Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/323

 322 F. H. BKADLEY : whether the incoming current stimulates the centre, or the centre discharges on the motor nerves, or the central motor organ puts forth energy also upon the sensory centre, or whatever else may happen, is as regards the main question entirely irrelevant, and, so far as I can judge, seems likely to remain so. And if any one replies, Here is physiological activity with a psychical feeling, and therefore of course the latter must be a feeling of activity, I will not gainsay it. I will merely ask him not to vary the meaning of his phrase without giving us notice, and somewhere to set down as clearly as he can what he means by a physiological activity. He should then give us a list of the psychical states where this condition is present, either according to the doctrine of physiologists in general, or of perhaps two or three, or of perhaps himself only. And in this case we may avoid that disastrous muddle of the body and the mind, which may appear " scientific " but can advance no science. We have now seen that from physiology no evidence can be brought to settle our main problem, and we have already attempted to exhibit the origin of our sense of expended energy. If that account is correct, then a specific activity of attention is no fact observed in the mind, but is a con- struction more or less fictitious and misleading. And if our account is not correct, that result still remains. We shall have shown that in every stage of attention we require no intervening event, and that a sense of energy (supposing it to exist) would be therefore not essential and probably not effective, but a more or less constant concomitant or result. And, if so, we have accomplished the task we undertook. There are two features however in the process of attention which deserve a passing notice. Is attention negative, and is it so directly or always indirectly ? I think the latter view the right one. When we are engrossed by one thing we lose sight of the others (why this must be so I shall not enquire), but the attention seems positive. And when an idea is painful and perhaps suggests also a prospect of pain, and when because of this character it is weakened or banished (I shall not ask through what means), there is in no case a negative activity of banishment. The attention which banishes is the domin- ance of an interest exclusive of the first and with a possible dominance of the idea of their conflict. In the latter case the positive interest will be strengthened by a powerful contrast, and attention to the pain will increase its strength and may hasten its disappearance. Further, when we attend to the absence of a certain idea in the sense of attending to