Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/68

 PSYCHOLOGICAL PEINCIPLES. (ill.) 55 is certain that the objects are different : thus in perception, e.g., we deal with impressions, and in memory and imagina- tion with ideas. It will therefore be a simplification if in place of a distinction of faculties as well as a difference of object we find a difference of object alone sufficient. The still wider difference between cognitive and conative acts i.e., between the intellectual and active powers of the older psychologists seems to admit of similar reduction, when, taking the simplest cases of each, we remark that the objects of the one are sensations and those of the other move- ments. Supposing, then, there should prove to be an under- lying sameness in all the variety of psychical acts, what is it ? Starting from common language, there seem but two terms that could possibly denote this common element Consciousness and Attention. The former is soon disposed of : in spite of its properly active signification, we have seen that it is frequently used in a passive sense, and when actively used its meaning is as often too wide as too narrow, ranging between the whole extent of the facts to be analysed and one of the most specialised of these, what we otherwise call internal perception, reflection, and less accurately self- consciousness. Attention, on the other hand, has invariably an active sense, and there is an appropriate verb, to attend. Moreover, the figure involved, that of stretching or bending in some direction, while happy as a figure, does not, like ' con- scious,' surreptitiously introduce what has to be analysed as itself an ultimate term of the analysis. 1 The objection to Attention is that it is too narrow : many things are presented, but few are attended to. If attention is to be made co-exten- sive with consciousness, the vital distinction between attention and inattention is lost, and it is but an ill way to advance knowledge to rob " the central word of discipline " of its essential meaning. But on the other side it may be urged that even in common parlance this is not the only use of the word ; there is a generic sense of attention recognised as well. "'Attention 5 in the school and the army" is also known as a concentration of attention, and its absence as relaxing or remitting attention. As ordinarily used, then, attention implies a covert comparison; in other words, implies several degrees of attention in the wider sense. The pro- 1 Any one curious to see some of the confusions resulting from _ this A ss 933. _ Adyos- cannot do better than glance at the note " On Conscious- ness : its Conditions and Limitations " in Hamilton's edition of Reid, p.