Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 12.djvu/69

 56 J. WARD : posal to use it absolutely or in this wider sense is very much like the proposal to use ' magnitude ' or ' heat ' (i.e., tempera- ture) in such fashion. Many an unsophisticated old lady would demur to one who described the minuteness of a snow crystal in terms of magnitude or its temperature as so many degrees of ' heat ' (reckoning from absolute zero). What has been found necessary in these physical matters seems necessary here, and it will be as easy to get accustomed to the absolute sense in the one case as in the other. Fortu- nately Prof. Bain goes a long way towards admitting the want. " I make the fullest allowance," he says, " for the need of a general word to express the reaction of the Subject upon presentations," &c. ; and he suggests " a still more general designation such as * mental tension ' or l conscious intensity '." In both the root of attention is there; but if the remarks already made on what might be called the relation- ality of terms have any force, it is obvious that mental tension and conscious intensity cannot be equated to each other, and can neither of them express the reaction of the subject upon presentations. But though Prof. Bain has nothing better to suggest, he animadverts none the less severely on the rashness and the presumption of the change proposed. " Before we bring forward a change in scientific nomenclature," he says, " we ought first to show that it is wanted, and next take the measure of our own influence or persuasive power for getting it adopted." As to the last, the writer is perfectly well aware that his personal influence is nil. So far as the advancement of knowledge goes, he is not, and never wishes to be, a per- son at all ; but that the change in question is wanted he thinks he has done something to show. And after all it is not nearly so violent a change as Prof. Bain imagines. The recognition of all degrees of attention in everyday life has been referred to already. The following from Locke is also very much to the point : " The various attention of the mind in thinking. . . . That there are ideas, some or other, always present in the mind of a waking man, everyone's experience convinces him ; though the mind employs itself about" them with several degrees of attention. Sometimes the mind fixes itself with such intention *. . . . that it shuts out all other thoughts and takes no notice of the ordinary impressions made on the senses ; .... at other 1 In an earlier paragraph Locke distinguishes " intention or study " from mere attention : in the former the mind resists the solici- tation of other ideas, in the latter such ideas as offer themselves are taken notice of as they pass ; in fact, it is attention as it is in the school and the army, that Locke here calls intention.