Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/322

300 selective attention. I choose to attend to one thought rather than another, and then I do attend to it. But though will in action is thus all selective attention, all selective attention is not will. For on further scrutiny of my stream of thought I am made aware rather startlingly that will meddles with it uncommonly little. Observation shows me that the like is true of my fellows. Indeed, the greater part of all our lives is made up of will-less action, of simply thinking the act and then doing it without any exercise of will at all. Yet we are not conscious of being our own on-lookers merely. On the contrary, we feel very poignantly that we live in this pageant that unrolls itself before the mind's eye. We feel this because selective attention is busy all the while, whether we will or no, and we are quite aware that it is thus at work involuntarily.

In the case of this involuntary attention, the power behind the throne seems to be quite simply the interest the particular idea possesses for us. If the idea appeals to us, we attend to it in spite of ourselves. We can, indeed, often catch ourselves led pleased captive thus to some fascinating thought,