Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/484

468 importance in Aristotle's definition: first, the inference is conceived as a unified totality, just as a single construction; and, secondly, it is insisted that through the inference an actual and not merely an apparent progress in judgment is made to a new judgment which is not contained in any single assertion taken by itself. In inference a reciprocal influence of the combined assertion takes place, such that the conclusion is no less conclusive for the premises than these are for it. The syllogism could last, as the sole accredited form of reasoning, only so long as the Aristotelian metaphysical science. As to the forms of reasoning, through the combination of conceptual theses and judgments in the narrower sense we get three principal kinds of conclusive-sequence: conclusions with conceptual premises alone, conclusions through the combination of judgments with conceptual theses, and, lastly, conclusions whose premises were constituted purely out of judgments. These three forms can be shown to correspond to what Aristotle taught about the figures of the syllogism.

After a short statement of the doctrines of attention advanced by British philosophers, the author discusses the "essential nature of attention." He does not find himself able to give any new explanation of the nature of attention in cases of sudden impressions, but quotes approvingly Maudsley's dictum that "Attention is the arrest of the transformation of energy for a moment, the maintenance of a particular tension." Voluntary attention is a complex process, and includes volition. The "motor" processes of attention are due to associations of sensations; attention as such belongs to sensor processes, but the molecular activities of the sensor element well over into the motor mechanism. Wundt's view that the frontal lobes are apperception centres is fanciful and speculative. The process of attention takes place in each of the cortical sensorial centres, and attention is accordingly visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc. In voluntary attention, often called internal volition, it may be said that the thoughts invariably follow one another according to laws of habit or association. When one train of thought supersedes another, we call the sequence an effort of will; but here, as in regular association, one thought supersedes another in virtue of its superior force. The occasions for exercise of voluntary movements spring up as ordinary links in the chain formed by an association of ideas. Between the cerebral reflexes known as ideo-motor acts and simple