Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/185

 ATTENTION 167

over the threshold of consciousness. Most of those which succeed in getting beyond the threshold are never ushered into the central office where the chief business of life is being transacted. Here in the focal point of consciousness the main process of adaptation is going on. Those sensations, or stimuli, gain admittance there which are directly involved in the effort we are making to get into more satisfactory relations with the environment. What sort of credentials must they present to gain admittance there?

First, they may appear to be significantly connected with some interest which we are at the time pursuing. In pro portion as the interest with which they are connected is cen tral in our purpose will their claim to recognition be strengthened, and also in proportion to what we conceive the importance of their relation to it to be. If you are absorbed in the effort to conclude a trade with a man, the colour of his hair will not be likely to fix your attention, unless it should be taken by you as an indication of his tem perament and thus become related to the dominant interest of the moment. On the other hand, if you had made a wager with some one that you would meet a certain num ber of red-haired men as you walked down the street, the colour of the hair of each man you met would attract your attention. If a geologist and a botanist should walk through a certain district for the purpose of studying, one its geological formation and the other its flora, their attention would be attracted by entirely different objects. If the geologist were interested in a secondary way in botany also, the weeds and flowers, trees and shrubs would receive an incidental share of his attention; but his interest would be chiefly engaged by rocks and earth-deposits. A detective who is working up the solution of a problematical crime will be attracted by certain details which would escape the notice of the average person, because they seem to his expert eye to be significantly related to the problem he is trying to solve. To sum up, attention always moves along the line of in terest.

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