_SOME REMARKS ON ATTENTION_
The term attention is, like feeling, a word of extremely doubtful and
variable import. Like feeling, attention may be used as denominating any
stage of consciousness, or it may be restricted to some more or less
specific form. As affections of the organism all psychoses are termed
feelings; viewed as subjective-objective acts, a content being attained,
consciousness as such is termed attention. We are said to be attending
when we have any activity of mind, when we have anything in the mind or
before the mind. When consciousness has something in it, consciousness
is attending, whence attention means consciousness acting. But what is
consciousness inactive? Nothing. Hence consciousness attending, used for
consciousness acting, is a pleonasm. Consciousness, by virtue of always
being conscious of something, does not need the word attention to
qualify it.
The attention of consciousness is called, attracted, or engaged, when
any mental act occurs, whether a pain, pleasure, perception, or whatever
form it may be. When the mind is occupied with anything, _i.e._, is
active, it is thereby attending to the thing. If I am conscious, I am,
of course, conscious of something, hence attending to that something.
But all these expressions are incompatible with a purely psychological
point of view. In psychics, as opposed to physics, the thing exists only
as perceived and in perceiving, _esse_ is _percipi_; the object or
content of consciousness exists neither beyond consciousness nor in it;
it is consciousness and consciousness is it, it is nothing more than
objectifying fact. Consciousness does not, like a pail, have contents,
but it is merely a name for the sum of activities we term conscious.
Such a phrase, then, as, attending to something, may be radically
misleading. We do not have both consciousness and a field of
consciousness, a presentation field. A tolerably constant part of human
consciousness is an activity which is a constituting a world of external
and internal objects. This objectifying activity, which may or may not
be object for higher activity—apperception or attention in one
sense—does not, however, persist and subsist as a more or less
mechanical _continuum_, as Mr. James Ward and that school maintain.
Still the word attention may in a vague and general way denote both the
realizing force and will effort therein of every act of consciousness.
But yet as thus a general term for certain aspects or general qualities,
it is liable to misconstruction, and we do not propose to employ it
either as denoting any act of consciousness as such, or any aspect
thereof.
Attention may also denote dominancy in consciousness. When any one
factor is pre-eminent, we say the mind is therewith attentive. When any
element has a marked ascendency, so that all others are much feebler and
subservient, thereby is constituted a state of attention; as when sight
perception monopolizes consciousness in an eagle watching for prey, or
hearing commands all the mental powers of a deer listening to a strange
sound. However, practically all states are in reality complexes in which
some one factor is and must be dominant, and this universal phenomenon
of dominancy scarcely deserves the specific name, attention.
Consciousness is always more or less concentrated in some single
channel; the factors in any state of consciousness are never perfectly
equal in intensity, and so are never in perfect balance. But attention
is not this fact of dominancy, but rather that of consciously sustained
dominancy, as we shall note later.
If attention is not a proper term to denote simple dominancy, may it not
denote that complete form, engrossment, or absorption, where one element
predominates to the exclusion of all others, and so occupies all of
consciousness—that is, more exactly, is all the consciousness—and also
tests the capacity for consciousness to the full? The fixed idea is an
instance in point, and in a certain way also preoccupation or
absent-mindedness. Still, in this last there are manifold elements and
often great complexity—_e.g._, train of thought—hence dominances of
different forms, but yet a persistence of a certain mode with
consciousness running at its full capacity, and the result being that
the general trend is not easily altered. In cases of fixed idea and
brown study we say, “his attention is fully occupied,” which means
nothing more than his mind or consciousness capacity is fully taken. I
do not see that we gain anything by using attention in the same sense as
these two general terms, mind and consciousness, which are surely
sufficient. Further, when one “loses himself in a subject,” the power of
self-activity, and hence power of real attention, is lost. Mental
activity which has slipped beyond the control of will is not in any true
and high sense an attending, nor is attention good term for
consciousness at saturation point.
Again, attention is often used to denote consciousness in its change
aspect. When a new consciousness comes in and supplants a former state,
we say, in popular but misleading phrase, “it takes or attracts his
attention,” as if attention were entity rather than activity. But when
we say that change of consciousness is change of attention, we really
add nothing; it is an identical proposition. Attention does not qualify
consciousness, but is merely synonym for it.
Still again, may attention designate intensity, or some certain degree
of intensity? We may say of one, “he was looking inattentively,” or of a
fixed, intense gaze, “he was looking very attentively.” A strong vision
is thus opposed to weak as an attention. As all psychoses have some
degree of intensity, they are thereby acts of attention, if we reckon
from a zero point, or a more or less large number of consciousnesses if
we reckon from some fixed degree of intensity. But to call a psychosis,
because of its intensity, or because it has reached a certain degree
thereof, an attention, seems an unnecessary procedure. Nothing is gained
by describing an intense psychosis as an attention, and certainly
intense pains and pleasures hardly come under the term. Nor yet are
intense cognitions, merely by reason of the intensity, properly states
of attention. Fixed ideas are commonly intense, yet there is no true
attention, as we have before intimated. Cognitions which come as intense
must be marked off from those which are intense by reason of a
self-determined self-consciousness intensifying. The essence of
attention is intensifying act self-regulated. To be sure, intense
presentations are given as such only by an heredity _momentum_, from
past ancestral intensifyings; their _impetus_ is on the basis of past
cognitive exertions. Presentation intensity, and, indeed, all mental
intensity, is originally and fundamentally volitional; the act had its
force solely in will power; but in late phases psychoses which
originally required intense exertion rise spontaneously and have a
strength and persistence apart from volition, and so the word attention
does not rightly apply to them. Thus also we can solve the problem that
Mr. Ward states when he says, “How the intensity that presentations have
apart from volition is related to that which they have by means of
it—how the objective component is related to the subjective—is a hard
problem; still there is no gain in a spurious simplicity that ignores
the difference” (_Mind_, xii. p. 65). But “objective component” and
“subjective” do not enter into the question; cognition does not arise as
a given, as forced and determined from without, but it is rather at
bottom a mode of volition. Still attention is not then cognition
intensity in general.
If attention is not any form or quality of mental activity in general or
of cognition in particular, we must find its essence in volition—as,
indeed, has been intimated in the immediately preceding pages. Attention
is properly the will side of cognition; it is cognitive effort.
Considering attentively, looking attentively, listening attentively,
mean cognitive efforts in thinking, seeing and hearing. Here is a
cognitive experience which does not simply happen, but is definitely
brought about and held to. There is intensifying act by which the given
cognition is held and kept in dominancy. The word attention must, as a
psychological term, be extended to denote, not merely modes of cognitive
effort prominent in man, but all cognitive exertion of whatever grade.
It will include all will-tension in all the senses—olfactory, gustatory,
muscular, etc.—as well as visual and auditory.[D] A dog scenting game
may be as truly attentive as a waiter listening to your order. So far as
the smelling by the dog is merely instinctive, that is, heredity
survival, there is no real attention; the mental activities are not
efforts of will-attentions—so far as they occur spontaneously and
inevitably. But when, as we often see, a dog is somewhat baffled in
scenting, it plainly puts forth cognitive effort, it exerts its
cognitive powers to the utmost, there is that strain and stretch which
the word attention literally and naturally suggests. As soon, in fact,
as the labour point is reached in any mode of cognition, here is
attention. All toil and work is attention, as a definite exertion of
will including some cognitive element. The labour of life is attention,
is minding or attending to business. Attention is thus will effort in
maintaining and intensifying a mode of cognition.
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Footnote D:
See also my remarks in _Psychological Review_, ii. p. 53.
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Concentration of attention is then, we may now remark, a redundancy, as
we make attention equal to concentration. To say his attention was
concentrated upon a certain subject, is equivalent to saying his mind
was concentrated. Sometimes, indeed, concentrated attention may mean
intense attention or concentration, but some concentration being always
involved in attention, it is a confusing and inaccurate phrase.
In a more restricted sense, attention is not merely any will tension in
cognition, but only so far as self-consciousness is involved in all the
exertion. We must sharply distinguish between this attention as willed
activity and as simple act of will. Willed cognitive activity denotes
cognition determined upon and consciously accomplished. The willing in
the knowing act may not be will to know. Willed cognitive activity, when
not against the will, when including choice and acquiescence, is in the
true sense voluntary attention—attention voluntarily, freely, willingly
performed. The term voluntary is not the proper correlative of
spontaneous, but rather volitional, while non-voluntary must be set over
against voluntary. In self-conscious attention of any kind there must be
consciousness of the tension, and consciously exercised effort in
delineating and maintaining cognition. In this narrow sense attention is
conscious furtherance or hindrance of cognition. Effort is consciously
put forth in some particular cognitive form; there is a self-limitation
by the mind in cognitive process. In short, attention here equals
cognition consciously constrained.
As to the relation of attention to subject, we remark that psychology as
the science of mental phenomena, rather than science of the soul, is not
called upon to imply a subject as in any wise attending. Yet we use, and
use inevitably, substantive forms and personal pronouns, but while it is
impossible for science to desubstantialize language, yet it must be ever
on its guard against the delusions of language. It is a common impulse
to explain activities by referring them to agents, to describe attention
and all mental acts as being what they are by reason of the actor, the
self, or _ego_; but science in this, as in so many things, inverts the
common order; the agent is made by and of activities, and not the
reverse. Agent or subject is no more than a congeries of manifold
interdependent activities. There is, and can be, no fixing of the mind
by the mind: the word, mind, being used in the same sense in both cases.
When I say, “I fix the mind upon something,” this means for analytical
psychology, that in the complex of consciousnesses which are unified by
an _ego_-sense, there occurs a will effort accomplishing a perception.
This purely dynamic interpretation is the method of all science which
cannot accept inexplicable essences and agents as explaining anything.
Attention is not to be explained by an attender, but it is a mode of
activity in that collection of activities which we term organic life
with conscious process. So even attention, as self-conscious exertion,
is not to be interpreted as an agent which is conscious of itself in
exerting; but we consider it as volitional activity with consciousness
of self as manifold complex of objects vitally connected with will
effort. Self-consciousness does not necessarily mean a self conscious of
itself.
It is obvious from our discussion thus far that we do not accept the
common division of attention into spontaneous and voluntary, which means
for us no more than spontaneous and voluntary—more properly
volitional—cognition. So-called spontaneous attention is the displacing
of one consciousness element by another without any will effort; there
is no displacing or placing as will activity, but cognitions appear,
persist and disappear by an inherent force. When in deep study the noise
of a whistle may spontaneously “attract my attention,” as the phrase is,
but this denotes no more than forcible change of state. There is nought
in the new act but the sensing the noise of whistle; there is no real
attending activity, no will effort at either promotion or inhibition.
However, we must grant that most cognition contains a volition element.
Absolute zero or negative value as to volition is but a momentary and
comparatively rare phenomenon in normal consciousness, where
self-possession and self-direction in some measure is almost constant.
In the case of noise of steam-whistle suddenly breaking in upon a
student, there is quickly attention—either positively, as listening to
quality, or to detect direction of sound; or negatively—true
_in_attention—as inhibiting and disturbing element. When one is made
“wild,” or distracted, by noise, then his mind is occupied unwillingly,
indeed, yet there being no real promotion or inhibition, we must term
the state _unattention_. Another form is where we give up in despair,
and passively suffer the annoying noise. In both cases we neither
stimulate nor repress, and so both are emotional unattentions. On
account of the pain-pleasure nature of all experience, there is even
here, however, some will attitude and tendency, some favouring or
retarding act, though it be wholly impotent in effect.
Just when a cognition rises to attention point, just when volition with
effort becomes prominent factor, this is a difficult and delicate
problem. However, according to the relative prominence or obscurity of
volition element, we must divide cognitions into attentions and
impressions. In the variety of human cognitive activity there is a
constant flow of cognitions which are one moment being strengthened to
attentions, and another, weakened to impressions. With volatile persons
cognitive life is a kaleidoscopic congeries of rapidly experienced
impressions and attentions. Will darts in and out with marvellous
velocity, now vivifying some, now others, in the stream of cognitive
activities determined by pleasure and pain interest. With all of us
there is a manifold complex _continuum_ of cognition, a general
non-attention knowing of external world and _ego_, which we continually
carry with us. Into this field of exertionless cognitive life
will-effort penetrates now to one point, now to another, seizing upon
and enlarging the most interesting and significant facts. As I am
sitting in my chair, I am dimly aware, without will tension, of a large
field of varied objects, any one of which I may emphasize, attend to,
when incited by sufficient interest. Practically exertionless awareness
is a constant _substratum_ for developed consciousness; here, in the
world of habit, it is always at home, and moves with great ease and
smallest friction; but the process of learning, the work of adding to
mental possessions and enlarging the _totum objectivum_ and _totum
subjectivum_, this is attention for complex consciousness.
We must note this, that attention is any general alertness toward
cognizing, though no actual cognition be attained. Cognitive straining
without result is truly a form of attention. A man listening for a sound
is equally attentive with a man listening to a sound. It is not
necessary for an attention to have something to attend to. Attention is
effort at cognizing as well as in cognizing. The stupid boy is often the
most attentive, the most strenuous in cognitive effort, yet there may be
little apprehension. In fact, we must recognise that in cognitive, as in
muscular activity, effort may be excessive, and defeat its own end. When
suddenly awaking in the night we often strain sense to the utmost, but
with no result; nothing is heard or seen. In this, as in some other
cases, we must notice that attention is not necessarily delineation.
While generally a particularizing effort of cognition, attention may
sometimes occur as mere general cognition stress.
If attention consists in cognitive effort, whether successful or not,
what is the nature of the effort to attend? A student says, I try to
attend, but I cannot; I cannot hold my mind down to anything. Professor
James remarks, “In fact, it is only to the _effort to attend_, not to
the mere _attending_, that we are seriously tempted to ascribe
spontaneous power” (_Psychology_, p. 451). But it is obvious in such
phrases attention means simply cognition, and may be substituted for it,
whereas we have just pointed out that attention is both the effort
toward and in cognizing act. Literally interpreted, then, the problem is
whether we can make an effort to make an effort at cognizing. In great
lassitude or exhaustion we lose control of ourselves, we are unable to
exercise volition either as attention or otherwise. We recognise and
lament the fact to ourselves, we feel our powerlessness, but I hardly
think we do ever really make an effort at effort. At the very first
stage of recovery from such state of utter non-volition, the will act is
always toward definite sense adjustments, or in holding to and promoting
certain thoughts and representations, and we thus have real attention.
The utter rout of psychoses, which once possessed us, we now conquer and
control for our ends and interests.
Attention to attention is obviously distinctively different from this
phase. We can and do attend to attention as psychic fact. An act of
attention cannot, indeed, attend to itself, but the volition act in
consciousness of consciousness, as consciousness of some attention act,
is very properly an attention to attention. If I am looking attentively
at a man, I cannot, by the very nature of attention, be simultaneously
volitionally introspective of, _i.e._, attentive to the looking
attentively. When actively sensing light, I cannot at the same moment
attend to this attention, because attention is always concentrative of
will. To be volitionally conscious of light is one moment, and to be
volitionally conscious of this light consciousness is another moment.
The attention attended to is not in process at the same moment as the
attention. This does not deny that we have simultaneous spontaneous
introspection of attentions. Introspection, like sensation, perception,
ideation, is attention only so far as it is effortful.
In his recent treatise on psychology Professor James discusses in an
interesting and suggestive way the relation of ideation to attention,
maintaining that “ideational preparation ... is concerned in all
attentive acts.” Attention is “anticipatory imagination” or
“preperception” which prepares the mind for what it is to experience.
Thus the schoolboy, listening for the clock to strike twelve,
anticipates in imagination and is prepared to hear perfectly the very
first sound of the striking.
It is undoubtedly true that in the form of attention we term expectant,
where we are awaiting _some given impression_, there is a representing,
antedating experience, which may be a preparatory preperception. But
with a wrong imaging of what is to be experienced there is hindrance, as
when in a dark, quiet room we are led to expect sensation of light but
actually receive sensation of sound. Very often, indeed, our
anticipations make us unprepared for experience. Further, the
experiments adduced by Professor James from Wundt and Helmholtz are in
the single form of expectant attention, and we must remark that in these
experiments the reagent is also experimenter, and this introduces a new
attention, consciousness of consciousness, and that of a peculiar kind,
which complicates an already complex consciousness. In general we may
say that experimentally incited consciousness is artificial, at least as
far as it feels itself as such, and for certain points like simple
attention this tends to vitiate results. Self-experimentation or
experiment on those conscious of it as such may mislead in certain
cases, and must, so far as this element of consciousness of experiment
is not allowed for. In physical science things always act naturally,
whether with observation or experiment, but in psychology observation,
other things being equal, is more trustworthy than experiment.
In all cases of expectant or experimentally expectant attention, the
attention does not, however, lie in the expectancy or in the imaging as
such, but it is merely the will effort concerned in these operations.
Yet as we may expect without effort, and preconceive without volition,
attention is necessarily involved in neither. A perception or a
preperception is an attention only as accomplished by will with effort,
but only an unattention when purely involuntary. Professor James’s use
of attention as preperception brings us back to the common idea of
attention, as any consciousness which cognizes something. This is so
inbred in thought and language that it is most difficult to avoid using
the term in this sense. Many psychologists, like Mr. James and Mr.
Sully, frequently mention attention as a will phenomenon, but they do
not treat it under will, and they constantly return to the cognition
meaning. Höffding, however, treats attention under psychology of will.
Attention as the exercise of will in building up and maintaining
cognitive activity, is naturally treated under cognition; but it is on
the whole safer and better to discuss attention under will so as to keep
it sharply distinguished from the presentation form which it vitalizes.
I have endeavoured to hold the term strictly to this sense, yet it is
not unlikely I may sometimes unwittingly countenance the common
confusion, but trust the instances will be few.
When we have, then, a case of expectant attention, we must distinguish
the attention in the imaging from the attention in the actual cognizing.
It is, indeed, true for us almost invariably that cognitive strain
without immediate realization is incentive to ideating. In listening in
the night in vain for a sound we hear in imagination many sounds, and we
form preparatory ideas of what we are to hear. Sense-adjustments call up
a train of sensations in ideal form. But it is obvious that low
intelligences which have no power of expectancy or ideation do yet
really attend. The very first cognitions and all early cognitions by
their very newness and difficulty were attentions long before ideation
was evolved. With low organisms, as cognitive power extends only to the
present in time and space, immediacy of reaction is imperatively
demanded, and every tension of cognitive apparatus is immediately
directive of motor apparatus, so that suitable motion is at once
accomplished. The cognition, though dim and evanescent factor, is yet
powerfully energized, and so a true attention. Always with lowest
sentiencies, and often with higher, pain is suddenly realized without
anticipation, followed quickly by attention as strong effort to cognize
the nature and quality of the pain-giver and so to effectually get rid
of pain-giver and pain.
Preliminary idea, then, cannot occur in early attentions and in late
attentions, it is by no means necessary. It is said that we see only
what we look for, but it must be answered that seeing commonly happens
without any looking for. The kindergarten child, Professor James to the
contrary notwithstanding, is not confined in his seeing to merely those
things which he has been told to see and whose names have been given
him. A child continually asks, What is that? and is quick to discern the
new and strange. He accomplishes a wide variety of attentions without
ideas and gives himself almost entirely to immediate presentations.
To be sure, every one sees only what he is prepared to see, only what is
made possible for him by his mental constitution as determined by his
own pre-experience and the experience of his ancestors, but this does
not signify ideation. Every cognizing is conditioned by the past, but
this does not call for a reawakening and projecting in ideal form at
every instance of cognitive effort before any real cognition is reached.
In fact many, if not the most of our attentions, are merely
intensifyings of some present cognition, of some cognitive psychosis
which has simply come or happened. Take the instance of attention to
marginal and retinal images; this certainly does not always imply
pre-perception, the forming of an idea of what we are to see, though in
the cases mentioned by Professor James it may. For example, I was
writing the above seated with my profile to the window when I became
suddenly aware, through the physiological agency of a marginal image, of
a moving object to my right. This perception of bare, undefined object
was spontaneous, a pure given; I exercised no will in attaining it, and
so the state of cognition was not an attention. However, by attending,
by intensifying the cognition by will effort, I perceive that the
indefinite object is a man walking on the sidewalk, who is of a certain
height, clothed in a certain way, etc. I do not trace the least ideation
in the whole process; the slight attending as act of will did not imply
any anterior or posterior idea or representation. The reason for the
will act was the intrinsic interest of movement, and this intrinsic
interest arises in the fact that moving objects have had for all life a
special pleasure-pain significance; the moving object is the most
dangerous, and so motion perceived has become ingrained in mind as a
special stimulant of attention. This habit of attentiveness to things in
motion survives and continues for cases where it is of no use and even
of harm; thus, in the present instance, it diverts me from my work. It
is obvious that attention often occurs in the same way for other senses
without preliminary idea.
Is there such a state as negative attention or active inattention? Is
will activity in cognition always positive merely, and never existing as
direct repression or weakening of acts? To some psychologists negative
attention means only that certain elements in a consciousness are
overshadowed by the dominancy of some single factor; that, owing to the
limited capacity of mind, many elements can exist only in enfeebled form
beside their stronger neighbours. If the life blood of mind, will, is
largely absorbed by some particular form or mode, all other forms must
suffer in consequence.
It is, of course, obvious that the amount of will force which is put
into some given cognition is potentially or actually withdrawn from
other factors which then, however, are more justly termed unattentions
than inattentions. But is the withdrawal of energy attained only by
transference? May it not be attained by direct repression and
suppression? When we wish to weaken some particular cognition, is it to
be done only by specially energizing some other cognition? It would seem
on general principles rather strange that we can, under stimulus of
interest, increase our energizing of any given cognition but cannot
reduce it except indirectly by transference. This would mean that the
sum total of actual will force remains constant as far as subject to
voluntary control, and it is only by subdivision into many channels that
any actual diversion is secured. Will force may be withdrawn and
transferred, but not an atom of it can be directly suppressed. But can I
not directly repress a troublesome thought or a painful sight? If by a
great effort of will I keep my eyes closed to some horrible but
fascinating sight, this is a true active inattention, the exactly
opposite exertion to holding my eyes open and fixed upon my book for
reading when very sleepy, which process is always termed attention. When
our energy is going in some comparatively undesirable way we often do
simply switch on to another track, but often also we shut off steam and
reverse. Instead of direct promotion or indirect inhibition there is
direct inhibition or often both forms of inhibition combined. We may,
under pressure of interest, directly weaken any cognition, untensify,
check and reduce the will effort involved by immediate relaxation. In
putting ourselves to sleep we relax with effort, we reduce and stop all
attentions. In awaking we often go through a reverse process. The
attitude of any cognition is either by and through will, or with
comparative indifference and no intervention of will or with will
directly against it, which three states we term attention, unattention,
inattention.
Negative attention is then, I think, a real activity, a will force which
directly hinders and crushes out the unwelcome in consciousness, while
positive attention is will force vitalizing and strengthening the
pleasant. In conflict of interests these forms are complementary, and
attention is here a double will-effort, both the effort at withdrawing
energy from one point, and the effort at applying it in a new point. In
most cases attention is both resistance and insistance. Even in simple
forms the natural tendency to inertia constitutes a constant counter
interest to any particular activity-interest. Attention then is always
resistance to this natural inertia _plus_ the direct energy in effecting
the particular activity. But in advanced consciousness there is always a
multitude of difficulties in the way of specializing cognition, a great
variety of distractions to be resisted, all which, added to the definite
exertion required in the special work, makes the ordinary attention in
human consciousness a very complex affair. A student engaged on a
mathematical problem is incessantly driving out distracting thoughts and
positively fixing his mind upon the problem. Resistance is manifold,
according to the speciality of the task—the more special, the more
distractions—and the direct concentration is also a real and direct
activity.
We may then, I think, see the importance of both positive and negative
acts in attention. As counter to the theory that positive attention is
the only real form, we might plausibly argue the opposite, that it is
only the reverse side of negative attention. If we shut out all but one
element from consciousness, do we not thereby bring that one into bolder
relief and so indirectly strengthen it? May not all intensification of
cognition be thus but an indirect result of negative attention? No, for
even when all distractions are kept away, there is the inherent
difficulty of the act _plus_ the inertia, the general disinclination to
effort. Positive attention may rarely appear as practically pure, and
rarely also negative attention. Consciousness may sometimes consist of
merely pure will tension as keeping off all defined activities; and
persons of great will power sometimes achieve this in putting themselves
to sleep. Consciousness is a blank field, tensely kept, but perfectly so
only for a very brief time.
As to the origin of attention, it must arise with cognition itself. The
past act of cognition was, as we have seen (p. 61), a powerful will act,
an achievement through struggle, and therefore an attention. The history
of cognition and of its ultimate development into the highest forms is a
story of incessant and fierce competition in the struggle of life. Man’s
power of sense, perception and thought is an inheritance from an immense
deal of will effort by untold millions of ancestors. The necessities of
existence compelled an alertness, a general cognitive strain, which
effected progress and discovery, the attainment and integration of new
and most valuable forms of experience which have been handed down to
later generations. The earliest cognitive life is then almost entirely
attentive; cognition does not _come_, it must be _attained_. Gradually,
however, some low form like general sensation is so integrated, and
requires less and less attention, till it _comes_, is _given_, with
comparatively no effort, and a state of unattention thus appears in
consciousness. The child repeats quickly, easily, without attention, the
evolution of the past, and this spontaneous re-enactment continues up to
the full point of hereditary integration. Without effort the child is
carried on at the incitement of instinctive inherent interest up to a
certain comparatively high grade of experience. But heredity _momentum_
gradually ceases, and if there is to be individual progress, attention
must come in. Thus, intellectual education is fundamentally a developing
of attention. Conscious control of cognition, both positively and
negatively, becomes more and more efficient, and the progress of the
race is dependent on exceptional attention in exceptional
individuals—geniuses. Attention becomes more and more limited and
specialized, and a minute subdivision of labour results.
Now, primitive attention is not as Mr. Ward, for example, would make it,
a primordial fact of mind, but as a cognitive form of will or will form
of cognition—it is essentially secondary. However, Mr. Ward, in his
article in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, makes a peculiarly advanced
form of attention the initial fact of consciousness, namely, by the
non-voluntary act of mind being conscious of changes in itself. But mind
is not at first a something which is inevitably cognizant of its own
experience, but it merely is a state, does not have states, and is not
consciously aware of them as such. There is, for instance, pain, but no
consciousness of the pain as fact of experience. Mind is not primitively
a something acted on, reacting, and cognizant of these self-movements,
but merely effortful will activity attaining snatches of cognition at
the pressure of pain and pleasure. It seems, indeed, tolerably plain
that apperception is not necessary to consciousness as such, and the
general law of evolution from simple to complex leads us to suppose that
consciousness was not at first with any apperceptive process. Changes,
whether as occurring or as being brought about, did not imply an
apperception taking cognizance of them. But however this may be, certain
it is that apperception, as consciousness of self-change or as
consciousness of consciousness, must as a form of cognition arise in
will effort like any other forms, must be a real attention, not a
so-called non-voluntary attention. We do not see any reason why this
form of cognition should be an exception to the general law that every
step of consciousness is an acquirement and achievement determined by
the struggle for existence.
The relation of attention to feeling has already been touched upon,
especially as related to interest. Attention, like other volitions, is
aroused by feeling, primarily as direct pleasures and pains, secondarily
by the ideal forms of these, that is, interest. Low organisms are
incited to attentions as simple sensation-cognitions only by present or
immediately impending pain or pleasure. Direct pain does not interest or
include interest in itself. There must be, not merely pain, but
cognition of it as element in experience, before there is interest,
which is always _in_ something. Interest implies representation, the
sense of the value for experience of any given thing. What pleases or
pains interests only so far as perceived as pleasurable-painful; the
thing perceived as source of feeling, or as in any wise related to it,
arouses interest. “I am pleased or pained,” does not equal, “I am
interested”; but only so far as I have cognizance of the object,
pleasing or paining, am I interested in it. The interesting is what
touches my interests, what affects my experience, what potentially
reaches or touches me. It is obviously to the great advantage of the
organism that pleasure-pain object merely perceived should move, excite,
or interest, which brings in attention to the thing, and so fuller
knowledge and preparedness for action. Interest, then, is practically
equivalent to emotion. “It interests me,” is equal to, “It arouses my
emotion.” The interesting picture, book, man, animal, etc., is that
which awakens emotion, and thus incites attention. What affects me or
moves me, interests me. Interest is generally used to denote favourable
emotion of rather low intensity, as when I say, “He interests me”; but
as a psychological term it may well be used in the broad sense to denote
any emotion so far as it stimulates attention. The function of interest
lies wholly in its effect upon attention, it is always a feeling
stimulant to the will act of cognition. I do not exert my cognitive
powers unless I have some interest at stake.
There are, of course, many degrees of interest. Often interest is so
slight as not to rouse attention, being too weak to overcome natural
inertia to will effort or unable to deflect will as bent by some
conflicting interest. A lesson is to be learned, but the interest,
often extrinsic, does not rise to attention point till possibly a
few minutes before recitation. The interest, fear of failure, may
then be sufficiently strong to induce very vigorous attention, and
within a certain range the stronger the interest, the stronger the
attention. Yet at a certain point of intensity emotion begins to
derange will activity and to hinder and even destroy attention. Fear
which has become fright extinguishes attention. Self-controlling
power of attention is lost in a flood of emotion. Yet ungovernably
intense emotion is no longer properly termed interest, which always
implies cognitive power. Interest is properly comparatively mild
emotion state, which includes definite cognitive element. But
interest may be not only at or below attention point, but it may be
of such an intensity and kind as to do away with need of attention,
securing a spontaneous, or practically spontaneous, cognition. Thus,
my interest in a book may at first be insufficient, _i.e._,
practically _nil_, to constrain attention in any degree; it may
become so strong that I make constant cognitive effort, and finally,
as it becomes profound and absorbing, I cognize without any
attention. When anything becomes sufficiently interesting, interest
acts of itself directly upon cognition, which is then performed
without attention. Interest frequently increases to the spontaneous
cognition point, carries cognition in it; but we must remember,
nevertheless, that all cognition had its origin in attention.
Interest acquired and become habitual demands less and less force of
attention, so that our customary interests finally awake cognition
without any attention act. If given cognitions always required the
original will effort,—attention,—intellect could not progress,
delicate and far-reaching reactions could not be initiated, for they
could have no basis. The force of inherent hereditary interests
makes itself felt throughout all advanced psychic life. A survey of
the cognitions of any single day would show us that by far the
greater number are by this type and degree of interest. The common
cognitions and adjustments of every-day life in walking, sitting
down, and in matters of routine, are mostly of this type.
It is tolerably plain that the relation of feeling to cognition cannot
be expressed by any single formula, and it is certainly far from true
that sensation or other cognition is inversely as the intensity of
feeling. If feeling, either as simple pleasure-pain or as interest, is
the incentive of attention, which is the primary measure of cognition;
then intensity of cognition is directly as intensity of feeling for a
certain range, and this is also true where attention has lapsed. The law
of inverse ratio applies only when feeling has risen beyond the point of
highest efficiency, when there is over pressure, and mind runs wild
beyond self-control and attention. Then we should, of course, find at a
certain point, if we could make exact measurement, geometrical decrease
in cognition for arithmetical increase in feeling, but ratio would
constantly change. The centre and spring of any high psychic life is
interest, and as interest increases intellection and volition increases
_pari passu_. In cases of decline, where interest or capacity for
emotion is lost, psychic life as a whole dissolves and disappears. On
the contrary, the progress of mind is in the strengthening and extension
of interest.
Interest leads to attention in the forms mentioned, but it seems also a
mode of attention when, at the bidding of interest, we not only promote
or inhibit some cognition, but some particular feeling. In a fit of
anger we may be prompted by prudence or conscience to forcibly and
directly restrain and abate it. I may similarly maintain an amiable
frame of mind as opposed to crossness. To repel a fit of anger of course
implies repelling the representations which enter into the angry
emotion, and so it is that the repressing or stimulating all emotions,
by reason of their representative nature, necessitates a will effort
with reference to the cognitive element, and thus an attention.
It is commonly believed that attention to a feeling intensifies it—that
the more we attend to our feelings the stronger they are, and the less
attention we pay to them the weaker they are. A soldier wounded on the
field of battle heeds not the pain in the excitement of the conflict.
But the truth is in this case that he has no pain so long as he feels
none, and that he does not attend to the pain signifies simply that pain
does not become a psychic fact, but is wholly physiological, and so not
a subject for psychological discussion. This is a case of the confusing
use of attention for consciousness in general which we have before
criticised. Very often, indeed, such an expression as, “The more he
attends to his pain the more he has,” means simply, the more pain he has
the more he feels, an identical proposition. But we must also
discriminate between attention in a feeling and attention to a feeling.
I work myself up into a passion by strenuously dwelling on
representations involved in anger—this is an attention in a feeling; but
attention to anger would be self-observational effort. The former does
not involve consciousness of the feeling, the latter is nothing more
than strenuous consciousness of the feeling. Men are often angry without
being conscious of it or but dimly so, and attention to the feeling
would consist in intensifying by will effort this consciousness. When a
person says, “I was mad and I knew it,” he asserts the distinctness of
the acts and that the first does not always imply the second. This
cognition originally, like all cognition, required volition, and it is
still subject to volitional control and emphasis, that is attention,
even in advanced consciousness. Attention to a feeling is cognitive
effort in attaining or strengthening consciousness of feeling, hence is
but a mode of apperceptive or introspective effort.
We must distinguish sharply then between the observing act and the
observed feeling, between a cognition of consciousness of pain and a
pain consciousness, and we must note that attention may be either,
neither, or both. Apperception has become such a habit with higher human
consciousness that it is commonly exercised without attention, and so
has seemed to some as a necessary fact of all consciousness, an
anthropomorphism, which seems to us erroneous. When we are conscious we
are generally conscious that we are conscious; when a man has toothache
there is not only pain, ache, toothache, but consciousness of this as
fact of experience; but this does not establish apperception as fact of
all consciousness.
Is it true now that the more we are conscious of a consciousness the
less we have of the latter? Certainly the more conscious we are of it
does not imply having the more of it, though we may say with truth that
within a limited range the greater and intenser the consciousness, the
greater the facility for consciousness of consciousness. A mental fact
must have a certain definiteness and prominence before it is clearly and
easily cognizable. However, speaking of the effect of apperception upon
the consciousness apperceived, it must be evident that it is always a
minifying and not a magnifying. Consciousness is self-divided when there
is both experience and consciousness of experience, hence a loss of
force for the consciousness cognized. A feeling self-consciously felt is
weakened thereby. The feelings we are most conscious of are of
comparatively low intensities. In very intense feelings we lose or
forget ourselves: we do not know what we are doing or feeling.
If now we make the consciousness of consciousness effortful, it is plain
that we diminish the consciousness cognized in still greater measure. A
consciousness of consciousness cannot be forwarded except at expense of
general mental capacity, and so as diverting force from the act
observed, whatever this be. Attention to a feeling must then on general
principles diminish the feeling, and that in a marked measure. The
psychologist who is always twigging his own consciousness to find out
what is going on there must often be surprised to find nothing there. It
is astonishing how fast feeling disappears when we begin to examine and
analyse it. The emotion fades the moment we turn attention to it. We
find that in psychological matters as elsewhere that we cannot have our
cake and eat it too. We murder to dissect. Apperceptive effort is never
intensification in the consciousness cognized, but cognition and
pleasure-pain feeling as a consciousness cognized lose in force, just as
in the body, an undue exaltation of one function is always a depressing
of others by withdrawal of force. The more conscious I am of my fear the
less I fear. While this law of withdrawal of force is obviously the case
when consciousness is at its fullest capacity, yet it may be said that
apperception in other phases acts as stimulant to waken latent forces,
just as in the body stimulus of one function is often stimulus of all,
though we doubt that apperception is original and permanent function in
consciousness. But still in such cases it is a new consciousness which
is stimulated and strengthened and not the consciousness which is being
cognized, and still more then is there decrease in the latter. A given
feeling is never increased by attentive consciousness of it. When a
feeling is said to be intensified by attention to it, we may suspect
either inaccurate analysis or misuse of terms. This, of course, does not
deny that within a certain range _immanent_ attention increases
pleasure, etc., for example, the more actively we taste an orange the
more taste pleasure we get.
We note in passing the very interesting psychological paradox that the
more we view ourselves the less we have to view, the principle of which
has been set forth above. We know well that the very reflective and
self-conscious have little personal force and individual quality.
Moreover the self-conscious stage in youth is precisely the period when
there is the least real self to be conscious of. A strong multiplex mind
is rarely very self-observant.
Finally we have to remark upon the way in which attention may be
divisive of cognition. Boswell makes Dr. Johnson to say, “If we read
without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention;
so that there is but one half to be employed on what we read.” But
admitting the necessity of intrinsic interest, this does not do away
with attention. Attention hinders rather than helps cognition only when
it becomes wearing strain, as in reading when much fatigued. But
attention as fulness of vigorous normal will activity gives a force and
value to cognition which it would not otherwise have, and often makes
its very existence possible. The greatest, most significant cognitions
in the mental life of any individual are those which are achieved at the
top of endeavour. Real knowledge as advancement and acquirement is
always the fruit of long training and attention.
The act of attention is painful and therefore is not exercised by lower
organisms, at least, only under absolute necessity. Often the pain from
attention is so great that the individual prefers to suffer than to
exert himself cognitively and so help to remove pain-giver. It is only
under the greatest pressure that new knowledge and new ideas are
acquired, and the history of mind shows a series of _tours de force_
achieved only in moments of direst need. The strengthening and the
holding of cognitive powers to a given point by effort of will is
peculiarly distasteful and painful activity. All minds tend toward
inaction or toward the regions of effortless action where overwhelming
interest carries them freely along. Attention, while the most
advantageous of actions, is yet most irksome and painful. It would seem
to us at first blush that if pleasure and not pain had attached to the
attentive act from the beginning, the evolution of mind would have been
accomplished in the merest fraction of the time actually required. It
would have been the difference between going down a steep incline rather
than up. Why progress should only be realized through painful effort and
struggle is a problem which has vexed the thought of man throughout
history but upon which psychology has little light to throw. Our present
concern is to simply emphasize the fact that cognitive act as attention
is always painful, and if the act of cognition is performed without pain
we may promptly deny this to be an attention. This is, of course, far
from asserting that all cognizings with pain are attentions.