Organic Connection Between Physical and Psychical 



us, we reproduce more of his sentences. "It has been ob- 

 jected to the partisans of Wundt that the term 'appercep- 

 tion,' as thus used, seems to signify a factor in mental life 

 which can be explained neither in terms of what we have 

 called sensitiveness, nor in terms of the law of habit. It 

 has also been objected that the conception of a conscious 

 process, engaged in influencing its own states, is a concep- 

 tion which confuses together metaphysical and psycholog- 

 ical motives. The psychologist, engaged as he is, not in 

 studying how Reason forms the world, but in observing and 

 reducing to rule the mere phenomena of human mental life as 

 they occur, is not interested, it has been asserted, in a power 

 whose influence upon mental phenomena seems to be of so 

 ambiguous a character as is that which the Wundtian 'ap- 

 perception' possesses." 3 



Again : "This is the place," Royce writes, "neither to 

 expound nor estimate Wundt's theory. But it does here 

 concern us to point out that what occurs in mind whenever 

 we are actively attentive is attended with a feelmg of rest- 

 lessness, which makes us dissatisfied with all those associa- 

 tive processes that do not tend to further our current in- 

 tellectual interests. On the other hand, the cerebral proc- 

 esses that accompany active attention are certainly such as 

 tend to inhibit many associative processes that would, if 

 free, hinder our current intellectual interests." Mean- 

 while, "our active attention itself is always the expression 

 of interests which possess the same elemental character that 

 we have all along been illustrating in the foregoing para- 

 graphs. The attentive inventor is eager about the beau- 

 tiful things that he thinks of while he is trying to invent. 

 The attentive hostess is eager about social success. The 

 attentive caged animal is eager about whatever suggests a 

 way of escape." 



The discussion from which these sentences are taken is 

 contained in a chapter near the end of the book, entitled 



