274 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



(1) insane delusions ; (2) alternating selves ; 

 (3) mediumships or possessions, and their 

 discussion is popular, anecdotal, and tolerant, 

 as becomes a member of the Society of Psy- 

 chical Research. Mr. James tries to inter- 

 pret the phenomena of mediumship. He 

 speculates on the brain-condition during per- 

 versions of personality, and says " we must 

 suppose the brain capable of successively 

 changing all its modes of action, and aban- 

 doning the use for the timu being of whole 

 sets of well - organized association paths. 

 And not only this, but we must admit that 

 organized systems of paths can be thrown 

 out of gear with others so that the processes 

 in one system give rise to one consciousness 

 and those of another system to another si- 

 multaneously existing consciousness." 



Chapter XI, on Attention, discusses the 

 question whether this is a faculty or a result- 

 ant a cause or an effect. The author accuses 

 the psychologists of the English empiricist 

 school, naming Locke, Hume, Hartley, the 

 Mills, and Spencer, of neglecting to notice it 

 at all, and explains the motive of this ignor- 

 ing by saying that " these writers are bent 

 on showing how the higher faculties of the 

 mind are pure products of ' experience ' ; 

 and experience is supposed to be of some- 

 thing simply given. Attention, implying a 

 degree of reactive spontaneity, would seem 

 to break through the circle of pure recep- 

 tivity which constitutes 'experience,' and 

 hence must not be spoken of under penalty 

 of interfering with the smoothness of the 

 tale." The following extracts from his sum- 

 mary of the chapter may be taken as a fair 

 sample of his style, and of his mode of deal- 

 ing with subjects. 



Mr. James says that he inclines to the 

 cause-theory ; but he also says that, " as re- 

 gards immediate sensorial attention, hardly 

 any one is tempted to regard it as anything 

 but an effect." And, again : " Derived atten- 

 tion, where there is no bodily effort, seems 

 also most plausibly to be a mere effect." 

 And, again : " Even where the attention is 

 voluntary it is possible to conceive of it as 

 an effect and not a cause, a product and not 

 an agent. " Viewing it thus he says : " The 

 stream of our thought is like a river. On 

 the whole, easy flowing predominates in it, 

 the drift of things is with the pull of gravity, 

 and effortless attention is the rule. But at 



intervals an obstruction, a se!-back, a log- 

 jam occurs, stops.the current, creates an 

 eddy, and makes things temporarily move 

 the other way. If a real river could feel 

 these eddies and set-backs as places of effort, 

 'I am here flowing,' it would say, ' in the 

 direction of greatest resistance. My effort 

 is what enables me to perform this feat.' 

 . . . The agent would all the while be the 

 total downward drift of the rest of the water, 

 forcing some of it upward in this spot. . . . 

 Just so with our voluntary acts of attention. 

 They are momentary arrests, coupled with a 

 peculiar feeling of portions of the stream. 

 . . . But the feeling of effort may be an 

 accompaniment more or less superfluous, and 

 no more contribute to the result than the 

 pain in a man's finger when a hammer falls 

 on it contributes to the hammer's weight. 

 Thus our notion that our effort in attending 

 is an original faculty, of which brain and 

 mind are the seat, may be an abject super- 

 stition. Attention may have to go like 

 many a faculty once deemed essential. It 

 may be an excrescence on psychology. No 

 need of it to drag ideas before consciousness 

 or fix them, when we see how perfectly they 

 drag and fix each other there." 



Then, after this persuasive statement of 

 the effect-theory, he gives the other side a 

 chance by answering the question as to 

 " what the effort to attend would effect if it 

 were an original force." " It would deepen 

 and prolong the stay in consciousness of in- 

 numerable ideas which else would fade more 

 quickly away. The delay thus gained might 

 not be more than a second in duration but 

 that second might be critical ; for in the 

 constant rising and falling of considerations 

 in the mind, where two associated systems 

 of them are nearly in equilibrium, it is often 

 a matter of but a second, more or less, of 

 attention at the outset, whether one system 

 shall gain force to occupy the field and de- 

 velop itself, and exclude the other, or be 

 excluded itself by the other. When devel- 

 oped it may make us act, and that act may 

 seal our doom. The whole feeling of reality, 

 the whole sting and excitement of our vol- 

 untary life, depend on our sense that in it 

 things are really being decided from one mo- 

 ment to another, and that it is not the dull 

 rattling off of a chain that, was forged innu- 

 merable ages ago. This appearance, which 



