ESSAYS 475 



At length I began to see that in this study was to be found the clue to the 

 whole problem. It led, for one thing, to the consideration of a question that 

 for centuries had been asked by psychologists, and to which various answers, 

 some fantastic, had been given by great authorities — viz., as to how many ideas 

 the mind can at one time entertain. Amongst the endeavours to obtain an 

 answer on scientific grounds may be cited those of Bessel and of Weber. The 

 greater part of the writings on the subject are vitiated by that spirit of inconclusive 

 disquisition which has descended to us from the Schoolmen, and which remains 

 as the model of the academic philosophers of to-day. 



In regard to this question I recognised its cardinal importance, and, travers- 

 ing the arguments of Bessel and Weber, I have shown their insufficiency, and 

 have submitted a series of new arguments which, I believe, will be found to be 

 decisive. The mind cannot at any moment entertain more than one object of 

 attention, together with the relation that associates it with the next. The word 

 "object" is here used, not with reference to any meaning that opposes objective 

 to subjective, but as including any sensation, idea, or incident, of mental life, 

 which can be regarded at the moment as the matter of attention. The term I 

 have used in my book is — " Immediate Presentation." 



The meaning of counting arises clearly from this — it is the registration, in 

 some form or other, by means of symbols, of the successive acts of attention, or 

 the reception as Units of the series of Immediate Presentations. 



The word "successive" is here inevitable; in other words, the recognition 

 of Time in elementary movements of the mind is a condition of our conscious life. 

 Space also forms a condition. 



At the threshold then, and it is for this reason that I have concentrated on this 

 part of the field, we have already ascertained certain processes as necessary, or as 

 I have called them, fundamental. The relation of one Immediate Presentation 

 to another implies Association, and the series, even of two, implies Memory. 

 The process of counting already involves Symbolification. Here, however, I have 

 used the term " Generalisation," which I have shown to involve Symbolification 

 and Classification ; these are but different aspects of the same process. 



The next process to be considered is that of which the inverse is usually 

 discussed under the title " Discrimination." I have called it Agreement, because 

 when, after a certain sequence of mental experiences another similar sequence 

 arises, there is a tendency in the mind to facilitate this second sequence ; or there 

 is an expectancy of Agreement, and it is the disappointment of this expectancy 

 that directs the mind to the points of difference, and so gives us the experience 

 of Discrimination. 



In these experiences the affection of the mind, when the conditions are 

 established, arises spontaneously and inevitably. The combination of the move- 

 ment of thought, so that the successive conditions may be produced, depends on 

 an extraordinarily complicated underlying mechanism, the physical correlative to 

 the mental state ; and the successive impacts giving rise to new mental states. 

 In this simple form Immediate Presentation manifests itself in consciousness as 

 the result of the process of Impulse. 



This process contains the germ of what we know as Will. 



The Sense of Effort is not to be confounded with Impulse. The Sense of 

 Effort has the same relation to motor acts affecting the efferent system, as 

 Sensation has to efferent stimulation. This is one of the most recondite 

 questions in the whole range of psychology, and I have devoted to it a special 

 examination. 



