THE PRINCIPAL ACTS 381 



some part of that organ, so that it is ready either to re-awake ideas 

 already impressed upon it or to receive the impression of new ideas. 



It seems to me manifest that attention is not a sensation, as Senator 

 Garat has said,^ and that it is not an idea, or any operation upon 

 ideas ; consequently that it is not an act of will, since this is always the 

 result of a judgment ; but that it is an act of the individual's inner 

 feehng, by which some part of the organ of understanding is prepared 

 for an intellectual operation, and by which that part becomes fitted to 

 receive impressions of new ideas, or recall to the individual ideas which 

 had previously been traced. 



Indeed I can prove that when the organ of understanding is not 

 prepared by that effort of the inner feehng called attention, no sensation 

 can arise ; or if one does arise, it leaves no impression but merely 

 skims over the organ without producing any idea, or recalhng to con- 

 sciousness any that had been previously traced. 



I was justified in the statement that although every idea is derived 

 in the first instance from a sensation, every sensation does not neces- 

 sarily yield an idea. The citation of certain well-established facts will 

 suffice to justify this proposition. 



When you are reflecting, or your thoughts are occupied with some- 

 thing, although your eyes are open and external objects are constantly 

 affecting your vision by the hght which they emit, you do not see any 

 of these objects or at least you do not distinguish them, because the 

 effort of your attention guides the available portion of your nervous 

 fluid over the outlines of the ideas which are occupying you, and because 

 the part of your intellectual organ that is adapted to the reception of 

 sensations of external objects is not at the time prepared to receive these 

 sensations. Thus the external objects which affect your senses from all 

 sides produce no idea within you. 



The fact that your attention is directed to the other points of your 

 organ, where the ideas that occupy you are traced, and where perhaps 

 you are still tracing new and complex ones by your reflections, puts 

 these other points in the state of tension or preparation necessary for 

 the working of your thoughts. Hence, under these circumstances, 

 although your eyes are open and receive the impression of external 

 objects, yet you form no idea of them, because the sensations ensuing 

 from them cannot penetrate to your organ of intelligence, which is not 

 prepared to receive them. In the same way you do not hear, or at 

 least do not distinguish, the sounds which strike your ear. 



Finally, if somebody speaks to you, although distinctly and in a 

 loud voice, at a moment when you are engrossed in some particular 



^ Course of lectures on the analysis of the understanding for the Ecole normale, 

 p 145. 



