62 C. U. ARIENS KAPPERS 



formation of bird's eggs. Then instinct and growth, logetical action 

 and logetical formation, become one, both of them based on the 

 logetic entelechy of life. 



Since we see this relationship between spiritual life and growth, 

 and we find in both of them associated correlations, memory 

 and entelechy, the question arises, whether in our physical devel- 

 opment we can indicate still other factors, which we know play 

 a part in our mental or perceptual life. 



I shall discuss still two points here, attention and Weber's 

 law for perceptions. 



ATTENTION (CONCENTRATION) IN GROWTH 



It appears indeed that in bodily development there occurs 

 something that may be regarded as the spatial transposition of 

 the attention concentrated on one point, viz., the fact that a 

 tissue can only be fully one thing at a time, and the living sub- 

 stance in its specific tissue strives after losing a defective fitness 

 for everything in favor of a concentrated adaptation with regard 

 to one function. This is, however, nothing but the developmental 

 transposition of that which operates as attention in our conscious- 

 ness. Attention taken in this sense is, just like memory, a gen- 

 eral function of organized matter — a functional principle peculiar 

 to the cell in general. 



Just as it is I that am attentive and not the attention that is 

 there, so the specificity of a tissue is a specificity which only 

 has significance in the 'many-in-oneness' of the body. 



Perhaps we can also explain now by a somatic transposition 

 why the scientific, that is the attentive (discursive, analytic) in- 

 tellect can have no image of the 'many-in-oneness' of the micro- 

 cosm or the macrocosm. For conscious conception includes at- 

 tention, i.e., concentric visioning, and just as a specific tissue 

 which is to-day only a muscle, to-morrow a connective tissue, 

 and the day after tomorrow another thing again, would not 

 form an organ even if it preserves the properties which all the 

 tissues have in common, so the attentive conceptions of our con- 

 sciousness cannot give us an idea of the world or of life, though 

 we can recognize laws in it as many single threads. 



