Herrick, Lecture Notes on Attention. 1 1 



of sense with a reproduced vestige as a guide. The repro- 

 duction may be of a very simple sort, as that of number — we 

 may be repeating mentally, simply " how many ? " as we scru- 

 tinize the sense content, but it is easy to see that the state 

 of things here is very difterent from that in case of external at- 

 tention — we are now dealing with a complicated central corre- 

 lation across if not wholly within the field of consciousness. 



hiternal Attention. — We have seen that internal attention 

 popularly lays claim to active and conscious effort, but we have 

 learned that such sense of mental effort may be, and sometimes 

 is, simply the association of muscular sensations and that inter- 

 nal attention implies a variety of coordinations in consciousness 

 and we need not be blamed if we fall to doubting the validity 

 of the sense of self-direction in internal attention. Internal at- 

 tention is connected with the process of comparison either of 

 the content of sense with some vestige or concept, or of two 

 or more psychical elements along themselves. Thus we receive 

 the advices from sense with a predetermined interrogatory, it 

 may be, "Is the new impression the same as some other? 

 Does it belong to the same class? Was it previously associated 

 with A, B, or C? Is it as big, as loud, as persistent, etc?" 

 In other words, we compare the new sensation with some stand- 

 ard in reproduction and form more or less implicate judgements 

 as to identity, similarity, difference etc., so that we find our- 

 selves projected into regions in the very penetralia of the psy- 

 chical life far from the supposed boundaries of mere attention. 

 This experience is enough to show that attention is not a fac- 

 ulty or independent activity of mind. Inner attention then 

 may be but the measure of the vividness of consciousness 

 under different conditions and attendant circumstances, whether 

 of presentations of sense or central processes. But, it is proper 

 to ask, what then becomes of the appearance of voluntary di- 

 rection of attention ? If it were true that we can force our 

 minds to attend to any thing we choose, then this would become 

 a matter of volition and need not require a separate treatment. 

 Very brief reflection shows that we cannot attend to anything 

 we please, for, in the first place, it is necessary that the thing 



