14 Journal of Comparative Neurology. 



might if permitted to reach an auditory cortical station, produce 

 some Sensation — perhaps of a new kind of sound. The anat- 

 omical relations prevent an interference of this kind but the re- 

 sults of the current's action on the eye station may meet and 

 modify a similar product of an ear station in a centre of a higher 

 order. In the frontal lobes, perhaps, is a projection system of 

 the highest order where the last fine adjustments occur. There 

 must be, it would seem, a constant balance or resolution of 

 lorces in such a system. The centre of tension, if it could be 

 seen, would be found flitting with greater rapidity that the re- 

 flected disc of the electrometer of a testing outfit from one sta- 

 tion to another in obedience to the various disturbances of equi- 

 librium — due here to a new sense presentation, there to a nu- 

 tritive adjustment removing a temporary inhibition. There is, 

 to all appearance, only this sort of physiological unity possible. 

 The only psychological unity is the unity of consciousness. Is 

 there a connection between the two ? We are inclined to an- 

 swer in the affirmative. While it seems necessary from consid- 

 erations not necessary to enter upon here to consider conscious- 

 ness itself a spontaneity of a higher than nervous nature, it is 

 apparent that it finds its physical condition in this vortex or ner- 

 vous " centre of gravity." If this or something like this is the 

 truth about consciousness, then attention is a name for the play 

 of consciousness and a study of its laws reduces, on one hand, 

 to the investigation of neural equilibrium and, on the other, to 

 a natural history of consciousness. The conditions of inner at- 

 tention are those of association and inhibition. 



