ATTENTION THOUGHT. 33 



hitherto on account of the tendency to mislead which is 

 involved in it, preferring the more comprehensive ex- 

 pression Consciousness itself. For though it is difficult to 

 show that attention is only one of the powers of Con- 

 sciousness, and that Consciousness is not always, in our 

 common acceptation, attention because it is certain that 

 Consciousness is never exercised as a faculty or perceptive 

 power without attention being simultaneously and co- 

 extensively exercised upon the same subject on which the 

 Consciousness is engaged we have no means of showing 

 how far Consciousness and attention are identical with 

 and how far they differ from each other. We might, for 

 example, say that attention does not think, it merely per- 

 ceives. But then we might say the same thing of Conscious- 

 ness it merely perceives, but does not think : but this 

 is just another of those plausibilities which, like the 

 Epicurean proposition as to matter and touch, has more 

 the aspect of obviousness in it than the qualities of 

 intrinsic truth ; for Consciousness perceives thought, and 

 attention perceives thought, and these alone, if they be 

 one and the same unitedly if they be twain form the 

 only means by which we do perceive thought. The 

 difficulty hence is to conceive that the only power by 

 which we perceive thought is not our thinking power. 

 We know of no other thinking power we possess but that 

 power by which we perceive thought. The touch, the 

 taste, the smell, sight, or hearing, cannot think, neither 

 can they even perceive thought. Nay, the brain itself 

 cannot think, though it may receive impression and 

 motion under the operation of thinking. All these 

 faculties possess merely the power of mechanical, and 

 some of them also, in a limited degree, of chemical action ; 

 and we know of no other power we possess to which the 

 metaphysical energy of thinking can be ascribed that 

 power of reading the records and impressions of the brain 



