322 The Animal Mind 



reference to objects having certain peculiarities originally 

 undiscriminated, but now in some way emphasized through 

 painful circumstances accompanying his previous encounter 

 with them. 



The most fundamental characteristic of attention, then, 

 is perhaps that aspect of it which has been called abstrac- 

 tion, the diminished effectiveness of stimuli not attended to. 

 By virtue of this aspect we recognize that attention belongs 

 with instinct as being concerned in securing the prepotency 

 of vitally important stimulation. On the other hand, the 

 further characteristic of attention ; namely, that it is a state 

 of suspended reaction involving careful discrimination of 

 stimuli, suggests that its functioning is connected rather 

 with the refining and modifying influence of individual expe- 

 rience acting on instinct, since here alone do we find delayed 

 reaction and accurate stimulus discrimination. 



The highest grade of attention, the final triumph of vital 

 importance over mere intensity of stimulation, is to be found 

 where the focus of attention is occupied by an idea or train 

 of ideas. When a process purely centrally excited holds the 

 field and makes the individual deaf and blind to powerful 

 external stimuli pouring in upon his sense organs, then he 

 is superior to the immediate environment at least. This 

 form of attention occurs, probably, only when the vital im- 

 portance of the idea attended to has been learned through 

 that most rapid form of individual acquisition of experience 

 which involves the revival of the past in idea. It has been 

 called derived attention. The ideas attended to are held 

 in the focus of consciousness and analyzed through the power 

 of associated ideas. The inventor holds to his problem, the 

 student to his task, in spite of distractions, because of the 

 consequences which he thinks of as likely to result. It 

 seems unlikely that attention in this final form occurs among 



