Selection of Ideas by Attention 255 



This analysis enables us to see more clearly the mean- 

 ing of the 'platform' from which thought-variations must 

 be projected to be real candidates for selection in the life 

 of attention. The experience which does not even bring 

 out the constant A elements is merely a brute shock and 

 not 'knowledge-about,' seeing that in these elements, 

 which are necessary to all attention, we have necessary 

 motor adjustments in which accommodation to the external 

 world consists. Such ' shocks ' do not reach the platform. 



Further, those experiences which do involve the A ele- 

 ments must also, at least in selective thinking, have some 

 sort of a element and a elements with them ; seeing that, 

 in the realm of thought, attention which is not concrete 

 involves no specific determination. ^ The study of the child 

 shows that the differentiation of the a from the a elements 

 is a gradual thing, the first knowledge being of a * vaguely 

 universal ' sort (an expression of Royce's ; the same thing 

 has been called by the present writer * the general of the 

 first degree'). Psychologically, therefore, the platform 

 upon which the new knowledge is to be secured is that of 

 a sense of familiarity toward an experience, at least in the 

 unrefined way which the child's 'vague universal' illus- 

 trates. The apprehension of a new truth is always either 

 the consciousness of an identity, in which case it is treated 

 as an old truth in all respects, or it is in some measure 

 subsumed under an old truth, when it illustrates class 

 recognition. And it follows as to our platform that any 

 new knowledge, to be selected and held as such, must be 



1 We may note, however, the familiar fact that the concrete content on 

 which attention is fixed is often only 2i point d'appui, 2iS,ymho\, verbal or other, 

 which, on the organic side, merely opens a channel for the discharge of the 

 larger whole of attitudes (the a elements) which general and class notions 

 presuppose. 



