Selection of Ideas by Attentio7t 253 



erally admitted, I think, that attention is in some way the 

 organizing function of knowledge, and also because further 

 definition— which, moreover, I have attempted elsewhere^ 

 — is not necessary to our present purpose. 



The first selection which thought-variations have to 

 undergo, therefore, if eligibility from this platform be the 

 first condition of final adoption, is in their getting a place 

 in the organization which present attention conditions rep- 

 resent and exact. This is just the condition of things we 

 saw above when we pointed out that it is only the strenu- 

 ous, hard, and attentive concentration of mind that brings 

 results for the life of thought. Attention is relatively easy, 

 when we let it roam over our old stock in trade ; but even 

 then the contrast is striking between the items of know- 

 ledge which are held in the system thus easily run through 

 with frequent repetition, and on the other hand those ves- 

 tigial fragments of representation which do not engage the 

 attention in any system of exercises, and so have no settled 

 place or orderly sequence in our mental life. The latter 

 are not on the platform ; the former are. There is always 

 such preliminary ' intra-organic ' selection — a set of ready 

 interests, preferences, familiarities, set to catch our new 

 experiences or to reject them. It proceeds by motor syn- 

 ergy or assimilation. Thoughts which get so far in are 

 then candidates for the other selection which the full term 

 'selective thinking' includes. In order to be really the 

 thought-variations which selective thinking requires, all 

 new items must, in the first place, secure and hold the 

 attention; which means that they must already enter, 



^ Mental Development in the Child and the Race, Chap. XV., where it is 

 held that the attention, organically considered, is a habitual motor reaction 

 upon mental contents. 



