144 CREATIVE INVOLUTION 



jecting of our mental power. The two are equally 

 dependent upon the ability of the mind to control its 

 processes, and in that sense only is love the gift of 

 the gods we have thought it. 



And not only does love resemble attention in its 

 normal aspects but in its abnormal ones as well. 

 The grand passion and the fixed idea are the acute 

 and chronic forms respectively of that state of idea- 

 tion wherein a single representation absorbs all 

 thought. Of its very nature attention requires a 

 great expenditure of physical force not possible to 

 one whose strength is exhausted by work or anxiety. 

 In a passive state of consciousness the work of the 

 brain is diffused, but with attention the work becomes 

 localised. This concentration of effort to one part 

 of the organ obviously requires a rapid transforma- 

 tion of potential energy into actual kinetic energy, 

 and for this there must be a reserve of vital force. 

 If attention is thus difficult physiologically to one in 

 a state of fatigue, how much more so its higher form, 

 love? It is not strange that affection sometimes 

 goes out of the door when sickness and poverty enter. 



Before going further into the question it were per- 

 haps well to discriminate between spontaneous and 

 voluntary attention, for therein lies the basis of the 

 difference between dependable and non-dependable 

 affection. In the passive state of the mind impres- 

 sions come and go in perpetual flux. It is through 

 the association of these impressions that sensations, 



