284 PSYCHOLOGY. 



5) It is alioays interested more in one part of its object than in 

 another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the lohile 

 it thinks. 



The phenomena of selective attention and of delibera- 

 tive will are of course patent examples of this choosing 

 activity. But few of us are aware how incessantly it is at 

 work in operations not ordinarily called by these names. 

 Accentuation and Emphasis are present in every perception 

 we have. We find it quite impossible to disperse our 

 attention impartially over a number of impressions. A 

 monotonous succession of sonorous strokes is broken up 

 into rhythms, now of one sort, now of another, by the dif- 

 ferent accent which we place on different strokes. The 

 simplest of these rhythms is the double one, tick-tock, tick- 

 tock, tick-tock. Dots dispersed on a surface are perceived 

 in rows and groups. Lines separate into diverse figures. 

 The ubiquity of the distinctions, this and that, here and 

 thei^e, now and then, in our minds is the result of our laying 

 the same selective emphasis on parts of place and time. 



But we do far more than emphasize things, and unite 

 some, and keep others apart. We actually ignore most of the 

 things before us. Let me briefly show how this goes on. 



To begin at the bottom, what are our very senses them- 

 selves but organs of selection ? Out of the infinite chaos 

 of movements, of which physics teaches us that the outer 

 world consists, each sense-organ picks out those which fall 

 within certain limits of velocity. To these it responds, but 

 ignores the rest as completely as if they did not exist. It 

 thus accentuates particular movements in a manner for 

 which objectively there seems no valid ground; for, as 

 Lange says, there is no reason whatever to think that the 

 gap in Nature between the highest sound-waves and the 

 lowest heat-Avaves is an abrupt break like that of our sen- 

 sations ; or that the difference between \dolet and ultra- 

 violet rays has anything like the objective importance sub- 

 jectively represented by that between light and darkness. 

 Out of" what is in itself an undistinguishable, swarming 

 continuum, devoid of distinction or emphasis, our senses 

 make for us, by attending to this motion and ignoring that, 



