300 PSYCIIOLOOY. 



pie with particulars, coming to the closest possible quarters 

 with the facts, it is difficult for me to detect in the activity any 

 purely spiritual element at all. Whenever my introspective 

 glance sticceeds in turning round quickly enough to catch one of 

 these manifestations of spontaneity in the act, all it can ever fed 

 distinctly is some bodily process, for the most part talcing place 

 ivithin the head. Omitting for a moment what is obscure in 

 these introspective results, let me try to state those particu- 

 lars which to my own consciousness seem indubitable and 

 distinct. 



In the first place, the acts of attending, assenting, ne- 

 gating, making an effort, are felt as movements of some- 

 thing in the head. In many cases it is possible to describe 

 these movements quite exactly. In attending to either an 

 idea or a sensation belonging to a particular sense-sphere, 

 the movement is the adjustment of the sense-organ, felt as 

 it occurs. I cannot think in visual terms, for example, 

 without feeling a fluctuating play of pressures, converg- 

 ences, divergences, and accommodations in my eyeballs. 

 The direction in which the object is conceived to lie deter- 

 mines the character of these movements, the feeling of 

 which becomes, for my consciousness, identified with the 

 manner in which I make myself ready to receive the visible 

 thing. My brain apj)ears to me as if all shot across with 

 lines of direction, of which I have become conscious as my 

 attention has shifted from one sense-organ to another, in 

 passing to successive outer things, or in following trains of 

 varying sense-ideas. 



When I try to remember or reflect, the movements in 

 question, instead of being directed towards the periphery, 

 seem to come from the periphery inwards and feel like a 

 sort of ivithdraical from the outer w^orld. As far as I can 

 detect, these feelings are due to an actual rolling outwards 

 and upwards of the eyeballs, such as I believe occurs in 

 me in sleep, and is the exact opposite of their action in fix- 

 ating a physical thing. In reasoning, I find that I am apt 

 to have a kind of vaguely localized diagram in my mind, 

 wdth the various fractional objects of the thought disposed 

 at particular points thereof ; and the oscillations of my at- 

 tention from one of them to another are most distinctly felt 



