ATTENTION. 405 



left to themselves ; asked what they are thinking of, they 

 reply, ' of nothing particular ' ! ^ 



The abolition of this condition is what we call the awak- 

 ening of the attention. One principal object comes then 

 into the focus of consciousness, others are temporarily sup- 

 pressed. The awakening may come about either by reason 

 of a stimulus from without, or in consequence of some 

 unknown inner alteration ; and the change it brings with it 

 amounts to a concentration upon one single object with 

 exclusion of aught besides, or to a condition anywhere be- 

 tween this and the completely dispersed state. 



TO HOW MANY THINGS CAN WTE ATTEND AT ONCEP 



The question of the * span' of consciousness has often been 

 asked and answered — sometimes a priori, sometimes by ex- 

 periment. This seems the proper place for us to touch 

 upon it ; ;iud oar answer, according to the principles laid 

 down in Chapter IX, will not be difficult. The number of 

 things we may attend to is altogether indefinite, depending 

 on the power of the individual intellect, on the form of the 

 apprehension, and on what the things are. ATlien appre- 

 hended conceptually as a connected system, their number 

 may be very large. But however numerous the things, they 

 can only be knoAvn in a single pulse of consciousness for 

 which they form one complex 'object' (p. 276 ff.), so that 

 properly speaking there is before the mind at no time a 

 plurality of ideas, properly so called. 



The 'unity of the soul' has been supposed by many 



* " The first and most important, but also the most difficult, task at the 

 outset of an education is to overcome gradually the inattentive dispersion 

 of mind which shows itself wherever the organic life preponderates over 

 the intellectual. The training of animals . . . must be in the first in- 

 stance based on the awakening of attention (cf. Adrian Leonard, Essai sur 

 I' Education des Animaux, Lille, 1842) , that is to say, we must seek to make 

 them gradually perceive separately things which, if left to themselves, 

 would not be attended to^ because they would fuse with a great sum of 

 other sensorial stimuli to a confused total impression of which each separate 

 item only darkens and interferes with the rest. Similarly at first with the 

 human child. The enormous difficulties of deaf-mute- and especially of 

 idiot-instruction is principally due to the slow and painful manner in 

 which we succeed in bringing out from the general confusion of perception 

 single items with sufficient sharpness." (Waitz, Lehrb. d. Psychol., p. 638.) 



