ATTENTION. 411 



server was sometimes so intent upon the signal that his 

 reaction actually coincided in time ivith it, or even preceded it, 

 instead of coming a fraction of a second after it, as in the 

 nature of things it should. More will be said of these re- 

 sults anon. Meanwhile Wundt, in explaining them, says 

 this : 



' ' In general we have a very exact feeling of the simultaneity of two 

 stimuli, if they do not differ much in strength. And in a series of ex- 

 periments in which a warning precedes, at a fixed interval, the stimu- 

 lus, we involuntarily try to react, not only as promptly as possible, 

 but also in such wise that our movement may coincide with the stimu- 

 lus itself. We seek to make our own feelings of touch and innervation 

 [muscular contraction] objectively contemporaneous with the signal 

 which we hear; and experience shows that in many cases we approxi- 

 mately succeed. In these cases we have a distinct consciousness of 

 hearing the signal, reacting upon it, and feeling our reaction take 

 place, — all at one and the same moment." * 



In another place, Wundt adds : 



" The difficulty of these observations and the comparative infrequency 

 with which the reaction-time can be made thus to disappear shows how 

 hard it is, when our attention is intense, to keep it fixed even on tnx> 

 different ideas at once. Note besides that when this happens, one 

 always tries to bring the ideas into a certain connection, to grasp them 

 as components of a certain complex representation. Thus in the ex- 

 periments in question, it has often seemed to me that I produced by 

 my own recording movement the sound which the ball made in drop- 

 ping on the board." f 



The ' difficulty,' in the cases of which Wundt speaks, is 

 that of forcing two non-simultaneous events into apparent 

 combination with the same instant of time. There is no 

 difficulty, as he admits, in so dividing our attention be- 

 tween two really simultaneous impressions as to feel them 

 to be such. The cases he describes are really cases of 

 anachronistic perception, of subjective time-displacement, 

 to use his own term. Still more curious cases of it have 

 been most carefully studied by him. They carry us a step 

 farther in our research, so I Avill quote them, using as far 

 as possible his exact words : 



' ' The conditions become more complicated when we receive a series 

 of impressions separated by distinct intervals, into the midst of which 



* Physiol. Psych., 2d ed. ii. pp. 238-40. 

 t lb. p. 262. 



