418 PSYCHOLOGY. 



from the general rumor of the world. But when it is a 

 signal, as that of a lover on the window-pane, it will hardly 

 go unperceived. Herbart writes : 



" How a bit of bad grammar wounds the ear of the purist! How a 

 false note hurts the musician! or an offence against good manners the 

 man of the world ! How rapid is progress in a science when its first 

 principles have been so well impressed upon us that we reproduce them 

 mentally with perfect distinctness and ease ! How slow and uncertain, on 

 the other hand, is our learning of the principles themselves, when 

 familiarity with the still more elementary percepts connected with the 

 subject has not given us an adequate predisposition! — Apperceptive 

 attention may be plainly observed in very small children when, hearing 

 the speech of their elders, as yet unintelligible to them, they suddenly 

 catch a single known word here and there, and repeat it to themselves; 

 yes! even in the dog who looks round at us when we speak of him and 

 pronounce his name. Not far removed is the talent which mind- 

 wandering school-boys display during the hours of instruction, of notic- 

 ing every moment in which the teacher tells a story. I remember classes 

 in which, instruction being uninteresting, and discipline relaxed, a buz- 

 zing murmur was always to be heard, which invariably stopped for as 

 Jong a time as an anecdote lasted. How could the boys, since they 

 seemed to hear nothing, notice when the anecdote began ? Doubtless 

 most of them always heard something of the teacher's talk; but most of 

 it had no connection with their previous knowledge and occupations, 

 and therefore tne separate w^ords no sooner entered their consciousness 

 than they fell out of it again; but, on the other hand, no sooner did the 

 words awaken old thoughts, forming strongly-connected series with 

 which the new impression easily combined, than out of new and old 

 together a total interest resulted which drove the vagrant ideas below 

 the threshold of consciousness, and brought for a while settled atten- 

 tion into their place." * 



Passive intellectual attention is immediate when we follow 

 in thought a train of images exciting or interesting per se; 

 derived, when the images are interesting only as means to a 

 remote end, or merely because they are associated with 

 something which makes them dear. Owing to the way in 

 which immense numbers of real things become integrated 

 into single objects of thought for us, there is no clear line 

 to be drawn between immediate and derived attention of 

 an intellectual sort. When absorbed in intellectual atten- 

 tion we may become so inattentive to outer things as to be 



* Herbart: Psychologie als Wissenschaft, § 128. 



