426 PSYCHOLOGY. 



falls far short of it. lu face of such facts it is rash to say 

 that attention cannot make a sense-impression more intense. 

 But, on the other hand, the intensification which may be 

 brought about seems never to lead the judgment astray. 

 As we rightly jaerceive and name the same color under 

 various lights, the same sound at various distances ; so we 

 seem to make an analogous sort of allowance for the vary- 

 ing amounts of attention with which objects are viewed; 

 and whatever changes of feeling the attention may bring 

 we charge, as it were, to the attention's account, and still 

 perceive and conceive the object as the same. 



"A gray paper appears to us no lighter, the pendulum-beat of a 

 clock no louder, no matter how much we increase the strain of our at- 

 tention upon them. No one, by doing this, can make the gray paper 

 look white, or the stroke of the pendulum sound like the blow of a 

 strong hammer, — everyone, on the contrary, feels the increase as that 

 of his own conscious activity turned upon the thing."* 



Were it otherwise, we should not be able to note hiten- 

 sifies by attending to them. Weak impressions would, as 

 Stumpf says,t become stronger by the very fact of being 

 observed. 



" I should not be able to observe faint sounds at all, but only such 

 as appeared to me of maximal strength, or at least of a strength that 

 increased with the amount of my observation. In reality, however, I 

 can, with steadily increasing attention, follow a diminuendo perfectly 

 well." 



The subject is one which would well repay exact experi- 

 ment, if methods could be devised. Meanwhile there is no 

 question whatever that attention augments the clearness of 

 all that we perceive or conceive by its aid. But what is 

 meant by clearness here? 



c. Clearness, so far as attention produces it, means dis- 

 tinction from other things and internal analysis or subdivision. 

 These are essentially products of intellectual discrimination, 

 involving comparison, memory, and perception of various 

 relations. The attention per se does not distinguish and 

 analyze and relate. The most we can say is that it is a 



* Fecbner, op. cit. p. 271, 

 f Tonpsychologie, i. p. 71. 



