ATTENTION. 445 



But it is one thing to point out the presence of muscu- 

 lar contractions as constant concomitants of our thouglits, 

 and another thing to say, with Herr Lange, that thought is 

 made possible by muscular contraction alone. It may well 

 be that where the object of thought consists of two parts, 

 one perceived by movement and another not, the part per- 

 ceived ty movement is habitually called up first and fixed 

 in the mind by the movement's execution, w^hilst the other 

 part comes secondarily as the movement's mere associate. 

 But even were this the rule with all men (which I doubt *), 

 it would only be a practical habit, not an ultimate necessity. 

 In the chapter on the Will we shall learn that movements 

 themselves are results of images coming before the mind, 

 images sometimes of feelings in the moving part, some- 

 times of the movement's efi'ects on eye and ear, and some- 

 times (if the movement be originally reflex or instinctive), 

 of its natural stimiilus or exciting cause. It is, in truth, 

 contrary to all wider and deeper analogies to deny that any 

 quality of feeling whatever can directly rise up in the form 

 of an idea, and to assert that only ideas of movement can 

 call other ideas to the mind. 



So much for adjustment and j)reperception. The only 

 third process I can think of as always present is the inhibi- 

 tion of irrelevant movements and ideas. This seems, how- 

 ever, to be a feature incidental to voluntary attention rather 

 than the essential feature of attention at large,t and need 



* Many of my students have at my request experimented with imagined 

 letters of the alphabet and syllables, and they tell me that they can see 

 them inwardly as total colored pictures without following their outlines 

 with the eye. I am myself a bad visualizer, and make movements all the 

 while. — M. L. Jlarillier, in an article of eminent introspective power which 

 appeared after my text was written (Remarques sur le Mecanisme de I'At- 

 tention, in Revue Philosophique, vol. xxvii. p. 566), has contended against 

 Ribot and others for the non-dependence of sensory upon motor images in 

 their relations to attention. I am glad to cite him as an ally. 



f Drs. Ferrier (Functions of the Brain, §§ 102-3) and Obersteiner (Brain, 

 I, 439 ff.) treat it as the essential feature. The author whose treatment 

 of the subject is by far the most thorough and satisfactory is Prof. G. E. 

 Miiller, whose little work Zur Theorie der sinnlichen Aufmerksamkeit, 

 Inauguraldissertation, Leipzig, Edelmann (1874?), is for learning and 

 acuteness a model of what a monograph should be. 1 should like to have 

 quoted from it, but the Germanism of its composition makes quotation quite 



