ATTENTION. 447 



no spontaneous attention ; but they arouse and maintain it 

 by borrowing a force from elsewhere.* 



Second, take that mind- wandering which at a later age 

 may trouble us ichilst reading or listening to a discourse. If 

 attention be the reproduction of the sensation from within, 

 the habit of reading not merely with the eye, and of listen- 

 ing not merely with the ear, but of articulating to one's self 

 the words seen or heard, ought to deepen one's attention to 

 the latter. Experience shows that this is the case. I can 

 keep my wandering mind a great deal more closely upon a 

 conversation or a lecture if I actively re-echo to myself the 

 words than if I simply hear them ; and I find a number of 

 my students who report benefit from voluntarily adopting 

 a similar course, f 



Second, a teacher loho loisTies to engage the attention of his 

 dass must knit his novelties on to things of lohich they already 

 have prepercepfions. The, old and familiar is readily at- 

 tended to by the mind and helps to hold in turn the new, 

 forming, in Herbartian phraseology, an ' Apperceptions- 

 masse ' for it. Of course it is in every case a very delicate 

 problem to know what ' Apperceptionsmasse ' to use. 

 Psychology can only lay down the general rule. 



IS VOLUNTARY ATTENTION A RESULTANT OR A FORCE? 



When, a feM' pages back, I symbolized the ' ideational 

 preparation' element in attention b}' a brain-cell played 

 upon from within, I added * by other brain-cells, or by 

 some spiritual force,' without deciding which. The ques- 

 tion * which ?' is one of those central psychologic mys- 

 teries which part the schools. When we reflect that the 

 turnings of our attention form the nucleus of our inner 

 self; when we see (as in the chapter on the Will we 

 shall see) that volition is nothing but attention ; when we 

 believe that our autonomy in the midst of nature depends 

 on our not being pure effect, but a cause, — 



Principium quoddnm quod fati foidera rumpat. 



Ex mfinito ne causam causa sequatur — 



* Psychologie de rAttention, p. 53. 



f Repetition of this sort does not confer intelligence of what is said, it only 

 keeps the mind from wandering into other channels. The intelligence 

 sometimes comes in beats, as it were, at the end of sentences, or in tlie 

 midst of words which were mere words until then. See above, p 281. 



