448 PSTCHOLOGT. 



we must admit that the question whether attention involve 

 such a principle of spiritual activity or not is metaphysical 

 as well as psychological, and is well worthy of all the pains 

 we can bestow on its solution. It is in fact the pivotal 

 question of metaj^hysics, the very hinge on which our 

 picture of the world shall swing from materialism, fatalism, 

 monism, towards spiritualism, freedom, pluralism, — or else 

 the other way. 



It goes back to the automaton-theory. If feeling is an 

 inert accompaniment, then of course the brain-cell can be 

 played upon only by other brain- cells, and the attention 

 which we give at any time to any subject, whether in the 

 form of sensory adaptation or of 'preperception,' is the 

 fatally predetermined effect of exclusively material laws. 

 If, on the other hand, the feeling which coexists with the 

 brain-cells' activity reacts dynamically upon that activity, 

 furthering or checking it, then the attention is in part, at 

 least, a ccmse. It does not necessarily follow, of course, 

 that this reactive feeling should be ' free ' in the sense of 

 having its amount and direction undetermined in advance, 

 for it might very well be j^redetermined in all these par- 

 ticulars. If it were so, our attention would not be ma- 

 terially determined, nor yet would it be ' free ' in the 

 sense of being spontaneous or unpredictable in advance. 

 The question is of course a purely speculative one, for we 

 have no means of objectiveh' ascertaining whether our feel- 

 ings react on our nerve-processes or not; and those who 

 answer the question in either way do so in consequence 

 of general analogies and presumptions drawn from other 

 fields. As mere conceptions^ the efiect-theory and the cause- 

 theory of attention are equally clear ; and whoever affirms 

 either conception to be true must do so on metaph^^sical or 

 universal rather than on scientific or particular grounds. 



As regards immediate sensorial attention hardly any one 

 is tempted to regard it as anything but an effect* We 



* The reader will please observe tlial I am saying all that can possibly 

 be said in favor of the effect-theory, since, inclining as 1 do myself to the 

 cause-theory, 1 do not want to undervalue the enemy. As a matter of 

 fact, one might begin to take one's stand against the effect theory at 

 the outset, with the phenomenon of immediate sensorial attention. One 



