ATTENTION. 449 



are ' evolved 'so as to respond to special stimuli bj special 

 accommodative acts wliicli produce clear perceptions on 

 the one hand in us, and on the other hand such feelings of 

 inner activity as were above described. The accommoda- 

 tion and the resultant feeling are the attention. We don't 

 bestow it, the object draws it from us. The object lias the 

 initiative, not the mind. 



Derived attention, ivhere there is no voluntary effort, seems 

 also most plausibly to be a mere effect. The object again 

 takes the initiative and draws our attention to itself, not 

 by reason of its own intrinsic interest, but because it is 

 connected with some other interesting thing. Its brain- 

 process is connected with another that is either excited, or 

 tending to be excited, and the liability to share the excite- 

 ment and become aroused is the liability to 'preperception' 

 in which the attention consists.- If I have received an 

 insult, I may not be actively thinking of it all the time, jet 

 the thought of it is in such a state of heightened irrita- 

 bility, that the place where I received it or the man who 

 inflicted it cannot be mentioned in my hearing without my 

 attention bounding, as it were, in that direction, as the im- 

 agination of the whole transaction revives. Where such a 

 stirring-up occurs, organic adjustment must exist as well, 

 and the ideas must innervate to some degree the muscles. 

 Thus the whole process of involuntary derived attention is 



might say that attention causes the movements of adjustment of the eyes, 

 for examjile, and is not merely their effect. Hering writes most enijihati- 

 cally 10 this eilect : " The movements from one point of fixation to another 

 are occasioned and regulated by the changes of place of the attention. 

 When an object, seen at tirst indirectly, draws our attention to itself, the 

 corresponding movement of the eye follows without further ado. as a con- 

 sequence of the attention's migration and of our effort to make the object 

 distinct. The wandering of the attention entails that of the fixation point. 

 Before its movement begins, its goal is already in consciousness and 

 grasped by the attention and the location of this spot in the total space 

 seen is what determines the direction and amount of the movement of the 

 eye."' (Hermann's Handbuch, p. 534.) I do not here insist on this, because 

 it is hard to tell whether the attention or the movement comes lirst (Ber- 

 ing's reasons, pp. 535-6, also 544-6, seem to me ambiguous), and because, 

 even if ti)e attention to the object does come first, it may be a mere effect of 

 stimulus and association, Mach's theory that the will, to look is the space- 

 feeling itself may be compared with Hering's in this place. See 3lacb's 

 BeitrSge zur Analyse der Empfindungeu (1886), pp. b'y tf. 



