452 PSYCHOLOGY. 



river could feel, it -vvonld feel these eddies and set-backs as 

 places of effort. " I am here flowing," it would say, " in the 

 direction of greatest resistance, instead of flowing, as usual, 

 in the direction of least. My eftbrt is what enables me to per- 

 form this feat." Keall}', the efi"ort would only be a passive in- 

 dex that the feat was being performed. The agent would all 

 the while be the total downward drift of the rest of the water, 

 forcing some of it upwards in this sjDot ; and although, on 

 the average, the direction of least resistance is downwards, 

 that would be no reason for its not being upwards now 

 and then. Just so with our voluntary acts of attention. 

 They are momentary arrests, coupled with a peculiar feel- 

 ing, of portions of the stream. But the arresting force, 

 instead of being this peculiar feeling itself, may be nothing 

 but the processes by which the collision is produced. The 

 feeling of efi'ort may be ' an accompaniment,' as Mr. Brad- 

 ley says, ' more or less superfluous,' and no more contribute 

 to the result than the pain in a man's finger, when a ham- 

 mer falls on it, contributes to the hammer's weight. Thus 

 the notion that our effort in attending is an original faculty, 

 a force additional to the others of which brain and mind 

 are the seat, may be an abject sujDerstition. Attention may 

 have to go, like many a faculty once deemed essential, like 

 many a verbal phantom, like many an idol of the tribe. It 

 may be an excrescence on Psychology. No need of it to 

 drag ideas before consciousness or fix them, w^hen we see 

 how perfectly they drag and fix each other there. 



I have stated the effect-theory as persuasively as I can.* 

 It is a clear, strong, well-equipped conception, and like all 

 such, is fitted to carry conviction, where there is no con- 

 trary proof. The feeling of effort certainly may be an inert 

 accompaniment and not the active element which it seems. 

 No measurements are as yet performed (it is safe to say 

 none ever will be performed) which can show that it con- 

 tributes energy to the result. We may then regard atten- 

 tion as a superfluity, or a 'Luxus,' and dogmatize against 



* F. H. Bradley, " Is there a Special Activity of Attention ?"in ' Mind,' 

 XI. 305, and Lipps, Grundtatsachen, chaps, iv and xxix, have stated It 

 Bimilarly. 



