1895.] i Psychology. 693 
“ ATTENTION is the mental function corresponding to the habitual 
motor coordination of the processes of heightened or excess discharge.” 
This theory finds a further confirmation in two facts. First, since the 
excess discharge is the sole means of accommodation in the lower 
organisms, and attention the only one in consciousness, we must con- 
nect in theory the function of excess with that of attention. Second, 
the excess discharge is also the organic analogue of pleasure and pain ; 
attention, then should be the seat of pleasure and pain. This we find 
to be the case, especially in the pleasures of emotional and intellectual 
life. Since attention is a motor phenomenon, and since by the law of 
Dynamogenesis the more intense sensation has the greater effect, we 
readily see why an intense sensation tends to attract attention, and 
why attention tends to increase the intensity of the content attended 
to. It follows (P. 468) that attention is not a single function—there 
are as many attentions as there are contents. This fact has escaped 
notice because in all states of attention there is a certain relatively 
constant element, viz,: tensions in brow, jaws, skin of head, etc. 
“ The office of attention is that of fixing the content steadily on the 
sensory side, and at the same time of releasing the associated discharge 
movements on the motor side. It is a go-between between the copy 
imitated and the imitation which copies it and is, therefore, the central 
and essential fact in all voluntary muscular control.” 
I have gone somewhat at length into the analysis of this book 
because it seems to me a most important contribution both to biology 
and psychology. It may be'described as an attempt to express all 
forms of conscious experience, from the lowest to the highest, in terms 
of their motor concomitants. In a sense the attempt is strictly legiti- 
mate. All mental states have motor concomitants, and since motion 
is the most essential fact in the life of the organism, and moreover, since 
movements are often more easily studied and measured than their 
accompanying mental states, it may well be that from a study of 
movement we may get those architectonic conceptions which all 
psychologists seek, but which have not as yet been got from intro- 
spection. But in the effort one is apt to exaggerate the genetic 
importance of the motor element, to ignore certain definite laws which 
introspection reveals, and to rest content with a careless and inade- 
quate analysis of the psychoses which are to be explained. Against a 
large part of Prof. Baldwin’s book these charges may be brought, and 
I think they rob many of his expositions of all practical value. Yet 
the book is full of acute observation and insight; one feels upon first 
reading it that he has here a mass of material of very unequal value, care- 
. 
