associate and they conflict: in short, as Herbart roundly put it, we have in them a psychical statics and dynamics, and these, as he thought, admit of a mathematical treatment. The activity underlying the old terms 'faculty,' 'power,' &c., which was formerly referred to the subject, here reappears on the side of the object. We find this interaction of presentations pushed to the utmost-with that speculative thoroughness so characteristic of the master minds among our Teutonic brethren-in Herbart's own psychology. It would not be difficult to shew that the metaphysical theory of self-conservation,' which Herbart developed, makes no material difference to the general character of his psychology as here described. In Bain and in J. S. Mill the same tendency is apparent, but in them systematic thoroughness is sacrificed to regard for facts, which is said for better, for worse-to be the peculiarly British trait. Now comes the question :-Can we, provided we credit presentations with certain mutual attractions, repulsions, associations, complications, &c., &c.-dispense altogether with the postulation of an active subject? Whatever our sentimental preferences may be, it is hard to see any scientific objection to such an attempt if only it could succeed. The one question to be asked then is: Can it? The onus probandi lies with the Presentationists; and it may fairly be said that as yet they are very far from discharging it1. Meanwhile we must still maintain the reality of that subjective activity implied in consciousness, which Descartes and Locke called thinking, but which we propose to call attention. To certain general characteristics of this activity we may now turn.

Attention and Acts of Attention.

§ 3. We have already distinguished between non-voluntary and voluntary changes, or 'movements,' of attention. But besides these, its dynamic aspects, we must with the wider meaning here given to the term, distinguish also the comparatively static aspects, which this extended meaning includes. More definitely, besides movements of attention, whether objectively or subjectively initiated, we must assume there is always some degree

1 See further my articles, "Psychological Principles," Mind, 1887, pp. 62 ff., and "Modern Psychology': a Reflexion," Mind, 1893, pp. 70 ff.

of continuous attention to the presentation-continuum as a whole. Acts of attention are changes in the distribution of this attention just as presentations are changes in the differentiation of the continuum1. As the latter is not completely resolvable into a discrete manifold so neither is the former wholly resolvable into discrete acts. But there is a difference between the two cases answering to the difference between the central unity of the subject and what we shall call the primitive extensity of the objective continuum. Thus while there may be an indefinite number of simultaneous changes in the so-called 'field of consciousness' there can at one time be only one movement of attention. Hence it used to be argued that 'we can only attend to one thing at once.' But this is only true, if it be understood to mean that a plurality of presentations to which attention is directed-or on which it is concentrated-thereby tends to become a unity, to be more or less definitely 'synthesized' or 'integrated' as one 'situation' or one complex whole of some sort. How complex such a whole may be is mainly a question of previous practice and the 'complications,' 'associations' or 'secondary automatisms' thereby acquired. Every acquisition, whether cognitive or practical, presupposes such acts of attention, and to these its retention, assimilation and association-matters to be further dealt with presentlyare largely due. This is a principle of absolutely fundamental importance, grievously overlooked by earlier British psychologists and the occasion of much just censure from without. We cannot be always insisting upon it, but it must never be forgotten.

1 The somewhat figurative term 'movement of attention' perhaps needs a word or two of explanation lest it perplex or mislead. Attention cannot be conceived as itself moving: this would be to regard as concrete what is really abstract. Again the subject in attending does not move, nor does the object move in being merely attended to: there is, strictly speaking, no change of position in either. But any object specially noticed is a more or less definitely discriminated part within the presented whole; and further, the subject's relation to that whole is different when different parts of it are singled out. No wonder, then, that this varying relation of the subject to the totum objectivum should suggest an analogy between this relation and the movements of the eye to and fro over the field of sight. (Cf. below, ch. iv, § 6.) But, as we have already remarked, it is probably more than an analogy (cf. the last §): the visual movements are themselves a case of movements of attention, subjectively or objectively determined acts.

2 And such movements of attention have a good deal to do with what we call 'one time.' Cf. below ch. viii, § 4.

But what can be effectively comprised in one act of attention has very narrow limits: hence Locke's well-known references to "the narrowness that human minds are confined to here" as "not being capable of having many ideas under view and consideration at once1" and as contrasted with the 'larger views' "which the several degrees of angels may probably have." The phrase 'narrowness of consciousness' (Herbart's Enge des Bewusstseins) in this sense has now passed into psychology as a technical term.

1 Essay II, x. §§ 9, 2.

CHAPTER IV

THEORY OF PRESENTATIONS

The Psychological Individual.

1. We come now to the exposition of the objects of attention or consciousness, i.e. to what we may call the objective or presentational factor of psychical life. The treatment of this will fall naturally into two divisions. In the first we shall have to deal with its general characteristics and with the fundamental processes which all presentation involves. In view of its general and more or less hypothetical character we may call this the theory of presentations. In the second division we shall then pass on to the special forms of presentations, known as sensations, percepts, images, &c., and to the special processes to which these forms lead up.

This exposition will be simplified if we start with a supposition that will enable us to leave aside, at least for the present, the difficult question of heredity. We know that in the course of every human life there has been more or less of progressive differentiation or development. Further, it is believed that there has been a succession of sentient individuals beginning at the lowest level of life and advancing continuously up to the level of man. Some trace of earlier stages may be seen in the behaviour of a human infant now-in its crawling before walking for example-but for the most part such traces have been obliterated. What was experience in the past has become instinct in the present. The descendant has no consciousness of his ancestor's failures when performing at once by 'an untaught ability' what they slowly and perhaps painfully acquired. But, if we are to attempt to follow the genesis of mind from its earliest dawn, it is the primary experience rather than the eventual instinct that we have first of all to keep in

view. To this end, then, it is proposed to assume that we are dealing with one individual who has continuously advanced from the beginning of psychical life, and not with a series of individuals all of whom, save the first, 'inherited' certain capacities from their progenitors. The life-history of such an imaginary individual1, that is to say, would correspond with all that was new in the experience of a certain typical series of individuals each of whom advanced a certain stage in mental differentiation. On the other hand, from this history would be omitted that inherited reproduction of the net results of ancestral experience, that innate tradition, so to say, by which alone, under the actual conditions of existence, racial progress is possible.

The process of thus reproducing the old might differ as widely from that of producing the new as electrotyping does from engraving. However, the point is that as psychologists we know nothing directly about it; neither can we distinguish precisely at any link in the chain of life what is old and inherited, original in the sense of Locke and Leibniz, from what is new or acquired, original in the modern sense. But we are bound as a matter of method to suppose all discernible complexity and differentiation among presentations to have been originated, i.e. experimentally acquired, at some time or other. So long, then, as we are concerned primarily with the progress of this differentiation we may disregard the fact that it has not actually been, as it were, the product of one hand dealing with one tabula rasa to use Locke's-originally Aristotle'sfigure, but of many hands, each of which, starting with a reproduction of what had been wrought on the preceding tabulae, put in more or fewer new touches before devising the whole to a successor who would proceed in like manner.

The Presentational Continuum: Differentiation.

§ 2. What is implied in this process of differentiation and what is it that becomes differentiated ?—these are the questions to which we must now attend. Psychologists have usually

1 He may be compared to Hegel's 'general mind': cf. Phaenomenologie des Geistes, 1832, p. 23. Professor Baillie's trans. i. p. 36. Pascal had a similar idea :-"Toute la suite des hommes, pendant le cours de tant de siècles, doit être considerée comme un même homme qui subsiste toujours et qui apprend continuellement." Pensées et Opuscules, edit. L. Brunschvicg, 1900, p. 80.