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Constituent

elements

elements, and secondly, to ascertain and explain the laws | vidual mind?"2 Surely the moment we try distinctly to underof their combination and interaction.

stand this question we realize that the cases are different. "Series of mental phenomena" for whom? For any passer-by such as might take stock of our biological dog? No, obviously only for that individual mind itself; yet that is supposed to be made up of, to be nothing different from, the series of phenomena. Are we, then, (1) quoting J. S. Mill's words, "to accept the paradox that something which ex hypothesi is but a series of feelings, can be aware of itself as a series?" Or (2) shall we say that the several parts of the series are mutually phenomenal, much as A may look at B, who was just now looking at A? Or (3) finally, shall we say that a large part of the so-called series, in fact every term but one, is phenomenal for the rest for that one?

As to the first alternative, paradox is too mild a word for it; even contradiction will hardly suffice. It is as impossible to express "being aware of" by one term as it is to express an equation or any other relation by one term: what knows can no more be identical with what is known than a weight with what it weighs. If a what it is presented to, cannot be that series of feelings, and this series of feelings is what is known or presented, then what knows, without regard to the point Mill mentions, viz., that the infinitely greater part of the series is either past or future. The question is not in the first instance one of time or substance at all, but simply turns upon the fact that knowledge or consciousness is unmeaning except as it implies something knowing or conscious of something. But it may be replied :-Granted that the formula for consciousness is something doing something, to put it generally; still, if the two somethings are the same when I touch myself or when I see myself, why may not agent and patient be the same when the action is knowing or being aware of; why may I not know myself-in fact, do I not know myself? Certainly not; agent and patient never are the same in the same act; the conceptions of self-caused, selfmoved, self-known, et id genus omne, either connote the incompreoneself when one's right hand touched one's left. hensible or are abbreviated expressions-such, c.g., as touching

And so we come to the second alternative :-As one hand washes

the other, may not different members of the series of feelings be subject and object in turn? Compare, for example, the state of mind of a man succumbing to temptation (as he pictures himself enjoying the coveted good and impatiently repudiates scruples of conscience or dictates of prudence) with his state when, filled with remorse, he sides with conscience and condemns this "former self,"-the "better self" having meanwhile become supreme. Here the cluster

General Analysis of Mind; its Ultimate Constituents. As to the first, there is in the main substantial agree ment the elementary facts of mind cannot, it is held, be of mind, expressed in less than three propositions, I feel somehow, I know something, I do something. But here at once there arises an important question, viz., What are we to understand by the subject of these propositions? Nobody nowadays would understand it to imply that every psychical fact must be ascertained or verified by personal introspection; perhaps no modern writer ever did understand this; at any rate to do so is to confound the personal with the psychological. We are no more confined to our own immediate observations here than elsewhere; but the point is that, whether seeking to analyse one's own consciousness or to infer that of a lobster, whether discussing the association of ideas or the expression of emotions, there is always an individual mind or self or subject in question. It is not enough to talk of feelings or volitions: what we mean is that some individual, man or worm, feels, wills, acts-thus or thus. Obvious as this may seem, it has been frequently either forgotten or gainsaid. It has been forgotten among details or through the assumption of a medley of faculties, each treated as an individual in turn, and among which the real individual was lost. Or it has been gainsaid, because to admit that all psychological facts pertain to a psychological subject seemed to carry with it the admission that they pertained to a particular spiritual substance, which was simple, indestructible, and so forth; and it was manifestly desirable to exclude such assumptions from psychology, i.e., from a science which aims only at a scientific exposition of what can be known and verified Subject by observation. But, however much assailed or disowned, or Ego. the conception of a mind or conscious subject is to be of presentations and their associated sentiments and motives, which together play the rôle of self in the one field of consciousness, have found implicitly or explicitly in all psychological writers-only momentarily it is truc, but still have-for a time the place whatever, not more in Berkeley, who accepts it as a fact, of not-self; and under abnormal circumstances this partial alternathan in Hume, who accepts it as a fiction. This being so, tion may become complete alienation, as in what is called "double consciousness. we are far more likely to reach the truth eventually if we Or again, the development of self-consciousness might taking the subject or self of openly acknowledge this inexpugnable assumption, if such as an object in the next, self being, eg, hist identified on stage c.g., with it prove, instead of resorting to all sorts of devious peri- body and afterwards distinguished from it. But all this, however phrases to hide it. Now wherever the word Subject, or true, is beside the mark; and it is really a very serious misnomer, its derivatives, occurs in psychology we might substitute though the vagueness of our psychological terminology seems to allow it to do, as c.g., Mr Spencer does-represent the developthe word Ego and analogous derivatives, did such exist. ment of self-consciousness as a 'differentiation of subject and But Subject is almost always the preferable term; its im- object." It is, if anything, a differentiation of object and object, personal form is an advantage, and it readily recalls its i.e., in plainer words, it is a differentiation among presentationsmodern correlative Object. Moreover, Ego has two senses, a differentiation every step of which implies just that relation to a distinguished by Kant as pure and empirical, the latter of which is, of course, an object, while the former is subject always. By pure Ego or Subject it is proposed to denote the simple fact that everything mental is referred to a Self. This psychological conception of a self or subject, then, is after all by no means identical with the metaphysical conceptions of a soul or mind-atom, or of mind-stuff not atomic; it may be kept as free from metaphysical implications as the conception of the biological individual or organism with which it is so intimately connected. Attempts The attempt, indeed, has frequently been made to resolve the former into the latter, and so to find in mind only such an indivitrade the duality as has an obvious counterpart in this individuality of the organism, ie, what we may call an objective individuality. But such procedure owes all its plausibility to the fact that it leaves out of sight the difference between the biological and the psychological standpoints. All that the biologist means by a dog is "the sum of the phenomena which make up its corporeal existence." And, inasmuch as its presentation to any one in particular is a point of no importance, the fact of presentation at all may be very well dropped out of account. Let us now turn to mind: Why should we not take this word or "the word 'soul' simply as a name for the series of mental phenomena which make up an indi

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1 Professor Hazley, Hume (English Men of Letters series), p. 171.

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subject which it is supposed to supersede.

There still remains an alternative, which, like the first, may be expressed in the words of J. S. Mill, viz., "the alternative of believ ing that the Mind or Ego is something different from any series of feelings or possibilities of them. To admit this, of course, is to ing the unity or continuity of consciousness as a complex of preadmit the necessity of distinguishing between Mind or Ego, meansentations, and Mind or Ego as the subject to which this complex is presented. In dealing with the body from the ordinary biological standpoint no such necessity arises. But, whereas there the individual organism is spoken of unequivocally, in psychology, on the other hand, the individual mind may mean either (i.) the series of feelings or "mental phenomena" above referred to; or (ii.) the subject of these feelings for whom they are phenomena; or (iii.) the subject of these feelings or phenomena + the series of feelings or phenomena themselves, the two being in that relation to each other in which alone the one is subject and the other a series of feelings, phenomena, or objects. It is in this last sense that Mind is used in empirical psychology, its exclusive use in the first sense being favoured only by those who shrink from the speculative associations connected with its exclusive use in the second. psychology is not called upon to transcend the relation of subject to object or, as we may call it, the fact of presentation. On the other hand, as has been said, the attempt to ignore one term of the relation is hopeless; and equally hopeless, even futile, is the

2 Professor Huxley, op. cit., p. 172.

3 Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy, ch. xii. fin.

But

Feeling.

attempt, by means of phrases such as consciousness or the unity of consciousness, to dispense with the recognition of a conscious subject.

stances, (2) that we are pleased or pained with the change, and (3) that we act accordingly. We never find that feeling directly alters-i.e., without the intervention of We might now proceed to inquire more closely into the the action to which it prompts either our sensations or character and relations of the three states, modes, or acts1 situation, but that regularly these latter with remarkable of this subject, which are commonly held to be the invari- promptness and certainty alter it. We have not first a able constituents of psychical life and broadly distinguished change of feeling, and then a change in our sensations, as cognitions, feelings, and conations. But we should be at perceptions, and ideas; but, these changing, change of feelonce confronted by a doctrine much in vogue at present, ing follows. In short, feeling appears frequently to be an which, strictly taken, amounts almost to a denial of this effect, which therefore cannot exist without its cause, tripartite classification of the facts of mind-the doctrine, though in different circumstances the same cause may proviz., that feeling alone is primordial, and invariably present duce a different amount or even a different state of feeling. wherever there is consciousness at all. Every living crea- Turning from what we may call the receptive phase of conture, it is said, feels, though it may never do any more; sciousness to the active or appetitive phase, we find in like only the higher animals, and these only after a time, learn manner that feeling is certainly not, in such cases as we can to discriminate and identify and to act with a purpose. clearly observe, the whole of consciousness at any moment. This doctrine, as might be expected, derives its plausibility True, in common speech we talk of liking pleasure and partly from the vagueness of psychological terminology, disliking pain; but this is either tautology, equivalent to and partly from the intimate connexion that undoubtedly saying, we are pleased when we are pleased and pained cxists between feeling and cognition on the one hand and when we are pained, or else it is an allowable abbreviafeeling and volition on the other. As to the meaning of tion, and means that we like pleasurable objects and dislike the term, it is plain that further definition is requisite for painful objects, as when we say, we like feeling warm and a word that may mean (a) a touch, as feeling of roughness; dislike feeling hungry. And feeling warm or feeling (b) an organic sensation, as feeling of hunger; (c) an emo- hungry, we must remember, is not pure feeling in the tion, as feeling of anger; (d) feeling proper, as pleasure strict sense of the word. Such states admit, if not of or pain. But, even taking feeling in the last, its strict description, yet at least of identification and distinction sense, it has been maintained that all the more complex as truly as colours and sounds do. Within the limits of forms of consciousness are resolvable into, or at least have our observation, then, we find that feeling accompanies been developed from, feelings of pleasure and pain. The some more or less definite presentation which for the sake only proof of such position, since we cannot directly observe of it becomes the object of appetite or aversion; in other the beginnings of conscious life, must consist of considera- words, feeling implies a relation to a pleasurable or paintions such as the following. So far as we can judge, we ful presentation, that, as cause of feeling and end of the find feeling everywhere; but, as we work downwards from action to which feeling prompts, is doubly distinguished higher to lower forms of life, the possible variety and the from it. Thus the very facts that lead us to distinguish definiteness of sense-impressions both steadily diminish. feeling from cognition and conation make against the Moreover, we can directly observe in our own organic sensa-hypothesis that consciousness can ever be all feeling.

Relation

tions, which seem to come nearest to the whole content
of infantile and molluscous experience, an almost entire
absence of any assignable quale. Finally, in our sense-
experience generally, we find the element of feeling at a
maximum in the lower senses and the intellectual element
at a maximum in the higher. But the so-called intellectual
senses are the most used, and use we know blunts feeling
and favours intellection, as we see in chemists, who sort the
most filthy mixtures by smell and taste without discomfort.
If, then, feeling predominates more and more as we approach
the beginning of consciousness, may we not say that it is
the only sine qua non of consciousness? Considerations
of this kind, however impressive when exhibited at length,
are always liable to be overturned by some apparently un-
important fact which may easily be overlooked. Two lines,
e.g., may get nearer and nearer and yet will never meet, if
the rate of approach is simply proportional to the distance.
A triangle may be diminished indefinitely and yet we can-
not infer that it becomes eventually all angles, though the
angles get no less and the sides do. Now, before we decide
that pleasure or pain alone may constitute a complete state
of mind, it may be well to inquire: What is the connexion
between feelings of pleasure and pain and the two remain-
ing possible constituents of consciousness, as we
observe them now? And this is an inquiry which will
help us towards an answer to our main question, namely,
that concerning the nature and connexions of what are
commonly regarded as the three ultimate facts of mind.

can

Broadly speaking, in any state of mind that we can of feeling directly observe, what we find is (1) that we are aware of to cogni- a certain change in our sensations, thoughts, or circum

tion and conation.

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1 It is useless at this point attempting to decide on the comparative appropriateness of these and similar terms, such as "faculties,' capacities," "functions," &c.

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sensation

distinct.

But, as already said, the plausibility of this hypothesis Feeling is in good part due to a laxity in the use of terms. Most and psychologists before Kant, and English psychologists even to the present day, speak of pleasure and pain as sensations. But it is plain that pleasure and pain are not simple ideas, as Locke called them, in the sense in which touches and tastes are,—that is to say, they are never like these localized or projected, nor elaborated in conjunction with other sensations and movements into percepts or intuitions of the external. This confusion of feeling with sensations is largely consequent on the use of one word pain for certain organic sensations and for the purely subjective state. But, to say nothing of the fact that such pains are always more or less definitely localized,—which of itself is so far cognition,-they are also distinguished as shooting, burning, gnawing, &c. &c., all which symptoms indicate a certain objective quality. Accordingly all the more recent psychologists have been driven by one means or another to recognize two "aspects" (Bain), or "properties" (Wundt), in what they call a sensation, the one a "sensible or intellectual" or qualitative," the other an "affective” or emotive," aspect or property. The term "aspect" is figurative and obviously inaccurate; even to describe pleasure and pain as properties of sensation is a matter open to much question. But the point which at present concerns us is simply that when feeling is said to be the primordial element in consciousness more is usually included under feeling than pure pleasure and pain, viz., some characteristic or quality by which one pleasurable or painful sensation is distinguishable from another. doubt, as we go downwards in the chain of life the quali tative or objective elements in the so-called sensations become less and less definite; and at the same time organisms with well-developed sense-organs give place to others

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without any clearly differentiated organs at all. But there is no ground for supposing even the amoeba itself to be affected in all respects the same whether by changes of temperature or of pressure or by changes in its internal fluids, albeit all of these changes will further or hinder its life and so presumably be in some sort pleasurable or painful. On the whole, then, there are grounds for saying that the endeavour to represent all the various facts of consciousness as evolved out of feeling is due to a hasty striving after simplicity, and has been favoured by the ambiguity of the term feeling itself. If by feeling we mean a certain subjective state varying continuously in intensity and passing from time to time from its positive phase (pleasure) to its negative phase (pain), then this purely pathic state implies an agreeing or disagreeing something which psychologically determines it. If, on the other hand, we let feeling stand for both this state and the cause of it, then, perhaps, a succession of such "feelings' may make up a consciousness; but then we are including two of our elementary facts under the name of one of them. The simplest form of psychical life, therefore, involves not only a subject feeling but a subject having qualitatively distinguishable presentations which are the occasion of its feeling. Presenta We may now try to ascertain what is meant by cognition as an essential element in this life, or, more exactly, what we are to understand by the term presentation. It was an important step onwards for psychology when Locke introduced that "new way of ideas" which Stillingfleet found alternately so amusing and so dangerous. By idea Locke tells us he meant true appearances in men's minds, or "whatsoever is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding"; and it was so far a retrograde step when Hume restricted the term to certain only of these appearances or objects, or rather to these appearances or objects in a certain state, viz., as reproduced ideas or images. And, indeed, the history of psychology seems to show that its most important advances have been made by those who have kept closely to this way of ideas; the establishment of the laws of association and their many fruitful applications and the whole Herbartian psychology may suffice as instances (see HERBART). The truth is that the use of such a term is itself a mark of an important generalization, one which helps to free us from the mythology and verbiage of the "faculty-psychologists." that variety of mental facts which we speak of as sensations, perceptions, images, intuitions, concepts, notions, bave two characteristics in common:-(1) they admit of being more or less attended to, and (2) can be reproduced and associated together. It is here proposed to use the term presentation to connote such a mental fact, and as the best English equivalent for what Locke meant by idea and what Kant and Herbart called a Vorstellung.

All

A presentation has then a twofold relation,-first, directly to the subject, and secondly, to other presentations. By the first is meant the fact that the presentation is attended to, that the subject is more or less conscious of it it is "in his mind" or presented. As presented to a subject a presentation might with advantage be called an object, or perhaps a psychical object, to distinguish it from what are called objects apart from presentation, i.e., conceived as independent of any particular subject. Locke, as we have seen, did so call it; still, to avoid possible confusion, it may turn out best to dispense with the frequent use of object in this sense. But on one account, at least, it is desirable not to lose sight altogether of this which is after all the stricter as well as the older signification of object, namely, because it enables us to express definitely, without implicating any ontological theory, what we have so far seen reason to think is the fundamental fact in psychology. Instead of depending mainly on that vague

and treacherous word "consciousness," or committing ourselves to the position that ideas are modifications of a certain mental substance and identical with the subject to which they are presented, we may leave all this on one side, and say that ideas are objects, and the relation of objects to subjects-that whereby the one is object and the other subject is presentation. And it is because only objects sustain this relation that they may be spoken of simply as presentations.

It will be convenient here to digress for a moment to take account Sensaof an objection that is sure to be urged, viz., that sensations at all tions not events ought not to be called objects, that they are states of the psychosubject" and that this is a deliverance of common sense, if anything logically is. Now if by this be meant (i.) that sensations are metaphysically subjectsubjective modifications in an idealistic_sense, there is no need at ive. this stage either to assert or deny that. But if the meaning be (ii.) that sensations are presented as modes of the subject, such a position is due to a confusion between the subject proper or pure Ego and that complex presentation or object, the empirical, or as we might call it the biotic, Ego. A self-conscious subject may not only have a sensation but may recognize it as its own,-recognize a certain connexion, that is to say, between the sensation and that presentation of the empirical self which self-consciousness implies. But such reference only renders more obvious the objective nature of a sensation, in the psychological tion, in the psychological sense of the term objective. Or, again, the meaning may be (iii.) that a subject whose presentations were all sensations would know nothing of the difference between subject and object. In this objection there is a lurking confusion between the standpoint of a given experience and the standpoint of its exposition. The true way, surely, to represent the bare fact of sensation is not to attempt to reproduce an experience as yet confined to sensations, but to describe such experience as a scientific psychologist would do if we could imagine him a spectator of it. The infant who is delighted by a bright colour does not of course conceive himself as face to face with an object; but neither does he conceive the colour as a subjective affection. We are bound to describe his state of mind truthfully, but that is no reason for abandoning terms which have no counterpart in his consciousness, when these terms are only used to depict that consciousness to us. As to the objection (iv.) that, when all is said and done, sensations are conceived by common sense as modifications of self, whether so presented or not, it may be granted that it appears so at first blush, but not when common sense is more closely examined. The fact is we are here upon what has been called "the margin of psychology," where our ordinary thinking brings into one view what science has to be at great pains to keep distinct. Though it is scientifically a long way round from a fact of mind to the corre sponding fact of body, yet it is only on careful reflexion that we can distinguish the two in those cases in which our practical interests have closely associated them. Such a case is that of sensation. The ordinary conception of a sensation coincides, no doubt, with the definition given by Hamilton and Mansel:"Sensation proper is the consciousness of certain affections of our body as an animated organism"; and it is because in ordinary thinking we reckon the body as part of self that we come to think of sensations as subjective modifications. But, when considerations the ordinary conception of a sensation, we are able here to disof method compel us to eliminate physiological implications from tinguish the conscious subject and the "affections" of which it is conscious as clearly as wo can distinguish subject and object in other cases of presentation. On the whole, then, we may conclude that there is nothing either in the facts or in our necessary concep tions of them to prevent us from representing whatever admits of psychical reproduction and association, no matter how simple it be, as an object presented to a subject.

As to the subjective relation of objects, the relation of Attenpresentation itself, we have merely to note that on the tion. side of the subject it implies what, for want of a better word, may be called attention, extending the denotation of this term so as to include even what we ordinarily call inattention. Attention so used will thus cover part of what is meant by consciousness,so much of it, that is, as answers to being mentally active, active enough at least to "receive impressions." Attention on the side of the subject implies intensity on the side of the object: we might indeed almost call intensity the matter of a presentation, without which it is a nonentity. As to the connexion between these two, subjective attention and 1 Compare Kant's Principle of the Anticipations of Perception :"In all phenomena the real which is the object of sensation has intensive magnitude." XX.

- 6

objective intensity-in that higher form of attention called | at present is the result of a gradual differentiation. It is
voluntary we are aware (1) that concentration of atten-
tion increases or its abstraction diminishes the intensity
of a presentation in circumstances where physically and
physiologically there is nothing to prevent the intensity of
the presentation from continuing uniform. Again, (2) in
circumstances when psychologically we are aware of no
previous change in the distribution of attention, we find
the intensity of a presentation increased or diminished if
certain physical concomitants of the presentation (e.g.,
stimulus, nervous process, &c.) are increased or diminished.
Thus, though this is a point we could hardly establish
without the aid of psychophysics, we may conclude that
the intensity of a presentation may be altered from two
sides; that it depends, in other words, partly upon what
we may perhaps call its physical intensity and partly on
the amount of attention it receives.

quite impossible for us now to imagine the effects of years
of experience removed, or to picture the character of our
infantile presentations before our interests had led us
habitually to concentrate attention on some, and to ignore
others, whose intensity thus diminished as that of the
former increased. In place of the many things which we
can now see and hear, not merely would there then be a
confused presentation of the whole field of vision and of a
mass of undistinguished sounds, but even the difference
between sights and sounds themselves would be without
its present distinctness. Thus the further we go back
the nearer we approach to a total presentation having the
character of one general continuum in which differences
are latent. There is, then, in psychology, as in biology,
what may be called a principle of "progressive differen-
tiation or specialization"; and this, as well as the facts of
reproduction and association, forcibly suggests the con-

background or basis to the several relatively distinct pre-
sentations that are elaborated out of it-the equivalent,
in fact, of that unity and continuity of consciousness
which has been supposed to supersede the need for a
conscious subject.

There is one class of objects of special interest even in Motor a general survey; viz., movements or motor presentations. presenta These, like sensory presentations, admit of association and

tions.

tion.

Some further exposition of the connexion between subjective attention and objective intensity is perhaps desirable here, where we are seeking to get a general view of the essential facts of minception of a certain objective continuum forming the and their relations, rather than later on, when we shall be more concerned with details. We are aware in ordinary life that the intensity of any given sensation depends upon certain physical quantities, varying directly in some proportion as these vary. Hence, since our habitual standpoint is the physical not the psychological, we conceive sensory objects as having an intensity per se apart from the attention that their presentation secures. From the physical standpoint indeed it is manifest that no other conception is compatible with a scientific treatment of phenomena. Subjective sources of variation are supposed to be eliminated: the general mind to which, according to the physicist's conception of a pheno-reproduction, and seem to attain to such distinctness as menon, that phenomenon is implicitly supposed to be presented is they possess in adult human experience by a gradual differa mind in which there is no feeling to produce variations of atten- entiation out of an original diffused mobility which is little tion, or to favour æsthetic combinations of objects. Attention is besides emotional expression. Of this, however, more thus assumed to be constant, and all variations in intensity to be presently. It is primarily to such dependence upon feelobjectively determined. But psychologically we cannot assume this. In any given presentation there is, it must be admitted, no ing that movements owe their distinctive character, the immediate evidence that the intensity of the object is a function of possession, that is, under normal circumstances, of definite two variables,-(1) what we have called its physical or absolute and assignable psychical antecedents, in contrast to sensory intensity and (2) the intensity of attention. Still there are facts presentations, which enter the field of consciousness ex which justify this conclusion. That the intensity of the presentation varies with the absolute intensity of the object, attention abrupto. We cannot psychologically explain the order in remaining constant, is a proposition not likely to be challenged. which particular sights and sounds occur; but the moveWhat has to be shown is that the intensity of presentations varies ments that follow them, on the other hand, can be adewith the attention, all else remaining constant. Assuming that quately explained only by psychology. The twilight that voluntary and non-voluntary attention are fundamentally the same, this amounts to showing (1) that concentration of attention upon sends the hens to roost sets the fox to prowl, and the lion's some objects diminishes the intensity of presentation of others in roar which gathers the jackals scatters the sheep. Such Subjectthe same field, whether the concentration be voluntary or non- diversity in the movements, although the sensory presenta- ive selecvoluntary, i.e., due to a shock; and (2) that, even though only tions are similar, is due, in fact, to what we might call the within narrow limits, increasing attention voluntarily has the same effect on the presentation as increasing the objective intensity from principle of "subjective or hedonic selection "—that, out of the physical side. The narrowness of these limits-practically an all the manifold changes of sensory presentation which a all-important fact is theoretically no objection. It would not be given individual experiences, only a few are the occasion difficult psychologically to account for our inability to concentrate of such decided feeling as to become objects of possible attention indefinitely: that we can concentrate it at all is enough appetite (or aversion). The representation of what into show that there is a subjective as well as an objective factor in the intensity of a presentation. Any fuller consideration of the terests us comes to be associated with the representation connexion between attention and presentations may be deferred. of such movements as will secure its realization, so that— The inter-objective relations of presentations, on which although no concentration of attention will secure the tinuity their second characteristic, that of revivability and asso- requisite intensity to a pleasurable object present only in ciability depends, though of the first importance in them- idea-we can by what is strangely like a concentration selves, hardly call for examination in a general analysis of attention convert the idea of a movement into the like the present. But there is one point still more funda- fact, and by means of the movement attain the coveted mental that we cannot wholly pass by: it is-in part at reality. any rate-what is commonly termed the unity or continuity of consciousness. From the physical standpoint and in ordinary life we can talk of objects that are isolated and independent and in all respects distinct individuals. The screech of the owl, for example, has physically nothing to do with the brightness of the moon: either may come or go without changing the order of things to which the other belongs. But psychologically, for the individual percipient, they are parts of one whole: special attention to one diminishes the intensity of presentation of the other and the recurrence of the one will afterwards entail the re-presentation of the other also. Not only are they still parts of one whole, but such distinctness as they have

Con

of conscious

ness.

And this has brought us round naturally to what is per- Cona. haps the easiest way of approaching the question: What tion. is a conation or action? In ordinary voluntary movement we have first of all an idea or re-presentation of the movement, and last of all the actual movement itself,—a new presentation which may for the present be described as the filling out of the re-presentation,1 which thereby attains that intensity, distinctness, and embodiment we call reality. How does this change come about? The attempt has often been made to explain it by a reference to the more uniform, and apparently simpler, case of reflex 1 On the connexion of presentations and re-presentations, see p. 59

below.

action, including under this term what are called sensorimotor and ideo-motor actions. In all these the movement seems to be the result of a mere transference of intensity from the associated sensation or idea that sets on the movement. But, when by some chance or mischance the same sensory presentation excites two alternative and con'flicting motor ideas, a temporary block, it is said, occurs; and, when at length one of these nascent motor changes finally prevails and becomes real, then we have the state of mind called volition.1 But this assumption that sensory and motor ideas are associated before volition, and that the volition begins where automatic or reflex action ends, is due to that inveterate habit of confounding the psychical and the physical which is the bane of modern psychology. How did these particular sensory and motor presentations ever come to be associated? It is wholly beside the mark to answer that they are "organically determined psychical changes." In one respect all psychical changes alike are organically determined, inasmuch as all alike-so far, at least, as we at all know or surmise-have organic concomitants. In another respect no psychical changes are organically determined, inasmuch as physical events and psychical events have no common factors. Now the only psychological evidence we have of any very intimate connexion between sensory and motor representations is that furnished by our acquired dexterities, i.e., by such movements as Hartley styled secondary automatic. But then all these have been preceded by volition: Mr Spencer says, "the child learning to walk wills each movement before walking it." Surely, then, a psychologist should take this as his typical case and prefer to assume that all automatic actions that come within his ken at all are in this sense secondarily automatic, i.e., to say that either in the experience of the individual or of his ancestors volition, or something analogous to it, preceded habit.

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But, if we are thus compelled by a sound method to regard sensori-motor actions as degraded or mechanical forms of voluntary actions, instead of regarding voluntary actions as gradually differentiated out of something physical, we have not to ask: What happens when one of two alternative movements is executed? but the more general question: What happens when any movement is made in consequence of feeling? It is obvious that on this view the simplest definitely purposive movement must have been preceded by some movement simpler still. For any distinct movement purposely made presupposes the ideal presentation, before the actual realization, of the movement. But such ideal presentation, being a re-presentation, equally presupposes a previous actual movement of which it is the so-called mental residuum. There is then, it would seem, but one way left, viz., to regard those movements which are immediately expressive of pleasure or pain as primordial, and to regard the so-called voluntary movements as elaborated out of these. The vague and diffusive character of these primitive emotional manifestations is really a point in favour of this position. For such "diffusion" is evidence of an underlying continuity of motor presentations parallel to that already discussed in connexion with sensory presentations, a continuity which, in each case, becomes differentiated in the course of experience into comparatively distinct and discrete movements and sensations respectively.2

Compare Spencer's Principles of Psychology, i. 496.

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It may be well to call to mind here that Dr Bain also has regarded emotional expression as a possible commencement of action, but only to reject it in favour of his own peculiar doctrine of "spontaneity," which, however, is open to the objection that it makes movement precede feeling instead of following it-an objection that would be serious even if the arguments advanced to support his hypothesis were as cogent as only Dr Bain takes them to be. Against the position

But, whereas we can only infer, and that in a very roundabout fashion, that our sensations are not absolutely distinct but are parts of one massive sensation, as it were, we are still liable under the influence of strong emotion directly to experience the corresponding continuity in the case of movement. Such motor-continuum we may suppose is the psychical counterpart of that permanent readiness to act, or rather that continual nascent acting, which among the older physiologists was spoken of as "tonic action"; and as this is now known to be intimately dependent on afferent excitations so is our motor consciousness on our sensory. Still, since we cannot imagine the beginning of life but only life begun, the simplest picture we can form of a concrete state of mind is not one in which there are movements before there are any sensations or sensations before there are any movements, but one in which change of sensation is followed by change of movement, the link between the two being a change of feeling.

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Having thus simplified the question, we may now ask Dependagain: How is this change of movement through feeling ence of brought about? The answer, as already hinted, appears feeling. to be: By a change of attention. We learn from such observations as psychologists describe under the head of fascination, imitation, hypnotism, &c., that the mere concentration of attention upon a movement is often enough to bring the movement to pass. But, of course, in such cases there is neither emotional experience nor volition in question; such facts are only cited to show the connexion between attention and movements. Everybody too has often observed how the execution of any but mechanical movements arrests attention to thoughts or sensations, and vice versa. Let us suppose, then, that we have at any given moment a certain distribution of attention between sensory and motor presentations; a change in that distribution means a change in the intensity of some or all of these, and change of intensity in motor presentations means change of movement. Such changes are, however, quite minimal in amount so long as the given presentations are not conspicuously agreeable or disagreeable. As soon as they are, we find pleasure to lead at once to concentration of attention on the pleasurable object; so that pleasure is not at all so certainly followed by movement as we find pain to be, save of course when movements are themselves the pleasurable objects and are executed, as we say, for their own sakes. In fact, pleasure would seem rather to repress movement, except so far as it is coincident either with a more economic distribution, or with a positive augmentation, of the available attention; and either of these, on the view supposed, would lead to increased but indefinite (ie., playful) movement. Pain, on the other hand, is much more closely connected with movement, and movement too which for obvious reasons much sooner acquires a purposive character. Instead of voluntary concentration of attention upon a painful presentation we find attention to such an object always involuntary; in other words, attention is, as it were, excentrated, dispersed, or withdrawn. If, therefore, the painful presentation is a movement, it is suspended; if it is a sensation, movements are set up which further distract attention, and some of which may effect the removal of the physical source of

the sensation.

maintained above he objects that "the emotional wave almost invariably affects a whole group of movements," and therefore does not furnish the "isolated promptings that are desiderated in the case of the will" (Mental and Moral Science, p. 323). But to make this objection is to let heredity count for nothing. In fact, wherever a variety of isolated movements is physically possible, there also we always find corresponding instincts, that untaught ability to perform actions," to use Dr Bain's own language, which a minimum of practice suffices to perfect.

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