its cause, though in different circumstances the same immediate cause may produce a different amount or even a different state of feeling. Turning from what we may call the receptive phase of an experience to the active or appetitive phase, we find in like manner that feeling is certainly not-in such cases as we can clearly observe the whole of what we experience at any moment. True, in common speech we talk of liking pleasure and disliking pain; but this is either tautology, equivalent to saying we are pleased when we are pleased and pained when we are pained; or else it is an allowable abbreviation, and means that we like pleasurable objects and dislike painful objects, as when we say we like feeling warm and dislike feeling hungry. But feeling warm or feeling hungry, we must remember, is not pure feeling in the stricter sense of the word. Within the limits of our observation, then, we find that feeling accompanies some more or less definite presentation which for the sake of it becomes the object of appetite or aversion; in other words, feeling implies a relation to a pleasurable or painful presentation or situation, that, as cause of feeling or as end of the action to which feeling prompts, is doubly distinguished from it. Thus the very facts that lead us to distinguish feeling from cognition and conation make against the hypothesis that consciousness can ever be all feeling.

5. We might now proceed to inquire more closely into the character and relations of the three invariable constituents of Feeling. psychical life which are broadly distinguished as cognitions, feelings and conations. But we should be at once confronted by a doctrine which, strictly taken, amounts almost to a denial of this tripartite classification of the facts of mind-the doctrine, viz. that feeling alone is primordial and invariably present wherever there is consciousness at all. Every living creature, it is said, feels, though it may never do any more; only the higher animals, and these only after a time, learn to discriminate and identify and to act with a purpose. This doctrine, as might be expected, derives its plausibility partly from the vagueness of psychological terminology, and partly from the intimate connexion that undoubtedly exists between feeling and cognition on the one hand and feeling and volition on the other. As to the meaning of the term, it is plain that further definition is requisite for a word that may mean (a) a touch, as feeling of roughness; (b) an organic sensation, as feeling of hunger; (c) an emotion, as feeling of anger; (d) feeling proper, as pleasure or pain. But, even taking feeling in the last, its stricter sense, it has been maintained that all the more complex forms of consciousness are resolvable into, or at least have been developed from, feelings of pleasure and pain. The only proof of such position, since we cannot directly observe the beginnings of conscious life, must consist of considerations such as the following. So far as we can judge, we find feeling everywhere; but, as we work downwards from higher to lower forms of life, the possible variety and the definiteness of sense-impressions both steadily diminish. Moreover, we can directly observe in our own organic sensations, which seem to come nearest to the whole content of primitive or infantile experience, an almost entire absence of any assignable quale. Finally, in our senseexperience generally, we find the element of feeling at a maximum in the lower senses and the cognitive 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 conscious life, may we not conclude that it is its only essential constituent? On the contrary, such a conclusion would be rash in the extreme. Two lines, e.g. may get nearer and nearer and yet will never meet, if the rate of approach is simply proportional to the dis-under feeling than pure pleasure and pain, viz. some charactertance. A triangle may be diminished indefinitely, and yet we cannot infer that it becomes eventually all angles, though the angles get no less and the sides do. Before, then, we decide whether pleasure or pain alone can ever constitute a complete experience, it may be well to inquire into the connexion between feeling and cognition, on the one hand, and between feeling and conation on the other, so far as we can now observe. 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

Cognition

tion.

Broadly speaking, in any state of mind that we can directly observe, what we find is (1) that we are aware of a certain change Relation of in our sensations, thoughts or circumstances, (2) Feeling to that we are pleased or pained with the change, and and Cona (3) that we act accordingly. We never find that feeling directly alters-i.e. without the intervention of the action of which it prompts-either our sensations or situation, but that regularly these latter with remarkable promptness and certainty alter it. We have not first a change of feeling, and then a change in our sensations, perceptions and ideas; but, these changing, change of feeling follows. In short, feeling appears to be an effect, which therefore cannot exist without

But, as already said, the plausibility of this hypothesis is in good part due to a laxity in the use of terms. Most psychologists before Kant, and some even to the present day, Feeling and speak of pleasure and pain as sensations. But it is Sensation plain that pleasure and pain are not simple ideas, distinct. 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 are they 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 both for certain organic sensations and for the purely subjective state of being pained. But such pains not only are always more or less definitely localized-which of itself is so far cognition, they are also distinguished as shooting, burning, gnawing, &c., all which symptoms indicate a certain objective quality. Accordingly 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 istic or quality by which one pleasurable or painful sensation is distinguishable from another. No doubt, as we go downwards in the chain of life the qualitative 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 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 | still more fundamental that we cannot wholly pass by: it only a subject feeling but a subject having qualitatively distinguish- | is-in part at any rate-what is commonly termed the unity able presentations which are the occasion of its feeling.

or continuity of consciousness. From the physical standpoint 6. We may now try to ascertain what is meant by cognition and in ordinary life we can talk of objects that are isolated as an essential element in this life, or, more exactly, what we are and independent and in all respects distinct individuals. The to understand by the term presentation. It was an screech of the owl, for example, has physically nothing to do Presenta important step onwards for psychology when Locke with the brightness of the moon: either may come or go without tion. introduced that "new way of ideas" which Stilling-changing the order of things to which the other belongs. But fleet found alternately so amusing and so dangerous. By ideas psychologically, for the individual percipient, they are parts of Locke told him he meant "nothing but the immediate objects one whole; the more his attention is given to the one the more of our minds in thinking "; and it was so far a retrograde step it is taken from the other. Also the actual recurrence of the when Hume restricted the term to certain only of these objects, one will afterwards entail the re-presentation of the other or rather to these objects in a certain state, viz, as reproduced also. Not only are they still parts of one whole, but such ideas or images." And, indeed, the history of psychology distinctness as they have at present is the result of a gradual seems to show that its most important advances have been made differentiation. by those who have kept closely to this way of ideas; the establishment of the laws of association with 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." All the various mental facts spoken of as sensations, movements, percepts, images, intuitions, concepts, notions, have two characteristics in common: (1) they admit of being more or less attended to, and (2) they can be variously combined together and reproduced. It is here proposed to use the term presentation to denote them all, as being the best English equivalent for what Locke meant by idea and what Kant and Herbart called a Vorstellung.

A presentation has then a twofold relation-first, directly to the subject, and, secondly, to other presentations. The former relation answers to the fact that a 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 scen reason to think is the fundamental fact in experience. 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 or identical with the subject to whom 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. On the side of the subject this relation 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 Attention. 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.1

It is 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. 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 differentiation or specialization"; and this, as well as the facts of reproduction and association, forcibly suggests the conception of a certain objective continuum forming the background or basis to the several relatively distinct presentations 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 a
general survey, viz. movements or motor presentations. These,
like sensory presentations, admit of association and
Motor Pre-
reproduction, and seen to attain to such distinctness sentations.
as they possess in adult human experience by a
gradual differentiation out of an original diffused mobility which
is little besides emotional expression. Of this, however, more
presently. It is primarily to such dependence upon feeling
that movements owe their distinctive character, the possession,
that is, under normal circumstances, of definite and assignable
psychical antecedents, in contrast to sensory presentations,
which are devoid of them. We cannot psychologically explain
the order in which particular sights and sounds occur; but the
movements that follow them, on the other hand, can be ade-
quately explained only by psychology. The twilight that sends
the hens to roost sets the fox to prowl, and the lion's roar

which gathers the jackals scatters the sheep. Such Subjective
diversity in the movements, although the sensory Selection.
presentations are similar, is due, in fact, to what we
might call the principle of "subjective or hedonic selection
that, out of all the manifold changes of sensory presentation
which a given individual experiences, only a few are the occasion
of such decided feeling as to become objects of possible appetite
or aversion. It is thus by means of movements that we are
more than the creatures of circumstances and that we can
with propriety talk of subjective selection. The represen-
tation of what interests us comes then to be associated with
the representation of such movements as will secure its
realization, so that although no concentration of attention
will secure the requisite intensity to a pleasurable object
present only in idea-we can by what is strangely like a con-
centration of attention convert the idea of a movement into
the fact, and by means of the movement attain the coveted
reality.

The biological principle referred to is that known as von Baer's law, viz. that the progress of development is from the general to the special."

Conation.

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 motorcontinuum 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." This "skeletal tone," as it is now called, is found to disappear more or less completely from a limb when its sensory nerves are divided. "In the absence of the usual stream of afferent impulses passing into it, the spinal cord ceases to send forth the influences which maintain the tone."4 And a like intimate dependence, we have every reason to believe, obtains throughout between sensation and movement. We cannot imagine the beginning of life but only life begun. The simplest picture, then, which 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.

7. And this has brought us round naturally to the third of the commonly accepted constituents of experience. What is conation, or rather conative action? For there are two questions often more or less confused, the question of motive or spring of action, as it is sometimes called -why is there action at all? and the question of means-how do definite actions come about? The former question relates primarily to the connexion of conation and feeling. It is only the latter question that we now raise. 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, 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 action, including under this term what are called sensori-motor 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 or more nascent motor changes that conflict, a temporary block is said to occur; Having thus simplified the question, we may now ask again: and, when at length one of these nascent motor changes How is this change of movement through feeling brought about? finally prevails, then, it is said, "there is constituted a state The answer, as already hinted, appears to be: Dependence of consciousness which displays what we term volition." But By a change of attention. We learn from such of Action of this assumption that sensory and motor ideas are associated observations as psychologists describe under the Feeling, before volition, and that volition begins where automatic or head of fascination, imitation, hypnotism, &c., that the merc reflex action ends, is due to that inveterate habit of confound- concentration of attention upon a movement is often enough ing the psychical and the physical which is the bane of modern to bring the movement to pass. But, of course, in such cases psychology. How did these particular sensory and motor neither emotion nor volition is necessarily implied; but none presentations ever come to be associated? The only psycho- the less they show the close connexion that exists between logical evidence we have of any very intimate connexion between attention and movement. Everybody, too, must often sensory and motor representations is that furnished by our have observed how the execution of any but mechanical acquired dexterities, i.e. by such movement as Hartley movements arrests attention to thoughts or sensations, and styled "secondarily automatic." But then all these have been how, vice versa, a-striking impression or thought interrupts preceded by volition: as Herbert Spencer says, "the child him in the performance of skilled movements. Let us learning to walk wills each movement before making it." Surely, suppose, then, that we have at any given moment a certain then, a psychologist should take this as his typical case and distribution of attention between sensory and motor presentaprefer to assume that all automatic actions that come within tions; a change in that distribution then will mean a change his ken at all are in this sense secondarily automatic, i.e. to in the intensity of some of all of these. But, in the case of say that either in the experience of the individual or of his motor presentations, change of intensity means change of ancestors, volition or something analogous to it, preceded habit. movement. Such changes are, however, quite minimal in But, if we are thus compelled by a sound method to regard amount so long as the given presentations are not conspicusensori-motor actions as degraded or mechanical forms of ously agreeable or disagreeable. So soon as they are, however, voluntary actions, instead of regarding voluntary actions as there is evidence of a most intimate connexion between feeling gradually differentiated out of something physical, we have not and attention; but it is hardly possible adequately to exhibit to ask: What happens when one of two alternative movements this evidence without first attempting to ascertain the characis executed? but the more general question: What happens teristics of the presentations, or groups of presentations, that when any movement is made in consequence of feeling? It is are respectively pleasurable and painful, and this must occupy obvious that on this view the simplest definitely purposive us later on. 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.

Compare Spencer's Principles of Psychology, i. §§ 217, 8. D. Hartley, Observations on Man (6th ed., 1834), pp. 66 sqq. 'It may be well to call to mind here that Alexander Bain also regarded emotional expression as a possible commencement of action,

Miod,

8. We are now at the end of our analysis, and the results may perhaps be most conveniently summarized by first throwing them into a tabular form and then appending a Primordial few remarks by way of indicating the main purport Facts of of the table. Taking no account of the specific difference between one concrete state of mind and another, and supposing that we are dealing with presentations 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 Bain supposed them to be. Against the position maintained above he objects that "the emo and therefore does not furnish the "isolated promptings that are tional wave almost invariably affects a whole group of movements,' 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 Bain's own language, which a minimum of practice suffices to perfect. But then these suggest gradual ancestral acquisition.

Foster, Text-Book of Physiology, § 597.

"

in their simplest form, i.e. as sensations and movements, we of activity might vary while the object remained the same; have:

"

that e.g. we perceived an object and later on remembered or desired it. It would then be most natural to refer these several activities to corresponding faculties of perception, memory and desire. This, indeed, is the view embodied in common speech, and for practical purposes it is doubtless the simplest and the best. Nevertheless, a more thorough analysis shows that when the supposed faculty is different the object is never entirely OBJECTS. and in all respects the same. Thus in perception, e.g. we deal with "impressions or primary presentations, and in memory and imagination with "ideas" (in the later sense) or secondary presentations. In desire the want of the object gives it an entirely different setting, adding a new characteristic, that of value or worth, so that its acquisition becomes the end of a series of efforts or movements. The older psychology, by its acceptance of the Cartesian doctrine that all the facts of immediate experience are to be interpreted as subjective modifications, failed to distinguish adequately between the subject as active and the objects of its activity. Hence the tendency to rest content with the popular distinction of various faculties in spite of the underlying sameness implied in the common application of "conscious" to them all. In fact, Locke's definition of idea (in the older and wider sense) as the immediate object of con"the greatest sciousness or thinking was censured by Reid as blemish in the Essay on Human Understanding." But, accepting this definition as implied in the duality of subject and object, and accepting too the underlying sameness which the active form "conscious" undeniably implies, we have simply to ask: "Which is the better term to denote this common elementconsciousness or attention?"

Of the three phases or functions, thus analytically distinguish able, but not really separable, the first and the third correspond in the main with the receptive and active states or powers of the older psychologists. The second, being more difficult to isolate, was long overlooked; or, at all events, its essential characteristics were not distinctly marked, so that it was confounded either with (1) which is its cause, or with (3), its effect. But perhaps the most important of all psychological distinctions is that which traverses both the old bipartite and the prevailing tripartite analysis, viz. that between the subject on the one hand, as acting and feeling, and the objects of this activity on the other. With this distinction clearly before us, instead of crediting the subject with an indefinite number of faculties or capacities, we must seek to explain not only reproduction, association, &c., but all varieties of thinking and acting, by the laws pertaining to ideas or presentations, leaving to the subject only the one power of variously distributing that attention upon which the intensity of a presentation in part depends. What we call activity in the narrower sense (as e.g. purposive movement and intellection) is but a special form of this single subjective activity, although a very important one.

According to this view, then, presentations, attention, feeling, are not to be regarded as three co-ordinate genera, each of which is a complete "state of mind or consciousness," i.e. as being all alike included under this one supreme category. There is, as Berkeley long ago urged, no resemblance between activity and an idea; nor is it easy to see anything common to pure feeling and an idea, unless it be that both possess intensity. Classification seems, in fact, to be here out of place. Instead, therefore, of the one summum genus, state of mind or consciousness, with its three co-ordinate subdivisions-cognition, emotion, conationour analysis seems to lead us to recognize three distinct and irreducible components-attention, feeling, and objects or presentations-as together, in a certain connexion, constituting one concrete state of mind or psychosis. Of such concrete states of mind or psychoses we may then say-so far agreeing with the older, bipartite psychology-that there are two forms, corresponding to the two ways in which attention may be determined and the two classes of objects attended to in each, viz. (1) the sensory or receptive attitude, when attention is non-voluntarily determined, i.e. where feeling follows the act of attention; and (2) the motor or active attitude, where feel ing precedes the act of attention, which is thus determined voluntarily.

Attention.

9. Instead of a congeries of faculties we have assumed a single subjective activity and have proposed to call this attention. Some further explication of this position seems to be desirable. We start with the duality of subject and object as fundamental. We say of man, mouse, or monkey that it feels, perceives, remembers, infers, strives, and so forth. Leaving aside the first term, it is obvious that all the rest imply both an activity and an object. Is it possible to resolve these instances into a form in which the assumed diversity of the act will appear as a diversity of the object? At first sight it looks rather as if the kind To cover more complex cases we might here add the words trains of ideas."

or

Consciousness, as the vaguest, most protean and most treacherous of psychological terms, will hardly serve our purpose. Attention, on the other hand, has an invariable active sense, and there is an appropriate verb, to attend. But many things, it may be said, are presented while few are attended to; if attention is to be made coextensive with the activity implied in consciousness, will not the vital distinction between attention and inattention be lost? In fact, however, this distinction implies a covert comparison, not an absolute contrast. everyday life we recognize many degrees of attention, ranging from an extreme of intense concentration to one of complete remission, as Locke long ago pointed out. Between these extremes there is perfect continuity, and not a difference of kind; to apply the one term attention to the whole range is very like applying the one term magnitude to large and small quantities alike.

In

But it is not enough to show that when we commonly talk of different faculties we also find psychological differences of object, and to assert that if there is one common factor in all psychical activity this factor is attention. To make our position secure it is needful to show directly that all the various faculties with which a subject can be credited are resolvable into attention and various classes or relations or states of presentations that are attended to. How far this is possible remains to be seen as we proceed. In the case of the so-called "intellectual powers the position is generally conceded, but so far as the voluntary or active powers are concerned it is as generally denied. Now, in so far as volition implies not merely action, overt or intended, but also motives, in so far also it must be acknowledged it contains a factor not resolvable into attention to motor presentations. This further factor, which has been called "the volitional character of feeling," we here leave aside. Apart from this direct spring of action, then, the question is whether the active process itself differs from the cognitive or receptive process

"That there are ideas, some or other, always present in the mind of a waking man, every one's experience convinces him; though the mind employs itself about them with several degrees of attention. Sometimes the mind fixes itself with such intention... that it shuts out all other thoughts and takes no notice of the ordinary impressions made on the senses; ...at other times it barely observes the train of ideas... without directing and pursuing any of them; and at other times it lets them pass almost quite unregarded as faint shadows that make no impression" (Essay, ii. 19, §§ 3, 4).