l68 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING
Second, those objects draw attention to themselves which are out of the ordinary, and do so in proportion to their rarity or strangeness. To say that we are accustomed to anything is to say in other words that we are adapted to it ; and as attention is the adaptive function of consciousness it must concern itself with that which is not customary. And, since attention is consciousness engaged in .the process of guiding adjustment, each successive act of adjustment, after the adaptation has been effected, falls under the law of habit and takes place with less attention, or even while it is di rected elsewhere. The young lady sits at the piano and draws the harmony from its keys, but her attention is most likely directed upon the young man who stands by her side and turns the pages of the music ; the keys and notes occupy the obscure margin of consciousness. The greater number of the adjustments we are actually making throughout our waking life never get beyond the dim borders of our con sciousness. It is the unusual adjustments which occupy the foreground of the mental picture. But as in a picture, there is no sharp demarcation between the foreground and the background. The successive acts of adjustments, of which the substance of life consists, lie all the way between the extremes of the unconscious and habitual and the abso lutely new, upon which the surprised consciousness is most intensely focused. The reign of habit is continually ex tending over the realm of our experience, and with it the shadow of the unconscious with its broad fringe of twilight. And the darkness would ultimately settle upon it all if the realm of experience were not extending also. It is the en trance of the new into our lives which keeps consciousness alert, the attention active and the intelligence growing. In people who live under monotonous conditions or in a comparatively unchanging environment, consciousness is at a low tension; in people who live in a changeful environ ment, it is at a high tension. The attention is more active because it is continually challenged by new experiences. Consciousness focalizes upon the unusual, for the obvious
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