activity that in a more developed shape we commonly call will. We attend to one thing rather than to another, because we will to do so, and our will is here the elementary impulse to know. Our attention leads us at times into error. But this error is merely an accompaniment, the result of our will activity. We want to intensify an impression, to bring it within the sphere of knowledge. But in carrying out our impulse, we do more than we meant. We not only bring something into clearer consciousness that was before out of clear consciousness, but we qualitatively modify this thing in attending to it. I want to observe a series of beats, and in observing it, I make one beat in three or four seem heavier than the others, or I even alter the apparent length of one interval in three or four, by making it seem longer than the others. I observe a series of visual impressions, and at the same time a series of auditory impressions; if there is a certain agreement between them, I irresistibly unite these two series by my act of attention into one series, and refer them to a common cause. And so in the other cases. Attention seems to defeat, in part, its own object. Bringing something into the field of knowledge seems to be a modifying, if not a transforming, process.
We all know how this same law works on a higher plane. Giving our whole attention for a time to a particular subject seems necessary for the growth of our knowledge. Yet such attention, if long kept up, always modifies our power to know, affects our whole mental condition, and thus injures our power to appreciate the relations between the subject of our
