Studies in the Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling

by Hiram Miner Stanley

In his recent treatise on psychology Professor James discusses in an interesting and suggestive way the relation of ideation to attention, maintaining that “ideational preparation ... is concerned in all attentive acts.” Attention is “anticipatory imagination” or “preperception” which prepares the mind for what it is to experience. Thus the schoolboy, listening for the clock to strike twelve, anticipates in imagination and is prepared to hear perfectly the very first sound of the striking.

It is undoubtedly true that in the form of attention we term expectant, where we are awaiting some given impression, there is a representing, antedating experience, which may be a preparatory preperception. But with a wrong imaging of what is to be experienced there is hindrance, as when in a dark, quiet room we are led to expect sensation of light but actually receive sensation of sound. Very often, indeed, our anticipations make us unprepared for experience. Further, the experiments adduced by Professor James from Wundt and Helmholtz are in the single form of expectant attention, and we must remark that in these experiments the reagent is also experimenter, and this introduces a new attention, consciousness of consciousness, and that of a peculiar kind, which complicates an already complex consciousness. In general we may say that experimentally incited consciousness is artificial, at least as far as it feels itself as such, and for certain points like simple attention this tends to vitiate results. Self-experimentation or experiment on those conscious of it as such may mislead in certain cases, and must, so far as this element of consciousness of experiment is not allowed for. In physical science things always act naturally, whether with observation or experiment, but in psychology observation, other things being equal, is more trustworthy than experiment.

In all cases of expectant or experimentally expectant attention, the attention does not, however, lie in the expectancy or in the imaging as such, but it is merely the will effort concerned in these operations. Yet as we may expect without effort, and preconceive without volition, attention is necessarily involved in neither. A perception or a preperception is an attention only as accomplished by will with effort, but only an unattention when purely involuntary. Professor James’s use of attention as preperception brings us back to the common idea of attention, as any consciousness which cognizes something. This is so inbred in thought and language that it is most difficult to avoid using the term in this sense. Many psychologists, like Mr. James and Mr. Sully, frequently mention attention as a will phenomenon, but they do not treat it under will, and they constantly return to the cognition meaning. Höffding, however, treats attention under psychology of will. Attention as the exercise of will in building up and maintaining cognitive activity, is naturally treated under cognition; but it is on the whole safer and better to discuss attention under will so as to keep it sharply distinguished from the presentation form which it vitalizes. I have endeavoured to hold the term strictly to this sense, yet it is not unlikely I may sometimes unwittingly countenance the common confusion, but trust the instances will be few.

When we have, then, a case of expectant attention, we must distinguish the attention in the imaging from the attention in the actual cognizing. It is, indeed, true for us almost invariably that cognitive strain without immediate realization is incentive to ideating. In listening in the night in vain for a sound we hear in imagination many sounds, and we form preparatory ideas of what we are to hear. Sense-adjustments call up a train of sensations in ideal form. But it is obvious that low intelligences which have no power of expectancy or ideation do yet really attend. The very first cognitions and all early cognitions by their very newness and difficulty were attentions long before ideation was evolved. With low organisms, as cognitive power extends only to the present in time and space, immediacy of reaction is imperatively demanded, and every tension of cognitive apparatus is immediately directive of motor apparatus, so that suitable motion is at once accomplished. The cognition, though dim and evanescent factor, is yet powerfully energized, and so a true attention. Always with lowest sentiencies, and often with higher, pain is suddenly realized without anticipation, followed quickly by attention as strong effort to cognize the nature and quality of the pain-giver and so to effectually get rid of pain-giver and pain.

Preliminary idea, then, cannot occur in early attentions and in late attentions, it is by no means necessary. It is said that we see only what we look for, but it must be answered that seeing commonly happens without any looking for. The kindergarten child, Professor James to the contrary notwithstanding, is not confined in his seeing to merely those things which he has been told to see and whose names have been given him. A child continually asks, What is that? and is quick to discern the new and strange. He accomplishes a wide variety of attentions without ideas and gives himself almost entirely to immediate presentations.

To be sure, every one sees only what he is prepared to see, only what is made possible for him by his mental constitution as determined by his own pre-experience and the experience of his ancestors, but this does not signify ideation. Every cognizing is conditioned by the past, but this does not call for a reawakening and projecting in ideal form at every instance of cognitive effort before any real cognition is reached.

In fact many, if not the most of our attentions, are merely intensifyings of some present cognition, of some cognitive psychosis which has simply come or happened. Take the instance of attention to marginal and retinal images; this certainly does not always imply pre-perception, the forming of an idea of what we are to see, though in the cases mentioned by Professor James it may. For example, I was writing the above seated with my profile to the window when I became suddenly aware, through the physiological agency of a marginal image, of a moving object to my right. This perception of bare, undefined object was spontaneous, a pure given; I exercised no will in attaining it, and so the state of cognition was not an attention. However, by attending, by intensifying the cognition by will effort, I perceive that the indefinite object is a man walking on the sidewalk, who is of a certain height, clothed in a certain way, etc. I do not trace the least ideation in the whole process; the slight attending as act of will did not imply any anterior or posterior idea or representation. The reason for the will act was the intrinsic interest of movement, and this intrinsic interest arises in the fact that moving objects have had for all life a special pleasure-pain significance; the moving object is the most dangerous, and so motion perceived has become ingrained in mind as a special stimulant of attention. This habit of attentiveness to things in motion survives and continues for cases where it is of no use and even of harm; thus, in the present instance, it diverts me from my work. It is obvious that attention often occurs in the same way for other senses without preliminary idea.

Is there such a state as negative attention or active inattention? Is will activity in cognition always positive merely, and never existing as direct repression or weakening of acts? To some psychologists negative attention means only that certain elements in a consciousness are overshadowed by the dominancy of some single factor; that, owing to the limited capacity of mind, many elements can exist only in enfeebled form beside their stronger neighbours. If the life blood of mind, will, is largely absorbed by some particular form or mode, all other forms must suffer in consequence.

It is, of course, obvious that the amount of will force which is put into some given cognition is potentially or actually withdrawn from other factors which then, however, are more justly termed unattentions than inattentions. But is the withdrawal of energy attained only by transference? May it not be attained by direct repression and suppression? When we wish to weaken some particular cognition, is it to be done only by specially energizing some other cognition? It would seem on general principles rather strange that we can, under stimulus of interest, increase our energizing of any given cognition but cannot reduce it except indirectly by transference. This would mean that the sum total of actual will force remains constant as far as subject to voluntary control, and it is only by subdivision into many channels that any actual diversion is secured. Will force may be withdrawn and transferred, but not an atom of it can be directly suppressed. But can I not directly repress a troublesome thought or a painful sight? If by a great effort of will I keep my eyes closed to some horrible but fascinating sight, this is a true active inattention, the exactly opposite exertion to holding my eyes open and fixed upon my book for reading when very sleepy, which process is always termed attention. When our energy is going in some comparatively undesirable way we often do simply switch on to another track, but often also we shut off steam and reverse. Instead of direct promotion or indirect inhibition there is direct inhibition or often both forms of inhibition combined. We may, under pressure of interest, directly weaken any cognition, untensify, check and reduce the will effort involved by immediate relaxation. In putting ourselves to sleep we relax with effort, we reduce and stop all attentions. In awaking we often go through a reverse process. The attitude of any cognition is either by and through will, or with comparative indifference and no intervention of will or with will directly against it, which three states we term attention, unattention, inattention.

Negative attention is then, I think, a real activity, a will force which directly hinders and crushes out the unwelcome in consciousness, while positive attention is will force vitalizing and strengthening the pleasant. In conflict of interests these forms are complementary, and attention is here a double will-effort, both the effort at withdrawing energy from one point, and the effort at applying it in a new point. In most cases attention is both resistance and insistance. Even in simple forms the natural tendency to inertia constitutes a constant counter interest to any particular activity-interest. Attention then is always resistance to this natural inertia plus the direct energy in effecting the particular activity. But in advanced consciousness there is always a multitude of difficulties in the way of specializing cognition, a great variety of distractions to be resisted, all which, added to the definite exertion required in the special work, makes the ordinary attention in human consciousness a very complex affair. A student engaged on a mathematical problem is incessantly driving out distracting thoughts and positively fixing his mind upon the problem. Resistance is manifold, according to the speciality of the task—the more special, the more distractions—and the direct concentration is also a real and direct activity.