it appears to have retained all its strength, provided, however, that we are content to see, in the movements described by Ribot, only the negative condition of the phenomenon. For, even if we suppose that the accompanying movements of voluntary attention are mainly movements of arrest, we still have to explain the accompanying work of the mind, that is to say, theBut the positive side of attention is the effort which seeks past memory-images to insert them into the present perception. mysterious operation by which the same organ, perceiving in the same surroundings the same object, discovers in it a growing number of things. But we may go farther, and maintain that the phenomena of inhibition are merely a preparation for the actual movements of voluntary attention. Suppose for a moment that attention, as we have already suggested, implies a backward movement of the mind which thus gives up the pursuit of the useful effect of a present perception: there will indeed be, first, an inhibition of movement, an arresting action. But, upon this general attitude, more subtle movements will soon graft themselves, some of which have been already remarked and described,[1] and all of which combine to retrace the outlines of the object perceived. With these movements the positive, no longer merely negative, work of attention begins. It is continued by memories.
For, while external perception provokes on our
- ↑ N. Lange, Beitr. zur Theorie der Sinnlichen Aufmerksamkeit (Philos. Studien, Wundt, vol. vii, pp. 390–422).
