not to comprehend equally in our field of vision, many objects beside that single object which is supposed to have fixed our attention; and if, by the direction of our eyes, be meant the exclusive or limited perception by our mind itself, there remains the difficulty,-how it happens, that while light from innumerable objects falls on our retina as before, it no longer produces any distinct vision relatively to the objects from which it comes,-while light certainly not more brilliant, from other objects, produces vision much more distinct than before. Let us consider this difficulty which, in truth, constitutes the principal phenomenon of attention, a little more fully.

When Condillac speaks of the faculty of the mind, by which he supposes it capable of directing the eye, exclusively, on certain objects, he must speak of that only, of which we are conscious, previously to the more distinct perception of those objects, as certain parts of the scene.

What is it, then, of which we are conscious, between the indistinct perception of the wide scene, and the distinct perception of parts of the scene? In the first place, there is a general desire of knowing the scene more accurately. This is the primary feeling of the process of attention. But this primary feeling is soon succeeded by others. Indistinct as the whole complex scene may be, some parts of it more brilliant, or more striking in general character, are less indistinct than others. There are a few more prominent parts, as Condillac says, around which the rest are indistinctly arranged.

With some one of these, then, as in itself more impressive and attractive, we begin; our general desire of knowing the whole scene having been followed by a wish to know this principal part more accurately.

The next step is to prevent the eye itself from wandering, that no new objects may distract it, and that there may be as little confusion as possible of the rays from different objects, on that part of the retina, on which the rays fell from the particular object which we wish to consider. We fix our eyes, therefore, and our whole body, as steadily as we can, by the muscles subservient to these purposes.

So far, unquestionably, no new faculty is exercised. We have merely the desire of knowing the scene before us,--the selection of some prominent object, or rather the mere perception of it, as peculiarly prominent,--the desire of knowing it particularly,--and the contraction of a few muscles, in obedience to our volition.

No sooner, however, has all this taken place, than instantly, or almost instantly, and without our consciousness of any new and peculiar state of mind intervening in the process, the landscape becomes to our vision altogether different. Certain parts only, those parts which we wished to know particularly, are seen by us; the remaining parts seem almost to have vanished. It is as if every thing before had been but the doubtful colouring of enchantment, which had disappeared, and left to us the few prominent realities on which we gaze; or rather, it is as if some instant enchantment, obedient to our wishes, had dissolved every reality besides, and brought closer to our sight the few objects which we desired to see.

Still, however, all of which we are truly conscious, as preceding immediately the change of appearance in the scene, is the mere desire, of which 1 have spoken, combined probably with expectation of that more distinct vision be a combination of feelings, but no new and which follows. There may peculiar feeling, either as simple, or co-existing with other feelings,-no indication, in short, of the exercise of a new power.

Even though we should be incapable, therefore, of understanding how the desire should have this effect, it would not be the less true, that the desire of knowing accurately a particular object in a group, is instantly, or, at least, instantly after some organic change which may probably be necessary, -followed by a more vivid and distinct perception of the particular object, and a comparative faintness and indistinctness of the other objects that coexist with it; and that what we call attention is nothing more.

Are the comparative distinctness and indistinctness, however, a result which we had no reason to expect? or are they not rather what might, in some degree at least, have been expected, from our knowledge of the few physical facts with respect to our co-existing sensations, which I have already pointed out to you, and from the circumstance which we are next to consider? We have seen, in the observations already made by us, that many co-existing perceptions are indistinct, and that when one becomes more vivid, the others become still fainter. All that is necessary, therefore, is to discover some cause of increased vividness of that one to which we are said to attend.

If we can discover any reason why this should become more vivid, the comparative indistinctness of the other parts of the scene may be considered as following of course.

Such a cause exists, unquestionably, in that feeling of desire, without which there can be no attention. To attend, is to have a desire of knowing that to which we attend, and attention without desire is a verbal contradiction, an inconsistency, at least, as great as if we were said to desire to know without any desire of knowing, or to be attentive without attention.

When we attend, then, to any part of a complex group of sensations, there is always an emotion of desire, however slight the emotion may be, connected exclusively with that particular part of the group to which we attend; and whatever effect our emotions produce on the complex feelings that accompany them, we may expect to be produced, in some greater or less degree, by the desire in the complex process which we term attention.

The effect which our expectation might anticipate, is the very effect that is truly found to take place, an increased liveliness of that part of the complex group, to which alone the desire relates.

That it is the nature of our emotions of every sort, to render more vivid all the mental affections with which they are peculiarly combined, as if their own vivacity were in some measure divided with these, every one who has felt any strong emotion, must have experienced. The eye has, as it were, a double quickness, to perceive what we love or hate, what we hope or fear. Other objects may be seen slightly; but these, if seen at all, become instantly permanent, and cannot appear to us without impressing their presence, as it were, in stronger feeling on our senses and our soul.

Such is the effect of emotion, when combined even with sensations that are of themselves, by their own nature, vivid; and mark, therefore, less strikingly, the increase of vividness received. The vivifying effect, however, is still more remarkable, by its relative proportion, when the feelings with which the emotion is combined, are in themselves peculiarly faint, as in the • case of mere memory or imagination. The object of any of our emotions, thus merely conceived by us, becomes, in many cases, so vivid, as to render even our accompanying perceptions comparatively faint. The mental absence of lovers, for example, is proverbial; and what is thus termed in popu

lar language absence, is nothing more than the greater vividness of some mere conception, or other internal feeling, than of any, or all of the external objects present at the time, which have no peculiar relation to the prevailing

emotion.

"The darkened sun

Loses his light: The rosy-bosom'd Spring

To weeping Fancy pines; and yon bright arch
Contracted, bends into a dusky vault.

All nature fades, extinct; and she alone,
Heard, felt, and seen, possesses every thought,
Fills every sense, and pants in every vein.
Books are but formal dulness, tedious friends,
And sad amid the social band he sits
Lonely and unattentive. From his tongue
The unfinish'd period falls; while, borne away
On swelling thought, his wafted spirit flies
To the vain bosom of his distant Fair;
And leaves the semblance of a lover, fix'd
In melancholy site, with head declined
And love-dejected eyes."*

What brighter colours the fears of superstition give to the dim objects perceived in twilight, the inhabitants of the village who have to pass the churchyard at any late hour, and the little students of ballad lore, who have carried with them, from the nursery, many tales which they almost tremble to remember, know well. And in the second sight of this northern part of the island, there can be no doubt, that the objects which the seers conceive themselves to behold, truly are more vivid, as conceptions, than, but for the superstition and the melancholy character of the natives, which harmonize with the objects of this gloomy foresight, they would have been; and that it is in consequence of this brightening effect of the emotion, as concurring with the dim and shadowy objects which the vapoury atmosphere of our lakes and vallies presents, that fancy, relatively to the individual, becomes a temporary reality. The gifted eye which has once believed itself favoured with such a view of the future, will, of course, ever after have a quicker foresight, and more frequent revelations; its own wilder emotion communicating still more vivid forms and colours to the objects which it dimly perceives.

On this object, however, I need not seek any additional illustration. 1 may fairly suppose you to admit, as a general physical law of the Phenomena of Mind, that the influence of every emotion is to render more vivid the perception or conception of its object.

I must remark, however, that when the emotion is very violent, as in the violence of any of our fiercer passions, though it still renders every object, with which it harmonizes, more vivid and prominent, it mingles with them some degree of its own confusion of feeling. It magnifies and distorts; and what it renders brighter, it does not therefore render more distinct.

"The flame of passion, through the struggling soul
Deep-kindled, shows across that sudden blaze
The object of its rapture, vast of size,

With fiercer colours and a night of shade."t

The species of desire which we are considering, however, is not of this fierce and tempestuous kind.

• Thomson's Seasons-Spring, v. 1006-1021.

+ Pleasures of Imagination Book II. v. 137-140.

Emotions of a calmer species have the vivifying effect, without the indistinctness; and precisely of this degree is that desire which constitutes attention as co-existing with the sensations, or other feelings to which we are said to attend.

We have found, then, in the desire which accompanies attention, or rather which chiefly constitutes it, the cause of that increased intensity which we sought.

When all the various objects of a scene are of themselves equally, or nearly equally, interesting or indifferent to us, the union of desire with any particular perception of the group, might be supposed, a priori, to render this perception in some degree more vivid than it was before. It is not necessary that this difference of vividness should take place wholly, or even be very striking, in the first instance; for, by becoming in the first instant even slightly more vivid, it acquires additional colouring and prominence, so as to increase that interest which led us originally to select it for our first minute observation, and thus to brighten it more and more progressively. Indeed, when we reflect on our consciousness during what is called an effort of attention, we feel that some such progress as this really takes place, the object becoming gradually more distinct while we gaze, till at length it requires a sort of effort to turn away to the other co-existing objects, and to renew with them the same process.

Attention, then, is not a simple mental state, but a process, or a combination of feelings. It is not the result of any peculiar power of the mind, but of those mere laws of perception, by which the increased vividness of one sensation produces a corresponding faintness of others co-existing with it, and of that law of our emotions, by which they cominunicate greater intensity to every perception, or other feeling, with which they co-exist and har

monize.

LECTURE XXXII.

ON THE EXTERNAL AFFECTIONS OF MIND COMBINED WITH DESIRE, CONTINUED. ON THE INTERNAL AFFECTIONS OF MIND.-CLASSIFICATION OF THEM.

IN my last Lecture, gentlemen, I concluded my sketch of the different hypotheses of philosophers with respect to perception, with an account of that Pre-established Harmony, by which Leibnitz, excluding all reciprocal agency of mind and matter, endeavoured to account for the uniform coincidence of our mental feelings with our bodily movements,-an hypothesis which, though it does not seem to have gained many followers out of Germany, produced the most enthusiastic admiration in the country of its author. I may remark by the way,-as a very striking example of the strange mixture of seemingly opposite qualities, which we frequently find in the character of nations, that, while the country, of which I speak, has met with ridicule, -most unjust in degree, as national ridicule always is,-for the heaviness

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of its laborious erudition, it must be allowed to surpass all other countries in the passionate enthusiasm of its philosophy, which, particularly in metaphysics, from the reign of Leibnitz to the more recent worship paid to the transcendentalism of Kant, seems scarcely to have admitted of any calm approbation, or to have known any other inquirers than violent partisans and violent foes.

After my remarks on this hypothesis, which closed my view of our external affections of mind, as they exist simply, I next proceeded to consider them, as they exist, combined with desire, in that state of the mind, which is termed attention, a state which has been supposed to indicate a peculiar intellectual power, but which, I endeavoured to show you, admits of being analyzed into other more general principles.

It is to our consciousness, of course, that we must refer for the truth of any such analysis; and the process which it reveals to us, in attention, seems, I think, to justify the analysis which I made, indicating a combination of simpler feelings, but not any new and distinct species of feeling, to be referred to a peculiar faculty.

We see many objects together, and we see them indistinctly. We wish to know them more accurately, and we are aware, that this knowledge can be acquired only in detail. We select some one more prominent object, from the rest, or rather, without any selection on our part, this object excites, in a higher degree, our desire of observing it particularly, merely by being more prominent, or, in some other respect, more interesting than the rest. To observe it particularly, we fix our body, and our eyes,-for it is a case of vision which I have taken for an example,-as steadily as possible, that the light from the same points of the object may continue to fall on the same points of the retina. Together with our wish, we have an expectation, the natural effect of uniform past experience, that the object will now be more distinctly perceived by us; and, in accordance with this expectation, when the process, which I have described, is completed, the object, as if it knew our very wish, and hastened to gratify it, does become more distinct; and, in proportion as it becomes thus more vivid, the other objects of the group become gradually fainter, till at length they are scarcely felt to be present. Such, without the intervention of any new and peculiar state The of mind, is the mental process, as far as we are conscious of it; and, if this be the process, there is no reason to infer in it the operation of any power of the mind different from those which are exercised in other cases. general capacities of perception, and desire, and expectation, and voluntary command of certain muscles, which on every view of the phenomena of attention, we must allow the mind to possess, are, of themselves, sufficient to explain the phenomena, and preclude, therefore, any further reference.

The brightening of the objects to which we attend, that is to say, of the objects which have interested us, and which we feel a desire of knowing, and the consequent fading of the other co-existing objects, I explained, by the well known influence, not of desire merely, but of all our emotions, in rendering more vivid those objects of perception or fancy, with which they harmonize; and I illustrated this influence by various examples.

The phantasms of imagination, in the reveries of our waking hours, when our external senses are still open, and quick to feel, are, as mere conceptions, far less vivid than the primary perceptions, from which they originally Aowed; and yet, under the influence of any strong emotion, they become