ous region, in which such processes of flowering may occur, in
a somewhat less vague way. I only regret that my limits of time here
force me to be so short.

The expression "field of consciousness" has but recently come into
vogue in the psychology books. Until quite lately the unit of mental
life which figured most was the single "idea," supposed to be a
definitely outlined thing. But at present psychologists are tending,
first, to admit that the actual unit is more probably the total mental
state, the entire wave of consciousness or field of objects present to
the thought at any time; and, second, to see that it is impossible to
outline this wave, this field, with any definiteness.

As our mental fields succeed one another, each has its centre of
interest, around which the objects of which we are less and less
attentively conscious fade to a margin so faint that its limits are
unassignable. Some fields are narrow fields and some are wide fields.
Usually when we have a wide field we rejoice, for we then see masses of
truth together, and often get glimpses of relations which we divine
rather than see, for they shoot beyond the field into still remoter
regions of objectivity, regions which we seem rather to be about to
perceive than to perceive actually. At other times, of drowsiness,
illness, or fatigue, our fields may narrow almost to a point, and we
find ourselves correspondingly oppressed and contracted.

Different individuals present constitutional differences in this matter
of width of field. Your great organizing geniuses are men with
habitually vast fields of mental vision, in which a whole programme of
future operations will appear dotted out at once, the rays shooting far
ahead into definite directions of advance. In common people there is
never this magnificent inclusive view of a topic. They stumble along,
feeling their way, as it were, from point to point, and often stop
entirely. In certain diseased conditions consciousness is a mere
spark, without memory of the past or thought of the future, and with
the present narrowed down to some one simple emotion or sensation of
the body.

The important fact which this "field" formula commemorates is the
indetermination of the margin. Inattentively realized as is the matter
which the margin contains, it is nevertheless there, and helps both to
guide our behavior and to determine the next movement of our attention.
It lies around us like a "magnetic fiel