cting life action. By the
use of past experience, the mind is able to analyse each situation
calling for reaction and, by noting any unusual circumstances it
presents, may adapt even our habitual reactions to the particular
conditions.

The relation of habit to interest and attention is treated in Chapter
XXIV.

CHAPTER XXIII

ATTENTION

=Nature of Attention.=--In our study of the principles of general
method, it was noted that the mind is able to set up and hold before
itself as a problem any partially realized experience. From what has
been said concerning nervous stimulation and the passing inward of
sensuous impression, it might be thought that the mind is for the most
part a somewhat passive recipient of conscious states as they chance to
arise through the stimulations of the particular moment. Further
consideration will show, however, that, at least after very early
childhood, the mind usually exercises a strong selective control over
what shall occupy consciousness at any particular time. In the case of a
student striving to unravel the mazes of his mathematical problem,
countless impressions of sight, sound, touch, etc., may be stimulating
him from all sides, yet he refuses in a sense to attend to any of them.
The singing of the maid, the chilliness of the room as the fire dies
out, even the pain in the limb, all fail to make themselves known in
consciousness, until such time as the successful solution causes the
person to direct his attention from the work in hand. In like manner,
the traveller at the busy station, when intent upon catching his train,
is perhaps totally unconscious of the impressions being received from
the passing throngs, the calling newsboys, the shunting engines, and the
malodorous cattle cars. This ability of the mind to focus itself upon
certain experiences to the exclusion of other possible experiences is
known as _attention_.

=Degree of Attention.=--Mention has already been made of states of
consciousness in which the mind seems in a passive state of reverie.
Although the mind, even in such sub-conscious states, would seem to
exercise some slight attention, it is yet evident that it does not
exercise a definite selective control during such passive states of
consciousness. Attention proper, on the other hand, may be described as
a state in which the mind focuses itself upon some particular
impression, and thus makes it stand out more clearly in consciousness as
a defini