under an impending blow is of the same class, and it extends even to a remote or ideal danger; we wince under disagreeable possibilities suddenly suggested, or even under the recollection of past incidents of a distressing kind. The expressive gesture of turning away the head is volitional in its origin; it is a mode of getting out of the way of something that displeases us. Looking up to the roof is a variety of the same attempt to evade a disagreeable object. The gesture of loathing is chosen with a view to signify the act of repelling; the head is turned away, and the hands held up in a propulsive attitude. To turn about restlessly from one side to another, to get up and walk to and fro, although to a spectator expressive of mental struggle-are still of the nature of voluntary acts. Drawing down the eyebrows, to mitigate the glare of the light, is obviously voluntary. A bad odour, besides (emotionally) inducing a pained expression, (volitionally) promotes an attitude of mouth and nose calculated to close the ingress of the nostrils. The movements and attitudes in 'fidgets' are a mixture of the expression of discomfort, and of the actions stimulated by the will for procuring relief. The restlessness of children under constraint shows the expression of pain, and a variety of movements for venting the surplus energy within the narrow limits of the situation. The culprit slinking out of sight exhibits the collapse of a true emotional expression, coupled with an impetus of the will.

On the pleasurable side, we have the attitudes of beckoning, of stretching to, of aspiring after, of embracing the object of delight; all which are of the nature of volition.

COMMAND OF THE THOUGHTS.

6. This is the place to handle more explicitly the topic already introduced under the Law of Compound Association (§ 13), namely, the instrumentality of the will in the current of thoughts or ideas. It is a fact that, by a voluntary endeavour, we can modify or divert the stream of images and recollections coming into the present view of the mind. While I am engaged in one pursuit, I find it possible to keep out irre

FIXING THE ATTENTION.

373

levant thoughts, although arising in the current of associations; my power in this respect is not unlimited, any more than my power of self-control in the suppression of feeling; but I do possess it in a certain measure-more, perhaps, than some men and less than others. I refer to a book on a particular subject -look up the table of contents or index; this starts me off in a great many different trains of intellectual reproduction, all which I refuse and suppress, except the one answering to my purpose or end at the time.

It was said in the place above quoted, that this influence, although genuine and decided, is still only indirect. What the will can do is to fix the Attention. As we can, under an adequate motive, observe one point in the scene before us, and neglect everything else; as we can single out one sound and be deaf to the general hum; as we can apply ourselves to the appreciation of one flavour in the midst of many; or be aware of a pressure on a particular part of the body to the neglect of the rest; so in mental attention, we can fix one idea firmly in the view, while others are coming and going unheeded. On the supposition, that the influence of the will is limited to the region of the voluntary muscles and parts in alliance therewith, something needs to be said in explanation of this apparent exception to the rule. It is not obvious at first sight that the retention of an idea in the mind is operated by voluntary muscles. Which movements are operating when I am cogitating on a circle, or recollecting St. Paul's? There can be no answer given to this, unless on the assumption that the mental, or revived, image occupies the same place in the brain and other parts of the system, as the original sensation did a position supported by a number of reasons adduced in my former volume (Contiguity, § 10). Now, there being a muscular element in our sensations, especially of the higher senses, touch, hearing, and sight, this element must somehow. or other have a place in the after remembrance or idea; otherwise, the ideal and the actual would be much more different than we find them. The ideal circle is a restoration of those currents that would prompt the sweep of the eye round a

real circle; the difference lies in the last stage, or in the stopping short of the actual movement performed by the organ. I know of no other distinction between the remembered and the original, except this stoppage or shortcoming of the current of nervous power, which is no doubt an important one in several respects, but still permitting the power of voluntary control. We can direct the currents necessary for keeping an imagined circle in the view, by the same kind of impetus as is required to look at a diagram in Euclid. Not that we should have had any title to say beforehand, that the volition could operate, as a matter of course, under the restriction now implied; but seeing that it is a fact, we treat it as of the same nature with the power of voluntary attention directed to present realities. This is not by any means an early or an easily-attained aptitude; but when the time arrives for possessing well-formed ideas of things, seen, heard, touched, &c., there is scope for the process of voluntary selection; a spontaneous power in the right direction manifests itself; and is held fast by the urgency of some present feeling. The infant at school can be trained to fix the volatile gaze upon the alphabet before it; a little later the master can compel an arrest of the thoughts npon a sum propounded as an exercise in mental arithmetic. The youthful mind, as yet averse to concentration, may require a pretty sharp goad, and the excitement of fear, but the schoolmaster ultimately triumphs. The power grows rapidly with well-directed exercises, and in the various intellectual professions is so matured as to dispense with artificial spurs. Indeed, none but an idiot (and he not always) is found wholly incapable of mental attention; for this is implied in listening to, and answering the commonest question, or giving the most ordinary information in the proper forms of language. There are very high efforts of the kind belonging to the student, the contriver, the man at the head of complicated affairs; and for such men the qualifying endowment is a mixture of the volitional element with intellect proper. A great profusion of remembered images, ideas or notions, avails little for practical ends with

out this power of arrest and selection, which is in its origin purely voluntary. We may have the luxuriousness of a reverie or a dream, but not the compliance with a plan of operations, or a method of composition.*

7. We may now see in what way the control of the intellectual trains provides a touchstone for the degree of development of volition as a whole, in the individual character. In the case now supposed, the force of the will is set in array against a power of a different sort, the power of the intellectual associations. Contiguous adhesion, and similarity, call up foregone states with a certain amount of energy. Against this we place the voluntary detention of the inward view upon some one object, and the result shows which is the stronger. I am engaged in watching the demeanour of a person, whom I address with the view of informing or persuading; the appearance of that person tends by association to suggest places and times of former connexion, or other persons having points of resemblance. The earnestness of my purpose, that is to say, the strength of motive growing out of some pain or pleasure, present or apprehended, utterly quells all those resurrections of the associative faculties, and voluntary power is in the ascendant. If it be a usual experience with any one to restrain at all hands the rush of associated ideas, at the

*The common observation as to the plodder taking the start of the man of great natural endowment is in point here. By the phrases 'plodding,' 'industry,' 'application,' 'steadiness,' and the like, is clearly indicated the energy of the will in commanding the intellectual faculties. A mind little retentive by nature of a given subject, as for example, languages, can make up by protracted application or study, under a volitional resolve monopolized by one subject. So as regards the aptitudes growing out of the emotional part of our nature, of which acting, address, and engaging demeanour are the most notable; the same difference may be remarked between natural gifts adapted to the purpose from the first, and aptitudes that are the reward of study. We have a born actor, like Kean, when the primitive and untutored expression of the feelings, and the general bearing, coincide almost exactly with the maximum of stage effectiveness. When a person of much inferior endowments, seized with the passion for becoming an actor or an orator, scorns delights, and lives laborious days,' in training the defective parts of the organization, the force of the will is the power evoked for the occasion.

instigation of ends, it is proper to say that such a person possesses volitional energy in a superior degree. It may be that the intellect per se is but feeble, and then the comparison would imply little. Could we suppose an instance of great Emotional character as displayed in the sustained vehemence of outward demonstrations, an Intellect unusually strong in the elements of mental reproduction, and a Will, keeping in subjection alike the one and the other,—we should have to pronounce that will something almost superhuman.

8. In the intellectual process, termed, in my former volume, 'constructive association,' I have maintained that there is no new law of association, the additional fact being only an exercise of the will moved by some end to be attained. When I wish to put together a sentence of language, differing from any that I have learnt, I proceed upon some known form, and strike out, or put in, words, also known, till the result answers the effect that I mean to produce. If I am under the hand of the schoolmaster, the spur of his disapprobation on the one hand, and approbation on the other, keeps my faculties at work, trying and erring; and when, in the course of the flow of ideas, brought up by associations, a combination emerges, corresponding with the conditions imposed, I adhere to that, and put a stop to all further currents of associative reproduction. This is the exact tendency of the volitional mechanism so often described, namely, to adhere to what relieves a pain, or yields a pleasure, when that something is once present, and to depart from other objects or movements that have the opposite effect, or no such effect. The higher constructions of the intellectual ingenuity exhibit, in the full-grown individual, nearly the situation of the infant beginner, for in them there is no established channel leading to the movements demanded, and a series of tentatives have to be made, with only the certainty that, if the true thing occur, the primordial instinct of our nature will fasten upon it, and put an end to the search. When Watt invented his 'parallel motion' for the steam-engine, his intellect and observation were kept at work, going out in all