The Five Senses
In the foregoing chapter we obtained a preliminary glance of the whole field of psychology from a biblical point of view. Now we proceed to indicate how the same field is viewed from the modern and scientific standpoint.
While the five senses and their uses are manifest to all, it is not so well known that with these is connected a system of nerves which, like the wires of a telegraph-system, carry to the brain the impressions made on them by the objects of the external world. The brain forms the headquarters to which all the information derived in any way from the outside world is transmitted. Here the self resides; and all the rest of the organism may be compared to the rooms, passages, gardens and walls surrounding the spot in which this subject has his home. But it is still less generally known that, besides this system of telegraphy from the senses to the brain, there is in the human body a system of nerves incessantly carrying messages in the opposite direction — namely, from the brain to the muscles and the organs of motion, such as the hands and the feet. And, as by the nerves going inwards from the senses to the brain all our knowledge is obtained, so by the nerves proceeding from the brain to the muscles all our actions are performed.
These two, knowing and acting, make up two-thirds of life. But there is a third division, which is feeling; and this has its location at the junction of the nerves which go inwards and those which come outwards. The three are intimately connected; for it is by the information coming along the pathways of knowledge from the outside that feeling is excited; and it is excited feeling which, in its turn, gives rise to action.
The nerves proceeding to the brain and those proceeding from it are called respectively the sensory and the motor systems, and they form the physical basis upon which the whole of life is from day to day carried on. If we conceive the double system as an arc, stretching from where impressions are received by the bodily senses to where action issues from the person of the human subject at the organs of motion, all the topics with which Psychology has to deal lie along this arc.
On the left are, first, the powers of knowing, including such faculties as sensation and perception, memory and imagination, judgment and reasoning. Then, in the middle of the arc, are the feelings, representing such varieties as impulses, emotions, sentiments. Lastly, on the right of the arc are the powers directly concerned with action, such as desire, conscience and will.
It will be well to bear this image of an arc in mind. It emphasizes the unity of the soul’s life, because all parts of it are in motion all the time. Yet it reminds us, also, that there are large obvious divisions of the soul’s activity; because knowledge, feeling and volition, as well as the subdivisions of these, can be clearly distinguished from one another. And, finally, it represents the whole life as a connected system — knowledge giving rise to feeling, and feeling, in its turn, originating action. Thus is life seen as a whole; and Psychology lets us know what our life consists of, as it goes on from morning to night and from year to year, till our span is ended, and our contribution has been made to the larger life of the world.
To anyone familiar, to any extent, with the development of human knowledge it must have often been occasion of surprise to note the subjects which the ancients knew and those of which they were ignorant — how frequently they had studied deeply that which was far away, while neglecting that which was at hand; knowing not a little, for example, about astronomy but nothing whatever of geology. Of this, however, there is no illustration so striking as the extent of their knowledge of the mind and its operations, contrasted with their ignorance of the brain and the nervous system, without the assistance of which mental work cannot be performed. The notions of the ancients about the invisible parts of human physiology were of the most fantastic description; and it is only in very recent times that accurate knowledge has been obtained. There can be little doubt, however, that the double system of nerves above described furnishes the simplest key to the mysteries of human life, or that it will be by the door which this key opens that the generations of the future will incline to enter this region of knowledge. So promising, indeed, is this mode of approach that some of those making use of it are inclined to ignore or despise any other. But the wiser heads among those employing the experimental method do not forget that there is another door — that of introspection — which was used for many centuries, admitting many of the greatest thinkers of the race, who did work that is immortal and can never be superseded. This is the attitude, for example, of Professor Hanna Thomson, of New York, a scholar of distinction in medical science who, in a book much read on his own side of the Atlantic, entitled “Brain and Personality,” furnishes a succinct history both of the notions entertained on this subject in the past and of the freshest discoveries of recent times. Much of his argument has an appearance of drifting towards materialism, but his book is, on the contrary, from beginning to end, a skilful exposition of a spiritual view of human nature; and, in the true spirit of science, the author never loses sight of the debt due to the great thinkers of the past, or imagines that, though a certain method of inquiry may be the most congenial to the present age, this forbids the belief that other seekers after truth, following the only path known to them, may have taken ample possession of the common field. This is also the attitude of the sanest thinkers on our own side of the water; and it may be held as certain that none can undervalue such stupendous structures of human thought as the Ancient
Logic or the Modern Idealism except those who do so in ignorance.
All that follows in this book will be an expansion of what has now been stated. Meantime, we return to consider the five gateways of knowledge, as the senses have been called, for it is with these that the process of knowing commences. On his physical side, man is nothing more than a few pounds of the clay of which all things are composed, enabled by the action of certain forces to stand upright for a certain time and to move about. But, both internally and externally, this little mass of the matter composing the earth is very singularly constituted, so as to serve important purposes. Every soul has under its control a small mass of material called a body, through means of which it obtains a hold on the whole material universe.
Inside the body, as has been indicated above, there is an immense system of delicate wires, called nerves, extending from the outside surface to the brain; and outside, in connexion with these, there are the five senses, constantly foraging for a supply of knowledge. The senses are peculiar modifications of the external surface of the body, by which difierent sides of the external world are discerned. The ear discerns sounds, the eye sights, the touch forms, and so on. Everyone has had the dream that, if we had more senses than the five, we might perceive other sides of nature which are at present a blank to us; and no doubt it would be rash to assert dogmatically that the qualities of things are limited to our powers of perception. There are indications that other animals possess senses by which they discern some things not perceived by us. For instance, changes of weather appear to be anticipated by certain animals considerably before they dawn upon the human faculties; and the marvellous power exhibited by carrier-pigeons and lost cats and dogs, to find their way home, suggest something of the same kind. Of course, on the other hand, many animals lack organs which we possess; and man far surpasses other animals, if not in the keenness of particular senses, at least in the range of objects which the senses bring within his ken.
The most general and typical of the senses is that of touch. Indeed, all the other senses may be called modifications of this one. When we hear the sound of a distant waterfall, the object really touches the ear; because it generates in the atmosphere waves, by the impact of which on the organ of hearing we are made aware of its proximity. Even the star which we see in the far-away heavens must touch us in order to be seen; that is to say, it must propagate in our direction waves of light, and only when these reach their destination and come in contact with the organ of vision does sight take place. Touch proper belongs, in varying degrees, to the whole surface of the body; for the contact of almost any part of our skin with external substances will inform us whether these are cold or hot, rough or smooth, hard or soft; but the sensation is intensified in certain parts of the body, such as the lips, the tip of the tongue, and the finger-tips.^ The division of the hand into five long and separable fingers, with this peculiar sensitiveness in the tip of each, and the position of the hand, at the extremity of the long and jointed arm, give the sense of touch a wide range; so that the amount of information conveyed to the mind by the use of this sense is extensive and varied.
The senses of taste and smell are usually
In any surface-area — e.g., the wrist — it may be shown that there are spots, some of which register heat and cold, some pain, etc. These are the temperature-spots, the pressure-spots, etc. And it is possible to cover the wrist with dots, in differently coloured inks, showing where the respective spots are.
spoken of as inferior to the rest in importance, the impressions conveyed through them being less distinct and less easily remembered than those of the other senses. Yet they are the channels of a very considerable amount of pleasure; and they ward off a great variety of dangers — a service not perhaps inferior. Located at the entrance of the two passages opening into the body, they may be regarded as sentinels, placed there to give warning lest the citadel of life should receive any detriment. In certain cases, especially where there is defect in other senses, they may attain to abnormal development.
Hearing and seeing are, however, the two imperial senses; and it is difficult to say which of them is the more important, or whether the loss of hearing or of sight be the graver calamity. The organs, also, by which they are served are almost equally wonderful products of creative purpose.
Everyone, while walking by the seashore, has lifted a shell to his ear; but not everyone may, in so doing, have noticed how like each other are the two things which he has brought into contact. The external ear, with its curious irregular convolutions, bears a remarkable resemblance to a shallow, open shell; and there is an internal ear, which bears a considerable resemblance to one of those elongated, spiral shells, terminating in a point, which may also be picked up on the seashore. The internal ear is sunk in the head; one of the Psalms speaks of the ear being “planted,” and this is an expressive phrase; for it is somewhat like a tapering root thrust into the earth. When the sound is gathered in the outside shell, it passes inwards, till it comes to a membrane stretched across the passage, when this membrane vibrates, as does the top of a drum, when it is struck; hence its familiar name — the ‘’ drum” of the ear. On the inner side of this drum the sound is carried forward by means of three tiny bones, called respectively, from their shapes, the hammer, the anvil and the stirrup. The innermost of the three, the stirrup, when thus agitated, knocks or kicks at a kind of window, where the message is taken in. Beyond the window, the new carrier is a tiny pool of water. It is well known how water aids the transmission of sound; and of this facility advantage is taken in the ear. Still further in, there is the most marvellous of all the parts of the ear — literally, a musical instrument of a hundred strings, The strings are nerves, sq slender that a microscope is required to see them; and the fingers by which this fairy piano is played are the waves of the lakelet just referred to. Finally, the nerves, throbbing with the messages received from the outside, stretch inwards to the brain.
Still more marvellous is the structure of the eye; but the attempt can hardly be made here to describe its wonders — its fourfold protection from external injury by means of the eyebrows, the eyelids, the eyelashes and the stream of liquid pouring every moment, as we wink, over the eyeball; the eyesocket, so perfectly formed, and the system of pulleys by which the eye is made to move easily and incessantly in it, so that, instead of seeing only in one direction, it sees in every direction; the rainbow-curtain of the iris, which is constantly being opened or closed, to regulate the quantity of light admitted; the lens, set, like the jewel-stone of a ring, in a sphere of crystal; and lastly, the retina, on which, as on the screen of a magic-lantern, the picture of the outside world is always being cast, though in reality the pictures are changing every moment, the displaced photographs being transmitted long the optic nerve to the brain.
JLiong and friendly discussion might be carriecj on over the question, whether ear or eye yields the greater pleasure and profit. The champions of the ear would expatiate on the delights of music — the music of instruments of all kinds, the music of the human voice, the music of the songsters of the woods — on the sublimity of the voice of the thunder, of the stormy wind, of the ocean; on the infinite variety of the voices of nature; on the charming sounds of love, friendship and human intercourse; and, above all, on the boundless utility of language, by which to our own stores may be added the experiences of our fellow-creatures. The champions of the eye, on the other hand, would place over against the musical scale the spectrum of colours; over against the arts of song and eloquence the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture; over against the profit of conversation the utility of the printed page; over against the sound of nature its infinitely varied forms; over against the voice of love the face of the beloved; and they would specially insist on the vast range of this sense; for, whereas the loudest sound can only be heard at the distance of a few miles, the eye can obtain distinct impressions from as far away as the fixed stars. It is not necessary to decide this controversy; it is enough to feel gratitude to the Creator for endowing us with faculties so noble and surrounding us with so brave a world, in which every sense has abundance of work to do and abundance of gratification to drink in/
Up to this point all has been plain sailing; but from this point onwards the course becomes much more difficult.
The five senses are, as we have seen, gateways or avenues by which impressions of different sorts are constantly being conveyed from the external world to the interior of man’s person; and it is from the accumulation of such impressions that knowledge or experience is made up. The avenues all converge in the brain. There all the nerves along which the impressions travel from the eye, the ear, and the other organs reach their termination; and the inner termination of the nerve-track, in the substance of the brain, seems to be as original a formation of the brain-substance as is the organ at the external surface of
Excellent observations on the senses will be found in Sully, “Outlines of Psychology,” or Ladd, “Psychology Descriptive and Explanatory “. See also the charming popular account of them in Wilson, “The Five Gateways of Knowledge”. Experiments are said to prove that the average educated person relies more on the eye than the ear.
the skin and other tissues. At all events each kind of information goes along its own track; and the part of the brain can be located where each is discharged. The same nerve-tracks do not serve indifferently eye and ear, for example; and at the end of the eye-track there seems to be a receiver of peculiar configuration, and the like at the termination of the ear-track. As has been hinted above, it is in the brain that every sensation is felt,^ though it seems to be felt at the surface of the body. When I grasp anything with my hand, it seems to be the hand that feels it. In fact, the feeling may even appear to lie outside the body altogether, as, when I touch the ground with a stick in walking, I seem to feel the sensation at the end of the stick. But that the sensation is really felt in the brain is proved by the fact that, if the nerve be touched midway to the brain, the sensation is still felt in the accustomed place. In a long day’s walking in Switzerland, a companion of my own, who had had the misfortune, in boyhood, to have a foot amputated, had unwittingly overtaxed his
But see what is said on p. 218 of reactions without the co-operation of the brain. If such be possible, we may have to alter our conception of mind as associated with the brain, and extend this association to the whole spinal cord.
strength; and he woke up the following morning with a violent pain in the foot which was not there.
The great mystery, however, is what takes place when the terminus in the brain is reached by the impressions from the outside. For example, on the retina of the eye a photograph of a face is taken, and this is transmitted along the optic nerve to the brain; but who or what is it that perceives it and recognises it as a face, and as somebody’s face? This act of turning round, so to speak, on the impression and recognising it to be what it is seems to be something totally different from the conveyance of the impression. To receive the impression and to convey it so accurately as is done by the eye and the optic nerve must be considered a great thing; yet it is no more than can be done by the manufactured apparatus of the photographer. The camera, however, does not see the face it has produced; and just as little is it in the power of matter to recognise the face mirrored in the brain. This can only be an act of mind — of an invisible, spiritual something, which we cannot locate but which we naturally speak of as having its seat in the brain.
An eminent psychologist has drawn attention to the fact, that, while the various senses and the other parts of the body sending impressions along the sensory nerves have their terminal organs in the brain, there has been discovered in the brain no organ which is the general receivinghouse for all the senses. Yet there must be some such point of junction, if not material, then spiritual and invisible; because the mind has the power of combining, in one united act, the impressions received from the different senses. Thus, it may, at the same moment, discern an object to be large, red and hot. These three kinds of information it receives from three different senses, yet it perceives them all united in a single object.^
1 “It has seemed, and still seems to many thinkers, necessary to assume that the different sensory nervous processes must become fused in a unitary physical or physiological process in some part of the substance of the nervous system. Hence they have sought for a sensorium commune, some central nervous substance to which the various sensory nerves shall communicate their specific modes of activity (commonly conceived by these authors as forms of molecular vibration), so producing in that central substance a unitary physical process, a complex form of vibration, the resultant of all the specific kinds of processes in the sensory paths simultaneously active. Many different parts of the brain have been in turn regarded as this hypothetical central organ, but the progress of our knowledge of the structure and functions of the nervous
This transition from the material to the spiritual is the most important point in the whole field of psychology; and it is of the utmost importance to perceive its necessity. The student ought to follow again and again in his own mind the process by which knowledge becomes ours — the external object transmitting the waves of light which fall on the eyeball; the formation of the image on the retina; then its transmission along the nerves to the brain — and consider whether he can conceive that the act of receiving the impressions and recognising the object from which these proceed can also be thought of as an act of matter; or whether it is not a totally
system has proved that no such organ is to be found. We are compelled to admit, or so it seems to the writer as to many others, that the so-called psychical elements are not independent entities, but are partial affections of a single substance or being; and since, as we have seen, this is not any part of the brain, is not a material substance, but differs from all material substance in that, while it is unitary, it is yet present, or can act or be acted upon at many points in space simultaneously (namely, the various parts of the brain in which psycho- physical processes are at any moment occurring), we must regard it as an immaterial substance or being, And this being, thus necessarily postulated as the ground of the unity of individual consciousness, we may call the soul of the individual.” McDougall, “Physiological Psychology,” pp. 76-9; some sentences omitted.
different kind of act from all that has preceded — separated from it, in fact, by an immeasurable diameter.^ The stream of impressions from the
^” Even the vaguest of evolutionary enthusiasts, when deliberately comparing material with mental facts, have been as forward as anyone else to emphasise the chasm between the inner and the outer worlds. * Can the oscillations of a molecule,’ says Mr. Spencer, ’ be represented side by side with a nervous shock (he means a mental shock), and the two be recognised as one? No effort enables us to assimilate them. That a unit of feeling has nothing in common with a unit of motion becomes more than ever manifest when we bring the two into juxtaposition.’ And again: ‘Suppose it to have become quite clear that a shock in consciousness and a molecular motion are the subjective and objective phases of the same thing; we continue utterly incapable of uniting the two, so as to conceive that reality of which they are the opposite faces.’ In other words, incapable of perceiving in them any common character. So Tyndall, in that lucky paragraph which has been quoted so often that every one knows it by heart: * The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from one to the other.’ Or in this other passage: ‘We can trace the development of a nervous system and correlate with it the parallel phenomena of sensation and thought. We see with undoubting certainty that they go hand in hand. But we try to soar in a vacuum the moment we seek to comprehend the connexion between them. There is no fusion possible between the two external world is pouring incessantly along the channels of the senses; but the power of turning round upon them, separating them and identifying them is that which really creates knowledge. The mere impact of the impressions on the brain, however often repeated, would leave no mark, unless there were at the centre an intelligent agent, to capture and detain them. English philosophers have generally inclined to the view that the mind derives its knowledge wholly from the senses, and that it is a blank sheet of paper until experience writes on it its communications; but in more deeply thinking regions the widely different view has prevailed that, if the mind receives much from the outside, it also brings much into the world with it. At least it brings receptacles, so to speak, in which the impressions coming from the outside arrange themselves, instead of being piled up in confusion. Take, for instance, the scale in music, with its fixed intervals, as these are embodied in the framework of the pianoforte: must there not be something originally in the mind corresponding with these intervals, so as to produce the harmonies which
classes of facts — no motor energy in the intellect of man to carry it without logical rupture from the one to the other.’ ‘’ James, “Psychology,” i. 147, afiFord such exquisite delight? In the same way, it is by something native to the mind that the contours and colours of external objects are rendered agreeable or the reverse. It is as if the mind were born with an image of the world already in it, which the material objects gradually fill up; and perhaps this may be the meaning of the deep saying in the Book of Ecclesiastes: “He hath set the world in their heart.”
Not a few thinkers have gone so far as to hold that all the order and beauty of the world are contributed by the mind of man: it is only our way of seeing it which makes a line symmetrical or a colour beautiful.^ But this is an exaggeration.
im. 11.
2 The most striking evidence of the necessity for a reaction from within on the materials supplied from without through sensation is furnished by discoveries recently made concerning the localisation of functions in the brain; for these seem to show that, through accident, the power of comprehending words may be lost, though these are still sensed as sounds, or of music, though it is still sensed as noise; and so with the other senses. Thus, Sir William MacEwen of Glasgow, whose name has become famous in connexion with such investigations, gave, in an Address before the British Medical Association, the particulars of the case of a mechanic, among his patients, who had received a severe injury to his head. Immediately after the accident he was in a peculiar mental condition. Physically he could see, but what he saw conveyed
The order and the beauty are in the world as well as in the mind. But how did they get into the world? It must have been out of another mind — the divine mind. Thus is nature a system of signs by which mind speaks to mind — the divine mind to the human mind. The deepest question of all, however, is whether the human
no impression to his mind. Thus an object presented itself before him which he could not make out, but, when this object emitted sounds of the human voice, he at once recognised it to be a man who was one of his fellow-workers. He was equally unable to recognise his wife and children. By eyesight he could not tell how many fingers he held up, when he placed his own hand before his face, till he became cognisant of the number by the sense of touch. These symptoms gave the key to the hidden lesion in his brain and, therefore, where to trephine his skull. On operation it was found that a portion of the inner table of the skull had been detached from the outer and had become imbedded in the grey matter of that locality. The bone was removed from the brain and reimplanted in proper position, upon which he recovered and returned to his work. “It is evident,” comments Professor W. Hanna Thomson, in “Brain and Personality,” who reports this case, “that that fragment of bone interfered with an important mental function located in the brain- spot which it penetrated, because, so soon as it was removed from that place, the mental function returned. What was that mental function? It was not sight, for the man saw his wife and friends as well as before, but he did not know what he saw. Hence, seeing and knowing what is seen are not the same thing.”
mind has a native and inalienable perception of this Speaker behind nature. Some of the deepest thinkers have held that the voice of God is heard in every impression from the outside world, even the faintest; because the finite always implies the Infinite. However this may be, it can at least be heard in nature by a trained ear; and this training of ourselves to discern the Eternal behind the transitory is our highest attainment. It is the deepest in ourselves awaking to discern the Great Being from whom come all things, ourselves included, and who is the prop and soul of the universe.
But we are hastening too fast; and we must now return to the position, that in the formation of even the simplest forms of knowledge there are at work two elements — on the one hand, the stream of impressions entering from without and, on the other, the mind itself, apprehending these and making them its own. At a certain point the objective becomes subjective; or, to express it in the technical language of philosophy, sensation passes into perception, the one of these being a passive and the other an active state of mind.
We have no experience of pure sensation; because our mental states are all complex, and it is only by an artificial effort that we can separate one element and study it by itself. The nearest approach we can make to an experience of pure sensation is perhaps when we try to realise what has been happening to us whilst asleep. During sound sleep the distant hum of the city, the shouts of passing revellers, the striking of the clock must be entering through the organs of hearing, but, because the self is not available to mark them, they are not perceived. Perhaps, if they were all suddenly to stop, the mind would awaken to observe the change; and this would seem to prove that, in a dim sort of way, it has been noticing them all the time. At all events what happens in ordinary awaking is familiar to all, and may be illustrated as follows: The sleeper becomes aware of a clock striking, and he counts one, two, three, four. But he is not certain whether he has heard the first of the strokes, until another clock begins to strike — one, two, three, four. Then he is satisfied; and he recognises that the first sounds have come from a clock at the top of the stair and the others from one at the bottom. Had he still been asleep when the clock struck, the sounds would have passed unobserved through the portals of the ears; but now he connects them with the points in space from which they come, and he observes their succession in time. This is what is called Perception; but it is obvious that it presupposes the activity of other powers likewise, such as memory and reason, to the discussion of which we shall come by and by.^
1 In philosophy an immense amount of labour has been bestowed on a question which can never have much reality for the popular mind — namely, what it is that is perceived when, through the senses, we are made acquainted with the external world. Is it the thing itself? or is it only a representation of it mirrored in the mind? Many philosophers hold that things themselves can have no direct access to the mind: we are all like the Lady of Shalott, in Tennyson’s poem, who is under a spell by which she is prevented from turning round, and only in her mirror sees the knights and the beggars passing along the highway outside the room in which she is confined. This, too, is what Plato meant by his famous image of the Cave: we are all like creatures sitting inside a cave, with their backs to the cave-mouth, who see not the beings of flesh and blood passing in front of the entrance, but only the shadows of these cast by the sunshine from without on the opposite wall, to which their eyes are directed. Perhaps also this is what St. Paul intended when he said, “Now we see through a glass darkly “; for the “glass” is a mirror, and “darkly” is, literally, “in an enigma “. It is a comfort to know that even philosophers believe that we are directly conscious of ourselves; we know at first hand all the motions of our own mind; and it is generally held that this conscious-Another way of expressing the same thing would be to attribute the change from sensation to perception to the power of Attention. The supplementary powers required for perception, as above described, namely memory and reason, are intellectual; but attention suggests rather a faculty of a different kind, namely the will. As we shall see further on, the will gets its turn pretty late in the discussion of the various faculties; but there is no great part of the mind that is not in motion all the time; and psychologists have had to introduce the will, in so far as it is involved in attention, at a very early stage. Thus, Ladd has a chapter headed Primary Attention, before deahng in detail withness of ourselves is a constituent of all knowledge: we cannot know anything else without knowing it as different from ourselves. The knowledge of other persons has puzzled philosophers. Is our knowledge of men and women, who think, feel and act like ourselves, of the same indirect kind as our knowledge of things? or is it more akin to the direct knowledge which we have of ourselves? Perhaps it would be said that the most direct knowledge is of ourselves; that very close to this is our knowledge of other persons; but that the knowledge of things is more remote. Not all thinkers would, however, agree in this, some holding that of the three classes our knowledge is the same; and this is the naive judgment also of the common mind.
In “Psychology Descriptive and Explanatory “.
any of what he calls the Elements of Mental Life; Sully introduces Attention before either sensation or perception; and Ward is inclined to allow to attention a very wide range indeed, as a kind of intensification of any faculty. It is, indeed, less a distinct faculty than a concentration of any of the faculties on its work. Yet certainly the will is conspicuous in it.
The power of the impressions transmitted through the senses to influence the mind is due partly to the force of the stimulus in every case and partly to the mind’s own preparedness to attend to them. Suppose, for example, that one were gazing forth from a hilltop on a far extended landscape, when fire suddenly burst forth from a cottage in the foreground: the whole power of vision would instantly become concentrated on this particular spot. Perhaps the rest of the landscape might still continue to be dimly seen by what is called the tail of the eye, but, on the whole, the eyes would be withdrawn from everything else and fixed on the blazing object. In the same way, a scream in church during the service would divert the at-
In “Outlines of Psychology “.
2 la article on Psychology in “The Encyclopaedia Britannica “.
tention of the congregation from the proceedings and fix it on the quarter from which the interruption came; and still more absolute would be the absorption of a crowd in the market-place in the roar of an escaped lion, should this be suddenly heard. There is sometimes an urgency that is compelling in the objects themselves, and the harvest for everyone from the employment of the senses depends, in some degree, on the variety and novelty of the scenes through which it is his lot to pass. There are those who extend the scope of their experience by visiting other lands, and others do so by living successively in different ranks of society. It is a privilege to be frequented by interesting people; and, through the medium of books, it is possible to be in constant contact with the richest minds of many countries and many generations. The success of a teacher or preacher depends, in part, on the number and variety of the things he knows, and on the power of presenting these in a commanding fashion.
But of at least equal importance is the mind’s own preparedness to attend to the impressions reaching it from the outside. The mind does not receive the whole of these equally: it has the power of selecting and rejecting. As the various streams of impression are passing in, along the channels of the senses, the attention can be focussed on any one of the streams or on any object in any of them; and, in point of fact, this concentration is shifting from point to point continually. But an object in the stream may be detained, as it passes, or brought back again and again for examination. In short, attention is of all degrees of intensity, duration and repetition; and the grasp on life of everyone depends on his power of controlling this activity and keeping it fixed wherever he pleases and as long as he pleases.^ This infuses meaning into
1 Compare Arnold, “Attention and Interest,” New York, 1910. “Interest,” says Stout, “Analytic Psychology,” p. 225, “is nothing but attention itself, considered in its hedonic aspect.”
In books on Psychology intended for the use of teachers, of which the name is legion, those of Professor Adams being easily the best, great prominence is given to Attention and to Interest, which is a comprehensive term for the means of winning the attention. Much is said both about heightening the stimulus in the presentation of the object and about cultivating in the mind habits of attention through exercise. The great secret of the teacher’s art, however, and the essence of all that has been written on Method is contained in our Lord’s counsel to “the scribe instructed unto the Kingdom of God”
such a text of Scripture as, “He that hath ears to hear let him hear,” or, ^’ Turn away mine eyes from viewing vanity “. There is a hearing of the Gospel which is not hearing, the sound, as we say, going in at the one ear and out at the other; but there is also a hearing of another sort, in which every word is drunk in, to the exclusion of all other objects. Similarly, we can turn away our eyes from viewing any object, or we can withdraw any sense from that which is engrossing it. In the last resort we can disengage our attention by removing the body itself beyond the range of the object to be avoided; and there may be forms of temptation with which this is the only safe mode of coping.
Among psychologists there has been much discussion as to the number of objects to which the mind is capable of attending at once, some holding that only one can receive distinct attention at a time, while others have extended the number to six or seven. It would seem that at least two can be thus thought together; otherwise
(an excellent title for a religious teacher), to bring forth out of his treasure “things new and old” — a phrase which does not mean sometimes things new and at other times things old, but old and new at the same time, the old or well-known being made the stepping-stone to the new or not-yet-known.
how could comparison be made? But all are agreed that the amount of attention is in inverse ratio to the number perceived. That is to say, the more the attention is distributed over a number of objects, the less of it can be given to each; and for the full concentration of attention the field must be limited to one. From this law a powerful lesson can be learned in the moral and spiritual sphere. In the Gospels, from the lips of Christ Himself, there are many hints about the necessity of concentrating on the one thing needful, as well as about the danger of dispersing one’s pursuit over too many objects; and St. Paul exclaims, in the same tone, “This one thing I do “. It is by minds most apt towards religion and ready for every good work that such restraint is most required. And let him who administers it to others begin by taking his own advice; for there is no commoner source of ministerial failure than the diffusion of attention over too many objects. The first time the writer met the late Dr. W. M. Taylor of New York, the veteran said to the novice, ‘’ As soon as the Devil sees a young minister likely to be of use in the Kingdom of God, he gets on his back and rides him to death with engagements “. But, besides the attention which is compelled.
there is a more genial kind, which is either nature or second nature. Thus, the hunter in the high Alps perceives a chamois among the rocks where the tourist sees nothing; the North American Indian hears a distant footstep before the ordinary man has made any such observation; and, in the street, the shoemaker notices the shoes of the passers-by and the tailor the condition of their clothes almost without looking. Whatever we have an interest in or warmly desire we notice without effort; and each man sees in every scene that to which he brings the power of seeing. No two persons standing in the same landscape would perceive exactly the same things; for, though the streams of impression, pouring from the outside along the passages to the brain, might be approximately identical, yet each selects those to which he will give attention in accordance with his own history and interests. The optician would have his attention drawn to sights, the musician to sounds, and other persons to other aspects of nature according to their tastes and occupations. There are probably differences due to heredity in the power of using the different senses; and there are certainly great differences acquired by practice, as when a man unawares cultivates a sense
70115^ which he has to employ in his daily vocation.^ But in the world as a whole, as well as in his own limited sphere, that which everyone sees depends on his own ruling impulses. If his heart is vain, then he will see vanity; if not, his eyes will pass it by. If he love God, he will see His footprints everywhere and hear on every hand the rustle of His robes; and, if Christ be his Saviour and heaven his home, then he will listen with avidity to every authentic voice testifying of Christ or delivering news of heaven. Thus we perceive, that such precautionary sentiments as have been quoted above from the Word of God — ‘’Turn away mine eyes from viewing vanity,” and ‘’ He that hath ears to hear let him hear” — though they go deep, do not go deep enough: we require to make our own a prayer which goes far deeper: ‘’Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew in me a right spirit “.
1 Stout, “Analytic Psychology,” p. 88, says: “I am somewhat deaf, and when conversation is going on among a considerable number of persons, I am usually unable to hear anything which is not directly addressed to myself with a distinct utterance by my immediate neighbour; all the rest of what is being said around me is a confused murmur. I sometimes find, however, that if anyone, even at a distance from me, happens to refer to philosophy or any other subject in which I have a keen interest, his words disengage themselves from the chaos of sounds and fix my attention.”