" These remarks may fittingly serve as a preface to the following attempt to traverse once more a field that may seem to have been already sufficiently explored, and from which attempt, it may be thought, little or nothing of fresh importance is likely to accrue.

In spite of much to the contrary that has been written of late, I venture, however, to plead that the subject calls for the mode of treatment I have here in view.

An account, such as that presented by Titchener 2 , of the experimental work that has been done on attention exhibits only too plainly the barrenness in psychological significance of what has thereby so far been achieved, and illustrates also how intimately the value of what is yielded by experiment depends upon the theoretical standpoint from which specific problems are framed and their solution sought.

There is no possibility of entering upon an investigation of the conditions and laws of attention without some conception of the nature of the process itself, and if that conception be not reached through a careful analysis of the facts of the mental life, the alternative will be the acceptance of the crude uncritical generalisa- tions of popular reflexion with which, in that case, every interpretation of the experimental results will be saturated.

1.