really time to get up. What a curious figure the pattern of the paper
makes, viewed in this light! The breakfast bell! Out of my head go all
vagrant reflections, and suddenly, before I can notice the process, I
find myself in the middle of the floor. That is the way. From wavering
thoughts nothing comes. But suddenly some sound, some sight, some
significant interest, raises the depicted act into exclusive vividness
of attention, and our part is done. The spring has been touched, and
the physical machinery, of which we may know little or nothing, does
its work. There it stands ready, the automatic machinery of this
exquisite frame of ours, waiting for the unconfused signal,--our only
part in the performance,--then automatically it springs to action and
pushes our purpose into the outer world. Such at least is the
fashionable teaching of psychologists to-day. Volition is full
attention. It has no wider scope. With bodily adjustments it does not
meddle. These move by their own mechanic law. Of real connection
between body and mind we know nothing. We can only say that such
parallelism exists that physical action occurs on occasion of complete
mental vision.

No doubt this theory leaves much to be desired in the way of
clearness. What is meant by fixing the attention exclusively? Is
unrelated singleness possible among our mental pictures? Or how
narrowly must the field of attention be occupied before these strange
springs are set in motion? At the end of the explanation do not most
of the puzzling problems of scope, freedom, and selection remain,
existing now as problems about the nature and working of attention
instead of, as formerly, problems about the emergence of the intention
into outward nature? No doubt these classical problems puzzle us
still. But a genuine advance toward clarity is made when we confine
them within a small area by identifying volition with mental