Licence: In copyright
Credit: The mind of man : a text-book of psychology / by Gustav Spiller. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
68/578 page 48
![brain ? Inquiry negatives these suggestions. I know that if I had been reading the book in a room where all was still, the course of thought would have been in an appreciably different state from what it is when I am reading in a noisy railway station. [Tes^ this?\ I somehow continue to ignore the conversation. I hold the sounds back, as it were. I stave them off. I prevent their intrusion. That is to say, I attend, among other things, to something which, when more fully or differently attended to, is sound. At this lowest point we are confronted with a vague detailless feeling. As the air-waves are less impetuous, so is the feeling vaguer, until at last we detect neither sound nor feeling. Probably there is a point where minimal systems become differentiated, and that point must be for us the threshold of a particular system. The lowest element is, therefore, a very faint feeling,—a feeling so faint that it makes no perceptible stir, and is apparently not reproducible,—a feeling which is perhaps so unstable that it disappears immediately it is specially attended to. States of this faint quality exist in abundance. A good example is the effect produced by a noisy clock in an otherwise quiet room. Ordinarily, when absorbed, we do not hear the ticking, except at intervals. [Is that so ?] We seem oblivious of the acoustic waves. Yet when the clock stops, we frequently notice the fact. [Experiment in this direction^ If the air-waves have left no mark, then their cessation should have made no difference. We conclude, therefore, that the sounds from the clock leave a faint trace on the organism; and also that this trace is not a sound, not the monotonous tick-tick, but some residue. The same holds true under certain circumstances of the innumerable “possible” sensations which we are ever ignoring, and of the silent working of the brain as a whole. We often observe things indolently. In such cases, our attention no sooner turns away than we forget that we have been attending in those directions. The subject is frequently discussed among psycho-physicists. (Miinsterberg, Intensifying Effect of Attention, 1894.) Faint feelings are of considerable frequency. Systems which were at one time sharp in outline and could be easily developed and re-membered, gradually lose these properties without being essentially changed in their constitution. (Ch. 3.) In casual routine processes (or organised re- action)* the feelings are still there generally; but they are no longer lively. The gentle stimulus, under the changed conditions, preserves the motive force of the pronounced activity. The general organic life of the body, the general individual life, as well as the routine of life, swarm with : these silent and impalpable presences. However, as organic adjustments ; to demands become closer and induce far-reaching changes, so feelings are .* more and more dispensed with, till, with total re-adjustment, they cease to > exist. In less extreme cases, the feelings remain, but become almost: wholly unobtrusive. I have said that the dimmest of these feelings form the first degree in • * To emphasise the process involved in habit, I shall generally speak of habitual pro- cess as organised process, organised trend, trend, and economisation.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21938982_0068.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
