Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

72 ATTENTION.
are pleased with any particular beauty, or offended with any
defect, it is evident, that if his theory be just, the circumstances
which he points out as the foundation of our pleasure or uneasiness, must have occurred to our minds before we were pleased
with the beauty, or offended with the defect. In such cases, it
sometimes happens, when a critic has been fortunate in his theory, that we recognize at first sight our old ideas, and without
any further consideration, are ready to bear testimony to the
truth, from our own consciousness. So very difficult, however,
is it to attend to the ideas which excite such feelings, that it
often appears to be doubtful, whether a theory be right or
wrong; and that where there is every reason to believe that
the pleasure is produced in all men in the same way, different
critics adopt different theories with respect to its cause. It is
long practice alone, joined to what is commonly called a metaphysical turn of mind, (by which, I think, is chiefly to be understood a capacity of reflecting on the subjects of our consciousness,) tflhat can render such efforts of attention easy. Exquisite
sensibility, so far from being useful in this species of criticism,
both gives a disrelish for the study, and disqualifies for pursuing it.
Inability to attend to more than one thing at once. - Before
we leave the subject of attention, it is proper to take notice of a
question which has been stated with respect to it; whether we
have the power of attending to more than one thing at one and
the same instant; or, in other words, whether we can attend at
one and the same instant to objects which we can attend to separately? This question has, if I am not mistaken, been already
decided by several philosophers in the negative; and I acknowledge for my own part, that although their opinion has not
only been called in question by others, but even treated with
some degree of contempt as altogether hypothetical, it appears
to me to be the most reasonable and philosophical that we can
form on the subject.
There is, indeed, a great variety of cases, in which the mind
apparently exerts different acts of attention at once; but from
the instances which have already been mentioned, of the aston