Negative attention is then, I think, a real activity, a will force which directly hinders and crushes out the unwelcome in consciousness, while positive attention is will force vitalizing and strengthening the pleasant. In conflict of interests these forms are complementary, and attention is here a double will-effort, both the effort at withdrawing energy from one point, and the effort at applying it in a new point. In most cases attention is both resistance and insistance. Even in simple forms the natural tendency to inertia constitutes a constant counter interest to any particular activity-interest. Attention then is always resistance to this natural inertia _plus_ the direct energy in effecting the particular activity. But in advanced consciousness there is always a multitude of difficulties in the way of specializing cognition, a great variety of distractions to be resisted, all which, added to the definite exertion required in the special work, makes the ordinary attention in human consciousness a very complex affair. A student engaged on a mathematical problem is incessantly driving out distracting thoughts and positively fixing his mind upon the problem. Resistance is manifold, according to the speciality of the task—the more special, the more distractions—and the direct concentration is also a real and direct activity. We may then, I think, see the importance of both positive and negative acts in attention. As counter to the theory that positive attention is the only real form, we might plausibly argue the opposite, that it is only the reverse side of negative attention. If we shut out all but one element from consciousness, do we not thereby bring that one into bolder relief and so indirectly strengthen it? May not all intensification of cognition be thus but an indirect result of negative attention? No, for even when all distractions are kept away, there is the inherent difficulty of the act _plus_ the inertia, the general disinclination to effort. Positive attention may rarely appear as practically pure, and rarely also negative attention. Consciousness may sometimes consist of merely pure will tension as keeping off all defined activities; and persons of great will power sometimes achieve this in putting themselves to sleep. Consciousness is a blank field, tensely kept, but perfectly so only for a very brief time.