pleasure, etc., for example, the more actively we taste an orange the more taste pleasure we get. We note in passing the very interesting psychological paradox that the more we view ourselves the less we have to view, the principle of which has been set forth above. We know well that the very reflective and self-conscious have little personal force and individual quality. Moreover the self-conscious stage in youth is precisely the period when there is the least real self to be conscious of. A strong multiplex mind is rarely very self-observant. Finally we have to remark upon the way in which attention may be divisive of cognition. Boswell makes Dr. Johnson to say, “If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so that there is but one half to be employed on what we read.” But admitting the necessity of intrinsic interest, this does not do away with attention. Attention hinders rather than helps cognition only when it becomes wearing strain, as in reading when much fatigued. But attention as fulness of vigorous normal will activity gives a force and value to cognition which it would not otherwise have, and often makes its very existence possible. The greatest, most significant cognitions in the mental life of any individual are those which are achieved at the top of endeavour. Real knowledge as advancement and acquirement is always the fruit of long training and attention. The act of attention is painful and therefore is not exercised by lower organisms, at least, only under absolute necessity. Often the pain from attention is so great that the individual prefers to suffer than to exert himself cognitively and so help to remove pain-giver. It is only under the greatest pressure that new knowledge and new ideas are acquired, and the history of mind shows a series of _tours de force_ achieved only in moments of direst need. The strengthening and the holding of cognitive powers to a given point by effort of will is peculiarly distasteful and painful activity. All minds tend toward inaction or toward the regions of effortless action where overwhelming interest carries them freely along. Attention, while the most advantageous of actions, is yet most irksome and painful. It would seem to us at first blush that if pleasure and not pain had attached to the attentive act from the beginning, the evolution of mind would have been accomplished in the merest fraction of the time actually required. It would have been the difference between going down a steep incline rather than up. Why progress should only be realized through painful effort and struggle is a problem which has vexed the thought of man throughout history but upon which psychology has little light to throw. Our present concern is to simply emphasize the fact that cognitive act as attention is always painful, and if the act of cognition is performed without pain we may promptly deny this to be an attention. This is, of course, far