as we follow the appearance of colours and light, but as we do
_not_ follow, in the sense of _connecting by our activity,_
consecutive sensations of taste or smell. Besides such obvious or
presumable bodily activities requisite for looking and listening as
distinguished from mere seeing and hearing, there is moreover in all
perception of shape, as in all _grasping of meaning,_ a mental
activity involving what are called _attention_ and _memory._ A
primer of aesthetics is no place for expounding any of the various
psychological definitions of either of these, let us call them, faculties.
Besides I should prefer that these pages deal only with such mental
facts as can be found in the Reader's everyday (however unnoticed)
experience, instead of requiring for their detection the artificial
conditions of specialised introspection or laboratory experiment. So
I shall give to those much fought over words _attention_ and
_memory_ merely the rough and ready meaning with which we are
familiar in everyday language, and only beg the Reader to notice
that, whatever psychologists may eventually prove or disprove
_attention_ and _memory_ to be, these two, let us unscientifically
call them _faculties,_ are what chiefly distinguishes _perception_
from _sensation._ For instance, in grasping or taking stock of a
visible or an audible shape we are doing something with our
attention, or our attention is doing something in us: a travelling
about, a returning to starting points, a summing up. And a travelling
about not merely between what is given simultaneously in the
present, but, even more, between what has been given in an
immediately proximate past, and what we expect to be given in an
immediately proximate future; both of which, the past which is put
behind us as past, and the past which is projected forwards as future,
necessitate the activity of _memory._ There is an adjustment of our
feelings as well as our muscles not merely to the present sensation,
but to the future one, and a buzz of continuing adjustment to the past.
There is a holding over and a holding on, a reacting backwards and
forwards of our attention, and quite a little drama of expectation,
fulfilment and disappointment, or as psychologists call them, of
tensions and relaxations. And this little drama involved in all
looking or listening, particularly in all taking stock of visible or
audible (and I may add intellectual or _verbal_) shape, has its
appropriate accompanim