§ 4. The Conative Attitude.—The states designated by such words as craving, longing, yearning, endeavour, effort, desire, wish, and will, have one characteristic in common. In all of them there is an inherent tendency to pass beyond themselves and become something different. This tendency is not only a fact but an experience; and the peculiar mode of being conscious, which constitutes the experience, is called conation. The process of consciousness is a process of incessant change; the changes are partly due to the play of external impressions, and to other conditions extraneous to consciousness itself. But this is rarely, if ever, entirely so. The process is in part selfdetermining. The successive phases have, by their very nature, a tendency to pass into other phases. The stream of consciousness has a current; and its course is determined not merely by external conditions, but by its own drift at any moment. Considered in relation to the presented object, conation is a tendency to alter it, or make some difference in it, to expel it from consciousness, or to bring it more vividly and completely before consciousness.

Mental activity also produces or tends to produce changes in the body and in the external world. But we must carefully separate these changes from conation. They are merely means by which it may work. The end to which it is directed is always some change in consciousness itself. If I will to blow a candle out, the mental activity does not lie in the contraction of my muscles, nor yet in the effect produced on the candle as a physical occurrence. It is the resulting darkness, in so far as I am aware of it, which is the end attained by my volition. In other words, it is a change in the object, as presented, which I strive to attain in willing to blow out the candle. It is not necessary that I should have actual experience of the physical result. I may make a will, leaving property to a certain person. Here, what I am aiming at or endeavouring after is that this person shall enjoy my property after I am dead. By the nature of the case, I can have no direct experience of the result. What satisfies me and so terminates the volitional process is the belief that my property will actually come into the hands of the legatee. Before I made the will, this was only a floating possibility. In making the will, I transform it into a practical certainty.

It may happen that the end to which conation is directed is, from the nature of the case, unattainable. Thus, I may wish to recall or undo the past. This is a tendency which cannot realise itself. But none the less it is a tendency as much as if it could realise itself. Considered as a mode of consciousness, it is just as much a conation as the desire to blow out a candle standing before my eyes.

Conation may attain its end by merely mental process, without overt bodily action. In part or whole, it may be satisfied by fuller knowledge of its object; and this may be brought about merely by a train of thought or observation, without altering the nature of the object as it actually exists apart from its being presented to consciousness. From this point of view we can bring under conation all that is covered by the word attention. Attention is simply conation in so far as it finds satisfaction in the fuller presentation of its object, without actual change in the object. This may bo possible only in part. Thus, wo may have a practical end in view, and we may, for the sake of this end, attend to the conditions and means of its attainment. I may wish to climb a rock, and I first observe it carefully to determine the best mode of ascent. So far, all I have gained is more complete knowledge. This is a partial satisfaction of my original desire. It carries me a stage nearer to my end; but it does so only because it makes further steps possible. On the other hand, my interest may bo purely theoretical. I may simply desire to know the geological structure of the rock. In this case, mere observation will be sufficient. If it is necessary to climb the rock, the climbing will be merely a means of making observation possible, just as in the previous case observation is merely a means of making climbing possible. Sometimes it would appear as if attention were not directed to the fuller presentation of an object, but merely to the keeping of it unchanged before consciousness. "Perhaps the closest approximation to this mental attitude is found in the case of attention to a simple object of sense or imagination, on account of the immediate pleasure it yields."* Now we allow here that the end of attention is not cognitive; none the less, its end is in a sense the fuller presentation of the object. So long as the pleasuregiving capacity of the object is not exhausted, it makes a difference to consciousness whether it continues to be presented or not. It is only fully presented when consciousness is satiated.

• Analytic Psychology, vol. i., pp. 1267. Psych.)