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[ 316 ] A full account of the case , by Mr . R . Hodgson , will be found in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research for 1891 . [ 317 ] He had spent an afternoon in Boston , a night in New York , an afternoon in Newark , and ten days or more in Philadelphia , first in a certain hotel and next in a certain boarding - house , making no acquaintances , ' resting , ' reading , and ' looking round . ' I have unfortunately been unable to get independent corroboration of these details , as the hotel registers are destroyed , and the boarding - house named by him has been pulled down . He forgets the name of the two ladies who kept it . [ 318 ] The details of the case , it will be seen , are all compatible with simulation . I can only say of that , that no one who has examined Mr . Bourne ( including Dr . Read , Dr . Weir Mitchell , Dr . Guy Hinsdale , and Mr . R . Hodgson ) practically doubts his ingrained honesty , nor , so far as I can discover , do any of his personal acquaintances indulge in a sceptical view . [ 319 ] The Watseka Wonder , by E . W . Stevens . Chicago , Religio - Philosophical Publishing House , 1887 . [ 320 ] My friend Mr . R . Hodgson informs me that he visited Watseka in April 1890 , and cross - examined the principal witnesses of this case . His confidence in the original narrative was strengthened by what he learned ; and various unpublished facts were ascertained , which increased the plausibility of the spiritualistic interpretation of the phenomenon . [ 321 ] See his highly important series of articles on Automatic Writing , etc . , in the Proceedings of the Soc . for Psych . Research , especially Article ii ( May 1885 ) . Compare also Dr . Maudsley's instructive article in Mind , vol . xiv , p . 161 , and Luys's essay , ' Sur le Dédoublement , ' etc . , in l'Encéphale for 1889 . [ Pg 402 ] CHAPTER XI . ATTENTION . Strange to say , so patent a fact as the perpetual presence of selective attention has received hardly any notice from psychologists of the English empiricist school . The Germans have explicitly treated of it , either as a faculty or as a resultant , but in the pages of such writers as Locke , Hume , Hartley , the Mills , and Spencer the word hardly occurs , or if it does so , it is parenthetically and as if by inadvertence . [ 322 ] The motive of this ignoring of the phenomenon of attention is obvious enough . These writers are bent on showing how the higher faculties of the mind are pure products of ' experience ; ' and experience is supposed to be of something simply given . Attention , implying a degree of reactive spontaneity , would seem to break through the circle of pure receptivity which constitutes ' experience , ' and hence must not be spoken of under penalty of interfering with the smoothness of the tale . But the moment one thinks of the matter , one sees how false a notion of experience that is which would make it tantamount to the mere presence to the senses of an outward order . Millions of items of the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience . Why ? Because they have no interest for me . My experience is what I agree to attend to . Only those items which I notice shape my mind — without selective interest , experience is an utter chaos .
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