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The book is philosophical rather than psychological, and attempts to deal with the difficulty of the mind examining itself, being at the same time both subjective and objective to itself. The recognition of this difficulty dates at least from Herbert Spencer and is probably much older.
We are told that we have to recognize two species of attention, observation or examination:—
a.'Projective or intellectual attention, which obtains to the objective sphere of sense-perceptions with its symbolic connotations (words, names) of surrounding objects; the sum of the impressions being represented in the identity of the social or linguistic substantive "I"'.
b.'Systemic or integral attention which pertains to the systemic, integral organic sensations as a whole—appreciable only in terms of the organism's total function as it relates man in so far as he is tribal man (i.e. phyletically), to the world of actuality'.
They seem to correspond with what the reviewer has elsewhere described as 'voluntary' and 'instinctive' attention, and Dr. Burrow thinks that