A definition of attention – excerpt

“When life is in good trim, when the line which strings our successive words together is galvanized into proper working action, the tale is quite other. The words surge pell-mell. In minute observation they form short, fascinating, tight-packed rings and loops, but in vast generalizations, with more than lightning’s swiftness and force they fling their nervous line wide and net whole hemispheres of meaning. They sweep through every corner of the heavens. With a giant’s ease they balance entire worlds against each other, unite them, divide them, make clean division through minutenesses and confusions at which the finest non verbal tool would retire helpless, and put the whole plastic universe through figures of differentiation and comparison as smooth and harmonious as those of a ballet. The width, splendour, and variety of this stream are, in fine, just what makes life an intoxicating and lordly thing.”
-Dora Marsden, The Egoist Vol. 4, No. 8 p. 114

Taken at the Modernist Journals Project. A huge thank you to Chris for sending this wonderful link my way.

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