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.
Interest alone gives accent and emphasis, light and shade, background and foreground — intelligible perspective, in a word. It varies in every creature, but without it the consciousness of every creature would be a gray chaotic indiscriminateness, impossible for us even to conceive.
The Principles of Psychology, volume II, p. 402f.
