[D]. See also my remarks in Psychological Review, ii. p. 53.
Concentration of attention is then, we may now remark, a redundancy, as we make attention equal to concentration. To say his attention was concentrated upon a certain subject, is equivalent to saying his mind was concentrated. Sometimes, indeed, concentrated attention may mean intense attention or concentration, but some concentration being always involved in attention, it is a confusing and inaccurate phrase.
In a more restricted sense, attention is not merely any will tension in cognition, but only so far as self-consciousness is involved in all the exertion. We must sharply distinguish between this attention as willed activity and as simple act of will. Willed cognitive activity denotes cognition determined upon and consciously accomplished. The willing in the knowing act may not be will to know. Willed cognitive activity, when not against the will, when including choice and acquiescence, is in the true sense voluntary attention—attention voluntarily, freely, willingly performed. The term voluntary is not the proper correlative of spontaneous, but rather volitional, while non-voluntary must be set over against voluntary. In self-conscious attention of any kind there must be consciousness of the tension, and consciously exercised effort in delineating and maintaining cognition. In this narrow sense attention is conscious furtherance or hindrance of cognition. Effort is consciously put forth in some particular cognitive form; there is a self-limitation by the mind in cognitive process. In short, attention here equals cognition consciously constrained.
As to the relation of attention to subject, we remark that psychology as the science of mental phenomena, rather than science of the soul, is not called upon to imply a subject as in any wise attending. Yet we use, and use inevitably, substantive forms and personal pronouns, but while it is impossible for science to desubstantialize language, yet it must be ever on its guard against the delusions of language. It is a common impulse to explain activities by referring them to agents, to describe attention and all mental acts as being what they are by reason of the actor, the self, or ego; but science in this, as in so many things, inverts the common order; the agent is made by and of activities, and not the reverse. Agent or subject is no more than a congeries of manifold interdependent activities. There is, and can be, no fixing of the mind by the mind: the word, mind, being used in the same sense in both cases. When I say, “I fix the mind upon something,” this means for analytical psychology, that in the complex of consciousnesses which are unified by an ego-sense, there occurs a will effort accomplishing a perception. This purely dynamic interpretation is the method of all science which cannot accept inexplicable essences and agents as explaining anything. Attention is not to be explained by an attender, but it is a mode of activity in that collection of activities which we term organic life with conscious process. So even attention, as self-conscious exertion, is not to be interpreted as an agent which is conscious of itself in exerting; but we consider it as volitional activity with consciousness of self as manifold complex of objects vitally connected with will effort. Self-consciousness does not necessarily mean a self conscious of itself.
It is obvious from our discussion thus far that we do not accept the common division of attention into spontaneous and voluntary, which means for us no more than spontaneous and voluntary—more properly volitional—cognition. So-called spontaneous attention is the displacing of one consciousness element by another without any will effort; there is no displacing or placing as will activity, but cognitions appear, persist and disappear by an inherent force. When in deep study the noise of a whistle may spontaneously “attract my attention,” as the phrase is, but this denotes no more than forcible change of state. There is nought in the new act but the sensing the noise of whistle; there is no real attending activity, no will effort at either promotion or inhibition. However, we must grant that most cognition contains a volition element. Absolute zero or negative value as to volition is but a momentary and comparatively rare phenomenon in normal consciousness, where self-possession and self-direction in some measure is almost constant. In the case of noise of steam-whistle suddenly breaking in upon a student, there is quickly attention—either positively, as listening to quality, or to detect direction of sound; or negatively—true inattention—as inhibiting and disturbing element. When one is made “wild,” or distracted, by noise, then his mind is occupied unwillingly, indeed, yet there being no real promotion or inhibition, we must term the state unattention. Another form is where we give up in despair, and passively suffer the annoying noise. In both cases we neither stimulate nor repress, and so both are emotional unattentions. On account of the pain-pleasure nature of all experience, there is even here, however, some will attitude and tendency, some favouring or retarding act, though it be wholly impotent in effect.
Just when a cognition rises to attention point, just when volition with effort becomes prominent factor, this is a difficult and delicate problem. However, according to the relative prominence or obscurity of volition element, we must divide cognitions into attentions and impressions. In the variety of human cognitive activity there is a constant flow of cognitions which are one moment being strengthened to attentions, and another, weakened to impressions. With volatile persons cognitive life is a kaleidoscopic congeries of rapidly experienced impressions and attentions. Will darts in and out with marvellous velocity, now vivifying some, now others, in the stream of cognitive activities determined by pleasure and pain interest. With all of us there is a manifold complex continuum of cognition, a general non-attention knowing of external world and ego, which we continually carry with us. Into this field of exertionless cognitive life will-effort penetrates now to one point, now to another, seizing upon and enlarging the most interesting and significant facts. As I am sitting in my chair, I am dimly aware, without will tension, of a large field of varied objects, any one of which I may emphasize, attend to, when incited by sufficient interest. Practically exertionless awareness is a constant substratum for developed consciousness; here, in the world of habit, it is always at home, and moves with great ease and smallest friction; but the process of learning, the work of adding to mental possessions and enlarging the totum objectivum and totum subjectivum, this is attention for complex consciousness.
We must note this, that attention is any general alertness toward cognizing, though no actual cognition be attained. Cognitive straining without result is truly a form of attention. A man listening for a sound is equally attentive with a man listening to a sound. It is not necessary for an attention to have something to attend to. Attention is effort at cognizing as well as in cognizing. The stupid boy is often the most attentive, the most strenuous in cognitive effort, yet there may be little apprehension. In fact, we must recognise that in cognitive, as in muscular activity, effort may be excessive, and defeat its own end. When suddenly awaking in the night we often strain sense to the utmost, but with no result; nothing is heard or seen. In this, as in some other cases, we must notice that attention is not necessarily delineation. While generally a particularizing effort of cognition, attention may sometimes occur as mere general cognition stress.
If attention consists in cognitive effort, whether successful or not, what is the nature of the effort to attend? A student says, I try to attend, but I cannot; I cannot hold my mind down to anything. Professor James remarks, “In fact, it is only to the effort to attend, not to the mere attending, that we are seriously tempted to ascribe spontaneous power” (Psychology, p. 451). But it is obvious in such phrases attention means simply cognition, and may be substituted for it, whereas we have just pointed out that attention is both the effort toward and in cognizing act. Literally interpreted, then, the problem is whether we can make an effort to make an effort at cognizing. In great lassitude or exhaustion we lose control of ourselves, we are unable to exercise volition either as attention or otherwise. We recognise and lament the fact to ourselves, we feel our powerlessness, but I hardly think we do ever really make an effort at effort. At the very first stage of recovery from such state of utter non-volition, the will act is always toward definite sense adjustments, or in holding to and promoting certain thoughts and representations, and we thus have real attention. The utter rout of psychoses, which once possessed us, we now conquer and control for our ends and interests.
Attention to attention is obviously distinctively different from this phase. We can and do attend to attention as psychic fact. An act of attention cannot, indeed, attend to itself, but the volition act in consciousness of consciousness, as consciousness of some attention act, is very properly an attention to attention. If I am looking attentively at a man, I cannot, by the very nature of attention, be simultaneously volitionally introspective of, i.e., attentive to the looking attentively. When actively sensing light, I cannot at the same moment attend to this attention, because attention is always concentrative of will. To be volitionally conscious of light is one moment, and to be volitionally conscious of this light consciousness is another moment. The attention attended to is not in process at the same moment as the attention. This does not deny that we have simultaneous spontaneous introspection of attentions. Introspection, like sensation, perception, ideation, is attention only so far as it is effortful.