[8] If we consent to follow Ward in talking of degrees of attention, there is no reason why we should not take a leaf out of Mill's book, and claim that attention may differ in quality as well as in quantity. I shall now take up this idea, and consider the question of whether there are different types of attention. Of course, in a sense, an affirmative answer has already been conceded as soon as it is agreed that 'rudimentary attention' is found in states of distraction. Ribot too, as we have noticed in passing, makes a clear-cut distinction between two different types of attention, one of which he calls 'spontaneous' attention and the other 'voluntary' attention. In terms of this classification the discussion to this point has been confined to 'spontaneous' attention. We are now ready to investigate 'voluntary' attention. I shall try to show that the traditional explanation of the distinction between different types of attention runs into difficulties, and I shall offer in its place a different explanation of what lies at the heart of the differentiation of attention into 'spontaneous' attention on the one hand and 'voluntary' attention on the other.

Ribot sets out the contrast between spontaneous attention a voluntary attention, as he sees it, as follows:

There are two well-defined forms of attention the one spontaneous, natural; the other voluntary, artificial. The former - neglected by most psychologists - is the true, primitive, and fundamental form of attention. The second - the only one investigated by most psychologists - is but an imitation, a result of education, of training, and of impulsion. Precarious and vacillating in nature, it derives its whole being from spontaneous attention, and finds only in the latter a point of support. It is merely an apparatus formed by cultivation, and a product of civilization. ⁶⁹

I have already drawn attention to Ribot's view that attention is an abnormal phenomenon which cannot be prolonged too long. This point of view is strongly evident in what he here says about voluntary attention. A further distinction between the two types, which he takes to be quite definitive, is that spontaneous attention is entirely effortless, while on the other hand voluntary attention is always an effort. ⁷⁰

William James shares Ribot's views, as is evident from the following passage:

Voluntary attention is always derived; we never make an effort to attend to an object except for the sake of some remote interest which the effort will serve. ⁷¹

Ribot would endorse that statement without qualification. And the next statement of James's is also one which would fit in with Ribot's position:

There is no such thing as voluntary attention sustained for more than a few seconds at a time. ⁷²

repetition of successive efforts which bring back the topic to the mind'.

There is no doubt a distinction to be made between what Ribot calls spontaneous attention and voluntary attention, but it cannot be said that he has clarified it. In the first place, if we suppose that only learned attention is voluntary - and this seems to be Ribot's criterion for voluntary attention - there is no reason to believe that learned attention will always be accompanied by a feeling of effort (in the sense of overcoming a disinclination to do it). Ribot himself states that in people who have been successfully taught, attention of the sort in question ultimately becomes a habit. Now surely it must be conceded that when we do something out of habit, we do it without feeling any effort in what we are doing? We can go a step further and affirm that when something has become a habit, we are frequently unaware of having acted on the habit until the act has been completed. If so, we could not have been aware of a feeling of effort.

Bearing this in mind, I can only suggest that Ribot has convinced himself of the ubiquity of the feeling of effort in voluntary attention, because he has confined himself to the learning-situation. If a child is being taught to pay attention, he is being taught to do something he cannot yet do, and this would ordinarily give rise to a feeling of effort. But once the task is learned, it can be performed without any conscious feeling of effort. From this point of view the feeling of effort can be seen as incidental to the learning process, and not as intrinsic to the nature of voluntary attention. Alternatively, we frequently meet with the experience in which an initial attempt to attend to an activity costs a great deal of effort but that after a while, the activity begins to engross us, we become absorbed, and all feeling of effort disappears. In the light of these two circumstances Ribot would seem constrained to say that what began as voluntary attention became transformed into spontaneous attention. This would account for the disappearance of the feeling of effort.

Unfortunately this move is not open to Ribot, for on his own theory spontaneous attention is by definition unlearned attention, ⁷³ and neither voluntary attention which has become habit, nor voluntarv attention which has become absorption, can be described

as unlearned attention. On the other hand, Ribot could not drop the requirement that a feeling of effort always accompanies voluntary attention, without surrendering his claim that there is a felt basis to the distinction between spontaneous and voluntary attention. Manifestly his twofold distinction is insufficient for his purpose.

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