Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 02.djvu/260

ATTENTION. If the struggle be continued active attention passes, inevitably, into (c) 'secondary passive attention.' Just as the selective action slips back, with repetition, into a secondary reflex, so does active attention presently fall under the exclusive dominance of some one of the rival determinants. We begin the novel voluntarily, in face of conflicting duties. As we read we grow absorbed in the story. What is this 'absorp- tion' but a reappearance of primitive attention upon a higher plane of mental development? The attention-compelling property of the successful stimulus is no longer intensity or novelty, but something much more subtle. It is the relation of the stimulus in question to the whole content of consciousness. As soon as our mind is set for the plot of the novel, and all intruding ideas have been banished, the incidents, as they come, have full sway over us; we are prepared for them, ready to receive them; they fit in with our mental trend and tendency. Every trained mind is thus dominated by the objects which appeal to its training; the poet, by works of the creative imagination; the physician, by the de- tails of a new treatment; the painter, by an effect of color upon the landscape; the zoölogist, by the forms of animal life. We can never transcend the dictates of the primary passive attention; the most absorbed reader, the most abstracted thinker, starts at the sound of the gun. But our intellectual life, when it has reached the stage of achievement, is in the main a life of secondary passive attention. From the educational point of view the stage of active attention is a stage of waste, of non-attainment; mastery comes with secondary passive attention. But, then, there is no road to this last save through active attention: work comes before play. The child must be led to work in order that his play, in adult life, may be of the highest possible service to society.

(3) Little need be said of the sense-processes that are aroused by the bodily attitude of atten- tion, the strains and pressures that come to consciousness from eye or ear, as the attention is visually or auditorily directed. Some psy- chologists, envisaging attention as a purely motor phenomenon, have laid much stress upon these muscular adjustments ; and there can be no doubt that they help to induce and to main- tain the attentive state. But while this is true, it seems to be equally certain that the sensations which proceed from the adjustments are merely secondary characteristics of the attentive con- sciousness. As Kuelpe puts it, they are con- secutive, not constitutive. They contribute largely to the experience of effort in active atten- tion. And it is interesting to notice, as Fechner and James have done, the change of direction which this effort undergoes, according as the object of attention belongs to the world of things or to the world of thought. In the former ease it is a straining outward; in the latter, a strained retraction or withdrawal inward. Further study of the sensations, however, throws no new light upon the mechanism of attention.

W. James, Principles of Psychology (New York, 1890); O. Kuelpe, Outlines of Psychology (London, 1895); W. Wundt, Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie (Leipzig, 1893); Th. Ribot, La psychologie de l'attention (Paris, 1889); E. B. Titchener, Experimental Psychology (New York, 1901). See ; and (for the relation of attention to affection). See also.

ATTERBOM, iit'ter-bom, (1790-1855). A Swedish poet. He was born at Åsbo. As a student he fell under German literary influence, and was a founder of the Musis Amici, a student society which, under the name of Aurora League, helped to emancipate Swedish literature from the dominance of French academic tradition, through its organs, Phosphorus (1810-13), Poelic Calendar' (1812-22), and Swedish Literary News (1813-24). Broken in health by overstudy, Atterbom visited Germany and Italy in 1817-19, where he met Schelling and Thorwaldsen. On his return he became (1820) instructor of the Crown Prince Oscar, and (1828) professor of philosophy at Upsala. In 1839 he was made Academician. He wrote critical literary essays, Swedish Seers and Poets, a collection of lyrics, The Flowers, in which he introduced the sonnet to Swedish poetry, an unfinished but exquisite fairy drama, The Blue Bird, and the very popular romantic drama. The Isle of Blessedness (1823). He possessed rare poetic gifts, but introduced into his verses metaphysical and religious speculation.

AT'TERBURY, (1662-1732). Bishop of Rochester. He was born at Middleton Keynes, near Bedford, England, March 6, 1662, and educated at Westminster School, London, from which, in 1680, he passed to Christ Church, Oxford. In 1687 he gave proof of that ready controversial talent which distinguished him through life, in a reply to a pseudonymous attack on Protestantism by Obadiah Walker, Master of University College, under the name Abraham Woodhead, and in the same year received holy orders. In London his rhetorical powers soon won him reputation. He became lecturer of Saint Bride's (1691), a royal chaplain, and minister of Bridewell. In 1698 a temporary sensation was created in the learned world by the appearance of the Hon. Charles Boyle's Examination of Dr. Bentley's Dissertations on the Epistles of Phalaris and the Fables of Æsop, in which he defended the Epistles, though all the world now knows that they are forgeries. This clever but shallow and malicious performance was in reality composed chiefly by Atterbury, who had been the young nobleman's tutor at Christ Church. In 1700 he distinguished himself in a controversy with Dr. Wake and others regarding the powers and privileges of convocations. Atterbury's zealous and caustic defense of the ecclesiastical against the civil authority procured him the thanks of the lower house of Convocation and the degree of D.D. from Oxford (1701); also the archdeaconry of Taunton. In 1704 he was promoted to the deanery of Carlisle, on which occasion he subjected himself to just obloquy by attempting to procure an alteration in the date of his predecessor's resignation, which happened to interpose a temporary obstacle to his appointment. In 1707 he was made a canon of Exeter; in 1709, preacher at the Rolls Chapel; in 1710 he was chosen prolocutor to the lower house of Convocation, and in the same year he had the chief hand, according to the common belief, in drawing up the famous defense of Dr. Sacheverell; in 1712 he became Dean of Christ Church, where, however, his