The psychology of attention / by Th. Ribot.

Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The psychology of attention / by Th. Ribot. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    ciphers a word or a figure by the light of several elec- trical sparks. Intensity alone is equally efficacious : thus a woman will take in, in the twinkling of an eye, the complete toilet of a rival. The feeble forms of attention can teach us nothing : at all events, it is not from these that we must begin our study. Before we have yet traced the broad outlines of our work, it would be idle to note the more delicate aspects, and to waste time with subtile differences. The purpose of this series of essays is to establish and prove the following propositions : There are two well-defined forms of attention : the one spontaneous, natural; the other voluntary, arti- ficial. The former—neglected by most psychologists— is the true, primitive, and fundamental form of atten- tion. The second—the only investigated by most psy- chologists—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 sup- port. It is merely an apparatus formed by cultivation, and a product of civilization. Attention, in these two forms, is not an indetermi- nate activity, a kind of pure act of spirit, acting by mysterious and undiscoverable means. Its mechan- ism is essentially motory, that is, it always acts upon the muscles, and through the muscles, mainly under the form of inhibition ; and as epigraph of this study we might choose the words of Maudsley, that the person who is unable to control his own muscles, is inca- pable of attention. Attention, under these two forms, is an exceptional, abnormal state, which cannot last a long time, for the reason that it is in contradiction to the basic condition of psychic life ; namely, change.