nge which does not allow the attention to become fatigued.

Finally the mere formal arrangement of the succeeding pictures may keep
our attention in control, and here again are possibilities which are
superior to those of the solid theater stage. At the theater no effect
of formal arrangement can give exactly the same impression to the
spectators in every part of the house. The perspective of the wings and
the other settings and their relation to the persons and to the
background can never appear alike from the front and from the rear, from
the left and from the right side, from the orchestra and from the
balcony, while the picture which the camera has fixated is the same
from every corner of the picture palace. The greatest skill and
refinement can be applied to make the composition serviceable to the
needs of attention. The spectator may not and ought not to be aware that
the lines of the background, the hangings of the room, the curves of the
furniture, the branches of the trees, the forms of the mountains, help
to point toward the figure of the woman who is to hold his mind. The
shading of the lights, the patches of dark shadows, the vagueness of
some parts, the sharp outlines of others, the quietness of some parts of
the picture as against the vehement movement of others all play on the
keyboard of our mind and secure the desired effect on our involuntary
attention.

But if all is admitted, we still have not touched on the most important
and most characteristic relation of the photoplay pictures to the
attention of the audience; and here we reach a sphere in which any
comparison with the stage of the theater would be in vain. What is
attention? What are the essential processes in the mind when we turn our
attention to one face in the crowd, to one little flower in the wide
landscape? It would be wrong to describe the process in the mind by
reference to one change alone. If we have to give an account of the act
of attention, as seen by the modern psychologist, we ought to point to
several cooerdinated features. They are not independent of one another
but are closely interrelated. We may say that whatever attracts our
attention in the sphere of any sense, sight or sound, touch or smell,
surely becomes more vivid and more clear in our consciousness. This does
not at all mean that it becomes more intense. A faint light to which we
turn our attention does not become the strong light of an incandescent
lamp. No, it rema