It is quite different with the involuntary attention.  The guiding influence here comes from without.  The cue for the focusing of our attention lies in the events which we perceive.  What is loud and shining and unusual attracts our involuntary attention.  We must turn our mind to a place where an explosion occurs, we must read the glaring electric signs which flash up.  To be sure, the perceptions which force themselves on our involuntary attention may get their motive power from our own reactions.  Everything which appeals to our natural instincts, everything which stirs up hope or fear, enthusiasm or indignation, or any strong emotional excitement will get control of our attention.  But in spite of this circuit through our emotional responses the starting point lies without and our attention is accordingly of the involuntary type.  In our daily activity voluntary and involuntary attention are always intertwined.  Our life is a great compromise between that which our voluntary attention aims at and that which the aims of the surrounding world force on our involuntary attention.

How does the theater performance differ in this respect from life?  Might we not say that voluntary attention is eliminated from the sphere of art and that the audience is necessarily following the lead of an attention which receives all its cues from the work of art itself and which therefore acts involuntarily?  To be sure, we may approach a theater performance with a voluntary purpose of our own.  For instance, we may be interested in a particular actor and may watch him with our opera glass all the time whenever he is on the stage, even in scenes in which his role is insignificant and in which the artistic interest ought to belong to the other actors.  But such voluntary selection has evidently nothing to do with the theater performance as such.  By such behavior we break the spell in which the artistic drama ought to hold us.  We disregard the real shadings of the play and by mere personal side interests put emphasis where it does not belong.  If we really enter into the spirit of the play, our attention is constantly drawn in accordance with the intentions of the producers.

Surely the theater has no lack of means to draw this involuntary attention to any important point.  To begin with, the actor who speaks holds our attention more strongly than the actors who at that time are silent.  Yet the contents of the words may direct our interest to anybody else on the stage.  We watch him whom the words accuse, or betray or delight.  But the mere interest springing from words cannot in the least explain that constantly shifting action of our involuntary attention during a theater performance.  The movements of the actors are essential.  The pantomime without words can take the place of the drama and still appeal to us with overwhelming power.  The actor who comes to the foreground of the stage is at once in the foreground of our consciousness.