The schoolboy must struggle to keep his mind on such uninteresting things as the alphabet. Later he may become a literary man and find that nothing attracts his attention so quickly as printed symbols. In commercial arithmetic the boy labors to fix his attention on dollar signs and problems involving profit and loss. Launched in business, <p 112> however, these things may attract him more than a football game. It is the outcome of previous application that we now attend without effort to many things in our civilization which differ from those of more primitive life. Such attention without effort is known as _*secondary passive attention_. Examples are furnished by the geologist's attention to the strata of the earth, the historian's to original manuscripts, the manufacturer's to by-products, the merchant's to distant customers, and the attention which we all give to printed symbols and scores of other things unnoticed by our distant ancestors. Here our attention is similar to passive attention, though the latter was the result of inheritance, while our secondary passive attention results from our individual efforts and is the product of our training. Through passive attention my concentration upon a ``castle in Spain'' may be perfect until destroyed by a fly on my nose. Voluntary attention may make my concentration upon the duty at hand entirely satisfactory <p 113> till dissipated by some one entering my office. Secondary passive attention fixes my mind upon the adding of a column of figures, and it may be distracted by a commotion in my vicinity. Thus concentration produced by any form of attention is easily destroyed by a legion of possible disturbances. If I desire to increase my concentration to the maximum, I must remove every possible cause of distraction. _Organized society has recognized the hindering effect of some distractions and has made halting attempts to abolish them_. Thus locomotives are prohibited from sounding whistles within city limits, but power plants are permitted by noise and smoke to annoy every citizen in the vicinity. Street cars are forbidden to use flat wheels, but are still allowed to run on the surface or on a resounding structure and thus become a public nuisance. Steam calliopes, newsboys, street venders, and other unnecessary sources of noise are still tolerated.