QUESTIONS. SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS. 109 1. "The botanist sees much in a plant; the horse-dealer in a horse; the musician hears much in a piece of orchestral music, of whose presence in the sense-perception the layman has no idea. From the same story each hearer interprets something different; out of the same laws each party interprets its right; the same turn of battle is proclaimed by both armies as a victory; out of the same book of nature the different readers, men and people, have gathered the most diverse things." (Volkmann.) How would you explain these facts? 2. Account for the truth embodied in the proverb, "There are none so blind as those that won't see." 3. Account for the use of mind in the following sentence: "I can't put my mind on anything to-day." LESSON XIII. ATTENTION. (Continued.) IN the last lesson I tried to make it clear that our entire mental life is controlled by attention, in order that we may realize that the beginning of teaching is getting the attention of our pupils, and that the end of education is the developing of powers of attention, and directing those powers into right channels. An inattentive mind is an absent mind; and, as Thring remarks, a teacher "might as well stand up and solemnly set about giving a lesson to the clothes of the class, whilst the owners were playing cricket, as to the so-called class" if they were inattentive. Moreover, as the character of the mind depends upon the things it attends to and the manner in which it attends to them, evidently the object of education is to develop the power of attending to the right things in the right way. Definition of Attention. But what is attention? When you are reading an interesting book, you are scarcely conscious, if at all, of the sensations of pressure produced by your chair; carriages and wagons are clattering along the street, but you do not note them; various objects are directly before you, but you do not see them. Indeed, you are but dimly conscious of the sensations produced by the very type of the book you are reading. But the thoughts TWO KINDS OF ATTENTION. III called to your mind by your book stand out clearly and conspicuously in your consciousness every feature, as it thus emphasized and Attention, then, may were, sharply defined. The act of the mind by which certain facts in our experience are made prominent is called attention. be defined as that act of the mind by which we bring into clear consciousness any subject or object before the mind. When you say to your pupils, "Give me your attention," you mean that you want them to stop thinking of the game they played at recess, of the book they read last night, of everything except what you are saying.1 Making another study of Two Kinds of Attention. our experience, we find that there are two kinds of attention. You are reading a difficult and not very interesting book, when some one in the next room begins to sing your favorite song. You do your best to keep your attention on your book, but your mind wanders to the song in spite of you. Or you go to a lecture just after reading a letter that contained some very good news. You try to listen to the lecture, but the thought of the letter persists in dragging your mind away. In both these cases you are con 1 "Clear consciousness may be thought as the circle of those concepts experiences - upon which attention rests. Experience shows us that this circle, like the pupil of the eye, can be extended or contracted within certain rather wide limits. The greatest narrowing occurs when we concentrate our attention upon a single object — as, for example, when we become absorbed in thought, or narrowly observe an outward phenomenon; the greatest extension takes place when we widen the bounds of the narrow consciousness to its greatest extent, in which case there would be really no concentration of mind and no attention. It is apparent that the width of the circle is indirectly proportioned to the clearness of its single points-i.e., that our attention is so much the less intensive the more extensive it is."— Lindner's Psychology, p. 13. scious of two very different kinds of attention - attention depending upon the will, or voluntary attention, and attention independent of the will, or non-voluntary attention. -- We can see the difference between them more clearly, perhaps, if we bear in mind that, in the case of non-voluntary attention, there is but one thing that influences the mind the thing attended to; while in voluntary attention there are two the thing attended to and some reason or motive for attending to it. When you listen to a song. simply because you like it, you attend involuntarily; when you keep your mind fixed upon a book by an effort of will, you attend voluntarily. In the first case, there are but two things concerned - your mind and the song; in the second, there are three-your mind and the book, and some reason or motive for attending to it. In the first case, you attend because of the attraction which the song has for your mind directly; in the second, you attend not because of any attraction which the book has for your mind, but because of its relation to something else that attracts you directly, as the desire to improve. Non-voluntary attention, then, is that attention which results from the influence exerted upon the mind by the thing attended to, in and of itself; voluntary attention is that which results from the influence exerted upon the mind, not by the thing attended to, but by the knowledge of its relation to something else that attracts the mind in and of itself. Conditions of Voluntary Attention. It is evident that voluntary attention is impossible without some variety of experience and some mental development. To attend voluntarily, we must perceive relations; and to perceive relations, the mind must have had experience, and must CHILDREN AND VOLUNTARY ATTENTION. 113 be developed enough to interpret that experience. A bath may, almost from the beginning, give a child pleasant sensations. But his mind must be developed enough to perceive the relations between the preparations for his bath and the bath before the sight of the former can give him pleasure. Moreover, it is evident that the child must not only have had experience of relations in order to regard one thing as the sign of another; he must have not only some devopment of intellect to be able to connect things together, but also some development of his capacity for feeling, in order to be able to form ideas of things desirable in themselves. When the child is able to form the idea of a thing desirable in itself, and to see the connection between such a thing and something undesirable, the latter begins to be interesting because of its relation to the former the conditions of voluntary attention exist. Very Young Children Incapable of Voluntary Attention. This analysis of the circumstances under which voluntary attention is possible prepares us to anticipate what observation confirms that very young children are incapable of voluntary attention. Indeed, it seems probable that in the first days of a child's life there is no attention of any kind. Mental Life of Very Young Children. The mental life of a new-born child seems to consist of a mass of confused sensations, none of them coming into clear and distinct consciousness, because none of them are attended to. But the quality of some of its sensations, their character as pleasant or painful, causes the sensations that possess it to be emphasized in the child's experience. 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