that "enjoyment, immediate and incessant, is a primary vocation of the infant mind." "In the Two Causes of Non-voluntary Attention. presence of the more enjoyable, the less enjoyable is disregarded." "Attention lasts so long as enjoyment lasts, and no longer." So far as a child is under the influence of pleasure alone, these statements are true without qualification. But pain has fully as strong a hold on attention as pleasure. Moreover, as the same author remarks, "Intensity of sensation, whether pleasant or not, is a power." A bright light, a loud noise, "take the attention by storm." But in considering the effect of intensity of sensations upon attention, we must bear in mind that the greater their relative intensity — the greater, in other words, the contrast between the sensation and the other experiences of the child the stronger will be its influence in attracting his attention. A remark made in an ordinary tone, for example, when it breaks in upon absolute stillness, will attract attention more strongly than one made in a very loud tone in the midst of noise and confusion. - Under the influence of these two causes - the quality of sensations or their character as pleasurable or painful and their intensity, absolute and relative, the child's power of attention develops with wonderful rapidity. As long as he is capable only of non-voluntary attention, he is at the mercy of his impressions. As the course of a stream depends upon the slope of the ground, so the direction of his attention depends upon the attractiveness of his sensations. 1 Bain's Education as a Science, p. 179. POWER OF VOLUNTARY ATTENTION. 115 How the Power of Voluntary Attention is Developed. - But the exercise of non-voluntary attention develops the power to attend voluntarily. Every exercise of non-voluntary attention makes that kind of attention easier. Sensations less and less intense-sensations whose pleasurable or painful character is less and less pronounced - have power to attract it, in accordance with the universal law of the mind that exercise develops power. While the child's power of non-voluntary attention is in this way increasing, his growing experience is leading him to form ideas of things he desires, and to perceive the relation between the things that give him pleasure and the means of gratifying his desires. When this relation is clearly perceived, all the conditions of voluntary attention exist. Probably the first exercise of distinctively voluntary attention usually occurs when the child is from three to six months old. Experiment upon a Child. Professor Preyer reports an instructive experiment made by Professor Lindner upon his little daughter, twenty-six weeks old, which experiment proves conclusively that the child was exercising voluntary attention: "While the child, at this age, was taking milk as she lay in the cradle, the bottle took such a slant that she could not get anything to suck. She now tried to direct the bottle with her feet, and finally raised it by means of them so dexterously that she could drink conveniently. This action was manifestly no imitation; it can not have depended upon a mere accident; for when, at the next feeding, the bottle is purposely so placed that the child can not get anything without the help of hands or feet, the same performance takes place as before. Then, on the following day, when the child drinks in the same way, I prevent her from doing so by removing her feet from the bottle, but she at once makes use of them again as regulators for the flow of the milk, as dexterously and surely as if the feet were made on purpose for such use. If it follows from this that the child acts with deliberation long before it uses language in the proper sense, it also appears how imperfect and crude the deliberation is, for my child drank her milk in this awkward fashion for three whole months, until she at last made the discovery one day that, after all, the hands are much better adapted to service of this sort. I had given strict orders to those about her to let her make this advance of herself." What the Experiment Proves. We must not forget to note that the conditions of voluntary attention were completely fulfilled in this case, and that it was only through this that the child's action was possible. If the child had not known by experience the relation between certain movements and the effects of those movements, she would not have been able to attend to those movements in themselves uninteresting in order to get hold of her bottle. And if her experience had not enabled her to form an idea of her bottle as a thing that gave her pleasure, it would not have been possible for her to fix her attention upon certain movements as a means of experiencing that pleasure. QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT. 1. Why is it so important for you to know the conditions of attention? 2. Illustrate and define the two kinds of attention. QUESTIONS. 3. State and illustrate the conditions of voluntary attention. 117 4. Show that these conditions can not be fulfilled in the case of a very young child. 5. Describe as clearly as you can the consciousness of a newborn child. 6. What are the two causes of non-voluntary attention in a child's experience? 7. Show how the conditions of voluntary attention are gradually developed. 8. Analyze the voluntary attention exercised by Prof. Lindner's child for the purpose of showing that the conditions of voluntary attention were fulfilled. SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS. 1. Account for the miser's love of money. 2. Account for the knowledge of Prof. Lindner's child. 3. Make a study of any children you know of from two or three months to six or seven years of age in order to ascertain (1) the kind of objects that attract their non-voluntary attention; and (2) the lines of interests that control their voluntary attention after they are capable of exercising it. 4. President G. Stanley Hall says: "It is a striking fact that nearly every great teacher in the history of education who has spoken words that have been heeded has lived for years in the closest personal relations to children, and has had the sympathy and tact that gropes out, if it can not see clearly, the laws of juvenile development and lines of childish interests." (a) Who are some of the great teachers of whom he speaks? (6) In what way do you think their personal relations to children were helpful to them? (c) Do you know any important educational questions that can be best solved by a careful and systematic study of children? (d) Why is it important to know the "laws of juvenile development"? (e) Why the lines of childish interests? 5. Prof. Preyer's child gazed steadily at his own image in the glass when he was about four months old. Was that a case of voluntary attention? LESSON XIV. ATTENTION. (Continued.) COMPAYRE says that the way to teach the child to be attentive is to supply the conditions of attention. Nothing can be truer. But in order to do this, as he remarks, we need to know what the conditions of attention are. To ascertain the conditions of non-voluntary attention was the object of the last lesson. We did, indeed, confine our investigations to the first years of childhood; but, as G. Stanley Hall remarks, "the living, playing, learning child. . . embodies a truly elementary Psychology." If, then, we were right in concluding that the two laws of non-voluntary attention—the two conditions upon which it depends in childhood are the pleasurable or painful character of the child's experiences, and their intensity, we have reason to hope that we know the conditions that we need to supply in order to get non-voluntary attention, no matter what grade of pupils we are dealing with. Universal Condition of Non-voluntary Attention. I think we shall be quite sure of this if, pursuing our usual course, we make a study of our own experience and the experience of those about us. Why do you find it easier to listen to a speaker when you can see him than when |