CHAPTER V.

ATTENTION.

The mind acmerely pas

tive, and not

sive.

Meaning of

Up to this point the soul has been regarded as scarcely more than the passive recipient of impressions made upon it, and the spontaneous interpreter of these impressions. But the mind is an active power, and in the acquisition of knowledge it must be continually putting forth its energies. It is true, the mind must be first affected before it comes into action. But to the calls to action it ordinarily responds with great readiness. When any new state of mind exists, Attention is aroused. By this we mean a attention. voluntary directing of the energy of the mind towards an object or act. It has not usually been treated as a distinct faculty, but as a general power of the mind subsidiary to all the faculties. As intimated, it implies action, and is a matter of volition. In the great mass of objects and qualities that come under our observations, we are scarcely, or perhaps not at all, conscious of giving any attention. We pass along the street; we walk without thought, and apparently automatically. That is, the walking seems to do itself. Still we are really paying more attention to our steps than we seem to be. If there is an unexpected obstacle, or a muddy spot, or a rough place, how quickly we observe it, and how readily avoid it, as if we had been on the alert all the while. So during the walk, if in a

great city thoroughfare, we meet hundreds of men and women, many of whom we do not seem to see, yet if one of our acquaintances is in the crowd, the readiness with which we recognize him shows that we have been paying some sort of attention to faces all the time.

There is a great variety in the degrees of attention which we give to a subject. Sometimes, as has been shown, there is very little, and yet enough to recog

Difference in the degrees of attention.

any

nize at once any change in the general view, or unusual individual in a series. We sometimes, as Dr. Upham says, judge of the degree of attention paid to an object by the length of time one devotes to it. But, as he also says, it is more likely to be the case that we give the more time because our attention is aroused.

Difficulties

There are many people who find it very difficult to fix their attention for any length of time on any one thing, especially if they have to depend on mere force of fixing of will. Many others find no difficulty in givattention. ing their attention, if the subject interests them sufficiently. The causes of this interest are various; curiosity, hope of good news, or even fear of bad news, pleasure in the subject itself, expectation of result in a scientific experiment, and a hundred others. Some persons become so absorbed that everything else vanishes. from the mind, and the whole force of the soul bends itself to one point. Mathematicians have been known to solve the most abstruse and complicated problems with every variety and character of disturbance about them. "The man who can fix his attention, without allowing it a single excursion for five consecutive minutes, with or without the schools, is a liberally educated man.” 1

1 Superintendent Northrup.

1

more than

It is a question which has been much discussed, whether the mind can attend to more than one thing at a time. Some have strenuously maintained the nega- Can the mind tive. At one time I so held. But I am now attend to inclined to the opinion that we may have more one thing at than one object of thought at a given instant. a time? It is no doubt true that what sometimes seems to be the presence of two or more simultaneous ideas, is only their rapid alternation. The intense quickness with which the mind acts may leave intervals too small to be Apparently discerned, and what appears to be a mere punc- simultaneous ideas really tum temporis may yet be capable of several rapid alterdivisions. It might thus appear possible that nation. by intensely rapid movement or change the mind may go from one of these infinitesimal intervals to another, or from the thought occurring in one to that in another, in such a way as to make several mental acts appear

as one.

But Sir William Hamilton seems to have made it tolerably clear that the mind must sometimes attend to more than one thing at a time, and that without this Hamilton's view of the subject it is impossible to explain views. many phenomena. Thus, for instance, where anything is made up of small parts which must be combined by an action of the mind, as in a picture, these several points must be taken in simultaneously, or the effect is not produced. If it is said we take them all at a time, one disappearing as another appears, and in bringing them together we depend on memory, this would only shift the difficulty. It would be just as much a case of attention to two things if one of the things were a representation of memory as if they were both presentations of

outward or of inward perceptions. It would also, as Hamilton thinks, be impossible to comprehend Harmony in music. harmony in music if only one sound were present to the mind in the same indivisible instant of time; since harmony involves a multiplicity of different tones. If we resort to memory for an explanation, we have the same difficulty as pointed out just now in the case of the picture, only more palpable here. In short, we shall find that in every case in which judgment, or even comparison, is called for and there are few acts of the mind in which this is not the case there must be two objects or ideas present at the same time.

How many things can

the mind attend to at once ?

The question arises as to how many things the mind can attend to at the same time. Sir William Hamilton and others limit the number to about six as the extreme limit. It is probable that it is only in rare cases of rare minds that the attention can be so much diffused. It is probable that it can be bestowed upon two or three, and sometimes four things simultaneously. But it is admitted by those who hold this doctrine that the intensity of the attention is inversely as the number of objects, that it would be impossible to bestow the same amount of attention upon each of three or four objects simultaneously present as upon one of them by itself.

There are many illustrations, both of power of concentration which some men have possessed, and of the possible Remarkable plurality of simultaneous objects of attention. instances of It is said that Julius Cæsar, while writing a despatch, could at the same time dictate four others to his secretaries, and if he did not write himself, could dictate seven letters at once. But this was before

power of concentra

tion.

the invention of the modern shorthand! Napoleon had the same wonderful power of directing his whole mental energy to one point, and of rapidly shifting it to another.

acts of the

I have spoken of attention as being voluntary, and therefore involving acts of the will. This, perhaps, needs considerable modification. There are undoubtedly Attention as very many instances in which attention is invol- involving untary, when it is compelled sometimes contrary will. to the desire of the individual. A vivid flash of lightning, the sudden discharge of a gun near one, any extraordinary spectacle, either attractive by its sometimes beauty, or repulsive by its deformity, any un- compelled. natural, or perilous, or magnificent, or revolting, object of vision, or event, is likely to command the attention.

Attention

most part unthe will.

der control of

For the most part, however, the attention, even when not the result of a direct effort of the will, is so far under the control of the will that it may be withheld But for the from an object towards which it would otherwise spontaneously go forth. But there is also a kind of attention which is the direct product of the will. The mind is sometimes compelled by itself to attend to things to which it is naturally averse. Here there is a positive effort of the mind for this purpose. Only minds of unusual power can put forth this effort in certain cases for any considerable length of time.

Hamilton has the following concerning the three degrees or kinds of attention: "The first is a mere vital and irresistible act; the second, an act determined by Hamilton's desire, which, though involuntary, may be re- three degrees sisted by our will; the third, an act determined by deliberate volition."

of attention.

We have all along been considering attention as the con