Thought-Culture

ness upon some object of thought presented or represented to the mind. In some respects it bears a resemblance to Abstraction, inasmuch as it sets aside some particular object for the consi

hat is an act of concentration, seems thus necessary to every exertion of consciousness, as a certain contraction of the pupil is requisite to every exertion of vision.... Attention then is to consc

l habit that I know of is the habit of attending exclusively to the matter in hand.... It is commonly said that genius cannot be infused by education, yet this power of concentrated attention, which belongs as a part of his gift to every

of the attention, but the student will also acquire a facility for accomplishing his tasks quickly and thoroughly. As Kay says: "There is nothing that contributes more to success in any pursuit than that of having the attention concentrated on the matter in hand; and, on the contrary, nothing is more detrimental than when doing one thing to have the mind taken up with something else." And as Granville says: "A frequent cause of failure in the faculty of attention is striving to think of more than one thing at a time." Kay also well says: "If we would possess the po

application of the attention hav

ore readily to interesting

s a variation in the stimulus, either by a change of obje

nvarying object, may be revived by directing it toward some new obje

e objects. Thus, it has its positive and negative sides. Thus, when a man wishes to give his undivided attention to one speaker in a crowd of spea

but a means of using any faculty wi

ted attention is usually greatly developed. Brooks says: "Attention is one of the principal elements of genius." Hamilton says: "Genius is a higher capacity of attention." Helvetius sa

The way to exercise the attention is to use it frequently in every-day life. If you are listening to a man speaking, endeavor to give to him your undivided attention, and, at the same time, to shut out from your consciousness every other object. In working, w

h more than hours of careless reading so far as the cultivation of the attention is concerned. Mathematics is most valuable in the direction of developing the power of attention. Gibbon

her sounds, giving the whole attention to the particular speaker; or, in the same manner, selecting one singer in a church choir or band of singers; or one musical instrument in an orc

its notes exclusively followed." And as Taylor says: "In a concert of several voices, the voices being of nearly equal intensity, regarded merely as organic impressions on the auditory nerve, we select one, and at will we lift out and disjoin it from the general volume of sound; we shut off the other

s different parts individually by itself if we would obtain a clear idea of it. We can only obtain a full and complete knowledge of an object by analyzing it and concentrating the attention upon its different parts, one by one." Reid says: "It is not by the senses immediately, but rather by the power of analyzing and abstraction, that we get the most simple and the most distinct notions of objects of sense." And, as Brown says: "It is scarcely possible to advance even a single step in intellectual physics without the necessity of per

g the cultivation of the various faculties, are also adapted to the development of the attention, for the latter is brought in