Part 2 (1/2)
THE WILL AND VOLUNTARY ATTENTION--In voluntary attention there is a conflict either between the will and interest or between the will and the mental inertia or laziness, which has to be overcoree of concentration Interest says, ”Follow this line, which is easy and attractive, or which requires but little effort--follow the line of least resistance” Will says, ”Quit that line of dalliance and ease, and take this harder hich I direct--cease the line of least resistance and take the one of greatest resistance”
When day dreams and ”castles in Spain” attempt to lure you froabond thoughts and stick to your task When intellectual inertia deadens your thought and clogs your mental strea or ihts seek entrance to your hts of desire try to drive out thoughts of duty, be heroic and insist that thoughts of duty shall have right of way In short, see that _you_ are the , and do not let it always be directed without your consent by influences outside of yourself
It is just at this point that the strong ins victory and the ill breaks down Between the ability to control one's thoughts and the inability to control the actions; betithstanding te to it; between an inefficient purposeless life and a life of purpose and endeavor; between success and failure For we act in accordance with those things which our thought rests upon Suppose two lines of thought represented by _A_ and _B_, respectively, lie before you; that _A_ leads to a course of action difficult or unpleasant, but necessary to success or duty, and that _B_ leads to a course of action easy or pleasant, but fatal to success or duty Which course will you follow--the rugged path of duty or the easier one of pleasure? The answer depends almost wholly, if not entirely, on your power of attention If your will is strong enough to pull your thoughts away from the fatal but attractive _B_ and hold them resolutely on the less attractive _A_, then _A_ will dictate your course of action, and you will respond to the call for endeavor, self-denial, and duty; but if your thoughts break away fro of your interests alone, then _B_ will dictate your course of action, and you will follow the leading of ease and pleasure _For our actions are finally and irrevocably dictated by the things we think about_
NOT REALLY DIFFERENT KINDS OF ATTENTION--It is not to be understood, however, from what has been said, that there are _really_ different kinds of attention All attention denotes an active or dynamic phase of consciousness The difference is rather _in the e secure attention_; whether it is de objects of thought without effort on our part, or co and take the direction which we dictate
6 IMPROVING THE POWER OF ATTENTION
While attention is no doubt partly a natural gift, yet there is probably no power of thethan is attention And with attention, as with every other power of body and mind, the secret of its development lies in its use Stated briefly, the only way to train attention is by attending No a can take the place of practice in the actual process of attending
MAKING DIFFERENT KINDS OF ATTENTION REeNFORCE EACH OTHER--A very close relationshi+p and interdependence exists between nonvoluntary and voluntary attention It would be impossible to hold our attention by sheer force of will on objects which were forever devoid of interest; likewise the blind following of our interests and desires would finally lead to shi+pwreck in all our lives Each kind of attention must support and reenforce the other The lessons, the sermons, the lectures, and the books in which we are most interested, and hence to which we attend nonvoluntarily and with the least effort and fatigue, are the ones out of which, other things being equal, we get the est On the other hand, there are sos besides, which are not intensely interesting, but which should be attended to nevertheless It is at this point that the will th to do this, it is in so far a ill, and steps should be taken to develop it We are to ”_keep the faculty of effort alive in us by a little gratuitous exercise every day_” We are to be systematically heroic in the little points of everyday life and experience We are not to shrink from tasks because they are difficult or unpleasant Then, when the test comes, we shall not find ourselves unnerved and untrained, but shall be able to stand in the evil day
THE HABIT OF ATTENTION--Finally, one of the chief things in training the attention is _to for_ This habit is to be for to do is to attend, whether ”in work, in play, infor an exa a book” The lesson, or the ser; but if they are to be attended to at all, our rule should be to attend to them co away and now jerking ourselves back, but _all the time_
And, furthermore, the one ill deliberately do this will often find the dull and uninteresting task beco, he is at least forh life On the other hand, the one who fails to attend except when his interest is captured, who never exerts effort to co a habit which will be the bane of his thinking until his streaht shall end
7 PROBLEMS IN OBSERVATION AND INTROSPECTION
1 Which fatigues you ive attention of the nonvoluntary type, or the voluntary? Which can you ive? Under which can you acco?
2 Try to follow for one or two minutes the ”wave” in your consciousness, and then describe the course taken by your attention
3 Have you observed one class alert in attention, and another lifeless and inattentive? Can you explain the causes lying back of this difference? Estimate the relative amount of work accomplished under the two conditions
4 What distractions have you observed in the schoolroo to break up attention?
5 Have you seen pupils inattentive froe, (2) pure air, (3) enthusiasue, (5) ill health?
6 Have you noticed a difference in the _habit_ of attention in different pupils? Have you noticed the sa for whole schools or rooiven to daydrea? Are you?
8 Have you seen a teacher rap the desk for attention? What type of attention was secured? Does it pay?
9 Have you observed any instance in which pupils' lack of attention should be blamed on the teacher? If so, as the fault? The remedy?
10 Visit a school room or a recitation, and then write an account of the types and degrees of attention you observed Try to explain the factors responsible for any failures in attention, and also those responsible for the good attention shown
CHAPTER III
THE BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM
A fine brain, or a good eably, as if they stood for the sa Yet the brain is material substance--sosome three pounds and shut away from the outside world in a casket of bone The --the sum of the processes by which we think and feel and will,our destiny