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Page 26
One often hears it said that genius is nothing but a power of sustained
attention, and the popular impression probably prevails that men of
genius are remarkable for their voluntary powers in this direction. _But
a little introspective observation will show any one that voluntary
attention cannot be continuously sustained,--that it comes in beats._
When we are studying an uninteresting subject, if our mind tends to
wander, we have to bring back our attention every now and then by using
distinct pulses of effort, which revivify the topic for a moment, the
mind then running on for a certain number of seconds or minutes with
spontaneous interest, until again some intercurrent idea captures it and
takes it off. Then the processes of volitional recall must be repeated
once more. Voluntary attention, in short, is only a momentary affair.
The process, whatever it is, exhausts itself in the single act; and,
unless the matter is then taken in hand by some trace of interest
inherent in the subject, the mind fails to follow it at all. The
sustained attention of the genius, sticking to his subject for hours
together, is for the most part of the passive sort. The minds of
geniuses are full of copious and original associations. The subject of
thought, once started, develops all sorts of fascinating consequences.
The attention is led along one of these to another in the most
interesting manner, and the attention never once tends to stray away.
In a commonplace mind, on the other hand, a subject develops much less
numerous associates: it dies out then quickly; and, if the man is to
keep up thinking of it at all, he must bring his attention back to it by
a violent wrench. In him, therefore, the faculty of voluntary attention
receives abundant opportunity for cultivation in daily life. It is your
despised business man, your common man of affairs, (so looked down on by
the literary awarders of fame) whose virtue in this regard is likely to
be most developed; for he has to listen to the concerns of so many
uninteresting people, and to transact so much drudging detail, that the
faculty in question is always kept in training. A genius, on the
contrary, is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of
attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself. He breaks his
engagements, leaves his letters unanswered, neglects his family duties
incorrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his attention down and
back from those more interesting trains of imagery with which his genius
constantly occupies his mind.
Voluntary attention is thus an essentially instantaneous affair. You can
claim it, for your purposes in the schoolroom, by commanding it in loud,
imperious tones; and you can easily get it in this way. But, unless the
subject to which you thus recall their attention has inherent power to
interest the pupils, you will have got it for only a brief moment; and
their minds will soon be wandering again. To keep them where you have
called them, you must make the subject too interesting for them to
wander again. And for that there is one prescription; but the
prescription, like all our prescriptions, is abstract, and, to get
practical results from it, you must couple it with mother-wit.
The prescription is that _the subject must be made to show new aspects
of itself; to prompt new questions; in a word, to change_. From an
unchanging subject the attention inevitably wanders away. You can test
this by the simplest possible case of sensorial attention. Try to
attend steadfastly to a dot on the paper or on the wall. You presently
find that one or the other of two things has happened: either your field
of vision has become blurred, so that you now see nothing distinct at
all, or else you have involuntarily ceased to look at the dot in
question, and are looking at something else. But, if you ask yourself
successive questions about the dot,--how big it is, how far, of what
shape, what shade of color, etc.; in other words, if you turn it over,
if you think of it in various ways, and along with various kinds of
associates,--you can keep your mind on it for a comparatively long time.
This is what the genius does, in whose hands a given topic coruscates
and grows. And this is what the teacher must do for every topic if he
wishes to avoid too frequent appeals to voluntary attention of the
coerced sort. In all respects, reliance upon such attention as this is a
wasteful method, bringing bad temper and nervous wear and tear as well
as imperfect results. The teacher who can get along by keeping
spontaneous interest excited must be regarded as the teacher with the
greatest skill.
There is, however, in all schoolroom work a large mass of material that
must be dull and unexciting, and to which it is impossible in any
continuous way to contribute an interest associatively derived. There
are, therefore, certain external methods, which every teacher knows, of
voluntarily arousing the attention from time to time and keeping it upon
the subject. Mr. Fitch has a lecture on the art of securing attention,
and he briefly passes these methods in review; the posture must be
changed; places can be changed. Questions, after being answered singly,
may occasionally be answered in concert. Elliptical questions may be
asked, the pupil supplying the missing word. The teacher must pounce
upon the most listless child and wake him up. The habit of prompt and
ready response must be kept up. Recapitulations, illustrations,
examples, novelty of order, and ruptures of routine,--all these are
means for keeping the attention alive and contributing a little interest
to a dull subject. Above all, the teacher must himself be alive and
ready, and must use the contagion of his own example.
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