“I don’t remember that you asked me; and who would be pert enough to think of schooling a young mother? Not I, at any rate. Don’t I know that every mother of a first child is infallible, and knows more about children than all the old doctors in creation? But, supposing you had asked me, I should have said—Get him each day to occupy himself a little longer with one plaything than he did the day before. He plucks a daisy, gurgles over it with glee, and then in an instant it drops from the nerveless grasp. Then you take it up, and with the sweet coaxings you mothers know how to employ, get him to examine it, in his infant fashion, for a minute, two minutes, three whole minutes at a time.”
“I see; fix his thoughts on one thing at a time, and for as long as you can, whether on what he sees or what he hears. You think if you go on with that sort of thing with a child from his infancy he gets accustomed to pay attention?”
“Not a doubt of it; and you may rely on it that what is called ability—a different thing from genius, mind you, or even talent—ability is simply the power of fixing the attention steadily on the matter in hand, and success in life turns upon this cultivated power far more than on any natural faculty. Lay a case before a successful barrister, an able man of business, notice how he absorbs all you say; tell your tale as ill as you like, he keeps the thread, straightens the tangle, and by the time you have finished, has the whole matter spread out in order under his mind’s eye. Now comes in talent, or genius, or what you will, to deal with the facts he has taken in. But attention is the attribute of the trained intellect, without which genius makes shots in the dark.”
“But, don’t you think attention itself is a natural faculty, or talent, or whatever we should call it?”
“Not a bit of it; it is entirely the result of training. A man may be born with some faculty or talent for figures, or drawing, or music, but attention is not a faculty at all; it is simply the power of bending such faculties as one has to the work in hand; it is a key to success within the reach of every one, but the power to turn it comes of training. Circumstances may compel a man to train himself, but he does so at the cost of great effort, and the chances are ten to one against his making the effort. For the child, on the other hand, who has been trained by his parents to fix his thoughts, all is plain sailing. He will succeed, not a doubt of it.”
“But I thought school-work, Latin and mathematics, and those sorts of things, should give this kind of intellectual training?”
“They should; but it’s the merest chance whether the right spring is touched, and from what you say of Fred’s school-work, I should say it was not touched in his case. ’Tis incredible how much solid learning a boy will contrive to let slip by him instead of into him! No; I’m afraid you must tackle the difficulty yourself. It would be a thousand pities to let a fine fellow like Fred run to waste.”
“What can I do?”
“Well, we must begin where we are; Fred can attend, and therefore remember: and he remembers what interests him. Now, to return to your question, How are you to make a message to Mrs. Milner as interesting to him as the affairs of his cricket club? There is no interest in the thing itself; you must put interest into it from without. There are a hundred ways of doing this: try one, and when that is used up, turn to another. Only, with a boy of Fred’s age, you cannot form the habit of attention as you could with a child. You can only aid and abet; give the impulse; the training he must do for himself.”
“Make it a little plainer, doctor; I have not yet reduced your remarks to the practical level of something I can do.”