Miss —— gave the C class a lesson in Elocution. She is a very energetic teacher, and manifests a deep interest in her pupils—hence, her success. A visitor would have inferred from her manner, that she was the permanent teacher, not a mere substitute for a passing hour. Teaching average, 100.
XXVI.
ATTENTION AS A MENTAL FACULTY, AND AS A MEANS OF MENTAL CULTURE.
The illustrations which first led to a satisfactory elucidation of the subject, were drawn from the eye. There are many facts in the history of vision, which show that we may experience sensations and perceptions and other intellectual operations, and may at the time be conscious of the same, without giving them any attention, or, at least, without giving them such a degree of attention as to have the slightest recollection of them afterwards.
When, for instance, we read a printed book, the eye glances so rapidly from sentence to sentence, that we can hardly persuade ourselves that we actually see successively every letter. We certainly have no recollection of having gone through such an innumerable train of conscious acts as the theory necessarily implies. That such, however, is the case, is proved by the fact, that if by accident any letter is omitted, or transposed, or put upside down, the eye at once detects the mistake. The fact is familiar to all. It can be accounted for only on the supposition that, even in the rapid and cursory perusal of a book, the eye actually passes from letter to letter, and gives to each a distinct notice. It not only notices each letter, but the position of each in reference to the other letters in the line, and even those nice diacritical points by which one letter is distinguished from another, as c from e, u from n, b from d, p from q. This notice, however, is so slight, the transition is so rapid, that we have no recollection of it afterwards, and we can hardly persuade ourselves that such has been the sober and yet most wonderful fact.
Take another instance. If, on the occasion of an evening assemblage, by a sudden movement of the gas-pipe, any one should instantly extinguish all the lights in the room and leave the building for a time in total darkness, and if, by an equally sudden movement, he should then restore the light to its previous condition, every one present would notice the change and have a distinct recollection of it afterwards. Yet, every time we close our eyes in winking, that is, several times in every minute of our waking hours, we experience precisely this change from full and perfect vision to total darkness. But no one ever notices or remembers the fact of his winking, unless he stops to make it the subject of special attention.
Sight however is not the only means of illustrating this point. We are drawn to a similar conclusion by observing the workings of the mind itself, in the act of volition. Whenever we make any single volition an object of special attention, we are conscious of that volition, and we have a distinct recollection of it afterwards. Yet probably not one out of ten thousand, possibly not one out of a million, of our simple volitions, is ever known to us after the moment of its occurrence. In voluntary muscular action, every distinct movement requires a distinct volition. And how innumerable are the movements necessary to the accomplishment of any one of the ordinary purposes of life! We sit down for example to write a letter to a friend. The nimble pen dances from point to point over the darkening page, and when we reach the bottom, we have not the least recollection of having willed any one of those countless muscular movements which have been necessary to what, but for its every-day occurrence, would be accounted the greatest feat of legerdemain ever performed by man!
Take for example the act of reading aloud. Every letter requires for its utterance at least one distinct muscular contraction. Some letters require several. Now it has been found on trial that we are able to pronounce more than a thousand letters in a minute. That is, during every minute that we are reading aloud, we perform between one and two thousand distinct muscular movements, and by necessity a like number of antecedent acts of the will, to say nothing of those other acts, not less numerous in the case of a speaker, connected with the general movement of the body in earnest gesticulation. Yet after the hour's performance, what does the speaker or the reader remember of all these countless volitions? Nothing but the one general purpose to please, instruct, or persuade an audience.
The conclusion, toward which these illustrations point, is objected to by some writers, on the ground of the incredible rapidity which it attributes to our intellectual operations. Is it possible, it is asked, that we can crowd into such a space of time so many acts of the will, and that we are, at the moment when each happens, conscious of its presence? Is it not more probable that these rapid muscular actions are resolvable, in some way, into the law of habit? May they not become in some sense mechanical and automatic, so as to require no intervention of the will? Take for example, the case of a person learning to play upon a musical instrument. The first step is to move the fingers from key to key with a slow motion, looking at the notes, and exerting an express act of volition at every note. By degrees, however, the motions somehow cling to each other, and to the impressions of the notes, in the way of associations, the acts of volition all the while growing less and less express, until at last they become quite evanescent and imperceptible. An expert will play from notes or from memory, and with a rapidity of motion that is perfectly bewildering, while at the same time he himself is carrying on quite a different train of thoughts in his mind, or even perhaps holding a conversation with another. Hence, it is concluded, by the writers referred to, that in these cases there is really no intervention of that idea or state of the mind called will.
The authorities for this hypothesis are among the highest that can be named in the history of intellectual science. Let us see how far the hypothesis explains the facts of the case. The most rapid performer, it is obvious, can at any time retard his execution, until his movements become so slow that each one may be made, as originally it was made, the subject of special attention, and may be distinctly remembered afterwards. Now, according to the hypothesis proposed, we will our actions, and are conscious both of the act, and the antecedent volition, so long as their rapidity is confined to a certain rate; but, as soon as the rapidity exceeds that rate, the operation is taken out of our hands, and is carried on by some unknown power, of which we know no more than we do of the circulation of the blood, or of the systole and diastole of the heart! Such a supposition is about as reasonable as it would be to say that a projectile passes through the intermediate space, when it is thrown with such a moderate degree of velocity that we can see it, in its progress; but, when it is thrown with such velocity as to become invisible, it ceases to pass through the intermediate space, and reaches the goal only because projectiles have the habit of doing so!