It is of consequence to distinguish between slow and sluggish attention. Sometimes children appear stupid and heavy, when they are absolutely exhausted by too great efforts of attention: at other times, they have something like the same dulness of aspect, before they have had any thing to fatigue them, merely from their not having yet awakened themselves to business. We must be certain of our pupil's state of mind before we proceed. If he be incapacitated from fatigue, let him rest; if he be torpid, rouse him with a rattling peal of thunder; but be sure that you have not, as it has been said of Jupiter,[21] recourse to your thunder only when you are in the wrong. Some preceptors scold when they cannot explain, and grow angry in proportion to the fatigue they see expressed in the countenance of their unhappy pupils. If a timid child foresees that an explanation will probably end in a phillipic, he cannot fix his attention; he is anticipating the evil of your anger, instead of listening to your demonstrations; and he says, "Yes, yes, I see, I know, I understand," with trembling eagerness, whilst through the mist and confusion of his fears, he can scarcely see or hear, much less understand, any thing. If you mistake the confusion and fatigue of terror for inattention or indolence, and press your pupil to further exertions, you will confirm, instead of curing, his stupidity. You must diminish his fear before you can increase his attention. With children who are thus, from timid anxiety to please, disposed to exert their faculties too much, it is obvious that no excitation should be used, but every playful, every affectionate means should be employed to dissipate their apprehensions.
It is more difficult to manage with those who have sluggish, than with those who have timid, attention. Indolent children have not usually so lively a taste for pleasure as others have; they do not seem to hear or see so quickly; they are content with a little enjoyment; they have scarcely any ambition; they seem to prefer ease to all sorts of glory; they have little voluntary exertion; and the pain of attention is to them so great, that they would preferably endure the pain of shame, and of all the accumulated punishments which are commonly devised for them by the vengeance of their exasperated tutors. Locke notices this listless, lazy humour in children; he classes it under the head "Sauntering;" and he divides saunterers into two species; those who saunter only at their books and tasks; and those who saunter at play and every thing. The book-saunterers have only an acute, the others have a chronic disease; the one is easily cured, the other disease will cost more time and pains.
If, by some unlucky management, a vivacious child acquires a dislike to literary application, he may appear at his books with all the stupid apathy of a dunce. In this state of literary dereliction, we should not force books and tasks of any sort upon him; we should rather watch him when he is eager at amusements of his own selection, observe to what his attention turns, and cultivate his attention upon that subject, whatever it may be. He may be led to think, and to acquire knowledge upon a variety of subjects, without sitting down to read; and thus he may form habits of attention and application, which will be associated with pleasure. When he returns to books, he will find that he understands a variety of things in them which before appeared incomprehensible; they will "give him back the image of his mind," and he will like them as he likes pictures.
As long as a child shows energy upon any occasion, there is hope. If he "lend his little soul"[22] to whipping a top, there is no danger of his being a dunce. When Alcibiades was a child, he was one day playing at dice with other boys in the street; a loaded waggon came up just as it was his turn to throw. At first he called to the driver to stop, but the waggoner would not stop his horses; all the boys, except Alcibiades, ran away, but Alcibiades threw himself upon his face, directly before the horses, and stretching himself out, bid the waggoner drive on if he pleased. Perhaps, at the time when he showed this energy about a game at dice, Alcibiades might have been a saunterer at his book, and a foolish schoolmaster might have made him a dunce.
Locke advises that children, who are too much addicted to what is called play, should be surfeited with it, that they may return to business with a better appetite. But this advice supposes that play has been previously interdicted, or that it is something pernicious: we have endeavoured to show that play is nothing but a change of employment, and that the attention may be exercised advantageously upon a variety of subjects which are not called Tasks.[23]
With those who show chronic listlessness, Locke advises that we should use every sort of stimulus; praise, amusement, fine clothes, eating; any thing that will make them bestir themselves. He argues, that as there appears a deficiency of vigour, we have no reason to fear excess of appetite for any of these things: nay, further still, where none of these will act, he advises compulsory bodily exercise. If we cannot, he says, make sure of the invisible attention of the mind, we may at least get something done, prevent the habit of total idleness, and perhaps make the children desire to exchange labour of body for labour of mind. These expedients will, we fear, be found rather palliative than effectual; if, by forcing children to bodily exercise, that becomes disagreeable, they may prefer labour of the mind; but, in making this exchange, or bargain, they are sensible that they choose the least of two evils. The evil of application is diminished only by comparison in their estimation; they will avoid it whenever they are at liberty. The love of eating, of fine clothes, &c. if they stimulate a slothful child, must be the ultimate object of his exertions; he will consider the performance of his task merely as a painful condition on his part. Still the association of pain with literature continues; it is then impossible that he should love it. There is no active principle within him, no desire for knowledge excited; his attention is forced, it ceases the moment the external force is withdrawn. He drudges to earn his cream bowl duly set, but he will stretch his lubbar length the moment his task is done.
There is another class of children opposed to saunterers, whom we may denominate volatile geniuses. They show a vast deal of quickness and vivacity; they understand almost before a tutor can put his ideas into words; they observe a variety of objects, but they do not connect their observations, and the very rapidity with which they seize an explanation, prevents them from thoroughly comprehending it; they are easily disturbed by external objects when they are thinking. As they have great sensibility, their associations are strong and various; their thoughts branch off into a thousand beautiful, but useless ramifications. Whilst you are attempting to instruct them upon one subject, they are inventing, perhaps, upon another; or they are following a train of ideas suggested by something you have said, but foreign to your business. They are more pleased with the discovery of resemblances, than with discrimination of difference; the one costs them more time and attention than the other: they are apt to say witty things, and to strike out sparks of invention; but they have not commonly the patience to form exact judgments, or to bring their first inventions to perfection. When they begin the race, every body expects that they should outstrip all competitors; but it is often seen that slower rivals reach the goal before them. The predictions formed of pupils of this temperament, vary much, according to the characters of their tutors. A slow man is provoked by their dissipated vivacity, and, unable to catch or fix their attention, prognosticates that they will never have sufficient application to learn any thing. This prophecy, under certain tuition, would probably be accomplished. The want of sympathy between a slow tutor and a quick child, is a great disadvantage to both; each insists upon going his own pace, and his own way, and these ways are perhaps diametrically opposite. Even in forming a judgment of the child's attention, the tutor, who is not acquainted with the manner in which his pupil goes to work, is liable to frequent mistakes. Children are sometimes suspected of not having listened to what has been said to them, when they cannot exactly repeat the words that they have heard; they often ask questions, and make observations, which seem quite foreign to the present business; but this is not always a proof that their minds are absent, or that their attention is dissipated. Their answers often appear to be far from the point, because they suppress their intermediate ideas, and give only the result of their thoughts. This may be inconvenient to those who teach them; but this habit sufficiently proves that these children are not deficient in attention. To cure them of the fault which they have, we should not accuse them falsely of another. But it may be questioned whether this be a fault; it is absolutely necessary, in many processes of the mind, to suppress a number of intermediate ideas. Life, if this were not practised, would be too short for those who think, and much too short for those who speak. When somebody asked Pyrrhus which of two musicians he liked the best, he answered, "Polysperchon is the best general." This would appear to be the absurd answer of an absent person, or of a fool, if we did not consider the ideas that are implied, as well as those which are expressed.
March 5th, 1796. To-day, at dinner, a lady observed that Nicholson, Williamson, Jackson, &c. were names which originally meant the sons of Nicholas, William, Jack, &c. A boy who was present, H——, added, with a very grave face, as soon as she had finished speaking, "Yes, ma'am, Tydides." His mother asked him what he could mean by this absent speech? H—— calmly repeated, "Ma'am, yes; because I think it is like Tydides." His brother S——eagerly interposed, to supply the intermediate ideas; "Yes, indeed, mother," cried he, "H—— is not absent, because des, in Greek, means the son of (the race of.) Tydides is the son of Tydeus, as Jackson is the son of Jack." In this instance, H—— was not absent, though he did not make use of a sufficient number of words to explain his ideas.
August, 1796. L——, when he returned home, after some months absence, entertained his brothers and sisters with a new play, which he had learned at Edinburgh. He told them, that when he struck the table with his hand, every person present, was instantaneously to remain fixed in the attitudes in which they should be when the blow was given. The attitudes in which some of the little company were fixed, occasioned much diversion; but in speaking of this new play afterwards, they had no name for it. Whilst they were thinking of a name for it, H—— exclaimed, "The Gorgon!" It was immediately agreed that this was a good name for the play, and H——, upon this occasion, was perfectly intelligible, without expressing all the intermediate ideas.
Good judges, form an accurate estimate of the abilities of those who converse with them, by what they omit, as well as by what they say. If any one can show that he also has been in Arcadia, he is sure of being well received, without producing minutes of his journey. In the same manner we should judge of children; if they arrive at certain conclusions in reasoning, we may be satisfied that they have taken all the necessary previous steps. We need not question their attention upon subjects where they give proofs of invention; they must have remembered well, or they could not invent; they must have attended well, or they could not have remembered. Nothing wearies a quick child more than to be forced slowly to retrace his own thoughts, and to repeat the words of a discourse to prove that he has listened to it. A tutor, who is slow in understanding the ideas of his vivacious pupil, gives him so much trouble and pain, that he grows silent, from finding it not worth while to speak. It is for this reason, that children appear stupid and silent, with some people, and sprightly and talkative with others. Those who hope to talk to children with any effect, must, as Rousseau observes, be able to hear as well as to speak. M. de Segrais, who was deaf, was much in the right to decline being preceptor to the Duke de Maine. A deaf preceptor would certainly make a child dumb.