Precautions Relating to Voluntary Attention.—Although voluntary attention is evidently the form of attention possessing real educational value, certain precautions would seem necessary concerning its use. With very young children the aim for attending should evidently not be too remote. In other words, the problem should involve matter in which the children have a direct interest. For this reason it is sometimes said that young children should set their own problems. This is of course a paradox so far as the regular school work is concerned, though it does apply to the pre-school period, and also justifies the claim that with young children the lesson problem should be closely connected with some vital interest. It would be useless, for instance, to try to interest young children in the British North America Act by telling them that the knowledge will be useful when they come to write on their entrance examinations. The story of Sir Isaac Brock, on the other hand, wins attention for itself through the child's patriotism and love of story. Again, the problem demanding attention should not, in the case of young children, be too long or complex. For example, a young child might easily attend to the separate problems of finding out, (1) how many marbles he must have to give four to James and three to William; (2) how many times seven can be taken from twenty-eight; (3) how many marbles James would have if he received four marbles four times; and (4) how many James would have if he received three marbles three times. But if given the problem "to divide twenty-eight marbles between James and William, giving James four every time he gives William three," the problem may be too complex for his present power of attention. A young child has not the control over his knowledge necessary to continue any long process of selecting attention. A relatively short period of attention to any problem, therefore, exhausts the nervous energy in the centres connected with a particular set of experiences. It is for this reason that the lessons in primary classes should be short and varied. One of the objections, therefore, to a narrow curriculum is that attention would not obtain needed variety, and that a narrowness in interest and application may result. On the other hand, it is well to note that the child must in time learn to concentrate his attention for longer periods and upon topics possessing only remote, or indirect, interest.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE FEELING OF INTEREST
Nature of Feeling.—Feeling has already been described ([Chapter XIX]) as the pleasurable or painful side of any state of consciousness. We may recall how it was there found that any conscious state, or experience, for instance, being conscious of the prick of a pin, of success at an examination, or of the loss of a friend, is not merely a state of knowledge, or awareness, but is also a state of feeling. It is a state of feeling because it affects us, that is, because being a state of our consciousness, it appeals to us pleasurably or painfully in a way that it can to no one else.
Neural Conditions of Feeling.—It has been seen that every conscious state, or experience, has its affective, or feeling, tone, and also that every experience involves the transmission of nervous energy through a number of connected brain cells. On this basis it is thought that the feeling side of any conscious state is conditioned by the degree of the resistance encountered as the nervous energy is transmitted. If the centres involved in the experience are not yet properly organized, or if the stimulation is strong, the resistance is greater and the feeling more intense. A new movement of the limbs in physical training, for example, may at first prove intensely painful, because the centres involved in the exercise are not yet organized. So also, because a very bright light stimulates the nerves violently, it causes a painful feeling. That morphine deadens pain is to be explained on the assumption that it decreases nervous energy, and thus lessens the resistance being encountered between the nervous centres affected at the time.
Feeling and Habit.—That the intensity of a feeling is conditioned by the amount of the resistance seems evident, if we note the relation of feeling to habit. The first time the nurse-in-training attends a wounded patient, the experience is marked by intense feeling. After a number of such experiences, however, this feeling becomes much less. In like manner, the child who at first finds the physical exercise painful, as he becomes accustomed to the movements, finds the pain becoming less and less intense. In such cases it is evident that practice, by organizing the centres involved in the experience, decreases the resistance between them, and thus gradually decreases the intensity of the feeling. When finally the act becomes habitual, the nervous impulse traverses only lower centres, and therefore all feeling and indeed all consciousness will disappear, as happens in the habitual movements of the limbs in walking and of the arms during walking.
CLASSES OF FEELINGS
Sensuous Feeling.—As already noted, while feelings vary in intensity according to the strength of the resistance, they also differ in kind according to the arcs traversed by the impulse. Experiencing a burn on the hand would involve nervous impulses, or currents, other than those involved in hearing of the death of a friend. The one experience also differs in feeling from the other. Our feeling states are thus able to be divided into certain important classes with more or less distinct characteristics for each. In one class are placed those feelings which accompany sensory impulses. The sensations arising from the stimulations of the sense organs, as a sweet or bitter taste, a strong smell, the touch of a hot, sharp, rough, or smooth object, etc., all present an affective, or feeling, side. So also feeling enters into the general or organic sensations arising from the conditions of the bodily organs; as breathing, the circulation of the blood, digestion, the tension of the muscles, hunger, thirst, etc. The feeling which thus enters as a factor into any sensation is known as sensuous feeling.
Ideal Feeling.—Other feelings enter into our ideas and thoughts. The perception or imagination of an accident is accompanied with a painful feeling, the memory or anticipation of success with a feeling of joy, the thought of some particular person with a thrill of love. Such feelings are known as ideal feelings. When a child tears his flesh on a nail, he experiences sensuous feeling, when he shrinks away, as he perceives the teeth of a snarling dog, he experiences an ideal feeling, known as the emotion of fear.