Nor has greatness from careful observation and large experience distinguished men of action alone. Shakespeare, Goethe, Bunyan, Burns, Whittier, Longfellow, James Whitcomb Riley, and a host of the great men of philosophy, science, and literature are where they are to-day in the esteem of their fellow men, and in their service to humanity, because they were the keenest among the men acute in observation.
[1] The failure to observe is strikingly proved by practical experiment in the psychological laboratory. Reproductions of a familiar or unfamiliar scene are placed in the observers' hands and they are instructed to study the reproductions carefully and to remember what they see. After 5 minutes careful study, the reproductions are taken away and a series of questions concerning them are put to the observers. The contradictory answers to these questions is strikingly eloquent of the all-too-human inability to observe. Hugo Munsterberg, the famous psychologist, made a number of psychological experiments to determine the limits of error in observation as these limits affect the credibility of witnesses in the court room. Some of his findings are summarized in "On the Witness Stand."
Your good newspaper reporter is a trained observer who describes exactly what he sees. Yet the manner in which even the trained observer fails to observe correctly is unfailingly demonstrated by the widely differing accounts of the same occurrence as reported in the various newspapers of a community.
One of the best ways to learn to observe correctly and in detail is to take a hasty glance at the display in a store window, pass on and attempt to recall that which you have seen, the number of objects, what they were, etc., and then check your observing faculties by returning to the window and listing its contents. Continued practice of this sort will greatly increase your observing powers. Perhaps the most famous known exponent of this method for training the observing faculties was Houdini, the famous magician, who describes the method in detail and his experiences in applying it in his memoirs.
II
ANIMALS AND "THE LEAST THINGS"
The benefits brought to humanity through the study of lower animal life are incalculable, and could not be told in one book. With all that vivisection and post-mortem dissection have revealed to scientific examiners, contagious and infectious diseases have been nearly removed from the human family. We have been taught to live better from observing animal habits in searching for food, in building their habitats, in their mode of living, in their fear of man, and in the methods they adopt to preserve their health. All this knowledge has been gained for us, for the upbuilding of humanity, through the efforts of close observers. They have studied the cat by the hearth, the dog by the door, the horses in the pasture and stall, the pigs in their pens, and the sheep in their folds. Closely associated with the investigators of animal life are those who have observed the origin, habits, and influence of birds, insects, and creeping things.
But what we have learned from animals in the past seems only a trifle in comparison with what they will teach when we go to them with more serious purpose and more carefully observe them. The leaders in all these investigations of animal life have all been distinguished for their power to discover in animals what has escaped other people.