Speaker 1: Attention. As we have seen in the preceding chapters. Before
one can expect to recall or remember a thing, that
thing must have been impressed upon the records of his
subconsciousness distinctly and clearly. And the main factor of the
recording of impressions is that quality of the mind that
we call attention. All the leading authorities on the subject
of memory recognize and teach the value of attention in
the cultivation and development of the memory. Tupper says, memory,
the daughter of attention, is the teeming mother of wisdom.
Lowell says attention is the stuff that memory is made of,
and memory is accumulated genius. Hall says in the power
of fixing the attention lies the most precious of the
intellectual habits. Locke says, when the ideas that offer themselves
are taken notice of, and as it were, registered in
the memory, it is attention. Stuart says, the permanence of
the impression which anything leaves in the memory is proportionate
to the degree of attention which was originally given to it.
Thompson says, the experience is most permanently impressed upon consciousness
are those upon which the greatest amount of attention has
been fixed. Beatty says, the force wherewith anything strikes the mind,
is generally in proportion to the degree of attention bestowed
upon it. The great art of memory is attention. Inattentive
people have always bad memories. Kay says it is generally
held by philosophers that without some degree of attention, no
impression of any could be made on the mind or
laid up in the memory. Hamilton says, it is a
law of the mind that the intensity of the present
consciousness determines the vivacity of the future. Memory. Memory and
consciousness are thus in the direct ratio of each other,
vivid consciousness, long memory, faint consciousness, short memory, no consciousness,
no memory. An act of attention, that is, an act
of concentration, seems thus necessary to every exertion of consciousness,
as a certain contraction of the pupil is requisite to
every exertion of vision. Attention, then, is to consciousness what
the contraction of the pupil is to cite, or to
the eye of the mind, what the microscope or telescope
is to the bodily eye. It constitutes the better half
of all inns intellectual power. We have quoted from the
above authorities at considerable length for the purpose of impressing
upon your mind the importance of this subject of attention.
The subconscious regions of the mind are the great storehouses
of the mental records of impressions from within and without
its great system of filing, recording, and indexing. These records
constitute that which we call memory. But before any of
this work is possible, impressions must first have been received. And,
as you may see from the quotations just given, these
impressions depend upon the power of attention given to the
things making the impressions. If there has been given great attention,
there will be clear and deep impressions. If there has
been given but average attention, there will be but average impressions.
If there has been given but faint attention, there will
be but faint impressions. If there has been given no attention,
there will be no records. One of the most common
causes of poor attention is to be found in the
lack of interest. We are apt to remember the things
in which we have been most interested, because in that
outpouring of interest there has been a high degree of
attention manifested, A man may have a very poor memory,
for many things, but when it comes to the things
in which his interest is involved, he often remembers the
most minute details. What is called involuntary attention is that
form of attention that follows upon interest, curiosity, or desire,
no special effort of the will being required in it.
What is called voluntary attention is that form of attention
that is bestowed upon objects necessarily interesting, curious, or attractive.
This requires the application of the will and is a
mark of a developed character. Every person has more or
less involuntary attention, while but few possess developed voluntary attention.
The former is instinctive, the latter comes only by practice
and training. But there is this important point to be remembered,
that interest may be developed by voluntary attention bestowed and
held upon an object. Things that are originally lacking in
sufficient interest to attract the involuntary attention may develop a
secondary interest if the voluntary attention be placed upon and
held upon them. As Halleck says on this point, when
it is said that attention will not take a firm
hold on an uninteresting thing, we must not forget that
anyone not shallow and fickle can soon discover something interesting
in most objects. Here cultivated minds show their special superiority.
For the attention which they are able to give generally
ends in finding a pearl in the most uninteresting looking oyster.
When an object necessarily loses interest from one point of view,
such minds discover in it new attributes. The essence of
genius is to present an old thing in new ways,
whether it be some force in nature or some aspect
of humanity. It is very difficult to teach another person
how to cultivate the attention. This because the whole thing
consists so largely in the use of the will and
by faithful practice and persistent application. The first requisite is
the determination to use the will. You must argue it
out with yourself until you become convinced that it is
necessary and desirable for you. To acquire the art of
voluntary attention. You must convince yourself beyond reasonable doubt. This
is the first step, and one more difficult than it
would seem at first sight. The principal difficulty in it
lies in the fact that to do the thing you
must do some active, earnest thinking, and the majority of
people are too lazy to indulge in such mental effort.
Having mastered this first step, you must induce a strong,
burning desire to acquire the art of voluntary attention. You
must learn to want it hard. In this way, you
induce a condition of interest and attractiveness where it was
previously lacking. Third, and last, you must hold your will
firmly and persistently to the task and practice faithfully. Begin
by turning your attention upon some uninteresting thing and studying
its detail until you are able to describe them. This
will prove very tiresome at first, but you must stick
to it. Do not practice too long at a time
at first, take a rest, and try it again later.
You will soon find that it comes easier, and that
a new interest is beginning to manifest itself in the task.
Examine this book as practice. Learn how many pages there
are in it, how many chapters, how many pages in
each chapter, the details of type, printing, and binding, all
the little things about it, so that you could give
another person a full account of the minor details of
the book. This may seem uninteresting, and so it will
be at first, but a little practice will create a
new interest in the petty details, and you will be
surprised at the number of little things that you will notice.
This plan, practiced on many things in spare hours, will
develop the power of voluntary attention and perception in any one,
no matter how deficient he may have been in these things.
If you can get some one else to join in
the game task with you, and then each endeavor to
excel the other in finding details, the task will be
much easier and better work will be accomplished. Begin to
take notice of things about you, the places you visit,
the things in the rooms, et cetera. In this way
you will start the habit of noticing things, which is
the first requisite for memory development. Halleck gives the following
excellent advice on this subject. To look at a thing
intelligently is the most difficult of all arts. The first
rule for the cultivation of accurate perception is do not
try to perceive the whole of a complex object at once.
Take the human face as an example. A man holding
an important position to which he has been elected offended
many people because he could not remember faces and hence
failed to recognize individuals the second time he met them.
His trouble was in looking at the countenance as a whole.
When he changed his method of observation and noticed carefully
the nose, mouth, eyes, chin, and color of hair. He
at once began to find recognition easier. He was no
longer in difficulty of mistaking A for B since he
remembered that the shape of bees nose was different, or
the color of his hair at least three shades lighter.
This example shows that another rule can be formulated pay
careful attention to details. We are perhaps asked to give
a minute description of the exterior of a somewhat noted
suburban house that we have lately seen. We reply in
general terms, giving the size and color of the house.
Perhaps we also have an idea of part of the
material used in the exterior construction. We are asked to
be exact about the shape of the door, porch, roof, chimneys,
and windows, whether the windows are plane or circular, whether
they have cornices, or whether the trimmings around them are
of the same material as the rest of the house.
A friend who will be unable to see the house
wishes to know definitely about the angles of the roof
and the way the windows are arranged with reference to them.
Unless we can answer these questions exactly, we merely tantalize
our friends by telling them we have seen the house.
To see an object merely as an undiscriminated mass of
something in a certain place is to do no more
than a donkey accomplishes as he trots along. There are
three general rules that may be given in this matter
of bestowing the voluntary attention in the direction of actually
seeing things instead of merely looking at them. The first
is make yourself take an interest in the thing. The second,
see it as if you were taking note of it
in order to repeat its details to a friend. This
will force you to take notice. The third, give to
your sub conscious a mental command to take note of
what you are looking at. Say to it here you
take note of this, and remember it for me. This
last consists of a peculiar knack that can be attained
by a little practice. It will come to you suddenly
after a few trials. Regarding this third rule, whereby the
subconscious is made to work for you, Charles Leland has
the following to say, although he uses it to illustrate
another point. As I understand it, it is a kind
of impulse or projection of will into the coming work.
I may here illustrate this with a curious fact in physics.
If the reader wished to bring a doorbell so as
to produce as much sound as possible, he would probably
pull it as far back as he could, and then
let it go. But if he would, in letting it go,
simply give it a tap with his forefinger, he would
actually redouble the sound. Or to shoot an arrow as
far as possible, it is not enough to merely draw
the bow to its utmost span or tension. If just
as it goes, you will give the bow a quick push,
though the effort be trifling, the arrow will fly almost
as far again as it would have done without it.
Or if, as is well known, in wielding a very
sharp saber, we make the draw cut. That is, if
to blow or chop as with an axe, we also
add a certain slight pull. Simultaneously, we can cut through
a silk handkerchief or a sheep. Forethought command to the
subconsciousness is the tap on the bell, the push on
the bow, the draw on the saber. It is the
deliberate but yet rapid action of the mind, when, before
dismissing thought, we bid the mind to consequently respond. It
is more than merely thinking what we are to do.
It is the bidding or ordering the self to fulfill
a task before willing it. Remember first, last, and always
that before you can remember or recollect, you must first perceive.
And that perception is possible only through attention, and responds
in degree to the latter. Therefore, it has truly been
said that the great art of memory is attention.