QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. For testing one's grasp of the subject, and Does knowledge come into the human soul from without? If so, how? If the special senses were never to report sensations, what would be the condition of the human soul? Do you remember a thing better from hearing it or from reading it? How does this bear upon the right method of instruction? Some people are said to be ear-minded; others eyeminded; what do you mean by this? Jot down on a sheet of paper the different things that come into the focus of consciousness in your own mind in any given two minutes of time. Will the fact that you jot them down have anything to do with the character of the things which you note? Have you been telling your children, or have you been teaching them, great fundamental spiritual truths? Why should the child give expression to his knowledge? Is your class so organized that the pupils are free to say what they have in their minds? Do they keep to the subject under study? Do you deliberately cultivate freedom of expression in your class? Should you do so? Why? Have you ever seriously studied the way you know the content of your own soul? Have you any definite method of preventing the minds of your pupils from wandering? Jot down in your note-book the things that you do in order to keep the focus of consciousness upon the thing which you most desire the pupil to consider. Is it true that without attention there can be no true teaching? If so, why? Explain fully the function of consciousness. What is the relation of attention to the stream of sensations? What power of the soul brings percepts to the focus of consciousness? Attention makes possible the enrichment of percepts. Explain this statement. In Milton's Comus the Lady, in a critical moment, exclaims, "I was all ear." What does Milton mean by this sentence? Why cannot a teacher compel attention? What follows? III HOW ATTENTION MAY BE SECURED We have now tracked our fact through sen sation, perception, and consciousness, to attention. What will attention do with it? This question cannot now be answered wisely. We must first study this power of attention. It is most significant. Is it always the same? Is it easily controlled? Is it always active? You should at this point make note of the power of attention as it manifests itself while you study these words. Do you focus on this line your entire attention? Is it easy for some outside fact, calling through the senses, to destroy your attention? Can I readily shift your attention? What peculiar quality in this discussion seems to hold your attention most steadily? What can you most readily give up, what do you find yourself holding to most tenaciously? In the preceding chapter the question was raised: "How may attention be secured?" The answer to this is important, because, as we have seen, without attention there is no fixedness in thought. This will be apparent to anybody who will for a moment consider the stream of thought that passes under the focus of consciousness. It is one minute one thing and another minute another thing, and so on through an almost endless series. Arresting the Stream of Percepts It is not to be understood that there is no connection between the different percepts in the stream of thought. There probably is, but the connection is oftentimes so subtle that we fail to recognize it, and in general it is of such a character as to make it practically useless for educational purposes. It is only when attention arrests the stream of thought, and holds the focus of consciousness upon one distinct aspect of this stream of thought, that anything like vivid, connected thought arises in the soul. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance to understand something of the fundamental laws that control attention, and something of the skill which a teacher needs to possess in order to be sure to command the attention of the pupil. If now we ask what it is that causes attention to fasten upon one and not another of the different areas of thought in the mind, to hold the focus of consciousness at this instead of some other place, we have reached the fundamental question. In cach case it is some agency of the soul that does it. We can secure it in no What Guides other way. No outside influence can do more than to produce the conditions within the soul that result in attention. Why does my mind in any given moment rest upon this instead of some other thing? What directs attention? The answer to this question a teacher needs to consider carefully. The area of attention is not so great as that of consciousness. Real education has to do not with all that is in consciousness but only with that part which lies within the area of attention. There are three areas of possible knowledge in the soul. (1) The widest area, which may be called the beyondconscious (sometimes referred Three Areas in to as the sub-conscious area); (2) the area of conscious knowledge; and (3) the limited area within these which is the vivid area of attention. Wundt likens the different areas to the whole field of vision when one looks out upon a landscape. There is the vague fringe of practically unnoted objects, the less extended circle of objects seen, and the specific object upon which one focuses his attention. Everything in teaching depends upon the skill of the teacher in fixing attention upon the specific things the pupil should consider. Our attention rests upon those things which are for us objects of interest, and the degree of our attention to any given thing is but |