intuition-an unreasoned idea springing from the background and bearing with it an irresistible force of emotional conviction. As these three types of religious belief are to form the central part of our entire discussion, I shall refer to them respectively as the Religion of Primitive Credulity, the Religion of Thought, or of Understanding, and the Religion of Feeling." A strong testimony to the reasonableness of religion is borne by Professor James in his new volume on Pragmatism. "I firmly disbelieve, myself, that our human experience is the highest form of experience extant in the universe. I believe rather that we stand in much the same relation to the whole of the universe as our canine and feline pets do to the whole of human life. They inhabit our drawing-rooms and libraries. They take part in scenes of whose significance they have no inkling. They are merely tangent to curves of history, the beginnings and ends and forms of which pass wholly beyond their ken. So we are tangent to the wider life of things. But just as many of the dogs' and cats' ideals coincide with our ideals, and the dogs and cats have daily living proof of the fact, so we may well believe, on the proofs that religious experience affords, that higher powers exist and are at work to save the world on ideal lines similar to our own." QUESTIONS FOR THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION. 1. What is Self-Activity, and how is it manifested throughout all life? 2. What wonderful evolution in unitary assemblage of cell life does man show? 3. Draw the Nervous System of Man and Explain. 4. Describe the Brain and its work. What is Localization? 5. Give James' Idea of The Stream of Consciousness. Explain "Focus," "Margin," etc. 6. Give the Stages of Thinking, and illustrate each concretely. 7. Why does a landscape suggest one thing to one observer, and something wholly different to another? 8. A man receives no new ideas after the age of thirty. Discuss What has Apperception to do with your teaching? CHAPTER V. A STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY (Continued). Attention-Memory-Will. SUGGESTED READINGS. Attention and Interest: TALKS TO TEACHERS. James. pp. 91-116. THE RELATION OF INTEREST TO WILL, 3RD HERBART YR. BK. HOW TO CONDUCT THE RECITATION. McMurray. pp. 11-12. p. 54. *UP THROUGH CHILDHOOD. Hubbell. pp. 155-163. Memory: *NEW PSYCHOLOGY. Gordy. Index. Sub-Conscious Self: SOCIAL LAW. Jones. Index. PSYCHOLOGY. 2 Vols. James. Index. *RELIGION AND MEDICINE. Worcester. Index. MENTAL TREATMENT OF NERVOUS DISORDERS. Du Bois. Will: TALKS TO TEACHERS. James. pp. 169-184. UP THROUGH CHILDHOOD. Hubbell. pp. 204-251. Attention and Interest. Dewey. Attention is fixing the mind upon a particular idea, bringing that idea or thought into the centre or focus of the mind, and then persistently holding it there. There are two kinds of attention, (a) Involuntary, and (b) Voluntary; or Attention that is spontaneous and without effort, and that with effort; the one passive, the other active. The attention with effort is the process of fixing the mind, with deliberation, on objects uninteresting or less interesting in themselves. Voluntary attention cannot be continuously sustained. It comes in beats, and each beat, each effort, expends itself in the single act and must be renewed by a deliberate pulling of our minds back again. Interest is the outcome of Attention. It is the Self-activity of our Impulses seeking to find satisfactory outlet for their desires and yearnings. Attention is the basis of all Education. As Gordy puts it, "Without attention there is no sensation; the sensation of which we are conscious depends upon attention." Professor Carpenter gives some remarkable examples of this. Before the introduction of chloroform, patients sometimes went through severe operations without giving any sign of pain, and afterwards declared that they felt none, having concentrated their thoughts upon some subject, by a powerful effort of abstraction which held them engaged throughout. What we perceive depends upon attention. Let a botanist and geologist take the same walk, and the botanist will see the flowers, while the geologist notes the rocks, because each sees what he attends to. What we remember depends upon attention. Most of our past lies in a barren region of forgetfulness, swallowed up in oblivion. Here and there are little green spots of memory like oases in the desert of the past. This accounts for the fact that the events of youth are so well remembered in later years, for in the far-off happy time when our hearts were light and our minds were free, trivial events received attention sufficient to stamp them on our memories forever. What we recall depends upon attention. All recalling is remembering, but all remembering is not recalling. Recalling is remembering by an effort of the will. Recalling a friend's name, which has slipped the memory, by an effort of attention is this kind of remembering. What reasoning we do depends upon attention, and very often great truths have been evolved by simple reasoning. What we feel depends upon attention. Frequently the most important and pathetic statements may be only half perceived and their serious import often unfelt, because sufficient attention has not been directed to them. What we will to do depends upon attention, and attention is so important that practically to Will is merely to pay attention, and, if we pay attention to an act steadily and persistently, we are bound to do that act. All this shows how important attention is in life. The chief difference between the Educated and the Uneducated man is the capacity of the first for close, continuous, and concentrated attention. Newton thought that the sole difference between himself and ordinary men consisted in his greater power of attention. This probably, however, overdraws it. How can we train attention? Precisely as we cultivate other powers, by forcing ourselves to attend. The rules for gaining and holding attention, both for ourselves and for our pupils, will be considered more fully in Chapter XV. Types of Attention. There is a native difference or variety among individuals in the concentrativeness of their attention; in other words, in the intensity and scope of their field of consciousness. It is unlikely, thinks James, that those who lack it can gain it to any extent. It is probably a fixed characteristic. Both mind-wandering, and the rapt-attention class are types that remain. However, it is the total mental condition that counts in life, not one side of it. Memory. Miss Slattery defines the word Memory to be as follows: "Memory is the act of the mind by which it retains and reproduces ideas which it has gained. Every act of memory really includes three acts. First, the mind takes hold of an idea; this is called apprehension; then the idea is kept hidden away in the mind, which is retention; finally it is brought back when desired, and this is reproduction. Have you ever used a carbon paper and lead-pencil in making copies? If you have, you know the harder you press on it, the deeper impression and clearer reproduction you get. In some measure this is true when you write upon the minds of children. There is this difference, however: carbon paper is made very much alike; it is passive. But the brain material of these boys and girls of ours is entirely unlike, and it reacts. The thing which will make a deep impression, be retained and reproduced clearly by the child with excellent memory, meets a different fate with the faithful plodder who takes in slowly, requires endless repetition, but in the end retains, and reproduces slowly and painfully. It meets still a different fate with the really dull child, or with the child who takes in quickly, reproduces easily, but has no power of retention, and cannot tell to-morrow what he seemed to know to-day. As we have seen in our previous study, to work to the greatest advantage, we must know the children." White defines memory as "the power of the soul to represent and re-know objects previously known or experienced." There are three elements in this definition, the retaining of that which has passed through the mind, the reproduction of it, and the recognition of it. Consciousness has to do with the present, memory with the past. Without consciousness we should have no "to-day," without memory, no "yesterday." Locke said that "without memory man is a perpetual infant." Memory is of two kinds, verbal and logical, according as that which is recalled is in the exact words or in the association of ideas. An accurate verbal memory is often-times associated with inferior mentality, and is not the type to be cultivated with the greatest assiduity. Memory is due to attention. It is not in any way a faculty. Memory is due to the fact that our brains are wax to receive and marble to retain. Names, dates, and what-not leave their impressions on our brain cells, become inter-related, correlated, welded together, and are indelibly retained. Practically nothing is totally forgotten. Professor Ebbinghaus has proved that the process of forgetting is vastly more rapid at first than later. No matter how long ago we have learned a poem, and no matter how complete our inability to reproduce it now may be, yet the first learning will still show its lingering effects in the abridgment of time required for learning it over again. Things which we are quite unable to definitely recall have nevertheless impressed themselves in some way upon the structure of the mind. We are different for having once learned them. Our conclusions from certain premises are probably not just what they would be if those modifications of the brain cells were not. The very fact that when we re-learn, we recognize that we have known the fact before, shows that it has not been totally forgotten. Memory depends upon five factors: (1) Attention, which in turn depends upon (a) our Personal Interest, and (b) our Paying Attention, (2) Retention, (3) Recall, (4) Recognition, |