5 20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of making an impression, of stamping an idea in the mind ; it is 

 strictly an intellectual stimulus. There is still the proviso (under the 

 general law of incompatibility of the two opposite moods) that the 

 excitement must not be violent and wasting. In well-understood 

 moderation, excitement is identical with attention, mental engross- 

 ment, the concentration of the forces upon the plastic or cementing 

 operation, the rendering permanent as a recollection what lies in the 

 focus of the blaze. Excitement, so defined, is worthless as an end, 

 but is valuable as a means ; and that means is the furtherance of our 

 mental improvement by driving home some useful concatenation of 

 ideas. 



Another subtilty remains a distinction within a distinction. 

 After contrasting feeling as excitement with feeling as pleasure or 

 pain, we must separate the useful from the useless or even pernicious 

 modes of excitement. The useful excitement is what is narrowed and 

 confined to the subject to be impressed ; the useless, and worse than 

 useless, excitement is what spreads far and wide, and embraces noth- 

 ing in particular. It is easy to get up the last species of excitement 

 the vague, scattered, and tumultuous mode but this is not of avail 

 for any set purpose; it may be counted rather as a distracting agency 

 than as a means of calling forth and concentratingthe attention upon 

 an exercise. 



The true excitement for the purpose in view is what grows out of 

 the very subject itself, surrounding and adhering to that subject. 

 Now, for this kind of excitement, the recipe is continuous application 

 of the mind in perfect surrounding stillness. Restrain all other solicita- 

 tion of the senses ; keep the attention upon the one act to be learned ; 

 and, by the law of nervous and mental persistence, the currents of the 

 brain will become gradually stronger and stronger, until they have 

 reached the point when they do no more good for the time. This is . 

 the ideal of concentration by neutral excitement. 



The enemy of such happy neutrality is pleasure from without ; 

 and the youthful mind cannot resist the distraction of a present pleas- 

 ure, or even the scent of a far-off pleasure. The schoolroom is pur- 

 posely screened off from the view of what is going on outside ; while 

 all internal incidents that hold out pleasurable diversion are carefully 

 restrained, at least during the crisis of a difficult lesson. A touch of 

 pain, or apprehension, if only slight, is not unfavorable to the concen- 

 tration. 



A very important observation remains, namely, that relationship 

 of retention to discrimination which was stated in introducing the 

 function of discrimination. The consideration of this relationship 

 illustrates with still greater point the true character of the excite- 

 ment that concentrates and does not distract nor dissipate the ener- 

 gies. The moment of a delicate discrimination is the moment when 

 the intellectual force is dominant; emotion spurns nice distinctions, 



