IMPORTANCE OF ATTENTION. 61 



the most important discoveries would never have been 

 made. 



Attention is the essential condition of formation of 

 high intellect. In original research we require to employ 

 the will in fixing our attention whilst acquiring and com- 

 paring ideas ; also in an increasing degree whilst forming 

 general conceptions and drawing inferences ; and especially 

 whilst imagining new, abstruse, and complex hypotheses 

 and explanations, and carrying on prolonged trains of 

 difficult thought. All great discoverers have possessed in 

 a high degree the power of concentrating their attention, 

 and Newton was a conspicuous example of this. Dr. 

 Livingstone also was able to write, even under the 

 most distracting conditions, the accounts of his geogra- 

 phical discoveries. Attention may, however, be excited, 

 not only by means of volition, but by any of the numerous 

 other influences which act upon us ; and either of these 

 may be the strongest and overpower the other ; but by 

 long-continued and suitably cultivated habits of study, 

 that concentration of attention and thought, which was at 

 first extremely difficult, and required the utmost exertion 

 of the will, becomes not only quite voluntary, but more or 

 less spontaneous and easy. It is by practice of attention 

 that the mind acquires the greatest power of sustain- 

 ing it. 1 



Attention is volitional observation, a conscious state of 

 tension. Without that stronger degree of mental percep- 

 tion, known as attention, multitudes of objects and ideas 

 would either not be perceived at all, or not be clearly per- 

 ceived. ' We should accustom ourselves to make attention 



1 A striking instance of the power of attention in rendering the 

 mind unconscious of exciting circumstances, in Geoffrey St. Hilaire, 

 during the siege of Alexandria, is described by Hamerton in The In- 

 tellectual Life, p. 438. 



