758 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



groups selected and associated by the school examinations into 

 classes. The adult end of it (seventy-five per cent) is the position 

 of the center of groups trained in the schools of the United States 

 and part of Europe. The adult farmer who does nothing else 

 stands on exactly the same center as those graduated from the 

 high schools and colleges who have been licensed to teach. The 

 youth of the rural districts stand five per cent higher than the 

 adult, but they will not all be farmers ; many of them will drift 

 into the cities and become successful business men with a center 

 at eighty- five per cent or more, which is the point of accuracy 

 attained by all those of any profession reputed by co-workers to 

 have marked ability, which means, as read from the chart, the 

 successful have as much power to direct their own attention to 

 the uninteresting thing as can be lent to them by external aid. 

 That the average school training has carried those who have fol- 

 lowed it no nearer success in drawing than those who have not 

 been so trained seems to go far toward taking Mr. Wheelock's 

 statement out of the realm of doubt and extending the scope of 

 it to the school drawing of Europe as well as to the " great State 

 of New York." 



Not the least singular of the facts brought out by these ex- 

 periments is that, while the figure painter (position A) needs 

 ninety-five per cent of the power measured by the test, and the 

 landscape painter (position B) has acquired ninety- two per cent 

 by years of labor, the telegraph operator (also position B), whose 

 training certainly has not been toward eye accuracy, should also 

 be able to locate by observed proportion and direction to ninety- 

 two per cent. By what means did he get the power to locate 

 with an accuracy almost double that possessed by the average 

 mechanical engineer ? The telegraph operator has been trained 

 in voluntary attention to such an extent as to be able to listen to 

 certain sounds, not in themselves interesting, and inhibit all oth- 

 ers. Herbert Spencer says success in everything depends on the 

 power of observation. 



It seems that the foundation of the power of observation is 

 voluntary attention. 



Balzac is quoted as saying, " Almost the whole of human 

 genius consists in observing well." And Taine writes, " Suc- 

 cess in life depends on knowing how to be patient, how to endure 

 drudgery, how to make and remake, how to recommence and 

 continue without allowing the tide of anger or the flight of the 

 imagination to arrest or divert the daily effort." * 



Prof. William James writes : " The faculty of bringing back 

 a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of 



* Art in the Netherlands, p. 23. 



