CHAPTER VI

ATTENTION

As we have seen in the preceding chapters, before one can expect to recall or remember a thing, that thing must have been impressed upon the records of his subconsciousness, distinctly and clearly. And the main factor of the recording of impressions is that quality of the mind that we call Attention. All the leading authorities on the subject of memory recognize and teach the value of attention in the cultivation and development of the memory. Tupper says: "Memory, the daughter of Attention, is the teeming mother of wisdom." Lowell says: "Attention is the stuff that Memory is made of, and Memory is accumulated Genius." Hall says: "In the power of fixing the attention lies the most precious of the intellectual habits." Locke says: "When the ideas that offer themselves are taken notice of, and, as it were, registered in the memory, it is Attention." Stewart says: "The permanence of the impression which anything leaves on the memory, is proportionate to the degree of attention which was originally given to it." Thompson says: "The experiences most permanently impressed upon consciousness are those upon which the greatest amount of attention has been fixed." Beattie says: "The force wherewith anything strikes the mind is generally in proportion to the degree of attention bestowed upon it. The great art of memory is attention. . . . Inattentive people have always bad memories." Kay says: "It is generally held by philosophers that without some degree of attention no impression of any duration could be made on the mind, or laid up in the memory." Hamilton says: "It is a law of the mind that the intensity of the present consciousness determines the vivacity of the future memory; memory and consciousness are thus in the direct ratio of each other. Vivid consciousness, long memory; faint consciousness, short memory; no consciousness, no memory. . . . An act of attention, that is an act of concentration, seems thus necessary to every exertion of consciousness, as a certain contraction of the pupil is requisite to every exertion of vision. Attention, then, is to consciousness what the contraction of the pupil is to sight, or to the eye of the mind what the microscope or telescope is to the bodily eye. It constitutes the better half of all intellectual power."

We have quoted from the above authorities at considerable length, for the purpose of impressing upon your mind the importance of this subject of Attention. The subconscious regions of the mind are the great storehouses of the mental records of impressions from within and without. Its great systems of filing, recording and indexing these records constitute that which we call memory. But before any of this work is possible, impressions must first have been received. And, as you may see from the quotations just given, these impressions depend upon the power of attention given to the things making the impressions. If there has been given great attention, there will be clear and deep impressions; if there has been given but average attention, there will be but average impressions; if there has been given but faint attention, there will be but faint impressions; if there has been given no attention, there will be no records.