Improvement of the Mind by Isaac Watts

Author:Isaac Watts
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2015-04-29T14:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XI.

OF FIXING THE ATTENTION.

I. A student should labor, by all proper methods, to acquire a steady fixation of thought. Attention is a very necessary thing in order to improve our minds. The evidence of truth does not always appear immediately, nor strike the soul at first sight. It is by long attention and inspection that we arrive at evidence, and it is for want of it we judge falsely of many things. We make haste to determine upon a slight and a sudden view, we confirm our guesses which arise from a glance, we pass a judgment while we have but a confused or obscure perception, and thus plunge ourselves into mistakes. This is like a man who, walking in a mist, or being at a great distance from any visible object (suppose a tree, a man, a horse, or a church,) judges much amiss of the figure, and situation, and colors of it, and sometimes takes one for the other; whereas, if he would but withhold his judgment till he came nearer to it, or stay till clearer light comes, and then would fix his eyes longer upon it, he would secure himself from those mistakes.

II. Now, in order to gain a greater facility of attention, we may observe these rules:

1. Get a good liking to the study of knowledge you would pursue. We may observe, that there is not much difficulty in confining the mind to contemplate what we have a great desire to know; and especially if they are matters of sense, or ideas which paint themselves upon the fancy. It is but acquiring a hearty good will and resolution to search out and survey the various properties and parts of such objects, and our attention will be engaged, if there be any delight or diversion in the study or contemplation of them. Therefore, mathematical studies have a strange influence towards fixing the attention of the mind and giving a steadiness to a wandering disposition, because they deal much in lines, figures, and numbers, which affect and please the sense and imagination. Histories have a strong tendency the same way, for they engage the soul by a variety of sensible occurrences; when it hath begun, it knows not how to leave off; it longs to know the final event, through a natural curiosity that belongs to mankind. Voyages and travels, and accounts of strange countries and strange appearances, will assist in this work. This sort of study detains the mind by the perpetual occurrence and expectation of something new, and that which may gratefully strike the imagination.

2. Sometimes we may make use of sensible things and corporeal images for the illustration of those notions, which are more abstracted and intellectual. Therefore, diagrams greatly assist the mind in astronomy and philosophy; and the emblems of virtues and vices may happily teach children, and pleasingly impress those useful moral ideas on young minds, which perhaps might be conveyed to them with much more difficulty by mere moral and abstracted discourses.

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