be to his playfellow or to his tutor, to conversation or to books. But if he has by fatal experience discovered, that, let him listen ever so intently, he cannot understand, he will spare himself the trouble of fruitless exertion; and, though he may put on a face of attention, his thoughts will wander far from his tutor and his tasks. "It is impossible to fix the attention of children," exclaims the tutor; "when this boy attends he can do any thing, but he will not attend for a single instant." Alas! it is in vain to say he will not attend; he cannot.

CHAPTER III.

ON ATTENTION.

PERE BOURGEOIS, one of the missionaries to China, attempted to preach a Chinese sermon to the Chinese. His own account of the business is the best we can give. They told me Chou signifies a book, so that I thought whenever the word Chou was pronounced, a book was the subject of discourse; not at all. Chou, the next time I heard it, I found signified a tree. Now I was to recollect Chou was a book and a tree; but this amounted to nothing. Chou I found also expressed great heats. Chou is to relate. Chou is the Aurora.. Chou means, to be accustomed. Chou expresses the loss of a wager, &c. I should never have done were I to enumerate all its meanings.

*

*

*

"I recited my sermon at least fifty times to my servant before I spoke it in public; and yet I am told, though he continually corrected me, that of the ten parts of the sermon (as the Chinese express themselves) they hardly understood three. Fortunately, the Chinese are wonderfully patient."

Children are sometimes in the condition in which the Chinese found themselves at this learned missionary's sermon, and their patience deserves to be equally commended. The difficulty of understanding the Chinese Chou, strikes us immediately, and we sympathize with Pere Bourgeois's perplexity; yet, many words which are in common use among us, may perhaps be as puzzling to children. Block (see Johnson's Dictionary)

signifies a heavy piece of timber, a mass of matter. Block means the wood on which hats are formed. Block means the wood on which criminals are beheaded. Block is a sea

term for pulley. Block is an obstruction, a stop; and finally, Block means a blockhead.

There are, in our language, ten meanings for sweet, ten for open, twenty-two for upon, and sixty-three for to fall. Such are the defects of language! But, whatever they may be, we cannot hope immediately to see them reformed, because common consent, and universal custom, must combine to establish a new vocabulary. None but philosophers could invent, and none but philosophers would adopt a philosophical language.

The new philosophical language of chymistry was received at first with some reluctance, even by chymists, notwithstanding its obvious utility and elegance. Butter of antimony, and liver of sulphur, flowers of zinc, oil of vitriol, and spirit of sulphur by the bell, powder of algaroth, and salt of alem-broth, may yet long retain their ancient titles among apothecaries. There does not exist in the mineral kingdom either butter or oil, or yet flowers; these treacherous names* are given to the most violent poisons, so that there is no analogy to guide the understanding or the memory: but Custom has a prescriptive right to talk nonsense. The barbarous enigmatical jargon of the ancient adepts continued for above a century to be the only chymical language of men of science, notwithstanding the prodigious labour to the memory, and confusion to the understanding, which it occasioned: they have but just now left off calling one of their vessels for distilling a death's head, and another a helmet. Capricious analogy with difficulty yields to rational arrangement. If such has been the slow progress of a philosophical language among the learned, how can we expect to make a general, or even a partial reformation among the ignorant? And it may be asked, how can we in education attempt to teach in any but customary terms? There is no occasion to make any sudden or violent alteration in language; but a man who attempts to teach will find it necessary to select his terms with care, to define them with accuracy, and to abide by them with steadiness; thus he will make a philosophical vocabulary for him

* See Preface to Berthollet's Chymical Nomenclature.

self. Persons who want to puzzle and to deceive always pursue a contrary practice; they use as great a variety of unmeaning, or of ambiguous words, as they possibly can. That state juggler, Oliver Cromwell, excelled in this species of eloquence; his speeches are models in their kind. Count Cagliostro, and the Countess de la Motte, were not his superiors in the power of baffling the understanding. The ancient oracles, and the old books of judicial astrologers, and of alchymists, were contrived upon the same principles; in all these we are confounded by a multiplicity of words which convey a doubtful sense.

Children, who have not the habit of listening to words without understanding them, yawn and writhe with manifest symptoms of disgust, whenever they are compelled to hear sounds which convey no ideas to their minds. All supernumerary words should be avoided in cultivating the power of attention.

The common observation, that we can attend to but one thing at a time, should never be forgotten by those who expect to succeed in the art of teaching. In teaching new terms, or new ideas, we must not produce a number at once. It is prudent to consider, that the actual progress made in our business at one sitting is not of so much consequence, as the desire left in the pupil's mind to sit again. Now a child will be better pleased with himself, and with his tutor, if he acquire one distinct idea from a lesson, than if he retained a confused notion of twenty different things. Some people imagine, that as children appear averse to repetition, variety will amuse them. Variety, to a certain degree, certainly relieves the mind; but then the objects which are varied must not all be entirely new. Novelty and variety, joined, fatigue the mind. Either we remain passive at the show, or else we fatigue ourselves with ineffectual activity.

A few years ago, a gentlemant brought two Esquimaux to London-he wished to amuse, and at the same time to astonish them, with the great magnificence of the metropolis. For this purpose, after having equipped them like English gentlemen, he took them out one morning to walk through the streets of London. They

* V. Condillac's "Art de Penser."

† Major Cartwright. See his Journal, &c.

walked for several hours in silence; they expressed neither pleasure nor admiration at any thing which they saw. When their walk was ended, they appeared uncommonly melancholy and stupified. As soon as they got home, they sat down with their elbows upon their knees, and hid their faces between their hands. The only words they could be brought to utter, were, "Too much smoke-too much noise-too much houses-too much men-too much every thing!"

Some people who attend public lectures upon natural philosophy, with the expectation of being much amused and instructed, go home with sensations similar to those of the poor Esquimaux; they feel that they have had too much of every thing. The lecturer has not time to explain his terms, or to repeat them till they are distinct in the memory of his audience.* To children, every mode of instruction must be hurtful which fatigues attention; therefore, a skilful preceptor will, as much as possible, avoid the manner of teaching, to which the public lecturer is in some degree compelled by his situation. A private preceptor, who undertakes the instruction of several pupils in the same family, will examine with care the different habits and tempers of his pupils; and he will have full leisure to adapt his instructions peculiarly to each.

There are some general observations which apply to all understandings; these we shall first enumerate, and we may afterward examine what distinctions should be made for pupils of different tempers or different dispositions.

Besides distinctness and accuracy in the language which we use, besides care to produce but few ideas or terms that are new in our first lessons, we must exercise attention only during very short periods. In the beginning of every science pupils have much laborious work; we should therefore allow them time; we should repress our own impatience when they appear to be slow in comprehending reasons, or in seizing analogies. We often expect, that those whom we are teaching should know some things intuitively, because these may have been so long known to us that we forget how we learned them. We may, from habit, learn to pass with extraordinary velocity from one idea to another. "Some

*V. Chapter on Mechanics.

often repeated processes of reasoning or invention," says Mr. Stewart, "may be carried on so quickly in the mind, that we may not be conscious of them ourselves." Yet we easily convince ourselves that this rapid facility of thought is purely the result of practice, by observing the comparatively slow progress of our understandings in subjects to which we have not been accustomed: the progress of the mind is there so slow, that we can count every step.

We are disposed to think that those must be naturally slow and stupid, who do not perceive the resemblances between objects which strike us, we say, at the first glance. But what we call the first glance is frequently the fiftieth: we have got the things completely by heart; all the parts are known to us, and we are at leisure to compare and judge. A reasonable preceptor will not expect from his pupils two efforts of attention at the same instant; he will not require them at once to learn terms by heart, and to compare the objects which those terms represent; he will repeat his terms till they are thoroughly fixed in the memory; he will repeat his reasoning till the chain of ideas is completely formed.

Repetition makes all operations easy; even the fatigue of thinking diminishes by habit. That we may not increase the labour of the mind unseasonably, we should watch for the moment when habit has made one lesson easy, and when we may go forward a new step. In teaching the children at the House of Industry at Munich to spin, Count Rumford wisely ordered that they should be made perfect in one motion before any other was shown to them: at first they were allowed only to move the wheel by the treadle with their feet; when, after sufficient practice, the foot became perfect in its lesson, the hands were set to work, and the children were allowed to begin to spin with coarse materials. It is said that these children made remarkably good spinners. Madame de Genlis applied the same principle in teaching Adela to play upon the harp.*

In the first attempts to learn any new bodily exercise, as fencing or dancing, persons are not certain what muscles they must use, and what may be left at rest; they generally employ those of which they have the most ready command, but these may not always be the mus

* V. Adela and Theodore