ATTENTION, ABSTRACTION, AND NERALIZATION.
117. By investigating the phenomena of mind at a time when we have formed a connection between volition and certain mental states or operations, we are re peatedly led to consider those states or operations, however passive the mind might originally have been, as totally, and in their own nature voluntary.—This is remarkably the case with that state of mind which we call attention. That this is in young children-entirely involuntary, ;41-7 is apparently certain, and those who are endeavouring to form their minds to habits of study and reflection, know from con stant experience that they have it not un der their command. So far from having an original power of excluding vivid ideas or sensations, to give our attention to those which, though most certainty demanding it, do not make the same lively impression upon the mind, it is a habit which requires the strictest and severest discipline to pro. duce it ; it is a possession honourable, and invaluable, but like every other of impor tance, not the acquisition of the moment, but of a long continued course of rigor ous, and in many cases, of painful exer tion. And when the habit of attention is formed, that is, when we can produce the state of mind called attention by a voli tion, how much may fairly be attributed to the nature of the object, which, though, perhaps, at first uninteresting, becomes pleasing and impressive, and thus produ ces that state by the original laws of our constitution. It even appears probable that the person who has formed such ha bits of attention to a particular science, as to be able to give it his undivided at tention, would be almost as incapable of directing it to frivolous objects, as to a science to which habitual attention, or the nature of the subject, does not give any charms, as he was when he first entered upon his pursuits. In a word, when we take into consideration the circumstances that our attention is never undivided, ex cept to those things which are calculated to engage it, either by the original agreea bleness of their nature, or that which they acquire in proportion as our habits be come confirmed, and that the associative faculty may, and in many instances does, form a connection between the mental states we call attention and volition ; we have probably then sufficient data to ac count for the phenomena of attention, without calling in the aid of a new facul ty.
118. Abstraction is defined by Mr. Stewart, the faculty by which the mind separates the combinations which are presented to it. This definition, so far as it goes, appears to be very correct ; but if the processes of generalization are in. tended to be contained in it, it is by no means sufficient ; as will immediately ap pear from the slightest consideration of that mental process. Abstraction, in this acceptation, is indeed " essentially sub servient to every act of classification but by no means comprehends that act in the number of its functions. Though we cannot agree with Mr. Stewart in all his statements in his chapter on attention, we must in this position, that the mind "cannot attend at one and the same instant to objects which we can attend to sepa rately." If this be the case, what is abstrac tion but attention directed to particular objects, owing either to something vivid in the sensations they excite, or to the frequency of their recurrence ? in fact, subject to all the laws of attention, per fectly involuntary in early life, and after wards becoming, to a certain degree, vo luntary, by means of a strong association formed between the states of mind called volition and attention.
119. In speaking of the process of ge neralization, some observations will apply to the process of abstraction separately considered. We shall therefore proceed to consider the formation of general or abstract notions ; a process in which the mind is most usually passive ; which seems capable of satisfactory explana tion upon the principle of the associative powers, and apparently cannot be ex plained without it.