Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

MEMORY. 259
Attention sometimes spontaneous, and sometimes requires effort.
-I have only to observe further, with respect to attention, considered in the relation in which it stands to MlIemory, that although it be a voluntary act, it requires experience to have it
always under command. In the case of objects to which we
have been taught to attend at an early period of life, or which
are calculated to rouse the curiosity, or to affect any of our
passions, the attention fixes itself upon them, as it were spontaneously, and without any effort on our part, of which we are
conscious. How perfectly do we remember, and even retain,
for a long course of years, the faces and the handwritings of
our acquaintances, although we never took any particular pains
to fix them in the Memory? On the other hand, if an object
does not interest some principle of our nature, we may examine
it again and again, with a wish to treasure up the knowledge of
it in the mind, without our being able to command that degree
of attention which may lead us to recognize it the next time we
see it. A person, for example, who has not been accustomed to
attend particularly to horses or to cattle, may study for a considerable time the appearance of a horse or of a bullock, with
out being able, a few days afterwards, to pronounce on his identity; while a horse-dealer or a grazier recollects many hundreds
of that class of animals with which he is conversant, as perfectly as he does the faces of his acquaintances. In order to
account for this, I would remark, that although attention be a
voluntary act, and although we are always able, when we choose,
to make a momentary exertion of it; yet, unless the object to
which it is directed be really interesting, in some degree, to the
an attempt to repeat it at the end of each, than after a hundred readings
without such an effort. The effort rouses the attention from that languid
state in which it remains, while the mind is giving a passive reception to
foreign ideas. The fact is remarked by Lord Bacon, and is explained by
him on the same principle to which I have referred it.
" Qun expectantur et attentionem excitant, melius hbrent quam qu00
prietervolant. Itaque si scriptum aliquod vicies perlegeris, non tam facile
illud memoriter disces, quam si illud legas decies, tentando interim illud
recitare, et ubi deficit memoria, inspiciendo librum." -Bacon, Nov Org.
lib. ii. aph. 26.