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CHAPTER XV.

Of fixing the attention.

A STUDENT should labour 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 colours of it, and sometimes takes one for the other; whereas if he would but withhold his judgment till he come 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.

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

I. Get a good liking to the study or 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 an 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 occur. rences; 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.

II. 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.

I confess in this practice of representing moral subjects by pictures, we should be cautious lest we so far

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immerse the mind in corporeal images, as to render it unfit to take in an abstracted and intellectual idea, or cause it to form wrong conceptions of immaterial things. This practice therefore is rather to be used at first in order to get a fixed babit of attention, and in some cases only; but it can never be our constant way and method of pursuing all moral, abstracted and spiritual themes.

III. Apply yourself to those studies, and read those authors who draw out their subjects into a perpetual chain of connected reasonings, wherein the following parts of the discourse are naturally and easily derived from those which go before. Several of the mathematical sciences, if not all, are happily useful for this purpose. This will render the labour of study delightful to a rational mind, and will fix the powers of the understanding with strong attention to their proper operations by the very pleasure of it. Labor ipse voluptas, is a happy proposition, wheresoever it can be applied.

IV. Do not choose your constant place of study by the finery of the prospects, or the most various and entertaining scenes of sensible things. Too much light, or a variety of objects which strike the eye or the ear, especially while they are ever in motion or often changing, have a natural and powerful tendency to steal away the mind too often from its steady pursuit of any subject which we contemplate; and thereby the soul gets a habit of silly curiosity and impertinence, of trifling and wandering. Vagario thought himself furnished with the best closet for his study among the beauties, gaities and diversions of Kensington or Hampton-Court; but after seven years professing to pursue learning, he was a mere novice still.

V. Be not in too much haste to come to the determination of a difficult or important point. Think it worth your waiting to find out truth. Do not give your assent up to either side of a question too soon, merely on this account, that the study of it is long and difficult. Rather be contented with ignorance for a season, and continue in suspense till your attention and meditation and due labour have found out sufficient evidence on one side, Some are so fond to know a great deal at once, and love to talk of things with freedom and boldness before they thoroughly understand them, that they scarce ever allow themselves attention enough to search the matter through and through.

VI. Have a care of indulging the more sensual pas sions and appetites of animal nature: they are great enemies to attention. Let not the mind of a student be under the influence of any warm affection to things of sense when he comes to engage in the search of truth, or the improvement of his understanding. A person under the power of love, or fear, or anger, great pain or deep sorrow, hath so little government of his soul, that he cannot keep it attentive to the proper subject of his meditation. The passions call away the thoughts with incessant importunity towards the object that excited them; and if we indulge the frequent rise and roving of passions, we shall thereby procure an unsteady and unattentive habit of mind.

Yet this one exception must be admitted, viz. If we can be so happy as to engage any passion of the soul on the side of the particular study which we are pursuing,

it may have a great influence to fix the attention more strongly to it.

VII. It is therefore very useful to fix and engage the mind in the pursuit of any study by a consideration of the divine pleasures of truth and knowledge, by a sense of our duty to God, by a delight in the exercise of our intellectual faculties, by the hope of future service to our fellow-creatures, and glorious advantage to ourselves, both in this world and that which is to come. these thoughts though they may move our affections, yet they do it with a proper influence: these will rather assist and promote our attention, than disturb or divert it from the subject of our present and proper meditations. A soul inspired with the fondest love of truth, and the warmest aspirations after sincere felicity and celestial beatitude, will keep all its powers attentive to the incessant pursuit of them: passion is then refined and consecrated to its divinest purposes.

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