"
As Magnusson expresses it, "Attention is the centering of consciousness
on a portion of its contents." And Angell adds, "Attention is simply a
name for the central and most active portion of the field of
consciousness."
The mind, of course, during waking hours, is never merely passive. With
its flood of ideas it is always recalling, observing, comparing,
analyzing, building toward conclusions. These processes go on
inevitably--go on with little concern about attention. But when we
narrow the field--when we bring our mental energy to a focus on
something specific and particular we then _attend_.
Betts, in his _The Mind and Its Education_, very happily illustrates the
meaning of attention:
"_Attention Measures Mental Efficiency._--In a state of attention the
mind may be likened to the rays of the sun which have been passed
through a burning glass. You may let all the rays which can pass
through your window pane fall hour after hour upon the paper lying on
your desk, and no marked effects follow. But let the same amount of
sunlight be passed through a lens and converged to a point the size
of your pencil, and the paper will at once burst into flame."
To follow another analogy, attention is to the energies of the mind what
the pipe line leading into the power plant is to the water in the canyon
above.
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