attention may be cultivated, just as may be the various faculties of the mind, by the two-fold method of Exercise and Nourishment; that is, by using and employing it actively and by furnishing it with the proper materials with which to feed its strength. The way to exercise the attention is to use it frequently in every-day life. If you are listening to a man speaking, endeavor to give to him your undivided attention, and, at the same time, to shut out from your consciousness every other object. In working, we should endeavor to use the attention by concentrating our interest upon the particular task before us to the exclusion of all else. In reading, we should endeavor to hold our minds closely to the text instead of hastily glancing over the page as so many do.
Those who wish to cultivate their attention should take up some line of study in which it is necessary to fasten the attention firmly for a time. A half-hour's study in this way is worth more than hours of careless reading so far as the cultivation of the attention is concerned. Mathematics is most valuable in the direction of developing the power of attention. Gibbon says: "After a rapid glance on the subject and distribution of a new book, I suspend the reading of it which I only resume after having myself examined the subject in all its relations."
Some writers have held that the attention may be developed by the practice of selecting the voice of one person speaking among a crowd of speakers, and deliberately shutting out the other sounds, giving the whole attention to the particular speaker; or, in the same manner, selecting one singer in a church choir or band of singers; or one musical instrument in an orchestra; or one piece of machinery making sounds in a room filled with various machines, etc. The practice of so doing is held to strengthen one's powers of concentration and attention.
Draper says: "Although many images may be simultaneously existing upon the retina, the mind possesses the power of singling out any one of them and fastening attention upon it, just as among a number of musical instruments simultaneously played, one, and that perhaps the feeblest, may be selected and its notes exclusively followed." And as Taylor says: "In a concert of several voices, the voices being of nearly equal intensity, regarded merely as organic impressions on the auditory nerve, we select one, and at will we lift out and disjoin it from the general volume of sound; we shut off the other voices – five, ten and more – and follow this one alone. When we have done so for a time, we freely cast it off and take up another." Carpenter says: "The more completely the mental energy can be brought into one focus and all distracting objects excluded, the more powerful will be the volitional effort."
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