The Herbartian doctrine of interest ought not, therefore, in principle to be reproached with making pedagogy soft.  If it do so, it is because it is unintelligently carried on.  Do not, then, for the mere sake of discipline, command attention from your pupils in thundering tones.  Do not too often beg it from them as a favor, nor claim it as a right, nor try habitually to excite it by preaching the importance of the subject.  Sometimes, indeed, you must do these things; but, the more you have to do them, the less skilful teacher you will show yourself to be.  Elicit interest from within, by the warmth with which you care for the topic yourself, and by following the laws I have laid down.

If the topic be highly abstract, show its nature by concrete examples.  If it be unfamiliar, trace some point of analogy in it with the known.  If it be inhuman, make it figure as part of a story.  If it be difficult, couple its acquisition with some prospect of personal gain.  Above all things, make sure that it shall run through certain inner changes, since no unvarying object can possibly hold the mental field for long.  Let your pupil wander from one aspect to another of your subject, if you do not wish him to wander from it altogether to something else, variety in unity being the secret of all interesting talk and thought.  The relation of all these things to the native genius of the instructor is too obvious to need comment again.

One more point, and I am done with the subject of attention.  There is unquestionably a great native variety among individuals in the type of their attention.  Some of us are naturally scatterbrained, and others follow easily a train of connected thoughts without temptation to swerve aside to other subjects.  This seems to depend on a difference between individuals in the type of their field of consciousness.  In some persons this is highly focalized and concentrated, and the focal ideas predominate in determining association.  In others we must suppose the margin to be brighter, and to be filled with something like meteoric showers of images, which strike into it at random, displacing the focal ideas, and carrying association in their own direction.  Persons of the latter type find their attention wandering every minute, and must bring it back by a voluntary pull.  The others sink into a subject of meditation deeply, and, when interrupted, are ‘lost’ for a moment before they come back to the outer world.

The possession of such a steady faculty of attention is unquestionably a great boon.  Those who have it can work more rapidly, and with less nervous wear and tear.  I am inclined to think that no one who is without it naturally can by any amount of drill or discipline attain it in a very high degree.  Its amount is probably a fixed characteristic of the individual.  But I wish to make a remark here which I shall have occasion to make again in other connections.  It is that no one need deplore unduly the inferiority