Observance

“ By power of observation is not meant simply the ability to see, to hear, to taste, or to smell with delicacy, but the power of so concentrating the attention on what we observe as to form a definite and lasting impression on the mind. ”

“ In fact, I am again taking interest in the world, I am testing my faculty of observation, and am trying how far I can go with my science and my acquirements, how far my eye is clear and sharp, how much I can take in at a hasty glance, and whether those wrinkles, that are imprinted upon my heart, are ever again to be obliterated. ”

“ What experience shows us as to the quantitative aspect of the world is, not that such differences exist wholly apart from our own or anybody’s attention, but that the attentive will to measure does find a successful expression of its purposes in experience, so that a consciousness of small differences in lengths, times, masses, etc., comes to be recognized, where untrained and careless attention had ignored every such difference. ”

“ The power of observation, then, is simply the power of fixing the attention upon our sensations, and this power of fixing the attention is the one essential condition of scholarship in all departments of learning. ”

“ If attention be the reproduction of the sensation from within, the habit of reading not merely with the eye, and of listening not merely with the ear, but of articulating to one's self the words seen or heard, ought to deepen one's attention to the latter. ”

“ Do you look people frankly in the eye? Are your inflections natural, courteous, modest, musical, or aggressive, conceited, pessimistic, repellent? What are your powers of attention, observation, memory, reason, imagination, inventiveness, thoughtfulness, receptiveness, quickness, analytical power, constructiveness, breadth, grasp? ”

“ Its aim is to teach the unscientific observer how to make use of his eye,—'how to look, and what to look at;' and to show him how much of wonder and beauty lies everywhere around him, if he could only recognise it. ”

“ By appropriate tests, the quickness of response to sense-impressions, the character of the associations of ideas, the workings of the individual imagination, the nature of the emotional tendencies, the character and scope of the powers of attention and discrimination, the degree of persistence of the individual and his susceptibility to fatigue in certain forms of effort, the visual, auditory and manual skill, and even the moral character of the subject, can be more or less clearly and definitely determined. ”

“ A simple instance will bring home to us how the boundaries of our consciousness are crowded with unknown impressions — unknown, because not attended to; but yet in some inexplicable way a part of our consciousness, since an effort of attention serves to bring them, any one of them, clearly into mental vision. ”

“ A Mind at the Mercy of Associations.--We will consider, then, the nature and the functions of attention. The mind--with the possible exception of the state of coma--is never idle; ideas are for ever passing through the brain, by day and by night, sleeping or walking, mad or sane. We take a great deal too much upon ourselves when we suppose that we are the authors and intenders of the thoughts we think. ”

“ If we trace the progress of our minds, and with attention observe how it repeats, adds together, and unites its simple ideas received from sensation or reflection, it will lead us further than at first perhaps we should have imagined. ”

“ From a momentary sensation of sight, or sound, or touch we infer reality that far exceeds anything actually given to us by the sensation.
Thinking is questioning experience. When our attention is suddenly attracted by something—a flash of light, or a sound, or a twinge of pain—consciously or unconsciously we say to ourself, What is that? ”

“ Observation.—It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit in life. Human knowledge is but an accumulation of small facts, made by successive generations of men,—the little bits of knowledge and experience carefully treasured up by them growing at length into a mighty pyramid.—Samuel Smiles. ”

“ We all have eyes that see not for all but a limited range of facts and views; and we unconsciously fill out the blind-spots of our mental retinæ according to the habits and acquisitions of the surrounding areas. We observe and record what interests us; and this interest is in turn the outcome of a greater or lesser endowment, knowledge, and training. A new observation requires, as a rule, not a new sense-organ or an additional faculty, nor even more powerful or novel apparatus, but an insight into the significance of quite lowly and frequent things. ”

“ This generalised form of attention, which we attribute to the Absolute Experience, is now conceived by us as that aspect of this Absolute which, in the total movement of the world’s unity, determines the ideas to find this concrete realisation which they do find. ”

“ By attention we mean sensory clearness. When we say we are attentive to a thing or subject, we mean that perceptions or ideas of that thing or subject are clear as compared to other perceptions and ideas that are in consciousness at the same time. The contents of one’s consciousness, the perceptions and ideas that constitute one’s mind at any one moment are always arranged in an attentive pattern, some being clear, others unclear. ”

“ At first sight, the objects of attention seem to be infinite. When traced to their sources, however, it is found, that they are of two species only. We attend to Sensations; we attend to Ideas; and there is no other object of our attention. ”

“ Every one knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains [Pg 404] of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. ”

“ The activity by which the mind ascends from sense-perception to memory is the activity of attention. Here we have the appearance of the will in intellectual activity. Attention is the control of perception by means of the will. ”

“ In this manner, from a series of sensations, observations, and analyses, a successive train of ideas arises, so linked together, that an attentive observer may trace back to a certain point the order and connection of the whole sum of human knowledge. ”

“ In a course of observation, the mind is but a mere spectator, and only sees external appearances. We must aid these with the light of Philosophy to unveil knowledge fully. We must dive into the bottom of things by repeated and different experiments, and, as is were, force nature to yield herself up to our inquiries. ”

“ When you go to Nature, bring us good science or else good literature, and not a mere inventory of what you have seen. One demonstrates, the other interprets.
Observation is selective and detective. A real observation begets warmth and joy in the mind. To see things in detail as they lie about you and enumerate them is not observation; but to see the significant things, to seize the quick movement and gesture, to disentangle the threads of relation, to know the nerves that thrill from the cords that bind, or the typical and vital from the commonplace and mechanical—that is to be an observer. ”

“ Well, what I have called contemplative insight, that disposition and power of our minds whereby we study and enjoy truth, expresses itself early and late, as you know, in the form of a searching curiosity about our world and about life, a curiosity to which you in vain endeavor to set bounds. ”

“ To observations which ourselves we make, We grow more partial for the observer's sake; ”

“ In this way also the habits of observation are formed in the young, and it is fair to believe that the spirit of inquiry thus excited will tend to increase the knowledge of the phenomena of life, and its relations to the conditions of existence. ”

“ Thou hast a consciousness of thy seeing, feeling, &c., and thereby thou perceivest the object. Couldst thou not perceive it without this consciousness? Canst thou not recognise an object by sight or hearing, without knowing that thou seest or hearest? ”

“ From these three considerations we ought, therefore, to infer, that the thoughts connected with circumstances on which our attention is more specially concentrated, are those which prevail over the others; for the effect of attention is to render dominant and exclusive the object on which it is directed, and during the moment of attention it is the circumstance to which we attend that necessarily obtains the ascendant. ”

“ Practically, does all this help one much? It is possible that some who have passed for the deepest observers of human nature, owed their renown more to an acute observation of the phenomena of feeling, an intuitive knowledge of what people like and dislike, a retentive memory, and a happy knack of making all these available at the right moment, than to any profound reasoning on abstract principles. ”

“ The habits of observation, of comparison, and of method, are those which all naturalists and collectors must have; habits which are of great value in other ways as well. Firstly, one must have the seeing eye, and train it to notice what many people do not. ”

“ What, then, that we observe, can give us any reason for believing that anyone else has certain particular perceptions, thoughts or feelings? It has, I think, been very commonly assumed that the observation of my own perceptions, thoughts, and feelings, can, by itself, give me such a reason. ”

“ Your gift of observation must be truly wonderful—you manage to exercise it at so great a distance, or perhaps you send out your astral body to do the observing, which must be the reason why it's invisible to me. ”

“ Attention, discrimination, and comparison, and the other so-called activities of consciousness, are for the most part open to observation as being made up of changes in conscious states along with a certain integrating play of associative elements. ”

“ The sight, as it is called, of figure, or distance, appearing as it does a simple sensation, is in reality a complex state of consciousness—a sequence in which the antecedent, a sensation of color, and the consequent, a number of ideas, are so closely combined by association that they appear not one idea, but one sensation. ”

“ I answer at once, the world of the objects of my present possible Attention, where attention means simply the discrimination of what is already assumed to be there, is by no means the final or determinate world that the Will seeks. ”

“ Here are multitudes of phenomena which every observer sees and owns; and every one who observes them owns likewise, that "the most unthinking, as well as the most prejudiced, must be struck with the fact, that the period in which we live is extraordinary and momentous;" ”

“ Observation and experience teach us, those scorning to swerve from a direct line of duty, or vainly to stoop to personal aggrandizement at the sacrifice of conscience, and make popularity paramount to Truth, are traduced by many whom that line of duty touches. ”

“ The best mode of exciting the love of observation is by teaching 'How to Observe.' With this end it was originally intended to produce, in one or two volumes, a series of hints for travellers and students, calling their attention to the points necessary for inquiry or observation in the different branches of Geology, Natural History, Agriculture, the Fine Arts, General Statistics, and Social Manners. ”

“ Thus, the repetition of similar experiences forms habits such that each element of some new instant of passing experience comes to us saturated with the meaning that, as we look back upon our past life, we suppose to have resulted from the whole course of what has happened. And through such endlessly varied processes of habit-forming, we come to reach stages of insight in which the instantaneous presentation of a few facts gets for us, at a given moment, the value of an indirect appreciation of what we never directly grasp--that is, the value of a wide survey of life. ”

“ Before going on to speak of the effect of our own activity upon our knowledge, when attention is combined with active recognition of impressions, we want to formulate the law that governs the action of attention upon sense-impressions apart from recognition. ”

“ Is not the one the appropriate field and province of observation,—a power habitually awake to all the perceptions and impressions of the bodily organs? and does not the other fall exclusively under the cognizance of reflection,—an operation which inverts all the ordinary habits of the understanding, abstracting the thoughts from every sensible object, and even striving to abstract them from every sensible image? ”

“ The habit of scientific{319} observation, which in time becomes one of the involuntary processes, goes on as do heart-beat and breathing; a certain general awe overshadows the mind; but on descending again to lowlands one after another the whole riches of the human organization come back with delicious freshness. ”

“ Whatever may be the kind of attention, voluntary or involuntary, it always acts alike; the image of an object or event is capable of revival, and of complete revival, in proportion to the degree of attention with which we have considered the object or event. ”

“ The observant man is, in reality, the attentive man, and the so-called power of observation is simply the capacity for continuous attention. As a matter of fact, I have found in practice, that the habit is a useful one even in reference to letters ”