may say that this boy or girl illustrates
both the aspects of the attention-function which I pointed out above;
he attends best--that is, most effectively--to visual instruction
provided he exert himself; but on the other hand, it is just here that
the drift of habit tends to make him superficial. As attention to the
visual is the most easy for him, and as the details of his visual
stock are most familiar, so he tends to pass too quickly over the new
matters which are presented to him, assimilating the details to the
old schemes of his habit. It is most important to observe this
distinction, since it is analogous to the "fluid attention" of the
motor scholar; and some of the very important questions regarding
correlation of studies, the training of attention, and the stimulation
of interest depend upon its recognition. _Acquisition best just where
it is most likely to go wrong_; that is the state of things. The
voluntary use of the visual function gives the best results; but the
habitual, involuntary, slipshod use of it gives bad results, and tends
to the formation of injurious habits.

For example, I set a strongly visual boy a "copy" to draw. Seeing this
visual copy he will quickly recognise it, take it to be very easy,
dash it off quickly, all under the lead of habit; but his result is
poor, because his habit has taken the place of effort. Once get him to
make effort upon it, however, and his will be the best result of all
the scholars, perhaps, just because the task calls him out in the line
of his favoured function. The same antithesis comes out in connection
with other varieties of sensory scholars.

We may say, therefore, in regard to two of the general aspects of
mental types--the relation of the favoured function to attention, on
the one hand, and to habit, on the other--that they both find emphatic
illustration in the pupil of the visual type. He is, more than any
other sensory pupil, a special case. His mental processes set
decidedly toward vision. He is the more important, also, because he is
so common. Statistics are lacking, but possibly half of the entire
human family in civilized life are visual in their type for most of
the language functions. This is due, no doubt, to the emphasis that
civilization puts upon sight as the means of social acquisition
generally, and to our predominantly visual methods of instruction.

The third fact mentioned is also illustrated by this type; the fact
that mental instr