g the principles and part of
the material I had used for many years previously in the education of
deficient children, to the normal children of the San Lorenzo quarter
in Rome, when I happened to notice a little girl of about three years
old deeply absorbed in a set of solid insets, removing the wooden
cylinders from their respective holes and replacing them. The
expression on the child's face was one of such concentrated attention
that it seemed to me an extraordinary manifestation; up to this time
none of the children had ever shown such fixity of interest in an
object; and my belief in the characteristic instability of attention
in young children, who flit incessantly from one thing to another,
made me peculiarly alive to the phenomenon.

I watched the child intently without disturbing her at first, and
began to count how many times she repeated the exercise; then, seeing
that she was continuing for a long time, I picked up the little
armchair in which she was seated, and placed chair and child upon the
table; the little creature hastily caught up her case of insets, laid
it across the arms of her chair, and gathering the cylinders into her
lap, set to work again. Then I called upon all the children to sing;
they sang, but the little girl continued undisturbed, repeating her
exercise even after the short song had come to an end. I counted
forty-four repetitions; when at last she ceased, it was quite
independently of any surrounding stimuli which might have distracted
her, and she looked round with a satisfied air, almost as if awaking
from a refreshing nap.

I think my never-to-be-forgotten impression was that experienced by
one who has made a discovery.

This phenomenon gradually became common among the children: it may
therefore be recorded as a constant reaction occurring in connection
with certain external conditions, which may be determined. And each
time that such a polarisation of attention took place, the child began
to be completely transformed, to become calmer, more intelligent, and
more expansive; it showed extraordinary spiritual qualities, recalling
the phenomena of a higher consciousness, such as those of conversion.

It was as if in a saturated solution, a point of crystallization had
formed, round which the whole chaotic and fluctuating mass united,
producing a crystal of wonderful forms. Thus, when the phenomenon of
the polarisation of attention had taken place, all that was disorderly
and flu