, in
this point of view, prove any thing in favour of fortune. Those who
can best command their attention, in the greatest variety of
circumstances, have the most useful abilities; without this command of
mind, men of genius, as they are called, are helpless beings; with it,
persons of inferior capacity become valuable. Addison trembled and
doubted, and doubted and trembled, when he was to write a common
official paper; and it is said, that he was absolutely obliged to
resign his place, because he could not decide in time whether he
should write a _that_ or a _which_. No business could have been
transacted by such an imbecile minister.

To substitute voluntary for associated attention, we may withdraw some
of the usually associated circumstances, and increase the excitement;
and we may afterwards accustom the pupil to act from the hope of
distant pleasures. Unless children can be actuated by the view of
future distant advantage, they cannot be capable of long continued
application. We shall endeavour to explain how the value of distant
pleasures can be increased, and made to act with sufficient force upon
the mind, when we hereafter speak of judgment and of imagination.

It has been observed, that persons of wit and judgment have perhaps
originally the same powers, and that the difference in their
characters arises from their habits of attention, and the different
class of objects to which they have turned their thoughts. The manner
in which we are first taught to observe, and to reason, must in the
first years of life decide these habits. There are two methods of
teaching; one which ascends from particular facts to general
principles, the other which descends from the general principles to
particular facts; one which builds up, another which takes to pieces;
the synthetic and the analytic method. The words analysis and
synthesis are frequently misapplied, and it is difficult to write or
to speak long about these methods without confounding them: in
learning or in teaching, we often use them alternately. We first
observe particulars; then form some general idea of classification;
then descend again to new particulars, to observe whether they
correspond with our principle.

Children acquire knowledge, and their attention alternates from
particular to general ideas, exactly in the same manner. It has been
remarked, that men who have begun by forming suppositions, are
inclined to adapt and to compress their consequent