an hold
himself to a task, to a fixed purpose. One must learn to form plans
extending over weeks, months, and years, and to hold unflinchingly to
them, just as one must hold himself to his study table and allow nothing
to distract or to interfere. No training a child can receive is more
important than this, for it gives him control over his life, it gives
him control over the ideas that are to become focal and determine
action. It is for this reason that we call such training a training of
attention. It might perhaps better be called a training of the will. But
the will is only the attentive consciousness. The idea that is clear,
that holds its own in consciousness, is the idea that produces action.
When we say that we _will_ to do a certain thing, all we can mean is
that the _idea of this act_ is clearest and holds its focal place in
consciousness to the exclusion of other ideas. It therefore goes over
into action.

(2) The training just discussed may be called a general training of
attention giving us a general power and control over our lives, but
there is another type of training which is specific. As with the
machinist mentioned above, so with all of us; we attend to the type of
thing that we have formed a habit of attending to. Continued experience
in a certain field makes it more and more easy to attend to things in
that field. One can take a certain subject and work at it day after day,
year after year. By and by, the whole world takes on the aspect of this
chosen subject. The entomologist sees bugs everywhere, the botanist sees
only plants, the mechanic sees only machines, the preacher sees only the
moral and religious aspects of action, the doctor sees only disease, the
mathematician sees always the quantitative aspect of things. Ideas and
perceptions related to one's chosen work go at once and readily to the
focus of consciousness; other things escape notice.

It is for this reason that we become "crankier" every year that we live.
We are attending to only one aspect of the world. While this blinds us
to other aspects of the world, it brings mastery in our individual
fields. We can, then, by training and practice, get a general control
over attention, and by working in a certain field or kind of work, we
make it easy to attend to things in that field or work. This to an
extent gives us control of our lives, of our destiny.

=Interest.= The essential elements of interest are attention and feeling.
When a pe