exists for it which it does not itself posit as its own. We hear
it not seldom implied that something from outside conditions must make
an impression on the mind, but this is an error. Mind lets nothing act
upon it unless it has rendered itself receptive to it. Without this
preparatory self-excitation the object does not really penetrate it, and
it passes by the object unconsciously or indifferently. The horizon of
perception changes for each person with his peculiarities and culture.
Attention is the adjusting of the observer to the object in order to
seize it in its unity and diversity. Relatively, the observer allows,
for a moment, his relation to all other surroundings to cease, so that
he may establish a relation with this one. Without this essentially
spontaneous activity, nothing exists for the mind. All result in
teaching and learning depends upon the clearness and strength with which
distinctions are made, and the saying, _bene qui distinguit bene docit_,
applies as well to the pupil.

Sec. 83. Attention, depending as it does on the self-determination of the
observer, can therefore be improved, and the pupil made attentive, by
the educator. Education must accustom him to an exact, rapid, and
many-sided attention, so that at the first contact with an object he may
grasp it sufficiently and truly, and that it shall not be necessary for
him always to be adding to his acquisitions concerning it. The twilight
and partialness of intelligence which forces us always to new
corrections because a pupil at the very commencement did not give entire
attention, must not be tolerated.

[Sidenote: _Psychological Faculties._]

Sec. 84. We learn from Psychology that mind does not consist of distinct
faculties, but that what we choose to call so are only different
activities of the same power. Each one is just as essential as the
other, on which account Education must grant to each faculty its claim
to the same fostering care. If we would construe correctly the axiom _a
potiori fit denominatio_ to mean that man is distinguished from animals
by thought, and that mediated will is not the same as thought, we must
not forget that feeling and representing are not less necessary to a
truly complete human being. The special direction which the activity of
apprehending intelligence takes are (1) Perception, (2) Conception, (3)
Thinking. Dialectically, they pass over into each other; not that
Perception rises into Conception, and Concep