Public Speaking, Principles and Practice (1915) - Livro de bolso

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II ATTENTION FURTHER ANALYSIS OF MENTAL, ACTION AS AFFECTING DELIVERY From the preceding chapter it is manifest that concentration of attention is called for in delivery. To attend to an idea means that one holds it in the focus of consciousness, excluding for the time all the swarms of other ideas and sensations that constantly bid for attention. Without an effort to control, and often in spite of effort, the mind may turn here and there as one thing suggests another by the subtle process of association; so that things so incongruous as art and artichokes, clouds and anarchy may jostle each other in one's mind. Says Dr. Curry: "These characteristics of the act of thinking will be seen by observing the difference between thinking and musing. In musing, the mind drifts from idea to idea, independent of the will. There is little concentration or direction of mind: it moves passively from idea to idea. In thinking, however, there is an accentuation of successive pulsations. The mind concentrates its attention upon one idea, placing this in the foreground, and placing others in the background; then chooses another idea from the many possible associations, and directs attention to that. The prolonging of the concentration of the mind upon an idea is called 'attention.' "l An important part of attending to one idea is attending from all others; "for we cannot attend at the same moment to all the ideas that make up a consciousness; the 'grasp' of attention is limited."2 We can think clearly and definitely one thing at a time. We cannot attend to all the thought of even a short speech at once, or of theordinary paragraph, or of any but the shortest sentence. We may hold in mind a summary of a speech; but the summary is only the thought generalized, without its defin...