Читать книгу Aids to Reflection; and, The Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Страница 18

Leighton and Coleridge.

It is a matter of great difficulty, and requires no ordinary skill and address, to fix the attention of men on the world within them, to induce them to study the processes and superintend the works which they are themselves carrying on in their own minds; in short, to awaken in them both the faculty of thought[15] and the inclination to exercise it. For alas! the largest part of mankind are nowhere greater strangers than at home.

[15] Distinction between Thought and Attention.—By thought is here meant the voluntary reproduction in our own minds of those states of consciousness, or (to use a phrase more familiar to the religious reader) of those inward experiences, to which, as to his best and most authentic documents, the teacher of moral or religious truth refers us. In attention, we keep the mind passive: in thought we rouse it into activity. In the former, we submit to an impression—we keep the mind steady in order to receive the stamp. In the latter, we seek to imitate the artist, while we ourselves make a copy or duplicate of his work. We may learn arithmetic, or the elements of geometry, by continued attention alone; but self-knowledge, or an insight into the laws and constitutions of the human mind, and the grounds of religion and true morality, in addition to the effort of attention requires the energy of thought.