pupil may be to abide by the task prescribed. The influence of the Feelings upon Retentiveness is not throughout in proportion to their degree, whether they are pleasurable, painful, or neutral. We have to introduce a modifying circumstance into the case, namely, that great strength of feeling absorbs the forces of the system, and diminishes the power available for cementing an intellectual association. A strong feeling once aroused, while inflaming the attention upon whatever is bound up with it, necessarily engages us with itself. The plastic process of fixing a train or aggregate of ideas has but a share of the energies awakened under feeling. It is possible also to stimulate attention, and thereby to {118} quicken memory, without the excitement of the feelings, as in pure voluntary attention. For although the will, in the last resort, is stimulated by an end (which must involve the feelings), yet we may be strongly moved without being under the excitement of the feelings that enter into the final end. Our volitions may be energetic, without the presence of strong emotions, notwithstanding that, apart from our possessing such emotions, we should not be strongly moved to action. Thus, a difference is made between the influence of the feelings and the influence of the will; both being powers to impress the memory. The two considerations now advanced, namely, the want of strict concomitance between strength of feeling and the stimulus to memory, and the operation of the will in the abeyance of present feeling, make it desirable to find some other mode of stating the element or condition that qualifies the influence of Frequency or Repetition, in the growth of memory and association. Perhaps the best mode of singling out the operative circumstance is to describe it as "Concentration of Mind;" the devotion of the mental forces to the thing to be done or remembered--the withdrawal of power from other exercises, to expend it on the exercise in hand. Every circumstance that at once rouses the mental and nervous energies, and keeps them fixed upon any subject of study or the practice of any art, is a circumstance in aid of acquisition. No fact more comprehensive, more exactly in point, can be assigned than the one now stated. What remains is to apply it in the detail, or to point out the occasions and conditions that favour, and those that obstruct, the concentration of the mental energy. It is under this view that we can best appreciate the efficacy of pleasure (interest in the subject), of pain, of mere excitement, and of voluntary attention. We can also see, as an obvious corollary, the advantage of having the mind unoccupied, or disengaged for the work, and the disadvantage of being diverted, or distracted by other objects. Fear, care, anxiety, are hostile to culture by lowering the tone or energy of the mind; while what power is left concentrates itself upon the subject matter of the anxious feeling. On the other hand,