A MAN is fit for neither business nor pleasure, who either cannot or does not command and direct his attention to the present object, and in some degree banish, for that time, all others from his thoughts. If at a ball, a supper, or a party of pleasure, a man were to be solving, in his own mind, a problem in Euclid, he would be a very bad companion, and make a very poor figure in that company; or if, in studying a problem in his closet, he were to think of a minuet, I am apt to believe that he would make a very poor mathematician.
There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.
This steady and undissipated attention to one object is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.
Indeed, without attention, nothing is to be done: want of attention, which is really want of thought, is either folly or madness. You should not only have attention to everything, but a quickness of attention, so as to observe, at once, all the people in the room,—their motions, their looks, and their words; and yet without staring at them, and seeming to be an observer. This quick and unobserved observation is of infinite advantage in life, and is to be acquired with care; and, on the contrary, what is called absence, which is a thoughtlessness and want of attention about what is doing, makes a man so like either a fool or a madman, that for my part, I see no real difference. A fool never has thought; a madman has lost it; and an absent man is, for the time, without it.
In short, the most material knowledge of all—I mean the knowledge of the world—is never to be acquired without great attention ; and I know many old people, who, though they have lived long in the world, are but children still as to the knowledge of it, from their levity and inattention. Certain forms, which all people comply with, and certain arts, which all people aim at, hide, in some degree, the truth, and give a general exterior resemblance to almost everybody. Attention and sagacity must see through that veil, and discover the natural character.
Add to this, there are little attentions which are infinitely engaging, and which sensibly affect that degree of pride and self-love which is inseparable from human nature; as they are unquestionable proofs of the regard and consideration which we have for the persons to whom we pay them. As, for example: suppose you invited anybody to dine or sup with you, you ought to recollect if you had observed that they had any favorite dish, and take care to provide it for them; and, when it came, you should say, “You seemed to me, at such and such a place, to give this dish a preference, and therefore I ordered it.” “This is the wine that I observed you liked, and therefore I procured some.” Again: most people have their weaknesses; they have their aversions or their likings to such or such things. If we were to laugh at a man for his aversion to a cat or cheese, (which are common antipathies,) or, by inattention or negligence, to let them come in his way, where we could prevent it; he would, in the first case, think himself insulted, and, in the second, slighted; and would remember both. But, on the other hand, your care to procure for him what he likes, and to remove from him what he dislikes, shows him that he is at least an object of your attention, flatters his vanity, and perhaps makes him more your friend than a more important service would have done. The more trifling these things are, the more they prove your attention for the person, and are consequently the more engaging. Consult your own breast, and recollect how these little attentions, when shown you by others, flatter that degree of self-love and vanity from which no man living is free. Reflect how they incline and attract you to that person, and how you are propitiated afterward to all which that person says or does. The same causes will have the same effects in your favor.
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