If the pessimistic,
morbid one had looked away from the shadow to the sun it hid he, too, in
the end might have seen with sane eyes and lived so wholesomely as to
find all the good there was in life. Willed attention, rather than
spineless feeling distractibility, might have saved him.
When thinking can be forced to follow where trained reason directs, and
can be kept in that direction, the greatest problem of physical and
nervous well being is solved. To the nurse there is no other principle
of psychology so important. But no child ever had his attention
diverted by reasoning alone. The object at which you wish him to look
must be made more impelling than the one he already sees, or he must
want much to please you, else he only with his eyes will follow your
command while his mind returns to his real interest; and the second you
cease to command that eye service, he looks back to the thing that was
holding him before. The beginning of all education is in arousing a
_want to know_; in turning desire in the direction of knowledge.
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