Mental discipline Author:Davis Wasgatt Clark 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: ness of effort, which is forming for the struggles of more illustrious fields." Section IV.—Endeavor to acquire the habit of applying the mind, with full vigo... more »r and undivided attention, to every intellectual pursuit in which you engage. Intellectual habits detrimental to any worthy acquirement are often engendered by a careless exercise of attention. " If there can be anything," saya Dr. Reid, " in matters of mere judgment and reasoning, worthy the name of genius, it seems to consist chiefly in being able to give that attention to the subject which keeps it steady in the mind till we can survey it accurately on all sides." The vigor of intellectual power, as well as the actual knowledge we may obtain, must depend in a great measure upon our habits of attention. Sitting with a book before you, or dozing over one with dreamy indifference, is not study. Neither are those oft intermitted efforts, that are made by some, worthy of the name of study. " Would you deserve to be called a student," says one, " you must learn to abstract your mind from everything else, and fasten it upon the subject before you. If it wander, bring it back, and chain it to the subject again." Continue thus, till you have fully formed the habit of applying the whole attention to whatever subject of investigation you undertake, mill fixed and intense thought. This one habit is of more value to him who would extend his researches and enlarge the dominion of his thought, than the possession of a superficial knowledge of half-a-dozenlanguages -without it. The mighty intellects of every age have been distinguished for this power. It is said of Seneca, that, in the midst of the bustle of an encampment, he fell into a profound meditation, and stood, with the immobility of a statue, from one morning till the sun r...« less