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Ebook has 32 lines and 6286 words, and 1 pages
FEEDING THE MIND
UNIFORM WITH THE PRESENT VOLUME.
PRAYERS WRITTEN AT VAILIMA. BY R. L. STEVENSON.
A CHRISTMAS SERMON. BY R. L. STEVENSON.
LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS.
FEEDING THE MIND
BY LEWIS CARROLL
WITH A PREFATORY NOTE BY WILLIAM H. DRAPER
LONDON CHATTO & WINDUS 1907
NOTE
'Into the Silent Land.'
EIGHT OR NINE WISE WORDS ABOUT LETTER-WRITING
PAGE ON STAMP-CASES, 5 HOW TO BEGIN A LETTER, 8 HOW TO GO ON WITH A LETTER, 11 HOW TO END A LETTER, 20 ON REGISTERING CORRESPONDENCE, 22
'Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus Tam cari capitis?'
W. H. D.
FEEDING THE MIND
Breakfast, dinner, tea; in extreme cases, breakfast, luncheon, dinner, tea, supper, and a glass of something hot at bedtime. What care we take about feeding the lucky body! Which of us does as much for his mind? And what causes the difference? Is the body so much the more important of the two?
Well, it is, I say, for us that the consequences of neglecting the body can be clearly seen and felt; and it might be well for some if the mind were equally visible and tangible--if we could take it, say, to the doctor, and have its pulse felt.
'Why, what have you been doing with this mind lately? How have you fed it? It looks pale, and the pulse is very slow.'
'Well, doctor, it has not had much regular food lately. I gave it a lot of sugar-plums yesterday.'
'Sugar-plums! What kind?'
'Well, they were a parcel of conundrums, sir.'
'Ah, I thought so. Now just mind this: if you go on playing tricks like that, you'll spoil all its teeth, and get laid up with mental indigestion. You must have nothing but the plainest reading for the next few days. Take care now! No novels on any account!'
Considering the amount of painful experience many of us have had in feeding and dosing the body, it would, I think, be quite worth our while to try and translate some of the rules into corresponding ones for the mind.
I have heard a physician telling his patient--whose complaint was merely gluttony and want of exercise--that 'the earliest symptom of hyper-nutrition is a deposition of adipose tissue,' and no doubt the fine long words greatly consoled the poor man under his increasing load of fat.
I wonder if there is such a thing in nature as a FAT MIND? I really think I have met with one or two: minds which could not keep up with the slowest trot in conversation; could not jump over a logical fence, to save their lives; always got stuck fast in a narrow argument; and, in short, were fit for nothing but to waddle helplessly through the world.
First, as to the intervals: these are as really necessary as they are for the body, with this difference only, that while the body requires three or four hours' rest before it is ready for another meal, the mind will in many cases do with three or four minutes. I believe that the interval required is much shorter than is generally supposed, and from personal experience, I would recommend anyone, who has to devote several hours together to one subject of thought, to try the effect of such a break, say once an hour, leaving off for five minutes only each time, but taking care to throw the mind absolutely 'out of gear' for those five minutes, and to turn it entirely to other subjects. It is astonishing what an amount of impetus and elasticity the mind recovers during those short periods of rest.
'A thoroughly well-read man. Just you try him in any subject, now. You can't puzzle him.'
You turn to the thoroughly well-read man. You ask him a question, say, in English history . He smiles good-naturedly, tries to look as if he knew all about it, and proceeds to dive into his mind for the answer. Up comes a handful of very promising facts, but on examination they turn out to belong to the wrong century, and are pitched in again. A second haul brings up a fact much more like the real thing, but, unfortunately, along with it comes a tangle of other things--a fact in political economy, a rule in arithmetic, the ages of his brother's children, and a stanza of Gray's 'Elegy,' and among all these, the fact he wants has got hopelessly twisted up and entangled. Meanwhile, every one is waiting for his reply, and, as the silence is getting more and more awkward, our well-read friend has to stammer out some half-answer at last, not nearly so clear or so satisfactory as an ordinary schoolboy would have given. And all this for want of making up his knowledge into proper bundles and ticketing them.
Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his very amusing book, 'The Professor at the Breakfast Table,' gives the following rule for knowing whether a human being is young or old: 'The crucial experiment is this--offer a bulky bun to the suspected individual just ten minutes before dinner. If this is easily accepted and devoured, the fact of youth is established.' He tells us that a human being, 'if young, will eat anything at any hour of the day or night.'
If this paper has given you any useful hints on the important subject of reading, and made you see that it is one's duty no less than one's interest to 'read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest' the good books that fall in your way, its purpose will be fulfilled.
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
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