NewThoughtLibrary.com / DivineLibrary.org

or to the effort in hand. External circumstances favorable to the inquiry, are secured. The desires, quickened by exercise, lend their aid in constraining and spurring on the thoughts. The purpose, kept in view, evokes from the memory on each new exigency, every fitting idea in the increasing circle of its information, while the logical connection of ideas guides the pursuit along the right trail. Under these conditions, we shortly behold an intellectual power which works as intensely, as directly, as uninterruptedly toward its end, as the engine whose valves and pistons and wheels are driven by a mechanical agency. A wayward pleasure of vagrant connections may turn the thoughts for a moment aside, but not more frequently nor more unfortunately than the flower or the fruit the wayside traveler steadily pursuing his journey. States and powers of mind are not indeed instantly determined, immediately gained; but tendencies are established, and control acquired as certainly here as in any form of effort. The person himself may determine within the limits which the surrounding world presents him, what shall be his resources of thought, and what the motives calling them "into act and use."

The whole movement is a living one, under a living intelligent power, and is no more to be expounded as a dead process, an adhesion of one thought to another, than is the life of the plant or of the animal to be traced to simply chemical forces. The very secret of life is to combine material into living organs; the very knack of mind is consecutive, coherent, self-supporting thought and self-directed action.

If we look upon the phenomena of mind as passing on under its observation, its immediate power over them is found in its ability to select any one, and to intensify and prolong its consideration. This is attention. Its second more comprehensive power over the flow of experience lies