sublimely selfish.

Another way in which the brain is constantly used is through the eyes.
What deadly fatigue comes from time spent in picture galleries! There
the strain is necessarily greater than in listening, because all the
pictures and all the colors are before us at once, with no appreciable
interval between forms and subjects that differ widely. But as the
strain is greater, so should the care to relieve it increase. We should
not go out too far to meet the pictures, but be quiet, and let the
pictures come to us. The fatigue can be prevented if we know when to
stop, and pleasure at the time and in the memory afterwards will be
surprisingly increased. So is it in watching a landscape from the car
window, and in all interests which come from looking. I am not for one
instant condemning the _natural_ expression of pleasure, neither do I
mean that there should be any apparent nonchalance or want of interest;
on the contrary, the real interest and its true expression increase as
we learn to shun the shams.

But will not the discovery of all this superfluous tension make one
self-conscious? Certainly it will for a time, and it must do so. You
must be conscious of a smooch on your face in order to wash it off, and
when the face is clean you think no more of it. So you must see an evil
before you can shun it. All these physical evils you must be vividly
conscious of, and when you are so annoyed as to feel the necessity of
moving from under them self-consciousness decreases in equal ratio with
the success of your efforts.

Whenever the brain alone is used in thinking, or in receiving and
taking note of impressions through either of the senses, new power
comes as we gain freedom from all misdirected force, and with muscles
in repose leave the brain to quietly do its work without useless strain
of any kind. It is of course evident that this freedom cannot be gained
without, first, a consciousness of its necessity. The perfect freedom,
however, when reached, means freedom from self-consciousness as well as
from the strain which made self-consciousness for a time essential.

VI.

THE BRAIN IN ITS DIRECTION OF THE BODY

WE come now to the brain and its direction of other parts of the body.

What tremendous and unnecessary force is used in talking,--from the
aimless motion of the hands, the shoulders, the feet, the entire body,
to a certain rigidity of carriage, which tells as powerfully in the
wear and tear