ate for the most part during the time
that is given to bodily exercise, and during the time in which we read
books of amusement merely, or are employed in witnessing public shews
and exhibitions.

That portion of every day of our existence which is occupied by us with
a mind attentive and on the alert, I would call life in a transcendant
sense. The rest is scarcely better than a state of vegetation.

And yet not so either. The happiest and most valuable thoughts of the
human mind will sometimes come when they are least sought for, and we
least anticipated any such thing. In reading a romance, in witnessing a
performance at a theatre, in our idlest and most sportive moods, a
vein in the soil of intellect will sometimes unexpectedly be broken
up, "richer than all the tribe" of contemporaneous thoughts, that shall
raise him to whom it occurs, to a rank among his species altogether
different from any thing he had looked for. Newton was led to the
doctrine of gravitation by the fall of an apple, as he indolently
reclined under the tree on which it grew. "A verse may find him, who
a sermon flies." Polemon, when intoxicated, entered the school of
Xenocrates, and was so struck with the energy displayed by the master,
and the thoughts he delivered, that from that moment he renounced the
life of dissipation he had previously led, and applied himself entirely
to the study of philosophy. --But these instances are comparatively of
rare occurrence, and do not require to be taken into the account.

It is still true therefore for the most part, that not more than eight
hours in the day are passed by the wisest and most energetic, with a
mind attentive and on the alert. The remainder is a period of vegetation
only. In the mean time we have all of us undoubtedly to a certain degree
the power of enlarging the extent of the period of transcendant life in
each day of our healthful existence, and causing it to encroach upon the
period either of mental indolence or of sleep.--With the greater part
of the human species the whole of their lives while awake, with the
exception of a few brief and insulated intervals, is spent in a passive
state of the intellectual powers. Thoughts come and go, as chance, or
some undefined power in nature may direct, uninterfered with by the
sovereign will, the steersman of the mind. And often the understanding
appears to be a blank, upon which if any impressions are then made, they
are like figures drawn in the