is the wisest
thing you can practise. But be intemperate in the pursuit of your object.
Let no expense be too large to equip yourself physically or mentally for
your life's work, as, for example, to assure regular exercise, to cure any
physical imperfection or disease, or for the furtherance of any desire for
investigation on natural or scientific subjects or points of interest
allied to the thing which you are seeking to attain. There is no need of
moderation in labor, exposure, or discomfort. Thus you will eventually
reach your ends, and may obtain results at which people will stand amazed,
believing them to be beyond the range of possibilities, as they will not
know that for years a systematic preparation has been going on to prepare
yourself for this result.

As a boy, your desires have been limited by your opportunities. You have
had certain kinds of recreation provided for you which you have enjoyed.
Your expenditure of money has been limited by your purse, which will have
been small if your parents were wise; and your expenditure of time will
have been limited by the hours you have been unable to take from study,
which will also have been small.

At college your opportunities will have broadened, and you begin to have
something similar to the elective system. You can choose more freely how
to spend your time. Your development to this point, I have already said,
may be called the rounding of the handle; and your education will be
normal if you have average application, intelligence, and memory. During
college your future course will begin to shape itself, but before you fix
upon your definite object there is likely to be a period at which you can
be tempted into the greatest dissipation. By dissipation I do not mean the
accepted term, but the scientific use of the word; namely, the useless
expenditure of energy in futile pursuits. It is the opposite of
concentration, which means directing energy upon your object. To make
myself clearer, I will define energy as also meaning, in addition to your
labor, your money, as money is the accumulated energy of your ancestors,
just as coal is the accumulated energy of sunshine.

You must remember also that there is a certain amount of allowance to be
made for some rather indefinite objects, which are none the less
important, and which, for want of a better name, I shall call the Discard.
Among these can be named the education of the imagination, having a good
time generall