itself. "The human heart," says Luther,--and we can apply
the remark as well, to the human mind,--"is like a millstone in a mill;
when you put wheat under it, it turns, and grinds, and bruises the wheat
into flour; if you put no wheat in, it still grinds on, but then it is
itself it grinds, and slowly wears away." Now activity for an object,
which is an activity that constantly increases the power of acting,
and keeps the mind glad, fresh, vigorous, and young, has three deadly
enemies,--intellectual indolence, intellectual conceit, and intellectual
fear. We will say a few words on the operation of this triad of
malignants.

Montaigne relates, that, while once walking in the fields, he was
accosted by a beggar of Herculean frame, who solicited alms. "Are you
not ashamed to beg?" said the philosopher, with a frown,--"you who are
so palpably able to work?" "Oh, Sir," was the sturdy knave's drawling
rejoinder, "if you only knew how lazy I am!" Herein is the whole
philosophy of idleness; and we are afraid that many a student of good
natural capacity slips and slides from thought into reverie, and from
reverie into apathy, and from apathy into incurable indisposition to
think, with as much sweet unconsciousness of degradation as Montaigne's
mendicant evinced; and at last hides from himself the fact of his
imbecility of action, somewhat as Sir James Herring accounted for the
fact that he could not rise early in the morning: he could, he said,
make up his mind to it, but could not make up his body.

"He who eats with the Devil," says the proverb, "has need of a long
spoon"; and he who domesticates this pleasant vice of indolence, and
allows it to nestle near his will, has need of a long head. Ordinary
minds may well be watchful of its insidious approaches when great ones
have mourned over its enfeebling effects; and the subtle indolence
that stole over the powers of Mackintosh, and gradually impaired the
productiveness even of Goethe, may well scare intellects of less natural
grasp and imaginations of less instinctive creativeness. Every step,
indeed, of the student's progress calls for energy and effort, and every
step is beset by some soft temptation to abandon the task of developing
power for the delight of following impulse. The appetites, for example,
instead of being bitted, and bridled, and trained into passions, and
sent through the intellect to quicken, sharpen, and intensify its
activity, are allowed to take their wa