rwhelming of all theories! And the years are
passing; and there are twenty-four hours in every day, out of which
they work only six or seven; and it needs only an impulse, an effort,
a system, in order gradually to cure the mind of its slackness, to
give "tone" to its muscles, and to enable it to grapple with the
splendours of knowledge and sensation that await it! But the regret is
not poignant enough. They do nothing. They go on doing nothing. It is
as though they passed for ever along the length of an endless table
filled with delicacies, and could not stretch out a hand to seize. Do
I exaggerate? Is there not deep in the consciousness of most of us a
mournful feeling that our minds are like the liver of the
advertisement--sluggish, and that for the sluggishness of our minds
there is the excuse neither of incompetence, nor of lack of time, nor
of lack of opportunity, nor of lack of means?

Why does not some mental efficiency specialist come forward and show
us how to make our minds do the work which our minds are certainly
capable of doing? I do not mean a quack. All the physical efficiency
specialists who advertise largely are not quacks. Some of them achieve
very genuine results. If a course of treatment can be devised for the
body, a course of treatment can be devised for the mind. Thus we might
realize some of the ambitions which all of us cherish in regard to the
utilization in our spare time of that magnificent machine which we
allow to rust within our craniums. We have the desire to perfect
ourselves, to round off our careers with the graces of knowledge and
taste. How many people would not gladly undertake some branch of
serious study, so that they might not die under the reproach of having
lived and died without ever really having known anything about
anything! It is not the absence of desire that prevents them. It is,
first, the absence of will-power--not the will to begin, but the will
to continue; and, second, a mental apparatus which is out of
condition, "puffy," "weedy," through sheer neglect. The remedy, then,
divides itself into two parts, the cultivation of will-power, and the
getting into condition of the mental apparatus. And these two branches
of the cure must be worked concurrently.

I am sure that the considerations which I have presented to you must
have already presented themselves to tens of thousands of my readers,
and that thousands must have attempted the cure. I doubt not that many
have