THE UNCONSCIOUS ACTION OF THE BRAIN. 559 



horse's back and let him find his way home. You have been guiding 

 the horse into one path and into another, and following this and 

 that path, and you find that it does not lead you in the right direction ; 

 just let the horse go by himself, and he will find his way better than 

 you can. In the same manner, I believe that our minds, under the 

 circumstances I have mentioned, really do the work better than our 

 wills can direct. The will gives the impulse in the first instance, just 

 as when you start on your walk; and not only this, but the will keeps 

 before the mind all the thoughts which it can immediately lay hold of, 

 or which association suggests, that bear upon the subject. But then 

 these thoughts do not conduct immediately to an issue, they require to 

 work themselves out ; and I believe that they work themselves out 

 very often a great deal better by being left to themselves. But then 

 we must recollect that such results as these are only produced in the 

 mind which has been trained and disciplined ; and that training and 

 discipline are the result of the control of the Will over the mental pro- 

 cesses, just as in the early part of the lecture I spoke to you of the act 

 of speech as made possible by the control which the will has over the 

 muscles of breathing. We cannot stop these movements we must 

 breathe but we can regulate them, and modify them, and intensify 

 them, or we can check them for a moment, in accordance with the ne- 

 cessities of speech. Well, so it is, I think, with regard to the action 

 of our will upon our mental processes. I believe that this conti'ol, this 

 discipline of the will, should be learned very early ; and I will give to 

 the mothers among you, especially, one hint in regard to a most 

 valuable mode of training it even in early childhood. I learned this, I 

 may say, from a nurse whom I was fortunate enough to have, and 

 whose training of my own sons in early childhood I regard as one of 

 the most valuable parts of their education. She was a sensible coun- 

 try girl, who could not have told her reasons, but whose instincts guided 

 her in the ricrht direction. I studied her mode of dealing: with the 

 children, and learned from that the principle. Now, the principle is 

 this : A child falls down and hurts itself. (I take the most common of 

 nursery incidents. You know that Sir Robert Peel used to say that 

 there were three ways of looking at this question ; and there are three 

 modes of dealing with this commonest of nursery incidents.) One 

 nurse will scold the child for crying. The child feels the injustice of 

 this ; it feels the hurt, and it feels the injustice of being scolded. I 

 believe that is the most pernicious of all the modes of dealing with it. 

 Another coddles the child, takes it up and rubs its head, and says, " O 

 naughty chair, for hurting my dear child ! " I remember learning that 

 one of the royal children fell against a table in the queen's presence, 

 and the nurse said, " O naughty table," when the queen very sensibly 

 said : " I will not have that expression used ; it was not the table that 

 was naughty; it was the child's fault that he fell against the table." I 

 believe that this method is extremely injurious ; the result of it being 



