5 i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



goes with the pleasure-giving exercise. The harvest of immediate 

 pleasure stimulates our most intense exertions, if exertion serves to 

 prolong the blessing. So it is with the deepening of an impression, 

 the confirming of a bent or bias, the associating of a couple or a 

 sequence of acts; a coinciding burst of joy awakens the attention, 

 and thus leads to an enduring stamp on the mental framework. 



The ingraining efficiency of the pleasurable motive requires not 

 only that we should not be carried off into an accustomed routine of 

 voluntary activities, such as to give to the forces another direction, 

 as when we pace to and fro in a flower-garden ; but also that the 

 pleasure should not be intense or tumultuous. The law of the mutual 

 exclusion of great pleasure and great intellectual exertion forbids the 

 employment of too much excitement of any kind, when we aim at the 

 most exacting of all mental results the forming of new adhesive 

 growths. A gentle pleasure that for the time contents us, there being 

 no great temptation at hand, is the best foster-mother of our efforts at 

 learning. Still better, if it be a growing pleasure; a small beginning, 

 with steady increase, never too absorbing, is the best of all stimulants 

 to mental power. In order to have a yet wider compass of stimula- 

 tion, without objectionable extremes, we might begin on the negative 

 side, that is, in pain or privation, to be gradually remitted in the 

 course of the studious exercise, giving place at last to the exhilara- 

 tion of a waxing pleasure. All the great teachers, from Socrates 

 downward, seem to recognize the necessity of putting the learner into 

 a state of pain to begin with ; a fact that we are by no means to exult 

 over, although we may have to admit the stern truth that is in it. 

 The influence of pain, however, takes a wider range than here sup- 

 posed, as will be seen under our next head. 



A moderate exhilaration and cheerfulness, growing out of the act 

 of learning itself, is certainly the most genial, the most effectual 

 means of cementing the unions that we desire to form in the mind. 

 This is meant when we speak of the learner having a taste far his 

 pursuit, having the heart in it, learning con amove. The fact is per- 

 fectly well known ; the error, in connection with it, lies in dictating 

 or enjoining this state of mind on everybody in every situation, as if 

 it could be commanded by a wish, or as if it were not itself an ex- 

 pensive endow r ment. The brain cannot yield an exceptional pleasure 

 without charging for it. 



Next to pleasure in the actual, as a concentrating motive, is 

 pleasure in prospect, as in learning what is to bring us some future 

 gratification. The stimulus has the inferiority attaching to the idea 

 of pleasure as compared with the reality. Still it may be of various 

 degrees, and may rise to a considerable pitch of force. Parents often 

 reward their children with coins for success in their lessons ; the con- 

 ception of the pleasure in this case is nearly equal to a present tremor 

 of sense-delight. On the other hand, the promises of fortune and 



