126 The New Lord Rector of Glasgow University. 



countering and mastering it ; and every successive triumph will inspire you 

 with that confidence in yourselves, that habit of victory that will make future 

 conquests easy. 



" On by far the greater part of you it is incumbent to acquire those qua- 

 lities which shall fit you for action rather than speculation. It is not there- 

 fore by the mere accumulation of knowledge that you can hope for eminence. 

 Mental discipline, the exercise of the faculties of the mind, the quickening of 

 your apprehension, the strengthening of your memory, the forming of a sound, 

 rapid, and discriminating judgment, are of even more importance than the 

 store of learning. If you will consider these faculties as the most precious 

 gifts of nature if you will be persuaded, as you ought to be, that they are 

 capable of constant, progressive, and therefore almost indefinite improvement, 

 that by arts similar to those by which magic feats of dexterity and bodily 

 strength are performed, a capacity for the nobler feats of the mind may be 

 acquired, the first, the especial object of your youth, will be to establish that 

 control over your own mind and your own habits, that shall ensure the proper 

 cultivation of this precious inheritance. Try, even for a short period, the 

 experiment of exercising such control. If in the course of your studies you 

 meet with a difficulty, resolve on mastering it ; if you cannot by your own 

 unaided efforts, be not ashamed to admit your inability, and seek for assistance. 

 Practice the economy of time, consider time like the faculties of your mind 

 a precious estate, that every moment of it well applied is put out to an exor- 

 bitant interest. I do not say, devote yourself to unremitting labour and 

 sacrifice all amusement ; but I* do say, that the zest of amusement itself and 

 the successful result of application depend in a great measure upon the eco- 

 nomy of time. When you have lived fifty years you will have seen many 

 instances in which the man who finds time for every thing, for punctuality in 

 all the relations of life, for the pleasure of society, for the cultivation of lite- 

 rature, for every rational amusement, is he who is the most assiduous in the 

 active pursuits of his profession. Estimate also properly the force of habit 

 exercise a constant, an unremitting vigilance over the acquirement of habit, 

 in matters that are apparently of entire indifference, that perhaps are really so, 

 independently of the habits which they engender. It is by the neglect of such 

 trifles that bad habits are acquired, and that the mind, by tolerating negli- 

 gence and procrastination in matters of small account, but frequent recurrence, 

 matters of which the world takes no notice, becomes accustomed to the same 

 defects in matters of higher importance. 



" If you will make the experiment of which I have spoken, if for a given 

 time you will resolve that there shall be a complete understanding of every 

 thing you read, or the honest admission that you do not understand it ; that 

 there shall be a strict regard to the distribution of time; that there shall be a 

 constant struggle against the bondage of bad habit ; a constant effort which 

 can only be made within to master the mind, to subject its various processes 

 to healthful action, the early fruits of this experiment the feeling of self- 

 satisfaction, the consciousness of growing strength, the force of good habit, 

 will be inducements to its continuance more powerful than any exhortations. 

 These are the arts, this is the patient and laborious process by which in all 

 times and in all professions the foundations of excellence and of fame have 

 been laid. 



*' * It is very natural,' says Sir Joshua Reynolds, ' for those who are unac- 

 quainted with the cause of any thing extraordinary, to be astonished at the 

 effect, and to consider it as a kind of magic/ The travellers into the East tell 

 us, that ' when the ignorant inhabitants of those countries are asked con- 

 cerning the ruins of stately edifices yet remaining among them, the melancholy 

 monuments of their former grandeur and long lost science, they always answer 

 that they were built by magicians.' The untaught mind finds a vast gulf between 

 its own powers and those works of complicated art which it is utterly unable 

 to fathom, and it supposes that such a void can be passed only by super- 



