O'SHEA ASPECTS OF MENTAL ECONOMY - . 65 



or excess, causing waste of vital forces, or failure to provide 

 nervous energy equal to the need in profiting by instruction 

 here, a student does not make the most of his privileges, then 

 from the community standpoint such an one is apostate to his 

 plain and simple duty. Being a recipient of the bounty of 

 the commonwealth, his indebtedness to it cannot be gainsaid; 

 and it is a wholly erroneous conception which persists against 

 all reason in some university communities, especially in those 

 sustained at public expense, that a student is not beholden in 

 his conduct to any one but himself and his guardians. 



§2. The Study of Psychical Processes, — Dangers, Advan- 

 tages. — It perhaps should be said at this time that, in general, it 

 cannot but prove detrimental to become too greatly concerned 

 about one's own physical or mental processes. One who intro- 

 spects much for egoistic ends can accomplish but little in 

 this world ; thinking all the time about life functions tends to 

 render them abnormal. Mature has evidently designed that for 

 the most part one should be interested in objects and aims 

 outside of self; and the machinery of the organism will run 

 most smoothly when it is left largely to the oversight of sub- 

 conscious agencies. But while this as a general principle is 

 of superior worth in the practical affairs of life, it yet does 

 not obtain rigidly as it relates to the subject under discussion, — 

 the most frugal and efficient methods of generating and expend- 

 ing nervous energy. Every one knows, to illustrate by a sin- 

 gle instance, that in the matter of food, which is the most im- 

 portant factor in the production of vital force, there are great 

 difficulties to be overcome in breaking away from the dogmas 

 and practices of tradition. But recent investigation has made 

 the beginnings at least of a science of nutrition, wherein are set 

 forth the needs of the organism that it may best fulfill its func- 

 tion as an instrument of mind and as a mechanism designed 

 to accomplish a given amount of work, and how these needs 

 may best be met: yet the community at large for whom alone 

 these things are of value, has exhibited little interest in them 



