158 Evolution of Life and Form. 



some great book worthy of being thought over, not 

 a newspaper, not a sensational novel, not a child's 

 book, but a BOOK an original book, on a real topic ; 

 what Charles lyamb called a book. Read, but do not 

 read much, perhaps not more than a dozen or twenty 

 lines ; think these lines over and over and over for at 

 least thrice as long as you have taken to read them 

 slowly. Do that every day regularly, and do not miss 

 it. You find time for your dinner ; why, if you can find 

 time to feed your body and to talk, can you not find 

 time to feed your mind ? Then your mind would 

 grow. If you do that as an experiment, say for three 

 months only, never missing a day for if you miss 

 a day, you will slip back and lose the value of the 

 automatic action of your mind do that for three 

 months as an experiment, as a scientific man makes 

 an experiment, and thus train yourselves for three 

 months in power of close attention and thought, and at 

 the end of the three months, you will be startled to 

 find how much these powers have grown. When you 

 have put yourself through this experiment, then you 

 will not want a lecturer to tell you about the value 

 of such self-discipline, for you yourself will have 

 proved it to be good. Take one faculty after another 

 to train ; train your reasoning faculty, your memory, 

 your power of comparison and contrast. Take up 

 a faculty, just as any one takes up a study that he is 



