MENTAL EXERCISE. 209 



An idle mind, like idle muscles, becomes weak. Even 

 if it remain in a few cases shrewd and clear, it is inca- 

 pable of prolonged steady effort, such as may any day 

 become necessary. There are mental loungers as well 

 as muscular; and the former are rather the more con- 

 temptible. 



7. Mental Exercise should be Varied. You have learned 

 (p. 57) that a man may exercise and greatly develop 

 some of his muscles, and leave others idle and feeble. 

 A great many people do something of this kind with 

 their brains. They use and train some mental faculties 

 and leave the rest unemployed until they almost cease 

 to be active at all. The hard struggle which most of 

 us have, nowadays, to make a place for ourselves in the 

 world and keep it, is very apt to lead to this mental lop- 

 sidedness, which is as much a deformity as would be 

 huge arms and spindling legs on the same body. We 

 meet business-men so absorbed in money-getting that 

 they care for no books except ledgers, no science unless 

 it helps them to patent some invention. We meet men 

 of science who take no interest in art or literature, or 

 who affect to despise the business-men who are carry- 

 ing on the great commerce which promotes the progress 

 of the world in ten thousand ways. We meet literary 

 men who seem quite incapable of sympathy with science, 

 and artists who care for nothing outside of art. All 

 such people may be very far from insane, in the usual 

 sense of the word, but they are all mentally deformed. 



7. How do some people train their mental faculties? What often 

 leads to mental lopsidedness? To what is it compared ? Give illus- 

 trations of persons who use only a small part of their mental faculties. 

 What is said of mental deformity ? Why is a broad education in 

 early life very valuable ? 



