HOW TO WORK 



out the best years of his life. It was by similar util- 

 ization of the early morning hours that Bunsen found 

 time to write his Meaning and Influence of Egyptian 

 History amidst the engrossing preoccupations of an 

 ambassador at the court of England. 



Dionysius Laertius tells us that Aristotle slept with 

 a brass ball in his hand, which, by falling into a basin 

 of water awakened him that he might resume his 

 studies. The story is perhaps apocryphal, but it 

 serves to illustrate the reputation for unwearied in- 

 dustry that Aristotle held in antiquity; a reputation 

 that accounts, in part at least, for the fact that the 

 Stagyrite's works have come down to us in greater 

 volume than those of almost any other Greek writer; 

 having given their author, meantime, for a thousand 

 years, such an ascendency over the scholarly world as 

 few other men ever attained. 



The Aristotle of the Roman world, and the only an- 

 cient who could challenge the supremacy of the great 

 Greek in the field of natural history, was the elder Pliny. 

 An authentic account of the habits of work of this 

 remarkable man has been left by his nephew^ Pliny the 

 younger. So vividly does it illustrate the power of 

 application, that a transcript of it is worth presenting 

 at length. 



It appears that in summer the elder Pliny "always 

 began his studies as soon as it was night: in winter 

 generally at one in the morning, but never later than 

 two and often at midnight. No man ever spent less 

 time in bed; insomuch that he would sometimes, with- 

 out retiring from his books, take a short sleep and then 



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