THE SCIENCE OF HAPPINESS 



in the newest cycle; for of a certainty the world has 

 not stood still. 



As a tangible aid, in this process of perpetual self- 

 rejuvenation, it is well to keep your mind burnished by 

 giving it very definite tasks involving the necessity of new 

 effort. Take up, for example, the acquisition of a 

 new language from time to time, with its novel gram- 

 matical forms, its unfamiliar vocabularies. Giuseppe 

 Mezzofanti, the celebrated librarian of Bologna Uni- 

 versity and of the Vatican, is said to have known 

 eighteen languages when he was thirty-six, and fifty- 

 eight at the time of his death, speaking and writing 

 them all with great facility. As he lived to be seventy- 

 three, he must have averaged a little better than one 

 language a year for each of the last forty years of his life. 



I do not mean to imply that the man of average linguis- 

 tic talent can duplicate such a record as that. To ac- 

 complish such feats, qualities of brain and ear are re- 

 quired which must be inherent, like any other kind of 

 sheer genius, and which remove their possessor from 

 the field of competition. But the example is stimula- 

 tive none the less. If Mezzofanti could acquire forty 

 languages after mid-age, you surely can learn at least to 

 read five or six, be your talent ever so meagre. And 

 if you cannot master each successive one a little more 

 readily than the last (other things being equal), you must 

 feel that you are permitting your mind to deteriorate; 

 you are losing your grip on the secret of eternal youth. 



If perchance the study of languages does not attract 

 you, take up some other line of mental action that will 

 offer similar stimulus, some new line of scientific 



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