438 JOUKNAL OP THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
interest. It chooses a lower good, or a good that is merely 
apparent in preference to a higher or real good, because the 
former seems to promise a greater immediate advantage. It makes 
of knowledge itself, as Bacon says, "a shop for profit or sale." 
Where the mind is thus misdirected, it soon becomes so absorbed in 
the objects it has chosen that it is difficult to attract it to loftier 
ends. And this difficulty is continually increased by the growing 
power of habit. 
The mind, however, that casts off the " leaden weights" of 
passion, and avoids the misdirection of self-interest, may yet be 
greatly hindered and thwarted by the power of unworthy motives, 
by the bias of prejudice, the love of reputation, the desire of excite- 
ment or amusement, the fear of failure, or the vanity of success. 
All these things, it is trite to say, hinder the will from being 
brought into accordance with the perfect law, and so prevent the 
attainment of true intellectual liberty. But these hindrances may 
be overcome, and the will brought into accord with law, either by 
a power acting upon it from without constraining it, or by a power 
enabling it from within. This latter, the enabling power, belongs 
to the province of theology, and I will not discuss it here. The 
constraining power is discipline, directed not to the mere outward 
act, but to the will through the act, by the formation of habits. 
Discipline may be exercised by the person himself over himself, 
choosing to do or to give up this or that according to certain deter- 
mined rules ; or it may be exercised by another over him, as in 
the case of children, or of adults who have chosen to put themselves 
under instruction or obedience. But in either case, if consented to by 
the will, and used for the purpose of bringing the will into accord 
with a law that is recognized as good, it is not an infringement of 
liberty, but a help to the attainment of true liberty, intellectual 
and moral. "Without discipline study is impossible. The student 
must be under control. If he would gain much, he must give up 
much. If he would learn much, he must dare to be ignorant of 
many things. He must be guided in everything by rule, by law ; 
and in this, his willing obedience to law, his true liberty consists. 
It is so in natural philosophy, in all experimental science. Obe- 
dience to law has been the Open sesame which has unlocked to 
the modern inquirer the great treasure-house of Nature's secrets. 
Naturam vincimus sequendo is the great principle of modern discovery, 
"Ruling by obeying Nature's powers." And if less obviously, it 
