The Intellectual Life Part 7

Much time is saved by following pursuits which help each other. It is a great help to a landscape painter to know the botany of the country he works in, for botany gives the greatest possible distinctness to his memory of all kinds of vegetation. Therefore, if a landscape painter takes to the study of science at all, he would do well to study botany, which would be of use in his painting, rather than chemistry or mathematics, which would be entirely disconnected from it. The memory easily retains the studies which are auxiliary to the chief pursuit.

Entomologists remember plants well, the reason being that they find insects in them, just as Leslie the painter had an excellent memory for houses where there were any good pictures to be found.

The secret of order and proportion in our studies is the true secret of economy in time. To have one main pursuit and several auxiliaries, but none that are not auxiliary, is the true principle of arrangement. Many hard workers have followed pursuits as widely disconnected as possible, but this was for the refreshment of absolute change, not for the economy of time.

Lastly, it is a deplorable waste of time to leave fortresses untaken in our rear. Whatever has to be mastered ought to be mastered so thoroughly that we shall not have to come back to it when we ought to be carrying the war far into the enemy's country. But to study on this sound principle, we require not to be hurried. And this is why, to a sincere student, all external pressure, whether of examiners, or poverty, or business engagements, which causes him to leave work behind him which was not done as it ought to have been done, is so grievously, so intolerably vexatious.

LETTER II.

TO A YOUNG MAN OF GREAT TALENT AND ENERGY WHO HAD MAGNIFICENT PLANS FOR THE FUTURE.

Mistaken estimates about time and occasion--The Unknown Element--Procrastination often time's best preserver--Napoleon's advice to do nothing at all--Use of deliberation and of intervals of leisure--Artistic advantages of calculating time--Prevalent childishness about time--Illusions about reading--Bad economy of reading in languages we have not mastered--That we ought to be thrifty of time, but not avaricious--Time necessary in production--Men who work best under the sense of pressure--Rossini--That these cases prove nothing against time-thrift--The waste of tune from miscalculation--People calculate accurately for short s.p.a.ces, but do not calculate so well for long ones--Reason for this--Stupidity of the Philistines about wasted time--Topffer and Claude Tillier--Retrospective miscalculations, and the regrets that result from them.

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise pa.s.sage when it is quoted, than when we read it in the original author? On the same principle, people will give a higher price to a picture-dealer than they would have given to the painter himself. The picture that has been once bought has a recommendation, and the quoted pa.s.sage is both recommended and isolated from the context.

Trusting to this well-known principle, although I am aware that you have read everything that Sir Arthur Helps has published, I proceed to make the following quotation from one of his wisest books.

"Time and occasion are the two important circ.u.mstances in human life, as regards which the most mistaken estimates are made. And the error is universal. It besets even the most studious and philosophic men. This may notably be seen in the present day, when many most distinguished men have laid down projects for literature and philosophy, to be accomplished by them in their own lifetime, which would require several men and many lifetimes to complete; and, generally speaking, if any person, who has pa.s.sed the meridian of life, looks back upon his career, he will probably own that his greatest errors have arisen from his not having made sufficient allowance for the length of time which his various schemes required for their fulfilment."

There are many traditional maxims about time which insist upon its brevity, upon the necessity of using it whilst it is there, upon the impossibility of recovering what is lost; but the practical effect of these maxims upon conduct can scarcely be said to answer to their undeniable importance. The truth is, that although they tell us to economize our time, they cannot, in the nature of things, instruct us as to the methods by which it is to be economized. Human life is so extremely various and complicated, whilst it tends every day to still greater variety and complication, that all maxims of a general nature require a far higher degree of intelligence in their application to individual cases than it ever cost originally to invent them. Any person gifted with ordinary common sense can perceive that life is short, that time flies, that we ought to make good use of the present; but it needs the union of much experience, with the most consummate wisdom, to know exactly what ought to be done and what ought to be left undone--the latter being frequently by far the more important of the two.

Amongst the favorable influences of my early life was the kindness of a venerable country gentleman, who had seen a great deal of the world and pa.s.sed many years, before he inherited his estates, in the practice of a laborious profession. I remember a theory of his, that experience was much less valuable than is generally supposed, because, except in matters of simple routine, the problems that present themselves to us for solution are nearly always dangerous from the presence of some unknown element. The unknown element he regarded as a hidden pitfall, and he warned me that in my progress through life I might always expect to tumble into it. This saying of his has been so often confirmed since then, that I now count upon the pitfall quite as a matter of certainty.

Very frequently I have escaped it, but more by good luck than good management. Sometimes I have tumbled into it, and when this misfortune occurred it has not unfrequently been in consequence of having acted upon the advice of some very knowing and experienced person indeed. We have all read, when we were boys, Captain Marryat's "Mids.h.i.+pman Easy."

There is a pa.s.sage in that story which may serve as an ill.u.s.tration of what is constantly happening in actual life. The boats of the _Harpy_ were ordered to board one of the enemy's vessels; young Easy was in command of one of these boats, and as they had to wait he began to fish.

After they had received the order to advance, he delayed a little to catch his fish, and this delay not only saved him from being sunk by the enemy's broadside, but enabled him to board the Frenchman. Here the pitfall was avoided by idling away a minute of time on an occasion when minutes were like hours; yet it was mere luck, not wisdom, which led to the good result. There was a sad railway accident on one of the continental lines last autumn; a notable personage would have been in the train if he had arrived in time for it, but his miscalculation saved him. In matters where there is no risk of the loss of life, but only of the waste of a portion of it in unprofitable employment, it frequently happens that procrastination, which is reputed to be the thief of time, becomes its best preserver. Suppose that you undertake an enterprise, but defer the execution of it from day to day: it is quite possible that in the interval some fact may accidentally come to your knowledge which would cause a great modification of your plan, or even its complete abandonment. Every thinking person is well aware that the enormous loss of time caused by the friction of our legislative machinery has preserved the country from a great deal of crude and ill-digested legislation. Even Napoleon the Great who had a rapidity of conception and of action so far surpa.s.sing that of other kings and commanders that it seems to us almost supernatural, said that when you did not quite know what ought to be done it was best to do nothing at all. One of the most distinguished of living painters said exactly the same thing with reference to the practice of his art, and added that very little time would be needed for the actual execution of a picture if only the artist knew beforehand how and where to lay the color. It so often happens that mere activity is a waste of time, that people who have a morbid habit of being busy are often terrible time-wasters, whilst, on the contrary, those who are judiciously deliberate, and allow themselves intervals of leisure, see the way before them in those intervals, and save time by the accuracy of their calculations.

A largely intelligent thrift of time is necessary to all great works--and many works are very great indeed relatively to the energies of a single individual, which pa.s.s unperceived in the tumult of the world. The advantages of calculating time are artistic as well as economical. I think that, in this respect, magnificent as are the cathedrals which the Gothic builders have left us, they committed an artistic error in the very immensity of their plans. They do not appear to have reflected that from the continual changes of fas.h.i.+on in architecture, incongruous work would be sure to intrude itself before their gigantic projects could be realized by the generations that were to succeed them. For a work of that kind to possess artistic unity, it ought to be completely realized within the s.p.a.ce of forty years. How great is the charm of those perfect edifices which, like the Sainte Chapelle, are the realization of one sublime idea? And those changes in national thought which have made the old cathedrals a jumble of incongruous styles, have their parallel in the life of every individual workman. We change from year to year, and any work which occupies us for very long will be wanting in unity of manner.

Men are apt enough of themselves to fall into the most astonis.h.i.+ng delusions about the opportunities which time affords, but they are even more deluded by the talk of the people about them. When children hear that a new carriage has been ordered of the builder, they expect to see it driven up to the door in a fortnight, with the paint quite dry on the panels. All people are children in this respect, except the workman, who knows the endless details of production; and the workman himself, notwithstanding the lessons of experience, makes light of the future task. What gigantic plans we scheme, and how little we advance in the labor of a day! Three pages of the book (to be half erased to-morrow), a bit of drapery in the picture that will probably have to be done over again, the imperceptible removal of an ounce of marble-dust from the statue that seems as if it never would be finished; so much from dawn to twilight has been the accomplishment of the golden hours. If there is one lesson which experience teaches, surely it is this, to make plans that are strictly limited, and to arrange our work in a practicable way within the limits that we must accept. Others expect so much from us that it seems as if we had accomplished nothing. "What! have you done only that?" they say, or we know by their looks that they are thinking it.

The most illusory of all the work that we propose to ourselves is reading. It seems so easy to read, that we intend, in the indefinite future, to master the vastest literatures. We cannot bring ourselves to admit that the library we have collected is in great part closed to us simply by want of time. A dear friend of mine, who was a solicitor with a large practice, indulged in wonderful illusions about reading, and collected several thousand volumes, all fine editions, but he died without having cut their leaves. I like the university habit of making reading a business, and estimating the mastery of a few authors as a just t.i.tle to consideration for scholars.h.i.+p. I should like very well to be shut up in a garden for a whole summer with no literature but the "Faery Queene," and one year I very nearly realized that project, but publishers and the postman interfered with it. After all, this business of reading ought to be less illusory than most others, for printers divide books into pages, which they number, so that, with a moderate skill in arithmetic, one ought to be able to foresee the limits of his possibilities. There is another observation which may be suggested, and that is to take note of the time required for reading different languages. We read very slowly when the language is imperfectly mastered, and we need the dictionary, whereas in the native tongue we see the whole page almost at a glance, as if it were a picture. People whose time for reading is limited ought not to waste it in grammars and dictionaries, but to confine themselves resolutely to a couple of languages, or three at the very utmost, notwithstanding the contempt of polyglots, who estimate your learning by the variety of your tongues. It is a fearful throwing away of time, from the literary point of view, to begin more languages than you can master or retain, and to be always puzzling yourself about irregular verbs.

All plans for sparing time in intellectual matters ought, however, to proceed upon the principle of thrift, and not upon the principle of avarice. The object of the thrifty man in money matters is so to lay out his money as to get the best possible result from his expenditure; the object of the avaricious man is to spend no more money than he can help.

An artist who taught me painting often repeated a piece of advice which is valuable in other things than art, and which I try to remember whenever patience fails. He used to say to me, "_Give it time._" The mere length of time that we bestow upon our work is in itself a most important element of success, and if I object to the use of languages that we only half know, it is not because it takes us a long time to get through a chapter, but because we are compelled to think about syntax and conjugations which did not in the least occupy the mind of the author, when we ought rather to be thinking about those things which _did_ occupy his mind, about the events which he narrated, or the characters that he imagined or described. There are, in truth, only two ways of impressing anything on the memory, either intensity or duration.

If you saw a man struck down by an a.s.sa.s.sin, you would remember the occurrence all your life; but to remember with equal vividness a picture of the a.s.sa.s.sination, you would probably be obliged to spend a month or two in copying it. The subjects of our studies rarely produce an intensity of emotion sufficient to ensure perfect recollection without the expenditure of time. And when your object is not to learn, but to produce, it is well to bear in mind that everything requires a certain definite time-outlay, which _cannot_ be reduced without an inevitable injury to quality. A most experienced artist, a man of the very rarest executive ability, wrote to me the other day about a set of designs I had suggested. "If I could but get the TIME,"--the large capitals are his own,--"for, somehow or other, let a design be never so studiously simple in the ma.s.ses, it _will_ fill itself as it goes on, like the weasel in the fable who got into the meal-tub; and when the pleasure begins in attempting tone and mystery and intricacy, _away go the hours at a gallop_." A well-known and very successful English dramatist wrote to me: "When I am hurried, and have undertaken more work than I can execute in the time at my disposal, I am always perfectly paralyzed."

There is another side to this subject which deserves attention. Some men work best under the sense of pressure. Simple compression evolves heat from iron, so that there is a flash of fire when a ball hits the side of an ironclad. The same law seems to hold good in the intellectual life of man, whenever he needs the stimulus of extraordinary excitement.

Rossini positively advised a young composer never to write his overture until the evening before the first performance. "Nothing," he said, "excites inspiration like necessity; the presence of a copyist waiting for your work, and the view of a manager in despair tearing out his hair by handfuls. In Italy in my time all the managers were bald at thirty. I composed the overture to 'Oth.e.l.lo' in a small room in the Barbaja Palace, where the baldest and most ferocious of managers had shut me up by force with nothing but a dish of maccaroni, and the threat that I should not leave the place alive until I had written the last note. I wrote the overture to the 'Gazza Ladra' on the day of the first performance, in the upper loft of the La Scala, where I had been confined by the manager, under the guard of four scene-s.h.i.+fters who had orders to throw my text out of the window bit by bit to copyists, who were waiting below to transcribe it. In default of music I was to be thrown out myself."

I have quoted the best instance known to me of this voluntary seeking after pressure, but striking as it is, even this instance does not weaken what I said before. For observe, that although Rossini deferred the composition of his overture till the evening before the first performance, he knew very well that he could do it thoroughly in the time. He was like a clever schoolboy who knows that he can learn his lesson in the quarter of an hour before the cla.s.s begins; or he was like an orator who knows that he can deliver a pa.s.sage and compose at the same time the one which is to follow, so that he prefers to arrange his speech in the presence of his audience. Since Rossini always allowed himself all the time that was necessary for what he had to do, it is clear that he did not sin against the great time-necessity. The express which can travel from London to Edinburgh in a night may leave the English metropolis on Sat.u.r.day evening although it is due in Scotland on Sunday, and still act with the strictest consideration about time. The blameable error lies in miscalculation, and not in rapidity of performance.

Nothing _wastes_ time like miscalculation. It negatives all results. It is the parent of incompleteness, the great author of the Unfinished and the Unserviceable. Almost every intellectual man has laid out great ma.s.ses of time on five or six different branches of knowledge which are not of the least use to him, simply because he has not carried them far enough, and could not carry them far enough in the time he had to give.

Yet this might have been ascertained at the beginning by the simplest arithmetical calculation. The experience of students in all departments of knowledge has quite definitely ascertained the amount of time that is necessary for success in them, and the successful student can at once inform the aspirant how far he is likely to travel along the road. What is the use, to anybody, of having just enough skill to feel vexed with himself that he has no more, and yet angry at other people for not admiring the little that he possesses?

I wish to direct your attention to a cause which more than any other produces disappointment in ordinary intellectual pursuits. It is this.

People can often calculate with the utmost accuracy what they can accomplish in ten minutes or even in ten hours, and yet the very same persons will make the most absurd miscalculations about what they can accomplish in ten years. There is of course a reason for this: if there were not, so many sensible people would not suffer from the delusion.

The reason is, that owing to the habits of human life there is a certain elasticity in large s.p.a.ces of time that include nights, and mealtimes, and holidays. We fancy that we shall be able, by working harder than we have been accustomed to work, and by stealing hours from all the different kinds of rest and amus.e.m.e.nt, to accomplish far more in the ten years that are to come than we have ever actually accomplished in the same s.p.a.ce. And to a certain extent this may be very true. No doubt a man whose mind has become seriously aware of the vast importance of economizing his time will economize it better than he did in the days before the new conviction came to him. No doubt, after skill in our work has been confirmed, we shall perform it with increased speed. But the elasticity of time is rather that of leather than that of india-rubber.

There is certainly a degree of elasticity, but the degree is strictly limited. The true master of time-thrift would be no more liable to illusion about years than about hours, and would act as prudently when working for remote results as for near ones.

Not that we ought to work as if we were always under severe pressure.

Little books are occasionally published in which we are told that it is a sin to lose a minute. From the intellectual point of view this doctrine is simply stupid. What the Philistines call wasted time is often rich in the most varied experience to the intelligent. If all that we have learned in idle moments could be suddenly expelled from our minds by some chemical process, it is probable that they would be worth very little afterwards. What, after such a process, would have remained to Shakespeare, Scott, Cervantes, Thackeray, d.i.c.kens, Hogarth, Goldsmith, Moliere? When these great students of human nature were learning most, the sort of people who write the foolish little books just alluded to would have wanted to send them home to the dictionary or the desk. Topffer and Claude Tillier, both men of delicate and observant genius, attached the greatest importance to hours of idleness. Topffer said that a year of downright loitering was a desirable element in a liberal education; whilst Claude Tillier went even farther, and boldly affirmed that "le temps le mieux employe est celui que l'on perd."

Let us not think too contemptuously of the miscalculators of time, since not one of us is exempt from their folly. We have all made miscalculations, or more frequently have simply omitted calculation altogether, preferring childish illusion to a manly examination of realities; and afterwards as life advances another illusion steals over us not less vain than the early one, but bitter as that was sweet. We now begin to reproach ourselves with all the opportunities that have been neglected, and now our folly is to imagine that we might have done impossible wonders if we had only exercised a little resolution. We might have been thorough cla.s.sical scholars, and spoken all the great modern languages, and written immortal books, and made a colossal fortune. Miscalculations again, and these the most imbecile of all; for the youth who forgets to reason in the glow of happiness and hope, is wiser than the man who overestimates what was once possible that he may embitter the days which remain to him.

LETTER III.

TO A MAN OF BUSINESS WHO DESIRED TO MAKE HIMSELF BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH LITERATURE, BUT WHOSE TIME FOR READING WAS LIMITED.

Victor Jacquemont on the intellectual labors of the Germans--Business may be set off as the equivalent to one of their pursuits--Necessity for regularity in the economy of time--What may be done in two hours a day--Evils of interruption--Florence Nightingale--Real nature of interruption--Instance from the Apology of Socrates.

In the charming and precious letters of Victor Jacquemont, a man whose life was dedicated to culture, and who not only lived for it, but died for it, there is a pa.s.sage about the intellectual labors of Germans, which takes due account of the expenditure of time. "Comme j'etais etonne," he says, "de la prodigieuse variete et de l'etendue de connaissances des Allemands, je demandai un jour a l'un de mes amis, Saxon de naissance et l'un des premiers geologues de l'Europe, comment ses compatriotes s'y prenaient pour savoir tant de choses. Voici sa reponse, a peu pres: 'Un Allemand (moi excepte qui suis le plus paresseux des hommes) se leve de bonne heure, ete et hiver, a cinq heures environ. Il travaille quatre heures avant le dejeuner, fumant quelquefois pendant tout ce temps, sans que cela nuise a son application. Son dejeuner dure une demi-heure, et il reste, apres, une autre demi-heure a causer avec sa femme et a faire jouer ses enfants.

Il retourne au travail pour six heures; dine sans se presser; fume une heure apres le diner, jouant encore avec ses enfants; et avant de se coucher il travaille encore quatre heures. Il recommence tous les jours, ne sortant jamais.--Voila,' me dit mon ami, 'comment Oersted, le plus grand physicien de l'Allemagne, en est aussi le plus grand medecin; voila comment Kant le metaphysicien etait un des plus savants astronomes de l'Europe, et comment Goethe, qui en est actuellement le premier litterateur, dans presque tous les genres, et le plus fecond, est excellent botaniste, mineralogiste, physicien.'"[2]

Here is something to encourage, and something to discourage you at the same time. The number of hours which these men have given in order to become what they were, is so great as to be past all possibility of imitation by a man occupied in business. It is clear that, with your counting-house to occupy you during the best hours of every day, you can never labor for your intellectual culture with that unremitting application which these men have given for theirs. But, on the other hand, you will perceive that these extraordinary workers have hardly ever been wholly dedicated to one pursuit, and the reason for this in most cases is clear. Men who go through a prodigious amount of work feel the necessity for varying it. The greatest intellectual workers I have known personally have varied their studies as Kant and Goethe did, often taking up subjects of the most opposite kinds, as for instance imaginative literature and the higher mathematics, the critical and practical study of fine art and the natural sciences, music, and political economy. The cla.s.s of intellects which arrogate to themselves the epithet "practical," but which we call _Philistine_, always oppose this love of variety, and have an unaffected contempt for it, but these are matters beyond their power of judgment. They cannot know the needs of the intellectual life, because they have never lived it. The practice of all the greatest intellects has been to cultivate themselves variously, and if they have always done so, it must be because they have felt the need of it.

The encouraging inference which you may draw from this in reference to your own case is that, since all intellectual men have had more than one pursuit, you may set off your business against the most absorbing of their pursuits, and for the rest be still almost as rich in time as they have been. You may study literature as some painters have studied it, or science as some literary men have studied it.

The first step is to establish a regulated economy of your time, so that, without interfering with a due attention to business and to health, you may get two clear hours every day for reading of the best kind. It is not much, some men would tell you that it is not enough, but I purposely fix the expenditure of time at a low figure because I want it to be always practicable consistently with all the duties and necessary pleasures of your life. If I told you to read four hours every day, I know beforehand what would be the consequence. You would keep the rule for three days, by an effort, then some engagement would occur to break it, and you would have no rule at all. And please observe that the two hours are to be given quite regularly, because, when the time given is not much, regularity is quite essential. Two hours a day, regularly, make more than seven hundred hours in a year, and in seven hundred hours, wisely and uninterruptedly occupied, much may be done in anything.

Permit me to insist upon that word _uninterruptedly_. Few people realize the full evil of an interruption, few people know all that is implied by it. After warning nurses against the evils of interruption, Florence Nightingale says:--

"These things are not fancy. If we consider that, with sick as with well, every thought decomposes some nervous matter--that decomposition as well as re-composition of nervous matter is always going on, and more quickly with the sick than with the well,--that to obtrude another thought upon the brain whilst it is in the act of destroying nervous matter by thinking, is calling upon it to make a new exertion--if we consider these things, which are facts, not fancies, we shall remember that we are doing positive injury by interrupting, by startling a 'fanciful' person, as it is called. Alas, it is no fancy.

"If the invalid is forced by his avocations to continue occupations requiring much thinking, the injury is doubly great. In feeding a patient suffering under delirium or stupor you may suffocate him by giving him his food suddenly, but if you rub his lips gently with a spoon and thus attract his attention, he will swallow the food unconsciously, but with perfect safety. Thus it is with the brain. If you offer it a thought, especially one requiring a decision, abruptly, you do it a real, not fanciful, injury. Never speak to a sick person suddenly; but, at the same time, do not keep his expectation on the tiptoe."

To this you will already have answered, mentally, that you are not a patient suffering under either delirium or stupor, and that n.o.body needs to rub your lips gently with a spoon. But Miss Nightingale does not consider interruption baneful to sick persons only.

"This rule indeed," she continues, "applies to the well quite as much as to the sick. _I have never known persons who exposed themselves for years to constant interruption who did not muddle away their intellects by it at last._ The process, with them, may be accomplished without pain. With the sick, pain gives warning of the injury."

Interruption is an evil to the reader which must be estimated very differently from ordinary business interruptions. The great question about interruption is not whether it compels you to divert your attention to other facts, but whether it compels you to tune your whole mind to another diapason. Shopkeepers are incessantly compelled to change the subject; a stationer is asked for notepaper one minute, for sealing-wax the next, and immediately afterwards for a particular sort of steel pen. The subjects of his thoughts are changed very rapidly, but the general state of his mind is not changed; he is always strictly in his shop, as much mentally as physically. When an attorney is interrupted in the study of a case by the arrival of a client who asks him questions about another case, the change is more difficult to bear; yet even here the general state of mind, the legal state of mind, is not interfered with. But now suppose a reader perfectly absorbed in his author, an author belonging very likely to another age and another civilization entirely different from ours. Suppose that you are reading the Defence of Socrates in Plato, and have the whole scene before you as in a picture: the tribunal of the Five Hundred, the pure Greek architecture, the interested Athenian public, the odious Melitus, the envious enemies, the beloved and grieving friends whose names are dear to us, and immortal; and in the centre you see one figure draped like a poor man, in cheap and common cloth, that he wears winter and summer, with a face plain to downright ugliness, but an air of such genuine courage and self-possession that no acting could imitate it; and you hear the firm voice saying--

[Greek: Timatai d' oun moi haner thanatou Eien.][3]

You are just beginning the splendid paragraph where Socrates condemns himself to maintenance in the Prytaneum, and if you can only be safe from interruption till it is finished, you will have one of those minutes of n.o.ble pleasure which are the rewards of intellectual toil.

But if you are reading in the daytime in a house where there are women and children, or where people can fasten upon you for pottering details of business, you may be sure that you will _not_ be able to get to the end of the pa.s.sage without in some way or other being rudely awakened from your dream, and suddenly brought back into the common world. The loss intellectually is greater than any one who had not suffered from it could imagine. People think that an interruption is merely the unhooking of an electric chain, and that the current will flow, when the chain is hooked on again, just as it did before. To the intellectual and imaginative student an interruption is not that; it is the destruction of a picture.

LETTER IV.

TO A STUDENT WHO FELT HURRIED AND DRIVEN.

People who like to be hurried--Sluggish temperaments gain vivacity under pressure--Routine work may be done at increased speed--The higher intellectual work cannot be done hurriedly--The art of avoiding hurry consists in Selection--How it was practised by a good landscape painter--Selection in reading and writing--Some studies allow the play of selection more than others do--Languages permit it less than natural sciences--Difficulty of using selection in the fulfilment of literary engagements.

So you have got yourself into that pleasant condition which is about as agreeable, and as favorable to fruitful study and observation, as the condition of an over-driven cab-horse!

Very indolent men, who will not work at all unless under the pressure of immediate urgency, sometimes tell us that they actually like to be hurried; but although certain kinds of practical work which have become perfectly easy from habit may be got through at a great pace when the workman feels that there is an immediate necessity for effort, it is certainly not true that hurry is favorable to sound study of any kind.

Work which merely runs in a fixed groove may be urged on occasionally at express speed without any perceptible injury to the quality of it. A clever violinist can play a pa.s.sage _prestissimo_ as correctly as if he played it _adagio_; a banker's clerk can count money very rapidly with positively less risk of error than if he counted it as you and I do. A person of sluggish temperament really gains in vivacity when he is pressed for time, and becomes during those moments of excited energy a clearer-headed and more able person than he is under ordinary circ.u.mstances. It is therefore not surprising that he should find himself able to accomplish more under the great stimulus of an immediate necessity than he is able to do in the dulness of his every-day existence. Great prodigies of labor have been performed in this way to avert impending calamity, especially by military officers in critical times like those of the Sepoy rebellion; and in the obscurer lives of tradesmen, immense exertions are often made to avert the danger of bankruptcy, when without the excitement of a serious anxiety of that kind the tradesman would not feel capable of more than a moderate and reasonable degree of attention to his affairs. But notwithstanding the many instances of this kind which might be cited, and the many more which might easily be collected, the truth remains that the highest kinds of intellectual labor can hardly ever be properly performed when the degree of pressure is in the least excessive. You may, for example, if you have the kind of ability which makes a good journalist, write an effective leader with your watch lying on the table, and finish it exactly when the time is up; but if you had the kind of ability which makes a good poet, you could not write anything like highly-finished poetry against time. It is equally clear that scientific discovery, which, though it may flash suddenly upon the mind of the discoverer, is always the result of long brooding over the most patient observations, must come at its own moments, and cannot be commanded. The activity of poets and discoverers would be paralyzed by exigencies which stimulate the activity of soldiers and men of business. The truth is, that intelligence and energy are beneficially stimulated by pressure from without, whereas the working of the higher intellect is impeded by it, and that to such a degree that in times of the greatest pressure the high intellectual life is altogether suspended, to leave free play to the lower but more immediately serviceable intelligence.