The Mystic Will | Page 3

experiment which I clearly describe and which has been tested and verified beyond all denial--cause himself to remain during the following day in a perfectly calm or cheerful state of mind; and this condition may, by means of repetition and practice, be raised or varied to other states or conditions of a far more active or intelligent description.
Thus, for illustration, I may say that within my own experience, I have by this process succeeded since my seventieth year in working all day far more assiduously, and without any sense of weariness or distaste for labour, than I ever did at any previous period of my life. And the reader need only try the extremely easy experiment, as I have described it, to satisfy himself that he can do the same, that he can continue it with growing strength ad infinitum, and that this power will unquestionably at some future time be employed with marvellous results in Education. For, beyond all question--since any human being can easily prove or disprove it by a few experiments-- there is no method known by which inattention, heedlessness, or negligence in the young can be so promptly and thoroughly cured as by this; while on the other hand, Attention and Interest by assiduity, are even more easily awakened. It has indeed seemed to me, since I have devoted myself to the study of Education from this point of view, as if it had been like the Iron Castle in the Slavonian legend, unto which men had for centuries wended their way by a long and wearisome road of many miles, while there was all the time, unseen and unknown, a very short and easy subterranean passage, by means of which the dwellers in the Schloss might have found their way to the town below, and to the world, in a few minutes.
To this I have added a succinct account of what is, I believe, the easiest and most comprehensive Art of Memory ever conceived. There are on this subject more than five hundred works, all based, without exception, on the Associative system, which may be described as a stream which runs with great rapidity for a very short time but is soon choked up. This, I believe, as a means applied to learning, was first published in my work, entitled Practical Education. In it the pupil is taught the direct method; that is, instead of remembering one thing by means of another, to impress the image itself on the memory, and frequently revive it. This process soon becomes habitual and very easy. In from one year to eighteen months a pupil can by means of it accurately recall a lecture or sermon. It has the immediate advantage, over all the associate systems, of increasing and enlarging the scope and vigour of the memory, or indeed of the mind, so that it may truly bear as a motto, Vires acquirit eundo--"it gains in power as it runs long."
Finally, I set forth a system of developing the Constructive Faculty-- that which involves Ingenuity, Art, or manual making--as based on the teaching of the so-called Minor Arts to the young. The principle from which I proceed is that as the fruit is developed from the flower, all Technical Education should be anticipated. Or begun in children by practicing easy and congenial arts, such as light embroidery, wood-carving or repouss��, by means of which they become familiar with the elements of more serious and substantial work. Having found out by practical experience, in teaching upwards of two thousand children for several years, that the practice of such easy work, or the development of the constructive faculty, invariably awakened the intellectual power or intelligence, I began to study the subject of the development of the mind in general. My first discovery after this was that Memory, whether mental, visual, or of any other kind, could, in connection with Art, be wonderfully improved, and to this in time came the consideration that the human Will, with all its mighty power and deep secrets, could be disciplined and directed, or controlled with as great care as the memory or the mechanical faculty. In a certain sense the three are one, and the reader who will take the pains, which are, I trust, not very great, to master the details of this book, will readily grasp it as a whole, and understand that its contents form a system of education, yet one from which the old as well as young may profit.
It is worth noting that, were it for nervous invalids alone, or those who from various causes find it difficult to sleep, or apply the mind to work, this book would be of unquestionable value. In fact, even while writing this chapter, a lady has called to thank me for the substantial