more private and sacred studio, for his magnum opus. Now, look
at a hen's egg, which is a convenient one to study, because it is large
enough and built solidly enough to look at and handle easily. That would
be the form I would choose for my thinking-cell. Build me an oval with
smooth, translucent walls, and put me in the centre of it with Newton's
"Principia" or Kant's "Kritik," and I think I shall develop "an eye for
an equation," as you call it, and a capacity for an abstraction.

But do tell me,--said the Astronomer, a little incredulously,--what there
is in that particular form which is going to help you to be a
mathematician or a metaphysician?

--It is n't help I want, it is removing hindrances. I don't want to see
anything to draw off my attention. I don't want a cornice, or an angle,
or anything but a containing curve. I want diffused light and no single
luminous centre to fix my eye, and so distract my mind from its one
object of contemplation. The metaphysics of attention have hardly been
sounded to their depths. The mere fixing the look on any single object
for a long time may produce very strange effects. Gibbon's well-known
story of the monks of Mount Athos and their contemplative practice is
often laughed over, but it has a meaning. They were to shut the door of
the cell, recline the beard and chin on the breast, and contemplate the
abdominal centre.

"At first all will be dark and comfortless; but if you persevere day and
night, you will feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner has the soul
discovered the place of the heart, than it is involved in a mystic and
ethereal light." And Mr. Braid produces absolute anaesthesia, so that
surgical operations can be performed without suffering to the patient,
only by making him fix his eyes and his mind on a single object; and
Newton is said to have said, as you remember, "I keep the subject
constantly before me, and wait till the first dawnings open slowly by
little and little into a full and clear light." These are different, but
certainly very wonderful, instances of what can be done by attention.
But now suppose that your mind is in its nature discursive, erratic,
subject to electric attractions and repulsions, volage; it may be
impossible for you to compel your attention except by taking away all
external disturbances. I think the poets have an advantage and a
disadvantage as compared with the steadier-going people. Life is so
vivid to the poet, tha