confessed that for such occupation a
pre-eminent amount of intellectual capacity is necessary. And in this
connection it may be noted that, just as a life devoted to outward
activity will distract and divert a man from study, and also deprive
him of that quiet concentration of mind which is necessary for such
work; so, on the other hand, a long course of thought will make
him more or less unfit for the noisy pursuits of real life. It
is advisable, therefore, to suspend mental work for a while, if
circumstances happen which demand any degree of energy in affairs of a
practical nature.

SECTION 8. To live a life that shall be entirely prudent and discreet,
and to draw from experience all the instruction it contains, it
is requisite to be constantly thinking back,--to make a kind
of recapitulation of what we have done, of our impressions and
sensations, to compare our former with our present judgments--what
we set before us and struggle to achieve, with the actual result and
satisfaction we have obtained. To do this is to get a repetition of
the private lessons of experience,--lessons which are given to every
one.

Experience of the world may be looked upon as a kind of text, to which
reflection and knowledge form the commentary. Where there is great
deal of reflection and intellectual knowledge, and very little
experience, the result is like those books which have on each page two
lines of text to forty lines of commentary. A great deal of experience
with little reflection and scant knowledge, gives us books like those
of the _editio Bipontina_[1] where there are no notes and much that is
unintelligible.

[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_. A series of Greek, Latin and French
classics published at Zweibraecken in the Palatinate, from and after
the year 1779. Cf. Butter, _Ueber die Bipontiner und die editiones
Bipontinae_.]

The advice here given is on a par with a rule recommended by
Pythagoras,--to review, every night before going to sleep, what we
have done during the day. To live at random, in the hurly-burly of
business or pleasure, without ever reflecting upon the past,--to go
on, as it were, pulling cotton off the reel of life,--is to have no
clear idea of what we are about; and a man who lives in this state
will have chaos in his emotions and certain confusion in his thoughts;
as is soon manifest by the abrupt and fragmentary character of his
conversation, which becomes a kind of mincemeat. A man will be all t