he
intellectual forces, you have too much energy in one direction, too
little in another, a brigade where a regiment could have done the work,
and light artillery where you want guns of the heaviest calibre.

To establish this central authority it is only necessary, in any
vigorous and sound mind, to exercise it. Without such a central power
there is neither liberty of action nor security of possession. "The
mind," says Locke, "should always be free and ready to turn itself to
the variety of objects that occur, and allow them as much consideration
as shall, for that time, be thought fit. To be engrossed so by one
subject as not to be prevailed on to leave it for another that we judge
fitter for our contemplation, is to make it of no use to us. Did this
state of mind always remain so, every one would, without scruple, give
it the name of perfect madness; and whilst it does last, at whatever
intervals it returns, such a rotation of thoughts about the same object
no more carries us forward toward the attainment of knowledge, than
getting upon a mill-horse whilst he jogs on his circular track, would
carry a man on a journey."

Writers of imaginative literature have found in practice that even the
creative faculty might be commanded. Charles Baudelaire, who had the
poetical organization with all its worst inconveniencies, said
nevertheless that "inspiration is decidedly the sister of daily labor.
These two contraries do not exclude each other more than all the other
contraries which constitute nature. Inspiration obeys like hunger, like
digestion, like sleep. There is, no doubt, in the mind a sort of
celestial mechanism, of which we need not be ashamed, but we ought to
make the best use of it. If we will only live in a resolute
contemplation of next day's work, the daily labor will serve
inspiration." In cases where discipline is felt to be very difficult, it
is generally at the same time felt to be very desirable. George Sand
complains that although "to overcome the indiscipline of her brain, she
had imposed upon herself a regular way of living, and a daily labor,
still twenty times out of thirty she catches herself reading or
dreaming, or writing something entirely apart from the work in hand."
She adds that without this frequent intellectual _flanerie_, she would
have acquired information which has been her perpetual but unrealized
desire.

It is the triumph of discipline to overcome both small and great
repugnances.