We bring ourselves, by its help, to face petty details that
are wearisome, and heavy tasks that are almost appalling. Nothing shows
the power of discipline more than the application of the mind in the
common trades and professions to subjects which have hardly any interest
in themselves. Lawyers are especially admirable for this. They acquire
the faculty of resolutely applying their minds to the dryest documents,
with tenacity enough to end in the perfect mastery of their contents; a
feat which is utterly beyond the capacity of any undisciplined
intellect, however gifted by Nature. In the case of lawyers there are
frequent intellectual repugnances to be overcome; but surgeons and other
men of science have to vanquish a class of repugnances even less within
the power of the will--the instinctive physical repugnances. These are
often so strong as to seem apparently insurmountable, but they yield to
persevering discipline. Although Haller surpassed his contemporaries in
anatomy, and published several important anatomical works, he was
troubled at the outset with a horror of dissection beyond what is usual
with the inexperienced, and it was only by firm self-discipline that he
became an anatomist at all.

There is, however, one reserve to be made about discipline, which is
this: We ought not to disregard altogether the mind's preferences and
refusals, because in most cases they are the indication of our natural
powers. They are not so always; many have felt attracted to pursuits for
which they had no capacity (this happens continually in literature and
the fine arts), whilst others have greatly distinguished themselves in
careers which were not of their own choosing, and for which they felt no
vocation in their youth. Still there exists a certain relation between
preference and capacity, which may often safely be relied upon when
there are not extrinsic circumstances to attract men or repel them.
Discipline becomes an evil, and a very serious evil, causing immense
losses of special talents to the community, when it overrides the
personal preferences entirely. We are less in danger of this evil,
however, from the discipline which we impose upon ourselves than from
that which is imposed upon us by the opinion of the society in which we
live. The intellectual life has this remarkable peculiarity as to
discipline, that whilst very severe discipline is indispensable to it,
that which it really needs is the obedience to an inward