together are
likely to keep you safe. Care for the physical health in the first
place, for if there is a morbid mind the bodily organs are not doing
their work as they ought to do. Next, for the mind itself, I would
heartily recommend hard study, really hard study, taken very regularly
but in very moderate quantity. The effect of it on the mind is as
bracing as that of cold water on the body, but as you ought not to
remain too long in the cold bath, so it is dangerous to study _hard_
more than a short time every day. Do some work that is very difficult
(such as reading some language that you have to puzzle out _a coups de
dictionnaire_) two hours a day regularly, to brace the fighting power of
the intellect, but let the rest of the day's work be easier. Acquire
especially, if you possibly can, the enviable faculty of getting
entirely rid of your work in the intervals of it, and of taking a hearty
interest in common things, in a garden, or stable, or dog-kennel, or
farm. If the work pursues you--if what is called unconscious
cerebration, which ought to go forward without your knowing it, becomes
conscious cerebration, and bothers you, then you have been working
beyond your cerebral strength, and you are not safe.

An organization which was intended by Nature for the intellectual life
cannot be healthy and happy without a certain degree of intellectual
activity. Natures like those of Humboldt and Goethe need immense labors
for their own felicity, smaller powers need less extensive labor. To all
of us who have intellectual needs there is a certain supply of work
necessary to perfect health. If we do less, we are in danger of that
ennui which comes from want of intellectual exercise; if we do more, we
may suffer from that other ennui which is due to the weariness of the
jaded faculties, and this is the more terrible of the two.

LETTER III.

TO AN INTELLECTUAL MAN WHO DESIRED AN OUTLET FOR HIS ENERGIES.

Dissatisfaction of the intellectual when they have not an extensive
influence--A consideration suggested to the author by Mr. Matthew
Arnold--Each individual mind a portion of the national mind, which
must rise or decline with the minds of which it is composed--Influence
of a townsman in his town--Household influence--Charities and
condescendences of the highly cultivated--A suggestion of M.
Taine--Conversation with inferiors--How to make it interesting--That
we ought to be satisfied with humble result