an
one's own. To fulfil, morning after morning, or evening after evening,
through months and years--this is the very dickens, and there is not
one of my readers that will not agree with me. Yet such is the elastic
quality of human nature that most of my correspondents are quite ready
to ignore the sad fact and to demand at once: "what shall we will?
Tell us what we must will." Some seem to think that they have solved
the difficulty when they have advocated certain systems of memory and
mind-training. Such systems may be in themselves useful or
useless--the evidence furnished to me is contradictory--but were they
perfect systems, a man cannot be intellectually born again merely by
joining a memory-class. The best system depends utterly on the man's
power of resolution. And what really counts is not the system, but the
spirit in which the man handles it. Now, the proper spirit can only be
induced by a careful consideration and realization of the man's
conditions--the limitations of his temperament, the strength of
adverse influences, and the lessons of his past.

Let me take an average case. Let me take your case, O man or woman of
thirty, living in comfort, with some cares, and some responsibilities,
and some pretty hard daily work, but not too much of any! The question
of mental efficiency is in the air. It interests you. It touches you
nearly. Your conscience tells you that your mind is less active and
less informed than it might be. You suddenly spring up from the
garden-seat, and you say to yourself that you will take your mind in
hand and do something with it. Wait a moment. Be so good as to sink
back into that garden-seat and clutch that tennis racket a little
longer. You have had these "hours of insight" before, you know. You
have not arrived at the age of thirty without having tried to carry
out noble resolutions--and failed. What precautions are you going to
take against failure this time? For your will is probably no stronger
now than it was aforetime. You have admitted and accepted failure in
the past. And no wound is more cruel to the spirit of resolve than
that dealt by failure. You fancy the wound closed, but just at the
critical moment it may reopen and mortally bleed you. What are your
precautions? Have you thought of them? No. You have not.

I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance. But I know you because I
know myself. Your failure in the past was due to one or more of three
causes. And the first