ver do." And we
set about developing the muscles of our arms until we can show them
off (through a frock coat) to women at afternoon tea. But it does not,
perhaps, occur to us that the mind has its muscles, and a lot of
apparatus besides, and that these invisible, yet paramount, mental
organs are far less efficient than they ought to be; that some of them
are atrophied, others starved, others out of shape, etc. A man of
sedentary occupation goes for a very long walk on Easter Monday, and
in the evening is so exhausted that he can scarcely eat. He wakes up
to the inefficiency of his body, caused by his neglect of it, and he
is so shocked that he determines on remedial measures. Either he will
walk to the office, or he will play golf, or he will execute the
post-shaving exercises. But let the same man after a prolonged
sedentary course of newspapers, magazines, and novels, take his mind
out for a stiff climb among the rocks of a scientific, philosophic, or
artistic subject. What will he do? Will he stay out all day, and
return in the evening too tired even to read his paper? Not he. It is
ten to one that, finding himself puffing for breath after a quarter of
an hour, he won't even persist till he gets his second wind, but will
come back at once. Will he remark with genuine concern that his mind
is sadly out of condition and that he really must do something to get
it into order? Not he. It is a hundred to one that he will tranquilly
accept the _status quo_, without shame and without very poignant
regret. Do I make my meaning clear?

I say, without a _very poignant_ regret, because a certain vague
regret is indubitably caused by realizing that one is handicapped by a
mental inefficiency which might, without too much difficulty, be
cured. That vague regret exudes like a vapour from the more cultivated
section of the public. It is to be detected everywhere, and especially
among people who are near the half-way house of life. They perceive
the existence of immense quantities of knowledge, not the smallest
particle of which will they ever make their own. They stroll forth
from their orderly dwellings on a starlit night, and feel dimly the
wonder of the heavens. But the still small voice is telling them that,
though they have read in a newspaper that there are fifty thousand
stars in the Pleiades, they cannot even point to the Pleiades in the
sky. How they would like to grasp the significance of the nebular
theory, the most ove