s. These times of relaxation, when the
mind follows its own bent, are perhaps the most fruitful and
significant periods in a rich and noble intellectual life. The real
nature, the deeper instincts of the man, come out in these moments, as
essential refinement and genuine breeding are revealed when the man is
off guard and acts and speaks instinctively. It is possible to be
mentally active and intellectually poor and sterile; to drive the mind
along certain courses of work, but to have no deep life of thought
behind these calculated activities. The life of the mind is rich and
fruitful only when thought, released from specific tasks, flies at
once to great themes as its natural objects of interest and love, its
natural sources of refreshment and strength. Under all our definite
activities there runs a stream of meditation; and the character of
that meditation determines our wealth or our poverty, our
productiveness or our sterility.

This instinctive action of the mind, although largely unconscious, is
by no means irresponsible; it may be directed and controlled; it may
be turned, by such control, into a Pactolian stream, enriching us
while we rest and ennobling us while we play. For the mind may be
trained to meditate on great themes instead of giving itself up to
idle reverie; when it is released from work it may concern itself with
the highest things as readily as with those which are insignificant
and paltry. Whoever can command his meditations in the streets, along
the country roads, on the train, in the hours of relaxation, can
enrich himself for all time without effort or fatigue; for it is as
easy and restful to think about great things as about small ones. A
certain lover of books made this discovery years ago, and has turned
it to account with great profit to himself. He thought he discovered
in the faces of certain great writers a meditative quality full of
repose and suggestive of a constant companionship with the highest
themes. It seemed to him that these thinkers, who had done so much to
liberate his own thought, must have dwelt habitually with noble ideas;
that in every leisure hour they must have turned instinctively to
those deep things which concern most closely the life of men. The vast
majority of men are so absorbed in dealing with material that they
appear to be untouched by the general questions of life; but these
general questions are the habitual concern of the men who think. In
such men the mi