Man's Mental Power House

1914

On Proper and Wise Use of Brain Depends Individual's Value to the World

The brain is our mental power house; its electric product is thought, and our sanity is determined by the mental voltage we carry.

So long as we are live wires, so long as we transmit power, radiate love, give out sympathetic warmth, think individually and act collectively, we establish our right to live.

The lazy man, as has been frequently observed, us not only as useless as a dead man (and takes up more room), but he is a clogging drag upon the wheels of progress.

The man or woman blessed with imagination or anticipation possesses a sort of prophetic vision, a kind of instinct, so that they look upon life with prescience, strength of character and courage. This possession is not a gift of chance, but a cultivation that comes with useful activities.

Inspiration is the indicator of well-being in our mental power house — it is a by-product of labor, for without labor it merely becomes a mental dribble, a wasting (without renewing) of mental vitality. Inspiration is therefore the result of laboring, and when properly applied it is followed by achievements of great worth. Allied to labor, it expands its force. Unallied, it is soon exhausted.

The Culture of Politeness

1895

M. Brunetiero of the French academy contributes an article on "Education and Instruction," in which he makes remarks that are worth quoting, to the effect that the first interest of the French community being to endure and to continue on the same lines, the treatment of the young must be to a certain extent subordinate to this general theory and not wholly based on the individual development of the boy and girl.

French politeness, for instance, is an integral attribute of France as we have always known her, and has partly molded her literary expressions and contributed to the wide diffusion of her language. "Thus the well-bred man is he who controls himself in the interest of others. The idea of a certain amount of constraint is still at the base of continental education. . . . To breed up or to train a child is to habituate it to repress such of its movements, to restrain such of its moods, to keep to itself such of its sentiments as might annoy or alarm others. The general interest, which in the sphere of manners is the interest of the 'world,' is therefore recognized as superior to that of the individual, and as sufficiently important to require each of us to subordinate, to submit, to bend his own nature, and so we come to the formula of individual constraint in favor of a social gain."