The Marietta journal. [volume] (Marietta, Ga.) 1866-1909, 1888-11-01
MENTAL LAzrsEss.
From the London Spectator.

limited class of experienced and OBJ
servant teachers, are at all aware of
tn extent to which many men and
mere women are swayed by what is
really nothing but mental laziness.
Numbers of them positively will not
apply their minds at all, preferring
any consequences which may result
from Ignorance, and emerge from
school as ignorant as fishes while
still larger classes, possibly even a
majority, betray the same impulse
as regards particular subjects. Men
are constantly heard to affirm in
confidential moments that they liter
ally cannot" acquire this or that
ordinary branch of knowledge, while
they do learn at the very same time
things more difficult, and requiring
precisely the same kind of mental
capacities. Hundreds of men will
protest positive inability to learn
the commonest facts relating to any
science but their own, even when
their own is kindred to the one dis
cussed; while thousands of women
will calculate accurately all the
measurements necessary for dress.
really difficult process il accuracy
is to be attained, and then declare
unblushingly that they cannot, no,
they Gun not understand rule-of-
three, or calculate Mr.. Goshen's in
terest in their own fortunes. Half
the men in the world who are not
sensitive to music think it an i'm
possibility for them to learn to read
musical notation: and we have
heard man, not without power of
reasoning, and with a special apti-
! tude for mental arithmetic, declare
that thousand years of tuition
would not enable him to compre-
bend quadratic equotation. In
deed, it is one of the phenomena of
mental laziness that it often reveals
itself in its acutest form in the nat
urally able, and chat it is the rea-
soner who is most daunted by par
ticular set of syllogisms, not one
whit more difficult than those he
has already mastered. The inabili-
ty is not positive, but only relative,
and is produced either by what we
call "want of interest in the subject,
which may be either instructive or
natural, or by sense of pain in the
effort, that, like the pain to the arms
in swimming, can be overcome only
by frequent and continuous prac-
tice. If the necessity is peremptory
the inability speedily disappears,
and that often in a way which at
once indicates its source. 1t does
not disappear gradually; it lasts,
apparently as insuperable as ever,
up to a defnable moment and
then, presto ! it is gone never to re-
turn. The truth is enough has been
learned to awaken unconsciously the
faculty of attention, or, in other
words, to take away the pain of it,
and then the natural power has its
full swing. That is, we believe, the
unvarying experience OF every man
who learns chess-which no man
ever torgot-and of all except the
few with natural bent who study
any abstract science whatsoever. In
men possessed of the natural bent"
there is, of course, no laziness, be-
cause there is no sense of pain ;
they learn without effort preceptible
to themselves, as the savage learns
the wilderness OF natural facts nee
essary to enable him to hunt or fish
for food with success. A savage
"never knows anything about the
orest"-except the myriad of min
ute indications necessary to tell him
where to find the great maggots
which he eats. He is compelled to
learn that, and his mental laziness,
therefore, does not stop him as it
would if Sir J. Lubbock were to try
to teach him the anatomy Of leaf.
He could learn that anatomy if it
were equally essential to his exis-
tence.'
Among those who are making
money in Floyd county is w. l..