White Pine news weekly mining review. [volume] (East Ely, Nev.) 1910-1920, 1912-06-09

idea eomprehended, the mind by rea-
o oil that effort and of enrich
ment thereby gained becomes strong
! er and more able and more willing to
make the next effort, to solve and
understand the next problem,
to store the next fact. and compre-
bend the next idea. A man is judged
in this life by his intellectual power:
his success is very largely measured
by that power and in nearly every
case his intellectual power may be
measured by the work he has made
his mind do. and probably nowhere
can the mind be better started to
work or better acquire the habit Of
work than in the schools and col
leges. It is true that there are many
men of large intellectual ability who
have had very little training in
school-but il will be found in the
| great majority of such cases that
such men have trained their own
minds by making them work out of
school and often on things other
than books. Such men are the ex-
ception rather than the rule. Few of
us have the will power or the mental
energy to give our minds the drill
and the work necessary to their full
development unless We have regular
mental tasks imposed on us by some
one in authority oyer us.
Most minds are inherently lazy.
They srink from real effort. They
must be whipped to their work by
the lash of the will. There are prob
ably very few trained minds that
have escaped such whippings. at
least until they have become ac-
customed to close hard work. How
often have you sat down to your
mental task with a firm resolve to
master it. and in a few moments
found your thoughts wandering to
more pleasant things? Your will
thereupon has brought our mind
back to the task il is trying to
shirk with a firm commend TO 90 to
work and stay at il. Presently you
have found il wandering again and
you bring it back to work; in a few
moments you have been surprised TO
find it dropping to sleep. And how
often has this lndisposition of the
mind to work been too strong for
your will and you have fallen asleep
or abandoned the job for something
more eongenial. But If your will
power has been strong enough to
keep your minds nose to the grind
stone-to bring it up with a sharp
turn when you found 1t shirking-to
keep it at the grind until the job is
done; If you have fought this
fight with your minds laziness-not
onee-but often. you may have
noticed how much less trouble IL
then became to keep the mind busy
at the appointed task, and 1naliy
how IL became nearly as eager to
work as you were to have it work;
and then it was that study became
rather a pleasure to be sought than
a d~isagreeable task TO be got
through with. If you have been
fortune enough to reach this stage
in your mental development, then
you have commenced TO reap n of
the richest harvests that school life,
or for that matter, all life affords.
l say yon have commenced
to reap. for that is only the real be-
ginning of the development of the
mind. After that the mind is readi-
ly responsive to tasks, and If given
proper and sufficient work TO do. it
will grow by leaps and bounds. But
il must be provided with work
otherwise it will lapse back into its
former state. But if kept up for a
sufficient length of time, it will be-
gin to outgrow the will and demand
work to do. Then n of the chief
ends of education will have been at
tanned.
II your school work has done this
for you., ii has been invaluable.
You viii then in all probability keep
up mental work of some kind after
the school work is finished and
your mind will continue to grow.
for the habit of mental industry
once acquired is seldom abandoned.
In the process of reaching this
point your mind will almost in
variably have been trained to think