Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

THE exercise of the Will, or the lesson of power, is taught in every event. From the child’s possession of his several senses up to the hour when he saith, ‘ Thy will be done ! ‘ he is learning the secret, that he can reduce under his Will, not only particular events, but great […]

THE man who is perpetually hesitating which of two things he will do first will do neither. The man who resolves, but suffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter suggestion of a friend who fluctuates from opinion to opinion, from plan to plan, and veers like a weather-cock to every point of […]

THE great thing in all education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. ” For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and as carefully guard against growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous. “In the acquisition […]

MECHANICAL obedience’ (in the treatment of disease and of mind as well as of body) is but one half the battle; the patient must not only will, he must believe. The whole nature of man must be brought to the task, moral as well as physical, for the seat of the disease is not confined […]

“RESOLVE is what makes a man manifest; not puny resolve, not crude determinations, not errant purpose but that strong and indefatigable Will which treads down difficulties and danger, as a boy treads down the heaving frost lands of winter; which kindles his eye and brain with a proud pulse-beat toward the unattainable. Will makes men […]

OUR labors are now nearly concluded. Hence forth it only remains to carry out in daily life the ideas of the preceding pages. The book is not a treatise; it seeks to be a teacher, and thus leaves much to the intelligence of the reader. If it prove suggestive and lead to practical efforts for […]

“WE are all born to be educators, to be parents, as we are not born to be engineers, or sculptors, or musicians, or painters. Native capacity for teaching is therefore more common than native capacity for any other calling. . . . But in most people this native sympathy is either dormant or blind or […]

“IF you would work on any man, you must either know his nature and fashions, and so lead him; or his ends, and so persuade him; or his weaknesses and disadvantages, and so awe him; or those that have interest in him, and so govern him.”— Francis Bacon. The preceding directions and illustrations relate to […]

“WHILE engaged in the composition of my ` Elements of Chemistry,’ I perceived, better than I had ever done before, the truth of an observation of Condillac, that we think only through the medium of words ; and that languages are true analytic methods. The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well […]

“IMPURE thought, despondent, hopeless, repining, fault finding, fretful, slanderous thought, is certain to make the blood impure and fill the system with disease. ” So with certain habits of body consequent on such habits of thought, such as the habit of worry, the habit of laying undue stress on things not the most needful for […]