ranged in any different manner whatsoever; any different position of the volumes would be new, and strange, and troublesome to us, and would not countervail the inconveniences of a change.

So if a man of forty years old has been taught to hold his pen awkwardly in his youth, and yet writes sufficiently well for all the purposes of his station, it is not worth while to teach him now the most accurate methods of handling that instrument; for this would create him more trouble without equal advantage, and perhaps he might never attain to write better after he has placed all his fingers perfectly right with this new accuracy.

CHAP. XV.

Of fixing the Attention.

A STUDENT should labour by all proper methods to acquire a steady fixation of thought. Attention is a very necessary thing in order to improve our minds. The evidence of truth does not always appear immediately, nor strike the soul at first sight. It is by long attention and inspection that we arrive at evidence, and it is for want of it we judge falsely of many things. We make haste to determine upon a slight and a sudden view, we confirm our guesses which arise from a glance, we pass a judgement while we have but a confused or obscure perception, and thus plunge ourselves into mistakes. This is like a man, who, walking in a mist, or being at a great distance from any visible object (suppose a tree, a man, a horse, or a church), judges much amiss of the figure, and situation, and colours of it, and sometimes takes one for the other whereas if he would but with-hold his judgement till he come nearer to it, or stay till clearer light comes, and then would fix his eyes longer upon it, he would secure himself from those mistakes.

Now,

Now, in order to gain a greater facility of attention, we may observe these rules.

I. GET a good liking to the study or knowledge you would pursue. We may observe that there is not much difficulty in confining the mind to contemplate what we have a great desire to know; and especially, if they are matters. of sense, or ideas which paint themselves upon the fancy. It is but acquiring an hearty good-will and resolution, to search out and survey the various properties and parts of such objects, and our attention will be engaged if there be any delight or diversion in the study or contemplation of them. Therefore mathematical studies have a strange influence towards fixing the attention of the mind, and giving, a steadiness to a wandering disposition, because they deal much in lines, figures, and numbers, which affect and please the sense and imagination. Histories have a strong tendency the same way, for they engage the soul by a variety of sensible occurrences; when it hath begun it knows not how to leave off; it longs to know the final event, through a natural curiosity that belongs to mankind. Voyages and travels, and accounts of strange countries and strange appearances, will assist in this work. This sort of study detains the mind by the perpetual occurrence and expectation of something new, and that which may gratefully strike the imagination.

II. SOMETIMES We may make use of sensible things and corporeal images for the illustration of those notions which are more abstracted and intellectual. Therefore diagrams greatly assist the mind in astronomy and philosophy; and the emblems of virtues and vices may happily teach children and pleasingly impress those useful moral ideas on young minds, which perhaps might be conveyed to them with much more difficulty by mere moral and abstracted discourses.

I confess in this practice of representing moral subjects by pictures, we should be cautious lest we so far immerse the mind in corporeal images, as to render it unfit to take in an abstracted and intellectual idea, or cause it to form

form wrong conceptions of immaterial things. This practice, therefore, is rather to be used at first, in order to get a fixed habit of attention, and in some cases only; but it can never be our constant way and method of pursuing all moral, abstracted, and spiritual themes.

III. APPLY yourself to those studies, and read those authors who draw out their subjects into a perpetual chain of connected reasonings, wherein the following parts of the discourse are naturally and easily derived from those which go before. Several of the mathematical sciences, if not all, are happily useful for this purpose. This will render the labour of study delightful to a rational mind, and will fix the powers of the understanding with strong attention to their proper operations by the very pleasure of it. Labor ipse voluptas is a happy proposition wheresoever it can be applied.

IV. Do not choose your constant place of study by the finery of the prospects, or the most various and entertaining scenes of sensible things. Too much light, or a variety of objects which strike the eye or the ear, especially while they are ever in motion, or often changing, have a natural and powerful tendency to steal away the mind too often from its steady pursuit of any subject which we contemplate; and thereby the soul gets a habit of silly curiosity and impertinence, of trifling and wandering. Vagerio thought himself furnished with the best closet for his study among the beauties, gaities, and diversions of Kensington or Hampton-court; but after seven years professing to pursue learning, he was a mere novice still.

V. BE not in too much haste to come to the determination of a difficult or important point. Think it worth your waiting to find out truth. Do not give your assent up to either side of a question too soon, merely on this account, that the study of it is long and difficult. Rather be contented with ignorance for a season, and continue in suspense, till your attention, and meditation, and due labour, have found out sufficient evidence on one side. Some are so fond

to

to know a great deal at once, and love to talk of things with freedom and boldness before they thoroughly understand them, that they scarcely ever allow themselves attention enough to search the matter through and through.

VI. HAVE a care of indulging the more sensual passions and appetites of animal nature; they are great enemies to attention. Let not the mind of a student be under the influence of any warm affection to things of sense, when he comes to engage in the search of truth, or the improvement of his understanding. A person under the power of love, or fear, or anger, great pain, or deep sorrow, hath so little government of his soul, that he cannot keep it attentive to the proper subject of his meditation. The passions call away the thoughts with incessant opportunity towards the object that excited them; and if we indulge the frequent rise and roving of passions, we shall thereby procure an unsteady and inattentive habit of mind.

Yet this one exception must be admitted, viz. If we can be so happy as to engage any passion of the soul on the side of the particular study which we are pursuing, it may have a great influence to fix the attention more strongly to it.

VII. IT is therefore very useful to fix and engage the mind in the pursuit of any study, by a consideration of the. divine pleasures of truth and knowledge, by a sense of our duty to God, by a delight in the exercise of our intellectual faculties, by the hope of future service to our fellow-creatures, and glorious advantage to ourselves, both in this world and that which is to come. These thoughts, though they may move our affections, yet they do it with a proper influence: these will rather assist and promote our attention, than disturb or divert it from the subject of our present and proper meditations. A soul inspired with the fondest love of truth, and the warmest aspirations after sincere felicity and celestial beatitude, will keep all its powers attentive to the incessant pursuit of them: passion is then refined, and consecrated to its divinest purposes.

CHAP.

CHA P. XVI.

Of enlarging the Capacity of the Mind.

THERE are three things which in an especial manner go to make up that amplitude or capacity of mind, which is one of the noblest characters belonging to the understanding: (1.) When the mind is ready to take in great and sublime ideas without pain or difficulty. (2.) When the mind is free to receive new and strange ideas, upon just evidence, without great surprise or aversion. (3.) When the mind is able to conceive or survey many ideas at once without confusion, and to form a true judgement derived from that extensive survey. The person who wants either of these characters, may, in that respect, be said to have a narrow genius. Let us diffuse our meditations a little upon this subject.

1. THAT is an ample and capacious mind which is ready to take in vast and sublime ideas without pain or difficulty. Persons who have never been used to converse with any thing but the common, little, and obvious affairs of life, have acquired such a narrow or contracted habit of soul, that they are not able to stretch their intellects wide enough to admit large and noble thoughts; they are ready to make their domestic, daily, and familiar images of things, the measure of all that is, and all that can be.

Talk to them of the vast dimensions of the planetary worlds; tell them that the star called Jupiter is a solid globe, two hundred and twenty times bigger than our earth; that the sun is a vast globe offre above a thousand times bigger than Jupiter; that is, two hundred and twenty thousand times bigger than the earth; that the distance from the earth to the sun is eighty-one millions of miles; and that a cannon-bullet, shot from the earth, would not arrive at the nearest of the fixed stars in some hundreds of years; they cannot bear the belief of it, but hear all these glorious labours of astronomy as a mere idle romance.

Inform them of the amazing swiftness of the motion of

some