"Mental Efficiency And Other Hints to Men and Women"

So much for the more or less technical processes of stirring the mind from its sloth and making it exactly obedient to the aspirations of the soul.

And here I close. Numerous correspondents have asked me to outline a course of reading for them. In other words, they have asked me to particularize for them the aspirations of their souls.

My subject, however, was not self-development. My subject was mental efficiency as a means to self-development.

Of course, one can only acquire mental efficiency in the actual effort of self-development. But I was concerned, not with the choice of route; rather with the manner of following the route.

You say to me that I am busying myself with the best method of walking, and refusing to discuss where to go. Precisely. One man cannot tell another man where the other man wants to go.

If he can't himself decide on a goal he may as well curl up and expire, for the root of the matter is not in him.

I will content myself with pointing out that the entire universe is open for inspection. Too many people fancy that self-development means literature. They associate the higher life with an intimate knowledge of the life of Charlotte Bronte, or the order of the plays of Shakespeare.

The higher life may just as well be butterflies, or funeral customs, or county boundaries, or street names, or mosses, or stars, or slugs, as Charlotte Bronte or Shakespeare. Choose what interests you.

Lots of finely-organized, mentally-efficient persons can't read Shakespeare at any price, and if you asked them who was the author of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall they might proudly answer Emily Bronte, if they didn't say they never heard of it.

An accurate knowledge of any subject, coupled with a carefully nurtured sense of the relativity of that subject to other subjects, implies an enormous self-development. With this hint I conclude.

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