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either lately, I cannot well say. At any rate, I have come to the conclusion that you are a "thinking Man". Now I have quite a large acquaintance among young men, many of them men of Education, of refined, cultivated, and well disciplined minds, so called; but it does not ?page folded over occur to me that I would be willing to warrant any one of them really thinking as much in one week as you do in one day. And as for myself, who from advantages of education, extensive & varied reading, in several respects, fair opportunities: might reasonably be expected, a fair "?page folded over for comparison, I hope no reason for judging that I think as normal in one month, or have day in the month last past, as you appear to one hour: that is, when the thinking mood comes over you. Now I think of it, there is in your letter, if I can find it, a passage my mental indolence. I do most fully, and most heartily confess the charge. It is a thing which has troubled me a good deal. It is a matter upon which I have really thought, or tried, or pretended, to think, more or less, occasionally. I have tried to imagine a cause, or a reason. I have been half flattering myself with the idea that perhaps as I had been for three or four years mostly occupied intellectually rather than physically, it was sometimes natural, if not reasonable, that the Mind should claim a space of rest, of relaxation from constant exertion. But I do not know as the flimsy defense would stand against your argument and theory. Still some things my experience would appear to confirm such an idea, I mean an idea that the mind may gain strength and ability for exertion from inactivity. E.g. you and I both when very young in Boston were precocious, prematurely scholars & readers. Now do you believe that if we had remained there under similar circumstances that should have ever matured into sound minds, eve as we now are? Was not the perfect change, relaxation, in fact the full giving up of that usually called Mental Culture, was it not necessary to further health development? I was not probably as good a scholar when I first went to Bangor to School