Directing mental energy / by Francis Aveling ; with diagrams and one plate.

  • Francis Aveling
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Directing mental energy / by Francis Aveling ; with diagrams and one plate. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    9 sense, W e cannot, so to say, slough off from our¬ selves the material of life. We can make use of it wisely and well, or work with it badly and with bungling hands, without skill, even without care. But we must carry the whole product with us to the end. Good or bad, beautiful or misshapen, fully developed and symmetrical or stunted, cramped and deformed, there is no wastage in the sense of loss or depletion. But there may be waste in the other sense of energy dissipated uselessly in the achievement of desired ends. Indeed, if we review our lives as so far lived, it is safe to say that there is no one of us who will not discover some sort of wastage here. There are goals proposed but never attained, ends never realised, despite the labour that we expended towards them ; labour, we realise it, wasted to no purpose. And there are ends and goals which have only partially been attained, or, if attained, have been found to be not worth attainment—not quite what we had laboured for after all—so that much energy has been spent, much endeavour lost, to little profit. And even when the ends proposed have been achieved, and the goals reached and found worth while, this has not seldom been secured by the expenditure of far more energy than was needed. It could have been done with less expense, less effort, and consequently less waste. We can see this, again, in the homely carpenter’s shop. The skilled craftsman who strikes the nail upon the head truly, drives it home ; and every ounce of muscle necessary, just that much and no more, is utilised in the work. There is no wasted power,
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