Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 86, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1909 — OUR WONDERFUL MINDS. [ARTICLE]

OUR WONDERFUL MINDS.

The mind is ever actively receiving impressions. So subtile are these impressions we are scarcely susceptible of having received them. In analizing it, we find it to be the most wonderful of all things in life. Mind—“the ability to think. ’’ The animal that has the greatest ability to think rules the world. Man rules the earth because his is the Master mind, and all other animals are therefore subject to him. Mind in its ability to think memorizies what it thinks. Memory is the power to revive again in our minds those ideas thought about, or to bring up something we have simply observed without thinking or studying. Say by the way of homely illustration, you should overhear one ask where the hatchet is. You call and say its out by a certain tree. You were not thinking of the hatcliet lying there. You did not indeed intend charging your mind —simply received the impression as you passed by. Mind and memory are so closely of kin, one is not thought of without the other. Its no use to study if the memory does not retain. It has always seemed to us to keep the little first fear at school tots in school more than a few hours a day a waste of time and an injury to them. Their little heads are capable of retaining but a thought or two at a time, and one study a day they could retain in their mind and go home and tell mamma all about it, but if a number of things one after another are being forced on its mind it in the meantime getting more and more restless as'the hours go by, at night it has a conglomeration of all, but hardly a distinct idea nor has it fully memorized any one study of the day. In other words, in the one case the child’s day is over with a conglomerated mass of ideas. No one of which it has memorized distinctly. In the other case, it has memorized the one study, therefore has learned at least the one thing and could stand an examination on that but could tell you nothing definite about the other days doings. Is it not a matter of fact that a child so young has all it can dodo retain one thing at a time? One thought or a study for a day is good and sufficient if you would have it retain the knowledge you wish to convey. A child is not capable of grasping more than one thing or idea at a time. The preparing for a great trial in which there were a great number of knotty legal problems we asked the lawyer how he could keep studying and at the same time remember ! He said just as long as his brain received impressions, he studied the problem, but as soon as his brain tired he put the matter aside, and commenced again where he left off, taking up some lighter duties till his mind rested. In other words, as soon as our minds fail to receive impressions, it is time to stop and let it catch up as you are then wasting your time. It is said the reason so many of our great men from the country have made good from the presidential chair down is that in following the plow the problems of their books were thought over and reasoned out. There is not much else to divert his mind when in the field and the country boy works out many a problem in this quietness that sticks and come up a reserve fund in the halls of congress or colleges of learning. Its the reasoning out of the thing, the memorizing of the whys and wherefores, that educates. Education is knowledge memorized or remembered. What we memorize no one can steal form us. Unless reason is dethroned, no one can rob us of education. Its the poor man’s capital. In this day and age it behoves one to be up and doing. We must be students all our lives. Our farmers find this true in all things agricultural. Different methods prevail than when he was a boy. The doctor, professor, or merchant who does not keep up with the age, will drop behind. It is an extremely progressive age. One can never rest on his laurels. We must not lose sight of impressions on our lives like unto the hlatchet incident. Our surroundings impress us daily. These impressions may be for good or evil. Some have said “Let them go.for a while, one must sow his wild oats.” Many a son or daughter has cursed father and mother for this. Give a boy six months or a year in a pool room or loafing about the saloons and you will find the agreeable saloonkeeper has nine cases of ten a mortgage on the balance of his life. The dog’s track in the cement will be in that walk for many a day before it is obliterated, in fact, the walk may not outlive it. The track was made while the material was soft. Tracks made in our youth are hard to obliterate, in fact they often track us to our graves. In the physical condition, there are times when certain of us are more susceptible of disease. One learns with astonishment that so and so has typhoid or some other fever. The doctor will tell you that the system had run down and was in such a condition (below par as were) that the germ fastened itself more readily like when a pestilence goes through the land, it is rare indeed that all get down with it. Those whose systems are in good condition to resist it, escape. Thus the “Smart Alex” age in boys and girls finds the most cengenial soil. The higher boys and girls climb “fool hill,” the greater the fall. If we place yourselves in position of wrong we cannot but fail to receive impressions, though we may not seem conscious at the time.