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Page 37 of
50.
GENERAL OBSEEVATIONS
Before commencing these exercises it will be a good thing to prepare oneself for
them by taking a few deep breaths.
In order to do this one should stand upright, the chest thrown well forward, the
lungs ex- tended outward and the back curved inward.
One should then fill one's lungs to their full capacity and allow the air to
escape as slowly as possible.
This exercise is designed to produce composure, by making certain the proper
functioning of the lungs and by regularizing the circulation.
Composure is one of the conditions essential to the mastery of perseverance.
Another very important point to observe is never to attempt to overtax one's
strength.
Discouragement is the enemy of perseverance, and this is susceptible of a very
natural explanation.
All efforts, up to the moment when it becomes impossible to continue them, lead
always to weariness, of which the least unpleasant result is that it shows us
our goal under disagreeable colors.
The memory of the difficulty we have experienced becomes linked with
apprehension of future efforts and retards their performance, until the time
arrives when one finds some reasonable pretext for abandoning them altogether.
It is also indispensable, while one is performing these exercises, to fix one's
thought steadily upon them and to allow nothing to cause it to wander.
It is for this reason that, at the start, it is essential to attempt nothing
that can not be quickly brought to a conclusion, in order to be easily able to
retain the mastery of one's thoughts that will prevent the idea from escaping
us.
If, in spite of all our efforts, wandering of the mind does take place, it will
become necessary to rigidly refuse all indulgence to our own weakness.
The mind should be brought back briskly to the subject under consideration, by
redoubling the effort of attention needed to center it upon that subject.
There is another recommendation of which the importance must not be overlooked.
It is disastrous for the conquest of perseverance to undertake one piece of work
when an- other is still in process of completion.
We are not speaking here of the different things which it may become necessary
to do in the course of accomplishing it, and which, far from doing any injury to
it, actually contribute to the perfection of the work.
We wish merely to describe those undertakings of a similar nature, of which the
beginning of one must necessarily be an absolute interruption to the completion
of another.
It is quite impossible to stop certain kinds of work, to commence other tasks of
the same sort without dividing one's energies, that is to say without doing
like the man of whom the Norwegian fable tells us.
He had to go from a certain place to a certain other place to rejoin his fiance.
But the direct road seemed to him a little monotonous, and he abandoned it to
follow a by-path, which he very soon left in order to try another.
His wanderings became more and more involved, until he completely lost sight of
his original objective point. On his journey he wandered from village to village
for many long years, without giving any thought, until it was much too late, to
his real destination, the hoped for goal of days long passed.
But his original road was far distant, he had to retrace many weary miles, and
found on the way other causes of distraction, so that he did not reach the end
of his journey until he had already been wandering over the face of the earth
for a very long time.
His sweetheart of former days, left to wait in vain, had cast in her lot with
another mate, and the wanderer found himself left alone, poor, and friendless,
in the face of an old age which should afford him no place beside the hearth
which should have been his.
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