There is scarce anything more for the improvement of knowledge,for the ease of life and the dispatch of business than for a man to be able to dispose of his own thoughts;and there is scarce anything harder in the whole conduct of the understanding than to get a full mastery over it.The mind in a waking man has always some object that it applies itself to,which,when we are lazier or unconcerned,we can easily change and at pleasure transfer our thoughts to another,and from thence to a third which has no relation to either of the former.Hence men forwardly conclude and frequently say,nothing is so free as thought;and it were well it were so;but the contrary will be found true in several instances;and there are many cases wherein there is nothing more resty and ungovernable than our thoughts;they will not be directed is hat objects to pursue nor be taken off from those they have once fixed on,but run away with a man in pursuit of those ideas they have in view,let him do what he can.
I will not here mention again what I have above taken notice of,how hard it is to get the mind,narrowed by a custom of thirty or forty years standing to a scant:collection of obvious and common ideas,to enlarge itself to a more copious stock and grow into an acquaintance with those that would afford more abundant matter of useful contemplation;it is not of this I am here speaking.The inconvenience I would here represent and find a remedy for is the difficulty there is sometimes to transfer our minds from one subject to another in cases where the ideas are equally familiar to us.
Matters that are recommended to our thoughts by any of our passions take possession of our minds with a kind of authority and will not be kept out or dislodged,but,as if the passion that rules were for the time the sheriff of the place and came with all the posse,the understanding is seized and taken with the object it introduces,as if it had a legal right to be alone considered there.There is scarce anybody,I think,of so calm a temper Who has not some time found this tyranny on his understanding and suffered under the inconvenience of it.who is there almost whose mind at some time or another love or anger,fear or grief has not so fastened to some clog,that it could not turn itself to any other object?
I call it a clog,for it hangs upon the mind so as to hinder its vigor and activity in the pursuit of other contemplations,and advances itself little or not [at]all in the knowledge of the thing which it so closely hugs and constantly pores on.Men thus possessed are sometimes as if they care so in the worst sense and was under the power of an enchantment.They see not what passes before their eyes,hear not the audible discourse of the company;and is hen by any strong application to them they are roused a little,they are like men brought to themselves from some remote region;whereas in truth they come no further than their secret cabinet within,where they have been wholly taken up with the puppet which is for that time appointed for their entertainment.The shame that such dumps cause to well bred people,when it carries them away from the company where they should bear a part in the conversation,is a sufficient argument that it is a fault in the conduct of our understanding not to have that power over it as to make use of it to those purposes and on those occasions wherein we have need of its assistance.
The mind should be always free and ready to turn itself to the variety of objects that occur and allow them as much consideration as shall for that time be thought fit.To be engrossed so by one object as not to be prevailed on to leave it for another that we judge fitter for our contemplation is to make it of no use to us.Did this state of mind remain always so,everyone would without scruple give it the name of perfect madness;and while it does last,at whatever intervals it returns,such a rotation of thoughts about the same object no more carries us for cards towards the attainment of knowledge than getting upon a mill horse whilst he jogs on in his circular tract would carry a man on a journey.
I grant something must be allowed to legitimate passions and to natural inclinations Every man,besides occasional affections,has beloved studies,and those the mind will more closely stick to;but yet it is best that it should be always at liberty and under the free disposal of the man to act how and upon what he directs This we should endeavor to obtain,unless we would be content with such a flaw in our understandings that sometimes we should be as it were without it;for it is very little better than so in cases where we cannot make use of it to those purposes we would and which stand in present need of it But before fit remedies can be thought on for this disease,we must know the several causes of it and thereby regulate the cure,if we will hope to labour with success One we hare already instanced in,whereof all men that reflect have so general a knowledge and so often an experience in themselves,that nobody doubts of it A prevailing passion so pins down our thoughts to the object and concern of it,that a man passionately in love cannot bring himself to think of his ordinary affairs,nor a kind mother drooping under the loss of a child is not able to bear a part as she was wont in the discourse of the company or conversation of her friends.
But though passion be the most obvious and general,yet it is not the only cause that binds up the understanding and confines it for the time to one object,from which it w ill not be taken off.