I shall not here engage on those beaten subjects of the usefulness
of knowledge, nor of the pleasure and perfection it gives the mind,
nor on the methods of attaining it, nor recommend any particular
branch of it; all which have been the topics of many other writers;
but shall indulge myself in a speculation that is more uncommon, and
may therefore, perhaps, be more entertaining.
I have before shown how the unemployed parts of life appear long and
tedious, and shall here endeavour to show how those parts of life
which are exercised in study, reading, and the pursuits of
knowledge, are long, but not tedious, and by that means discover a
method of lengthening our lives, and at the same time of turning all
the parts of them to our advantage.
Mr. Locke observes, "That we get the idea of time or duration, by
reflecting on that train of ideas which succeed one another in our
minds: that, for this reason, when we sleep soundly without
dreaming, we have no perception of time, or the length of it whilst
we sleep; and that the moment wherein we leave off to think, till
the moment we begin to think again, seems to have no distance." To
which the author adds, "and so I doubt not but it would be to a
waking man, if it were possible for him to keep only one idea in his
mind, without variation and the succession of others; and we see
that one who fixes his thoughts very intently on one thing, so as to
take but little notice of the succession of ideas that pass in his
mind whilst he is taken up with that earnest contemplation, lets
slip out of his account a good part of that duration, and thinks
that time shorter than it is.
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