In the chapter on exercises we insisted that both for their direct use in athletics, and for their far greater significance in life, the speed and promptitude of the body’s obedience was an attainment of great value, for thus the mind has at its call a quick ready servant to do its errands, instead of a slow loiterer. We saw, also, that these exercises, while they are in progress, necessitate strict attention, which we may now add should be consciously applied, as learnt there, to other pursuits. Let, for instance, the man who has accustomed himself by this drill, for so we may call it, to attend with concentrated attention to these simple actions of the body, apply that attitude of mind which is now familiar to him to other tasks. Let us say he has before him a tedious piece of work, which at the same time requires minute attention. Let him, then, put himself into that frame of mind (he remembers it quite well) with which he performs his exercises. Many people hardly know what real attention means: there is no better way to teach it than to make rapid and correct movements, which cannot be made without it. In the same way, also, these exercises give the habit of control. A man who has brought mind and body into the relation of master and willing servant, even in so elementary a matter as this, is going on the right road to teach himself control in the largest choices and difficulties. So, too, in other points of training: a man who has made himself able to drop smoking, or abstain from stimulants, or from certain sorts of food which he likes, but which his reason tells him are bad for him, has not improved his power of self-control in that point only, but has begun, at any rate, to form a habit of it; and the exercise of self-control, in one point only, will make his power of control stronger all round, in each and every case where his reason suggests control to him. It is here, as a tonic to the mind, that training of some sort, apart from all its other uses, is recommended to everybody; not training for some special event, which, as soon as the event has come off is dropped, but a daily and continual observance of certain rules of health, a daily practise of exertion of will and obedience of body.[12]