I find it a great aid to recall what I can of bygone beautiful associations, and then sleep on them with a resolve that they shall recur in complete condition. He who will thus resolutely clean up his past life and clear away from it all sorrow _as well as he can_, and refurnish it with beautiful memories, or make it better, _coute que coute_, will do himself more good than many a doleful moral adviser ever dreamed of. This is what I mean by _self-fascination_--the making, as it were, by magic art, one's own past and self more charming than we ever deemed it possible to be. We thus fascinate ourselves. Those who believe that everything which is bygone has gone to the devil are in a wretched error. The future is based on the past--yes, made from it, and that which _was_ never dies, but returns to bless or grieve. We mostly wrong our past bitterly, and bitterly does it revenge itself. But it is like the lion of ANDROCLES, it remembers those who treat it kindly. "And lo! when ANDROCLES was thrown to the lion to be devoured, the beast lay down at his feet, and licked his hands." Yes, we have all our lions! _To master difficult meanings_. It has often befallen me, when I was at the University, or later when studying law, to exert my mind to grasp, and all in vain, some problem in mathematics or a puzzling legal question, or even to remember some refractory word in a foreign language which would _not_ remain in the memory. After a certain amount of effort in many of these cases, further exertion is injurious, the mind or receptive power seems to be seized--as if nauseated--with spasmodic rejections. In such a case pass the question by, but on going to bed, think it over and _will_ to understand it on the morrow. It will often suffice to merely desire that it shall recur in more intelligible form--in which case, _nota bene_--if let alone it will obey. This is as if we had a call to make tomorrow, when, as we know, the memory will come at its right time of itself, especially if we employ Forethought or special pressure. When I reflect on what I once endured from this cause, and how greatly it could have been relieved or alleviated, I feel as if I could beg, with all my heart, every student or teacher of youth to seriously experiment on what I set forth in this book. It is also to be observed, especially by metaphysicians and mental philosophers, that a youth who has shown great indifference to, let us say mathematics, if he has manifested an aptitude for philosophy or languages, will be in all cases certain to excel in the former, if he can be brought to make a good beginning in it. A great many cases of bad, _i. e._, indifferent scholarship, are due to bad teaching of the rudiments by adults who took no _interest_ in their pupils, and therefore inspired none.