GIVING THE MIND ITS THREE SQUARE MEALS.
A Paper by the Late Lewis Carroll, in
Which the Desirability of Feeding the
Intellect Is Dwelt Upon.
The late Lewis Carroll was, first of all, professionally a mathematician, though few readers of "the Alice books" knew it. And his name, of course, was Charles L. Dodgson, and he wrote mathematical treatises. To the time of his death—he was born in 1832 and died in 1898—his readers hoped for more volumes like "Alice in Wonderland" or "The Hunting of the Snark," but Mr. Dodgson's literary output was small. The May Harper's reprints a hitherto unpublished paper from his pen, on "Feeding the Mind," in which he says:
Breakfast, dinner, tea; in extreme cases, breakfast, luncheon, dinner, tea, supper, and a glass of something hot at bedtime. What care we take about feeding the lucky body! Which of us does as much for his mind? And what causes the difference? Is the body so much the more important of the two?
By no means; but life depends on the body being fed, whereas we can continue to exist as animals (scarcely as men) though the mind be utterly starved and neglected. Therefore, Nature provides that in case of serious neglect of the body such terrible consequences of discomfort and pain shall ensue as will soon bring us back to a sense of our duty; and some of the functions necessary to life she does for us altogether, leaving us no choice in the matter.
It would fare but ill with many of us if we were left to superintend our own digestion and circulation. "Bless me!" one would cry, "I forgot to wind up my heart this morning! To think that it has been standing still for the last three hours!" "I can't walk with you this afternoon," a friend would say, "as I have no less than eleven dinners to digest. I had to let them stand over from last week, being so busy—and my doctor says he will not answer for the consequences if I wait any longer!"
Well it is, I say, for us that the consequences of neglecting the body can be clearly seen and felt; and it might be well for some if the mind were equally visible and tangible—if we could take it, say, to the doctor and have its pulse felt.
"Why, what have you been doing with this mind lately? How have you fed it? It looks pale, and the pulse is very slow."
"Well, doctor, it has not had much regular food lately. I gave it a lot of sugar-plums yesterday."
"Sugar-plums! What kind?"
"Well, they were a parcel of conundrums, sir."
"Ah! I thought so. Now just mind this: if you go on playing tricks like that you'll spoil all its teeth and get laid up with mental indigestion. You must have nothing but the plainest reading for the next few days. Take care, now! No novels on any account!"