Practical Essays

Can a gloomy person simply decide to be cheerful? Alexander Bain compares the command to asking someone to grow taller—and asks what the body must spend to keep the spirits high.

In these late-nineteenth-century essays, the Scottish philosopher and professor of logic takes familiar advice and tests it against the workings of the mind and body. Cheerfulness, Bain argues, is not a virtue anyone can summon at will: it depends on physical strength, and its bright energy may come at the cost of care, foresight, or strenuous work. From that challenge he turns to other common errors about feeling, will, education, and the limits of mental effort. If every thought draws on the body’s finite resources, what else have we misunderstood about the mind?

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