Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers/Concentration
CONCENTRATION
ISN'T it just simply terrible the way the Balkans are bombarding Venice… all those beautiful Doges and things, you know.
I suppose there will be nothing left, just simply nothing, of the city that Byron wrote about in—in—what was it? Oh, yes, in "Childe Harold to the Dark Tower Came."
That's one comforting thing to think of if this country ever gets into war, isn't it?—I mean that we haven't any of those lovely old things that can be bombarded, you know.
I suppose if we ever did get into war someone like Edison would invent something quick, you know, and it would be all over in a few hours.
Isn't inventive science wonderful! Just simply wonderful!
It's so—so—well, so dynamic, if you get what I mean. Isn't it?
Don't you just dote on dynamic things?
Dynamic personalities, especially.
I've often thought if I had it to do over again I'd go in less for psychics and more for dynamics. But then there are so many things that a modern thinker must keep up with, aren't there?
And it's easy enough to concentrate one's mind on one or two things, but I often find it terribly difficult to concentrate on ten or twelve different things all at the same time.
And one must if one is to keep up with the very latest in Thought and Life.
Concentration! Concentration! That is the key to it all! Nearly every night when I am alone with my own Ego I go into the Silences for a little period of Spiritual Self-Examination and I always ask myself: "Have I Concentrated today? Really Concentrated? Or have I failed?"
I call these little times my Psychic Inquisitions.
In the hurry of this crowded age one must find time to get alone with one's self, must one not? Fothy Finch has written a beautiful thing about the hurry of this crowded age which I wish everyone could hang over his desk.
Well, I must be going on now. I have a committee meeting for this afternoon. I can't for the life of me remember whether it's about suffrage—Oh, yes, I marched!—or about some relief fund.