The practice of thus reducing to writing what the teacher may
say on such subjects will be attended with excellent effects.
This is a subject upon which young persons find much difficulty. The
question is asked a thousand times, "How shall I ever learn to keep my
resolutions?" Perhaps the great cause of your failures is this. You are
not sufficiently _definite_ in forming your purposes. You will resolve
to do a thing without knowing with certainty whether it is even possible
to do it. Again, you make resolutions which are to run on indefinitely,
so that, of course, they can never be fully kept. For instance, one of
you will resolve to _rise earlier in the morning._ You fix upon no
definite hour, on any definite number of mornings, only you are going
to "_rise earlier_." Morning comes, and finds you sleepy and disinclined
to rise. You remember your resolution of rising earlier. "But then it is
_very_ early," you say. You resolved to rise earlier, but you didn't
resolve to rise just then. And this, it may be, is the last of your
resolution. Or perhaps you are, for a few mornings, a little earlier;
but then, at the end of a week or fortnight, you do not know exactly
whether your resolution has been broken or kept, for you had not decided
whether to rise earlier for ten days or for ten years.
In the same vague and general manner, a person will resolve to be _more
studious_ or more diligent. In the case of an individual of a mature and
well-disciplined mind, of acquired firmness of character, such a
resolution might have effect.
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