Acquire a government over your ideas, that they may come down when they are called, and depart when they are bidden.

Isaac Watts (1674–1748), best known as a hymn writer and Nonconformist minister, also produced widely read works on education, logic, and the disciplined use of the mind. This sentence fits the practical, self-improving tone of his advice literature, where he urges readers—especially students and those engaged in study or devotion—to cultivate habits of attention and mental order. In that setting, “government” means self-rule: training the imagination and trains of thought so they can be summoned for work (reading, prayer, composition) and dismissed when they become distracting or unprofitable.

Watts treats the mind as something that can be governed like a well-ordered commonwealth. “Ideas” should not tyrannize the thinker through wandering attention, obsessive rumination, or unregulated imagination; instead, the disciplined person can call thoughts up deliberately and send them away when they hinder duty. The line anticipates later discussions of attention and self-control: intellectual freedom is not mere spontaneity but the capacity to direct one’s inner life. It also carries a moral undertone typical of Watts—mental discipline supports virtue, devotion, and effective learning by preventing the mind from being carried off by idle or harmful fancies.