Superfluity of words.
Thought and action.
Francis Galton.
Some persons run to mouth; others lack in this respect. To the former class belong those whose lips move in study; those who talk to themselves; and many whose paucity of ideas does not justify their superfluity of words. Let such a man be elected as a delegate to a synod or a convention, and the sessions will be prolonged beyond the usual time. As a rule, the energy of such men is exhausted in speech; they are not noted for getting things done. On the other hand, the men of great executive ability are oftentimes men of few words; their thought is translated into doing rather than talking. The man of deeds is always estimated above the man of words, the general above the orator, Cæsar the commander above Cæsar the orator. Sometimes the men of original turn of mind find that their thinking outstripstheir power to express thought. Francis Galton says of himself, “It is a serious drawback to me in writing that I do not so easily think in words as otherwise. It often happens that after being hard at work and having arrived at results that are perfectly clear and satisfactory to myself, when I try to express them in language I feel that I must begin by putting myself on quite a different intellectual plane; I have to translate my thoughts into a language that does not run evenly with them. I therefore waste a great deal of time in seeking for appropriate words and phrases, and am conscious, when required to speak on a sudden, of being often obscure through mere verbal maladroitness, and not through want of clearness of perception. This is one of the small annoyances of my life. I may add that often while engaged in thinking out something I hatch an accompaniment of nonsense-words, just as notes of a song might accompany the thought. Also, that after I have made a mental step, the appropriate word frequently follows as an echo; as a rule, it does not accompany it.”
Knowing and telling.
This throws a new light upon one phase of school work. The boy who has a notion of the content of a lesson sometimes stops in the midst of a recitation and, without premeditation, exclaims, “I know it, but cannot say it.” The teacher retorts, “You do not know what you cannot express.” Both are right and both are wrong. There is, probably, a measure of truth in what each claims. If the pupil had mastered the text, he would not only have a clear idea of the lesson, but he would also have acquired from the book or from the teacher the words to express the idea. Nevertheless, if there is reason for thinking that the pupil has devoted reasonable time to the lesson, his linguistic powers should be developed by questions andother appropriate help. The good sense and native instincts of most teachers lead them to give this help. The teacher whose captious disposition issues in remarks calculated to repress a backward pupil’s powers of expression should find employment outside of the school-room.
Foreign-born children.
The child of foreigners may outstrip native children and astonish the school by unprecedented progress because, being already familiar with the ideas of the lesson, it is compelled simply to acquire the language by which the ideas are expressed. By reason of their inability at first to tell what they know, such children are often classified with those less mature, and the mastery of the new language in their case is not as difficult as the mastery of new ideas for which brain-growth may be the essential condition. To ignore the fact that such children often know more than they can tell is pedagogic folly in the highest degree.
Language clarifies thought.
Literary societies.
Courses of study are sometimes mapped out so as to cause inequality in the pace with which ideas are accumulated and language is developed. Undue stress on grammar, rhetoric, and belles-lettres may cause abnormal development in the direction of flowery language, a verbose style, an ornate diction. It is a fault difficult to correct. To insist that such a student shall have something to say, to force him into studies that will bring him face to face with great questions as yet unsettled, to beget in him a state of mind in which he is troubled with ideas, to compel him to work over and over what he writes until his sentences are as clear as crystals, seems necessary to counteract the one-sided development of such students. The curriculum of study may err on the other side. The graduates in the various courses of engineering (civil, electrical, mechanical, and mining) sometimes develop technical, to the neglect of linguistic, skill. In the presenceof a body of capitalists they are made deeply conscious of the difference between the ability to think and the ability to express thought.[14]In one large school of technology the graduates established prizes in English composition and endowed chairs of the English language and literature, so that future students might acquire the power to state in clear and intelligible language the results of their work as specialists. In no long time it was discovered that for this purpose they also needed training in an art similar to that of the teacher,—namely, the art of developing the ideas and thoughts which underlie and condition the engineering project under consideration. For him who would be a leader among men, the ability to express thought is quite as important as the ability to think. Moreover, there is a vast difference between ability to express thought on one’s feet in the presence of an audience and ability to express it on paper in the privacy of the home. J. J. Rousseau and Washington Irving could write well, but neither of them could make a speech. Patrick Henry’s eloquence before an audience was unsurpassed; he never could write a satisfactory report. Power in both directions may be acquired in a college course through the exercises of a good debating society. The student who, during four years, carefully writes out his thoughts, then discards his manuscript while speaking, and studies how he can best convince his hearers and how he can prunehimself of the defects pointed out by the merciless criticism of his fellows, can feel sure of ultimate success. President Barnard says of one of our largest institutions that half its glory departed when its literary societies were killed through the influence of the Greek letter fraternities. A public speaker who is a slave to his manuscript is deserving of pity. College authorities may well exercise their ingenuity in finding a substitute for the drill and practice which the literary societies of by-gone days afforded in learning to think and to express thought in the face of opposition, criticism, and other unfavorable conditions.
Influence of language upon thinking.
Teaching English.
Thought and language exercise a reciprocal influence. Thought is stimulated and clarified by the effort to express it. Often it is shaped by the limitations of one’s vocabulary and the range of the words with which one’s hearers or readers are familiar. The faded metaphors of language betray us into fallacies. Phrases like the witness of the spirit, total depravity, have led to extravagant expectations and unwarranted conclusions. People sometimes have a religious phraseology without a corresponding religious experience, and hence deceive themselves and others. Everywhere we see instances that go to show how important it is that the development of the power to think should keep pace with the growth of the power to express thought. Very much is said in these days about the use of good English. As Adam threw the blame upon Eve, and Eve cast it upon the Serpent, so every one blames some one else for the poor English used at school and college. In the end the teachers are usually made to bear most of the blame: the college professor blames the teachers in the high school; these, in turn, blame the teachers in the lower grades; and when the matter is cast up to the primary teacher,she throws the blame upon the street and the home. A professor in the college department of a university gave many ludicrous specimens of English in the work handed to him by students. He was asked of what college class he had charge, and when he replied the sophomore, a high-school teacher suggested that the specimens reflected quite as much upon the teachers of the freshman class as upon the schools below the university.
The committee.
A women’s society in one of our large cities sent a committee to the superintendent to complain of the poor English used by the children in the schools. He agreed that strenuous efforts should be made to provide a remedy. He added, “If you will take care of the English in the homes and on the streets, I will get the teachers to look after the English in the schools.” Instead of throwing blame upon others, it were far more sensible for each educated person to ask wherein he is to blame for setting others a bad example and wherein he can help the teachers of English to accomplish the desired result.
Aim.
The aim in teaching English is twofold,—first, to get the student to appreciate good English and good literature; secondly, to get him to use it in speaking and writing. The latter end cannot be reached by mere practice in essay-writing. Ability to think is a condition of ability to express thought. Too many of the subjects assigned lay stress upon the forms of speech and not upon the content of language. When pupils think in words and disconnected phrases rather than sentences, when they violate the rules for capitals, punctuation, and paragraphs, the teachers of English may be solely to blame; but, in so far as the use of good English depends upon good thinking, the blame for the use of faulty language rests upon all who teach. If the ability to think is not developed in proportion to theuse of language, the school will produce stylists who exalt the forms of speech above their content, slaves of beautiful and flowery language who resemble the fops and dudes of social life. To emancipate from such slavery requires more than an emancipation proclamation from the president of a college association.
Linguistic studies.
Language tributary to thinking.
The labors of the brothers Grim, Max Müller, and others have reduced the knowledge of language to a science. Linguistic studies have become as interesting as any branch of natural science. They shed new light upon the history of mankind. In furnishing material for thought, as well as mental discipline, they are not inferior to any other study in the curriculum. It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that philological studies are superior to other disciplines as means for developing power to think and power to express thought. The professor of any language is apt to regard that language as an end, and not as means to an end. Primarily, language is a medium of communication. It distinguishes man from the brute creation, and furnishes him the instruments of thought by which he carries forward processes of reasoning beyond the reach of the lower animals. At the university language in general, or any particular language, may be studied as a specialty, and can thus be made an end in itself as appropriately as any other subject which is studied for its own sake. In the lower schools language should always be made tributary to the art of thinking. It should be employed to embody thought, and to convey thought, without intruding itself upon our attention as the thing of chief value. Any phase of linguistic study may be lifted by an enthusiastic teacher into the chief place in the course of study. Orthography has sometimes been taught as if it were the chief end of man to spell correctly. Grammar has beentaught as if a faulty sentence were one of the sins forbidden by the Decalogue, and as if the fate of the republic depended upon parsing, analysis, and diagramming. The pronunciation of words may be emphasized until the lips of teacher and pupil smack of an overdose of dictionary, until the overdoing of obscure vowels draws attention away from the thought to the manner of utterance. A sensible man articulates his words in such a manner as readily to be understood, but never in such a way as to excite remark or draw the mind of the listener from the subject-matter of the discourse.
In educational practice, the manner of expressing the thought should not supplant the more important art of making the pupil think. Getting and begetting thought are of more consequence than the expression of thought; in fact, they condition the correct use of language. All talk about English, or German, or Spanish, or Latin, or Greek, as if any one of these languages were an end in itself for the average pupil, is wide of the mark. Correct sentences, beautiful expressions, and rhetorical phrases can never make a nation great or perpetuate its free institutions. Flowery language can never save a dying sinner or console the widow who is following the bier of a son, her only child and support. Fine words never win a battle by land or by sea. The most eloquent orations against Philip of Macedon did not keep him from destroying the liberties of Greece.
Correct and forceful language is a gift to be coveted, a prize worth striving for; but it should never be made the all-absorbing aim of education. The teacher of any phase of language must for a time make his instruction the object of chief concern; but he should never ignore the fact that language is and ever should be an aid to thought, a stimulus to thinking, an embodiment of ideas, a medium of communication, a means to an end.
Good methods of teaching are important, but they cannot supply the want of ability in the teacher. The Socratic method is good; but a Socrates behind the teacher’s desk to ask questions is better.Thomas M. Balliet.Of all forms of friendship in youth, by far the most effective as a means of education is that species of enthusiastic veneration which young men of loyal and well-conditioned minds are apt to contract for men of intellectual eminence in their own circles. The educating effect of such an attachment is prodigious; and happy the youth who forms one. We all know the advice given to young men to “think for themselves;” and there is sense and soundness in the advice; but if I were to select what I account perhaps the most fortunate thing that can befall a young man during the early period of his life,—the most fortunate, too, in the end, for his intellectual independence,—it would be his being voluntarily subjected for a time to some powerful intellectual slavery.David Masson.
Good methods of teaching are important, but they cannot supply the want of ability in the teacher. The Socratic method is good; but a Socrates behind the teacher’s desk to ask questions is better.
Thomas M. Balliet.
Of all forms of friendship in youth, by far the most effective as a means of education is that species of enthusiastic veneration which young men of loyal and well-conditioned minds are apt to contract for men of intellectual eminence in their own circles. The educating effect of such an attachment is prodigious; and happy the youth who forms one. We all know the advice given to young men to “think for themselves;” and there is sense and soundness in the advice; but if I were to select what I account perhaps the most fortunate thing that can befall a young man during the early period of his life,—the most fortunate, too, in the end, for his intellectual independence,—it would be his being voluntarily subjected for a time to some powerful intellectual slavery.
David Masson.
Thought stimulus.
Whilst the distinction between thinking in things and thinking in symbols should never be ignored or lost sight of by the teacher, it need not be brought to the attention of the learner,—at least not in the elementary stages of instruction. It is more profitable for the learner to be absorbed in gathering the materials of thought and in learning by practice how the educated man uses the instruments of thought for drawing correct conclusions by the most effective methods. If the eye of consciousness is turned inward upon the mental processes too early, the flow of thought is interrupted and turned away from its logical trend. The teacher, on the other hand, is expected to watch the growth of the mind, to awaken its powers, and to rouse these into vigorous activity. It is essential not merely that he furnish the pupils with the proper materials and the best instruments of thought, but it is necessary also to stimulate and direct their thinking; otherwise that which is given them may overload the memory, lie undigested in the mind, exhaust the energy of the intellect in the effort at retention, and ultimately cause mental dyspepsia.
Competition.
Socratic question.
Men engaged in the struggle for existence or preferment usually find ample stimulus to their thinking faculties in the competition which real life affords. If the merchant does not think accurately and effectively, the consequences make themselves visible in his bank-account. The desire for gain is the stimulus to thought in the commercial world. An appeal to the same motive is often made through the offer ofprizes and fellowships. The competition of maturer years finds an adumbration in the competition for class-standing and for superiority in field sports. The teacher who employs no higher stimulus to thought must be a stranger to the mysteries of the art which he professes to practise. The best device for stimulating thought has come down to us hallowed by the ages. It bears the name of the greatest teacher of ancient Athens. It is the question as employed in the Socratic method. Not every question is the Socratic question. A man who has lost his way may ask a question, but it is for the sake of getting information. The teacher may be striving to fix in the memory the salient points of the lesson: he asks questions, the answers to which the pupils are expected to have at their tongue’s or fingers’ end. A question thus used for purposes of drill is often called a categorical question. It is not the Socratic question. Yonder sits a boy who for half an hour has been wrestling with a problem. Unable to find a clue to the solution, he asks the teacher for help. Instead of telling him directly what he wishes to know, the Socrates behind the teacher’s desk asks a question which causes the pupil to put side by side in his mind two ideas never before linked together in his thought. Upon the learner’s face is seen an expression as if light had broken in from on high. He goes back to his seat, and ere five minutes have elapsed he is rejoicing in the glory of a triumph. The teacher did not do the pupil’s thinking; he simply asked the Socratic question, which aims to make the pupil think for himself.
Substitute teachers.
This stimulus to thought is employed by every master in the art of teaching. The question may be used to badger and confuse a pupil, especially if the teacher is not fully acquainted with the ideas and thoughts already in the learner’s mind. To cause each pupil to place sideby side in his mind ideas and concepts whose relation he had not before perceived, it is necessary that the teacher be familiar with the intellectual storehouse of every member of the class. At this point the substitutes who occasionally supply the places of regular teachers are at a serious disadvantage. Not knowing what the pupils have mastered, they must often waste time in finding out where the new should be linked to the old, and where it is necessary to clarify and develop ideas with which the members of the class are only partially familiar. Often these lose interest in the recitation while the new teacher quizzes them on things that have grown stale by repetition.
The living teacher.
The dead line.
Knowledge and teaching power.
The course of study.
Difficulties.
Back of the Socratic method must be a Socrates to ask the questions. Education results not from highly differentiated methods, but primarily from the play of mind upon mind, heart upon heart, will upon will. In the difficult art of making others think the most important factor is the teacher himself. Thinking begets thinking. In this connection one cannot forbear contrasting the living teacher with other educational forces. Treatises on education are in the habit of printing nature with a capital letter, whilst words like teacher, humanity, unless they stand at the beginning of the sentence, begin with a small letter. Are lifeless rocks, dead leaves, stuffed birds, and transfixed bugs more potent in begetting thought than the teacher himself? If nature were such a wonderful teacher, then the savage, who is in daily contact with nature, and who knows little or nothing of the artificial life of our great cities and great seats of learning, should be the best thinker. A teacher whose power to stimulate thought is not superior to dead leaves and bugs and butterflies must have reached the dead line. Teachers may be divided into two classes,—those who have ceasedto grow and those who are still alive and growing. Under the tuition of the former the boy soon loses interest in study, and seldom acquires the power to think. From a dead tree you cannot propagate life. Ingraft a lifeless teacher upon the school; the most skilful devices of school management and recitation serve only to intensify the dull routine, the mechanical iteration and repetition which Bishop Spalding declares to be the most radical defect in our systems of education. It takes life to beget life. A growing mind is required to beget growth in other minds. A good thinker begets habits of close and careful thinking in those whom he moulds. Some minds are more gifted in this respect than others. Without doubt the reader can recall the difference between knowledge and teaching power which he felt while under several instructors at the same time. From those gifted with stimulating power he came away with a mind full of interrogation points, and with the attention riveted upon problems calling for investigation. Under their tuition the commonest things acquired new interest and became food for thought. The thinking seemed to spring out of that upon which the mind was feeding. Without the stimulating influence which comes from a live teacher, contact with nature, access to libraries and laboratories, may amount to very little. The chief trouble in our schools is not that the courses of study are too crowded, but the teachers are too empty. There is not enough fuel in their minds to keep alive the glow of thought. A course of study in the hands of a skilful instructor is like a good bill of fare under the direction of a skilful caterer. The latter does not expect every guest to eat his way through the entire bill of fare; he so manages the succession of dishes as to stimulate the appetite to the end of the feast; he sendsthe guests away without the feeling of satiety,—in fact, anxious for the next banquet. The wise teacher does not expect the pupils to assimilate everything in the course of study; he aims so to feed and stimulate their minds that they find genuine pleasure in thinking, and go away from him with a desire not only for more knowledge, but also for things that give suitable exercise to the reflective powers. Watch a boy at work upon a puzzle, and you will be convinced that he finds genuine delight in thinking that which is difficult. The most popular teachers are not they who smooth away every difficulty in the pathway of the student, but they who stimulate his thinking and help him to a sense of mastery over intellectual difficulties. The quickening, stimulative influence of the Socratic question lies in its content rather than its form; and both form and content derive their vivifying power from the personality of the teacher.
Conscious and unconscious influences.
The stimulating influences which go forth from a live teacher are partly conscious and partly unconscious. The latter are the more effective. Minds gifted with quickening power create about themselves an intellectual atmosphere that is like the invigorating atmosphere of the mountains or the tonic breezes which blow from the sea. The woman who touched the hem of the Saviour’s garment felt at once the vivifying influences which were all the time going forth from the Great Teacher. Here we stand face to face with the greatest mystery of the teacher’s art.
The heart.
Some light is shed upon the mystery by the intimate relation which exists between the conscious and the subconscious life of the soul. The ideas upon any subject which the individual cherishes during his conscious moments, the train of logical thinking which he pursues when the will gives direction to reflection, the creativeeffort which he seeks to put forth in a given direction,—these shape the activities which go forward in the depths of the soul when perhaps the attention is directed to the discharge of routine duties. “Out of the heart are the issues of life.” “Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh.” From the treasure-house of the heart come welling up thoughts, ideas, sentiments, and purposes which largely determine the influence exerted upon others when the individual is not aware of it. The teacher must make himself what he wishes his pupil to be. If foot-ball and base-ball and boating form the staple of his thinking, the centre of his affections, these athletic sports, in ways that are marvellous and often past finding out, become the objects of thought in which his students will delight. If the truths and principles of science absorb his interest and engage the best thought of his conscious hours, these will determine the moulding influence which he will unconsciously exert upon others. If he delights in germ-ideas, in seed-thoughts, these will emanate from him whenever he is thrown into contact with inquiring minds. Much, of course, is due to native ability, to inherited qualities. The circle of minds which one teacher can reach is further limited by the breadth or narrowness of his views, by the points which he has in common with others, by the amount of sympathetic interest which he manifests in their progress and welfare, by the sum total of the characteristics of generic humanity which he has taken up into himself. In other words, his stimulating power depends upon the extent to which his inner life is representative of the best thought and the best traits of the age in which he lives and of the people to whom he belongs.
Exhaustive treatment.
Hope.
A teacher may destroy his power to awaken and stimulate thought by developing every subject in all itsbearings to its logical or final conclusion. He should send his classes away from the daily lecture or recitation to the library or the laboratory, to the study, the shop, or the field, with the sense of something to be achieved, with the feeling that there are fields of research for them to explore, fields that will amply repay careful study, investigation, and reflection. There is nothing that tires a boy so soon as the feeling that there is nothing for him to do, nothing that he can master, achieve, or conquer on his own account. The normal child is so constituted that it loves activity, looks into the future, and regards itself as an important factor in the world’s life. The advance from childhood to youth is marked by a transition into the period that is brimful of hope and ambition. The pampered son of a rich man may feel no longing of this sort; his opportunities for early travel and premature indulgence in every whim may have brought him to the point where the whole world seems like a sucked orange for which one has no further use. Unless the rich father and mother possess an extraordinary amount of good sense, their children do not have an even chance with the children of the middle classes whose outlook upon life supplies abundant motives for study and exertion.
The field of vision.
If a boy has not made a mistake in selecting his parents, if the atmosphere of the home in which his first six years are spent is normal, he comes to school with a sense of something to be achieved. Should this feeling be lacking, the true teacher will aim to beget it by the instruction he gives and by appeals to the innate desire for knowledge. As the intelligence dawns, the interrogation points on the boy’s face multiply; his appetite for knowledge grows by what it feeds on. If the branches of study do not become more interesting than any occupation by which the boy can earn coppers, there is somethingwrong either with the boy or his teacher, or with both. In the ascent of the hill of science every step upward widens the horizon, increases the field of vision, and stimulates to new effort. Every field explored beckons to new fields of investigation. It is the prerogative of the teacher to point out what is in store for the aspiring youth. Take, for instance, the domain of pure mathematics. A pupil had learned in his geometry that parallel lines never meet. The teacher told him that his geometrical studies would after a while acquaint him with lines that are not parallel and yet never meet. No sooner had he met lines of this kind, situated in different planes, than his teacher told him of lines that continually approach but never meet. The appeal to his curiosity helped to stimulate the desire for knowledge and kept him thinking earnestly and seriously until he met the asymptote and its curve. The study of asymptotes soon grew more interesting than chess or any sports upon the athletic field.
Master minds.
The aim of the teacher should be to make himself useless. In other words, the school should aim to lift the pupil to the plane of an independent thinker, capable of giving conscious direction to his intellectual life and of concentrating all his powers upon anything that is to be mastered. It is to be reckoned a piece of good fortune for a bright and talented youth to fall under the dominating influence of a master mind. In endeavoring to walk in the footsteps of an intellectual giant, to comprehend his theories and speculations, and to carry the burden of his thoughts, unexpected strength and power are developed, and when the day of emancipation comes—as it always does come in the case of gifted youth—the learner will find that he has entered a higher sphere of intellectual activity, and will henceforth rank among the world’s productive thinkers.
False stimulants.
Mental lethargy.
As was said at the beginning of the chapter, the competition of men in mature life is usually sufficient to stimulate their thinking. The men whose duties make a constant drain upon their productivity need other forms of thought-stimulation. Reference is not here made to the narcotics, alcoholic stimulants, and other drugs which brain-workers use in periods of reaction and fatigue: these stimulate only for a short time, and leave the nervous system and the brain weaker than before; they shorten life by burning the candle at both ends; they cannot supply the need of sleep, rest, and recreation. To take rational exercise, to eat proper food, and to obey all the laws of health is the sacred duty of every person who teaches by word of mouth or pen. Every effort should be made to keep vitality at its maximum. Often the mind resembles the soil which yields a richer harvest if permitted to lie fallow for a time. If at the close of a period of rest or a summer vacation the mind refuses to work, what shall then be done to stimulate mental activity? Different men derive stimulus from different sources. One finds help from taking a pen in hand, another by facing a sea of upturned faces. A clergyman of considerable repute uses an Indian story to start his mental machinery. Henry Ward Beecher declared that the greatest kindness which could be shown him was to oppose his public utterances. Opposition roused all his powers and helped him to think vigorously and to the best advantage. Schiller is said to have kept rotten apples in his desk, because he believed that the odor stimulated his mind. Some men find help in solitude, from the singing of birds, from the sound of rustling leaves and falling waters, from the noise of ocean waves, or from the glimpse of distant waters or far-off mountains. An eminent theologian isstimulated by the playing of a piano in the next room. The stimulus from books is reserved for discussion in a separate chapter on the Right Use of Books.
Hinderances.
As there are helps, so there are hinderances to good thinking. Petty cares, executive duties, noises in the same room, or in the next room, or upon the street, are well-known examples. Their name is legion, and their cost is enormous if they come from manufacturing establishments near the school. A word about the extra-mural music which emanates from vile machinery on the streets is not out of place in this connection. An English writer asserts that the organ-grinders of London have done more in the last twenty years to detract from the quality and quantity of the higher mental work of the nation than any two or three colleges at Oxford have effected to increase it. A mathematician estimates the cost of the increased mental labor these street-musicians have imposed upon him and his clerks at several thousand pounds’ worth of first-class work, for which the government actually paid in added length of the time needed for his calculations.
Our fellow-men.
In matters of this kind every man must be a law unto himself. Since no two human beings are exactly alike, but each is a new creation fresh from the hands of the Creator, it follows that each person must study his own peculiarities, form his own habits of work, and acquire the power to think in the midst of the circumstances in which he is placed. By resolute effort the mind can ignore many a hinderance and distraction. The best stimulus from without comes from our fellow-men. “Our minds need the stimulus of other minds, as our lungs need oxygen to perform their functions.” At school the stimulus comes from classmates, from those in the higher and lower classes, but above all else, from the best books and the best teachers. In thelife beyond the school the stimulus comes from the daily contact and competition with others, from conversation and discussions with those who think, from communion with the best books, with nature, and with nature’s God.
Sources of stimulus.
After the powers of the mind have been awakened and disciplined, stimulus and inspiration may come from ten thousand sources. Silence and solitude, city and country, business and pleasure, observation and travel, observatories and laboratories, libraries and museums, nature and art, poetry and prose, fiction and history, may each in turn serve as a spur to creative, inventive, and productive thinking, as an incentive to original research, fruitful investigation, and profitable reasoning. Among all the sources of stimulation, the good teacher and the good book take superlative rank.
Even the very greatest of authors are indebted to miscellaneous reading, often in several different languages, for the suggestion of their most original works, and for the light which has kindled many a shining thought of their own.Hamerton.He reads a book most wisely who thinks everything into a book that it is capable of holding, and it is the stamp and token of a great book so to incorporate itself with our own being, so to quicken our insight and stimulate our thought, as to make us feel as if we helped to create it while we read. Whatever we can find in a book that aids us in the conduct of life, or to a truer interpretation of it, or to a franker reconcilement with it, we may with a good conscience believe is not there by accident, but that the author meant we should find it there.Lowell.Much as a man gains from actual conflict with living minds, he may gain much even of the same kind of knowledge, though different in detail, from the accumulated thinking of the past. No living generation can outweigh all the past. If books without experience in real life cannot develop a man all round, neither can life without books do it. There is a certain dignity of culture which lives only in the atmosphere of libraries. There is a breadth and a genuineness of self-knowledge which one gets from the silent friendship of great authors without which the best work that is in a man cannot come out of him in large professional successes.Phelps.The great secret of reading consists in this,—that it does not matter so much what we read or how we read it as what we think and how we think it. Reading is only the fuel; and, the mind once on fire, any and all material will feed the flame, provided only it have any combustible matter in it. And we cannot tell from what quarter the next material will come. The thought we need, the facts we are in search of, may make their appearance in the corner of the newspaper, or in some forgotten volume long ago consigned to dust and oblivion. Hawthorne in the parlor of a country inn on a rainy day could find mental nutriment in an old directory. That accomplished philologist, the late Lord Strangford, could find ample amusement for an hour’s delay at a railway station in tracing out the etymology of the names in Bradshaw. The mind that is not awake and alive will find a library a barren wilderness.Charles F. Richardson.
Even the very greatest of authors are indebted to miscellaneous reading, often in several different languages, for the suggestion of their most original works, and for the light which has kindled many a shining thought of their own.
Hamerton.
He reads a book most wisely who thinks everything into a book that it is capable of holding, and it is the stamp and token of a great book so to incorporate itself with our own being, so to quicken our insight and stimulate our thought, as to make us feel as if we helped to create it while we read. Whatever we can find in a book that aids us in the conduct of life, or to a truer interpretation of it, or to a franker reconcilement with it, we may with a good conscience believe is not there by accident, but that the author meant we should find it there.
Lowell.
Much as a man gains from actual conflict with living minds, he may gain much even of the same kind of knowledge, though different in detail, from the accumulated thinking of the past. No living generation can outweigh all the past. If books without experience in real life cannot develop a man all round, neither can life without books do it. There is a certain dignity of culture which lives only in the atmosphere of libraries. There is a breadth and a genuineness of self-knowledge which one gets from the silent friendship of great authors without which the best work that is in a man cannot come out of him in large professional successes.
Phelps.
The great secret of reading consists in this,—that it does not matter so much what we read or how we read it as what we think and how we think it. Reading is only the fuel; and, the mind once on fire, any and all material will feed the flame, provided only it have any combustible matter in it. And we cannot tell from what quarter the next material will come. The thought we need, the facts we are in search of, may make their appearance in the corner of the newspaper, or in some forgotten volume long ago consigned to dust and oblivion. Hawthorne in the parlor of a country inn on a rainy day could find mental nutriment in an old directory. That accomplished philologist, the late Lord Strangford, could find ample amusement for an hour’s delay at a railway station in tracing out the etymology of the names in Bradshaw. The mind that is not awake and alive will find a library a barren wilderness.
Charles F. Richardson.
A novel.
A clergyman who found the reaction from his pulpit efforts so great that often he could not bring himself to think vigorously and consecutively before the middle of the following week was advised by his physician to try the effect of an Indian tale or an exciting story, and found that a good novel works like a charm in bringing the mind back to normal action. After the interest in the story or novel begins to grow there is danger of reading too long, of reading until another spell of fatigue and reaction comes. The book should be laid aside as soon as the first glow of mental action is felt.
Books.
Most thinkers need the stimulating influence of other minds. These can be found at their best upon the shelves of a well-selected library. They are ready to help us whenever we feel ready to give them our attention. Men put the best part of themselves into their books. The process of writing for print intensifies mental activity, spurs the intellect to the keenest, most vigorous effort, and arouses the highest energy of thought and feeling. Authors that exert a quickening influence upon our thinking should be kept for use whenever we need a stimulus to rouse the mind from its lethargy.
Leibnitz got his best ideas while reading books. He had acquired the habits of a librarian to whom favorite volumes are always accessible.
As stimulus.
A scientist of repute says he gets the necessary stimulusfrom Jevons’s treatise on the inductive sciences. Professor Phelps has collected an instructive list of authors whose writings have been helpful to other authors of note. He says,—
Examples.
“Voltaire used to read Massillon as a stimulus to production. Bossuet read Homer for the same purpose. Gray read Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queene’ as the preliminary to the use of his pen. The favorites of Milton were Homer and Euripides. Fénelon resorted to the ancient classics promiscuously. Pope read Dryden as his habitual aid to composing. Corneille read Tacitus and Livy. Clarendon did the same. Sir William Jones, on his passage to India, planned five different volumes, and assigned to each the author he resolved to read as a guide and awakener to his own mind for its work. Buffon made the same use of the works of Sir Isaac Newton. With great variety of tastes successful authors have generally agreed in availing themselves of this natural and facile method of educating their minds to the work of original creation.”[15]
Great thinkers.
The most valuable function of standard authors lies in their quickening influence upon the intellectual life. The effort to appropriate their ideas and to master their thoughts is the best possible exercise for the understanding. In thinking their thoughts, weighing their arguments, and following their train of reasoning the mind gains vigor, strength, and the capacity for sustained effort. The invigorating atmosphere which a great thinker creates has a most remarkable tonic effect upon all who dwell in it. By unconscious absorption they acquire his spirit of inquiry, his methods of research, his habits of investigation, his way of attacking and mastering difficulties. While trying to walk inhis footsteps they learn to take giant strides. His idioms, his choice of words, his favorite phrases and expressions are at their service when they enter new fields of truth. Both in power and aspiration they become like him through the mysterious process of mind acting upon mind, of heart evoking heart, and of will transfusing itself into will. A great thinker gets his place in the galaxy of shining intellects through the truths which he communicates; and as truth is the best food for the soul, so the quest of truth is the best exercise for all its faculties.
The literature of knowledge and the literature of power.
De Quincey, in his essay on Alexander Pope, draws an important and oft-quoted distinction between the literature of knowledge and the literature of power. He says the function of the one is to teach, of the other to move. The former he likens to a rudder, the latter to an oar or a sail. To illustrate the difference he asks, “What do you learn from ‘Paradise Lost’? Nothing at all. What do you learn from a cookery-book? Something new, something that you did not know before, in every paragraph. But would you, therefore, put the wretched cookery-book on a higher level of estimation than the divine poem? What you owe to Milton is not any knowledge, of which a million separate items are still but a million of advancing steps on the same earthly level; what you owe ispower,—that is, exercise and expansion to your own latent capacity of sympathy with the infinite, where every pulse and each separate influx is a step upward, a step ascending, as upon Jacob’s ladder, from earth to mysterious altitudes above the earth. All the steps of knowledge, from first to last, carry you farther on the same plane, but could never raise you one foot above your ancient level of earth; whereas, the very first step in power is a flight, is an ascending into another element where earth is forgotten.”
Lowell.
The value of the literature of power as a means of imparting power to every soul that lives under its influence is easily seen and generally acknowledged. But the literature of knowledge serves the double purpose of furnishing us material for thought and of acting as a stimulus to thought. On this point we have the testimony of the wisest who have ventured to give advice upon the use of books. Lowell says, “It is certainly true that the material of thought reacts upon the thought itself. Shakespeare himself would have been commonplace had he been padlocked in a thinly shaven vocabulary, and Phidias, had he worked in wax, only a more inspired Mrs. Jarley.”
The advice which Lowell gives concerning a course of reading and the ends of scholarship to be kept in mind by those who read with a purpose is too valuable to be omitted in this connection: