the human mind that it does not require evidence for a statement before
accepting it; it generally accepts any statement which has no evidence
against it. Unless we reject a statement and know why we have done so,
it is liable to insinuate itself in our reasoning, and the longer it
remains the more difficult it is to get rid of it. This is why it is so
important to avoid as many pitfalls as possible at the beginning of a
subject.
The reader may find that even when he reads critically he will accept
a certain statement at the time; and then perhaps much later, say a
month, an objection to that statement will occur to him, or he will see
that it at least ought to be qualified. For an explanation of this we
must go back to an analysis of the thinking process. Every idea which
enters the mind, either from independent thinking or from reading, is
accepted as true if it is in full conformity with our past experience
_as we remember it_. In all thinking or reading, the new idea arouses
associates on its entrance. An hypothesis or principle, for instance,
arouses in our minds past experiences of particular instances. If all
these conform it is accepted. But in ordinary uncritical reading or
thinking, only a few associates are aroused. In critical reading, we
look for as many associates as possible, especially those which do not
conform. It is this purpose kept in mind which helps to recall and
awaken these associates. No matter how critical our attitude, however,
we cannot at any given time recall every relevant associate, though
later a “non-conforming” associate is likely to occur to us by pure
accident.
While you are criticising a book line by line, and after you have
finished reading it, you should note the importance and relevancy
of the arguments accepted and rejected. While an author may make a
statement with which you disagree, its truth or falsehood may not
affect the rest of what he has to say, or it may affect merely a few
corollaries drawn from it. In other cases the truth of his entire
conclusion may depend upon it. Again, an author may incontrovertibly
prove something—which is entirely without bearing on the subject. This
means that you should keep the precise question constantly before your
mind.
Often you will find an author making a statement which really amounts
to nothing more than a mere airing of his prejudices, or at best the
bare statement of a conclusion. If he says, “Socialism is the greatest
menace of our civilization,” and leaves it go at that, not telling how
or why, you should mentally note this as a statement, as a statement
merely; you should not allow it to influence your opinion either way.
Finally, remember that though you may be able to refute every argument
an author brings forward in support of a conclusion, his conclusion may
still be correct. It is possible for a man to be right for the wrong
reasons.
While I believe all the foregoing suggestions are judicious and
necessary, I am willing to admit that their wisdom may reasonably
be doubted. But there is one practice about which there can be no
controversy—that of making sure you thoroughly understand every idea of
an author. While most people will not verbally contradict this advice,
their actual practice may be a continual contradiction of it. They will
be in such haste to finish a book that they will not stop to make sure
they really understand the more difficult or obscure passages. Just
what they hope to gain it is difficult to say. If they think it is
wasting time to try to understand every idea, it is surely a greater
waste of time to read an idea without understanding it. To be sure,
the difficulty of understanding may be the fault of the author. It may
be due to his involved and muddled way of expressing himself. It may
be the vagueness of the idea itself. But if anything this is all the
greater reason why you should attempt to understand it. It is the only
way you can find whether or not the author himself really knew what
he was talking about. To understand thoroughly the thought of another
does not necessarily mean to sympathize with it; it does not mean to
ask how that other came by it. It means merely to substitute as far
as possible concrete mental images for the words he uses, and analyze
those images to discover to what extent they agree with facts.
Better to carry this out, you might follow another practice of immense
value. Whenever you are puzzled as to an author’s meaning, or whenever
you do not care to accept his solution of a problem but are undecided
as to what the solution is, or whenever you want to carry an idea
further than he has, or above all, whenever an original and important
relevant thought is suggested to you, you should take your eyes from
your book—shut it if necessary—and let your thinking flow on; give
it fair play, even if it takes an hour before your vein of suggested
thought exhausts itself. Of course this practice will prevent you from
finishing a book as soon as you otherwise would. And if finishing a
book be your aim, I have nothing to say. But if your end is to attain
true, sound knowledge, knowledge which you will retain; if your object
is to become a thinker, the practice will prove of unspeakable benefit.
It will not interfere with concentration. Remember your object is to
concentrate primarily on the subject, not on the book; you intend to
become a thinker, not an interpreter or a commentator or a disciple of
any author.
And there are two reasons why this thinking should not be put off
until after you have finished a book. The first and more important
is that after you have finished reading, most of the ideas will have
unrecallably dropped out of mind. The second is that when you are
undecided about the solution of a problem, you will often find later
arguments depending upon that solution. Unless its truth or falsity is
decided in your own mind you will not know how to deal with these later
arguments.
I have spoken of feeling that an argument is fallacious, and of being
unable to point out just where it is so. To cease reading for a while,
and to endeavor to make these inarticulate objections articulate,
is excellent practice for training analytic powers and developing
clearness of thought.
Another way of reading a book is what I may call the anticipating
method. Whenever a writer has started to explain something, or
whenever you see that he is about to, stop reading and try to think
out the explanation for yourself. Sometimes such thinking will
anticipate only a paragraph, at other times an entire chapter. School
and college text-books, and in fact formal text-books generally, often
contain lists of questions at the end of the chapters. Where you find
these, read them before you read the chapter, and where possible try
to answer them by your own thinking. This practice will make you
understand an explanation much more easily. If your thinking agrees
with the author’s explanation it will give you self-confidence. It will
make you realize whether or not you understand an explanation. If you
were not able to think the thing out for yourself you will appreciate
the author’s explanation. If your thinking disagrees with that of the
author you will have an opportunity to correct him—or be corrected. In
either case your opinion will rest on firmer grounds. Not least of all
you will be getting practice in self-thinking.
After reading and criticising a book, it is a good practice to study
one taking a different viewpoint, or written even in direct opposition.
You will doubtless find that it points out many fallacies and
controverts many statements in the first book, which you allowed to
pass unchallenged. Ask yourself what the trouble was. Was your attitude
too receptive? Did you swallow words without substituting clear mental
images? Did you fail to trace out the consequences of a statement? All
these questions will help you do better the next time.
Because of your ignorance of the facts, your failure to refute a
conclusion will sometimes not be your fault. But even here, though you
cannot contradict an author’s statement of facts, you can criticise
conclusions drawn from those facts.
Take an instance. In making an inquiry into the causes of fatigue,
Professor Mosso of Turin selected two dogs as nearly alike as possible.
One he kept tied, and the other he exercised until it was thoroughly
tired. He then transfused blood of the tired dog into the veins of the
rested one, and produced in the latter every sign of fatigue. From this
he concluded that fatigue was due to certain poisons in the blood.
Now we cannot contradict the fact of this experiment: that the rested
animal was made to look tired. But we can question the inference
drawn. The truth of the conclusion aside, was the evidence sufficient
to establish it? Might not, for instance, similar results have been
produced upon the rested dog if blood of another rested dog had been
transfused into it? Had Mosso made such an experiment? Other objections
should easily occur to one.
Questions which admit of treatment by studying both sides are
too numerous to mention. The literature of philosophy furnishes
particularly good material. Examples which at present occur to me
are Sir William Hamilton’s philosophy versus Mill’s _Examination
of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy_, and Herbert Spencer’s
_First Principles_ versus William James’ essay, _Herbert Spencer’s
Autobiography_ and Henri Bergson’s criticism of Spencer in his
_Creative Evolution_.
Uncritical students of the history of philosophy often find themselves
agreeing with each thinker in turn, no matter how much he contradicts
previous thinkers, and end by acquiescing in the last system they read
about. I remember a philosophy class which completed its studies with
Pragmatism. Of course it was merely a coincidence, but at the end
of the course fully nine-tenths of the students declared themselves
Pragmatists!
It is almost needless to remark that an author who pretends to point
out fallacies in another is not necessarily right. There are men who
pride themselves on “reading both sides of a subject”; but unless they
have been critical, their knowledge is not half as clear or as likely
to be true as that of a man who has read only one side, but who has
read it critically.
* * * * *
We have now to consider the next step outlined in the suggested plan of
reading—“written note should be made of the problems taken up which you
do not believe have been adequately treated, or the solutions of which
are in any way unsatisfactory. These you should think out for yourself.”
When reading a book you will often come across a statement, perhaps
an entire chapter, with which you disagree. This disagreement should
be recorded in the form of a question; as for instance, “Is such
and such the case?” You may doubt whether an author’s explanation
really explains. You may have a vague inarticulate suspicion that he
is sliding over facts, or that his solution is too superficial. This
suspicion should also be recorded in the form of a question. Often
again, while reading, a problem connected with the subject will occur
to you which the author has not even considered. This too should be
recorded.
All these questions should unfailingly be written, either in the margin
or on a piece of paper or notebook kept always at hand. You should
then set aside a definite time for thinking and attempt to solve the
questions for yourself.
And in thinking for yourself you should not make the author’s remarks
the basis of your thinking. You should deal with a problem almost
as if it had never occurred to any one else but you. Simply because
somebody else has been satisfied with a certain solution, that is no
reason why you should be. You should deal directly with the facts, data
and phenomena under consideration; not with the opinions of others
about those facts, data and phenomena. You should not ask yourself
whether the pragmatists are right, or whether the nominalists are
right, or the socialists, or the evolutionists, or the Democrats, or
the Presbyterians, or the hedonists, or what not. You should not ask
yourself which “school” of thinking you ought to belong to. You should
think a problem out _for yourself_, in every way that phrase implies.
At the end you may, incidentally, find yourself agreeing in the main
with some school of thought. However, this will be only accidental, and
your thought will be much more likely to be true. But you should never
agree with a school of thought any more than independent thinking leads
you to.
Of problems dealt with in this manner, some will take ten minutes,
others a week. If you encounter a particularly obstinate problem it
may be best to leave it for a while, say a week or two or even longer,
and go on with other problems. When problems are thus recurrently
treated it may take months, even years, before a satisfactory solution
is reached. In such cases you should be willing to give months and
even years to their solution. If a problem is not important enough to
devote so much time to you may be forced to abandon it; but you should
constantly keep in mind the fact that you have not solved it, and you
should be willing to admit to others that you have not solved it. Never
allow mere intellectual laziness to stifle your doubts and make you
think you have solved a problem, when you know in your heart of hearts
that you have worked yourself into the state of belief merely to save
yourself mental discomfort.
When most of your problems have been solved and your views made
definite you may resume your reading. You may proceed to other books on
the subject.
As to the suggestion that another book on the subject might be dealt
with in the same manner as this first one: this will depend largely on
the individual subject. It will depend on just what books have been
written on that subject. If none completely or adequately covers the
field, or if there are two or more good books representing radically
different viewpoints, more than one book probably ought to be studied
in this comprehensive manner. But this must be left to the reader’s
discretion.
* * * * *
We come now to the last part of our plan—“after that all books may be
read ‘hop, skip and jump’ fashion, for the new problems or solutions
they suggest.”
I have already implied the necessity for this in formulating the law
of diminishing returns. After we have read several books on a subject
it would be manifestly foolish to continue reading books on that same
subject _in toto_. We would merely be going over again knowledge
already in our possession, instead of using our time more profitably
by entering new territory. But any good book will contain _something_
unique; some facts or principles to be found nowhere else; or perhaps
merely an unusually clear way of explaining some old principle, or a
new light on it. This we should endeavor to get without wasting our
time by plowing through the entire volume.
Theoretically our problem is difficult; on its face it would seem
impossible. We are to read all the important parts of a book; that
is, the parts most important _for us_, and nothing but the important
parts. But until we read it how are we to know whether any given part
of a book is important? In practice, however, our difficulty is not so
formidable.
We can eliminate the greater mass of the relatively useless part of a
book by a glance at its table of contents. If we see there titles which
suggest subjects or aspects of subjects in which we are not interested,
or that we feel we already know enough about, or that are simply
outside the particular purpose we have in consulting that book at all,
we can omit those chapters and confine ourselves to the others. . . .
When we were children first learning to read we had to look at every
letter in a word, then spell it out. Finally its meaning dawned upon
us. As we became more proficient we did not have to look at every
letter; we could read words as wholes with the same rapidity as the
separate letters. Accurate psychological tests have determined that a
man can read such words as “and” and “the” with even greater rapidity
than any single letter composing them. We finally reach the point where
we can read short phrases at the same rate as we formerly could single
words.
But the secret of the scholar who can cover efficiently much more
ground than ordinary men is not so much that he reads _faster_, as
that he reads _less_. In other words, instead of reading every word
he glances down a page and sees certain “cue” words or rather “cue”
phrases, for the eye and mind take in phrases as wholes. If he is
familiar with the subject (and he is not to employ this method unless
and until he is) he knows immediately, by “a sort of instinct” as
Buckle called it, whether any new or valuable thought is on that page.
When he finds that there is he involuntarily slackens his pace and
reads that thought at ordinary reading pace or even slower. Sometimes
indeed he will read whole chapters slowly, word for word, if the
contents are sufficiently novel and important to warrant it.
Read by this “hop, skip and jump” fashion a book the size of the
present volume might take an hour or even less. But it is almost
impossible to give even an approximate estimate of the time such
reading ought to take. Of course the longer you spend the more you
will get out of a book, but the return per time invested will be less
and less. On the other hand if you read the book too fast you may be
wasting your time altogether; you may end by understanding nothing at
all. Much will depend upon the originality and depth of the book, upon
the reader’s familiarity with the subject, and upon his native mental
qualities.
Many may object to practicing the foregoing method because they have
a vague feeling that it is their duty to read every word in a book. I
suspect that the real reason for this is simply so that when asked they
can conscientiously say they have _read_ the book. Whereas if they had
followed this skipping method they would be able to say only that they
had “glanced through it” or at best that they had “read parts of it.”
To this objection I have nothing to say, for I am confining my remarks
to those in search of truth and knowledge rather than conversation and
the good opinion of those who believe that reading from cover to cover
is the only path to wisdom. I might point out in passing, however, that
if we do follow this method there will be a half dozen books which we
can say we have “glanced through” to one which we would otherwise have
been able to say we had “read.”
This way of dealing with a book is constructive and positive as opposed
to the negative method of critical reading. For we read for suggestion
only; we carry forward some line of thought of an author, which is
better for intellectual development than trying to find if he was
wrong and where he was wrong. Not only is this positive method more
interesting; in some respects it is better even for criticism. For in
carrying forward an author’s line of thought, noting its consequences
and implications and considering different cases where it applies, we
find whether or not it leads to absurd conclusions; whether or not all
concrete instances conform with it. It should be kept in mind that this
method is not to be followed until the main text-book has been studied.
Consequently when it is followed your mind will have been fortified by
previous reading and thinking; valuable thoughts of an author will tend
to impress you and be remembered, while his trite or erroneous ideas
will tend to be ignored.
But after all, what is important is not your attitude or method at
the time of reading a book, but the thinking done later. The critical
attitude has its shortcomings, for when we are on the lookout for an
author’s mistakes we often miss the full significance of his truths.
On the other hand when “reading for suggestion” we may too often allow
an error to pass unquestioned. But both these disadvantages may be
overcome if we do enough thinking afterward.
Only one thing I must insist on: make sure you understand every
sentence of a book. Do not “guess” you understand it. Do not slide
over it in the hope that the author will explain it later. Do not work
yourself into the belief that after all it is not really important.
Rather than this, better by far do not read the book at all. Not only
will you get little or nothing from it but you will be forming the
worst of intellectual habits—that of thinking you understand when
you do not. If you have made every reasonable effort to understand
an author and then have not succeeded, write in the margin “I do not
understand this,” or draw a line alongside the sentence or passage. If
you have to do this too often you should put the volume aside for a
time. It is either too advanced for you or it is not worth reading.
As to the thinking you do after reading. Often problems connected with
the subject of a book you have read may arise spontaneously in mind,
or an objection to a statement may suddenly occur to you when thinking
on some other topic. Of course when this happens you should not stifle
your thoughts. But besides this, definite periods should be put aside
for thinking on what you have read and on the problems you have
written. I cannot insist on this too strenuously or too often.
A good task to set before yourself is to take every idea you agree with
in a book and try to treat it as a “germ.” Tell yourself that you will
develop it beyond the point where the author left off. Of course this
will not always be possible. You will seldom succeed. But there is
nothing like hitching your wagon to a star, and it will do no harm to
set this up as an ideal.
* * * * *
A few miscellaneous problems remain to be considered.
How should we deal with authors with whom we disagree fundamentally?
Herbert Spencer relates that he twice started Kant’s _Critique of
Pure Reason_, but disagreeing fundamentally with the first and main
proposition he ceased reading. Now to do this is to give an author too
much credit for consistency. For even if every other proposition he
sets forth is ostensibly a corollary from his leading one, some of them
will contain much truth. It is impossible to be consistently wrong.
Add to this the possibility that the author may be right on his first
proposition after all. However, no book with a viewpoint radically
different from our own should be used as a main text, for we would
get little benefit from it. If the book is by an obscure author we
may safely lay it aside altogether. But if it is by so famous and so
bepraised a philosopher as Kant we should at least glance through the
entire volume for suggestions.
How many times ought we to read a book? I have already partly answered
this in formulating the law of diminishing returns. Few books are worth
re-reading. Rather than read one book twice on any given subject it
will most often be more profitable to read another book on it. For the
second will not only serve as a review of previous knowledge, but will
furnish you with new ideas, different aspects and new problems.
Certain books, however, can never be replaced by others. They occupy
this position either because they deal with a subject not elsewhere
dealt with or because they take an entirely novel aspect, or solely
because they are the works of supreme genius, for while the main
conclusions reached in works of this last type may be found elsewhere,
the _manner of thinking_ can never be. These books should be read
twice. The main text-book selected on any subject will usually be
chosen because it is the best and most comprehensive work on that
subject. For this reason it should be read a second time even if such
reading is only of the hop, skip and jump variety.