Perhaps the best way to do this would be to make out a list of the
books we intend to read for the coming year, or say a list of from a
dozen to twenty-five volumes, and then read them in the order listed.
Another good plan is to jot down the title of every book we intend to
read, and keep the list about with us. Then when we meet with a book
which we think would be good to read, or which we feel we simply must
read, we can before starting it glance at our list. The formidable
array we find there will probably induce us either to give up entirely
our intention to read the book before us, or at least to put it
somewhere on the list which will allow more important books to be read
first.
Some people cannot endure planning their reading in this manner. It
grates on them to think they are tied down to any sort of program;
it seems to deprive them of the advantages of spontaneous interest.
Well, if you cannot plan your reading prospectively, at least plan it
retrospectively. If you cannot keep a list of books you _intend_ to
read, at least keep a list of books you _have_ read. Refer to this
from time to time. See whether you have been reading uniformly good
literature. See whether you have been reading too much on one topic and
not enough on another, and what topics you have been long neglecting.
But at best this method is a poor substitute for planning your reading
prospectively.
We should plan not only with regard to topics and subjects, but with
regard to authors. Obviously if two men of equal ability both study
the same subject, one will get more out of his study than the other if
he reads authors who treat the subject on a deeper plane—provided of
course he understands them.
Whether consciously or not, we tend to imitate the authors we read. If
we read shallow books we are forced, while reading them, to do shallow
thinking. Our plane of thought tends toward the plane of thought of
the authors we study; we acquire either habits of careful critical
thinking, or of dogmatic lack of thinking.
This emphasizes the importance of reading the best books, and _only_
the best books. Our plane of thinking is determined not alone by the
good books we read, but by all the books we read; it tends toward
the _average_. Most men imagine that when they read a good book they
get a certain amount of good out of it, and that this good will stay
with them undiminished. Provided they read a certain number of serious
books, they see no reason why they should not read any number of
superficial or useless books, or any amount of ephemeral magazine or
newspaper literature. They expect the serious reading to benefit them.
They do not expect the shallow reading to harm them. This is just as if
they were to buy and eat unnutritious and indigestible food, and excuse
themselves on the ground that they ate nourishing and digestible food
along with it.
The analogy may be carried further. As it is the average of the
physical food you digest which ultimately determines the constitution
of your body, so it is the average of the mental food you absorb which
determines the constitution of your mind. One good meal will not offset
a week of bad ones; one good book will never offset any number of poor
books. Further, as no one has a perfect memory, you do not retain all
you read any more than you retain all you eat. Therefore if you do
not want your mind to retrogress, you should not rest satisfied with
books already read, but should continue to read books at least as good
as any previous. As at any given time your bodily health—so far as it
depends on food—is mainly determined by the meals of the last few days
or weeks, so is your mental health dependent on the last few books you
have read.
One of the first things we should look to in selecting books is their
comprehensiveness. To quote Arnold Bennett: “Unless and until a man has
formed a scheme of knowledge, be it but a mere skeleton, his reading
must necessarily be unphilosophical. He must have attained to some
notion of the interrelations of the various branches of knowledge
before he can properly comprehend the branch of knowledge in which
he specializes.”[23] As an aid in forming this scheme of knowledge,
Mr. Bennett suggests Herbert Spencer’s _First Principles_. I heartily
endorse his choice. I would add to it the essay on _The Classification
of the Sciences_ by the same author.
These works are classics, and one of the most regrettable of
difficulties is that of getting people to read the classics. Mention
to a man Darwin’s _Origin of Species_ or _Descent of Man_, and he
will reply, “Oh, yes, that’s the theory that says men descended from
monkeys.” Satisfied that he knows all there is to know about it, he
never reads any of Darwin’s works. Now passing over the fact that
the theory does not assert that man descended from monkeys and never
intended to assert it;—what a compliment to Darwin’s thought and
brevity to assume that all his books can be summed up in a phrase!
But Darwin is not the only sufferer. If we come across the title of a
classic often enough, and hear a lot of talk “about it and about” and
a few quotations from it, we gradually come to believe we know all
the contents worth knowing. This is why Shakespeare, and in fact most
of the classics, are so seldom actually read, and why we go for our
serious reading to a book on “How to Read Character from Handwriting”
or to a sensational volume on prostitution by one of our modern
“sociologists.” The only way we can keep ourselves from such stuff is
to lay out some definite end, some big objective, to be attained; and
before reading a book we should ask how that helps us to attain it.
I have not given a formal list of books worth reading, nor do I intend
to; one of the reasons being that the work has been done so well by
others. Ever since Sir John Lubbock published his list of one hundred
best books, the number of selections has been legion. Charles Eliot’s
selection for his _Five Foot Shelf_ is to be commended, and a little
volume by Frank Parsons _The World’s Best Books_. Of course our purpose
is special:—to find the best books for making thinkers; but the remarks
already made should aid the reader sufficiently in making his own
selection from these lists. As previously pointed out, if the reader
is studying a specialty he can usually find a fairly well selected
bibliography at the end of the article on that specialty in any
standard encyclopedia.
* * * * *
The reader probably sees clearly by now that it is impossible to do
his own thinking in every case; that if he is to have sound knowledge
on important questions he must have the courage to be ignorant of
many things. How much trouble to go to in any particular case it is
difficult to say.
We can lay it down as a general principle that questions of the
highest importance, such as those of which I have given a suggestive
list—questions which deal with facts known or easily ascertainable,
and which depend for their right solution more on thinking than on
anything else—a man should solve for himself, and should take the
greatest caution in so doing. On the other hand, questions of the
highest importance which depend for their solution mainly on full and
detailed knowledge of highly technical facts which lie outside of one’s
specialty, should be dealt with by consulting authorities and taking
their word for it.
There still remains the great mass of questions which are relatively
unimportant, but continually coming up in our daily life, the answers
to which greatly influence our conduct. Time forbids us not only
from thinking these out for ourselves, but even from consulting an
authority—for the selection of an authority often involves almost as
much intellectual responsibility as self-thinking. The only thing we
can do is to accept the verdict of popular opinion.
Custom, convention and popular belief, no matter how many times they
have been overthrown, have fairly reliable foundations. Popular ideas,
to be sure, are products of mere unorganized experience. They are
empirical; seldom if ever scientific. But though they are founded on
experience which is _unorganized_, they are founded on so much of it
that they are worthy of respect. Society could not long exist if it
persisted in acting on beliefs altogether wrong, though it is safe to
say that popular ideas are never more than approximately right. But
unless and until you have either thoroughly thought over a question for
yourself or have consulted an acknowledged and trustworthy authority,
it is best tentatively to accept and act on common belief. To think
and act differently, merely for the sake of being different, is
unprofitable and dangerous, all questions of ethics aside.
X
THINKING AS AN ART
I discovered, though unconsciously and insensibly, that the pleasure
of observing and reasoning was a much higher one than that of skill
and sport.—DARWIN’S _Autobiography_.
To know is one thing; to do another. To know the science of thinking
is not to possess the art of thinking. Yet I doubt not that there are
readers who having finished, would deem it sufficient that they had
the knowledge, and would feel they had gotten all the good or harm out
of this book that there is in it. They would put it aside. They would
think no more of it.
The trouble with these good people (unfortunately I speak of the
overwhelming majority) is that they expect information to apply itself.
They expect that once they have learnt a thing they will act according
to their knowledge. This is the very last thing a normal human being
does.
The only way we can ever get ourselves to apply knowledge is to do so
by what will at first be a conscious effort. We shall have to devote
much attention to it. Old established custom will have to be broken.
We do not act according to knowledge; we act according to habit. Even
after we have decided, for instance, that we ought to give a little
independent thinking to a subject before reading about it, we shall
very likely continue to read books without previous thought.
Some people may imagine that the reason we do not practice what we
learn is that we do not remember what we learn. They are mistaken. When
learning German, I had much difficulty in knowing what prepositions
required the genitive, dative or accusative cases. I finally learnt all
of them alphabetically in their respective groups, and could rattle
them off at a rate which would make most native Germans blush for envy.
The only trouble was that when I came to an actual sentence requiring
one of these prepositions I continually forgot to apply my knowledge.
Some one would have to point an error out to me before it would occur
to me to do so. Even then I would have to think long before the proper
case occurred.
But while it is not true that we fail to practice a thing merely
because we fail to remember it, it is true that if we do not practice
we are not very likely to remember it. The only way we could remember
would be by constant re-reading, for knowledge unused tends to drop out
of mind. Knowledge used does not need to be remembered; practice forms
habits and habits make memory unnecessary. The rule is nothing; the
application is everything.
Practice being the thing needful, it is essential that we put aside a
certain amount of time for it. Unless you lay out a definite program,
unless you put aside, say, one-half hour every day, for pure downright
independent thinking, you will probably neglect to practice at all.
One-half hour out of every twenty-four seems little enough. You may
think you can fit it in with no trouble. But no matter how shamelessly
you have been putting in your time, you have been doing _something_
with it. In order to get in your thirty minutes of thinking, you will
have to put aside something which has been habitually taking up a half
hour of your day. You cannot expect simply to add thinking to your
other activities. Some other activity must be cut down or cut out.[24]
You may think me quite lenient in advising only one-half hour a day.
You may even go so far as to say that one-half hour a day is not
enough. Perhaps it isn’t. But I am particularly anxious to have some
of the advice in this book followed. And I greatly fear that if I
advised more than a half hour most readers would serenely neglect my
advice altogether. After you have been able for a month to devote at
least one-half hour a day to thinking, you may then, if you choose,
extend the time. But if you attempt to do too much at once, you may
find it so inconvenient, if not impracticable, that you may give up
attempting altogether. Throughout the book I have constantly kept in
mind that I wish my advice followed. I have therefore laid down rules
which may reasonably be adhered to by an average human, rules which
do not require a hardened asceticism to apply, and rules which have
occasionally been followed by the author himself. In this last respect,
I flatter myself, the present differs from most books of advice.
Above all I urge the reader to avoid falling into that habit so
prevalent and at the same time so detrimental to character:—acquiescing
in advice and not following it. You should view critically every
sentence in this book. Wherever you find any advice which you think
needless, or which requires unnecessary sacrifice to put into practice,
or is wrong, you should so mark it. And you should think out for
yourself what would be the best practice to follow. But when you agree
with any advice you see here, you should make it your business to
follow it. The fact that part of the advice may be wrong is no reason
why you should not follow the part that is right.
Most people honestly intend to follow advice, and actually start to
do it, but . . . They try to practice everything at once. As a result
they end by practicing nothing. The secret of practice is to learn
thoroughly one thing at a time. As already stated, we act according
to habit. The only way to break an old habit or to form a new one
is to give our whole attention to the process. The new action will
soon require less and less attention, until finally we shall do it
automatically, without thought—in short, we shall have formed another
habit. This accomplished we can turn to still others.
As an example let us take the different methods of looking at questions
considered in the second chapter. Most readers will glance over these
methods, and agree that they are very helpful—and the next problem
which perplexes them will probably be solved by no method at all, or
will be looked at from one standpoint only.
About the best, perhaps the only way by which the reader could get
himself to use habitually every valuable method possible, would be to
take one of the methods, say the evolutionary, and consciously apply
it, or attempt to apply it, to a whole list of problems. In this way
he could learn the possibilities and limits of that particular method.
Again, he could take an individual problem and consciously attempt to
apply every possible method to its solution. He could continue such
practice until he had so formed the habit of using method that it
would be employed almost unconsciously. Concentration, method in book
reading, and all the other practices here advocated should be learned
in the same conscious, painstaking way, one thing at a time, until
thoroughly ingrained. It must be left to the reader’s own ingenuity to
devise the best methods of acquiring each particular habit.
Of course it is possible to do a thing well—it is possible to follow
the rule for doing it—without knowing the rule. If a man take a live
interest in a subject he will naturally tend to look at it from a
number of different viewpoints. If he be eternally on the lookout for
errors and fallacies in his own thinking he will gradually evolve a
logic of his own. And this logic will be concrete, not abstract; it
will be something built into, an integral part of, concrete thought,
and he will be constantly strengthening the habit of using it. Compared
with the logic of the books it may be crude, but it will not consist of
mere rules, which can be recited but which are seldom applied.
So with grammar. Instance the writer’s experience with German. Few
native Germans could recite offhand what prepositions govern the
genitive, dative and accusative, even if they knew what was meant by
these terms. But they would (most of them) use these cases correctly,
and without the least thought. The educated Englishman or American
flatters himself that his correct speech is due to his study of
grammar. This is far from true. His speech is due to unconscious
imitation of the language of the people with whom he comes into
contact, and of the books he reads. And needless to say, the cultivated
man comes into contact with other cultivated men and with good
literature; the ignoramus does not.
Most of our thinking is influenced in this way. The great thinkers
of the past improved their innate powers not by the study of rules
for thinking, but by reading the works of other great thinkers, and
unconsciously imitating their habitual method and caution.
The fact to remember is that a rule is something that has been
formulated after the thing which it rules. It is merely an abstract of
current practice or of good practice. Rules are needful because they
teach in little time what would otherwise require much experience to
learn, or which we might never discover for ourselves at all. They help
us to learn things right in the beginning; they prevent us from falling
into wrong habits. The trouble with unsupplemented imitation, conscious
or unconscious, is that we tend to imitate another’s faults along with
his virtues. Rules enable us to distinguish, especially if we have
learned the reason for the rules.
But practice and rules should not be compared as if they were opposed.
The true road is plenty of practice with conscientious regard to rule.
It may be insisted that this has its limits; that there is a point
beyond which a man cannot improve himself. I admit that practice has
its limits. It may be true that there is a point beyond which a man
cannot advance. But nobody knows those limits and no one can say when
that point has come.
No two individuals profit in the same degree by the same practice.
With a given amount one man will always improve faster than another.
But the slower man may keep up with his more speedy brother by more
practice. I shall not repeat here the fable of the hare and the
tortoise. But any one who has discovered a flaw in his mental make-up,
any one who believes that he cannot concentrate, or that his memory is
poor, and that therefore he can never become a thinker, should find
consolation in the words of William James:
“Depend upon it, no one need be too much cast down by the discovery of
his deficiency in any elementary faculty of the mind. . . . The total
mental efficiency of a man is the resultant of all his faculties. He
is too complex a being for any one of them to have the casting vote.
If any one of them do have the casting vote, it is more likely to be
the strength of his desire and passion, the strength of the interest
he takes in what is proposed. Concentration, memory, reasoning power,
inventiveness, excellence of the senses—all are subsidiary to this.
No matter how scatter-brained the type of a man’s successive fields
of consciousness may be, if he really _care_ for a subject, he will
return to it incessantly from his incessant wanderings, and first and
last do more with it, and get more results from it, than another person
whose attention may be more continuous during a given interval, but
whose passion for the subject is of a more languid and less permanent
sort.”[25]
XI
BOOKS ON THINKING
The reader who desires to study further on the subject of thinking will
find a wide field before him—but he will have to search in cosmopolitan
quarters. While much has been written on thinking, it has been in an
incidental manner, and has found its way into books written mainly
to illuminate other subjects. Among the few books or essays devoted
exclusively or mainly to thinking may be mentioned:—John Locke, _The
Conduct of the Understanding_; Isaac Watts, _The Improvement of the
Mind_; Arnold Bennett, _Mental Efficiency_; T. Sharper Knowlson, _The
Art of Thinking_; Arthur Schopenhauer, _On Thinking for Oneself_, in
his _Essays_. The last is especially recommended. It is only about a
dozen pages long, and is the most stimulating essay written on the
subject. This, together with John Locke’s _Conduct_ (which, by the way,
is also fairly short) may be considered the two “classics” in the
meager literature on thinking.
There is an extensive literature on the psychology of reasoning, on the
“positive” science of thinking. The best single work on this subject is
John Dewey’s _How We Think_. William James’ chapter on _Reasoning_ in
his _Principles of Psychology_ might also be consulted with profit. S.
S. Colvin’s, _The Learning Process_ contains some interesting chapters
bearing on thought.
On method, the amount of literature is even more imposing than that
on the psychology of reasoning. Probably the most thorough book is
Stanley Jevon’s _The Principles of Science_, though this, consisting
of two volumes, will require quite some ambition to attack. A good
recent short work is J. A. Thomson, _Introduction to Science_.
Herbert Spencer’s short essay, _An Element in Method_, in his
_Various Fragments_ might also be mentioned. Of those works treating
method mainly from a corrective standpoint, I have already mentioned
Jevon’s _Elementary Lessons in Logic_. _The_ authoritative and most
comprehensive book on logic is still John Stuart Mill’s great tome. Of
course this list of books on method, as well as that on the psychology
of reasoning, cannot pretend to be more than merely suggestive. If the
reader desires an extensive bibliography in either of these subjects he
will probably find it in one of the books mentioned.
On doubt and belief, William Clifford, _The Ethics of Belief_, and
William James, _The Will to Believe_, might be read. The viewpoints of
the two essays are in almost direct contradiction.
On reading, Alexander Bain’s _The Art of Study_, in his _Practical
Essays_, will be found useful. Bacon’s essay _On Studies_, which is not
more than a couple pages long, contains more concentrated wisdom on the
subject than is to be found anywhere.
On subjects most worth thinking about, the reader cannot do better than
read Herbert Spencer’s essay _What Knowledge is of Most Worth?_ in his
_Education_. As to books most worth reading, consult the lists of John
Morley, Sir John Lubbock, and Frederic Harrison; Sonnenschein’s _Best
Books_ (in two volumes); Baldwin’s _The Book Lover_; Dr. Eliot’s _Five
Foot Shelf_ and Frank Parson’s _The World’s Best Books_, previously
referred to.
On the art of living—the art of planning time so as to have room for
thinking, as well as valuable hints as to how that thinking is to be
carried out—consult Arnold Bennett, _How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a
Day_, and E. H. Griggs, _The Use of the Margin_ (both very, very small
books).
Finally, there is much useful material, as well as incalculable
inspiration, to be obtained from the intellectual and literary
biographies of great thinkers. Especially is this true of
autobiography. Among others may be mentioned the autobiographies of
John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, and an autobiographical fragment
by Charles Darwin.
FOOTNOTES:
[ 1] See Herbert Spencer, _Education_.
[ 2] Pillsbury, _Essentials of Psychology_.
[ 3] _Principles of Psychology_, Vol. II, p. 332.
[ 4] See William A. Scott, _Money_.
[ 5] _How We Think._
[ 6] _Autobiography_, Vol. I, p. 463.
[ 7] _Autobiography._
[ 8] Hugh Elliot, _The Letters of John Stuart Mill_.
[ 9] Essay, _Over-Legislation_.
[10] _The Conduct of the Understanding._
[11] _The Will to Believe._
[12] _Autobiography._
[13] _Science and Education._
[14] T. Sharper Knowlson, _The Art of Thinking_.
[15] _The Conduct of the Understanding._
[16] _On Thinking for Oneself._