that it is essential to any broad range of originality. Never, if it
is genuine, does it create copyists or mannerists. Imitation is the
work of undeveloped mind. Childish mind imitates. Mind unawakened to
the consciousness of its own powers copies. Stagnant mind falls into
mannerism. On the contrary, a mind enkindled into aspiration by high
ideals is never content with imitated excellence. Any mind thus awakened
must, above all things else, be itself. It must act itself out, think its
own thoughts, speak its own vernacular, grow to its own completeness.
You can no more become servile under such a discipline than you can
unconsciously copy another man’s gait in your walk or mask your own
countenance with his.”[17]
“Give to yourself a hearty, affectionate acquaintance with a group of
the ablest minds in Christian literature, and if there is anything in
you kindred to such minds, they will bring it up to the surface of your
own consciousness. You will have a cheering sense of discovery. Quarries
of thought original to you will be opened. Suddenly, it may be in some
choice hour of research, veins will glisten with a lustre richer than
that of silver. You will feel a new strength for your life’s work,
because you will be sensible of new resources.”[18]
[Sidenote: Two ways of reading.]
There are two ways of reading books,—one a help to thinking, the other
destructive of ability to think. If the reader allows the ideas of a
book to pass through his mind as a landscape passes before the eye of
a traveller, ever seeking the excitement of something new and never
stopping to reflect upon the contents of the book so as to weigh its
arguments, to notice its beauties, and to appropriate its truths, the
book will leave him less able to think than before. Passive reading is
permissible when the aim is merely recreation, but he who would read
to gain mental strength must read actively, read books that he can
understand only as the result of effort. President Porter gives this
advice:
[Sidenote: President Porter.]
“The person, particularly the student, who has never wrestled manfully
and perseveringly with a difficult book will be good for little in this
world of wrestling and strife. But when you are convinced that a book is
above your attainments, capacity, or age, it is of little use for you,
and it is wiser to let it alone. It is both vexing and unprofitable to
stand upon one’s toes and strain one’s self for hours in efforts to reach
the fruit which you are not tall enough to gather. It is better to leave
it till it can be reached more easily. When the grapes are both ripe
and within easy reach for you, it is safe to conclude that they are not
sour.”[19]
[Sidenote: Reading as a source of material.]
There are many phases of the library problem which do not call for
consideration in this connection, but in addition to their value as
a stimulus to thinking, the function of books in furnishing proper
material for thought and suitable instruments of thought deserves special
consideration on the part of those charged with the duty of teaching
others to think. There was a time when libraries were managed as if it
were the mission of the librarian to keep the books from being used.
The modern librarian seeks to make the accumulated wisdom of the past
accessible to all. He regards the library as a storehouse of knowledge,
from which any one able to read can get what he needs. Cyclopædias and
dictionaries of reference, card catalogues, and helps like Poole’s
“Index to Periodical Literature” make the best thought of the best minds
in these and other days accessible to the student. He who wishes to gain
a hearing on any theme must know what others have said upon it. Disraeli
has well said that those who do not read largely will not themselves
deserve to be read. The prize debates between different colleges are
teaching students how to utilize books in getting material for public
discussions. Theses for graduation develop the ability to use books in
the right way. And yet, valuable as books are for furnishing fuel to the
mind, they may be used to destroy what little ability to think a pupil
has otherwise developed. To assign topics for composition which require
a culling of facts from books, and to allow the essays to be written
outside of school hours, expose the pupil to unnecessary temptations. In
the public schools there should be set apart each week several periods of
suitable length, during which the pupil, under the eye of the teacher,
writes out his thoughts. In such exercises the attention should not be
riveted upon capitals, spelling, punctuation, grammatical construction,
and rhetorical devices; the mind should be occupied solely and intensely
with the expression of the thought. Mistakes should be corrected when the
pupil reviews and rewrites his composition. Books can be used to furnish
material for thought; the elaboration can be helped by oral discussions;
the interest thereby aroused will make each member of the class anxious
to express his thoughts; hesitation in composing and distraction from
dread of mistakes can be overcome by making the class write against time.
[Sidenote: Enriching one’s vocabulary.]
Books are helpful in enriching one’s vocabulary. Treatises on rhetoric
teach what words should be avoided. The student finds more difficulty in
getting enough words to express his thoughts. The study of a good series
of readers is more valuable as a means of acquiring a good vocabulary
than all the rules on purity, propriety, and so forth, which are found in
the text-books on rhetoric. A good series of school readers employs from
five to six thousand words. With these the average teacher is familiar
to the extent of knowing their meaning when he sees them in sentences.
He does not have a sufficient command of a third of them to use them in
writing or speaking. The selections of a Fifth Reader contain more words
than are found in the vocabulary of any living author. The step from
knowing a word when used by another to the ability to use that word in
expressing our own thoughts has not been taken in the case of the larger
proportion of the words with which we are familiar on the printed page.
Most persons use more words in writing than in oral speech, more words in
public speaking than in ordinary conversation. We unconsciously absorb
many words which we hear others use, but we pick up a far larger number
from those we see in print simply because the printed page contains a
larger variety of words than spoken language. In this respect there is a
vast difference between the oral discourse and the written manuscript of
the same person. The style is different; the sentences in oral discourse
are less involved; the diction is less complicated; the vocabulary is
less copious. Hence the advantage of the boy who has access to standard
authors over the youth who has access to few books, and these not well
selected. Without any effort, the former gains possession of a vocabulary
which makes thinking easier and richer.
[Sidenote: School readers.]
The lack of a library of standard authors can be supplied, to some
extent, by a judicious use of the school readers. If the mastery of the
words and the getting of the thought precede the oral reading of the
lesson, and if the vocal utterance is followed by oral and written
reproduction of the thought, correct habits of study will be formed, and
the working vocabulary of teacher and pupil will be vastly increased.
The habit of eying every stranger on the printed page will be fixed, and
the appropriation of new words will rise above the subconscious stage.
Only one other exercise is comparable,—namely, the comparison of words
in a lexicon for the purpose of selecting the right one in making a
translation from some ancient or modern language. Such translations, if
honestly made, enrich the vocabulary and furnish exercise in the study of
the finer shades of meaning which words have, as well as in the use of
the words for the purpose of expressing thought.
[Sidenote: Franklin’s plan.]
[Sidenote: Correcting papers.]
Most persons, when they face an audience or feel at all embarrassed,
think in phrases, in broken sentences. Hence exercises designed to
cultivate the habit of thinking in sentences are very valuable.
Franklin’s plan of rewriting the thought of a book like “The Spectator,”
and then comparing his own sentences with those of a master-mind, can be
followed with great advantage, because it lifts the burden of correction
from the teacher’s shoulders and throws it upon the pupil, giving the
latter the full benefit of the exercise. Moreover, it cultivates in the
pupil the habit of watching how thought is expressed by standard authors.
The teacher’s interest in the thought side of language often makes him
forget that the correct use of capitals, punctuation marks, sentences,
and paragraphs is a matter of thinking quite as much as invention and the
arrangement of materials. These externals of the process of composing
must at some time be made the object of chief regard. The reason so
many pupils do not learn their use is found in the fact that teachers
hate the drudgery of correcting papers, and they expect the pupils to
acquire this knowledge incidentally. The right use of books obviates the
necessity for much of this drudgery, and secures the desired end with a
minimum expenditure of time and effort. Skill in the use of capitals and
punctuation marks is best acquired when the attention is not absorbed
by the elaboration of ideas or by the labor of composing. The externals
involved in putting sentences upon paper can claim the chief attention in
the dictation of standard selections from a school reader. This exercise
enables the pupil to make his own corrections, and is worth a dozen in
which the teacher makes the corrections, only to be cast aside after a
momentary glance by the pupil. The exercise may be varied by copying a
selection from a standard author upon the black-board, covering it with
a screen or shade (on rollers) during the dictation, and exposing it to
view only while the corrections are made. If each one of the punctuation
marks is made an object of special attention in a particular grade, there
are enough grades to cover them all before the pupil reaches the high
school.
[Sidenote: Dictation.]
A superintendent revolutionized the language-work of an entire county by
dictating to the applicants at the annual examination for provisional
certificates a selection from a First Reader for the purpose of testing
their knowledge of capitals and punctuation and the other details of
written speech. Every one saw the value of the test, and it led to a
study of the school reader from a new point of view.
[Sidenote: Books for all.]
[Sidenote: Right use of books.]
It is not easy to overestimate the value of books, not merely for those
who aspire to become thinkers, but even for all classes of men in
civilized life. Books treasure the wisdom of the ages and transmit it to
future generations. They kindle thought, enliven the emotions, and lift
the soul into the domain of the true, the beautiful, and the good. They
furnish recreation and instruction, comfort and consolation, stimulation
and inspiration. They confirm or correct the opinions already formed, and
give tone to the entire intellectual life. They enlarge the vocabulary,
exemplify the best methods of embodying thought in language, and show
how master-minds throw their materials into connected discourse, how
they organize facts, truths, inferences, and theories into systems of
science or speculation. One can subscribe to all that is said in favor
of object-teaching and laboratory methods, and still be consistent in
maintaining that it should be one of the chief aims of the school to
teach the right use of books, that the college and university fail in
their mission if they neglect to put the student into the way of using
a library to the best advantage. If the policy of many schools were
adopted in other fields of human activity, the folly would be too glaring
to escape notice. Suppose, by months of effort, a botanist could create
in his son a liking for the plants of the nightshade family, some of
which, like the potato and the tomato, are good for food and others are
poisonous. Having created the appetite, the father makes no effort to
gratify it. The son, failing to distinguish between the good and the bad,
the esculent and the poisonous, and finding the latter within easy reach,
begins to gratify his appetite by eating without discrimination. The
deadly effects are more easily imagined than described.
[Sidenote: Good literature.]
A parallel folly has been committed in hundreds of communities which have
taxed themselves to banish illiteracy and to make ignorance impossible
among the young people. Reading is carefully taught; the ability to
read is followed by an appetite for reading; a strong desire for the
mental food derived from the printed page is created. Yet nothing is
done to supply the right kind of books for the purpose of gratifying
this appetite. The average youth is allowed to get what he can from the
book-stalls, which contain much that is as deleterious to the soul as
some plants of the nightshade family are to the body. It is as much a
duty to supply proper literature as it is to impart the ability to read.
When, in the twentieth century, some historian shall give an account
of the educational development of Pennsylvania, he will record it as a
fact passing strange and well-nigh incapable of explanation that for
more than three decades there stood upon the statute-books of a great
commonwealth a law preventing boards of directors from appropriating any
school funds to the purchase of books for a school library except such
works of a strictly professional character as were necessary for the
improvement of the teachers. Within the last decade a new era has dawned
in library legislation and in the purchase of books. Directors are now
empowered to levy a tax for library purposes, and free libraries are
springing into existence not only in the large centres of population, but
even in the rural schools. The movement has come not a whit too soon;
for habits of reading are sadly needed to supplement life in the factory
and on the farm. To make from day to day nothing except the head of a
pin, or the sixtieth part of a shoe, may develop marvellous skill and
speed in workmanship, but such division of labor leaves little room for
intellectual activity or for anything above the merest mechanical routine.
[Sidenote: The factory.]
It should not occasion surprise that operatives in factories seek the
mental excitement which human nature always craves after hours of
monotony. Far better that they should find recreation in a good book than
in a game of cards, in a free library than in a drinking-saloon. That the
workman may taste the joys of the higher life of thought, it is essential
that he have access to the best literature in prose and poetry, to books
of travel, biography, history, science, and sociology. If he lack these,
his mind will lose itself in local gossip, in discontent over his lot,
in envy of those who have more to eat and drink, better clothes to wear,
and better houses to live in. Of the pleasures of the higher life he can
have as many as, if not more than, others have; for at the close of the
day his mind is not exhausted by professional thinking, and he can enjoy
a good book far more than the men whose daily occupation obliges them to
seek recreation in physical exercise.
[Sidenote: The farm.]
[Sidenote: Twentieth century.]
The same remarks apply to life on the farm. The incessant drudgery
of monotonous toil day after day from early dawn till late at night
has sent farmers and their wives to untimely graves, sometimes to the
insane asylum. They need the intellectual stimulus which comes from
good books, the health-giving recreation which comes with the change
from the fatiguing toil of the day to the perusal of good literature in
the evening. Under the more rational policy of providing a supply of
good books along with the creation of a taste for reading, the working
people of the next generation will be as well read, as well informed,
and as capable of sustained thought as those who think money all day, or
spend their strength in vocations which act upon the mind very much as a
grindstone acts upon a knife,—narrowing the blade while sharpening the
edge. Let it be hoped that early in the twentieth century the laboring
classes will have shorter hours of work, more leisure for reading, and an
appreciation of good books equal to that of Charles Lamb, who asserted
that there was more reason for saying grace before a new book than
before a dinner. Under the beneficent influence of free text-books and
free libraries it should be possible to create in the rising generation
a spirit like that of Macaulay, who declared that if any one should
offer to make him the greatest king that ever lived, with palaces and
gardens, and fine dinners and wines, and coaches and beautiful clothes,
and hundreds of servants, on condition that he should not read books, he
would decline the offer, preferring to be a poor man in a garret with
plenty of books rather than a king who did not love reading.
X
OBSERVATION AND THINKING
The degree of vision that dwells in a man is the correct
measure of a man.
THOMAS CARLYLE.
When general observations are drawn from so many particulars
as to become certain and indubitable, these are the jewels of
knowledge.
DR. I. WATTS.
To behold is not necessarily to observe, and the power of
comparing and combining is only to be obtained by education. It
is much to be regretted that habits of exact observation are
not cultivated in our schools; to this deficiency may be traced
much of the fallacious reasoning, the false philosophy which
prevails.
HUMBOLDT.
You should not only have attention to everything, but quickness
of attention, so as to observe at once all the people in the
room, their motions, their looks, and their words, yet without
staring at them or seeming to be an observer. This quick and
unobserved observation is of infinite advantage in life, and is
to be acquired with care; and, on the contrary, what is called
absence, which is a thoughtlessness and want of attention about
what is doing, makes a man so like either a fool or a madman,
that, for my part, I see no real difference. A fool never has
thought, a madman has lost it, and an absent man is for the
time without it.
LORD CHESTERFIELD.
X
OBSERVATION AND THINKING
[Sidenote: Inventors.]
Very few thinkers have let us into the secret of their thinking. Probably
most of them could not if they would. They are too much absorbed in that
which engrosses their attention to pay any heed to the processes of the
inner life. Occasionally an inventor or discoverer gives us a glimpse
of the state of his mind when the new idea flashed into consciousness.
Such glimpse always reveals his indebtedness to habits of careful
observation. His thinking was stimulated by some felt want or puzzling
phenomenon, and perhaps by contact with others engaged in similar lines
of study. Oftentimes a number of persons are thinking of ways, means, and
contrivances by which a widely felt want may be supplied or a perplexing
fact explained. After prolonged effort and meditation, during which
the mind is concentrated upon one thing to the neglect of everything
else having no bearing upon the problem in hand, the happy thought is
suggested by the observation of some neglected fact or the perception
of some unsuspected relation. Probably half the inventions are made in
that way. What seems accidental or a piece of good luck is in reality the
result of long musing and reflection, during which many comparisons are
made, until at length the right combination gives the desired result.
Wants keenly felt by mankind in general or by some gifted individual in
particular serve as a powerful stimulus to thought, and quicken the eye
and the ear to perceive what was before unnoticed, thereby laying the
foundation for invention, discovery, or progress in new fields of thought.
[Sidenote: Writers.]
Great writers are equally indebted to their powers of observation. Of the
men of genius whom the world delights to honor, probably no one watched
his inner development more closely than Goethe. He gives us the following
account of how his works were produced:
[Sidenote: Goethe.]
“To each one of my writings a thousand persons, a thousand things have
contributed. The learned and the ignorant, the wise and the foolish,
childhood and age have all a share therein. They all, without suspecting
it, have brought me the gifts of their faculties, their thought and
experience. Often they have sown, and I have reaped. My works are a
combination of elements which have been taken from all nature and which
bear the name—Goethe.”
[Sidenote: Human nature.]
Human nature furnishes as much room for observation as all the rest
of nature. The hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows, the trials and
struggles, the thoughts and beliefs, the aspirations and achievements,
the motives and deeds of the men and women whom we meet in our daily life
and on the pages of history and fiction (such as is true to life) offer
a field for observation as vast, as interesting, and as important as all
the rocks and soils, the bugs and beetles, the insects, birds, beasts,
and fishes that dwell beneath or above or on the surface of the earth.
The larger proportion of the books taken from free libraries are works of
fiction,—a fact which shows that the interest of most of those who read
is centred upon the things of the human heart and in the observation of
human life.
Goethe’s views of originality are these:
[Sidenote: Originality.]
“We are always talking about originality, but what do we mean? As soon
as we are born the world begins to work upon us, and this goes on to the
end. After all, what can we call our own except our energy, strength, and
will? If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors
and contemporaries, there would be little left of my own.”
[Sidenote: Observation.]
Observation lies at the basis of the thinking which leads to invention in
the arts, to discovery in the domain of science, to productivity in the
fields of literature, journalism, and oratory. It lies at the foundation
of success in the professions and in the ordinary walks of life. The
medical school, for instance, seeks to develop the power of noting facts
and making careful observations. It encourages the student to put his
observations on paper while the patient is before him, to compare the
diseased or injured part with the corresponding healthy part, and to
watch symptoms as a basis for a correct diagnosis of the case to be
treated.
[Sidenote: Books.]
[Sidenote: Daily life.]