Part 11
Invention usually requires highly technical knowledge, not to speak of facilities for experiment and a well-supplied purse. But nothing gives more solid satisfaction to its creator than a successful appliance. While the conscientious philosopher is constantly harassed by doubts as to whether, after all, he has discovered truth; the inventor need not worry. His machine either works or it does not work, and he _knows_ the truth of his thought thereby. On the other hand the philosopher will always have _some_ thoughts. Be they true or not they may at least be interesting and worth recording, whereas the inventor may toil on for years and years with absolutely nothing to show for his exertion at the end. . . .
There are a number of problems that are not of great “practical” importance, but whose theoretic value is so transcendent as to compel attention. Among these are certain problems in psychology, but more especially in metaphysics, philosophy and even religion, insofar as religion can be said to have problems.
_Is there a God and is it possible for man to learn anything of His nature?_ Some readers may object to the first part of this question. But I state it because I am anxious to avoid dogmatism.
_Is the soul immortal?_ What do we mean by the soul? Does science disprove the life after death?
_What is the test of truth?_ How shall we know truth when we have it? What after all is “truth”?
_Are our wills free, or are our actions predetermined?_ Some may object to this way of stating the question. Much confusion exists as to the meaning of the problem. A different way of stating it would lead to different treatment. What is the “will”? What do we mean by “free”? What do we mean by “predetermined”?
_The problem of existence._ How did the universe come into being? This is the last problem in which interest can be stimulated from without. No matter in how many different ways he phrases it, a writer cannot convey this sense of mystery to another. It must arise from within. Most of the time we accept, we take for granted, the universe and the existent order of things, and it requires the greatest effort to keep alive our mystification and doubt for even short periods.
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The list of questions foregoing is of course merely suggestive. It is impossible to select, say twenty-five questions, and pronounce them the twenty-five most important that can be asked. I fully realize there are questions of greater importance than some I have propounded. But I have not gone so far as to advise that every one of these should be thought over. The list has been given merely for thought stimulation, and to indicate what is meant by “worth while” questions.
Unfortunately I have not been able to explain why most of these are so important. To have done so would have required too much time for each individual problem. It would have drawn us too far out of our subject. The reader must find out or sense the importance for himself.
Practically all of the problems given in the list come under one of the sciences, especially if we count metaphysics or philosophy as a science, which it is in so far as it is organized knowledge. This may seem somewhat narrow. Now I admit there are important problems which are not included in any science. But there are very few. As soon as deep thought is given to a problem its treatment becomes systematic. It either falls into one of the sciences or a new science evolves about it. John Stuart Mill once started a journal in which he promised himself to put one thought a day, but he did not permit himself to record there any thought on a problem falling within one of the special sciences. None of the thoughts he put in the journal is of any great value. It came to an abrupt end in about two months.
It may be objected that though the questions selected are most important _in themselves_, there are other things more worth thinking about, because of the mental discipline they yield. Now putting aside the fact that questions important in themselves should be dealt with ultimately—that mental discipline would be useless unless applied to important problems—I must voice my suspicion that the most useful questions are also the best for training the mind. It may be true that punching the bag will help a prizefighter in boxing. But other things equal, a man who has spent one week in actual boxing is better prepared to enter the prize ring than one who has devoted a month to bag punching. The best practice for boxing is boxing. The best practice for solving important questions is solving important questions.
Nor do I admit the contention is valid that one problem rather than another should be thought of because it is “deeper.” We cannot truthfully say that psychology is a “deeper” science than ethics, or that metaphysics is deeper than psychology, or vice versa. Most subjects and most problems are just as deep as we care to make them. Their depth depends entirely on how deep we go into them. This applies especially to the so-called philosophical sciences. We may give them shallow treatment or we may give them profound treatment. But we shall usually find that the deepest questions are the most important questions. For the most important questions have generally attracted the greatest minds; consequently they have been given the deepest treatment; and when a man reads the attempted solutions of these great minds his thoughts tend toward this deeper plane. Of course certain problems, especially in mathematics, can be dealt with by only one method. In this case we may properly speak of some problems being objectively deeper or at least more difficult than others.
Some objections may be offered to several of the questions in my list, on the ground that they are invalid. Such problems as the immortality of the soul and the problem of existence may be declared inscrutable, unsolvable. Such a problem as “Is society for the benefit of the individual or is the individual for the benefit of society?” may be said to imply that society is something which has been voluntarily formed like the State. It may be declared that this is not the case; it may be objected that this question is meaningless. All these objections may be justified. But their truth cannot be determined until we actually attempt a solution. The determination of the validity of a problem is part of the problem.
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We come now to the question of what is most worth reading. The simplest answer is that that is most worth reading which is most worth thinking about, and therefore we should read those books which deal with such problems as I have indicated. But this counsel needs to be supplemented.
A conservative estimate places the number of books in the world at 4,500,000. (This estimate was made before the war broke out, and the war-books by now have doubtless brought the number to 5,000,000.) This does not mean books as collections of printed sheets of paper bound together—books as physical objects—for if it did the number would be immensely greater. It means 4,500,000 (or more) separate and distinct treatises. If you were to read one book every two weeks, you would read about twenty-five a year, and if you read for fifty years you would cover 1,250. One book in every three thousand six hundred! (3,600!)
From this it is apparent that even the most omnivorous reader, even the reader who can cover a book swiftly by efficient skipping, will at least have to ask himself before beginning a volume, “Is this a book in a thousand? Can I afford to read this at the cost of missing nine hundred and ninety-nine others?” And most men who ask this question will have to substitute the number five thousand, or even ten thousand.
Nine-tenths of our reading is on mere chance recommendation, passing whim or by sheer accident. We catch sight of a book on a library table. Having nothing better to do we pick it up; we start perusing it. Every book read in this way means a sinful waste of time. To be sure, a book read in this chance manner _might_ (accidentally) be very good—even better than some you would have planned for; but this will happen seldom, and is never a justification of the practice. By going a round about way to a place a man might stumble across a lost pocketbook, but this would not justify taking round about ways.
The first thing needed, then, is that we should plan our reading. 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.
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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.