Part 9
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.
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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.
We should not re-read a book immediately upon the first completion but should always allow a long interval to elapse. There are several reasons for this. After an interval we acquire perspective; we are in a position to know whether a book has done us any good and just about how much. We may find after this interval that a work of which we thought quite highly at the time of reading has really not helped us appreciably either in thought or action. We may find that we have outgrown the need of it. Even if we finally decide to re-read we shall find the wait of immense help to our memory. If we re-read a book after an interval of six months, three years after our second reading we will remember its contents much better than if we had read it three times in unbroken succession. Add to this that in the lapse of time we shall have forgotten most of the work, and shall therefore approach it the second time with greater interest than if it were still fresh in mind; that our experience, reading and thinking in the meantime will make us see every sentence in a different light, enabling us to judge our own marginal criticisms (if we have made any) as well as the book, and the advantage of waiting cannot be doubted. I do not believe it will ever be necessary to read a book more than twice, that is, so far as thought and knowledge are concerned. With books read for their style or for mere amusement the case is different.
How long should one read at a sitting? Some men find that their thought is choked by reading. Some find it stimulated. But results vary according to the length of time reading is carried on. Reading for very long periods at a stretch often deadens original thought. The writer finds that he nearly always derives benefit from reading for short periods, say ten or fifteen minutes. This is in some measure due to the increased concentration which short periods allow. On the other hand, some people find that a certain momentum is acquired during long reading periods. The reader can only experiment to find how long a period best suits his individual case.
How about concentration? This has been considered in relation to independent thinking, but in reading the problem is somewhat different. In thinking our task is to choose relevant associates. In reading the associates are chosen for us. Our task is to stick to them, instead of following the associates which occur to us either from what we read or from sights and sounds about us. But associates which occur to us from what we read are of two kinds: relevant and irrelevant, and the former should of course be followed out. This however should be done deliberately, in the manner I have previously indicated, and when the vein of suggested thought has been exhausted we should bring attention back to our book. The problem of concentration is not a very serious one in reading. It may sometimes be difficult to concentrate on a book. But it is infinitely easier than concentrating on a problem by unaided independent thought.
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The plan of reading I have laid out is merely suggestive. What I chiefly wanted to show was that all books cannot be treated alike, that we cannot lay down dogmatic inflexible rules to apply to every volume. Our method of reading will vary with the nature of a book or of the subject it treats. It will depend upon the books we have already read and even upon the books we contemplate reading later.
The good you get out of reading will depend entirely on how you allow it to affect you. If every book you read suggests more problems, gives you worth-while questions and topics to think about in spare moments, enriches your intellectual life and stimulates your thought, it is performing its proper function. But if you read solely to answer problems you cannot answer for yourself, if every time you are puzzled about anything you run to a book to have it explained, and accept without question the explanation there given; in short, if you use your reading to save yourself from thinking, you had better stop reading altogether. Smoking is a far less harmful form of dissipation.
I have not yet definitely indicated the ratio which time given to reading should bear to time devoted to thinking. I have avoided this because of the many factors to be taken into account. But if the reader happens to have a spare hour to devote to the improvement of his mind, he will not go very far wrong if he gives thirty minutes to reading and thirty minutes to thinking. His thinking may be on the subject he has read, or part of it may be on other problems. That is not so important. But the reader must not imagine that his thinking need be restricted to these thirty minutes or any other thirty minutes. The glorious advantage of thinking is that it can be fitted in at any odd moment. The entire apparatus for carrying it on is always with you. You do not even need a book for it. I remind the reader of this at the risk of repeating myself.
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It was pointed out at the beginning of this chapter that the reading of any book is not an end in itself, but should be subordinated to the larger end of obtaining the best from reading in general. But for the sake of clearness our end was temporarily considered as the mastery of some particular subject. I indicated a plan of reading to best serve that end. I also promised that needful qualifications would come later.
In stating the law of diminishing returns it was pointed out that it applied to whole subjects as well as to books, that “past a certain point every book we read on a subject, while it will probably add to our knowledge, will not yield as much return as a book of equal merit on another subject new to us.”
While this is true it applies to but a small extent when subjects are read by the method just outlined, for while we do not get as much out of any book as we would out of one of equal merit on another subject, we read it so much faster that the return per time and energy expended is practically as great. This fast reading is made possible by our previous knowledge on the old subject. If the book on the new subject were read in the same manner, we might get little or nothing from it.
With this objection out of the way I suggest that the reader get a specialty. Books read in the ordinary unsystematic fashion, now on this subject and now on that, leave little permanent impression. Even if they do, we feel that though our range of reading may be wide we have at best but a smattering of many things. In the final analysis a smattering of knowledge is in most cases of no more use than total ignorance. Better by far be ignorant of many things and know one thing well, than know many things badly.
Besides the utility of having a specialty is the pleasure we derive. There is always an intense satisfaction in feeling that one is an “expert,” an “authority” in some subject. When some Congressman makes an inaccurate remark which trespasses on your specialty you can write a letter to the _Times_ or the _Sun_ explaining the error of his ways, and incidentally exhibiting your own limitless erudition. When your friends get into an argument on some question within your chosen field they will remark, “Ask John Jones. He ought to know.” And even when you have to confess abysmal ignorance on some question outside of your domains, you may still have the satisfaction of believing that people are excusing you within themselves with an “Oh, well, but he knows a lot about someology.”
One writer estimates that “fifteen minutes a day or a half hour three days a week devoted to one definite study will make one a master in that field in a dozen years.”[20] This statement should interest those people who “haven’t the time” to take up any specialty outside their own business, but who spend at least half an hour every day in newspaper or magazine reading—with nothing to show for it at the end of twenty years.
Just what subject you make your specialty I am not at present concerned. It may be aeronautics, astronomy, banking, Greek history, differential calculus, social psychology, electricity, music, philosophy of law, submarines, soap manufacture, religion, metaphysics, sun-motors, education, literary style or the moon. But whatever it is, it ought to be a subject in which you are interested for its own sake—which most frequently means one which you do not make your vocation. If you get tired of it, drop it and take up something in which you are interested. Your thinking and study should be pursued as a pleasure—not as a duty.
If your subject is a narrow one, if let us say it is merely a branch of what is generally considered a science, you should first get a clear idea of the broad outlines of the science before taking the specialty up. Should you, for instance, select the tariff, begin your study by using as your main text a book on general economics.
Even if you make your specialty an entire science you will derive great help by reading in other sciences. In ethics, for instance, a knowledge of psychology, biology and sociology will prove of surprising value. This means that for the sake of knowing the specialty itself, if for nothing else, you should not pursue it exclusively. If ever you find yourself in danger of doing this it would be well to lay down a rule that every third or fourth book you read must be one which does not deal with the subject you have chosen as your own.
VIII
WRITING ONE’S THOUGHTS
Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.—BACON.
Any attempt to formulate a science or art of thinking would not be complete without at least some discussion of writing. Indeed writing is so closely bound up with thinking that I have been compelled to refer to it several times in the discussion of thought and reading.
I have already spoken of writing as an aid to concentration. I was wont to depreciate it on account of its slowness. But this is practically its only fault. Thoughts come to us when writing which we get in no other way. One is often surprised, when reading something one has written at a previous time, at some of the remarks made. We seem to have temporarily grown wiser than ourselves.
But the great advantage of writing is that it preserves thought. What printing has done for humanity in preserving the knowledge of the ages, writing will do for the individual in preserving his own reflections.
When some thought has occurred to us we believe at the time we are thinking it that it is ours forever. We cannot conceive that it shall ever be forgotten. Perish that belief! I have sometimes had an idea occur to me (really!), and have believed it absolutely new, at least so far as I was concerned. But on looking over things written before, I have found that I had had almost identically the same thought at another time. Not only did I forget the idea; I did not even recognize it at its second appearance. To be sure, in these cases the thoughts came a second time. But thoughts are seldom so obliging.
Therefore when an idea occurs or when you have solved a problem, even a problem suggested by a book, you should immediately put the idea or solution in writing. You may of course wait until the end of the day. But the safest way of capturing an idea is to write it the minute after it flashes through your brain, or it may be lost forever. It was with this in mind that in the chapter on reading I advised immediately writing not only ideas but problems which occurred to one. The discovery of a new problem is just as important and necessary for intellectual advance as the solution of an old one. If we do not write our problems we are apt to forget they exist; we put ourselves in danger of assuming without question some proposition which is not true.
To facilitate the writing of your thoughts and meditations I suggest a notebook kept specially for that purpose. In addition to this you should always carry about with you some blank paper and a pencil, so as to be ever ready to jot down anything. To write an idea does not of course imply that you cannot later reject it, or change it, or develop it further.
The elusiveness of thoughts is most strikingly brought out when writing them down. When we are writing a long sentence we have in mind the exact words with which we are going to finish it. But our attention is called for the moment to the physical act of writing, and presto!—the words are gone; we are compelled to end our sentence in a different way. I have mentioned the advantages of shorthand and typewriting for keeping pace with thought. I need merely repeat my advice to use these acquirements if you have them. Thoughts, I must repeat, are fleeting. No device for trapping them should be despised.
Not least among the advantages of a notebook in which to write thoughts is the permanent historical record it gives. Every thought we write should be dated, day, month and year, like a letter. When we come to read over ideas jotted down from time to time in this manner, we shall see before us an intellectual autobiography. We shall see how our recent thoughts compare with those written sometime ago. We shall see just what our opinions were at certain times, and how they have changed. And we shall see whether our mental progress has been marked, or whether we have been standing still.
It may be considered absurd to suggest that every thought you write in your note-book be put in the best style you can command. We are wont to differentiate “style” and “matter.” It is doubtful whether this distinction is quite valid. It is doubtful whether we know just what we mean when we make it. Indeed Arnold Bennett goes so far as to say:
“Style cannot be distinguished from matter. When a writer conceives an idea he conceives it in the form of words. That form of words constitutes his style, and it is absolutely governed by the idea. The idea can only exist in words, it can only exist in one form of words. You cannot say exactly the same thing in two different ways. Slightly alter the expression, and you slightly alter the idea. Surely it is obvious that the expression cannot be altered without altering the thing expressed! The writer, having conceived and expressed an idea, may, and probably will, ‘polish it up.’ But what does he polish up? To say that he polishes up his style is merely to say that he polishes up his idea, that he has discovered faults and imperfections in his idea, and is perfecting it. The idea exists in proportion as it is expressed; it exists when it is expressed, and not before. It expresses itself. A clear idea is expressed clearly and a vague idea vaguely.”[21]
Mr. Bennett, I suspect, is a victim of exaggeration. But this much is true: Thought and style are mutually dependent to a far greater degree than is generally supposed. Not only will an improvement in a thought improve its wording; an improvement in wording will improve the thought.
Now as to the application of this. I have referred to the occurrence in reading of “inarticulate” objections. The sole reason these are inarticulate is because the objection is too vague even to find expression. In a case like this we should word our objection the best we can, no matter how ridiculous or indefensible it at first sounds. But we should word it in as many ways as possible; we should say it in all different sorts of ways; we should write it in every different kind of way. Gradually our objection will become definite, clear, forceful. In short, we shall not only have improved our way of stating our thought; we shall have improved the thought itself. To study clearness of statement or acquisition of vocabulary is to study means of improving thought. Your notebook should not be used solely for the entry of “thoughts” as such, but any striking way of wording a thought which occurs to you should likewise be immediately written.
But while there is some truth in Arnold Bennett’s statement that the wording is the thought, from another point of view its very opposite is true. The wording is _never_ the thought. Strictly speaking, “thought” is something which can exist only in the mind. It can never be transferred to paper. What then is it that we write? If words and sentences are not thought, what are they? If they are not thought how is it possible to transfer thought through the medium of writing?
The fact is that words, though they are not thought, are the _associates_ of thought. You hear the word “horse.” Very likely the visual image of a horse arises in mind. This image, idea, notion, “concept,” will depend on your experience of particular horses. It will never be a logical abstract of these. It will never be a horse without color, particular size, sex or breed, as is sometimes thought. It may however have different elements in it from different horses you have seen. It may be the image of just one particular horse you remember. But no such thing as a general concept exists in the mind. We have a particular image which stands for all horses. The name of course is general. It—or its definition—may be called the logical concept. But the name itself is not used in thought. It is an arbitrary symbol which serves merely to arouse a particular image associated with it, and this image is dealt with as if general. This image we shall call the concept. It is the working concept: the psychological as opposed to the logical concept.