III. The head just now finished includes really by far the greatest portion of the economy of study. There are various other devices of importance in their way, but much less liable to error in practice. Of these, a leading place may be assigned to the best modes of Distributing the Attention in reading. Such questions as the following present themselves for consideration to the earnest student. How many distinct studies can be carried on together? What interval should be allowed in passing from one to another? How much time should be given to the art of reading, and how much to subsequent meditating or ruminating on what has been read? These points are all susceptible of being determined, within moderate limits of error. As to the first, the remark was made by Quintilian, that, in youth, we can most easily pass from one study to another. The reason of this, however, is, that youth does not take very seriously to any study. When a special study becomes engrossing, the alternatives must rather be recreative than acquisitive; not much progress being made in what is slighted, or left over to the exhaustion caused by attention to the favourite topic. A more precise answer can be made to the second and third queries, namely, as to an interval for recall and meditation, after putting down a book, and before turning the attention into other channels. There is a very clear principle of economy here. We should save as far as possible the fatigue of the reading process, or make a given amount of attention to the printed page yield the greatest impression on the memory. This is done by the exercise of recalling without the book; an advantage that we do not possess in listening to a lecture, until the whole is finished, when we have too much to recall. To hurry from book to book is to gain stimulation at the cost of acquisition.
I have alluded to the case of an engrossing subject, which starves all accompanying studies. There are but two ways of obviating the evil, if it be an evil; which it indeed becomes, when the alternative demands also are legitimate. The one is peremptorily to limit the time given to it daily, so as to rescue some portion of the strength for other topics. The other is to intermit it wholly for a certain period, and let other subjects have their swing. In advancing life, and when our studious leisure is only what is left from professional occupation, two different studies can hardly go on together. The alternative of a single study needs to be purely recreative.
One other point may be noted under this head. In the application to a book of importance and difficulty, there are two ways of going to work: to move on slowly, and master as we go; or to move on quickly to the end, and begin again. There is most to be said for the first method, although distinguished men have worked upon the other. The freshness of the matter is taken off by a single reading; the re-reading is so much flatter in point of interest. Moreover, there is a great satisfaction in making our footing sure at each step, as well as in finishing the task when the first perusal is completed. We cannot well dispense with re-reading, but it need not extend to the whole; marked passages should show where the comprehension and mastery are still lagging.
[DESULTORY READING.]
IV. Another topic is Desultory Reading. This is the whole of the reading of the unstudious mass; it is but a part of the reading of the true student. It may mean, for one thing, jumping from book to book, perhaps reading no one through, except for pure amusement. It may also include the reading of periodicals, where no one subject is treated at any length. As a general rule, such reading does not give us new foundations, or constitute the point of departure of a fresh department of knowledge; yet the amount of labour and thought bestowed upon articles in periodicals, may render them efficacious in adding to a previous stock of materials, or in correcting imperfect views. The truth is, that to the studious man, the desultory is not desultory. The only difference with him is that he has two attitudes that he may assume—the severe and the easy-going; the one is most associated with systematic works on leading subjects; the other with short essays, periodicals, newspapers, and conversation. In this last attitude, which is reserved for hours of relaxation, he skips matters of difficulty, and absorbs scattered and interesting particulars without expressly aiming at the solution of problems or the discussion of abstract principles. There is no reason why an essay in a periodical, a pamphlet, or a speech in Parliament, may not take a first place in anyone's education. All the labour and resource that go to form a work of magnitude may be concentrated in any one of these. Still, they are presented in the form that we are accustomed to associate with our desultory work, and our times of relaxation; and so, they seldom produce in the minds of readers the effect that they are capable of producing. The thorough student will not fail to extract materials from one and all of them, but even he will scarcely choose from such sources the text for the commencement of a new study.
The desultory is not a bad way of increasing our resources of expression. Although there be a systematic and a best mode of acquiring language, there is also an inferior, yet not ineffective mode; namely, reading copiously whatever authors have at once a good style and a sustaining interest. Hence, for this purpose, shifting from book to book, taking up short and light compositions, may be of considerable value; anything is better than not reading at all, or than reading compositions inferior in point of style. The desultory man will not be without a certain flow of language as well as a command of ideas; notwithstanding which, he will never be confounded with the studious man.
V. A fifth point is the proportion of book-reading to Observation of the facts at first hand. From want of opportunity, or from disinclination, many persons have all their information on certain subjects cast in the bookish mould, and do not fully conceive the particular facts as these strike the mind in their own character. A reader of History, with no experience of affairs, is likely to have imperfect bookish notions; just as a man of affairs, not a reader, is subject to narrowness of another kind. It was remarked by Sir G. Cornewall Lewis, that the German historians of the Athenian Democracy write like men that never had any actual experience of popular assemblies. A lawyer must be equally versed in principles and in cases as heard in court: this is a type of knowledge generally. In the Natural History Sciences, observation and reading go hand in hand from the first. In the science of the Human Mind, there are general doctrines, contrived to embrace the world of mental phenomena: the student may have to begin with these, and work upon them exclusively for a time, but in the end, phenomena must be independently viewed by him in their naked character, as exhibited directly in his own mind, and inferentially in the minds of those that fall under his observation. Book knowledge of Disease has to be coupled with bed-side knowledge; neither will take the place of the other.