VI. I began by limiting the meaning of study to the reading of books, and have reviewed the various points in the economy of this process. The other means of attaining, enlarging, deepening our knowledge, namely, Observation of facts, Conversation, Disputation, Composition, have each an art of its own —especially Disputation, which has long been reduced to rule. Observation also admits of specific directions, but, in stating the necessity of combining observation with book theories and descriptions, I have assumed the knowledge of how to observe.
[AIDS OF CONVERSATION AND COMPOSITION.]
Of all the adjuncts of study, none is so familiar, so available, and, on the whole, so helpful, as Conversation. The authors of Guides to Students, as Isaac Watts, give elaborate rules for carrying on conversation, a good many of them being more moral than intellectual; but an art of conversation would be very difficult to formulate; it would take quite as long an essay as I have devoted to study, and even then would not follow half of the windings of the subject. The only notice of it that my plan requires, is such as I have already bestowed upon Observation: namely, to point out the advantage of combining a certain amount of reading with, conversation; a thing that almost everybody does according to their opportunities. To rehearse what we have read to some willing and sympathizing listener, is the best way of impressing the memory and of clearing up difficulties to the understanding. It brings in the social stimulus, which ranks so high among human motives. It is a wholesome change of attitude; relieving the fatigue of book-study, while adding to its fruitfulness. Even beginners in study are mutually helpful, by exchanging the results of their several book acquirements; while it is possible to raise conversation to the rank of a high art, both for intellectual improvement and for mutual delectation. I cannot say that the ideal is often realized; since two or more must combine to conversation, and it is not often that the mutual action and re-action is perfectly adjusted for the highest effect.
The last great adjunct of study is original Composition, which also would need to be formulated distinct from the theory of book-study. Viewed in the same way as we have viewed the other collateral exercises, one can pronounce it too an invaluable adjunct to book-reading, as well as an end in itself; it is a variation of effort that diverts the mental strain, and re-acts powerfully upon the extraction of nutriment from books. Besides the pride of achievement, it evokes the social stimulus with the highest effect; our compositions being usually intended for some listeners. But, when to begin the work of original composition, as distinct from the written exercises upon books, in the way of abstracting, amending, and the rest; what forms it should assume at the outset, and by what steps it should gradually ascend to the culminating effects of the art,—would all admit of expansion and discussion as an altogether separate theme. Enough to remark here, that a course of book-reading without attempts at original composition is as faulty an extreme, as to begin and carry on writing upon a stinted basis of reading. The thorough student, as concerned in my present essay, carrying on book-study in the manner I have sketched, will almost infallibly end, at the proper time, in a self-thinker, and a self-originator. An adequate familiarity with the great writers of the past both checks presumptuous or hasty efforts of reproduction, and encourages modest attempts of our own as we feel ourselves becoming gradually invigorated through the combined influence of all the various modes of well-directed study.
FOOTNOTES:
Milton had charge of pupils in 1644, when Locke was twelve.