Thinking and learning to think

by Nathan Christ Schaeffer

Thinking which goes forward according to some established habit requires less effort than intellectual work that is accompanied with much volitional effort. This fact serves as a valuable indication to men who must do intellectual work for the press or the pulpit or the lecture-room. Perhaps no one is better qualified to speak on this point than Dr. Carpenter, who studied mental action from the physiological point of view, and whose publications show the quality, as well as the quantity, of his intellectual labor. He says,—

Dr. Carpenter.

“To individuals of ordinary mental activity who have been trained in the habit of methodical and connected thinking, a very considerable amount of work is quite natural; and when such persons are in good bodily health, and the subject of their labor is congenial to them,—especially if it be one that has been chosen by themselves, as furnishing a centre of attraction around which their thoughts spontaneously tend to range themselves,—their intellectual operations require but little of the controlling or directing power of the will, and may be continued for long periods together without fatigue. But from the moment when an indisposition is experienced to keep the attention fixed upon the subject, and the thoughts wander from it unless coerced by the will, the mental activity loses its spontaneous or automatic character; and (as in the act of walking) more effort is required to maintain it volitionally during a brief period, and more fatigue is subsequently experienced from such exertion than would be involved in the continuance of an automatic operation through a period many times as long. Hence he has found it practically the greatest economy of mental labor to work vigorously when he feels disposed to do so, and to refrain from exertion, so far as possible, when it is felt to be an exertion. Of course, this rule is by no means universally applicable; for there are many individuals who would pass their whole time in listless inactivity if not actually spurred on by the feeling of necessity. But it holds good for those who are sufficiently attracted by objects of interest before them, or who have in their worldly position a sufficiently strong motive to exertion to make them feel that they must work; the question with them being, how they can attain their desired results with the least expenditure of mental effort.”[55]

Jokes.

There is a danger to which public speakers are exposed, against which the efforts of a resolute will are not too potent. To capture a crowd that is more easily moved by jokes than by argument, the speaker resorts to sallies of wit and humor and turns the laugh upon an opponent. The temptation to cultivate one’s gifts in this direction is very strong, and when yielded to, it destroys the powers of logical reflection and consecutive thought. Wit is illogical, because it introduces into the current of thought what is foreign to the subject in hand, the incongruity giving rise to the laughter. Wit and humor serve a useful purpose in acting as a safety-valve to let off the discontent which accumulates in the human breast, and may be used for that purpose with great effect. But they should never be allowed to divert the stream of thought from its logical channel. The reputation for wit and humor may dispose people to laugh at everything a man says. It destroys their respect for his judgment and impairs his power to follow a line of thought to its legitimate conclusion. The ability to discuss a theme in all its bearings and details implies the power to investigate a subject in its essence and relations, to resolve an idea into its elements, and to present these in the form most easily understood,—an object which is as far from the purposes of the funny man as the poles are from the equator.

Forms of thought-expression.

Thinking in action.

All thinking tends towards the expression of thought. “Every expression of thought,” says Tracy, “whether it be word, or mark, or gesture, is the result of an active will, and as such may be classed among the movements.” Word, mark, and gesture do not exhaust the list of movements by which the mind expresses thought. Every handicraft is a form of expressing thought quite as important as writing and speaking and gesticulating. The fine arts and the useful arts are so many ways through which the will passes into thinking and issues in the expression of thought. Movements for reform are the intense expressions of great thoughts which have their origin in the heart. The men who spend their lives in the atmosphere of colleges and universities are apt to be satisfied if they have expressed their thoughts in a lecture or on the printed page. They live in books, and their thinking terminates in books. The thinking which issues in getting things done, in deeds, actions, achievements, is undervalued and too often ignored. University men are waking up to this defect in their thinking. They are throwing themselves into movements for reform and giving the world splendid examples of the translation of thought into vigorous action. The effort to carry theory into practice reacts powerfully upon the mind, forces the individual to see things as they are, and saves him from the habit of looking only for things which the schools have taught him to expect. When thinking issues in doing, the process promotes intellectual honesty. This remark is especially applicable to exercises in which the hand makes in wood, metal, marble, or clay what the mind has conceived. The execution cannot be accurate unless the thinking has been accurate and satisfactory. Drawing is a universal language. It imposes upon the mind a degree of accuracy which is wanting in the fleeting spoken word or even in the more permanent printed or written sentences.

Thinking in business.

The movements in manual training are an excellent preparation for the movements in the handicrafts and the daily occupations by which men gain the necessaries and the comforts of life. Ten thousand men are active in supplying our breakfast-table, and many thousand more in providing clothing, shelter, light, heat, and the manifold necessities and luxuries of modern society. All these involve thinking quite as useful, as logical, and as effective as the thinking which ends in talk or printer’s ink. The relation of thinking to doing and the reflex influence which the latter exerts upon the former is seen in the solution of problems and in all exercises involving the application of knowledge. Manual training is really and primarily a training in thinking, but it is the kind of thinking most closely related to thinking in things, and its value in education is so great that it has led to the formulation of the maxim, We learn to do by doing,—a maxim which deserves separate consideration, because, as usually applied, it is taken to mean that doing by the hand necessarily and inevitably leads to thinking and knowing.