Thinking and learning to think

by Nathan Christ Schaeffer

Science.

Science is, of course, a product of the human mind, quite as much as the so-called humanities, and answers the same purpose when studied as literature; but then it ceases to have the value of training the intellect in the rigid methods of original research and scientific investigation. Whilst it is the function of the laboratory to initiate the student into the mysteries of the methods by which new discoveries are made and verified, and thus to enable him to avail himself of the labors of others through their publications, it does not bring the student into living contact with human hopes, emotions, and aspirations as do the poems of Goethe, Schiller, and Shakespeare.

History.

History deals with what man has achieved. The materials for thought which it furnishes are mostly in the shape of the testimony of eye-witnesses and other original sources of information. The incidents, the achievements, the struggles, the victories and the defeats, the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of historic personages, are an inexhaustible supply of material from which authors, editors, and orators draw illustrations, figures of speech, and other matter for their thinking. Here is a field which must not be neglected by those who would influence their fellows or figure as leaders of men.

Vigorous thinking.

Some minds are slow at gathering materials; yet they think vigorously. They look at facts and ideas from every possible point of view, explore their nature and relations, their content and extent, and point out their bearing upon other things by the conclusions they reach. Sometimes they go astray because they do not have sufficient data to warrant a conclusion. Their condition resembles that of the King of Siam, who did not believe that water could become solid because he had been in the nine points of his kingdom and had not seen ice.

Intellectual gluttony.

Other men are intellectual gluttons. They keep pouring into themselves knowledge from every quarter, carry it in their minds as the overloaded stomach carries food, and end in mental dyspepsia. Better the man with few ideas, who can apply these in practical life, than the man of erudition who cannot apply his knowledge.

Too little food produces inanition and starvation; too much food brings on dyspepsia and a host of other ills and distempers. The haphazard selection of studies by inexperienced youth from the large list of electives offered by a great university is apt to result either in mental overfeeding or in intellectual starvation. The mind can be rightly formed only when it is rightly informed. To expect satisfactory thought-products when the mind lacks proper materials to act upon would be as irrational as to expect good grist from a flour-mill whose supply of grain is deficient in quality and quantity. In the process of making flour very much depends upon the instruments employed. The rude implements of antiquity, the buhr-stones of our fathers, and the improved machinery of the roller process make a difference in the product, even though the same quality of grain is used. In the elaboration of the thought-material the well-educated man uses instruments which may be likened to our modern inventions for saving labor in the domain of the mechanic arts. These instruments of thought will next claim our attention.