A novel.
A clergyman who found the reaction from his pulpit efforts so great that often he could not bring himself to think vigorously and consecutively before the middle of the following week was advised by his physician to try the effect of an Indian tale or an exciting story, and found that a good novel works like a charm in bringing the mind back to normal action. After the interest in the story or novel begins to grow there is danger of reading too long, of reading until another spell of fatigue and reaction comes. The book should be laid aside as soon as the first glow of mental action is felt.
Books.
Most thinkers need the stimulating influence of other minds. These can be found at their best upon the shelves of a well-selected library. They are ready to help us whenever we feel ready to give them our attention. Men put the best part of themselves into their books. The process of writing for print intensifies mental activity, spurs the intellect to the keenest, most vigorous effort, and arouses the highest energy of thought and feeling. Authors that exert a quickening influence upon our thinking should be kept for use whenever we need a stimulus to rouse the mind from its lethargy.
Leibnitz got his best ideas while reading books. He had acquired the habits of a librarian to whom favorite volumes are always accessible.
As stimulus.
A scientist of repute says he gets the necessary stimulus from Jevons’s treatise on the inductive sciences. Professor Phelps has collected an instructive list of authors whose writings have been helpful to other authors of note. He says,—
Examples.
“Voltaire used to read Massillon as a stimulus to production. Bossuet read Homer for the same purpose. Gray read Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queene’ as the preliminary to the use of his pen. The favorites of Milton were Homer and Euripides. Fénelon resorted to the ancient classics promiscuously. Pope read Dryden as his habitual aid to composing. Corneille read Tacitus and Livy. Clarendon did the same. Sir William Jones, on his passage to India, planned five different volumes, and assigned to each the author he resolved to read as a guide and awakener to his own mind for its work. Buffon made the same use of the works of Sir Isaac Newton. With great variety of tastes successful authors have generally agreed in availing themselves of this natural and facile method of educating their minds to the work of original creation.”[15]
Great thinkers.