Third test.
The third test to be applied to the method of teaching reading is the question, Does it save the pupil from the unnatural tones of the school-room by training him to use his voice in the right way? To this test reference will be made later.
Observation should lead to thinking.
If observation is to have abiding value, it must lead to thinking. This is as true of the observation of words and sentences on the printed or written page as it is of the observation of earth and sky and sea, of the starry heavens above and the moral law within (which filled the soul of the philosopher Kant with never-ceasing awe). How the things obtained from books and from the world outside are appropriated in thought and made our own will appear more fully when we discuss the relation of memory to thinking.
XI
THE MEMORY AND THINKING
Overburden not thy memory to make so faithful a servant a slave. Remember Atlas was weary. Have as much reason as a camel, to rise when thou hast thy full load. Memory, like a purse, if it be overfull that it cannot shut, all will drop out of it: take heed of a gluttonous curiosity to feed on many things, lest the greediness of the appetite of thy memory spoil the digestion thereof.
Thomas Fuller.