TO A STUDENT WHO FELT HURRIED AND DRIVEN.
People who like to be hurried—Sluggish temperaments gain vivacity under pressure—Routine work may be done at increased speed—The higher intellectual work cannot be done hurriedly—The art of avoiding hurry consists in Selection—How it was practised by a good landscape painter—Selection in reading and writing—Some studies allow the play of selection more than others do—Languages permit it less than natural sciences—Difficulty of using selection in the fulfilment of literary engagements.
So you have got yourself into that pleasant condition which is about as agreeable, and as favorable to fruitful study and observation, as the condition of an over-driven cab-horse!
Very indolent men, who will not work at all unless under the pressure of immediate urgency, sometimes tell us that they actually like to be hurried; but although certain kinds of practical work which have become perfectly easy from habit may be got through at a great pace when the workman feels that there is an immediate necessity for effort, it is certainly not true that hurry is favorable to sound study of any kind. Work which merely runs in a fixed groove may be urged on occasionally at express speed without any perceptible injury to the quality of it. A clever violinist can play a passage prestissimo as correctly as if he played it adagio; a banker’s clerk can count money very rapidly with positively less risk of error than if he counted it as you and I do. A person of sluggish temperament really gains in vivacity when he is pressed for time, and becomes during those moments of excited energy a clearer-headed and more able person than he is under ordinary circumstances. It is therefore not surprising that he should find himself able to accomplish more under the great stimulus of an immediate necessity than he is able to do in the dulness of his every-day existence. Great prodigies of labor have been performed in this way to avert impending calamity, especially by military officers in critical times like those of the Sepoy rebellion; and in the obscurer lives of tradesmen, immense exertions are often made to avert the danger of bankruptcy, when without the excitement of a serious anxiety of that kind the tradesman would not feel capable of more than a moderate and reasonable degree of attention to his affairs. But notwithstanding the many instances of this kind which might be cited, and the many more which might easily be collected, the truth remains that the highest kinds of intellectual labor can hardly ever be properly performed when the degree of pressure is in the least excessive. You may, for example, if you have the kind of ability which makes a good journalist, write an effective leader with your watch lying on the table, and finish it exactly when the time is up; but if you had the kind of ability which makes a good poet, you could not write anything like highly-finished poetry against time. It is equally clear that scientific discovery, which, though it may flash suddenly upon the mind of the discoverer, is always the result of long brooding over the most patient observations, must come at its own moments, and cannot be commanded. The activity of poets and discoverers would be paralyzed by exigencies which stimulate the activity of soldiers and men of business. The truth is, that intelligence and energy are beneficially stimulated by pressure from without, whereas the working of the higher intellect is impeded by it, and that to such a degree that in times of the greatest pressure the high intellectual life is altogether suspended, to leave free play to the lower but more immediately serviceable intelligence.
This being so, it becomes a necessary part of the art of intellectual living so to order our work as to shield ourselves if possible, at least during a certain portion of our time, from the evil consequences of hurry. The whole secret lies in a single word—Selection.
An excellent landscape painter told me that whatever he had to do, he always took the greatest pains to arrange his work so as never to have his tranquillity disturbed by haste. His system, which is quite applicable to many other things than landscape painting, was based on the principle of selection. He always took care to determine beforehand how much time he could devote to each sketch or study, and then, from the mass of natural facts before him, selected the most valuable facts which could be recorded in the time at his disposal. But however short that time might be, he was always perfectly cool and deliberate in the employment of it. Indeed this coolness and his skill in selection helped each other mutually, for he chose wisely because he was cool, and he had time to be cool by reason of the wisdom of his selection. In his little memoranda, done in five minutes, the lines were laid just as deliberately as the tints on an elaborate picture; the difference being in choice only, not in speed.
Now if we apply this art of selection to all our labors it will give us much of that landscape painter’s enviable coolness, and enable us to work more satisfactorily. Suppose that instead of painting and sketching we have to do a great deal of reading and writing: the art is to select the reading which will be most useful to our purpose, and, in writing, to select the words which will express our meaning with the greatest clearness in a little space. The art of reading is to skip judiciously. Whole libraries may be skipped in these days, when we have the results of them in our modern culture without going over the ground again. And even of the books we decide to read, there are almost always large portions which do not concern us, and which we are sure to forget the day after we have read them. The art is to skip all that does not concern us, whilst missing nothing that we really need. No external guidance can teach us this; for nobody but ourselves can guess what the needs of our intellect may be. But let us select with decisive firmness, independently of other people’s advice, independently of the authority of custom. In every newspaper that comes to hand there is a little bit that we ought to read; the art is to find that little bit, and waste no time over the rest.
Some studies permit the exercise of selection better than others do. A language, once undertaken, permits very little selection indeed, since you must know the whole vocabulary, or nearly so, to be able to read and speak. On the other hand, the natural sciences permit the most prudent exercise of selection. For example, in botany you may study as few plants as you choose.
In writing, the art of selection consists in giving the utmost effect to expression in the fewest words; but of this art I say little, for who can contend against an inevitable trade-necessity? Almost every author of ordinary skill could, when pressed for time, find a briefer expression for his thoughts, but the real difficulty in fulfilling literary engagements does not lie in the expression of the thought, it lies in the sufficiently rapid production of a certain quantity of copy. For this purpose I fear that selection would be of very little use—of no more use, in fact, than in any other branch of manufacture where (if a certain standard is kept up to) quantity in sale is more important than quality of material.