Permit me, then, to present to you a few suggestions concerning the proper method of study. We do nothing well except what we do with system and order. Set apart, therefore, stated times for the improvement of your minds, and suffer not a slight circumstance to interfere with this arrangement. And now I feel that I must be brief, when the subject which I am treating most requires development. How to study and what to study are problems which engage the attention of the profoundest thinkers of our age, the adequate solution of which can be found only in a perfect philosophy of education, which possibly has not yet been written. Without aiming, then, to be either deep or thorough, I shall strive to be practical. To study, as I have already intimated, means to work with the mind. The mind grows by union with truth, by the assimilation of knowledge, which never takes place except by direct application of the thinking subject to the object thought. This continued application—in other words, attention—is difficult; it wearies the mind, it fatigues the body. To read is not to study. Some of the most indolent men I have ever known, intellectually indolent, were passionately fond of reading. To read requires no mental effort, and demands merely that sort of attention necessary to form a vague notion of each sentence as it passes through the mind. A man may read all the books in the Astor Library, and acquire hardly more knowledge than there will remain water in a sieve through which a stream has been pouring. Indiscriminate, inattentive reading confuses the mind, and, if persevered in, begets a mental habit incompatible with clear and accurate thinking; and the important thing, from an educational point of view, is not so much to get knowledge as to strengthen and develop the intellect, that it may be prepared to grapple intelligently and successfully with the problems which greatly concern or interest us as rational beings.
But you will readily understand that it is far from my thought to wish to dissuade you from cultivating a fondness for reading. On the contrary, this, if you have it not, you must acquire, if you hope to make progress in the work of self-education. Read, then, but read intelligently, thoughtfully. One should read at his writing-desk, pen in hand, taking note of new and striking thoughts, of graceful and forcible modes of expression; bringing the author's ideas into the presence of higher truths, of principles that are fixed; rejecting what is false, assimilating what is just. Better still, write yourselves. Do not imagine that I have the faintest [pg 204] desire to encourage you to become authors; there would be fewer and better authors if men were in the habit of doing what I would have you do. Write, not that others may read your thoughts, but that they may become clear to your own minds.
“I confess,” said S. Augustine, “that by writing I have learned many things which nothing else had taught me.” You will recall to mind the apothegm of Bacon: “Reading makes a full man, talking a ready man, and writing an exact man.”
I have no hesitation in saying that, of all means of mental culture, writing is the best, as well for extending and deepening the intellectual faculties, as for giving them justness and polish.
Do I propose to you to go back to the drudgery of task compositions? Such is not my thought.
I suppose you to be interested in certain subjects, of which you wish to get at least a tolerably thorough knowledge. You take the authors who have treated most exhaustively of these matters; you read them, you study them; you apply your own minds, in sustained thought, to the facts and principles which they give you. And here precisely lies the difficulty; for you will find that, when you will have acquired the power of sustained thought, you will be able to master almost any subject.
Now, to get this mental habit, nothing will aid you like writing. I do not believe that any man who has never translated his thoughts into written language is able to think profoundly or correctly. Do not, however, misunderstand me. One may write negligently and thoughtlessly, as he may read with indolence and inattention. Put your hand to the pen, and begin to meditate upon the thoughts that fill your mind. Should you, for weeks and months, not write one sentence for every hour you hold the pen, do not be discouraged, and, above all, be persuaded that this time has not been lost. Think neither of style nor of the reader; give all your attention to truth and to your own soul. The style is the man. Write out the life that is within you. Keep what you have written, and after months and years, in looking back, you will perceive that you have grown steadily, increased day by day in intellectual vigor and refinement; and there will always be special worth in words written, not to please the vulgar crowd, not to propitiate a false and intolerant public opinion—written to gain neither applause nor gold, but for God and truth, and the dignity of the human soul.
“There is nothing,” says Seneca, “however difficult or arduous, which the human mind cannot conquer, and assiduous meditation render familiar. Whatever the soul demands of itself it obtains.” But how are you to learn the secret of assiduous meditation, to acquire the habit of retaining difficulties in mind, to be considered and reconsidered, to be taken up at the leisure moment, and laid down as deferred but not abandoned?
As the soldier takes the sword, the painter the brush, the musician his instrument, the mechanic the tools of his trade, each to perfect himself in his art, so he who wishes to learn how to think must take the pen and do honest work.
“But words are things, and a small drop of ink