Title: Thinking as a Science
Author: Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993)
Language: English
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THINKING AS A SCIENCE, BY HENRY HAZLITT



 THINKING
 AS A SCIENCE

 BY
 HENRY HAZLITT

 [Illustration]

 NEW YORK
 E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
 681 FIFTH AVENUE



 Copyright, 1916
 BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY



CONTENTS


        I • The Neglect of Thinking • 1

         II • Thinking With Method • 11

              III • A Few Cautions • 51

                IV • Concentration • 68

     V • Prejudice and Uncertainty • 99

     VI • Debate and Conversation • 129

       VII • Thinking and Reading • 135

    VIII • Writing One’s Thoughts • 191

 IX • Things Worth Thinking About • 207

           X • Thinking as an Art • 237

           XI • Books on Thinking • 248



THINKING AS A SCIENCE

I

THE NEGLECT OF THINKING


Every man knows there are evils in the world which need setting right.
Every man has pretty definite ideas as to what these evils are. But
to most men one in particular stands out vividly. To some, in fact,
this stands out with such startling vividness that they lose sight of
other evils, or look upon them as the natural consequences of their own
particular evil-in-chief.

To the Socialist this evil is the capitalistic system; to the
prohibitionist it is intemperance; to the feminist it is the subjection
of women; to the clergyman it is the decline of religion; to Andrew
Carnegie it is war; to the staunch Republican it is the Democratic
Party, and so on, _ad infinitum_.

I, too, have a pet little evil, to which in more passionate moments
I am apt to attribute all the others. This evil is the neglect of
thinking. And when I say thinking I mean real thinking, independent
thinking, hard thinking.

You protest. You say men are thinking more now than they ever were.
You bring out the almanac to prove by statistics that illiteracy is
declining. You point to our magnificent libraries. You point to the
multiplication of books. You show beyond a doubt that people are
reading more now than ever before in all history. . . .

Very well, exactly. That is just the trouble. Most people, when
confronted with a problem, immediately acquire an inordinate desire to
“read-up” on it. When they get stuck mentally, the first thing such
people do is to run to a book. Confess it, have you not often been in
a waiting room or a Pullman, noticed people all about you reading, and
finding yourself without any reading matter, have you not wished that
you had some?—something to “occupy your mind”? And did it ever occur to
you that you had within you the power to occupy your mind, and do it
more profitably than all those assiduous readers? Briefly, did it ever
occur to you to _think_?

Of course you “thought”—in a sense. Thinking means a variety of
things. You may have looked out of your train window while passing a
field, and it may have occurred to you that that field would make an
excellent baseball diamond. Then you “thought” of the time when you
played baseball, “thought” of some particular game perhaps, “thought”
how you had made a grand stand play or a bad muff, and how one day it
began to rain in the middle of the game, and the team took refuge in
the carriage shed. Then you “thought” of other rainy days rendered
particularly vivid for some reason or other, or perhaps your mind came
back to considering the present weather, and how long it was going to
last. . . . And of course, in one sense you were “thinking.” But when
I use the word thinking, I mean thinking with a purpose, with an end
in view, thinking to solve a problem. I mean the kind of thinking that
is forced on us when we are deciding on a course to pursue, on a life
work to take up perhaps; the kind of thinking that was forced on us
in our younger days when we had to find a solution to a problem in
mathematics, or when we tackled psychology in college. I do not mean
“thinking” in snatches, or holding petty opinions on this subject and
on that. I mean thought on significant questions which lie outside the
bounds of your narrow personal welfare. This is the kind of thinking
which is now so rare—so sadly needed!

Of course before this can be revived we must arouse a desire for it. We
must arouse a desire for thinking for its own sake; solving problems
for the mere sake of solving problems. But a mere desire for thinking,
praiseworthy as it is, is not enough. We must know _how_ to think, and
to that end we must search for those rules and methods of procedure
which will most help us in thinking creatively, originally, and not
least of all surely, correctly.

When they think at all, the last thing men think about is their
own thoughts. Every sensible man realizes that the perfection of a
mechanical instrument depends to some extent upon the perfection of the
tools with which it is made. No carpenter would expect a perfectly
smooth board after using a dented or chipped plane. No gasolene engine
manufacturer would expect to produce a good motor unless he had the
best lathes obtainable to help him turn out his product. No watchmaker
would expect to construct a perfectly accurate timepiece unless he had
the most delicate and accurate tools to turn out the cogs and screws.
Before any specialist produces an instrument he thinks of the tools
with which he is to produce it. But men reflect continually on the
most complex problems—problems of vital importance to them—and expect
to obtain satisfactory solutions, without once giving a thought to
the manner in which they go about obtaining those solutions; without
a thought to their own mind, the tool which produces those solutions.
Surely this deserves at least some systematic consideration.

Some remarks of Ella Wheeler Wilcox under this head will bear quoting:
“Human thinking is still in as great a state of disorder and jumble
as language was before the alphabet, music before the scale was
discovered, printing before Gutenberg, or mathematics before Pythagoras
formulated its laws.” “This systematization of all thought,” she tells
us, would be “a more far reaching improvement than all the others, for
it will do for education, health, economics, government, etc., what the
alphabet did for language, movable type for printing and literature,
the scale for music, and the rules of arithmetic for calculation. Being
the exact counterpart of these in its particular field, its mission,
like theirs, will be to bring order out of chaos.”

I believe Miss Wilcox exaggerates matters. Incidentally I for one
do not pretend to have discovered anything revolutionary. But the
importance of the subject warrants its formulation into as near
scientific form as we can bring it.

I beg no one to get frightened. Science does not necessarily mean test
tubes and telescopes. I mean science in its broadest sense; and in
this sense it means nothing more than organized knowledge. If we are
to find rules and methods of procedure, these methods must come from
somewhere—must be based on certain principles—and these principles can
come only from close, systematic investigation.

It may indeed be urged that we can think best by disregarding all
“rules,” by not paying any attention to method. But the man who
maintains this must give reasons; and once he attempts this he himself
is bordering closely on the science of the matter. In short, the
settlement of even this question is part of the science of thinking.

And what is to be the nature of this science?

For our purposes, all sciences may be divided into two kinds:
_positive_ and _normative_. A positive science investigates the nature
of things as they are. It deals simply with matters of fact. Such a
science is physics, chemistry, psychology. A normative science is one
which studies things as they ought to be. As the name implies, it
seeks to establish a _norm_ or pattern which ought to be adhered to.
It studies means of reaching desired ends. To this class belong such
sciences as ethics, education, agriculture.

Now these normative sciences, with the exception of ethics, are nearly
always referred to either as “arts” or “applied sciences.” To both
of these terms I technically but strenuously object. I object to the
term “art” to designate any set of organized rules for doing a thing,
because “art” also means the actual doing of that thing. And this
thing may be done, and often is done, in total ignorance of the rules
governing it. A man may possess the art of swimming—he may be able to
swim—without any previous instruction, without any knowledge of how he
ought to hold his body, arms and legs; just as a dog may do the same
thing.

I object also to the term “applied science,” because to me this term
implies that the science it refers to is based on one positive science
only. I can think of no so-called applied science which is so based.
Hygiene, not alone dependent on physiology, must derive some of its
rules from the chemistry of foods, as well as from the sciences of
sanitation and ventilation, themselves normative. Agriculture is based
not only on biology and botany, but on chemistry and meteorology.

The science of thinking, then, if such a science there be, is
normative. Its purpose is to find those methods which will help us to
think constructively and correctly.

One more distinction and our preliminaries are over. There are two
other sciences with which the science of thinking is liable to become
confused; one positive, the other normative.

The positive science is that branch of psychology which deals with
the reasoning process and examines the basis of belief. We shall make
frequent use of this science in trying to find rules for thinking, but
it will not be the only science we shall use, nor will that science be
the subject of this book.

The normative science with which the science of thinking may become
confused is logic. Indeed, logic has sometimes been called the science
of thinking. Now for our purposes logic is a part of the science of
thinking, but it is not the part which we are primarily to consider.
Its function is merely negative; it consists in leading us from
error. The part of the science of thinking in which we are interested
deals with those positive rules which will help to make us creative
thinkers. . . .

Our ship is headed for the port Truth. Our mind is the engine, the
science of thinking the propeller, and logic the rudder. Without our
engine, the mind, the propeller of the science of thinking, which
transforms our mental energy most effectively into motion, would be
useless. Without the propeller, which gives motion, the rudder of logic
would be useless. But all three are needed to reach our goal.

       *       *       *       *       *

And now I must bespeak a little patience. The next chapter, and the one
following it, are going to deal very largely with method and methods.
They will touch on classification, and a lot of other things to which
the plain man has an aversion; to which, at least, he usually evinces
no very active interest. But it is necessary to consider these things
in order to make our study complete.



II

THINKING WITH METHOD


Most of us, at those rare intervals when we think at all, do so in a
slipshod sort of way. If we come across a mental difficulty we try to
get rid of it in almost any kind of hit or miss manner. Even those few
of us who think occasionally for the mere sake of thinking, generally
do so without regard for method—indeed, are often unconscious that
method could be applied to our thought. But what is meant by method? I
may best explain by an example.

From somewhere or other, a man gets hold of the idea that the proper
subjects are not being taught in our schools and colleges. He asks
himself what the proper subjects would be. He considers how useless
his knowledge of Greek and Latin has been. He decides that these two
subjects should be eliminated. Then he thinks how he would have been
helped in business by a knowledge of bookkeeping, and he concludes
that this subject deserves a place in the curriculum. He has recently
received a letter from a college friend containing some errors in
spelling. He is convinced that this branch of knowledge is being left
in undeserved neglect. Or he is impressed by the spread of unsound
theories of money among the poorer classes, and he believes that
everybody should receive a thorough course in economics and finance.
And so he rambles on, now on this subject, now on that.

Compare this haphazard, aimless thinking with that of the man of
method. This man is confronted with the same general situation as our
first thinker, but he makes his problem a different one. He first asks
himself what end he has in view. He discovers that he is primarily
trying to find out not so much—what subjects should be taught in the
schools? as—what knowledge is of most worth? He puts the problem
definitely before himself in this latter form. He then sees that the
problem—what knowledge is of _most_ worth?, implies that what is
desired is not to find what subjects are of worth and what are not, but
what is the _relative_ value of subjects. His next step, obviously,
is to discover a standard by which the relative value of subjects can
be determined; and this, let us say, he finds in the help a knowledge
of these subjects gives to complete living. Having decided this, he
next classifies in the order of their importance the activities which
constitute human life, and follows this by classifying subjects as they
prepare for these activities.[1]

Needless to say, the results obtained by this thinker will be
infinitely more satisfactory than those arrived at by his unsystematic
brother. Method, then, is essential. But how are we to apply it in all
cases?

Now there are methods without number, and in many cases a problem will
require a method all its own; but we here purpose to take up only those
most general in application.

Before considering these methods of thinking, however, it would
be well to ask ourselves what thinking is. As stated before, the
term is loosely used to cover a wide range of mental processes.
These processes we may roughly divide into memory, imagination and
reasoning. It is the last only with which we have to deal. I admit that
development of the memory is desirable. I admit that development of the
imagination is equally desirable. But they are not the subject of this
book. By “thinking” I mean reasoning. And our present purpose is to
find the nature of this process.

Modern psychologists tell us that all reasoning begins in perplexity,
hesitation, doubt. “The process of reasoning is one of problem solving.
. . . The occasion for the reasoning is always a thwarted purpose.”[2]

It is essential we keep this in mind. It differs from the popular
conception even more than may appear at first sight. _If a man were to
know everything he could not think._ Nothing would ever puzzle him, his
purposes would never be thwarted, he would never experience perplexity
or doubt, he would have no problems. If we are to conceive of God as an
All-Knower, we cannot conceive of Him as a Thinking Being. Thinking is
reserved for beings of finite intelligence.

Were we to study the origin and evolution of thinking, we would
doubtless find that thinking arose in just this way—from thwarted
purposes. If our lives and the lives of our animal ancestors had always
run smoothly, if our every desire were immediately satisfied, if we
never met an obstacle in anything we tried to do, thinking would never
have appeared on this planet. But adversity forced us to it.

Tickle a frog’s left leg, and his right leg will immediately fly up
and scratch it. The action is merely what psychologists would call a
“reflex.” Absolutely no thinking takes place: the frog would do the
same thing if you removed its brain. And if you tickle its right leg
its left leg would fly up to scratch. But if you tickled both legs
at once they could not both fly up and scratch each other. It would
be a physical impossibility. Here, then, is a difficulty. The frog
hesitates; thinking steps upon the scene. After mature deliberation the
frog solves his problem: he holds his left leg still while he scratches
it with his right, then he holds his right leg still and scratches
that with his left.

We cannot, then, think on “general principles.” To try this is like
attempting to chew laughing gas. To think at all requires a purpose,
no matter how vague. The best thinking, however, requires a definite
purpose, and the more definite this purpose the more definite will be
our thinking. Therefore in taking up any special line of thought, we
must first find just what our end or purpose is, and thus get clearly
in mind what our problems are.

Advising a man to ask himself what his problems are may seem absurd.
But it is just this confusion as to what they want to know which
has driven men into error time and time again. The history of the
never-ending philosophical controversy between “materialism” and
“idealism” is largely a history of different ways of stating the issue;
the progress made is mainly due to the increasing definiteness with
which it has been stated.

One of the most frequent sources of confusion in stating questions
is in failure to distinguish between what is and what ought to be.
Considering woman suffrage a man will ask himself “What is woman’s
sphere?,” when he really wants to know not what woman’s sphere actually
is, but what it ought to be. Our first step, then, is to get our
problem or problems clearly in mind, and to state them as definitely as
possible. A problem properly stated is a problem partly solved.

What we will do next depends on the nature of the question. In the
example “What knowledge is of most worth?” we proceeded to look for
a criterion of worthiness. And this was really a re-stating of the
question. For instead of asking ourselves “What knowledge is of most
worth?,” we began asking “What knowledge best prepares for complete
living?”

Our next move was to classify. This is essential not only to systematic
reasoning but to thinking of any kind. Classification is the process
of grouping objects according to common qualities. But as almost all
objects differ in some qualities and almost all have some qualities
in common, it follows that, contrary to common belief, _there is no
one classification absolutely essential to any group of objects_. An
infinite number of classifications may be made, because every object
has an infinite number of attributes, depending on the aspect we take
of it. Nor is any one aspect of a thing “truer” than any other. The
aspect we take depends entirely on the purpose we have in mind or the
problem we wish to solve. As William James pointed out:

“Now that I am writing it is essential that I conceive my paper as a
surface for inscription. If I failed to do that I should have to stop
my work. But if I wished to light a fire and no other materials were
by, the essential way of conceiving the paper would be as combustible
material; and I need then have no thought of any of its other
destinations. It is really all that it is: a combustible, a writing
surface, a thin thing, a hydrocarbonaceous thing, a thing eight inches
one way and ten another, a thing just one furlong east of a certain
stone in my neighbor’s field, an American thing, etc., etc., _ad
infinitum_.”[3]

And if the reader insist that these qualities are merely “accidental,”
and that what the thing really is, is just _paper_ and nothing else,
the reply is that the reader is intellectually petrified; that though
“paper” may be our commonest title for it and may suggest our usual
purpose with it, yet that purpose and this title and the properties
which this title suggest have in reality nothing sacramental about them.

So because you have classified something from one aspect do not
imagine that you are necessarily precluded from classifying it from
any other. A man who is studying the theory of money may divide the
medium of exchange into standard money and credit currency. But this
need not keep him from viewing it as coins, government notes, and
bank currency, nor should it prevent him from classifying it into,
say (1) hand-to-hand money, (2) written or printed orders of one
party to pay specified sums to another, and (3) book accounts.[4]
All these classifications will be true; all may be useful for a full
comprehension. Every classification should of course be logical; but it
is far more essential that it be utilizable.

And while we are treating of utility, we might note that this
_pragmatic_ method can be applied with profit to nearly all our
positive problems. Before starting to solve a question—while deciding,
for instance, on the validity of some nice distinction in logic—we
should ask ourselves, “What practical difference will it make if
I hold one opinion or the other? How will my belief influence my
action?”—(using the word “action” in its broadest sense). This may
often lead our line of inquiry into more fruitful channels, keep
us from making fine but needless distinctions, help us to word our
question more relevantly, and lead us to make distinctions where we
really need them.

We are now ready to consider in order a number of constructive methods
in thinking.

One method applicable to almost all problems is what we may call
either the _deductive_ or the _à priori_ method. This method reaches a
conclusion without observation or experiment. It consists in reasoning
from previous experience or from established principles to particular
facts. It may, however, be used to confirm observation and experiment
as well as to take their place. Take the all important questions in
biology of whether or not specific characteristics acquired by an
animal during its life time are inherited by offspring. The a priori
method would examine the structures of the body, the germ plasm from
which the offspring develops, and the relation between them, and would
ask just how a specific change in the body could affect the germ. If it
were found that the tissues that are to continue the race were set off
so completely from the structures of the body as to make inconceivable
any manner by which they could be influenced by changes in these
structures, then this method would decide that acquired characteristics
are not transmitted.

Let us take another example. Both the supporters and opponents of
woman suffrage have often decided the question without consulting at
all the actual results achieved in the States where women vote. They
have settled the question to their own satisfaction merely on a priori
grounds. They have considered woman’s supposed mental qualities as
compared with man’s, and have decided on her fitness for the ballot
solely from these considerations. It must be remembered, however, that
before women were admitted to suffrage anywhere, deductive or a priori
reasoning was the only kind possible.

It is often helpful to look at a problem from the viewpoint of
different sciences. A problem in political science will very likely
have an economic aspect, whether it concerns taxation, tariff, trusts
or the ownership of land, and so we may look at the question solely
from the viewpoint of economics. But the problem may also have an
ethical aspect. If it is proposed to pass a universal prohibition law,
you may ask, “Has the Government the right to interfere in this way
with personal liberty?” Again, we could take a psychological view: we
would decide from our knowledge of human nature just what the effect of
an alcohol prohibition law would be—whether it would not drive men to
even more dangerous drugs, such as morphine and opium.

And now we come to a whole host of effective methods, all of which may
be classed as comparative. The comparative method is as old as thought
itself, but it is strange that even scientists did not begin to use
it consciously and consistently until almost the present generation.
Nowhere is it better illustrated than in modern psychology. Most of
the so-called branches of psychology are merely different forms of the
comparative method of treatment. “Abnormal psychology” is merely a
comparison of abnormal mental types with normal mental types for the
light they throw on each other. “Child study” is a comparison of the
mind of the child with that of the adult. “Animal psychology” is a
comparison of the actions of animals with each other and with those of
man. And none of these methods is of any value except in so far as it
makes use of comparison.

Often consciously used in the consideration of problems is the
so-called historical method. This method, as its name implies, consists
in obtaining knowledge of a thing by considering its past record. The
word history is popularly used in so narrow a sense, however, being
restricted only to the history of nations, and often merely to the
political history of nations, that we can avoid confusion by calling
this method the evolutionary. In the final analysis the method is
comparative, for it really consists in comparing a thing at one period
of development with itself at another period.

Let us take our example from political science. The historical
method, in its popular sense, has been so much used here, even to the
exclusion of other methods, that it would seem needless to speak of
it. But often the method has been abused and often it has not been
given broad enough treatment. It traces the growth of an institution,
or of an idea—personal liberty, say,—through successive periods.
It notes what the path has been, and judges of the probable future
tendency. But a far broader outlook than we get from this narrowly
conceived “historical” method is furnished by evolutionary sociology.
Here we inquire into the origin of society and of the various trades,
industries, professions and pursuits of all kinds, and to do this we go
far into prehistoric times.

Nowhere is the evolutionary method more strikingly seen than in
biology. Since Darwin’s great theory was promulgated the science has
gone forward by leaps and bounds. We have derived untold benefit from
a comparison of man and animals in the light of this hypothesis;
even study of the development of individual man has been aided. The
discovery of the _fact_ of evolution constituted an incalculable
advance, but the method for study which it furnished was of even
greater importance.

I have spoken of the comparison of man and animals “in the light of
this (evolutionary) hypothesis.” This brings us to a point which must
be kept in mind in practically all observation. We are often exhorted
to “observe.” Presumably we are to do this “on general principles.”
Such advice is about as foolish as asking us to think on general
principles. Imagine for the moment what would happen if you started
right now to “observe” as much as you could. You might begin with this
book and notice the size of the type, the amount of margin, the quality
of the paper, the dimensions of the page, the number of pages. But
you have by no means exhausted the number of properties possessed by
this book. You must observe that it is also combustible, that it is
destructible, that it is machine made, that it is American printed,
that it is such and such a price, that it weighs so many ounces,
that it is flat, that it is rectangular, that its thickness is so
much. . . .

The absurdity is obvious. If we started out merely to observe, with no
definite purpose in mind, we could keep it up forever. And get nowhere.
Nine out of every ten observations would never be put to use. We would
be sinfully wasting our time. To observe most profitably, just as to
think most profitably, we must have a definite purpose. This purpose
must be _to test the truth of a supposition_. A concrete example will
make this clear.

A man has been shipwrecked on an island and believes himself to be
alone there. One day, as he is walking along the beach, he discovers
footprints. How did they get there? His first assumption is that they
are his own. It occurs to him, however, that he had not been near this
spot for over a week, and that yesterday’s storm would have washed any
footprints away. This objection is confirmed by making a footprint
himself and comparing it with the one observed, and noticing that they
differ markedly. The footprints being those of some one else, how did
the man who made them get there? The first supposition is that he
came in a boat. The idea of a small boat is dismissed because of the
assumed great distance of this island from other land. Therefore the
man must have come in a large vessel. But the footprints lead to a wet
part of the sand and the tide is just going down. In this case they
are very recent—made not more than a half hour ago. This being so the
man who made them could not have had time to get back to any ship and
sail out of sight. If he came in a ship it should be still in view. The
discoverer of the footprints climbs a tree from which he can view the
sea around the entire island. He can sight no vessel. The supposition
or hypothesis that the unknown came in a ship is abandoned. Then the
suggestion comes that the unknown has been on the island during the
entire time that the shipwrecked man thought himself alone. This
suggestion is tested in a manner similar to the others. . . .

The example sums up roughly the general process of all thought, and
brings out the motive and value of observation. Let us analyze it.

The first thing to happen is the arousal of a feeling of perplexity,
the appearance of a problem. The man has been shambling along,
doubtless “thinking” in that loose sense referred to. He has perhaps
kicked several stones loose that would have set a geologist worrying,
and has picked branches from bushes which would have puzzled a
botanist. But this man has not had his curiosity aroused until he has
come to these footprints. His thinking starts with his perplexity.
After this doubt has been aroused the most obvious solution suggests
itself—“my own footprints.” But if true, this suggestion involves the
co-existence of other facts, some of which are known and some of which
may be determined. Thus, _if_ they were his own footprints, it must,
among other things, necessarily follow (1) that he had been at that
spot before, (2) that nothing had happened since that time to remove
the prints, (3) that the footprints corresponded to his own. The first
consequence involved—that he had been there before—was a fact, but
the others were not, and so the suggestion was dropped. Then a second
hypothesis occurred—“the man came in a ship”—and this was tried out
in a similar way. Notice that in each case the consequences dependent
on the truth of the suggestion are tried out (1) by memory, (2) by
observation or experiment. Memory came when he thought of the last time
he had walked near the beach and of yesterday’s storm. Observation came
when he compared his footprint with the one seen, when he followed the
footprints along the sand and noticed where they led, when he climbed a
tree and looked for a ship. There were a number of other things which
he could have observed. He might have noticed the texture of the sand,
what kind of a tree he was climbing, what sort of clouds were in the
sky. But he did not observe these interesting things simply because
they would throw no light on the truth or falsity of his supposition.
In another problem one of these facts might have been of value.

It is almost possible to sum up the whole process of thinking as the
occurrence of suggestions for the solution of difficulties and the
testing out of those suggestions. The suggestions or suppositions
are tested by observation, memory, experiment. Supposition and
observation alternate. The first facts observed—in the case foregoing,
the footprints—make the problem, they suggest the supposition. A
supposition is that the man came in a boat. _If_ the man came in a boat
such and such would be the case—the boat would still be visible, etc.
If the boat is not visible the supposition is given up and another one
made; if the boat is visible the supposition is confirmed. This is a
case of simple and rudimentary thinking, but it illustrates roughly the
process of thought on even the most complicated problems of science.
The methods we have been discussing may all be considered simply as
means for helping good suggestions occur to us.

Let us illustrate by considering a few methods of rather restricted
application. We are often aided in the solution of a problem by asking
its opposite. If we ask ourselves “What constitutes gracefulness?” we
may find ourselves at a loss for suggestions, because gracefulness
always seems “so natural.” But if we ask its opposite, “What
constitutes awkwardness?,” suggestions are more apt to occur. If we
find, for instance, that awkwardness consists in undue bodily effort
in making a movement, we may assume that gracefulness consists in ease
of movement. In the same way the question of what makes us forget may
be helped by asking ourselves what makes us remember, and light may be
thrown on the causes of success in business and in life by a study of
the causes of failure.

The method of analogy likewise encourages suggestions. Analogy consists
in noting certain likenesses between things, and assuming that they
also possess other common qualities. Striking use of analogy is made
in dealing with the planet Mars. At each pole there are great white
patches. The size of these varies markedly with the seasons, which
suggests that like the earth, Mars has great areas of ice and snow at
its two poles which melt and re-form. The general surface is reddish,
but three-eighths of it is covered by blue-green tracts, and these are
usually inferred to be seas. These again are connected by an intricate
system of blue-green lines, which some scientists believe to be
canals, but on this there is much controversy. In Mars we have at once
an illustration of the possibilities and dangers of analogy.

In the whole discussion of constructive method thus far, I have left
out the two most common and useful methods of all. The first of
these we may designate by a somewhat formidable title: _empirical
observation_. Empirical, at least for our present purposes, means
merely that which comes within experience. But the term is generally
opposed to scientific. Thus Dewey gives an example: “A says, ‘It will
probably rain to-morrow.’ B asks, ‘Why do you think so?’ And A replies,
‘Because the sky was lowering at sunset.’ When B asks, ‘What has that
to do with it?’ A responds, ‘I do not know, but it generally does rain
after such a sunset.’ He does not perceive any _connection_ between
the appearance of the sky and the coming rain; he is not aware of any
continuity in the facts themselves—any law or principle, as we usually
say. He simply, from frequently recurring conjunction of the events,
has associated them so that when he sees one he thinks of the other.”[5]

This, however, is not what I mean to imply by the term empirical
observation. I mean rather thinking on the basis merely of facts
which occur in the natural course of events, which have not been
systematically produced by ourselves or others for the purpose
of solving a problem. Logicians usually call this method simply
_observation_, and oppose it to experiment. But I object to calling
this simply observation because experiment itself is really
observation, only in one case we observe merely events which happen to
occur, and in the other we observe the results of events _which we have
made occur_. The true way of distinguishing these two methods would
be to call one _empirical observation_, and the other _experimental
observation_.

This empirical method—if indeed I am justified in calling it a
_method_—is the most common in all thinking. To give examples of it
would be to show how men generally think. But the method has real
value, and may even be the most important of all, for if we thought
without it our ideas would doubtless be original, but very dangerous.
Let us apply it to some of the problems considered under other methods.

Empirical observation is used where experiment is impossible—often,
unfortunately, where experiment is merely inconvenient. In political
science the empirical method would consist in noting the effect of
certain laws,—e.g., tariffs of different countries and of the same
country at different periods—and noting economic conditions at the time
the different tariffs were in effect. Allowance would be made for other
factors which could influence the country’s economic condition and the
effect of the tariff could then be determined.

The empirical method of dealing with meteorology, the science of
weather, would consist in making a study of cloud formations, wind
velocity, moisture in the air, temperature, etc., and noting what
conditions usually or perhaps invariably followed certain of these
conditions. From this, conclusions could be drawn as to what weather
to expect following certain conditions.

But valuable as empirical observation is, and often as we must use it,
it should never be employed when we can experiment. When the empirical
method is rightly used allowance always has to be made for certain
irrelevant factors. But “making allowances” is always sheer guess
work. _The experimental method consists not in making allowances for
certain factors, but in eliminating those factors._ In our example
from political science experiment is practically impossible, because
the factors which may influence economic conditions are innumerable,
and even were they few, no country could survive the dangers of being
experimented upon—to say nothing of its permitting it. Experiment is
similarly impossible in dealing with weather conditions directly. It is
impossible in astronomy.

But it could be applied quite easily to most questions. Suppose you
wanted to determine beyond question which of two methods of teaching a
given subject was the better. We shall assume for the moment that you
have unlimited time and money to experiment. It may be thought that
we could settle this simply by teaching one person according to one
method and another person according to the other, and that we could
determine the relative merits of each method from the progress made by
each pupil. This, however, would be practically of no use whatever.
One pupil might be naturally brighter than the other, and so would
naturally learn quicker, even were he taught by an inferior method.

To make the experiment of any use we should first take two _groups_
of pupils—the larger the better. For it is obvious that if we take a
great number of pupils and place them in two groups the differences
between the individuals will tend to offset one another. Let us say the
subject is one in which the progress can be quantitatively measured,
say typewriting, and let us suppose there are fifty pupils in each
group. If after a given time _all_ the pupils in one group had attained
a greater speed with accuracy than _all_ the pupils in the other,
the test would be almost unquestionable. This would be even more
conclusive if the groups were reasonably well balanced. For if all of
one group were men and all of the other were boys, the men might make
more rapid progress than the boys even with a less efficient system.
But it should be easy to divide classes and groups so as to have a
reasonable balance of intelligence between them. The probable result
of any experiment would be that in neither class would all the pupils
make more progress than all the pupils of the other, though you might
find that the preponderating majority in one class improved faster than
those in the other, and this would probably be sufficient to indicate
the superiority of one method, even though one or two pupils in the
second group progressed faster than one or two in the first.

I say “probably” because there are still many irrelevant factors which
might influence the result. For instance, if you had a different
teacher for each group, one group might make greater progress not
because of the method but because of the teacher. This means either
that one teacher should teach both groups, or that we should multiply
the number of groups and the number of teachers, and have half the
teachers teaching half the groups by one method, and the other half
teaching by the other method. Of course here too the more we could
multiply the number the better it would be. Even then there might be
some reasonable question as to the validity of the experiment, for it
might be that one method would tend to encourage faster progress at
the beginning, but that the other would lead to greater progress in
the long run. This could be determined only by carrying our experiment
over a long period. And we might still have irrelevant factors, for the
machines on which one group learnt to typewrite might be superior to
those on which the other group learnt, and this factor would have to be
eliminated in a similar way to the others.

The experimental method has been well summed up by Thomson and Tait in
their _Natural Philosophy_:

“In all cases when a particular agent or cause is to be studied,
experiments should be arranged in such a way as to lead if possible
to results depending on it alone; or, if this cannot be done, they
should be arranged so as to increase the effects due to the cause to be
studied till these so far exceed the unavoidable concomitants, that the
latter may be considered as only disturbing, not essentially modifying
the effects of the principal agent.”

In all experiments one must exercise ingenuity in finding other causes
besides the one to be studied which may possibly influence a result,
and in eliminating these. It might benefit the reader considerably if
he were to think out for himself how he would apply experiment in its
most thoroughgoing form to solve a given question, say the inheritance
of acquired characteristics.

       *       *       *       *       *

I have now cited enough methods to at least indicate what “thinking
with method” means. To satisfy a certain human craving all of these
have been named, though sometimes arbitrarily. Of course each may have
to be modified to some extent to adjust it to different problems. I
must repeat: there are methods numberless, and some problems will
require methods all their own.

But what is important is that every problem should be dealt with by
as many methods as possible. Doubtless you have used, at some time or
other in the course of your thinking, nearly every one of the methods
I have so far suggested. But the point is not that you have never used
these methods at all, but that you have not used them often enough. You
were unaware what method you were using. Consequently you used it only
occasionally. You used it only when you stumbled on it accidentally. To
formulate methods is to bring them to your attention, so that you may
use them always, thoroughly, correctly, consistently.

We have treated political science from most angles. We have applied
more than one method to several other problems. To still further
clarify, exemplify and impress this point, I shall show the application
of method to one more subject.

Suppose you wanted to invent a system of shorthand, and wanted to make
it as perfect as possible. How would you go about it?

Your first step should be to restate your question most advantageously.
You want to create certain characters or symbols, which will (1) take
the shortest time to write, (2) will be easily recognized by yourself
or others, even if written carelessly, and (3) which will not be so
numerous or so complex as to be difficult to learn. You may decide that
such symbols would have even further requirements. Next you should
decide on the methods to use in attacking your problem—this in order
not to forget any. Now assume you have decided on these methods and
that the first is the a priori. Your conclusion might be that it would
be impossible to have a different symbol for every word, and that it
is necessary to have some sort of alphabet. Should this alphabet be
based on that used in longhand? That is, should merely a simpler symbol
stand in place of each letter? Or should a different symbol represent
each sound? Or would it be possible to have a different elementary
symbol for each syllable? Having decided the basis for your symbols or
characters, you will know at least approximately the number required.
Your problem will then become that of making the characters as simple
as possible, so that they may be written most quickly; and yet as
different from each other as possible so that if written carelessly
(as they will be when written swiftly), they may be easily recognized.
You might try writing down all the simplest symbols you can think of.
Or you might ask yourself whether there is any fundamental geometrical
figure from which you can derive your symbols. Or you might study the
simplest and easiest movements of the hand, and base your characters on
these.

This a priori method is most apt of all to provoke real thinking. It
should therefore be taken up before any of the others. Not only is it
best for making you think deeply, but it will be more likely than any
of the others to make you think originally. However, whether attended
by great or little success, this method should be followed by others.

Not the least fruitful of these would be the evolutionary. This, of
course, would consist in studying the history of shorthand, finding out
the direction in which it has been tending, and thus anticipating in
some degree its future development. As this method is comparative we
would naturally be led from it to comparing the shorthand systems of
to-day, and assaying the good and bad qualities of each. These could
only be assayed if we knew something of shorthand theory, and thus our
experience with the deductive or a priori method would be of service.

Implied in here is a method of different nature than any we have yet
discussed, but one of immense help. In turning from the deductive
method to a study of shorthand systems which others have developed,
you have an opportunity to compare the results of your own thinking
with those obtained by others. If you have failed to solve the question
in as good a manner as these others, you can ask yourself wherein and
why your own reflections and ingenuity fell short. If you follow this
method with all problems—i.e., thinking a thing out for yourself before
looking up what others have thought—you will soon improve your thinking
surprisingly. The method is capable of application in every problem,
from inventing an adding machine to trying to find how the plumber got
that $3.46 on the bill.

But to return to shorthand. We still have the empirical and
experimental methods. In this particular case the difference between
them would be simply one of degree. We could find, for instance, what
systems were used by the fastest shorthand writers; but we could get
nothing conclusive from this, for we would have to make allowance for
the natural ability and length of training of these writers. From
merely looking at two outlines or characters, it is often difficult to
tell which can be written faster. This could only be tested by writing
hundreds in a row and finding the time it took to write the same number
of each. Of course such experiment is capable of indefinite expansion.

In dealing with method heretofore, I have at times come dangerously
near to making a false assumption. I have been talking as if a man
who took up political science, shorthand, or any other subject, were
dealing with only one problem. As a matter of fact he is dealing with
a whole series of problems. Just how many it is difficult to say,
because no problem worthy of the name is an indivisible unit, and
may always be broken into smaller problems. The whole science of
æsthetics is included in the simple question “What is beauty?”, the
science of ethics is merely the answer to “What is right conduct?”,
and metaphysics may be reduced to the problem “What is reality?” But
when we come to deal with any of these we instinctively break them up
into smaller and more concrete problems, making the treatment easier,
just as a general attempts to split his enemy’s forces, so that he can
annihilate one section at a time. Often, indeed, the very division of
the larger problem into smaller problems constitutes its solution, for
we finally come to a problem which practically answers itself, and
which we recognize as being included in, or a particular form of, some
more general problem to which we already know the answer.

A man sets before himself the question, “What is the proper sphere of
Government?” Perhaps he will first of all consider certain different
specific activities which might possibly be supposed to come within
the sphere of governmental interference. He might ask himself, for
instance, “Should the Government interfere with freedom of contract?”
Notice that he has here temporarily made his problem narrower, he has
chosen to break it up in order to deal with it part by part. But even
when he came to cope with this smaller problem he would probably find
it necessary to break this up, and he would therefore take a specific
example. Suppose a man works for so much an hour, and that nine hours’
work a day gives him the minimum amount on which he can live and
support his family. Would it be wise to limit the legal working day of
such a man to eight hours? This problem practically answers itself,
and so further division is unnecessary. Of course the answer to this
does not determine the answer to the original question, for other parts
still remain to be considered.

In fact, much of the success of our thinking will depend upon just how
we divide our big problems into subsidiary problems, and just what our
subsidiary or subordinate problems are. This will depend to some extent
on our own natural sagacity, and to some extent on mere chance. No
rigid rules can be laid down. The only advice which can be offered is
that when a thinker breaks up a problem he should do so with an eye to
utility and definiteness.

John Stuart Mill, in an essay on Jeremy Bentham, pointed out that the
secret of the latter’s strength and originality of thought lay in his
method, which “may be shortly described as the method of detail; of
treating wholes by separating them into their parts, abstractions by
resolving them into things,—classes and generalities by distinguishing
them into the individuals of which they are made up; and breaking every
question into pieces before attempting to solve it.” The method was not
absolutely original with Bentham, but “whatever originality there was
in the method, in the subjects he applied it to, and in the rigidity
with which he adhered to it, there was the greatest.”

The systematic thinker is careful of the manner in which he marshals
his difficulties. He knows that certain problems should properly be
considered before certain others, and he saves himself labor and
sometimes error by considering them in that order. Before asking
himself how Government should cure a given social evil, he first asks
whether it is the duty or even the right of the State to attend to
that particular evil at all. In other words, before asking what the
State should do in any particular case, he considers first what the
proper sphere of government is. It must be admitted that a previous
question often cannot be discovered until one has actually attempted
the solution of a problem. In the foregoing instance, it would be
difficult to determine the proper sphere of government by any other
method than a consideration of particular cases where government
interference suggests itself.

In fact, it is only by deep reflection on a subject that we come to
realize most of the problems involved. You walk along the road with
your friend the botanist and he stops to pick what looks to you to be
a common wild flower. “Hm,” he muses, “I wonder how that got in this
part of the country?” Now that is no problem to you, simply because
you do not happen to know why that particular flower should _not_ be
there—and what men do not know about they take for granted. Knowledge
furnishes problems, and the discovery of problems itself constitutes an
intellectual advance.

Whenever you are thrashing out a subject, write down every problem,
difficulty and objection that occurs to you. When you get what you
consider a satisfactory solution, see whether or not it answers all of
them.

I have stated that method is essential to good thinking. I have given
rules and examples of methodic thinking. But I do not want to create
a false impression. If a man has not within him the materials of a
thinker, no amount of method can make him one. Half the thinking
process, as pointed out, depends on the occurrence of suggestions. The
occurrence of suggestions depends on how ideas are associated in a
man’s mind. While this depends to some extent on the education and the
whole past life and environment of the individual, it depends far more
on inborn mental qualities. All method can do is to awaken the most
fruitful associations of ideas already in mind. Hence the more methods
we adopt—the greater the number of views we take of any problem—the
more solutions will suggest themselves.

There is one further reason why we should take as many different
viewpoints as possible. In our example of the inheritance of acquired
characteristics in animals, if we had been sure that the results of our
deductive reasoning were correct, it would have been a sinful waste of
time to experiment. But when we attack a problem by several methods we
can compare the results from each. If these results agree we have good
evidence that our solution is correct. But if we have adopted quite a
number of viewpoints, and have not let the results of one influence
those of the next, they are almost certain to be at variance. This
means that we have erred in applying one or several methods. How are
we to find which of the methods it was, and how are we to prevent such
errors?

This is the subject of our next chapter.



III

A FEW CAUTIONS


Thus far we have considered only positive and constructive thinking,
and means for obtaining relevant suggestions. We have had almost
nothing to do with cautions, means for avoiding fallacy and error, and
means for testing the truth and value of suggestions. Most writers who
have discussed thinking have dwelt so much on the negative aspect—so
much on what we should not do—and have so slighted the question of
what we should do, that I have perhaps been led to adopt this order,
more from a feeling of revolt than because it is logically better. But
I believe I have logic on my side. Constructive methods make thinking
“go”; cautions steer it in the right path. An automobile without a
steering gear is almost as useless as one without a motor. But an
automobile can go without being steered, whereas it cannot be steered
unless it is going.

But while with automobiles we can clearly divide moving from steering,
we cannot do this with thinking. The two processes are so inextricably
bound up, that we cannot engage in one without engaging in the other;
we cannot even speak of one without implying the other. I have divided
them for convenience of exposition. But in the last chapter we were
forced to deal slightly with cautions, and here we shall have to
consider constructive methods to some extent.

A case in point is classification. In taking this up from a
constructive standpoint, I remarked that all classifications ought to
be logical. But I did not say what I meant by logical, nor did I tell
how a logical classification could be secured. The two most prominent
errors made in classifying are (1) not making classifications mutually
exclusive, (2) not making them cover all the objects or phenomena
supposed to be classified.

The first error is the less common, for though occurring among all
thinkers, it is comparatively infrequent among those who proceed with
caution. It is, moreover, more easily discovered than the second.
Consider the classification of constructive methods into comparison,
observation, and experiment. It is apparent that these methods overlap.
We cannot compare without observing, much of our observation involves
comparison, when we experiment we must of course observe the results
obtained, and the results are usually always compared. All three
methods could be classed under observation. It is well to remember,
however, that the first classification may be useful—even more so than
one strictly logical, and that the nature of a subject will often make
impracticable, divisions which do not overlap in some degree.

The second error—that of not making a classification cover all the
objects or phenomena it is supposed to cover—is not so easy to
detect. It is one to which the greatest philosophers have been heir.
Some of our Socialist friends say there are but two kinds of people:
capitalists and laborers, “the people who live on others and the people
who are lived on.” They overlook that class of farmers who own a little
piece of land and do their own tilling. Even if they insist that such a
class “is rapidly becoming extinct,” the fact remains that it is still
with us and must be taken into account.

All classifications are made with a certain number of facts in mind,
and fortunate is he who happens to have just the right facts. We cannot
hold many facts in mind at once, and we often generalize upon thousands
of things by taking a supposedly representative dozen. To avoid error
all we can do is to keep constantly on the lookout for examples,
especially those which apparently will not fit into our generalization.
If they go in without straining anything, our classification receives
added warrant. But sometimes you will find that where you have three
classes a new fact will necessitate a fourth, and that often it will
overturn your whole beautiful structure.

There is another phase of thinking, which while chiefly cautionary, is
also in part constructive. We have so often been warned to “avoid the
treachery of words” and to “define all our terms” that a repetition
of the advice seems unnecessary. But we cannot overlook the excellent
counsel of Blaise Pascal. He urges that we not only define our terms,
but that whenever we use them we mentally substitute the definition.
However, this needs to be qualified. If every time we used a term we
stopped to substitute its definition, our thought might be exact but
would hardly move forward very rapidly. It will usually be sufficient
simply to substitute the definition a few times, for after doing this
we shall gradually come to know exactly what we mean by a term, and
further substitution would merely waste time. Of course, all this need
be applied only to terms new, technical or equivocal; or those used in
a mooted proposition.

I have spoken of analogy as a constructive method. This, however,
should be used only for suggestion, for it is most dangerous. Often
we use an analogy and are quite unaware of it. Thus many social
and political thinkers have called society an “organism,” and have
proceeded to deal with it as if it were a large animal. They have
thought not in terms of the actual phenomena under consideration,
but in terms of the analogy. In so far as the terms of the analogy
were more concrete than those of the phenomena, their thinking has
been made easier. But no analogy will ever hold good throughout, and
consequently these thinkers have often fallen into error.

The quickest way to detect error in analogy is to carry it out as far
as it will go—and further. Every analogy will break down somewhere. Any
analogy if carried out far enough becomes absurd. We are most likely to
err when we carry an analogy too far, but not to the point where the
absurdity is apparent. Take the analogy employed in our first chapter,
comparing thinking and a ship. For the sake of the image I shall make
this a motor-boat. We might carry this out further. We might compare
the effect on the mind of books and experience to the fuel used for the
engine. The brain, transforming outward experience into thought, might
be paralleled with a carburetor transforming fuel into usable form.
An idea may be compared to a spark. All this is very fascinating. It
may even lead to suggestions of real value. But it is bound soon or
late to develop into the ludicrous. The analogy in question, however,
does not need to be developed to be confuted. For unless a boat has a
propeller and a rudder, its engine is useless. A mind is capable of
attaining truth without even being aware of the existence of a science
of thinking or of logic.

Another way to find whether an analogy is fallacious is to see whether
you can discover a counter analogy. Surely this is the most effective
practice in refuting analogy in argument. This suggests the case of
the man who had a ticket from New York to Chicago, and tried to use it
from Chicago to New York. The railroad refused to accept it, whereupon
the man brought suit. The lawyer for the defendant, in the heat of
the debate, said, “Why, a man might just as well pay for a barrel of
potatoes and then demand a barrel of apples!” Whereupon the attorney
for the plaintiff replied, “It would be rather like a grocer selling
a man a barrel of potatoes and then trying to compel him to eat them
from the top down, refusing to allow him to turn the barrel upside
down and begin eating them from the bottom up.” It is best to avoid
analogy except for purposes of suggestion, or as a rhetorical device
for explaining an idea already arrived at by other means.

I have been forced to defend my advice to take as many viewpoints
as possible, by pointing out that the conclusions obtained from
these viewpoints might disagree; in fact would be almost sure to
disagree. Of course, this disagreement might be avoided if we allowed
the conclusions reached by one method or viewpoint to influence our
conclusions in another. But if we do this we give our problem more
shallow treatment, and we are not so sure of a result when we get it.
When a mathematician adds a column of figures from the top down, he
confirms by re-adding from the bottom up. He knows that if he added
in the same manner the second time he would be liable to fall into
the same errors. And in thinking, when we leave one method and take
up another, we should try to forget entirely the first conclusion and
begin on the problem as if we had never taken it up before. After we
have taken up all the applicable methods, then, and then only, should
we begin to compare conclusions.

Time forbids doing this with all problems. Time forbids even attacking
all problems from different points of view. But there are some
problems where this unquestionably ought to be done. The problem
of whether or not characteristics acquired during the life time of
one individual may be inherited by his offspring, if dealt with at
all, is too important to be left to the a priori method alone. This
problem asks whether the children of educated parents will necessarily
be innately superior to the children of uneducated parents; it asks
whether the man of today is superior to the ancient Greek, or even the
present day savage; or, assuming that the negro race is inferior to the
white race, it asks whether generations of education will bring it to
the white race level or leave it unchanged; it asks whether the hope
of improving the human race lies in education or eugenics. No question
can be more important than this in its practical bearings. The answer
to it will profoundly influence our opinions in education, psychology,
ethics, economics, political science—even philosophy and metaphysics.
The answer we obtain to this question from deductive reasoning, no
matter how unanswerable or conclusive it may seem, should be checked
up by nothing short of the most thoroughgoing experiment.

Unfortunately the experiments needed for this particular question
cannot be carried on by the layman. It is equally to be regretted that
scientists have been none too thorough in carrying them out themselves.
But we should remember that any result we arrive at should be subject
to revision, and that if we take up this problem at all, we should at
least make it our duty to read about and criticise all the experiments
that come to our notice.

A question has perhaps just occurred to the reader. If the deductive
method is to be checked up by experiment, and the results of the
experiment are always to be taken, why not experiment first, and omit
theory altogether?

Leaving aside the fact that theory is the best guide for
experiment—that were it not for theory and the problems and hypotheses
that come out of it, we would not know the points we wanted to verify,
and hence would experiment aimlessly—a more serious objection is that
experiment is seldom if ever perfect, for it nearly always involves
some unverified assumption. I have referred to empirical observation
and experiment as two different methods. But the difference is
mainly, if not solely, one of degree. If we experimented to find out
whether acquired characteristics were inherited, it is obvious that
our experiments would have to be confined to animals. If we found,
let us say, that no acquired characteristic was ever transmitted
to offspring, we could not say that this would be equally true of
man, but would be justified in concluding only that the acquired
characteristics of _animals_ are not transmitted to descendants. Nay,
we could not go even this far. We would have to confine ourselves
to the statement that certain acquired characteristics of the few
score animals we had experimented upon were not transmissible. But
even this statement would involve assumption. We could say only
that certain acquired characteristics of the few score animals we
had experimented upon had not been transmitted in these particular
instances. We would have to limit ourselves to a bare statement of
fact; we could draw no conclusion whatever. But if we had attacked
this problem from the deductive standpoint, and had concluded that
owing to certain conditions holding alike in all animals and in man,
acquired characteristics _could not possibly_ be transmitted, we would
have sufficient ground for deriving from our experiments a broad
generalization.

Experiment and deduction are not the only methods which can be checked
up against each other. We can do likewise with the comparative and
the experimental, the historical and the theoretical—in fact, all
viewpoints applicable to any one problem.

       *       *       *       *       *

When you encounter a question about which there is a controversy, and
where the adherents of both sides nearly equal each other in number
and intellectual status, you may be almost certain that each side has
caught sight of some truth, but that neither has seen the whole truth;
and you should endeavor to unite both sides by a broader and deeper
solution. A classic philosophical example of this method is Herbert
Spencer’s attempt to reconcile science and religion, and his effort
to unite the “intuitional” and “experiential” schools of thought. The
intuitionists maintained that the mind had from birth intuitions by
which it knew certain truths independently of experience. Such truths
as the axiom that a straight line is the shortest distance between two
points, or that it is morally wrong to do certain acts, were regarded
as among these intuitions. The “empiricists” or “sensationalists,” on
the other hand, maintained that all our knowledge—even of such a fact,
for instance, as that two and two are four, where we cannot conceive
otherwise—is learned solely from the individual’s experience, taken in
its broadest sense. Herbert Spencer thought he recognized some truth
in both these doctrines, and came forward with the theory that there
are certain truths which are intuitions so far as the individual is
concerned, but that these intuitions have been inherited from our
ancestors, were originally built up through the ages, and represent
the accumulated experience of the race. Whatever may be thought of
Spencer’s success in this case, the value of the method itself is
undoubted. It was frequently used by Kant, Hegel, Fichte and other
German philosophers.

I have remarked that it is almost possible to sum up the entire process
of thinking as the occurrence of suggestions for the solution of
difficulties and the testing out of those suggestions. The constructive
methods discussed were called means for making good suggestions occur
to us. From this standpoint the cautions with which we have just been
dealing may be considered as tests of suggestions.

Let us refer back to the analysis of thinking given in the case of the
man who discovered footprints on the beach. Even there, in order to
give any adequate idea of his thought process, I was obliged to show
that for various reasons he rejected certain suggested solutions. But
this negative method could be more fully developed. Because the man
rejected a certain solution, it does not follow that it was necessarily
wrong. Suppose the final suggestion—that the unknown had been on the
island all the time—were to have been tested out, and that certain
further facts were discovered which tended to disprove it; the man
might find it necessary to look for still another solution. But suppose
this were not forthcoming, suppose that all the possibilities had been
exhausted. It would be necessary to return to some of the original
suggestions. He would have to see whether an error had been made in
testing them. In rejecting the suggestion of a small boat he may have
overestimated the distance of this island from other land. He may have
underestimated the difficulties that a man in a small boat is capable
of surmounting. In rejecting the supposition of a ship, he may have
erred in his judgment of the time the footprints had been on the beach,
or of the time it would take a large vessel to get out of sight.

What is essential is that all suggestions be tested out, either by
memory, observation or experiment, in all their implications, and that
the tendency be resisted to accept the first solution that suggests
itself. For the uncritical thinker will always jump at the first
suggestion, unless an objection actually forces itself into view.
Remaining in a state of doubt is unpleasant. The longer the doubt
remains the more unpleasant it becomes. But the man who is willing
to accept this unpleasantness, the man who is willing carefully
to observe, or experiment if need be, to test the validity of his
suggestions, will finally arrive at a solution much deeper, and one
which will give him far more satisfaction, than the superficial answer
obtained by the man of careless habits of thought.

Thomas A. Edison says he always rejects an easy solution of any problem
and looks for something difficult. But the inventor has one great
advantage over any other kind of thinker. He can test his conclusion
in a tangible way. If his device works, his thinking was right; if his
device doesn’t work, his thinking was wrong. But the philosopher, the
scientist, the social reformer, has no such satisfactory test. His only
satisfaction is the feeling that his results harmonize with all his
experience. The more critical he has been in arriving at those results,
the more deep and permanent will be that feeling, the more valuable
will be his thoughts to himself and to the world. . . .

Even in the first chapter I intimated that logic would constitute a
part of the science of thinking. I intimated, moreover, that it would
constitute almost the whole of what may be called the negative side
of thinking—those rules which serve to steer thought aright. Though
cautionary, the advice given in this chapter is not usually given in
books on logic. But though I cannot overemphasize the importance of a
knowledge of logic, I cannot deal with it here. The science can receive
justice only in a book devoted entirely to it.

If he has not already done so the would-be thinker should study a work
on logic, for unless the present book is supplemented by some treatise
on that science it cannot be regarded as complete.

In order not to confuse the reader I shall recommend only one book.
In order to encourage him I shall recommend a small book, one not so
deep as to be incomprehensible or repulsive to the beginner, but at the
same time one which is recognized as a standard treatise:—_Elementary
Lessons in Logic_, by Stanley Jevons.



IV

CONCENTRATION


 What is the hardest task in the world? To think.—EMERSON.

We have been dealing with the subject of thinking. We have considered
it from both a positive and negative side. But while we have devoted
our attention to thinking, we have neglected the thinker. In more
scientific terms, we have treated thought from the logical side; we are
now to treat it from the psychological.

Few people will admit specific faults in themselves of any kind,
especially if these happen to be intellectual. But almost any man
is willing to confess that he cannot always “concentrate” when he
wants to, in fact, that he is one of the countless victims of “mind
wandering.”

Most of us imagine we know just what we mean by both these terms.
But if we are to judge by most of what has been written, no two
terms are more misconceived. Before trying to find the best means of
concentrating, we must first find just what we mean by concentration.

In a previous chapter I said that suggestions for solutions “occurred.”
I did not say how or why. To discover this we must refer to the famous
psychological principle of association.

Any train of thought is made possible by previous connections of ideas
in our minds. While a girl sits at her window a parade passes along a
nearby street. The band is playing, and ere the tune is completed the
band has gone so far that the music is no longer audible. But the tune
still goes along in her mind, and she completes it herself. It suggests
a dance she had been to where it was played, and this suggests that
she danced the two-step to it. The two-step suggests the more modern
one-step, and this leads her to compare the familiar dancing of to-day
with the distant and respectful minuet.

This is an example of a random train of ideas. It is that loose
“thinking” referred to in our first chapter. But even this is made
possible only by the connection of ideas in our mind at some previous
period. No thought can enter our minds unless it is associated in
some way with the previous thought. Psychologists have traditionally
classified associations into four kinds: association by succession,
by contiguity, by similarity and by contrast. The example just given
involves all four. Association by succession means that when two ideas
or impressions of objects have entered the mind in succession, the
second is likely to be suggested whenever the first is thought of. A
tune consists in a succession of notes, and when the first notes are
brought to mind, as by a passing band, the rest will follow—sometimes
in spite of ourselves. Association by contiguity means that when two
objects or ideas have been in consciousness together, one is always
likely to suggest the other thereafter. This was the case with the
music and the dance, or the music and the two-step. Association
by similarity occurs when two ideas resemble each other in some
particular. They need not have occurred together at any past time, nor
after each other. The fact that they have a common element suffices
to bring up one idea when the other is in mind: thus the two-step
suggested the one-step. Association by contrast needs no explanation.
It is exemplified when the idea of present-day dancing brings up the
idea of distant dancing.

Any attempt to show _why_ the mind acts in this way, any explanation of
the way in which the different kinds of association are made possible,
would bring us into physiological psychology, would involve a study of
the brain and the nervous system. For our purposes it is sufficient to
keep in mind that such associations do take place. Without them no idea
can occur. Without them thought is impossible.

The bearing of all this on concentration has yet to be made plain.
We must remember that every idea has more than one associate; in
fact that each idea generally has a cluster of possible associates.
Instead of suggesting the minuet, the one-step may have made the fox
trot or the three-step occur to the young lady. It may have made her
think of a young man with whom she danced it, or the trouble she had
in learning it. Each of these suggestions, in turn, would also have
potential connections with a cluster of ideas. When we are thinking at
random—when we are day dreaming, as in the example given—the strongest
association, or the first to be aroused, is the one we dwell upon. But
when we are thinking with a purpose, in a word, when we are reasoning,
we reject all associations which have no bearing on our purpose, and
select only those which serve it.

Concentration does not, as popularly supposed, mean keeping the mind
fastened on one object or idea or in one place. It consists in having a
problem or purpose constantly before one. It means keeping our thought
moving toward one desired end.

Concentration is often regarded as intense or focused attention. But
the fact is that all attention is focused attention. Psychologists are
fairly well agreed that we can attend to only one thing at a time. Mind
wandering, and so-called distributed attention, is really attention
directed first to one thing, then to another, then to another; or first
to one thing, then to another, and then back again to the original
object, resting but a few moments on each idea.

Concentration may best be defined as prolonged or sustained attention.
It means keeping the mind on one subject or problem for a relatively
long period, or at least continually reverting to some problem whenever
one’s thoughts momentarily leave it.

Having decided just what we mean by concentration, our next step is
to inquire whether concentration is worth while. The reader may smile
at this question or he may be shocked, according to his temperament.
But if most men were so convinced that concentration is such an
unquestionable virtue, they would practice it a little more. At least
they would make greater efforts to practice it than they do at present.

The truth is that concentration, _per se_, is of little value.
The value of concentration depends almost entirely on the subject
concentrated on. Almost any one will agree that even were a man to
allow his mind to dwell now on one important problem and now on
another, without stopping a very appreciable time at any, he might
nevertheless be improving his time far more than a man who concentrated
continually on some insignificant and inconsequential question.

But of course this is not really an argument against concentration. It
has no application when you concentrate on the proper subject. For if
you start to concentrate on some question which you have decided is
really important, you should keep at it, allowing no deviation. It may
be that during the course of your thought associations will be aroused
which will suggest or bear upon important problems, problems more
important perhaps than the one you originally started to concentrate
on. But if you immediately abandoned every problem you started to
think of, whenever you came across one which you imagined was just as
important, you would probably never really solve any big question.

Our attention is guided by interest. If a man merely allows his
thoughts to flow at random, thinking only of those things which
spontaneously arouse his interest, he may or may not attend to things
worth thinking about. All will depend upon the path in which his
natural interests run. But the point is that if the subject he thinks
about is valuable, it will be so only by accident; whether or not
his thinking is useful will depend upon mere chance. If however he
consciously chooses a subject—chooses it because he believes it to be
important—then his thinking will be worth while.

But there is another reason why concentration is necessary. Suppose a
man started to put up a barbed wire fence, got as far as driving in
all the posts, then lost interest in the fences and decided to grow
potatoes in his field, plowed up the ground, lost interest in the
field and neglected to plant the seeds; decided to paint his house,
got the porch done, lost interest . . . That man might work as hard as
any other man, but he would never get anything done. So with the mind
wanderer and the concentrator. The mind wanderer thinks of a problem,
loses interest, and abandons it. The concentrator sticks to it until it
is solved.

Much of our mind wandering is due to the fact that we are not fully
convinced of the importance of the problem being attacked, or that
we regard other problems or ideas as more important. Concentration
consists in devoting one’s mind to the solution of one problem.
During our train of thought associations bring up new ideas or suggest
problems which do not bear on the question at hand. Now when we wander,
when we follow up these irrelevant ideas or suggested problems, or
when we happen to glance at something or hear something and begin to
think of that, we do so because of a half-conscious belief that the new
idea, problem or fact needs attending to, is important. I have already
pointed out that if this new idea is important it will be so only by
accident. If we were consciously to ask ourselves whether any of these
irrelevant problems were as important as the one we were concentrating
on, or even important at all, we would find, nine times out of ten,
that they were not.

Therefore before beginning to concentrate you should assure yourself
that the problem you are about to attack is one worth solving, or at
least devoting a certain time to. And during that time you should think
only of that problem, and unhesitatingly throw out all irrelevant
suggestions coming either from your course of thought or from external
sights and sounds.

One qualification is necessary. Sometimes an irrelevant suggestion
occurs which is nevertheless really important and worth developing. As
this might be forgotten, and as it might never occur again, it would be
poor counsel indeed to ask that it be thrown aside forever. The best
move in such a case would be to make written note of the suggestion or
problem, so that it could be referred to at some future time. Having
written the idea, you will have it off your mind, and will be able to
continue your line of thought without perturbation.

It has been suggested that a great aid to concentration is writing
one’s thoughts. It must be admitted that this certainly helps one to
keep much closer to a subject. Ordinarily we wander without being
aware of it, and bring our minds back to a subject only after sudden
intermittent realizations that we have gone astray. When we write our
thoughts, however, we doubly secure ourselves against mind wandering.
All writing requires a certain effort, and this alone is sufficient
to keep most of us from writing irrelevant thoughts, or anything not
directly bearing upon the subject in hand. When we write, too, we
capture our thoughts in tangible symbols; we make them less elusive
than in their original form. Finally, we keep our entire past train of
thought in view. Like an oarsman, who cannot look ahead, but guides
himself by the objects he is constantly leaving further behind, we keep
to our original course of thought by a survey of the ideas already
written.

In spite of these great advantages, writing has certain serious
handicaps as a practical method for concentrating. First among these
is its slowness. Thoughts flash through our minds much faster than we
can write them. We either lose many ideas by the wayside, or fail to go
as far in our subject as we otherwise would. Another disadvantage is
that we are forced to give part of our attention to the physical act of
writing, and thus cannot concentrate entirely on our subject.

There are two methods of writing comparatively free of at least one of
these handicaps. Both shorthand and typewriting, if mastered to any
degree, are much faster than ordinary writing. This is especially true,
of course, of shorthand. But even with a good stenographer shorthand
has serious defects. Unless one is quite expert it requires even more
attention than longhand, and at that is often unable to keep pace
with thought. Typewriting requires almost no attention from a touch
operator, but it too is open to the charge of slowness, coming in this
respect about midway between short and longhand.

But to those so unfortunate as not to know either shorthand or
typewriting the necessity for still another method is evident. Indeed,
even those acquainted with these two arts cannot always use them.
If every time we were to think we had to have with us a typewriter,
or even a pencil and note-book, we would not engage in any too much
reflection.

Fortunately there is one method superior to any yet named, which
requires no study before its application, and no paraphernalia during
it. It consists in simply talking your thoughts as you think them. One
who has not tried this can have no idea of its effect. It possesses
almost all the advantages of writing. You cannot wander without
realizing the fact immediately. It makes your thinking much less vague
than if you thought silently, increases your vocabulary, always keeps
pace with your ideas, and requires practically no attention.

It may be objected that silent thinking itself is put in unspoken
words. But this is not true. Part of silent thinking consists of
unspoken words, but part of it consists of images, concepts and
attitudes which pass through our minds and which we do not take the
trouble to name. In silent thinking, too, there are also what appear
to be occasional dead stops. All these processes drift into each other
indefinably and are unrecognizable. When we talk we realize whether our
images or concepts are vague or definite by our ability to name them,
and we realize when our thought comes to a “dead stop” by the fact that
we miss the sound of our own voice.

Another practice can be used with talking. The degree of concentration
we give to any subject depends upon the degree of natural interest we
take in it. Mind wandering comes because we are also interested in
other subjects. No matter how slight our interest in a thing, we would
always concentrate on it if we were interested in nothing else. To
secure sustained attention, then, we should (1) stimulate or increase
interest in problems we want to concentrate on, (2) decrease or remove
temporarily any interest in the things we do not want to think about.
Men often complain that noises distract their attention. While not
impossible, it is inconvenient and unpleasant to shut off our ears. But
men are far more distracted by sights than they are by sounds. And they
never think of merely shutting their eyes. The next time you attempt
to concentrate—silently or by talking—try shutting your eyes and see
whether or not you are helped.

Talking has one disadvantage—it cannot always be used. To practice it,
you must either lock yourself up in your room, or sit alone in a forest
or field, or walk along unfrequented streets and by-ways. You can by no
means allow any one to hear or see you talking to yourself. If you are
caught doing this some asinine idiot is sure to mistake you for one.

We are brought back again, then, to the necessity of occasionally
thinking in silence. There is one other reason why we shall sometimes
need to do this. Thoughts of certain kinds are so elusive that to
attempt to articulate them is to scare them away, as a fish is scared
by the slightest ripple. When these thoughts are in embryo, even the
infinitesimal attention required for talking cannot be spared. But
later, as they take more definite and coherent form, they can and
should be put into words, for otherwise they will be incommunicable and
useless.

No definite rule can be laid down, however, as to what should be spoken
and what thought of silently. This depends to a large extent upon the
individual thinker. Some will probably find that talking helps them in
almost all their thinking, others that it is often an actual hindrance.
The same is true of closing one’s eyes. If you do not know which is
better for you, find out by experiment.

At those times when you suddenly catch yourself wandering, it would
be a good plan to stop occasionally and trace back your train of
thought to the point where it left its original direction. In this way
you would get some valuable insight into the _how_ and _why_ of mind
wandering; you would be helped in recognizing its appearance sooner
the next time it occurred.

Whenever a person is left alone for a short time, with no one to talk
to and no “reading matter”; when for instance, he is standing at a
station waiting for his train, or sitting at a restaurant table waiting
for his order, or hanging on a subway strap when he has forgotten to
buy a newspaper, his “thoughts” tend to run along the tracks they have
habitually taken. If a young man usually allows a popular tune to float
through his head, that will be most likely to happen; if he usually
thinks of that young lady, he will most likely think of her then; if
he has often imagined himself as some great political orator making a
speech amid the plaudits of the multitude, he is likely to see a mental
picture of himself swinging his arms, waving flags and gulping water.

The only way a man can put a stop to such pleasant but uneducative
roamings, is to snap off his train of day dreaming the first moment he
becomes aware of it, and to address his mind to some useful serious
subject. His thoughts will be almost sure to leak away again. They may
do this as often as fifteen times in half an hour. But the second he
becomes aware of it he should dam up the stream and send his thoughts
along the channel he has laid out for them. If he has never done this
he will find the effort great. But if he merely resolves now that
the next time his mind wanders he will stop it in this manner, his
resolve will tend to make itself felt. If he succeeds in following this
practice once it will be much easier a second time. Every time he does
this it will become increasingly easy, until he will have arrived at
the point where his control over his thoughts will be almost absolute.
Not only will it be increasingly easy for him to turn his mind to
serious subjects. It will become constantly more pleasurable. Frivolous
and petty trains of thought will become more and more intolerable.

This whole idea of forcing our thought has been questioned by no less a
thinker than Herbert Spencer. Let us hear what he has to say regarding
his own practice:

“It has never been my way to set before myself a problem and puzzle out
an answer. The conclusions at which I have from time to time arrived,
have not been arrived at as solutions of questions raised; but have
been arrived at unawares—each as the ultimate outcome of a body of
thoughts which slowly grew from a germ. Some direct observation, or
some fact met with in reading, would dwell with me: apparently because
I had a sense of its significance. It was not that there arose a
distinct consciousness of its general meaning; but rather that there
was a kind of instinctive interest in those facts which have general
meanings. For example, the detailed structure of this or that species
of mammal, though I might willingly read about it, would leave little
impression; but when I met with the statement that, almost without
exception, mammals, even as unlike as the whale and the giraffe,
have seven cervical vertebræ, this would strike me and be remembered
as suggestive. Apt as I thus was to lay hold of cardinal truths, it
would happen occasionally that one, most likely brought to mind by an
illustration, and gaining from the illustration fresh distinctiveness,
would be contemplated by me for a while, and its bearings observed. A
week afterwards, possibly, the matter would be remembered; and with
further thought about it, might occur a recognition of some wider
application than I had before perceived: new instances being aggregated
with those already noted. Again after an interval, perhaps of a month,
perhaps of half a year, something would remind me of that which I
had before remarked; and mentally running over the facts might be
followed by some further extension of the idea. When accumulation of
instances had given body to a generalization, reflexion would reduce
the vague conception at first framed to a more definite conception;
and perhaps difficulties or anomalies passed over for a while, but
eventually forcing themselves on attention, might cause a needful
qualification and a truer shaping of the thought. Eventually the
growing generalization, thus far inductive, might take a deductive
form: being all at once recognized as a necessary consequence of some
physical principle—some established law. And thus, little by little, in
unobtrusive ways, without conscious intention or appreciable effort,
there would grow up a coherent and organized theory. Habitually
the process was one of slow unforced development, often extending
over years; and the thinking done went on in this gradual, almost
spontaneous way, without strain. . . .”[6]

But compare this method with that of John Stuart Mill; who speaks of
“the mental habit to which I attribute all that I have ever done, or
ever shall do, in speculation; that of never abandoning a puzzle, but
again and again returning to it until it was cleared up; never allowing
obscure corners of a subject to remain unexplored because they did not
appear important; never thinking that I perfectly understood any part
of a subject until I understood the whole.”[7] Mill’s method was, in
short, “that of conscious and vehement effort directed towards the end
he had in view. He solved his problems by laborious application and
study.”[8]

William Minto writes of Adam Smith: “His intellectual proceedings
were calm, patient, and regular: he mastered a subject slowly and
circumspectly, and carried his principles with steady tenacity through
multitudes of details that would have checked many men of greater
mental vigor unendowed with the same invincible persistence.”

With such thinkers differing so markedly in their methods, the ordinary
man is left bewildered. He may indeed decide that effort or no effort
makes little difference. Let us, however, look to the psychology of the
question, and see whether we can find any guiding principle.

Spencer, defending his method, says: “A solution reached in the way
described, is more likely to be true than one reached in pursuance of
a determined effort to find a solution. The determined effort causes
perversion of thought. When endeavoring to recollect some name or
thing which has been forgotten, it frequently happens that the name or
thing sought will not arise in consciousness; but when attention is
relaxed, the missing name or thing often suggests itself. While thought
continues to be forced down certain wrong turnings which had originally
been taken, the search is vain; but with the cessation of strain the
true association of ideas has an opportunity of asserting itself. And,
similarly, it may be that while an effort to arrive forthwith at some
answer to a problem, acts as a distorting factor in consciousness and
causes error, a quiet contemplation of the problem from time to time,
allows those proclivities of thought which have probably been caused
unawares by experiences, to make themselves felt, and to guide the mind
to the right conclusion.”

Spencer’s first argument, that an effort to recollect something is
often without results, while the thing is remembered later when we are
not trying to think of it, is true as to fact. But it does not show
that the effort was unfruitful. As pointed out in the discussion of
association, one idea is associated with not only one other idea but
with an entire group. This may give a possible explanation of why it
is so often difficult to recollect anything when we make a determined
effort. The attempt partly arouses a whole cluster of ideas, each
of which tends to return, but is prevented from doing so by all the
others. It is analogous to a crowd of people all struggling to get
through a narrow doorway. They cause such a jam that for a time no
one succeeds. When the pushing and jostling cease one person at a
time is able to pass through. When effort is abandoned, probably all
but one of the associates become dormant, and this one slides into
consciousness at the slightest provocation.

Whether or not this explanation is true, it is a fact that though an
effort may not produce results at the time, still if it had not been
made, the associate which finally comes to mind would probably never
have occurred at all. The reader has possibly found that when learning
some skilled movement, such as bicycle riding, skating or swimming, his
first attempts seemed without result, but after an interval of a week
or a month, when trying again, he suddenly discovered that he could do
what he wanted from the very start. Surely no one would contend that
this could happen without the previous effort!

I must also question Spencer’s remark that “with the cessation of
strain the true association of ideas has an opportunity of asserting
itself.” The brain has no hidden mechanism by which it can separate the
true from the false. To be sure, if we use no effort the most usual
and strongest associations will be more likely to assert themselves,
and it may be that often these will have more warrant than unusual and
weaker associations. Outside of this, there is no superiority.

But the main reason why we cannot follow the method of Herbert Spencer
is that we are not all Herbert Spencers. His thought naturally tended
to serious and useful channels. Consequently he did not have to force
it there. If the reader is one of those rare and fortunate beings whose
thoughts run only to useful subjects, and who always concentrate from
pure spontaneous interest, I sincerely advise him not to force himself.
And if such a being happens to be reading the present chapter I assure
him he is criminally wasting his time, and that he should drop the
book or turn to the next chapter with all possible haste. But if the
reader numbers himself with the miserable majority whose minds are ever
running away with them, he will find it necessary to use effort in
thinking—at least for a while.

One remark of Spencer is undoubtedly true. This is “that an effort
to arrive forthwith at some answer to a problem, acts as a distorting
factor in consciousness and causes error.” And here, strange to say,
his practice is in substantial agreement with the apparently opposite
method of John Stuart Mill. For note that Mill speaks of “again and
again returning to it [a puzzle] until it was cleared up.”

Both imply their agreement rather than state it outright; Spencer
by his use of the word “forthwith” and Mill by his words “again and
again.” Here the practice of both differs from that of the vast
majority of men. Yet neither thinker seemed to be clearly conscious how
it differed. The average man (that mythical creature!) when he has just
been confronted with a problem, may wrestle with it with all the vigor
of a great thinker. But as he sees difficulties multiplying about him,
he gradually becomes more and more discouraged. Finally he throws up
the problem in disgust, contenting himself with the reflection that it
cannot be solved, or that it will take somebody who knows more than he
to solve it.

A real thinker, however, if confronted with the same problem, will look
for a solution from every possible viewpoint. But failing an answer
he will not give up. Instead he will let the subject drop for a while,
say a couple of weeks or perhaps longer, and then refer to it again.
This time he will find that certain obscurities have become a little
clearer; that certain questions have been answered. He will again
attack his puzzle with energy. And if he does not obtain a complete
solution he will once more put it aside, returning to it after another
interval, until finally a satisfactory solution presents itself.

You may fail to see any difference between thinking for two hours
separated by two weeks, and thinking for two consecutive hours. As
an experiment, then, the next time you come across a puzzle which
you fail to solve at first tilt, write down all the unsatisfactory
solutions suggested, and all the questions, difficulties and objections
met with. You may leave this for a few weeks. When you return to it
a few of the difficulties will look less formidable, and some of the
questions will have practically answered themselves. (Of course some
of the difficulties may look more formidable, and a few new questions
may have arisen.) If a solution is not found at the second attempt,
the problem may again be sent to your mental waiting room. But if it is
only of reasonable difficulty a solution is bound, soon or late, to be
discovered.

It is difficult to say just what effects this change in thought, when
apparently one has engaged in no reflection during the interval. The
attempted solution probably gives a certain “set” to our minds. Without
being aware of it we observe facts relating to our problem. Ideas
which occur to us in other connections are unconsciously seen in their
bearing on the unsolved question. In short, “those proclivities of
thought which have probably been caused unawares by experience” make
themselves felt.

It may be imagined that if we think too much we will be liable
permanently to injure our mighty intellects. This has sometimes
happened. But there is no serious danger of it. Thinking on one useful
subject for a long while will not hurt you any more than thinking on a
thousand different useless subjects for the same period. But of course
you should not try to concentrate when you are sleepy, when you have a
headache, when some other bodily pain distracts your attention, or when
your mind is in any way tired. If you attempt to concentrate at these
times you will endanger your mental and physical health. Not only this,
but the thinking done during such periods will be of such poor quality
that it will be practically useless if not harmful. This applies even
to cases where mental fatigue is almost inappreciable. Thinking done
in the evening seldom approaches in efficacy the thinking done in the
first hours of the morning. But you should always make sure your mind
is actually tired. It may merely be tired of a particular subject.

An objection of a different kind may be raised against concentrating
at every opportunity. It has often been noticed that names have been
recalled and problems solved when we were thinking of something
else. It may be urged that such solutions would not have occurred
when concentrating, because the exact associations which led up to
them would not have been present. This is occasionally true. But
there are still reasons why I must maintain my position. No matter
how well a man may have trained himself to concentrate, there will
always be short periods when his mind will wander, and these will
suffice for any accidental associations. Moreover, the fact that these
mind wandering periods _occasionally_ do good does not excuse their
existence. The most fallacious ideas, the most demoniacal practices,
the most despicable characters of history, have _occasionally_ done
good. The fact is that for every useful association which occurs during
mind wandering, ten associations just as useful will occur during
concentration. The only reason useful mind wandering associations
appear frequent is that they are unexpected, therefore more noticed
when they come.

It has been frequently said that many of the world’s greatest
inventions were due to accident. In a sense this is true. But the
accident was prepared for by previous hard thinking. It would never
have occurred had not this thinking taken place. It is said that the
idea of gravitation came to Newton because an apple fell on his head.
Perhaps. But apples had been falling ever since there were apple trees,
and had probably been falling on men’s heads ever since men had
acquired the habit of getting their heads in the way. The idea of the
steam engine is supposed to have come to Watt while observing a tea
kettle. But how many thousands before him had not seen steam coming
out of kettles? The idea of the pendulum for regulating time occurred
to Galileo from observing a swinging lantern in a cathedral. Think how
many others must have seen that lantern swinging! It is probable that
in all these cases the invention or idea had been prepared for, had
been all but formed, by downright hard thinking in previous periods of
concentration. All that was needed was the slightest unusual occurrence
to make the idea complete and conscious. The unusual occurrence, the
accident, which has so often received the credit for the invention or
the idea, merely made it come sooner, for with the thinking these men
did, it was bound to come eventually. . . .

Of course I really do not seriously expect anybody to concentrate at
every opportunity. I don’t myself. I merely wanted to establish the
fact that it’s the best thing. But every man, even the tired business
variety, should set aside at least half an hour a day, or three and
a half hours a week. I realize what a great hardship it is for some
people to devote one-forty-eighth of their time to such a useless
pastime as thinking. But if they will make the sacrifice for seven
consecutive days they will find themselves bearing up nobly at the end.

There is even a possibility that they may be encouraged to extend the
time.



V

PREJUDICE AND UNCERTAINTY


“From time to time there returns upon the cautious thinker, the
conclusion that, considered simply as a question of probabilities,
it is decidedly unlikely that his views upon any debatable topic are
correct. ‘Here,’ he reflects, ‘are thousands around me holding on
this or that point opinions differing from mine—wholly in most cases;
partially in the rest. Each is as confident as I am of the truth of
his convictions. Many of them are possessed of great intelligence;
and, rank myself high as I may, I must admit that some are my
equals—perhaps my superiors. Yet, while every one of us is sure he is
right, unquestionably most of us are wrong. Why should not I be among
the mistaken? True, I cannot realize the likelihood that I am so. But
this proves nothing; for though the majority of us are necessarily
in error, we all labor under the inability to think we are in error.
Is it not then foolish thus to trust myself? When I look back into
the past, I find nations, sects, philosophers, cherishing beliefs in
science, morals, politics, and religion, which we decisively reject.
Yet they held them with a faith quite as strong as ours; nay—stronger,
if their intolerance of dissent is any criterion. Of what little worth,
therefore, seems this strength of my conviction that I am right? A like
warrant has been felt by men all the world through; and, in nine cases
out of ten, has proved a delusive warrant. Is it not then absurd in me
to put so much faith in my judgments?’ ”[9]

I trust the reader will pardon this second rather extended quotation
from Herbert Spencer, but the thought expressed must be kept in mind if
we are to approach our present subject in the proper spirit. . . .

Our subject is prejudice. Our object is to free ourselves as much as
possible from our own prejudices. But before we can get rid of a thing
it is first necessary to recognize that thing when we see it.

Prejudice is often confused with intolerance. They are not the same. A
man may be prejudiced and not intolerant. You may think that your alma
mater, your city, or your country, is the greatest in the world, for
little other reason than simply that it is _yours_. Your opinion is
prejudiced. But you may not protest if any other man thinks that _his_
alma mater, or _his_ city, or _his_ country, is the best in the world.
In fact you may not have much respect for him if he doesn’t think so.
And your opinion is tolerant.

On the other hand, a man may be intolerant and not prejudiced. You may
decide, solely on the evidence and on grounds of pure reason, that
paper money—fiat money—is always a harmful form of currency, and you
may be justly wrathful against the man who advocates it. You may even
wish him suppressed. Yet you may be able to answer all his arguments.
But you fear that if he is allowed to air his views they will take hold
on minds as shallow as his own. You fear that once they have taken
root it will be difficult to dislodge them, and that in the meanwhile
they may do harm by being put into practice. You are intolerant. But
you are not prejudiced. It is well to remember this distinction when
accusations of prejudice are flying through the ozone.

One thing more must be kept in mind. Prejudice has less connection with
truth and falsity than is generally supposed. The fact that a man is
unprejudiced does not make his opinion right. And the fact that a man
is prejudiced does not necessarily make his opinion wrong; though it
must be admitted that if it is right it will be so only by accident.

It is often thought that prejudice can be immediately recognized. Locke
says, “Every one is forward to complain of the prejudices that mislead
other men or parties, as if he were free and had none of his own.
. . . This is the mote which every one sees in his brother’s eye, but
never regards the beam in his own.”[10] However, slight consideration
will convince us that because one man accuses another of prejudice, it
does not follow that the accused is guilty. The general practice is to
accuse of prejudice any one whose views happen to differ from our own.

Let us consider a formal dictionary definition of prejudice: “Judgment
formed without due examination; opinion adverse to anything, without
just grounds or sufficient knowledge.” This is not altogether
satisfactory. A man may form a judgment without sufficient knowledge
and still be unprejudiced. He may be perfectly open minded and willing
to change his opinion if other evidence is adduced. But even if the
formation of a judgment without sufficient knowledge is prejudice,
it is often justified. At all events, every one will agree that the
foregoing definition helps us little in discovering our own prejudices.
All of us, for instance, believe our judgment on any given question
has been formed with due examination, each being his own judge of what
constitutes “due.”

It is difficult to find any satisfactory definition. Perhaps the best
I can do is to point out various specific forms of prejudice and their
causes. The first form of prejudice I shall name consists in a love
for, and a desire to hold, some opinion. We may roughly ascribe this
desire to three causes:

(1) We desire an opinion to be right because we would be personally
benefited if it were. Promise a man that if he invests his money in
the Lookgood Gold Mine he will receive dividends of over 40 per cent.
annually, and he is in danger of becoming extremely gullible. He shirks
looking up the previous record of the promoters or directors because
he has a secret and indefined fear that if he does he will find their
pictures in the Rogues’ Gallery. Advertise in a magazine that any thin
man can gain seven to fourteen pounds a week by drinking Fattilac and
you will receive hundreds of answers enclosing the fifty cents for a
trial bottle. Not one desperately slim man in ten will stop to ask
himself how the miracle can be performed. In fact, he will do his
worst to argue himself into the matter. He will tell himself that
the advertisement is in a reliable magazine, that the company would
not dare to make an assertion like that unless it could make good,
that . . .

But we may pass over the more obvious benefits, and proceed to those
causes of prejudice less consciously selfish or directly beneficial.
If an economist were to write a book attempting to prove that bankers
were really unnecessary and could be dispensed with, it is a rather
sure guess that a banker would not regard very highly the intellectual
powers of that economist. If he considered his arguments at all, it
would be only with the view of refuting them. In an even less conscious
way, a rich man is likely to oppose socialism or communism, not so much
because he has evidence of intrinsic worth against them, but because
he fears that if such systems of society were put into effect he would
lose most of his wealth. The man who has nothing is likely to look with
favor upon these schemes, because they offer him promise of better
things.

The mere fact that we are ignorant of a certain thing will prejudice us
against it, while knowledge of it will prepossess us in its favor. Ten
chances to one a person who has been taught Esperanto will favor the
adoption of an international language—and the adoption of Esperanto in
particular. Most of the remarks on the uselessness of the classics come
from those ignorant of them; while those who, in order to get a college
degree or for some like reason, have been forced to study Greek and
Latin, will generally always exaggerate their importance. Most of the
opposition to simplified spelling is due to the fact that having taken
the time and toil to master our atrociously inconsistent spelling,
people have a vague fear that if a phonetic system were adopted,
children, the ignorant classes and persons of poor memories would be
able to spell just as well as they, without one quarter the trouble of
learning. Not that they are conscious of this childish and unworthy
attitude, for usually they are not, but the motive is operative none
the less.

Of course in all the foregoing cases of prejudice, as in those to
follow, none of the victims ever uses any of his real reasons in
argument, though he will bring forward nearly every other reason on
earth to justify his belief. And to do him justice, it must be admitted
that he is often unaware of the true cause of his inclination to one
side rather than another.

Though it is less directly selfish, the patriotic bias may fairly be
classed with the prejudices we have just been considering. At this
time the most stupendous war of all history is raging. But I know of
no German or Austrian or Turk or Bulgarian who has so far admitted
that the British or the French or the Russians or the Italians or
the Belgians or the Servians or the Montenegrins or the Japanese can
by any possibility have right on their side, nor do I know of any
Japanese or Montenegrin or Servian or Belgian or Italian or Russian
or Frenchman or Englishman who believes that the Bulgarians or the
Turks or the Austrians or the Germans are in the right. Philosophers
and men of science are no exception; Münsterberg, Eucken and Haeckel
write publicly in favor of Germany and fifty of England’s foremost
authors unanimously sign a pronunciamento in support of their native
country—yet nobody is surprised.

(2) Another reason why we desire an opinion to be right is because we
already happen to hold it. As one writer expresses it, “We often form
our opinions on the slightest evidence, yet we are inclined to cling to
them with grim tenacity.” There are two reasons for this.

When we have formed an opinion on anything, the chances are that we
have communicated it to some one, and have thereby committed ourselves
to that side. Now to reverse an opinion is to confess that we were
previously wrong. To reverse an opinion is to lay ourselves open to the
charge of inconsistency. To be inconsistent—to admit that our judgments
are human and fallible—this is the last thing we can ever think of.
“Inconsistency,” said Emerson, “is the hobgoblin of little minds.” And
if by this he meant inconsistency in the sense of changing opinions
already formed, we must agree with him.

The hypothesis maker has a specific form of this fear of inconsistency.
This type of theorist makes a supposition to account for certain facts.
When he meets with certain allied facts for which the supposition
apparently does not account, he either ignores said facts, or cuts and
trims them, or bullies them into his theory. Hypotheses _per se_ have
never done any harm. In fact they are indispensable in all thought,
especially as an aid to observation. But it is the desire to prove an
hypothesis correct, simply because it is _our_ hypothesis, or because
it is a fascinating hypothesis, which has done harm. Darwin says that
he had made it a habit “whenever a published fact, a new observation
or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to
make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by
experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape
from the memory than favorable ones.”

The second reason for desiring to cling to an opinion because we
already hold it is one which could probably best be explained by
physiological psychology and a study of the brain. We feel almost
a physical pain when a tenet we have long cherished is torn up and
exposed. The longer we hold an opinion, the harder it is for us to
get rid of it. In this respect it is similar to habit. Nor is the
comparison an analogy merely. An opinion is a habit of thought. It
has the same basis in the brain, and is subject to the same laws, as
a habit of action. It is well known that the opinions of a man over
forty are pretty well set. The older a man grows, the harder it is for
him to change an opinion—or for others to change it for him.

The side of a controversy we see first is usually the side we see
last. This is because the arguments we meet do not have to shake up
or dislodge anything in our brain (unless we are very critical, and
we generally aren’t). But once let an opinion gain entrance, and any
opinion contrary to it will have to dislodge the old one before it can
find a place for itself.

And as Mark Twain has remarked, “When even the brightest mind in our
world has been trained from childhood in a superstition of any kind,
it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine
sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any
circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of
that superstition.” Of course Mark Twain was wrong. Of course we are
The Reasoning Race, as he cynically intimates we are not. To religion,
for instance, the most important question which can engage our
understanding, each of us always gives independent thought. It is a
mere accident, of course, that almost all of the 400,000,000 Chinamen
are Buddhists. It is a mere accident that the overwhelming mass of East
Indians are Brahmans. It is only by chance that practically all Turks,
Persians and Arabians are Mohammedans. And it merely happened to happen
that England is Protestant and Ireland is Catholic. . . . But it is
unsafe to bring this question of religion too near home.

We now come to our third cause of desire:

(3) We desire an opinion to be wrong because we would be forced to
change other opinions if it were not; or we desire an opinion to be
right because then we would be able to retain our other opinions.
This is a most widespread form of prejudice. But I believe it is,
fortunately, the most defensible. Its defensibility, however, depends
mainly on the opinions we fear to change. These we may divide into two
kinds:

(a) Those which have been formed without thought; borrowed opinions,
etc. The greatest opposition to the theory of evolution came from
those conservative Christians who saw that it undermined any literal
interpretation of Genesis. If these Christians had investigated the
sources of that book, had considered its probable authority, had given
thought to the possibility of inspired writing, and had finally decided
in favor of the Biblical narrative; then—right or not—their opposition
to Darwin’s theory would have been free at least from this sort of
prejudice. But most of this opposition had come from persons who had
not thought of Genesis, but had accepted it from the first, because it
had been dogmatically hammered into their heads since childhood. Hence
it was prejudice, pure and simple.

(b) The second kind of opinions we fear to change are those resting
mainly upon evidence. William James gives an example:

“Why do so few ‘scientists’ even look at the evidence for telepathy,
so-called? Because they think, as a leading biologist, now dead, once
said to me, that even if such a thing were true, scientists ought to
band together to keep it suppressed and concealed. It would undo the
uniformity of nature, and all sorts of other things without which
scientists cannot carry on their pursuits.”[11] Darwin writes that when
a youth he told Sedgwick the geologist of how a tropical Volute shell
had been found in a gravel pit near Shrewsbury. Sedgwick replied that
some one must have thrown it there, and added that if it were “really
imbedded there, it would be the greatest misfortune to geology, as it
would overthrow all that we know about the superficial deposits of the
Midland Counties”—which belonged to the glacial period.[12]

Some readers may object to calling the last case prejudice. They may
say that Sedgwick was perfectly justified. That, however, is not the
present question. Prejudice itself may sometimes be justified. But
Sedgwick tacitly admitted that he not only believed the shell had not
been imbedded, he actually _desired_ that it had not been. And our
desires always determine, to a great extent, the trouble we take to get
evidence, and the importance we attach to it after we have it.

Emerson’s remark, that inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
is true in a double sense. For not only is it harmful to fear to
change an opinion which we have entertained, it is even harmful at
times to fear to hold simultaneously two opinions incongruous with
one another. If a thought springs up in your mind, and you come to
see after a time that it is inconsistent with another thought, do not
immediately try to throw out one or the other. Instead, think the new
thought out in all its bearings and implications, just as if you had
never had the first. Perhaps follow the same practice with the first
idea. By and by one will reveal its falsity and the other its truth.
Or more likely you will find that there was some truth in each idea,
and you will reconcile the two in a truth higher, deeper, or more
comprehensive.

       *       *       *       *       *

I have set down these three cases of prejudice to help the reader in
recognizing the same or similar prejudices in himself. And the mere
recognition of prejudices as prejudices will do much toward their
elimination. But though we all strenuously maintain our anxiety to get
rid of prejudices, the real reason most of us have them is that we do
not want to get rid of them. We are all willing to get rid of prejudice
in the abstract. But when some one troubles himself to point out any
particular concrete prejudice of ours we defend it and cling to it
like a dog to his bone. The only way we can get rid of this desire
to cling to our prejudices, is thoroughly to convince ourselves of
the superiority of the truth; to leave not the slightest doubt in our
own minds as to the value of looking with perfect indifference on all
questions; to see that this is more advantageous than believing in
that opinion which would benefit us most if true, more important than
“being consistent,” more to be cherished than the comfortable feeling
of certainty. When we really do desire to get rid of our prejudices we
will put ourselves on the path of getting rid of them. And not before
then.

One more prejudice has yet to be considered. This may be called the
prejudice of imitation. We agree with others, we adopt the same
opinions of the people around us, because we fear to disagree. We fear
to differ with them in thought in the same way that we fear to differ
with them in dress. In fact this parallel between style in thought
and style in clothing seems to hold throughout. Just as we fear to
look different from the people around us because we will be considered
freakish, so we fear to think differently because we know we will be
looked upon as “queer.” If we have a number of such dissenting opinions
we will be regarded as anything from a mere crank to a fanatic or one
with a “screw loose.” When our backs are turned people will wisely
point their index fingers to their temples and move them around in
little circles.

Our fear of freak opinions is only equalled by our dread of ideas
old-fashioned. A little while ago it was considered popular to laugh
at the suffragettes. And everybody laughed. Now it is getting to be
popular to laugh at the anti-suffragettes. A little while ago it was
considered quite _comme il faut_ to fear socialism. Now it is becoming
proper to remark, “There is really quite a good deal of truth in their
theories.” And soon we shall doubtless all be out and out socialists.

Nor is the prejudice of imitation confined to the layman. If anything,
it is even more common among so-called “thinkers.” I remember
quoting some remark of Spencer to an acquaintance, and getting this:
“Yes, but isn’t Herbert Spencer’s philosophy considered dead?” This
same acquaintance also informed me that John Stuart Mill had been
“superseded.” He candidly admitted—in fact seemed rather proud of the
fact—that he had read practically nothing of either philosopher. I am
not trying to defend Spencer or John Stuart Mill, nor am I attempting
to bark at the heels of any of our present-day philosophers. But I am
willing to wager that most of these same people now so dithyrambic in
their praise of James, Bergson, Eucken and Russell will twenty-five
years hence be ashamed to mention those names, and will be devoting
themselves solely to Post-neofuturism, or whatever else happens to be
the passing fadosophy of the moment.

If this is the most prevalent form of prejudice it is also the most
difficult to get rid of. This requires moral courage. It requires the
rarest kind of moral courage. It requires just as much courage for a
man to state and defend an idea opposed to the one in fashion as it
would for a city man to dress coolly on a sweltering day, or for a
young society woman to attend a smart affair in one of last year’s
gowns. The man who possesses this moral courage is blessed beyond
kings, but he must pay the fearful price of ridicule or contempt.

There is another form of this prejudice of imitation radically opposed
to this. Just as with fashions in clothes there are people who strive
to imitate others, so there are people who devote themselves entirely
to being “different.” Their greatest fear is that they will be taken
for “one of the mob.” They dress themselves as uniquely as possible
in order to acquire “individuality.” We have these same people in
the realm of thought. They are in constant trepidation lest they say
something that everybody else says. They say things not for the sake
of truth but for humor or paradox. Their great delight is to affirm or
defend something “new” regardless of its truth; something deliciously
radical which will shock everybody else and startle even themselves.
The worst part of this is that these people gradually come to regard
their propositions as true, just as a liar finally comes to believe his
own lies.

The only cure for such a mental condition is a constant sincerity in
every opinion we advance. People are often led into the fault by a
motive not incommendable in itself—the desire for originality. But
they choose the wrong path to their goal. If you make originality and
radicalness your aim, you will attain neither truth nor originality.
But if you make truth your aim you will very likely get truth, and
originality will come of itself.

There are hundreds of prejudices, hundreds of forms of prejudice.
There is, for instance, the prejudice of conservatism, which manifests
itself in a vague fear that if the present order were changed in any
particular—if women were given the vote, if socialism were to triumph,
if a new filing system were to be installed at the office—all would be
lost. But I cannot deal adequately with all the forms of bias which
flock to mind.

The distinguishing mark of the great thinkers of the ages was their
comparative freedom from the prejudices of their time and community.
In order to avoid these prejudices one must be constantly and
uncompromisingly sounding his own opinions. Eternal vigilance is the
price of an open mind.

       *       *       *       *       *

Prejudice is not the only danger which lies in wait for the would-be
thinker. In his very efforts to get rid of prejudice he is liable to
fall into an even greater intellectual sin. This sin is uncertainty.

As uncertainty and doubt are nearly synonymous, the reader will
probably be surprised at this statement because of the praise I have
hitherto accorded to the doubtful attitude. But the doubtful attitude,
necessary and praiseworthy as it is, should not be maintained always.
We think in order to have opinions. We have opinions in order to guide
action; in order to act upon should occasion require. Herbert Spencer,
even after his remarks quoted at the beginning of this chapter, which
imply the need of extreme caution, adds, “. . . In daily life we are
constantly obliged to act out our inferences, trustless as they may
be— . . . in the house, in the office, in the street, there hourly
arise occasions on which we may not hesitate; seeing that if to act is
dangerous, never to act at all is fatal. . . .”

There are other reasons why we cannot afford to keep the doubtful
attitude. If our lives were interminable, if we had limitless time for
thinking, we could afford to remain in doubt indefinitely. But life is
fleeting. So if you have examined facts obtainable on such a question
as psychic phenomena, have kept your mind open for a certain time, and
have decided that communication with the dead is impossible, you are
justified in discontinuing to look for evidence on that question. Every
hour devoted to examining such evidence would be an hour taken away
from thought on some other subject, and the law of diminishing returns
is just as applicable in thinking as in economics.

Another trouble with the attitude of doubt is that when not properly
utilized it hinders rather than aids the acquisition of truth. This is
especially the case when it takes the form of _fear of prejudice_. If
guided by this fear, in our anxiety not to discriminate in favor of one
side of a question we are apt to discriminate in favor of the other.
In an attempt to give an opposing argument due consideration, we are
liable to give it undue consideration. Instead of removing prejudice
with reason we may be trying to balance one prejudice with a counter
prejudice. When a person disagrees with him, a very conscientious
thinker, fearing that he may be prejudiced, and in order to prove
himself broad-minded, will often say regarding an objection, “Well,
there may be something in that.” Now your only excuse for ever saying,
“There may be something in that,” will be as an attitude to assume in
experimenting or observing, or looking up material or arguments to find
whether there actually _is_ anything in it. Then, if you do not find
anything in it you are justified in saying so—and you ought to.

It is useless to stimulate doubt unless you intend, on grounds
of reason, to settle the doubt. _The doubtful attitude should be
maintained only so long as you are actively searching for evidence
bearing on a question._ Maintained at any other time or used in any
other way it means merely uncertainty, indefiniteness, vagueness, and
leads nowhere.

It is important that we be unprejudiced. It is even more important that
our views be definite. And if our definite views are wrong? . . . But
the words of Thomas Huxley on this subject cannot be improved:

“A great lawyer-statesman and philosopher of a former age—I mean
Francis Bacon—said that truth came out of error much more rapidly
than it came out of confusion. There is a wonderful truth in that
saying. Next to being right in this world, the best of all things
is to be clearly and definitely wrong, because you will come out
somewhere. If you go buzzing about between right and wrong, vibrating
and fluctuating, you come out nowhere; but if you are absolutely and
thoroughly and persistently wrong, you must, some of these days, have
the extreme good fortune of knocking your head against a fact, and that
sets you all straight again.”[13]

When you find yourself fluctuating back and forth between two opinions
you might find it helpful to hold an internal debate. State to yourself
as strongly as possible the case for the affirmative, and then put
as convincingly as possible the case for the negative, holding a
refutation if necessary. You may even elaborate this by writing the
arguments for both sides in parallel columns. Of course you should
never use an argument which you can see on its face to be fallacious,
nor a statement which represents merely a prejudice and nothing more.
You should use only such arguments as you think a sincere debater would
conscientiously employ. By thus making your reasons articulate you will
often find that there is really no tenable case at all for one side,
and you will seldom fail to reach a definite conclusion. This method of
arriving at a decision may be voted childish and even artificial, but
nothing is to be despised which can render intellectual help.

One word more on this. There is a type of individual, most often met
with among writers, who fears to make a statement of his thought
definite, because he has a faint suspicion that it may be wrong.
He wishes to allow himself plenty of loopholes to slip out of an
intellectual position in case any one should attack it. Hence he never
says outright, “Such and such is the case.” Instead, his talk or
writing is guarded on all sides by such expressions as “It is probable
that,” “it is possible that,” “the facts _seem_ to indicate that”; or
“such and such is _perhaps_ the case.” Not satisfied with this he makes
his statement less positive by preceding it with an “I believe,” or
worse yet, with an “_I am inclined_ to believe.”

This is often done under the impression that it is something noble,
that it signifies broadmindedness, lack of dogmatism, and modesty.
It may. If it does, so much the worse for broadmindedness, lack of
dogmatism, and modesty. Never yield to the temptation to word your
thoughts in this manner. If you truly and firmly believe that “such
and such is the case” _say_ “such and such is the case”; not “it is
possible that such and such is the case,” or “such and such is perhaps
the case,” or “it is my belief that such and such is the case.” People
will assume that it is your belief and not somebody else’s.

Suppose you have made a positive statement. And suppose you later find
it to be wrong? Well then, acknowledge that it is wrong. Acknowledge
that you have done something human; that you have done something
which every man before you has done; that you have made a mistake. I
realize such a confession is hard. It is the severest blow you can
deal to yourself, and few people will think the better of you for
doing it. Most of them will say, “See, he acknowledges himself that
he was wrong.” And with these people, both you and your theory will
be far more discredited than if you had clung to it until the end of
your life, no matter how obviously, how flagrantly, it opposed itself
to facts. But a few people will appreciate your sacrifice. A few
people will admire your bigness. And you will grow. You will grow as a
thinker. What is more, you will grow morally. And the time will come
when you will have fewer and fewer occasions to reverse yourself, for
you will learn to think longer before you advocate an opinion.

       *       *       *       *       *

The question of the avoidance of prejudice and the necessity of
breaking off doubt, remains still unsettled. There can be no doubt
that the two desideratums conflict; that to cut off doubt, or even to
refrain from stimulating it, is to encourage by so much the dominance
of prejudice.

The answer to this question will depend entirely upon the particular
problem under consideration. No rules can be laid down. Everything will
depend upon the importance of the question, upon the possibility or
frequency of occasions when we may be called to act upon the answer,
and upon the way in which the answer will affect conduct when we do act
upon it. Where the importance of the question is trifling, it would be
foolish to sound our prejudices too deeply, or to go to any elaborate
pains to collect evidence. Where immediate, unhesitating action is
required, remaining in doubt might be fatal. Any decision would be
better than no decision. When the importance of the question is vital,
or when the possibility of having to act on the answer is distant,
we can afford to preserve our doubts, to suspend final judgment, for
years—perhaps during our entire life; and we should spare no pains to
investigate fully all that relates to the question.

Just how much trouble to take, how long to keep alive the attitude
of doubt in any particular question, will have to be decided by the
individual. His own judgment must be the sole criterion.



VI

DEBATE AND CONVERSATION


The mind engages in many activities which have power either for evil or
good. Just what influence they will exert depends on how we use them.
One of the most important of these activities is debate.

Debate brings in that unequaled form of incentive for all action which
psychologists call “social pressure” and which here means nothing more
than the desire to excel a fellow-being in some line of endeavor. When
debating we concentrate, and we do so without conscious effort. We are
too interested in defeating our opponent to wander from the subject.
We are forced to think rapidly. Not least of all, we are compelled to
think articulately.

But with all its advantages, debate is one of the most potent sources
of prejudice. In the heat of controversy, we adopt any and every
argument that comes handy. Every statement of our opponent is
considered only in the light of how it can be refuted. We are willing
to use almost any objection against him, so long as we believe he will
see no flaw in it. It is of utmost importance that we find how to avoid
these pitfalls.

The first thing we must do is to adopt a complete change of attitude
toward an opponent’s arguments. Whenever we meet with a fact which
we would not like to cite in a debate; because, to put it mildly, it
would not help our side; we should carefully investigate that fact.
We should consider whether if true it changes the aspect of things.
We should get rid of the idea that in order to vindicate our side we
must answer every contention our opponent advances. For this opponent
of ours will very likely be a man in full possession of his senses; at
least some of his arguments will be rational. When they are, we should
be willing to acknowledge it. Their truth does not necessarily make his
side right. His arguments may be irrelevant; they may be outbalanced by
some other reason or reasons. Attempts to prove too much are liable to
put us into the position of the lawyer whose client is alleged to have
been sued for putting a hole in a borrowed umbrella. The lawyer proved
first, that his client did not borrow the umbrella; second, that there
was a hole in it when he got it; third, that there was nothing the
matter with it when he returned it.

After you have had a friendly argument with an acquaintance, you
take leave either with the satisfaction that you have bested him, or
with a vague consciousness that though you were right, he was just a
trifle more skillful at bringing forward arguments. But having this
satisfaction or dissatisfaction, you seldom think any more of the
matter until the next time you meet him. Now this practice is helpful
neither to your debating nor your thinking. After you have taken
leave of your acquaintance, and are left to the quietude of your own
thoughts, you should mentally run over your controversy. You should
dispassionately consider the bearing and weight of his arguments; and
then, reviewing your own, ask yourself which were valid and relevant
and which were not. If you find you have used a sophism you should
resolve never to use it again, even though your opponent may have
been unable to answer it. The question of morals aside, this is poor
practice if you ever hope to become a thinker. In the end, it will tell
against you even as a debater.

You can use your debates for constructive material as well as for
criticism. After a controversy you can go over the arguments of your
opponent which you could not refute, or refuted but lamely, and think
of the answers you might have given. Of course you should take care
that these answers are not sophistical. The question will very likely
come up again; if not with the same friend, then with another, and when
it does you will find yourself prepared.

But the best debater, or at least he who gets the most from debating,
is the man who looks for evidence and thinks not for debate, but to
obtain a correct conclusion. After he has reached a conclusion in
this manner, he does not advance every possible reason to support it.
He does not even utilize the reasons on which others base a similar
belief, if he does not himself accept these reasons. He states merely
that evidence and those reasons which have led him to accept his
conclusion, nothing more.

While we are considering debate, I may well say a few words about
conversation in general. We do not and cannot always argue with our
friends, even though we scorn the dictums of formal etiquette. But
because we do not argue, it does not follow that we gain nothing. In
fact, ordinary conversation has advantages numerous over debate, not
the least of which is the comparative freedom it gives from prejudice.
But the value of conversation depends both on what we talk about,
and whom we talk with. Too much of our talk is on petty matters, is
uneducative. And even if we converse on worthy topics, it will profit
us little if we do not talk with worthy people. When we commune with a
dull mind, our thoughts are forced, in some degree, down to the level
of that mind. But dull people do not usually talk of weighty matters,
nor do active intellects dwell long on trifles. Therefore if we
rightly choose our companion we can conscientiously leave our path of
conversation to choose itself.

One aspect of conversation remains to be treated—its corrective
power. “There is a sort of mental exposure in talking to a companion;
we drag our thoughts out of their hiding-places, naked as it were,
and occasionally we are not a little startled at the exhibition.
Unexpressed ideas are often carefully cherished until, placed before
other eyes as well as our own, we see them as they really are.”[14]



VII

THINKING AND READING


Up to now I have dealt with thinking almost as if it could be carried
on without external aid. As with cautionary and constructive thought, I
have perhaps been led to do this because of a reaction from the usual
insistence upon reading as indispensable to mental improvement, and the
corresponding neglect of the need for independent thinking. Men thought
before there were books, and men can still think without reading, but
they cannot. . . . I was about to remark that they could not read
without thinking, but on second thought I am inclined to doubt it.
However, we have clung to the natural order, for we first considered
unaided thinking, then the help given by conversation and dispute, and
finally we are to examine the aid rendered by reading. There can be no
doubt that this order follows the development of thought both in the
individual and in the human race.

While no complaint can be made of lack of quantity in what has been
written on reading, most of it has not taken up the subject from the
proper standpoint; still less has dealt with it in the right manner.
There has been counsel galore urging people to read; and recently there
has been a great deal of advice on what to read. But comparatively very
little has been said on _how_ to read. At one time reading was regarded
an untainted virtue, later it was seen that it did us no good unless we
read good books, and now there is a dawning consciousness that even if
we read good books they will benefit us little unless we read them in
the right way.

But even where this consciousness has been felt, little attempt has
been made to solve the problem systematically. Leisurely discourses,
pretty aphorisms, and dogmatic rules have been the forms in which the
question has been dealt with. Such conflicting adages as “A good book
should be read over and over again”; and “The art of reading is the art
of skipping,” are not very serviceable. The necessity of some sort of
orderly treatment is evident.

Before we consider how to read, some queer person may ask us to put
the previous question, “Should we read at all?” Now the value of
reading has, in times past, been seriously doubted by thinkers and
non-thinkers. The philosopher Democritus put out his eyes so that,
ceasing to read, he might think. We are not going to follow his
example. But we can readily sympathize with him when we think of the
many learned men who have read themselves into dreamy stupidity; men
who know what everybody else thought, but who never have any thoughts
of their own. We must admit that the arguments of these cranks are at
least good medicine for the prevalent belief that the more a man reads
the more he will know and the better thinker he will become.

Learning to think by reading is like learning to draw by tracing.
In each case we make the work of another man our basis, instead of
observing directly from Nature. The practice has its value, it is true;
but no man ever became a great artist by tracing, and no man will ever
become a great thinker by reading. It can never become a substitute
for thought. At best, as John Locke says, “Reading furnishes the mind
only with materials of knowledge, it is thinking makes what we read
ours.”[15]

Our problem may be divided in two parts: (1) What ratio should our
reading bear to independent thinking, and (2) how should we read when
we do read?

It may be thought that we can learn something about the first question
by investigating the practice of great thinkers. But the outcome
of such an investigation is likely to be disappointment. Kant, for
instance, was an omnivorous reader; so were Huxley and Sir William
Hamilton; and outside the circle of philosophers, men as unlike as
Gibbon, Macaulay, Milton and Thomas A. Edison. On the other hand,
Spencer seldom ever read, and Hobbes is famous for his remark that if
he had read as much as other men he would have known as little. Auguste
Comte was unique in that he read copiously until he conceived his
Positive Philosophy, and then hardly at all until the end of his life.

Even were it found that most great thinkers adhered to nearly the same
practice, it would prove little; for how could we tell whether they
were good thinkers on account of, or in spite of it?

We can agree a priori, however, with the remark of Schopenhauer that
“the safest way to have no thoughts of one’s own is to take up a book
every moment one has nothing else to do.” And we may agree with him
further: “A man should read only when his thoughts stagnate at their
source, which will happen often enough even with the best of minds. On
the other hand, to take up a book for the purpose of scaring away one’s
own original thoughts is a sin against the Holy Spirit. It is like
running away from Nature to look at a museum of dried plants, or gaze
at a landscape in copper-plate.”[16]

It would be folly to lay down any fixed mathematical ratio between
the time we should devote to reading and the time we should give to
thinking. But one hour given to reading plus one hour given to thinking
would be certainly more beneficial than two hours devoted entirely to
reading.

You can find quite a number of serious-minded men who put by a certain
period each day for reading. But how many of them put by any time at
all for thinking? It would be unjust to say they do not think. But at
best their thinking is merely accidental—and apparently considered so.
Surely it is as important that we lay aside a definite period each day
for thinking as it is that we lay aside some time for reading. But how
much this time should be and whether it should bear any specific ratio
to the time given to reading can best be decided after a consideration
of the problem of how to read.

This problem has unfortunately been much misconceived. Those who have
laid stress on the maxim, “A good book should be read over and over
again,” have done so in the belief that this is the best way to get
the most out of a particular book. But the object of reading is not to
get the best out of any one book, but out of reading in general. A
realization of this end will change our problem somewhat.

It will bring us to a consideration, for example, of the law of
diminishing returns. While the more we re-read a book the more we get
out of it, it must be remembered that with a few possible exceptions,
every time we re-read it we add less to our knowledge than we did
the previous time. This means that we can usually make much faster
progress by reading other books, in which case we do not merely read
over what we already know for the most part. Whether re-reading is ever
justified, and when, is a question which will be considered a little
later.

The law of diminishing returns applies to an entire subject as well
as to a single book. That is to say, past a certain point, every book
we read on a particular subject, while it will probably add to our
knowledge, will not yield as much return as a book of equal merit on
another subject, new to us.

The problem of reading asks how we can acquire the greatest number of
ideas, and how we can arrive at truth rather than the verdict of an
author. It assumes a limited time and asks how we can use that time
most profitably. Not least of all, it asks how we can best combine our
reading with original thought.

From the remarks already made, it is evident that we cannot prescribe
any one method for dealing with all books. Even works of similar nature
and merit will be treated in different ways, depending on the order
in which we read them, and like conditions. The mastery of any book
will not be an end in itself. It will be subordinated to the larger
end of obtaining the best from reading as a whole. But for the sake of
clearness, I shall for the present consider our end as the mastery of
some particular subject, and shall indicate a plan of reading to best
serve that end. Needful qualifications will come later.

I shall first outline a typical plan of study, and then review and
explain it in detail.

Assuming you have chosen a subject, your first step should be to do a
little unaided thinking on it. Next I would advise the selection of a
comprehensive text book. This should be read critically and written
note made of the problems taken up which you do not believe have
been adequately treated, or the solutions of which are in any way
unsatisfactory. These you should think out for yourself. A second book
may in some cases be read in the same thorough manner as this first
one, and the problems recorded in the same way. After that all books
on that subject may be read “hop, skip and jump” fashion, for the new
problems or solutions they suggest.

I do not expect the foregoing plan to be strictly adhered to, for the
nature of the subject studied will make certain changes necessary.
However, it demands more detailed explanation and perhaps defense.

Let us take up the first step advised—giving a little unaided thought
to the subject. My only reason for advising “a little” thinking, is
that I know if I asked more the reader would probably do nothing at
all. Indeed many readers will fail to see the necessity of thinking
about a subject before studying it. Many may even question the
possibility of doing so. “How is a man to think about a subject on
which he knows nothing?” you ask. Let us, however, consider.

The very fact that you want to study a subject implies that the
phenomena with which it deals are not clear to you. You desire to
study economics, for instance, because you feel that you do not
understand everything you should about the production, distribution and
consumption of wealth. In other words, something about these phenomena
puzzles you—you have some unsolved problems. Very well. These problems
are your materials. Try to solve them.

“But how can I solve them when I know nothing of economics?”

Kindly consider what a science is. A science is nothing more than the
organized solution of a number of related problems. These problems and
their answers have been changed and added to the ages through. But when
the science first started there was no literature on it. It originated
from the attempts of men to solve those problems which spontaneously
occurred to them. Before they started thinking these men knew nothing
of the science. The men who came after them availed themselves of the
thoughts of those before, and added to these. The whole process has
been one of thought added to thought. Yet, in spite of this, people
still cling to the belief, even if they do not openly avow it, that
we never can make any headway by thinking, but that in order to be
educated, or cultured, or to have any knowledge, we must be reading,
reading, reading.[17]

I almost blush for this elaborate defense. Everybody will admit the
necessity for thinking—in the abstract. But how do we regard it in the
concrete? When we see a man reading a good book, we think of him as
educating himself. When we perceive a man without a book, even though
we may happen to know that he is engaged in reflection, we do not look
upon him as educating himself, though we may regard him as intelligent.
In short, our habitual idea of thought is that it is a process of
reviewing what we already know, but not of adding anything to our
knowledge. Of course no one would openly avow this opinion, but it is
the common acting belief none the less. The objections to thought are
inarticulate and half-conscious. I am trying to make them articulate in
order to answer them.

To return, then, to the remark that we should use as materials for
unaided thinking the problems which occur spontaneously. You will
find when you begin to solve these that other problems will arise,
and that up to a certain point, the deeper you go into a subject—the
more critical you are in your thinking—the more problems will occur.
Perhaps it would be too much to ask you to solve all of these. Yet
even a little of this preliminary thinking will be of immense help
in reading. It will give you a far better sense of the importance of
different problems which a book considers, and you will not judge
their significance merely by the space it devotes to them. An author
may indeed bring before us certain problems which had not hitherto
occurred, and stimulate in us a sense of their importance. But this
artificial stimulation can never take the place of natural and
spontaneous wonder. Once we have obtained a solution of a problem
which has arisen spontaneously and from within, we do not easily forget
it. Our independent thinking, too, will have given us an idea of the
difficulties presented by problems, and will make us more critical in
reading and more appreciative of the solutions of an author. Not least
of all, if we read first we are extremely liable to fall into the
routine and traditional ways of considering a subject, whereas if we
first think, we are more likely in our insophistication to hit upon an
idea of real originality.

One last objection to thinking before reading remains. Schopenhauer has
answered it in his forcible manner:

“A man may have discovered some portion of truth or wisdom after
spending a great deal of time and trouble in thinking it over for
himself, adding thought to thought; and it may sometimes happen that
he could have found it all ready to hand in a book and spared himself
the trouble. But even so it is a hundred times more valuable, for he
has acquired it by thinking it out for himself. For it is only when
we gain our knowledge in this way that it enters as an integral part,
a living member, into the whole system of our thought; that it stands
in complete and firm relation with what we know, that it is understood
with all that underlies it and follows from it, that it wears the
color, the precise shade, the distinguishing mark, of our own way of
thinking, that it comes exactly at the right time, just as we felt the
need for it; that it stands fast and cannot be forgotten.”[18]

Despite the strong case that Schopenhauer makes out, I am satisfied
with my former advice—that a little thinking will suffice. Not only
because, as already said, the reader will probably do nothing if
advised to do more; but because after a certain amount of thinking
has been done, it is more profitable to avail ourselves of the wisdom
of the ages, stored in books, and to do our thinking after we have
acquired the main outlines of this wisdom. For when we think a problem
out, with the feeling that even after we have obtained a solution we
shall probably find it in a book later, we have not the incentive that
we have when we feel we have covered most of the old ground and that
thinking may bring us into new territory.

The practice of Gibbon remains to be considered: “After glancing my
eye over the design and order of a new book, I suspended the perusal
until I had finished the task of self-examination; till I had revolved
in a solitary walk all that I knew or believed, or had thought on the
subject of the whole work, or of some particular chapter. I was then
qualified to discern how much the author added to my original stock,
and I was sometimes satisfied by the agreement, sometimes armed by the
opposition of our ideas.”[19]

The trouble with this method is that it is not critical enough;
that is, critical in the proper sense. It almost amounts to making
sure what your prejudices are, and then taking care to use them as
spectacles through which to read. We always do judge a book more or
less by our previous prejudices and opinions. We cannot help it. But
our justification lies in the manner we have obtained these opinions;
whether we have infected them from our environment, or have held
them because we wanted them to be true, or have arrived at them from
substantial evidence and sound reasoning. If Gibbon had taken a
critical attitude toward his former knowledge and opinions to make sure
they were correct, and had then applied them to his reading, his course
would have been more justifiable and profitable.

In certain subjects, however, Gibbon’s is the only method which can
with profit be used. In the study of geography, grammar, a foreign
language, or the facts of history, it is well, before reading, simply
to review what we already know. Here we cannot be critical because
there is really nothing to reason about. Whether George Washington
ought to have crossed the Delaware, whether “shall” and “will” ought
to be used as they are in English, whether the verb “avoir” ought to
be parsed as it is, or whether Hoboken ought to be in New Jersey, are
questions which might reasonably be asked, but which would be needless,
because for the purposes we would most likely have in mind in reading
such facts it would be sufficient to know that these things are so.
We might include mathematics among the subjects to be treated in this
fashion. Though it is a rational science, there is such unanimity
regarding its propositions that the critical attitude is almost a waste
of mental energy. In mathematics, to understand is to agree.

       *       *       *       *       *

We come to the second step outlined in our plan of study—the selection
of a comprehensive text book.

Every large subject has gathered about it a vast literature, more
than one man can ever hope to cover completely. This literature may
be said to consist wholly of two things: information as to facts, and
opinions on those facts. In other words, any book you read on that
subject will probably contain some facts new to you and will contain
also the thoughts and reflections of the author. Of course you should
endeavor to learn as many facts as possible. But it is not necessary
to know all that has been thought about the subject. You are supposed
to have a mind of your own; you are supposed to do some thinking for
yourself. But though it is not necessary that you know all that has
been thought, it is well that you know at least part of what has been
thought, and so far as possible, the best part. For as just pointed
out, if you attempt to think out an entire subject for yourself you
will expend great energy and time in arriving at conclusions which
have probably already been arrived at during the generations that the
subject has had its being. Therefore you should endeavor to get, in as
short a time as possible, the greatest number of important facts and
the main outlines of the best that has been thought.

So if you sincerely intend to master any subject, the best way to begin
is by the selection of the most comprehensive and authoritative work
you can secure.

The man who desires to study any subject is commonly advised to read
first a small “introductory” book, then a larger one, and finally the
largest and most authoritative volumes. The trouble with this practice
is that you will have to study each book in turn. If you take up the
most thorough book first you need merely glance through the smaller
books, for the chances are that they will contain little that is new
to you, unless they happen to be more recent. The only justification
for reading a small book first is that the larger books are apt to be
technical and to assume a certain knowledge of the subject. However,
_the_ authoritative treatise or treatises on a subject usually refer
far less to the smaller books than the smaller books do to them. Any
greater depth of thought which the larger works may possess can be made
up for by increased concentration on the part of the reader. Of course
if a man does not intend to master a subject thoroughly, but only to
get some idea of its broad outlines, the case is different. He would
then be justified in reading a small work.

Another advantage of beginning a subject with the study of a
comprehensive and authoritative volume or main textbook, is that you
avoid confusion. The man who has mastered one foreign language, say
French, will always find his knowledge of great benefit to him for the
study of another language, such as Spanish. But any one who has begun
at about the same time the study of two or more foreign languages must
remember his confusion, and how his vague knowledge of one tongue
hindered him in the acquisition of the other.

So with reading. When we peruse a book in the usual casual way we do
not master it. And when we read a book on the same subject immediately
after it, the different viewpoint is liable to cause bewilderment and
make us worse off than before the second book was started. We do not
like to devote a lot of time to one book, but would rather run through
several books in the same time, believing that we thereby gain more
ideas. We are just as mistaken as a beginner in swimming who would
attempt to learn several strokes before having mastered one well enough
to keep afloat.

A main text being of such importance, its choice involves
responsibility. But how are we to know whether one book is superior to
another until we have read both? And if we are confronted with this
difficulty even when familiar with a subject, how much greater must be
our task when we know nothing of it? These difficulties do not appear
so formidable in practice.

Failing other means, the best method of selecting a main text is by
reputation. If we do not even know what book has the best reputation,
we can easily find out by referring to so acknowledged an authority as
the Encyclopedia Britannica, and consulting the bibliography in the
article on the subject.

But reputation does not furnish the only means of selecting. By merely
glancing through a book, stopping here and there to read entire
paragraphs—a task of ten or fifteen minutes—we can form an estimate
which later reading will usually justify. For an author betrays himself
in every line he writes; every slightest remark reveals in some manner
the breadth and depth of his thought. But just how well we can judge
a book in this way depends both on our own ability and on the time we
devote to glancing through it.

A few general requirements in a main text have been implied in stating
the purpose of having one. The book with the best reputation is not
necessarily the best for you. In economics Adam Smith’s _Wealth of
Nations_, though easily the most famous book on the subject, would
hardly be suitable as a main text because it has been superseded.
But though recency is always an asset, this does not mean that the
most recent book is always or even usually the best. The common idea,
though it is usually but vaguely formulated, is that the writer of the
more recent book has had all the previous books to draw upon, and has
therefore been able to extract the best from all of them and add to
this his own thoughts. The fallacy of this has been pointed out in the
trenchant language of Schopenhauer:

“The writer of the new book often does not understand the old books
thoroughly, and yet he is unwilling to take their exact words; so he
bungles them and says in his own bad way that which has been said
very much better and more clearly by the old writers, who wrote from
their own lively knowledge of the subject. The new writer frequently
omits the best things they say, their most striking illustrations,
their happiest remarks, because he does not see their value or feel
how pregnant they are. The only thing that appeals to him is what is
shallow and insipid.”

The value of recency will depend on the subject; while it would be
essential in aviation, its importance would be far less in ethics.

It is not well to take as your main text a book presenting a number of
different and conflicting viewpoints. One purpose of a main text is to
avoid confusion. Do not start the study of psychology, for instance,
by reading a history of the subject giving the views of different
thinkers. Begin by taking up one definite system.

Finally, be sure to select a book covering the entire field. Do not,
for instance, take a volume on the tariff to begin the study of
economics.

       *       *       *       *       *

We pass now to the third step advised—to read critically. By this I
do not mean that we should read skeptically or to confute everything
an author says. I mean simply that we should resist our natural
tendency to have our minds swayed by every opinion he expresses. I mean
that before allowing an idea to slip into our minds we should first
challenge its truth; we should examine its evidence.

Perhaps you have listened to a debate. After the affirmative had
made his impassioned plea you were all for the affirmative. When the
negative came forward and presented his case, you found yourself
favoring _him_. . . . Why do debaters always try to get the last say?
Why is it that in a formal debate, the affirmative, which usually has
the last say, is most often the side that wins? I could state the
reason bluntly. But if I did the honorable judges of such controversies
would not feel that their critical powers had been complimented.

The tendency to absorb the opinions of others manifests itself to just
as great a degree in reading. I have held debating up as an example
merely because it brings out more strongly, more strikingly, the
effects of such a tendency. But how can it be resisted?

If we have thought out a subject thoroughly, if we have acquired a
stock of clear and definite ideas on it, criticism in reading will
largely take care of itself. By dint of our own thinking we will know
what is relevant and what is not; we shall be able to judge the truth
and importance of the various arguments offered. The chances are,
however, that we shall not have given much previous thinking to the
subject, and that even if we have we shall not have gone as far as the
author, who doubtless availed himself of other books. Consequently
certain problems which he takes up will not even have occurred to us,
and hence will not have received our consideration.

But where our thinking has not helped us, and even where it has, we
should look critically upon every statement of an author, instead of
lazily acquiescing in it. The difference between critical and ordinary
reading, is that in the former we look for objections, in the latter
we wait until they happen to occur to us. Even then we do not hold our
objections steadily in mind; we are as likely as not to accept later
arguments based upon one we have previously objected to. In order to
avoid this perhaps the best we can do when we object to any statement
or believe we have found a fallacy, is to make written note of it
in the margin. To some extent this will prevent forgetting it. Too
few or too many marginal notes are both extremes to be shunned. If
we make too many we shall be apt to lose a true sense of proportion
and fail to distinguish essential criticisms from nonessentials. The
only way we can keep clear of this extreme is to avoid quibbling and
hair-splitting, making only such written criticisms as we feel we could
unblushingly defend before the author himself. Often however we may
feel that a statement is untrue, or that an argument is fallacious, and
yet be unable to point out just where or how it is so. In this case
perhaps the best plan would be merely to put a question mark in the
margin in order to remind ourselves that the statement has not been
fully accepted.

We ought to make sure what we object to because it is a peculiarity of
the human mind that it does not require evidence for a statement before
accepting it; it generally accepts any statement which has no evidence
against it. Unless we reject a statement and know why we have done so,
it is liable to insinuate itself in our reasoning, and the longer it
remains the more difficult it is to get rid of it. This is why it is so
important to avoid as many pitfalls as possible at the beginning of a
subject.

The reader may find that even when he reads critically he will accept
a certain statement at the time; and then perhaps much later, say a
month, an objection to that statement will occur to him, or he will see
that it at least ought to be qualified. For an explanation of this we
must go back to an analysis of the thinking process. Every idea which
enters the mind, either from independent thinking or from reading, is
accepted as true if it is in full conformity with our past experience
_as we remember it_. In all thinking or reading, the new idea arouses
associates on its entrance. An hypothesis or principle, for instance,
arouses in our minds past experiences of particular instances. If all
these conform it is accepted. But in ordinary uncritical reading or
thinking, only a few associates are aroused. In critical reading, we
look for as many associates as possible, especially those which do not
conform. It is this purpose kept in mind which helps to recall and
awaken these associates. No matter how critical our attitude, however,
we cannot at any given time recall every relevant associate, though
later a “non-conforming” associate is likely to occur to us by pure
accident.

While you are criticising a book line by line, and after you have
finished reading it, you should note the importance and relevancy
of the arguments accepted and rejected. While an author may make a
statement with which you disagree, its truth or falsehood may not
affect the rest of what he has to say, or it may affect merely a few
corollaries drawn from it. In other cases the truth of his entire
conclusion may depend upon it. Again, an author may incontrovertibly
prove something—which is entirely without bearing on the subject. This
means that you should keep the precise question constantly before your
mind.

Often you will find an author making a statement which really amounts
to nothing more than a mere airing of his prejudices, or at best the
bare statement of a conclusion. If he says, “Socialism is the greatest
menace of our civilization,” and leaves it go at that, not telling how
or why, you should mentally note this as a statement, as a statement
merely; you should not allow it to influence your opinion either way.
Finally, remember that though you may be able to refute every argument
an author brings forward in support of a conclusion, his conclusion may
still be correct. It is possible for a man to be right for the wrong
reasons.

While I believe all the foregoing suggestions are judicious and
necessary, I am willing to admit that their wisdom may reasonably
be doubted. But there is one practice about which there can be no
controversy—that of making sure you thoroughly understand every idea of
an author. While most people will not verbally contradict this advice,
their actual practice may be a continual contradiction of it. They will
be in such haste to finish a book that they will not stop to make sure
they really understand the more difficult or obscure passages. Just
what they hope to gain it is difficult to say. If they think it is
wasting time to try to understand every idea, it is surely a greater
waste of time to read an idea without understanding it. To be sure,
the difficulty of understanding may be the fault of the author. It may
be due to his involved and muddled way of expressing himself. It may
be the vagueness of the idea itself. But if anything this is all the
greater reason why you should attempt to understand it. It is the only
way you can find whether or not the author himself really knew what
he was talking about. To understand thoroughly the thought of another
does not necessarily mean to sympathize with it; it does not mean to
ask how that other came by it. It means merely to substitute as far
as possible concrete mental images for the words he uses, and analyze
those images to discover to what extent they agree with facts.

Better to carry this out, you might follow another practice of immense
value. Whenever you are puzzled as to an author’s meaning, or whenever
you do not care to accept his solution of a problem but are undecided
as to what the solution is, or whenever you want to carry an idea
further than he has, or above all, whenever an original and important
relevant thought is suggested to you, you should take your eyes from
your book—shut it if necessary—and let your thinking flow on; give
it fair play, even if it takes an hour before your vein of suggested
thought exhausts itself. Of course this practice will prevent you from
finishing a book as soon as you otherwise would. And if finishing a
book be your aim, I have nothing to say. But if your end is to attain
true, sound knowledge, knowledge which you will retain; if your object
is to become a thinker, the practice will prove of unspeakable benefit.
It will not interfere with concentration. Remember your object is to
concentrate primarily on the subject, not on the book; you intend to
become a thinker, not an interpreter or a commentator or a disciple of
any author.

And there are two reasons why this thinking should not be put off
until after you have finished a book. The first and more important
is that after you have finished reading, most of the ideas will have
unrecallably dropped out of mind. The second is that when you are
undecided about the solution of a problem, you will often find later
arguments depending upon that solution. Unless its truth or falsity is
decided in your own mind you will not know how to deal with these later
arguments.

I have spoken of feeling that an argument is fallacious, and of being
unable to point out just where it is so. To cease reading for a while,
and to endeavor to make these inarticulate objections articulate,
is excellent practice for training analytic powers and developing
clearness of thought.

Another way of reading a book is what I may call the anticipating
method. Whenever a writer has started to explain something, or
whenever you see that he is about to, stop reading and try to think
out the explanation for yourself. Sometimes such thinking will
anticipate only a paragraph, at other times an entire chapter. School
and college text-books, and in fact formal text-books generally, often
contain lists of questions at the end of the chapters. Where you find
these, read them before you read the chapter, and where possible try
to answer them by your own thinking. This practice will make you
understand an explanation much more easily. If your thinking agrees
with the author’s explanation it will give you self-confidence. It will
make you realize whether or not you understand an explanation. If you
were not able to think the thing out for yourself you will appreciate
the author’s explanation. If your thinking disagrees with that of the
author you will have an opportunity to correct him—or be corrected. In
either case your opinion will rest on firmer grounds. Not least of all
you will be getting practice in self-thinking.

After reading and criticising a book, it is a good practice to study
one taking a different viewpoint, or written even in direct opposition.
You will doubtless find that it points out many fallacies and
controverts many statements in the first book, which you allowed to
pass unchallenged. Ask yourself what the trouble was. Was your attitude
too receptive? Did you swallow words without substituting clear mental
images? Did you fail to trace out the consequences of a statement? All
these questions will help you do better the next time.

Because of your ignorance of the facts, your failure to refute a
conclusion will sometimes not be your fault. But even here, though you
cannot contradict an author’s statement of facts, you can criticise
conclusions drawn from those facts.

Take an instance. In making an inquiry into the causes of fatigue,
Professor Mosso of Turin selected two dogs as nearly alike as possible.
One he kept tied, and the other he exercised until it was thoroughly
tired. He then transfused blood of the tired dog into the veins of the
rested one, and produced in the latter every sign of fatigue. From this
he concluded that fatigue was due to certain poisons in the blood.

Now we cannot contradict the fact of this experiment: that the rested
animal was made to look tired. But we can question the inference
drawn. The truth of the conclusion aside, was the evidence sufficient
to establish it? Might not, for instance, similar results have been
produced upon the rested dog if blood of another rested dog had been
transfused into it? Had Mosso made such an experiment? Other objections
should easily occur to one.

Questions which admit of treatment by studying both sides are
too numerous to mention. The literature of philosophy furnishes
particularly good material. Examples which at present occur to me
are Sir William Hamilton’s philosophy versus Mill’s _Examination
of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy_, and Herbert Spencer’s
_First Principles_ versus William James’ essay, _Herbert Spencer’s
Autobiography_ and Henri Bergson’s criticism of Spencer in his
_Creative Evolution_.

Uncritical students of the history of philosophy often find themselves
agreeing with each thinker in turn, no matter how much he contradicts
previous thinkers, and end by acquiescing in the last system they read
about. I remember a philosophy class which completed its studies with
Pragmatism. Of course it was merely a coincidence, but at the end
of the course fully nine-tenths of the students declared themselves
Pragmatists!

It is almost needless to remark that an author who pretends to point
out fallacies in another is not necessarily right. There are men who
pride themselves on “reading both sides of a subject”; but unless they
have been critical, their knowledge is not half as clear or as likely
to be true as that of a man who has read only one side, but who has
read it critically.

       *       *       *       *       *

We have now to consider the next step outlined in the suggested plan of
reading—“written note should be made of the problems taken up which you
do not believe have been adequately treated, or the solutions of which
are in any way unsatisfactory. These you should think out for yourself.”

When reading a book you will often come across a statement, perhaps
an entire chapter, with which you disagree. This disagreement should
be recorded in the form of a question; as for instance, “Is such
and such the case?” You may doubt whether an author’s explanation
really explains. You may have a vague inarticulate suspicion that he
is sliding over facts, or that his solution is too superficial. This
suspicion should also be recorded in the form of a question. Often
again, while reading, a problem connected with the subject will occur
to you which the author has not even considered. This too should be
recorded.

All these questions should unfailingly be written, either in the margin
or on a piece of paper or notebook kept always at hand. You should
then set aside a definite time for thinking and attempt to solve the
questions for yourself.

And in thinking for yourself you should not make the author’s remarks
the basis of your thinking. You should deal with a problem almost
as if it had never occurred to any one else but you. Simply because
somebody else has been satisfied with a certain solution, that is no
reason why you should be. You should deal directly with the facts, data
and phenomena under consideration; not with the opinions of others
about those facts, data and phenomena. You should not ask yourself
whether the pragmatists are right, or whether the nominalists are
right, or the socialists, or the evolutionists, or the Democrats, or
the Presbyterians, or the hedonists, or what not. You should not ask
yourself which “school” of thinking you ought to belong to. You should
think a problem out _for yourself_, in every way that phrase implies.
At the end you may, incidentally, find yourself agreeing in the main
with some school of thought. However, this will be only accidental, and
your thought will be much more likely to be true. But you should never
agree with a school of thought any more than independent thinking leads
you to.

Of problems dealt with in this manner, some will take ten minutes,
others a week. If you encounter a particularly obstinate problem it
may be best to leave it for a while, say a week or two or even longer,
and go on with other problems. When problems are thus recurrently
treated it may take months, even years, before a satisfactory solution
is reached. In such cases you should be willing to give months and
even years to their solution. If a problem is not important enough to
devote so much time to you may be forced to abandon it; but you should
constantly keep in mind the fact that you have not solved it, and you
should be willing to admit to others that you have not solved it. Never
allow mere intellectual laziness to stifle your doubts and make you
think you have solved a problem, when you know in your heart of hearts
that you have worked yourself into the state of belief merely to save
yourself mental discomfort.

When most of your problems have been solved and your views made
definite you may resume your reading. You may proceed to other books on
the subject.

As to the suggestion that another book on the subject might be dealt
with in the same manner as this first one: this will depend largely on
the individual subject. It will depend on just what books have been
written on that subject. If none completely or adequately covers the
field, or if there are two or more good books representing radically
different viewpoints, more than one book probably ought to be studied
in this comprehensive manner. But this must be left to the reader’s
discretion.

       *       *       *       *       *

We come now to the last part of our plan—“after that all books may be
read ‘hop, skip and jump’ fashion, for the new problems or solutions
they suggest.”

I have already implied the necessity for this in formulating the law
of diminishing returns. After we have read several books on a subject
it would be manifestly foolish to continue reading books on that same
subject _in toto_. We would merely be going over again knowledge
already in our possession, instead of using our time more profitably
by entering new territory. But any good book will contain _something_
unique; some facts or principles to be found nowhere else; or perhaps
merely an unusually clear way of explaining some old principle, or a
new light on it. This we should endeavor to get without wasting our
time by plowing through the entire volume.

Theoretically our problem is difficult; on its face it would seem
impossible. We are to read all the important parts of a book; that
is, the parts most important _for us_, and nothing but the important
parts. But until we read it how are we to know whether any given part
of a book is important? In practice, however, our difficulty is not so
formidable.

We can eliminate the greater mass of the relatively useless part of a
book by a glance at its table of contents. If we see there titles which
suggest subjects or aspects of subjects in which we are not interested,
or that we feel we already know enough about, or that are simply
outside the particular purpose we have in consulting that book at all,
we can omit those chapters and confine ourselves to the others. . . .

When we were children first learning to read we had to look at every
letter in a word, then spell it out. Finally its meaning dawned upon
us. As we became more proficient we did not have to look at every
letter; we could read words as wholes with the same rapidity as the
separate letters. Accurate psychological tests have determined that a
man can read such words as “and” and “the” with even greater rapidity
than any single letter composing them. We finally reach the point where
we can read short phrases at the same rate as we formerly could single
words.

But the secret of the scholar who can cover efficiently much more
ground than ordinary men is not so much that he reads _faster_, as
that he reads _less_. In other words, instead of reading every word
he glances down a page and sees certain “cue” words or rather “cue”
phrases, for the eye and mind take in phrases as wholes. If he is
familiar with the subject (and he is not to employ this method unless
and until he is) he knows immediately, by “a sort of instinct” as
Buckle called it, whether any new or valuable thought is on that page.
When he finds that there is he involuntarily slackens his pace and
reads that thought at ordinary reading pace or even slower. Sometimes
indeed he will read whole chapters slowly, word for word, if the
contents are sufficiently novel and important to warrant it.

Read by this “hop, skip and jump” fashion a book the size of the
present volume might take an hour or even less. But it is almost
impossible to give even an approximate estimate of the time such
reading ought to take. Of course the longer you spend the more you
will get out of a book, but the return per time invested will be less
and less. On the other hand if you read the book too fast you may be
wasting your time altogether; you may end by understanding nothing at
all. Much will depend upon the originality and depth of the book, upon
the reader’s familiarity with the subject, and upon his native mental
qualities.

Many may object to practicing the foregoing method because they have
a vague feeling that it is their duty to read every word in a book. I
suspect that the real reason for this is simply so that when asked they
can conscientiously say they have _read_ the book. Whereas if they had
followed this skipping method they would be able to say only that they
had “glanced through it” or at best that they had “read parts of it.”
To this objection I have nothing to say, for I am confining my remarks
to those in search of truth and knowledge rather than conversation and
the good opinion of those who believe that reading from cover to cover
is the only path to wisdom. I might point out in passing, however, that
if we do follow this method there will be a half dozen books which we
can say we have “glanced through” to one which we would otherwise have
been able to say we had “read.”

This way of dealing with a book is constructive and positive as opposed
to the negative method of critical reading. For we read for suggestion
only; we carry forward some line of thought of an author, which is
better for intellectual development than trying to find if he was
wrong and where he was wrong. Not only is this positive method more
interesting; in some respects it is better even for criticism. For in
carrying forward an author’s line of thought, noting its consequences
and implications and considering different cases where it applies, we
find whether or not it leads to absurd conclusions; whether or not all
concrete instances conform with it. It should be kept in mind that this
method is not to be followed until the main text-book has been studied.
Consequently when it is followed your mind will have been fortified by
previous reading and thinking; valuable thoughts of an author will tend
to impress you and be remembered, while his trite or erroneous ideas
will tend to be ignored.

But after all, what is important is not your attitude or method at
the time of reading a book, but the thinking done later. The critical
attitude has its shortcomings, for when we are on the lookout for an
author’s mistakes we often miss the full significance of his truths.
On the other hand when “reading for suggestion” we may too often allow
an error to pass unquestioned. But both these disadvantages may be
overcome if we do enough thinking afterward.

Only one thing I must insist on: make sure you understand every
sentence of a book. Do not “guess” you understand it. Do not slide
over it in the hope that the author will explain it later. Do not work
yourself into the belief that after all it is not really important.
Rather than this, better by far do not read the book at all. Not only
will you get little or nothing from it but you will be forming the
worst of intellectual habits—that of thinking you understand when
you do not. If you have made every reasonable effort to understand
an author and then have not succeeded, write in the margin “I do not
understand this,” or draw a line alongside the sentence or passage. If
you have to do this too often you should put the volume aside for a
time. It is either too advanced for you or it is not worth reading.

As to the thinking you do after reading. Often problems connected with
the subject of a book you have read may arise spontaneously in mind,
or an objection to a statement may suddenly occur to you when thinking
on some other topic. Of course when this happens you should not stifle
your thoughts. But besides this, definite periods should be put aside
for thinking on what you have read and on the problems you have
written. I cannot insist on this too strenuously or too often.

A good task to set before yourself is to take every idea you agree with
in a book and try to treat it as a “germ.” Tell yourself that you will
develop it beyond the point where the author left off. Of course this
will not always be possible. You will seldom succeed. But there is
nothing like hitching your wagon to a star, and it will do no harm to
set this up as an ideal.

       *       *       *       *       *

A few miscellaneous problems remain to be considered.

How should we deal with authors with whom we disagree fundamentally?
Herbert Spencer relates that he twice started Kant’s _Critique of
Pure Reason_, but disagreeing fundamentally with the first and main
proposition he ceased reading. Now to do this is to give an author too
much credit for consistency. For even if every other proposition he
sets forth is ostensibly a corollary from his leading one, some of them
will contain much truth. It is impossible to be consistently wrong.
Add to this the possibility that the author may be right on his first
proposition after all. However, no book with a viewpoint radically
different from our own should be used as a main text, for we would
get little benefit from it. If the book is by an obscure author we
may safely lay it aside altogether. But if it is by so famous and so
bepraised a philosopher as Kant we should at least glance through the
entire volume for suggestions.

How many times ought we to read a book? I have already partly answered
this in formulating the law of diminishing returns. Few books are worth
re-reading. Rather than read one book twice on any given subject it
will most often be more profitable to read another book on it. For the
second will not only serve as a review of previous knowledge, but will
furnish you with new ideas, different aspects and new problems.

Certain books, however, can never be replaced by others. They occupy
this position either because they deal with a subject not elsewhere
dealt with or because they take an entirely novel aspect, or solely
because they are the works of supreme genius, for while the main
conclusions reached in works of this last type may be found elsewhere,
the _manner of thinking_ can never be. These books should be read
twice. The main text-book selected on any subject will usually be
chosen because it is the best and most comprehensive work on that
subject. For this reason it should be read a second time even if such
reading is only of the hop, skip and jump variety.

We should not re-read a book immediately upon the first completion
but should always allow a long interval to elapse. There are several
reasons for this. After an interval we acquire perspective; we are
in a position to know whether a book has done us any good and just
about how much. We may find after this interval that a work of which
we thought quite highly at the time of reading has really not helped
us appreciably either in thought or action. We may find that we have
outgrown the need of it. Even if we finally decide to re-read we shall
find the wait of immense help to our memory. If we re-read a book after
an interval of six months, three years after our second reading we will
remember its contents much better than if we had read it three times
in unbroken succession. Add to this that in the lapse of time we shall
have forgotten most of the work, and shall therefore approach it the
second time with greater interest than if it were still fresh in mind;
that our experience, reading and thinking in the meantime will make us
see every sentence in a different light, enabling us to judge our own
marginal criticisms (if we have made any) as well as the book, and the
advantage of waiting cannot be doubted. I do not believe it will ever
be necessary to read a book more than twice, that is, so far as thought
and knowledge are concerned. With books read for their style or for
mere amusement the case is different.

How long should one read at a sitting? Some men find that their
thought is choked by reading. Some find it stimulated. But results
vary according to the length of time reading is carried on. Reading
for very long periods at a stretch often deadens original thought. The
writer finds that he nearly always derives benefit from reading for
short periods, say ten or fifteen minutes. This is in some measure due
to the increased concentration which short periods allow. On the other
hand, some people find that a certain momentum is acquired during long
reading periods. The reader can only experiment to find how long a
period best suits his individual case.

How about concentration? This has been considered in relation to
independent thinking, but in reading the problem is somewhat different.
In thinking our task is to choose relevant associates. In reading the
associates are chosen for us. Our task is to stick to them, instead of
following the associates which occur to us either from what we read
or from sights and sounds about us. But associates which occur to us
from what we read are of two kinds: relevant and irrelevant, and the
former should of course be followed out. This however should be done
deliberately, in the manner I have previously indicated, and when the
vein of suggested thought has been exhausted we should bring attention
back to our book. The problem of concentration is not a very serious
one in reading. It may sometimes be difficult to concentrate on a book.
But it is infinitely easier than concentrating on a problem by unaided
independent thought.

       *       *       *       *       *

The plan of reading I have laid out is merely suggestive. What I
chiefly wanted to show was that all books cannot be treated alike, that
we cannot lay down dogmatic inflexible rules to apply to every volume.
Our method of reading will vary with the nature of a book or of the
subject it treats. It will depend upon the books we have already read
and even upon the books we contemplate reading later.

The good you get out of reading will depend entirely on how you allow
it to affect you. If every book you read suggests more problems,
gives you worth-while questions and topics to think about in spare
moments, enriches your intellectual life and stimulates your thought,
it is performing its proper function. But if you read solely to answer
problems you cannot answer for yourself, if every time you are puzzled
about anything you run to a book to have it explained, and accept
without question the explanation there given; in short, if you use your
reading to save yourself from thinking, you had better stop reading
altogether. Smoking is a far less harmful form of dissipation.

I have not yet definitely indicated the ratio which time given to
reading should bear to time devoted to thinking. I have avoided this
because of the many factors to be taken into account. But if the reader
happens to have a spare hour to devote to the improvement of his mind,
he will not go very far wrong if he gives thirty minutes to reading and
thirty minutes to thinking. His thinking may be on the subject he has
read, or part of it may be on other problems. That is not so important.
But the reader must not imagine that his thinking need be restricted
to these thirty minutes or any other thirty minutes. The glorious
advantage of thinking is that it can be fitted in at any odd moment.
The entire apparatus for carrying it on is always with you. You do not
even need a book for it. I remind the reader of this at the risk of
repeating myself.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was pointed out at the beginning of this chapter that the reading
of any book is not an end in itself, but should be subordinated to the
larger end of obtaining the best from reading in general. But for the
sake of clearness our end was temporarily considered as the mastery of
some particular subject. I indicated a plan of reading to best serve
that end. I also promised that needful qualifications would come later.

In stating the law of diminishing returns it was pointed out that it
applied to whole subjects as well as to books, that “past a certain
point every book we read on a subject, while it will probably add to
our knowledge, will not yield as much return as a book of equal merit
on another subject new to us.”

While this is true it applies to but a small extent when subjects are
read by the method just outlined, for while we do not get as much out
of any book as we would out of one of equal merit on another subject,
we read it so much faster that the return per time and energy expended
is practically as great. This fast reading is made possible by our
previous knowledge on the old subject. If the book on the new subject
were read in the same manner, we might get little or nothing from it.

With this objection out of the way I suggest that the reader get a
specialty. Books read in the ordinary unsystematic fashion, now on
this subject and now on that, leave little permanent impression. Even
if they do, we feel that though our range of reading may be wide we
have at best but a smattering of many things. In the final analysis
a smattering of knowledge is in most cases of no more use than total
ignorance. Better by far be ignorant of many things and know one thing
well, than know many things badly.

Besides the utility of having a specialty is the pleasure we derive.
There is always an intense satisfaction in feeling that one is an
“expert,” an “authority” in some subject. When some Congressman makes
an inaccurate remark which trespasses on your specialty you can write
a letter to the _Times_ or the _Sun_ explaining the error of his ways,
and incidentally exhibiting your own limitless erudition. When your
friends get into an argument on some question within your chosen field
they will remark, “Ask John Jones. He ought to know.” And even when
you have to confess abysmal ignorance on some question outside of your
domains, you may still have the satisfaction of believing that people
are excusing you within themselves with an “Oh, well, but he knows a
lot about someology.”

One writer estimates that “fifteen minutes a day or a half hour three
days a week devoted to one definite study will make one a master in
that field in a dozen years.”[20] This statement should interest
those people who “haven’t the time” to take up any specialty outside
their own business, but who spend at least half an hour every day in
newspaper or magazine reading—with nothing to show for it at the end
of twenty years.

Just what subject you make your specialty I am not at present
concerned. It may be aeronautics, astronomy, banking, Greek history,
differential calculus, social psychology, electricity, music,
philosophy of law, submarines, soap manufacture, religion, metaphysics,
sun-motors, education, literary style or the moon. But whatever it
is, it ought to be a subject in which you are interested for its
own sake—which most frequently means one which you do not make your
vocation. If you get tired of it, drop it and take up something in
which you are interested. Your thinking and study should be pursued as
a pleasure—not as a duty.

If your subject is a narrow one, if let us say it is merely a branch of
what is generally considered a science, you should first get a clear
idea of the broad outlines of the science before taking the specialty
up. Should you, for instance, select the tariff, begin your study by
using as your main text a book on general economics.

Even if you make your specialty an entire science you will derive
great help by reading in other sciences. In ethics, for instance, a
knowledge of psychology, biology and sociology will prove of surprising
value. This means that for the sake of knowing the specialty itself,
if for nothing else, you should not pursue it exclusively. If ever you
find yourself in danger of doing this it would be well to lay down a
rule that every third or fourth book you read must be one which does
not deal with the subject you have chosen as your own.



VIII

WRITING ONE’S THOUGHTS


 Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an
 exact man.—BACON.

Any attempt to formulate a science or art of thinking would not be
complete without at least some discussion of writing. Indeed writing is
so closely bound up with thinking that I have been compelled to refer
to it several times in the discussion of thought and reading.

I have already spoken of writing as an aid to concentration. I was wont
to depreciate it on account of its slowness. But this is practically
its only fault. Thoughts come to us when writing which we get in no
other way. One is often surprised, when reading something one has
written at a previous time, at some of the remarks made. We seem to
have temporarily grown wiser than ourselves.

But the great advantage of writing is that it preserves thought. What
printing has done for humanity in preserving the knowledge of the ages,
writing will do for the individual in preserving his own reflections.

When some thought has occurred to us we believe at the time we are
thinking it that it is ours forever. We cannot conceive that it shall
ever be forgotten. Perish that belief! I have sometimes had an idea
occur to me (really!), and have believed it absolutely new, at least
so far as I was concerned. But on looking over things written before,
I have found that I had had almost identically the same thought at
another time. Not only did I forget the idea; I did not even recognize
it at its second appearance. To be sure, in these cases the thoughts
came a second time. But thoughts are seldom so obliging.

Therefore when an idea occurs or when you have solved a problem, even
a problem suggested by a book, you should immediately put the idea
or solution in writing. You may of course wait until the end of the
day. But the safest way of capturing an idea is to write it the minute
after it flashes through your brain, or it may be lost forever.
It was with this in mind that in the chapter on reading I advised
immediately writing not only ideas but problems which occurred to one.
The discovery of a new problem is just as important and necessary for
intellectual advance as the solution of an old one. If we do not write
our problems we are apt to forget they exist; we put ourselves in
danger of assuming without question some proposition which is not true.

To facilitate the writing of your thoughts and meditations I suggest
a notebook kept specially for that purpose. In addition to this you
should always carry about with you some blank paper and a pencil, so
as to be ever ready to jot down anything. To write an idea does not of
course imply that you cannot later reject it, or change it, or develop
it further.

The elusiveness of thoughts is most strikingly brought out when writing
them down. When we are writing a long sentence we have in mind the
exact words with which we are going to finish it. But our attention is
called for the moment to the physical act of writing, and presto!—the
words are gone; we are compelled to end our sentence in a different
way. I have mentioned the advantages of shorthand and typewriting for
keeping pace with thought. I need merely repeat my advice to use these
acquirements if you have them. Thoughts, I must repeat, are fleeting.
No device for trapping them should be despised.

Not least among the advantages of a notebook in which to write thoughts
is the permanent historical record it gives. Every thought we write
should be dated, day, month and year, like a letter. When we come
to read over ideas jotted down from time to time in this manner, we
shall see before us an intellectual autobiography. We shall see how
our recent thoughts compare with those written sometime ago. We shall
see just what our opinions were at certain times, and how they have
changed. And we shall see whether our mental progress has been marked,
or whether we have been standing still.

It may be considered absurd to suggest that every thought you write in
your note-book be put in the best style you can command. We are wont
to differentiate “style” and “matter.” It is doubtful whether this
distinction is quite valid. It is doubtful whether we know just what we
mean when we make it. Indeed Arnold Bennett goes so far as to say:

“Style cannot be distinguished from matter. When a writer conceives
an idea he conceives it in the form of words. That form of words
constitutes his style, and it is absolutely governed by the idea. The
idea can only exist in words, it can only exist in one form of words.
You cannot say exactly the same thing in two different ways. Slightly
alter the expression, and you slightly alter the idea. Surely it is
obvious that the expression cannot be altered without altering the
thing expressed! The writer, having conceived and expressed an idea,
may, and probably will, ‘polish it up.’ But what does he polish up? To
say that he polishes up his style is merely to say that he polishes up
his idea, that he has discovered faults and imperfections in his idea,
and is perfecting it. The idea exists in proportion as it is expressed;
it exists when it is expressed, and not before. It expresses itself. A
clear idea is expressed clearly and a vague idea vaguely.”[21]

Mr. Bennett, I suspect, is a victim of exaggeration. But this much is
true: Thought and style are mutually dependent to a far greater degree
than is generally supposed. Not only will an improvement in a thought
improve its wording; an improvement in wording will improve the thought.

Now as to the application of this. I have referred to the occurrence
in reading of “inarticulate” objections. The sole reason these are
inarticulate is because the objection is too vague even to find
expression. In a case like this we should word our objection the best
we can, no matter how ridiculous or indefensible it at first sounds.
But we should word it in as many ways as possible; we should say it
in all different sorts of ways; we should write it in every different
kind of way. Gradually our objection will become definite, clear,
forceful. In short, we shall not only have improved our way of stating
our thought; we shall have improved the thought itself. To study
clearness of statement or acquisition of vocabulary is to study means
of improving thought. Your notebook should not be used solely for the
entry of “thoughts” as such, but any striking way of wording a thought
which occurs to you should likewise be immediately written.

But while there is some truth in Arnold Bennett’s statement that the
wording is the thought, from another point of view its very opposite
is true. The wording is _never_ the thought. Strictly speaking,
“thought” is something which can exist only in the mind. It can never
be transferred to paper. What then is it that we write? If words and
sentences are not thought, what are they? If they are not thought how
is it possible to transfer thought through the medium of writing?

The fact is that words, though they are not thought, are the
_associates_ of thought. You hear the word “horse.” Very likely the
visual image of a horse arises in mind. This image, idea, notion,
“concept,” will depend on your experience of particular horses. It will
never be a logical abstract of these. It will never be a horse without
color, particular size, sex or breed, as is sometimes thought. It may
however have different elements in it from different horses you have
seen. It may be the image of just one particular horse you remember.
But no such thing as a general concept exists in the mind. We have a
particular image which stands for all horses. The name of course is
general. It—or its definition—may be called the logical concept. But
the name itself is not used in thought. It is an arbitrary symbol which
serves merely to arouse a particular image associated with it, and
this image is dealt with as if general. This image we shall call the
concept. It is the working concept: the psychological as opposed to the
logical concept.

As your concept of a horse will depend on your experience of particular
horses, another person’s concept will depend on _his_ experience of
that animal. And as his experience can never be exactly the same as
yours, his concept, though it may be similar to yours, will not be the
same. Not only will no one else have the same mental image or concept
as you _but you yourself will never have exactly the same image twice_.
This image will vary with the setting in which it occurs—with the
associates which happen to arouse it. If you are reading about a great
battle and the word “horse” is mentioned, a certain kind of horse will
suggest itself to you. If you are reading about a grocery wagon and see
the word “horse” another kind will suggest itself. This whether the
animal is described by adjectives or not. At one time you may think of
the horse as in motion, at another time as at rest.

Unfortunately many so-called psychologists seem to consider the
concept, even this image-concept, as something fixed in the individual,
or at best as only changing with actual experience of the thing
conceived. The truth is that the image or images aroused on hearing
any word are not the same for two seconds at a time. They are fluid,
dynamic; never static, immobile. They are associates of the words
in a constant state of flux.[22] When the concept of one individual
varies from one moment to the next, how must the concepts of different
individuals differ from each other!

I have instanced the idea of a horse because it is so simple and
concrete. In actual thinking we never meet with a simple separated
concept or with a single word; we deal with at least an entire
sentence. This means that our images vary even more widely at different
times than was the case in the example. It means that the images of
other people are at a correspondingly greater variance from ours.

As to the application of all this to writing. We have an idea; thinking
it important we decide to jot it down. Now we cannot jot down the idea,
but only words associated with it. We cannot even write all the words
associated with it, for there are too many. So we write a comparative
few; and we say we have written the idea. _But all we have really
written is something associated with the idea._ When we read this over
at a later time we shall not have the same ideas aroused as were in
mind originally, but at best only similar ideas. For the associates of
words, like all associates, are constantly changing; and thanks to the
frailties of human memory exactly the same associates are never aroused
twice. So after a long interval they will be much different than at the
time we wrote. The reader will often have the experience of “writing a
thought” and thinking it very important, but on reading it at another
time he will fail to see why he ever considered it worth putting on
paper. The truth is that at the time he wrote the idea it probably
_was_ important, because he had the right concepts. But when he came
back to the words he had written they failed to re-suggest the former
concepts and associates.

This difference between words and thought is even more strikingly
brought out when the written thought is read by some other person than
the writer. The writer is likely at least to have approximately the
same concepts as at the time of writing. And he is greatly aided by his
memory in recalling the concepts and associated ideas previously in
mind, the words suggesting these. But when a person reads what some one
else has written, he translates the words into the concepts previously
connected with them in his own mind. Thus an author can never literally
transfer an idea. He can merely put down certain arbitrary symbols,
which will serve to arouse a similar thought in his readers. How
greatly the reader’s thought differs from the author’s it is difficult
if not impossible to determine, for minds can only communicate by
words. It is this difference in associated concept which often makes a
reader fail to appreciate the profoundest thoughts of an author, and
even, on the other hand, occasionally to see depth where it does not
exist.

We come now to the solution of the problem to which this rather
extended discussion has been preparatory. How is an author to convey,
as nearly as possible, his actual idea? And the answer is: _he should
word it in as many different ways as possible_.

If a person had never been to a city and you wanted to give him an idea
of it, you would show him photographs taken from different viewpoints.
One photograph would correct and supplement the other. And the more
photographic viewpoints he saw the more complete and accurate would be
his idea—the more his concept would approximate the actual city. But he
could never more than approximate; he could never obtain the idea of a
man who had visited that city.

An author’s language is a photograph of his thought. He can never
actually transfer an idea, but by wording it in different ways he can
show different photographs of it.

If, for example, a second wording does not conform with the first
concept which a reader has formed, the reader will be obliged to modify
that concept. And if the idea is repeated in a number of different ways
he will have to modify his concept so much that he will gradually more
and more approximate the idea of the author.

I remember the story in some educational treatise of an inspector who
entered a school room, asked the teacher what she had been giving her
class, and finally took up a book and asked the following question,
“If you were to dig a hole thousands and thousands of feet deep, would
it be cooler near the bottom or near the top, and why?” Not a child
answered. Finally the teacher said, “I’m sure they know the answer but
I don’t think you put the question in the right way.” So taking the
book she asked, “In what state is the center of the earth?” Immediately
came the reply from the whole class in chorus, “The center of the earth
is in a state of _igneous fusion_.” . . .

There is, and has been for the past generation, a great cry in
educational circles that we should teach things, not words. In some
instances this is inadvisable, even impracticable. But if the teacher
in the foregoing story had taken the trouble to word her idea in at
least more than one way, she might have implanted a real idea in her
pupils. She would at least have found that as it was they had none.

       *       *       *       *       *

One more question remains. If you are writing a composition, a letter,
an essay, or even a book, what is the best way to get down all your
thoughts, without losing any of value; to get them down in the best
order and in the best style? In other words what is the path of
greatest efficiency in transferring thoughts from your mind to paper?

We have already considered such devices as shorthand. Of course
dictation, where it is possible, is an obvious advantage. But I mean
here to consider the aspects of the problem which apply more especially
to compositions of some length.

It is related of Auguste Comte that he composed his books by thinking
them over down to the minutest details, down to the very phraseology
of the sentences, before penning a single word, but that when he came
to writing he could turn out an astounding amount of work in a given
time. Unless a person have a remarkable memory, however, he will forget
most of what he has thought by the time he comes to writing it. Comte’s
method might nevertheless be profitably applied to short sections of
compositions. And where conciseness or perspicuity are desired, it will
often be found useful to think out an entire sentence before writing a
word of it.

Perhaps the best way of ensuring efficiency in writing is by the card
system. This consists in writing on a separate card every valuable idea
that occurs to you, immediately after it occurs. When you finally come
to writing you can arrange these cards in any order desired, throwing
out the ideas you no longer consider important, and adding those which
are necessary to complete or round out the work.



IX

THINGS WORTH THINKING ABOUT


 The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder, is but a
 pair of spectacles behind which there is no eye.—CARLYLE.

Up to now I have treated exclusively of _how_ to think, but have made
no mention of _what_ to think. I have treated of the best methods of
dealing with different subjects and questions; I have not considered
what subjects or problems are most worth dealing with.

Of course the important thing is that you do think. It is not
absolutely essential that the results of your thinking are results
which can be directly made use of. Thinking is an end in itself. Most
men imagine that “thinking for the sake of thinking” may appeal to
philosophers, but means nothing to them, as they like to think only
when by so doing they can forward some practical end. These people do
themselves an injustice.

Perhaps you, O reader, are among them. If so, let me appeal to your
personal experience. Have you ever tried to solve a toy puzzle, tried
to take the two wire hooks apart without bending them? Or have you
ever stopped to tackle a problem on the family page of your evening
or Sunday newspaper? “A grocer buys fifteen dozen eggs, he sells—”
you know what I mean. You admit that you have. Exactly. You have been
thinking for the mere sake of thinking.

If you protest that you didn’t care about the thinking, that you took
no pleasure in the thinking, which was merely incidental, but that
what really urged you on and gave you pleasure was the solution of
the puzzle, you are again deceiving yourself. The thinking was not
incidental. Thinking and problem solving are identical. The fact is
that you set yourself to solving a problem, to removing a mental
hindrance, for the mere sake of getting the answer, with absolutely no
thought of what you were going to do with the answer when you got it.

But if you can derive so much pleasure from thinking which you cannot
put to use, how much greater should be your pleasure when your
conclusions can be utilized? For when you think of something useful,
you have not only the present pleasure of solving your problem, but
the ulterior pleasure of applying your solution to action, or to the
solution of some further problem. And while I again admit that thinking
is an end in itself, this does not prevent it from being at the same
time a means to some further end. After all is said there is really no
reason why we should be prejudiced against problems or subjects that
are useful.

The mere decision that we should think of useful questions is
insufficient. Very few questions are without _some_ use. Even the
solution of the family page puzzle might some day be useful in solving
a similar problem arising in your own business; and even if this never
came to pass you might spring the puzzle on your friends, and make
yourself socially more interesting. Thought given to a question in a
debating book now before me, “Resolved, that Ferocious Wild Beasts are
more to be dreaded than Venomous Reptiles,” might result in knowledge
which would come handy in selecting equipment if one decided to journey
to the wilderness of South America. But there are millions of problems
of as much use as these; and it is not within the power of one lone
mortal, of years three score and ten, to compass even a corner of them.
Our question is not—what problems are of use?, but—of _how much_ use
are certain problems?, or stated in another way,—what is the _relative_
utility of problems?

Any adequate consideration of this question would involve the selection
of some criterion for utility, and the testing of individual problems
by that criterion. But to treat such a question with anything like
justice is beyond the scope of this book; it would require almost
a volume in itself. It is almost the same as the problem, What
knowledge is of most worth?, and the most masterly treatise on that
question which has ever been written can be found in Herbert Spencer’s
epoch-making little work, _Education_. I sincerely hope that the reader
study this. But I hope even more earnestly that before he does so he
first think the problem out independently, for it is one of the most
important he can put before himself.

But our present question—that of the relative importance of
problems—is slightly different from that of the relative importance
of knowledge. The first deals with thought and the second with
information, or the materials of thought; the first with a process of
getting knowledge and the second with knowledge itself.

I believe for example that a knowledge of his own body and of the
laws of health is the most valuable a man can have, but there are few
problems concerning the body which I would include in the first rank.
There are several reasons for this. In the first place, while it may
be true that such questions _taken as a whole_ are more important than
any other class of questions, taken separately they are relatively
minor; there are no one or two questions of all-encompassing importance
to which all the others are subsidiary. Moreover, such questions,
while they undoubtedly require thought for their solution, depend to a
relatively great extent on observation and experiment. No sane medical
student would sit down and follow out a lengthy course of reasoning
as to where the heart is; he would merely observe or dissect, or
consult the book of a man who had dissected, and save mental fatigue.
Not least of all, questions of physiology require extensive, highly
technical and detailed information—information which requires years of
special study to acquire—before any thinking that is at all safe can be
put upon them. So in estimating the relative value of problems, there
are other considerations besides the value of knowledge.

But it is not my purpose here to discuss the general principles upon
which the selection of worth-while questions should be made. That
task I leave to the reader. I have chosen rather the concrete path of
suggesting a list of questions which I consider of great import. I
believe that no matter how much thought the reader gives to any one of
them he will not be losing his time.

I have elsewhere pointed out that the more knowledge a man has the
more problems he will have. It is equally true that unless a man has
some knowledge on a subject he will not be able to appreciate or even
understand some of its most important problems. It is only when we
begin to think of subjects that we discover problems and realize their
significance. In stating most of the following problems, therefore, I
have often thought it necessary to add a few sentences in explanation,
and have sometimes stated a question in a variety of forms in order to
more clearly convey the thought.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Are specific characteristics, acquired during the lifetime of an
individual, inherited by his offspring?_ I have referred so often to
this problem and its importance that further explanation is hardly
necessary. “Characteristics” of course refer to intellectual and moral
as well as physical characteristics.

_What is the influence of the individual mind on society and of social
environment on the individual?_

_Does the form of government determine the character of a people, or
does the character of a people determine their form of government?_
Or do government and character react on each other, and how? The same
question may be asked of all other social institutions. Does the
religion of a people determine their character, or does the character
of a people determine their religion? This whole problem is somewhat
similar to that immediately preceding, regarding the interaction of the
individual and the social mind.

_Is society for the benefit of the individual or is the individual for
the benefit of society?_

_Should the jurisdiction of the government be extended or curtailed?_
Or should it be extended in some directions and curtailed in others?
Does the answer to this problem depend on the answer to the previous
one? Another form of the same problem is: What is the proper sphere of
government?

_Should the government grant monopolies?_ Patents, for example?

_What would be the most practicable plan for abolishing or minimizing
war?_ Those who do not wish to beg the previous question may first
ask whether it is always desirable to prevent war, whether war is
always an evil. What is the effect of war on the physical future of
the race? on national and individual character? on government? on
national liberty? on personal liberty? What are the ethics of war?
for aggression? for territorial conquest? for “national honor”? for
defense of a weaker nation? for defense against invasion? What is the
effect of preparedness? of universal preparedness? of preparedness of
an individual nation? In each case what are the principles on which the
extent of preparedness should be determined? What are the fundamental
causes of war? How can they be removed? Is it possible to remove all of
them?

_Which is the rightful owner of land, the community or the individual?_
To state the problem in another form: Should private land ownership be
abolished?

_Who should be entitled to vote?_ This of course is a question similar
to woman suffrage, but it is much broader. It deals not only with the
qualification of sex, but of age. Should any one under twenty-one have
the vote? The validity of property and educational qualifications
should also be considered.

_How should the relations of the sexes be regulated?_ Put in slightly
narrower and perhaps less objectionable form: What would be just laws
governing marriage and divorce?

_What is the effect of attempted State interference with the law of
supply and demand?_ Does the unrestricted working out of this law
forward ultimate justice? Just what is the validity and the meaning
of the expression “The _law_ of supply and demand”? The question
could be taken up in connection with minimum wage laws, railroad rate
regulations, “extra crew” laws, etc.

_Which is the best policy: free trade, revenue tariff, or protective
tariff?_ Or under what conditions is each best? With what classes of
commodities?

_What would be an equitable and sound currency system?_ This question
is somewhat technical, and would have to be considered in the form of a
number of subsidiary problems. Ought money to have an intrinsic value?
What is the effect of “fiat” paper currency on money of intrinsic
value and on prices? The effect of credit? The effect of fluctuations
in the supply of gold? Ought there be a double standard or a multiple
standard? etc.

_Should conduct be judged by the pleasure or happiness it yields?_
Stated in another form, almost a different problem: Is utility a good
moral guide?

_Should conduct be judged by its tendency to produce individual
well-being, or should it be judged by its tendency to produce the
well-being of all humanity, or of all sentient beings?_ This problem
cannot be lightly dismissed in favor of universal well-being.
This becomes apparent when we attempt to give an undogmatic and
non-question-begging answer to the query: Why should a man act for the
benefit of others?

No science is more provocative of thought than ethics. The question of
whether acts should be declared good or bad as they tend to produce
pleasure or happiness, either individual or in humanity as a whole, or
whether “virtue” or “morality” is an end in itself, is one of the most
subtle and elusive we can attempt to solve; no matter which answer we
give we are brought into logical and psychological dilemmas from which
it seems impossible to escape. This is also true of the problem of
whether our knowledge of what constitutes right and wrong comes from
experience or from intuition.

The broadest form of the ethical problem, which includes the two
preceding italicized problems, is:

_What is the proper criterion for determining right and wrong conduct?_
Or even less dogmatic: Can there be a criterion for determining right
and wrong conduct, and what is it?

Somewhat allied with the ethical problem is that problem of problems:
how to live? By this is meant how to put the most into life and get
the most out of it; what vocation to follow; what hobbies, amusements,
avocations to take up; how to plan time by months, by weeks, by days,
by hours. How much time and energy do certain activities deserve? How
much can we afford to give them? Restated: what activities are of most
worth?

Of course every one does think of problems connected with the art of
living. But he thinks of them as little unconnected questions. Barely
indeed does any one go about the solution of the general problem of
living in an orderly, systematic manner. To insist upon the broad
practical bearings of the problem would be unnecessary, absurd. By
its very nature it is the most “practical” question we can ask. Any
particular solution or treatment may be impractical, but this does not
affect the question itself.

_What are the respective influences of environment (education,
experience, etc.) and innate tendencies in determining character?_
Which is the greater determinant?

_Does pleasure depend upon the satisfaction of instinctive desires, or
do desires for certain activities depend upon the pleasure accompanying
the previous performance of such activities?_ Does an activity or the
possession of an object give us pleasure because we have previously
desired it, or do we desire an activity or an object because we have
previously obtained pleasure from it? Or do pleasure and desire
interact, and just how? The solution of this psychological problem is
of tremendous importance in ethics.

_Does the mind depend entirely on the brain?_ That is, are all
thoughts, emotions, feelings, due to material changes in the brain? The
answer we give to this problem may determine our answer to the question
of immortality.

_What knowledge is of most worth?_ I have so fully discussed the
importance of this question and the method of proceeding with its
solution that further explanation is needless.

One sphere of thought where the thinker is compelled to be original;
where it is practically impossible for him to fall into beaten tracks,
is invention. But there is useless as well as useful invention. A
man’s ambition may range all the way from inventing a machine to
harness directly the limitless power of the sun, down to devising a
tenacious tip for shoelaces. But he should be careful about inventing
something already patented. He should be even more careful to avoid
inventing something for which there is no demand. One of Edison’s first
patents was for a machine to register quickly the votes of legislative
assemblies. And it worked. But the legislative assemblies didn’t want
it, because they didn’t want their votes quickly registered. That
would have ended good old filibuster methods. Another invention of
great uselessness which has been several times attempted is a machine
to write words just like the human hand writes them. There are really
so many useful things which do not exist and for which there is a
demand, that it seems quite a pity nine out of ten patents in the
files at Washington are for things inutile. If the would-be inventor
cannot himself think of something really needed, almost any big patent
attorney house will send him an entire book of suggestions on “What to
Invent.”

Invention usually requires highly technical knowledge, not to speak of
facilities for experiment and a well-supplied purse. But nothing gives
more solid satisfaction to its creator than a successful appliance.
While the conscientious philosopher is constantly harassed by doubts as
to whether, after all, he has discovered truth; the inventor need not
worry. His machine either works or it does not work, and he _knows_ the
truth of his thought thereby. On the other hand the philosopher will
always have _some_ thoughts. Be they true or not they may at least be
interesting and worth recording, whereas the inventor may toil on for
years and years with absolutely nothing to show for his exertion at the
end. . . .

There are a number of problems that are not of great “practical”
importance, but whose theoretic value is so transcendent as to compel
attention. Among these are certain problems in psychology, but more
especially in metaphysics, philosophy and even religion, insofar as
religion can be said to have problems.

_Is there a God and is it possible for man to learn anything of His
nature?_ Some readers may object to the first part of this question.
But I state it because I am anxious to avoid dogmatism.

_Is the soul immortal?_ What do we mean by the soul? Does science
disprove the life after death?

_What is the test of truth?_ How shall we know truth when we have it?
What after all is “truth”?

_Are our wills free, or are our actions predetermined?_ Some may object
to this way of stating the question. Much confusion exists as to the
meaning of the problem. A different way of stating it would lead to
different treatment. What is the “will”? What do we mean by “free”?
What do we mean by “predetermined”?

_The problem of existence._ How did the universe come into being? This
is the last problem in which interest can be stimulated from without.
No matter in how many different ways he phrases it, a writer cannot
convey this sense of mystery to another. It must arise from within.
Most of the time we accept, we take for granted, the universe and the
existent order of things, and it requires the greatest effort to keep
alive our mystification and doubt for even short periods.

       *       *       *       *       *

The list of questions foregoing is of course merely suggestive. It is
impossible to select, say twenty-five questions, and pronounce them the
twenty-five most important that can be asked. I fully realize there are
questions of greater importance than some I have propounded. But I have
not gone so far as to advise that every one of these should be thought
over. The list has been given merely for thought stimulation, and to
indicate what is meant by “worth while” questions.

Unfortunately I have not been able to explain why most of these are so
important. To have done so would have required too much time for each
individual problem. It would have drawn us too far out of our subject.
The reader must find out or sense the importance for himself.

Practically all of the problems given in the list come under one of
the sciences, especially if we count metaphysics or philosophy as a
science, which it is in so far as it is organized knowledge. This may
seem somewhat narrow. Now I admit there are important problems which
are not included in any science. But there are very few. As soon as
deep thought is given to a problem its treatment becomes systematic.
It either falls into one of the sciences or a new science evolves
about it. John Stuart Mill once started a journal in which he promised
himself to put one thought a day, but he did not permit himself to
record there any thought on a problem falling within one of the special
sciences. None of the thoughts he put in the journal is of any great
value. It came to an abrupt end in about two months.

It may be objected that though the questions selected are most
important _in themselves_, there are other things more worth thinking
about, because of the mental discipline they yield. Now putting aside
the fact that questions important in themselves should be dealt with
ultimately—that mental discipline would be useless unless applied to
important problems—I must voice my suspicion that the most useful
questions are also the best for training the mind. It may be true
that punching the bag will help a prizefighter in boxing. But other
things equal, a man who has spent one week in actual boxing is better
prepared to enter the prize ring than one who has devoted a month to
bag punching. The best practice for boxing is boxing. The best practice
for solving important questions is solving important questions.

Nor do I admit the contention is valid that one problem rather than
another should be thought of because it is “deeper.” We cannot
truthfully say that psychology is a “deeper” science than ethics,
or that metaphysics is deeper than psychology, or vice versa. Most
subjects and most problems are just as deep as we care to make them.
Their depth depends entirely on how deep we go into them. This applies
especially to the so-called philosophical sciences. We may give them
shallow treatment or we may give them profound treatment. But we
shall usually find that the deepest questions are the most important
questions. For the most important questions have generally attracted
the greatest minds; consequently they have been given the deepest
treatment; and when a man reads the attempted solutions of these great
minds his thoughts tend toward this deeper plane. Of course certain
problems, especially in mathematics, can be dealt with by only one
method. In this case we may properly speak of some problems being
objectively deeper or at least more difficult than others.

Some objections may be offered to several of the questions in my list,
on the ground that they are invalid. Such problems as the immortality
of the soul and the problem of existence may be declared inscrutable,
unsolvable. Such a problem as “Is society for the benefit of the
individual or is the individual for the benefit of society?” may be
said to imply that society is something which has been voluntarily
formed like the State. It may be declared that this is not the case; it
may be objected that this question is meaningless. All these objections
may be justified. But their truth cannot be determined until we
actually attempt a solution. The determination of the validity of a
problem is part of the problem.

       *       *       *       *       *

We come now to the question of what is most worth reading. The simplest
answer is that that is most worth reading which is most worth thinking
about, and therefore we should read those books which deal with such
problems as I have indicated. But this counsel needs to be supplemented.

A conservative estimate places the number of books in the world at
4,500,000. (This estimate was made before the war broke out, and the
war-books by now have doubtless brought the number to 5,000,000.) This
does not mean books as collections of printed sheets of paper bound
together—books as physical objects—for if it did the number would be
immensely greater. It means 4,500,000 (or more) separate and distinct
treatises. If you were to read one book every two weeks, you would read
about twenty-five a year, and if you read for fifty years you would
cover 1,250. One book in every three thousand six hundred! (3,600!)

From this it is apparent that even the most omnivorous reader, even
the reader who can cover a book swiftly by efficient skipping, will at
least have to ask himself before beginning a volume, “Is this a book
in a thousand? Can I afford to read this at the cost of missing nine
hundred and ninety-nine others?” And most men who ask this question
will have to substitute the number five thousand, or even ten thousand.

Nine-tenths of our reading is on mere chance recommendation, passing
whim or by sheer accident. We catch sight of a book on a library table.
Having nothing better to do we pick it up; we start perusing it. Every
book read in this way means a sinful waste of time. To be sure, a book
read in this chance manner _might_ (accidentally) be very good—even
better than some you would have planned for; but this will happen
seldom, and is never a justification of the practice. By going a round
about way to a place a man might stumble across a lost pocketbook, but
this would not justify taking round about ways.

The first thing needed, then, is that we should plan our reading.
Perhaps the best way to do this would be to make out a list of the
books we intend to read for the coming year, or say a list of from a
dozen to twenty-five volumes, and then read them in the order listed.
Another good plan is to jot down the title of every book we intend to
read, and keep the list about with us. Then when we meet with a book
which we think would be good to read, or which we feel we simply must
read, we can before starting it glance at our list. The formidable
array we find there will probably induce us either to give up entirely
our intention to read the book before us, or at least to put it
somewhere on the list which will allow more important books to be read
first.

Some people cannot endure planning their reading in this manner. It
grates on them to think they are tied down to any sort of program;
it seems to deprive them of the advantages of spontaneous interest.
Well, if you cannot plan your reading prospectively, at least plan it
retrospectively. If you cannot keep a list of books you _intend_ to
read, at least keep a list of books you _have_ read. Refer to this
from time to time. See whether you have been reading uniformly good
literature. See whether you have been reading too much on one topic and
not enough on another, and what topics you have been long neglecting.
But at best this method is a poor substitute for planning your reading
prospectively.

We should plan not only with regard to topics and subjects, but with
regard to authors. Obviously if two men of equal ability both study
the same subject, one will get more out of his study than the other if
he reads authors who treat the subject on a deeper plane—provided of
course he understands them.

Whether consciously or not, we tend to imitate the authors we read. If
we read shallow books we are forced, while reading them, to do shallow
thinking. Our plane of thought tends toward the plane of thought of
the authors we study; we acquire either habits of careful critical
thinking, or of dogmatic lack of thinking.

This emphasizes the importance of reading the best books, and _only_
the best books. Our plane of thinking is determined not alone by the
good books we read, but by all the books we read; it tends toward
the _average_. Most men imagine that when they read a good book they
get a certain amount of good out of it, and that this good will stay
with them undiminished. Provided they read a certain number of serious
books, they see no reason why they should not read any number of
superficial or useless books, or any amount of ephemeral magazine or
newspaper literature. They expect the serious reading to benefit them.
They do not expect the shallow reading to harm them. This is just as if
they were to buy and eat unnutritious and indigestible food, and excuse
themselves on the ground that they ate nourishing and digestible food
along with it.

The analogy may be carried further. As it is the average of the
physical food you digest which ultimately determines the constitution
of your body, so it is the average of the mental food you absorb which
determines the constitution of your mind. One good meal will not offset
a week of bad ones; one good book will never offset any number of poor
books. Further, as no one has a perfect memory, you do not retain all
you read any more than you retain all you eat. Therefore if you do
not want your mind to retrogress, you should not rest satisfied with
books already read, but should continue to read books at least as good
as any previous. As at any given time your bodily health—so far as it
depends on food—is mainly determined by the meals of the last few days
or weeks, so is your mental health dependent on the last few books you
have read.

One of the first things we should look to in selecting books is their
comprehensiveness. To quote Arnold Bennett: “Unless and until a man has
formed a scheme of knowledge, be it but a mere skeleton, his reading
must necessarily be unphilosophical. He must have attained to some
notion of the interrelations of the various branches of knowledge
before he can properly comprehend the branch of knowledge in which
he specializes.”[23] As an aid in forming this scheme of knowledge,
Mr. Bennett suggests Herbert Spencer’s _First Principles_. I heartily
endorse his choice. I would add to it the essay on _The Classification
of the Sciences_ by the same author.

These works are classics, and one of the most regrettable of
difficulties is that of getting people to read the classics. Mention
to a man Darwin’s _Origin of Species_ or _Descent of Man_, and he
will reply, “Oh, yes, that’s the theory that says men descended from
monkeys.” Satisfied that he knows all there is to know about it, he
never reads any of Darwin’s works. Now passing over the fact that
the theory does not assert that man descended from monkeys and never
intended to assert it;—what a compliment to Darwin’s thought and
brevity to assume that all his books can be summed up in a phrase!
But Darwin is not the only sufferer. If we come across the title of a
classic often enough, and hear a lot of talk “about it and about” and
a few quotations from it, we gradually come to believe we know all
the contents worth knowing. This is why Shakespeare, and in fact most
of the classics, are so seldom actually read, and why we go for our
serious reading to a book on “How to Read Character from Handwriting”
or to a sensational volume on prostitution by one of our modern
“sociologists.” The only way we can keep ourselves from such stuff is
to lay out some definite end, some big objective, to be attained; and
before reading a book we should ask how that helps us to attain it.

I have not given a formal list of books worth reading, nor do I intend
to; one of the reasons being that the work has been done so well by
others. Ever since Sir John Lubbock published his list of one hundred
best books, the number of selections has been legion. Charles Eliot’s
selection for his _Five Foot Shelf_ is to be commended, and a little
volume by Frank Parsons _The World’s Best Books_. Of course our purpose
is special:—to find the best books for making thinkers; but the remarks
already made should aid the reader sufficiently in making his own
selection from these lists. As previously pointed out, if the reader
is studying a specialty he can usually find a fairly well selected
bibliography at the end of the article on that specialty in any
standard encyclopedia.

       *       *       *       *       *

The reader probably sees clearly by now that it is impossible to do
his own thinking in every case; that if he is to have sound knowledge
on important questions he must have the courage to be ignorant of
many things. How much trouble to go to in any particular case it is
difficult to say.

We can lay it down as a general principle that questions of the
highest importance, such as those of which I have given a suggestive
list—questions which deal with facts known or easily ascertainable,
and which depend for their right solution more on thinking than on
anything else—a man should solve for himself, and should take the
greatest caution in so doing. On the other hand, questions of the
highest importance which depend for their solution mainly on full and
detailed knowledge of highly technical facts which lie outside of one’s
specialty, should be dealt with by consulting authorities and taking
their word for it.

There still remains the great mass of questions which are relatively
unimportant, but continually coming up in our daily life, the answers
to which greatly influence our conduct. Time forbids us not only
from thinking these out for ourselves, but even from consulting an
authority—for the selection of an authority often involves almost as
much intellectual responsibility as self-thinking. The only thing we
can do is to accept the verdict of popular opinion.

Custom, convention and popular belief, no matter how many times they
have been overthrown, have fairly reliable foundations. Popular ideas,
to be sure, are products of mere unorganized experience. They are
empirical; seldom if ever scientific. But though they are founded on
experience which is _unorganized_, they are founded on so much of it
that they are worthy of respect. Society could not long exist if it
persisted in acting on beliefs altogether wrong, though it is safe to
say that popular ideas are never more than approximately right. But
unless and until you have either thoroughly thought over a question for
yourself or have consulted an acknowledged and trustworthy authority,
it is best tentatively to accept and act on common belief. To think
and act differently, merely for the sake of being different, is
unprofitable and dangerous, all questions of ethics aside.



X

THINKING AS AN ART


 I discovered, though unconsciously and insensibly, that the pleasure
 of observing and reasoning was a much higher one than that of skill
 and sport.—DARWIN’S _Autobiography_.

To know is one thing; to do another. To know the science of thinking
is not to possess the art of thinking. Yet I doubt not that there are
readers who having finished, would deem it sufficient that they had
the knowledge, and would feel they had gotten all the good or harm out
of this book that there is in it. They would put it aside. They would
think no more of it.

The trouble with these good people (unfortunately I speak of the
overwhelming majority) is that they expect information to apply itself.
They expect that once they have learnt a thing they will act according
to their knowledge. This is the very last thing a normal human being
does.

The only way we can ever get ourselves to apply knowledge is to do so
by what will at first be a conscious effort. We shall have to devote
much attention to it. Old established custom will have to be broken.
We do not act according to knowledge; we act according to habit. Even
after we have decided, for instance, that we ought to give a little
independent thinking to a subject before reading about it, we shall
very likely continue to read books without previous thought.

Some people may imagine that the reason we do not practice what we
learn is that we do not remember what we learn. They are mistaken. When
learning German, I had much difficulty in knowing what prepositions
required the genitive, dative or accusative cases. I finally learnt all
of them alphabetically in their respective groups, and could rattle
them off at a rate which would make most native Germans blush for envy.
The only trouble was that when I came to an actual sentence requiring
one of these prepositions I continually forgot to apply my knowledge.
Some one would have to point an error out to me before it would occur
to me to do so. Even then I would have to think long before the proper
case occurred.

But while it is not true that we fail to practice a thing merely
because we fail to remember it, it is true that if we do not practice
we are not very likely to remember it. The only way we could remember
would be by constant re-reading, for knowledge unused tends to drop out
of mind. Knowledge used does not need to be remembered; practice forms
habits and habits make memory unnecessary. The rule is nothing; the
application is everything.

Practice being the thing needful, it is essential that we put aside a
certain amount of time for it. Unless you lay out a definite program,
unless you put aside, say, one-half hour every day, for pure downright
independent thinking, you will probably neglect to practice at all.
One-half hour out of every twenty-four seems little enough. You may
think you can fit it in with no trouble. But no matter how shamelessly
you have been putting in your time, you have been doing _something_
with it. In order to get in your thirty minutes of thinking, you will
have to put aside something which has been habitually taking up a half
hour of your day. You cannot expect simply to add thinking to your
other activities. Some other activity must be cut down or cut out.[24]

You may think me quite lenient in advising only one-half hour a day.
You may even go so far as to say that one-half hour a day is not
enough. Perhaps it isn’t. But I am particularly anxious to have some
of the advice in this book followed. And I greatly fear that if I
advised more than a half hour most readers would serenely neglect my
advice altogether. After you have been able for a month to devote at
least one-half hour a day to thinking, you may then, if you choose,
extend the time. But if you attempt to do too much at once, you may
find it so inconvenient, if not impracticable, that you may give up
attempting altogether. Throughout the book I have constantly kept in
mind that I wish my advice followed. I have therefore laid down rules
which may reasonably be adhered to by an average human, rules which
do not require a hardened asceticism to apply, and rules which have
occasionally been followed by the author himself. In this last respect,
I flatter myself, the present differs from most books of advice.

Above all I urge the reader to avoid falling into that habit so
prevalent and at the same time so detrimental to character:—acquiescing
in advice and not following it. You should view critically every
sentence in this book. Wherever you find any advice which you think
needless, or which requires unnecessary sacrifice to put into practice,
or is wrong, you should so mark it. And you should think out for
yourself what would be the best practice to follow. But when you agree
with any advice you see here, you should make it your business to
follow it. The fact that part of the advice may be wrong is no reason
why you should not follow the part that is right.

Most people honestly intend to follow advice, and actually start to
do it, but . . . They try to practice everything at once. As a result
they end by practicing nothing. The secret of practice is to learn
thoroughly one thing at a time. As already stated, we act according
to habit. The only way to break an old habit or to form a new one
is to give our whole attention to the process. The new action will
soon require less and less attention, until finally we shall do it
automatically, without thought—in short, we shall have formed another
habit. This accomplished we can turn to still others.

As an example let us take the different methods of looking at questions
considered in the second chapter. Most readers will glance over these
methods, and agree that they are very helpful—and the next problem
which perplexes them will probably be solved by no method at all, or
will be looked at from one standpoint only.

About the best, perhaps the only way by which the reader could get
himself to use habitually every valuable method possible, would be to
take one of the methods, say the evolutionary, and consciously apply
it, or attempt to apply it, to a whole list of problems. In this way
he could learn the possibilities and limits of that particular method.
Again, he could take an individual problem and consciously attempt to
apply every possible method to its solution. He could continue such
practice until he had so formed the habit of using method that it
would be employed almost unconsciously. Concentration, method in book
reading, and all the other practices here advocated should be learned
in the same conscious, painstaking way, one thing at a time, until
thoroughly ingrained. It must be left to the reader’s own ingenuity to
devise the best methods of acquiring each particular habit.

Of course it is possible to do a thing well—it is possible to follow
the rule for doing it—without knowing the rule. If a man take a live
interest in a subject he will naturally tend to look at it from a
number of different viewpoints. If he be eternally on the lookout for
errors and fallacies in his own thinking he will gradually evolve a
logic of his own. And this logic will be concrete, not abstract; it
will be something built into, an integral part of, concrete thought,
and he will be constantly strengthening the habit of using it. Compared
with the logic of the books it may be crude, but it will not consist of
mere rules, which can be recited but which are seldom applied.

So with grammar. Instance the writer’s experience with German. Few
native Germans could recite offhand what prepositions govern the
genitive, dative and accusative, even if they knew what was meant by
these terms. But they would (most of them) use these cases correctly,
and without the least thought. The educated Englishman or American
flatters himself that his correct speech is due to his study of
grammar. This is far from true. His speech is due to unconscious
imitation of the language of the people with whom he comes into
contact, and of the books he reads. And needless to say, the cultivated
man comes into contact with other cultivated men and with good
literature; the ignoramus does not.

Most of our thinking is influenced in this way. The great thinkers
of the past improved their innate powers not by the study of rules
for thinking, but by reading the works of other great thinkers, and
unconsciously imitating their habitual method and caution.

The fact to remember is that a rule is something that has been
formulated after the thing which it rules. It is merely an abstract of
current practice or of good practice. Rules are needful because they
teach in little time what would otherwise require much experience to
learn, or which we might never discover for ourselves at all. They help
us to learn things right in the beginning; they prevent us from falling
into wrong habits. The trouble with unsupplemented imitation, conscious
or unconscious, is that we tend to imitate another’s faults along with
his virtues. Rules enable us to distinguish, especially if we have
learned the reason for the rules.

But practice and rules should not be compared as if they were opposed.
The true road is plenty of practice with conscientious regard to rule.
It may be insisted that this has its limits; that there is a point
beyond which a man cannot improve himself. I admit that practice has
its limits. It may be true that there is a point beyond which a man
cannot advance. But nobody knows those limits and no one can say when
that point has come.

No two individuals profit in the same degree by the same practice.
With a given amount one man will always improve faster than another.
But the slower man may keep up with his more speedy brother by more
practice. I shall not repeat here the fable of the hare and the
tortoise. But any one who has discovered a flaw in his mental make-up,
any one who believes that he cannot concentrate, or that his memory is
poor, and that therefore he can never become a thinker, should find
consolation in the words of William James:

“Depend upon it, no one need be too much cast down by the discovery of
his deficiency in any elementary faculty of the mind. . . . The total
mental efficiency of a man is the resultant of all his faculties. He
is too complex a being for any one of them to have the casting vote.
If any one of them do have the casting vote, it is more likely to be
the strength of his desire and passion, the strength of the interest
he takes in what is proposed. Concentration, memory, reasoning power,
inventiveness, excellence of the senses—all are subsidiary to this.
No matter how scatter-brained the type of a man’s successive fields
of consciousness may be, if he really _care_ for a subject, he will
return to it incessantly from his incessant wanderings, and first and
last do more with it, and get more results from it, than another person
whose attention may be more continuous during a given interval, but
whose passion for the subject is of a more languid and less permanent
sort.”[25]



XI

BOOKS ON THINKING


The reader who desires to study further on the subject of thinking will
find a wide field before him—but he will have to search in cosmopolitan
quarters. While much has been written on thinking, it has been in an
incidental manner, and has found its way into books written mainly
to illuminate other subjects. Among the few books or essays devoted
exclusively or mainly to thinking may be mentioned:—John Locke, _The
Conduct of the Understanding_; Isaac Watts, _The Improvement of the
Mind_; Arnold Bennett, _Mental Efficiency_; T. Sharper Knowlson, _The
Art of Thinking_; Arthur Schopenhauer, _On Thinking for Oneself_, in
his _Essays_. The last is especially recommended. It is only about a
dozen pages long, and is the most stimulating essay written on the
subject. This, together with John Locke’s _Conduct_ (which, by the way,
is also fairly short) may be considered the two “classics” in the
meager literature on thinking.

There is an extensive literature on the psychology of reasoning, on the
“positive” science of thinking. The best single work on this subject is
John Dewey’s _How We Think_. William James’ chapter on _Reasoning_ in
his _Principles of Psychology_ might also be consulted with profit. S.
S. Colvin’s, _The Learning Process_ contains some interesting chapters
bearing on thought.

On method, the amount of literature is even more imposing than that
on the psychology of reasoning. Probably the most thorough book is
Stanley Jevon’s _The Principles of Science_, though this, consisting
of two volumes, will require quite some ambition to attack. A good
recent short work is J. A. Thomson, _Introduction to Science_.
Herbert Spencer’s short essay, _An Element in Method_, in his
_Various Fragments_ might also be mentioned. Of those works treating
method mainly from a corrective standpoint, I have already mentioned
Jevon’s _Elementary Lessons in Logic_. _The_ authoritative and most
comprehensive book on logic is still John Stuart Mill’s great tome. Of
course this list of books on method, as well as that on the psychology
of reasoning, cannot pretend to be more than merely suggestive. If the
reader desires an extensive bibliography in either of these subjects he
will probably find it in one of the books mentioned.

On doubt and belief, William Clifford, _The Ethics of Belief_, and
William James, _The Will to Believe_, might be read. The viewpoints of
the two essays are in almost direct contradiction.

On reading, Alexander Bain’s _The Art of Study_, in his _Practical
Essays_, will be found useful. Bacon’s essay _On Studies_, which is not
more than a couple pages long, contains more concentrated wisdom on the
subject than is to be found anywhere.

On subjects most worth thinking about, the reader cannot do better than
read Herbert Spencer’s essay _What Knowledge is of Most Worth?_ in his
_Education_. As to books most worth reading, consult the lists of John
Morley, Sir John Lubbock, and Frederic Harrison; Sonnenschein’s _Best
Books_ (in two volumes); Baldwin’s _The Book Lover_; Dr. Eliot’s _Five
Foot Shelf_ and Frank Parson’s _The World’s Best Books_, previously
referred to.

On the art of living—the art of planning time so as to have room for
thinking, as well as valuable hints as to how that thinking is to be
carried out—consult Arnold Bennett, _How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a
Day_, and E. H. Griggs, _The Use of the Margin_ (both very, very small
books).

Finally, there is much useful material, as well as incalculable
inspiration, to be obtained from the intellectual and literary
biographies of great thinkers. Especially is this true of
autobiography. Among others may be mentioned the autobiographies of
John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, and an autobiographical fragment
by Charles Darwin.



FOOTNOTES:

[ 1] See Herbert Spencer, _Education_.

[ 2] Pillsbury, _Essentials of Psychology_.

[ 3] _Principles of Psychology_, Vol. II, p. 332.

[ 4] See William A. Scott, _Money_.

[ 5] _How We Think._

[ 6] _Autobiography_, Vol. I, p. 463.

[ 7] _Autobiography._

[ 8] Hugh Elliot, _The Letters of John Stuart Mill_.

[ 9] Essay, _Over-Legislation_.

[10] _The Conduct of the Understanding._

[11] _The Will to Believe._

[12] _Autobiography._

[13] _Science and Education._

[14] T. Sharper Knowlson, _The Art of Thinking_.

[15] _The Conduct of the Understanding._

[16] _On Thinking for Oneself._

[17] This may seem unjustified. Witness, however, this remarkable
statement in a prospectus of Charles Eliot’s “Five Foot Shelf”: “ . . .
The man who has not read the ‘Wealth of Nations’ is hardly qualified to
speak or even think wisely on these vital subjects.” If this be true,
Adam Smith himself was hardly qualified because he certainly could not
have read his own book before he had written it!

[18] Essay _On Thinking for Oneself_.

[19] _Autobiography._

[20] Edward Griggs, _The Use of the Margin_.

[21] _Literary Taste._

[22] The most advanced and severe psychologists may object to some
statements in this exposition. I admit that a word may be used as
the concept, _but only provided it is accompanied by a “fringe” of
potential associates_. I also admit that in order to be dealt with as
if general, the visual image must be accompanied by such a “fringe.”
But I do insist that this fringe itself is in a constant state of flux.
That is the important point for our present purposes.

[23] _Literary Taste._

[24] And consult Arnold Bennett’s _How to Live on 24 Hours a Day_.

[25] _Talks to Teachers._


THE END



TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:

Original spelling and grammar have been generally retained. Original
small caps are now uppercase. Italics look _like this_. Footnotes have
been relabeled 1–25 and moved to the end of the book. The transcriber
produced the cover image and hereby assigns it to the public domain.
Original page images are available from archive.org—search for
“cu31924031014867”.





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