Thinking and learning to think by Nathan C. Schaeffer (uplifting novels TXT) ๐
Read free book ยซThinking and learning to think by Nathan C. Schaeffer (uplifting novels TXT) ๐ยป - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
- Author: Nathan C. Schaeffer
- Performer: -
Read book online ยซThinking and learning to think by Nathan C. Schaeffer (uplifting novels TXT) ๐ยป. Author - Nathan C. Schaeffer
The most valuable function of standard authors lies in their quickening influence upon the intellectual life. The effort to appropriate their ideas and to master their thoughts is the best possible exercise for the understanding. In thinking their thoughts, weighing their arguments, and following their train of reasoning the mind gains vigor, strength, and the capacity for sustained effort. The invigorating atmosphere which a great thinker creates has a most remarkable tonic effect upon all who dwell in it. By unconscious absorption they acquire his spirit of inquiry, his methods of research, his habits of investigation, his way of attacking and mastering difficulties. While trying to walk in his footsteps they learn to take giant strides. His idioms, his choice of words, his favorite phrases and expressions are at their service when they enter new fields of truth. Both in power and aspiration they become like him through the mysterious process of mind acting upon mind, of heart evoking heart, and of will transfusing itself into will. A great thinker gets his place in the galaxy of shining intellects through the truths which he communicates; and as truth is the best food for the soul, so the quest of truth is the best exercise for all its faculties.
De Quincey, in his essay on Alexander Pope, draws an important and oft-quoted distinction between the literature of knowledge and the literature of power. He says the function of the one is to teach, of the other to move. The former he likens to a rudder, the latter to an oar or a sail. To illustrate the difference he asks, โWhat do you learn from โParadise Lostโ? Nothing at all. What do you learn from a cookery-book? Something new, something that you did not know before, in every paragraph. But would you, therefore, put the wretched cookery-book on a higher level of estimation than the divine poem? What you owe to Milton is not any knowledge, of which a million separate items are still but a million of advancing steps on the same earthly level; what you owe is power,โthat is, exercise and expansion to your own latent capacity of sympathy with the infinite, where every pulse and each separate influx is a step upward, a step ascending, as upon Jacobโs ladder, from earth to mysterious altitudes above the earth. All the steps of knowledge, from first to last, carry you farther on the same plane, but could never raise you one foot above your ancient level of earth; whereas, the very first step in power is a flight, is an ascending into another element where earth is forgotten.โ
The value of the literature of power as a means of imparting power to every soul that lives under its influence is easily seen and generally acknowledged. But the literature of knowledge serves the double purpose of furnishing us material for thought and of acting as a stimulus to thought. On this point we have the testimony of the wisest who have ventured to give advice upon the use of books. Lowell says, โIt is certainly true that the material of thought reacts upon the thought itself. Shakespeare himself would have been commonplace had he been padlocked in a thinly shaven vocabulary, and Phidias, had he worked in wax, only a more inspired Mrs. Jarley.โ
The advice which Lowell gives concerning a course of reading and the ends of scholarship to be kept in mind by those who read with a purpose is too valuable to be omitted in this connection:
โOne is sometimes asked by young people to recommend a course of reading. My advice would be that they should confine themselves to the supreme books in whatever literature, or, still better, to choose some one great author and make themselves thoroughly familiar with him. For, as all roads lead to Rome, so do they likewise lead away from it, and you will find that in order to understand perfectly and to weigh exactly any vital piece of literature you will be gradually and pleasantly persuaded to excursions and explorations of which you little dreamed when you began, and will find yourselves scholars before you are aware. For, remember, there is nothing less profitable than scholarship for the mere sake of scholarship, nor anything more wearisome in the attainment. But the moment you have a definite aim, attention is quickened, the mother of memory, and all that you acquire groups and arranges itself in an order that is lucid, because everywhere and always it is in intelligent relation to a central object of constant and growing interest. This method also forces upon us the necessity of thinking, which is, after all, the highest result of all education. For what we want is not learning, but knowledge; that is, the power to make learning answer its true end as a quickener of intelligence and a widener of our intellectual sympathies. I do not mean to say that every one is fitted by nature or inclination for a definite course of study, or, indeed, for serious study in any sense. I am quite willing that these should โbrowse in a library,โ as Dr. Johnson called it, to their heartโs content. It is perhaps the only way in which time may be profitably wasted. But desultory reading will not make a โfull man,โ as Bacon understood it, of one who has not Johnsonโs memory, his power of assimilation, and, above all, his comprehensive view of the relations of things. โRead not,โ says Lord Bacon, in his โEssay of Studies,โ โto contradict and confute; not to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously (carefully), and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention. Some books, also, may be read by deputy.โ
โThis is weighty and well said, and I would call your attention especially to the wise words with which the passage closes. The best books are not always those which lend themselves to discussions and comment, but those (like Montaigneโs โEssaysโ) which discuss and comment ourselves.โ[16]
Professor Phelps, in his lectures to divinity students, gives golden advice to the class of professional men whose life-work compels them to draw upon their productive intellect more than any other class of professional men.
โThere is an influence exerted by books upon the mind which resembles that of diet upon the body. A studious mind becomes, by a law of its being, like the object which it studies with enthusiasm. If your favorite authors are superficial, gaudy, short-lived, you become yourself such in your culture and your influence. If your favorite authors are of the grand, profound, enduring order, you become yourself such to the extent of your innate capacity for such growth. Their thoughts become yours not by transfer, but by transfusion. Their methods of combining thoughts become yours; so that on different subjects from theirs you will compose as they would have done if they had handled those subjects. Their choice of words, their idioms, their constructions, their illustrative materials become yours; so that their style and yours will belong to the same class in expression, and yet your style will never be merely imitative of theirs.
โIt is the prerogative of great authors thus to throw back a charm over subsequent generations which is often more plastic than the influence of a parent over a child. Do we not feel the fascination of it from certain favorite characters in history? Are there not already certain solar minds in the firmament of your scholarly life whose rays you feel shooting down into the depths of your being, and quickening there a vitality which you feel in every original product of your own mind? Such minds are teaching you the true ends of an intellectual life. They are unsealing the springs of intellectual activity. They are attracting your intellectual aspirations. They are like voices calling to you from the sky.
โRespecting this process of assimilation, it deserves to be remarked that it is essential to any broad range of originality. Never, if it is genuine, does it create copyists or mannerists. Imitation is the work of undeveloped mind. Childish mind imitates. Mind unawakened to the consciousness of its own powers copies. Stagnant mind falls into mannerism. On the contrary, a mind enkindled into aspiration by high ideals is never content with imitated excellence. Any mind thus awakened must, above all things else, be itself. It must act itself out, think its own thoughts, speak its own vernacular, grow to its own completeness. You can no more become servile under such a discipline than you can unconsciously copy another manโs gait in your walk or mask your own countenance with his.โ[17]
โGive to yourself a hearty, affectionate acquaintance with a group of the ablest minds in Christian literature, and if there is anything in you kindred to such minds, they will bring it up to the surface of your own consciousness. You will have a cheering sense of discovery. Quarries of thought original to you will be opened. Suddenly, it may be in some choice hour of research, veins will glisten with a lustre richer than that of silver. You will feel a new strength for your lifeโs work, because you will be sensible of new resources.โ[18]
There are two ways of reading books,โone a help to thinking, the other destructive of ability to think. If the reader allows the ideas of a book to pass through his mind as a landscape passes before the eye of a traveller, ever seeking the excitement of something new and never stopping to reflect upon the contents of the book so as to weigh its arguments, to notice its beauties, and to appropriate its truths, the book will leave him less able to think than before. Passive reading is permissible when the aim is merely recreation, but he who would read to gain mental strength must read actively, read books that he can understand only as the result of effort. President Porter gives this advice:
โThe person, particularly the student, who has never wrestled manfully and perseveringly with a difficult book will be good for little in this world of wrestling and strife. But when you are convinced that a book is above your attainments, capacity, or age, it is of little use for you, and it is wiser to let it alone. It is both vexing and unprofitable to stand upon oneโs toes and strain oneโs self for hours in efforts to reach the fruit which you are not tall enough to gather. It is better to leave it till it can be reached more easily. When the grapes are both ripe and within easy reach for you, it is safe to conclude that they are not sour.โ[19]
There are many phases of the library problem which do not call for consideration in this connection, but in addition to their value as a stimulus to thinking, the function of books in furnishing proper material for thought and suitable instruments of thought deserves special consideration on the part of those charged with the duty of teaching others to think. There was a time when libraries were managed as if it were the mission of the
Comments (0)