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 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
 
TALKS TO STUDENTS 
 
 ON THE ART OF 
 
 STUDY 
 
 FRANK CRAMER 
 
 Author of the "Method of Darwin: a Study 
 IN Scientific Method" 
 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE HOFFMAN-EDWARDS COMPANY 
 
 1902 
 
LBiOlS 
 
 THr LiBRARY OF 
 CON (^R ESS, 
 
 "vo COPtta Reosived 
 
 AUG. 25 1902 
 
 CnPVPIOHT ENTRY 
 
 Cl.«-S8 (X^ XXc. No 
 
 5 ^ T « S 
 
 COPY 3. 
 
 J 
 
 Copyright, 1902 
 
 Frank Cramer 
 
 PRINTED BY THE STANLEY-TAYLOR COMPANY 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 
TO MY FATHER-IN-LAW 
 
 ROBERT SAMSON THOMAS 
 
 WHOSE OLD AGE IS 
 
 CROWNED WITH A RECORD 
 
 OF NOBLE LIVING 
 
 ./ 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Anyone who is rash enough to add one more to the 
 hundred thousand books and pamphlets that have already 
 been written on the general subject of education ought, 
 perhaps, to give a somewhat elaborate justification for 
 his act. This book must make its own defense for exist- 
 ence. If it does not make good the intention of its 
 author it will go promptly to its long home' where most 
 of the others already are. 
 
 The book is not intended to fill the place of a manual 
 of logic or psychology or pedagogy. There is already a 
 surfeit of such books. It is intended to furnish effective 
 suggestion to the student who is passing through the 
 critical period of his intellectual life, while the mental 
 powers are plastic but on the point of setting. The 
 writer believes that with helpful suggestion, youth can 
 in a measure be its own instructor in the matter of the 
 right training of its powers. The first essential to this 
 end is that it shall see clearly what is wanted. 
 
 When the writer was a child, the Indian boys used to 
 come into his native village on pleasant winter days to 
 shoot pennies that idle white men put up on hitching 
 posts for them. Those young Indians nearly always got 
 
vi THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 the pennies; but not merely because they had good bows 
 and arrows^ but because they made such accurate study 
 of their weapons and of distances. When an arrow 
 missed its mark, it became a subject of discussion and ex- 
 planation. And there is no doubt that every failure was 
 forced to teach a lesson. It was the careful study of the 
 weapons and conditions that made the shooting accurate, 
 and caused even the little lads to become so quickly skill- 
 ful. 
 
 Skill comes quickly only by attention to the method 
 in which the thing is done; and the highest kind of skill 
 in anything is never attained by heedless repetition. I 
 have faith that the student, at least in the later years of 
 the secondary school and the first year in college can un- 
 derstand the necessary explanations of his own mental ac- 
 tivity. And when once his attention is fixed upon it, he 
 can see, perhaps better than his teacher, the most glaring 
 defects in his methods of study.. 
 
 The book has been written entirely from the student's 
 point of view; and therefore no attention whatever has 
 been given to courses of study or modes of presentation, 
 subjects which depend exclusively on the teacher and 
 are discussed in the formal pedagogical treatises. There 
 are doubtless dry places in it. When the reader reaches 
 them he may avoid the desert and tarry not nor stay 
 his feet until he is on the other side. But if curiosity 
 overcomes the repulsion, he may find that even a desert 
 can teach something to a good thinker. If this book does 
 not meet the requirements, someone will yet write one 
 
PREFACE vi 
 
 that will answer the purpose. The only thing I feel very 
 sure about is that there is need of such a book. 
 
 Whatever claims may be set up for the contents of 
 the book, there can be no serious claim to originality. 
 Many of the ideas are as old as Aristotle and have been 
 handed on from writer to writer. Nearly everything in 
 it is common property. Help has been drawn from 
 many sources and among those whose work has been 
 drawn upon I need to mention especially Bagehot, Bain, 
 Harris, Herbart, Huxley, William James, Jevons, Kay, 
 Locke, and Spencer. I have to acknowledge especial in- 
 debtedness to James' Principles of Psychology and Jev- 
 ons' Principles of Science. Ordinarily, in a systematic 
 work, direct quotation and references to sources are 
 strictly in order; but the writer has sought to simplify 
 the character of the discussions by avoiding both, and it 
 is hoped that the above acknowledgments will meet fully 
 the requirements of both justice and good taste. The 
 thanks of the author are due to Mr. John C. Kirtland, 
 Jr., of Phillips Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire, Miss 
 Hattie Lummis of Chicago, and President B. P. Eay- 
 mond of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 
 for many important suggestions. 
 
 FRANK CRAMER. 
 
 June 20, 1902. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. The Law of Habit 1 
 
 II. Habit: Friend or Enemy? 11 
 
 III. Interest 23 
 
 IV. Simple and Compound Interest . . . . 30 
 V. Attention 40 
 
 VI. Effect of Mental Alertness on Scholarship . 56 
 
 VII. Observation 63 
 
 VIII, Growth of the Power of Observation . . 72 
 
 IX, Discrimination 84 
 
 X. Association : Illustrations 96 
 
 XI. Association: the Original Order of Experience 108 
 
 XII. Association According to Similarity . 116 
 
 XIII. Association : Some Practical Applications . 121 
 
 XIV. Classification 136 
 
 XV. Memory 153 
 
 XVI. A Good Memory Depends on Good Thinking 166 
 
 XVII. Reasoning : Illustrations 183 
 
 XVIII. Reasoning: a Larger Problem .... 196 
 
 XIX. Reasoning : How the Mind Struggles after a Truth 204 
 XX. Reasoning : Its Progress Depends on Recognition 
 
 of Similarities ....... 212 
 
 XXI. Some Further Conditions of Sound Reasoning . 224 
 
 XXII. Reflection .237 
 
THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 Chapter 
 
 XXIII. The Impulsive and the Vascillating Will 
 
 XXIV The Agony of Starting . . . . 
 
 XXV The Petrified Will: Habitual Mastery 
 
 XXVI. The Feelings 
 
 XXVII. Science Culture and Feeling 
 
 XXVIII. Ideals 
 
 XXIX. Some Elements of Character 
 
 XXX. Conclusion 
 
 Page 
 
 243 
 252 
 
 258 
 272 
 279 
 287 
 294 
 305 
 
TALKS TO STUDENTS ON THE 
 ART OF STUDY 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE LAW OF HABIT. 
 
 A pendulum made of a marble and a piece of string, 
 if let alone, hangs still and straight. If the marble bob 
 is struck, the pendulum swings to and fro across the 
 point from which it was started by the initial stroke. 
 But even under such compulsion it beats across the 
 vertical in ever diminishing curves. After a period of 
 rhythmic motion, if let alone, it comes to rest, in its old 
 position of stable equilibrium. Force can move it away, 
 but it always comes back to the starting point. 
 
 In other cases the opposite is true. As soon as a 
 disturbance is started all of nature^s forces conspire to 
 increase the effect and prevent a return to the old con- 
 dition. Putty is powdered chalk well mixed with linseed 
 oil, and is carefully stored in bladders to keep it from 
 drying out. It is in an unstable condition. It can be 
 used but once. It is kept plastic until it can be applied, 
 but when it is put to use, it undergoes the single fate- 
 ful change, and its career of usefulness depends upon 
 
2 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 the permanence of the change. When soft it is plastic 
 enough to be molded; and when dry it is rigid enough 
 to keep its shape. When a thing is in unstable equilib- 
 rium, disturbance starts a change that is never again 
 undone. 
 
 A chopper strides through the snow to the foot of 
 a big pine tree, that seems to pierce the sky. It has 
 been so true to the light above, it is so straight, that he 
 can drop it where he will. He must make it fall where 
 it can be most easily reached by the skidding teams. 
 With an easy cunning born of experience he cuts a little 
 lower on one side of the tree than on the other, and 
 chops last on the higher side. The tree is indifferent; 
 it can fall anywhere. But when the work is done there 
 is a dainty quiver of its million needles; it seems to 
 stand with majestic poise — a giant about to die. The 
 chopper puts the last few strokes just where they are 
 needed, and with a crack, a rush, and a crash, the tree 
 falls where he intended it should. Stately in its upright- 
 ness, it needed but an inch or two of over-weight on one 
 side; thenceforward it was doomed to move in a single 
 way. The slightest, nicely gauged initial push decided 
 the fate of a giant which a little while before might have 
 been pulled the other way by a child with a silken cord. 
 
 An unstable thing is set, as it were, with a hair- 
 trigger attachment, and a relatively slight amount of 
 force applied, lets loose the vastly greater latent force 
 of the thing itself. It may be so nicely balanced that 
 it seems to poise and quiver, as if in search of the true 
 
THE LAW OF HABIT 3 
 
 direction. But after a little, initial, decisive push, the 
 nature of the thing itself transforms this gentle inclina- 
 tion into a hundred-handed force that locks and seals 
 the fate of the thing beyond repair, and it lies at last, 
 with its power expended and its destiny fixed. 
 
 A new coat sleeve has no inclinations. It has be- 
 come adapted to no arm. In the ordinary sense, it may 
 fit a hundred different men; but in the truer, deeper 
 sense, of having hecome adjusted, it fits ro arm whatever. 
 But let the coat be worn. The arm within the sleeve 
 furnishes a constant force that bends and straightens it. 
 Wrinkles begin to show, and become more and more pro- 
 nounced. The sleeve, at first indifferent in the matter 
 of wrinkles, was capable of being impressed with any set. 
 But once that particular arm begins to live in the sleeve, 
 that particular set of wrinkles is inevitable. Their ar- 
 rangement is determined by a rigid mechanical law. 
 
 The sleeve has taken on a habit. Of numberless 
 possibilities, one has been realized, and at the same time 
 all the others have been excluded. The sleeve has 
 yielded to force, and its structure has been modified. 
 It has a character now. And so with a boot. Neither 
 will ever really fit another arm or foot after it is once 
 "well-broken." 
 
 The smooth-skinned face and smooth-pressed coat 
 belong in the same class. Neither appeals to the artist 
 as a subject for study, because neither reveals anything. 
 Character is written in wrinkles. They are the hand- 
 writing of force, the record of work done. Character 
 
4 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 itself is the final shape taken by material that was once 
 indifferent^ plastic, capable of being molded into any 
 form. It is that one of many possibilities which has 
 been realized. 
 
 What is true of putty and the pine tree and the boot 
 and the coat sleeve, is true of the human brain and mind. 
 Their destiny, within certain limits, is determined by the 
 forces that are brought to bear upon them. Acts which 
 at first seemed no more easy or inevitable than their op- 
 posites, come in time to represent the only possible course 
 of action. Human character is the product of two sets 
 of forces: the constitution or tendencies that are inher- 
 ited, and the particular habits that are acquired by con- 
 tact with life's surroundings. Habits may be looked 
 upon as the statute laws of the individual life growing 
 out of the inherited constitution. No one is responsible 
 for the constitutional traits that he has inherited, but 
 within reasonable limits he is personally and solely re- 
 sponsible for the physical, mental, and moral habits that 
 mark out and distinguish his personality from that of 
 other men. ^ 
 
 If I could invent a good, strong, new word to sup- 
 plant the word habit, I would do it gladly, in self-de- 
 fense; because the law of habit is so striking, and so 
 fundamental in the development of every human life, 
 that it has been made the theme of myriads of sermons, 
 lectures and school essays. One who undertakes to say 
 anything about it, is forced to face the revulsion that 
 has been produced by constant harping and endless repe- 
 
THE LAW OF HABIT 5 
 
 tition. But the very reasons that have made it a thread- 
 bare subject, make it important that the student should 
 consider it seriously and at the very outset of his intel- 
 lectual development. The law of habit, which is the very 
 law of our being, is what makes life easy; without it 
 existence would not only be intolerable, but impossible. 
 Its general significance from the student's point of view 
 cannot be over-emphasized; and it may be made one of 
 the most attractive subjects of thought in connection 
 with -the general problem of education which the student 
 is trying to solve. 
 
 Our lives are almost entirely composed of routine 
 acts — ^acts indefinitely repeated with the return of the 
 days and nights. But every act that is subject to repeti- 
 tion becomes subject to the law of habit; so that our 
 lives are really made up of performances governed by this 
 inexorable law. That is why we repeat and repeat the 
 trite old saying, Man is a bundle of habits. Now the 
 student is in the act of making such a bundle; and what 
 its nature and value will be, depends on the considera- 
 tion that he gives to the fundamental law of habit that 
 shall by and by govern him with an iron hand. 
 
 In simple words, the law of habit is the tendency to 
 repeat an act of any kind in the same way more easily 
 and with less attention at every successive repetition. 
 However difficult an act or succession of acts may be at 
 first, repetition reduces the difficulty. Ease of perform- 
 ance increases and the amount of attention given to the 
 act grows less and less. When an act has become a habit, 
 
6 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 the performance is reduced to its last and mechanical 
 stage. The work is performed without conscious assist- 
 ance or guidance of the mind. Skill arises from giving 
 attention to the details of the performance until per- 
 fection is reached in both accuracy and speed. 
 
 Most men trust their lives entirely to the law of habit, 
 without purposeful interference to determine what the 
 particular habits shall be. But the student's power as 
 an intellectual unit will depend on his ability to map out 
 lines of action and train himself to perform these things 
 regularly and accurately under the most helpful law of 
 his being, the law of habit. The amount of action that 
 he can safely trust to habit will determine the amount 
 of mental vigor that he will have left to bestow on things 
 that are new, that come up only once, that are not mat- 
 ters of routine. The law of habit alone makes possible 
 the "economy of mental eifort" without which there can 
 be no intellectual progress. 
 
 Habit feeds us, guides us over the ground, sees to it 
 that our duties are done, without our giving it, the mas- 
 ter of our lives, a single thought. It lightens our labors, 
 it insinuates itself into a mastery over our every act, it 
 dooms us to an easy slavery — a slavery welcome because 
 it relieves us so largely from the necessity of active 
 thought and decision. We are so completely under the 
 control of the law of habit that the mind is left free to 
 fall asleep or busy itself about new and unusual things, 
 and the process by which we slide from strenuous effort 
 in the performance of an act into spontaneous perform- 
 
THE LAW OF HABIT 7 
 
 ance of the same act is so natural, so carefully provided 
 for in the nature of our organism, that it is the one ap- 
 parently irresistible, inexorable, masterful law of our 
 being. 
 
 Most habits are formed along the lines of conduct 
 that gratifies our immediate wants and desires. Our im- 
 mediate impulses control our acts, and habit makes these 
 acts the faithful attendants of our feelings. All bad hab- 
 its are formed along the lines of least resistance. They 
 are the ruts where the ungoverned and untrained feelings 
 ran. Habits formed in pursuit of some distant result are 
 almost all good. They are formed deliberately; they are 
 voluntary habits. The student, if he expects to govern 
 his career, must do what the scientific experimenter does. 
 He must interfere. The latter, when he makes an experi- 
 ment, creates his own conditions, decides what arrange- 
 ments will give him the desired results, and prevents sur- 
 rounding circumstances from interfering with his plans. 
 If the student makes a study of the law of habit with 
 this end in view, it will be neither dry nor threadbare, 
 but a big and vital subject of perennial interest. 
 
 It is not my purpose here to enter upon a discus- 
 sion of the nature of habit or to trace even in outline 
 the relations between mind and brain. That belongs to 
 psychology and to a later stage of the student's work. I 
 shall at most consider only a few of the practical bear- 
 ings of the law of habit on the problem of education from 
 the student's own point of view. 
 
8 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 Humanity's observations on Habit are not all hope- 
 lessly buried in sermons and lectures and essays. They 
 are crystallized into the oldest and commonest proverbs 
 of the race. Now humanity learned most of the truths 
 by which it is guided away from destruction and into 
 success, long before it could give the reasons for them. 
 Men have long been able to judge of a day's weather from 
 the character of the sunrise, without being able to tell 
 why a certain kind of sunrise was a pledge of rainy 
 weather. Such knowledge is empirical; but it serves the 
 practical purpose and is likely to find expression in a 
 short and pithy proverb. So of observations on the law 
 of habit. Men did not know why action becomes easy 
 and then inevitable by much repetition; and we do not 
 know overmuch about it now. But they did recognize 
 the facts, and coined such wisdom as the following. 
 "You cannot teach an old dog new tricks" ; "as the twig 
 is bent, so the tree will be inclined." "Train up a child 
 in the way he should go : and when he is old, he will not 
 depart from it." 
 
 If we had never heard anything about the law of 
 habit, these proverbs would be very striking to us, be- 
 cause they all by precept and figure of speech seek to 
 drive home the same great fact, that with habit as with 
 wheat, there is a seedtime and a harvest. The one truth 
 they tell is that the formation of habits is restricted to 
 youth, and that thereafter forever they lead their help- 
 less, mumbling slave where he does not will to go. 
 
 Habit has been called the memory of the spinal cord. 
 
THE LAW OF HABIT 9 
 
 The rational explanation that is given for the law of 
 habit is that the nervous system is the responsible party. 
 The brain and spinal cord are plastic enough to receive 
 impressions and rigid enough to retain them. They are 
 at the outset in an unstable, indifferent condition. They 
 may be impressed with any set of habits; but every phy- 
 sical and mental act leaves an effect on the material of 
 the nervous system. What was once capable of receiv- 
 ing any impression, has now been branded with a par- 
 ticular one. As the little impetus that removed all the 
 possibilities of the falling pine except one, gave the fate- 
 ful bent, so the first impressions on the nerve material 
 decide what shall become a habit when those materials 
 ^'seV' in their permanent, "stable" form. Brain and 
 cord, like other unstable things, receive the impression, 
 the record, they do the work, during the process of 
 change from the early, unstable to the later, stable con- 
 dition. 
 
 Hence the fact, that has always been so impressive 
 to men, that there is change and progress in the forma- 
 tion of habits only during the early history of the indi- 
 vidual. As soon as an act has been once performed, "lines 
 of least resistance" are established. Its repetition is easier 
 because the nervous system is ready now to do that kind 
 of work. After continued repetition of the same kind of 
 act, it is no longer possible to act differently without 
 tremendous effort. Like the putty, the brain and cord 
 have "set" in the forms impressed upon them in their 
 plastic state. The comparative ease of doing, and the 
 
10 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 infinite difficulty of undoing, result from this remarkable 
 quality of the human organism. 
 
 When once the nervous system has received the early 
 impressions and has assumed some of the burdens of the 
 mind, so that it does easily and without conscious effort 
 of the individual, many things which at first required 
 great effort, the ordinary processes of nutrition keep the 
 nerve tissue in that changed and fixed state. The nor- 
 mal process of renewing the wasted tissue preserves the 
 record, keeps brain and cord in the structure they as- 
 sumed when first the habits were formed. In course of 
 time all changes cease. The nervous system, and with 
 it the individual habits, become fixed. 
 
HABIT: FRIEND OR ENEMY 11 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 habit: friend or enemy? 
 
 Tihe enormous significance of the power of habit 
 is never fully realized. Habit is, in a sense, the taking 
 of a particular direction. When once it has been en- 
 tered upon, the human individual is no longer a mere pos- 
 sibilit}^, that may be realized in any one of a thousand 
 different ways. One of the possible ways has been se- 
 lected, only one result can now be realized; and that 
 result can no more be undone than the yesterdays can be 
 recalled. But none of us is deeply impressed with this 
 fatal truth. We recognize and acknowledge the real 
 power of habit only when it "sports" with us or others. 
 When the mind lets go its supervision, habit leads its sub- 
 ject into ridiculous situations. Then we are startled 
 into a realization that we have a real and merciless mas- 
 ter and that we are slaves. 
 
 Every reader can recall from his own experience, in- 
 stances in which inadvertently the mind failed to make 
 connection, at the proper time, with bodily actions that 
 were going on without attention under the strong force 
 of habit; and the ridiculous situations thus created. It 
 is these instances that serve best to show what habit 
 means to the individual life. The writer once knew a 
 
12 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 gentleman who had a habit of changing his clothes after 
 caring for his horse. One day he retired to his room, as 
 usual; but he was in a hopeless ^l3rown study/^ ISTow 
 the great virtue of habit is that it does its work thor- 
 oughly. All that is needed is the initial impulse; the 
 "memory of the spinal cord''' will do the rest. He took 
 off his coat, and while he was thinking about something 
 else, habit completed the peeling process and put him 
 to bed in broad daylight. 
 
 When once the attention is completely withdrawn, 
 and the mind does not recover the thread of control at 
 the proper moment either because it is preoccupied or 
 because it is incapacitated from doing so, habit follows 
 its purblind course and puts us in a predicament. 
 
 In one of the large coast cities of the United States, 
 a policeman, early one morning, found a Swedish sailor 
 clinging to the wing of an angel surmounting the column 
 of a fountain. The sailor's song was rudely interrupted, 
 and later he made an explanation in the police court. He 
 said, "I and another sailor man drank some alcohol. Ay 
 tank I see de ship." The judge appreciated the point 
 and dismissed the case. Habit had caught the intellect 
 in a dazed condition, and on its own responsibility had 
 taken the physical part of the sailor to the top of the 
 monument and had encouraged him to take a reef in the 
 bronze wing of the angel. When habit sports thus with 
 the dignity of our lives, its strength receives a temporary 
 recognition, and we see ourselves as helpless as little 
 children in the clutches of its hundred heavy hands. 
 
HABIT: FRIEND OR ENEMY 13 
 
 Thoreau tells of having seen on a freight train, hides 
 that had been shipped to Boston from the South Ameri- 
 can pampas. His poetic eyes saw that their tails were 
 still sticking up defiantly as when their owners ran like 
 mad across the grassy plains. He took occasion to re- 
 mark that if he once knew a man's disposition he wonld 
 look for no change in it this side the grave. 
 
 This view of habit seems to have nothing inspiring 
 in it. Not even the will seems to be taken much into 
 account when once the law of habit has mastered the 
 chief interests of life. But it is well for us that human 
 lives move round in rigid orbits, ruled by the law of habit. 
 If there were no means provided in our organism for 
 making acts more easy to perform with repetition, there 
 could be no skill, no progress. It would be as hard for a 
 man to put on his coat at forty years of age as it was at 
 the age of four or five. Even the rudiments of music 
 would be beyond our reach. We could not dream of, 
 much less carry out, the rapid, complex motions by which 
 music is produced. 
 
 The race would perish off the earth without help 
 from the law of habit. There are so many possible ways 
 of doing things, that, if there were no motive of any sort 
 for repeating them in the same way, there could be no 
 continuity of action. And if repetition did not cause 
 the formation of a habit and increase the ease of perform- 
 ance, every act would be and remain a matter of such ex- 
 treme difficulty that it would be neither pleasant nor 
 profitable. 
 
14 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 The force of habit is what makes expectation possi- 
 ble. It produces uniformity of action on the part of 
 each individual, so that others are able to anticipate what 
 he is likely to do. Our friends have been trustworthy, 
 and we believe that they will remain so. If a man lies 
 once, we think he will do it again. These things are 
 true because the law of habit, which underlies our con- 
 duct, forever tends to produce uniformity of action. Our 
 judgment of every man is based on the firm conviction 
 that he will always act in the same way. This continued 
 performance of acts in a uniform way gives him an indi- 
 vidual character. It marks him out and distinguishes 
 him for all observers. 
 
 National character, too, that remarkable thing that 
 seems so striking to the young student of history, is 
 merely a bundle of universal habits. A well-established 
 nation has its own peculiar views of life, and ways of 
 eating, drinking, working and amusing itself. These 
 practices have arisen slowly, and by imitation have come 
 to characterize every individual. And people of differ- 
 ent ages reflect the effects of national habit as clearly 
 as an individual reveals at different times of his life, the 
 increasing power of habit over his doings. 
 
 Children, transported from their native land, adopt 
 by imitation the national habits of their adopted country. 
 Ancestral habit has only a minor effect on them. They 
 may, on growing up, still harbor a desire to return to the 
 land of their nativity. But the all-pervading law of 
 habit has unfitted them for residence there. They fail 
 
HABIT: FRIEND OR ENEMY 15 
 
 to feel at home where there are habits unlike their own. 
 
 A mature man retains for life the habits of his na- 
 tive land and early childhood. He remains a stranger to 
 many things in his adopted country, because the old 
 national habits cling to him; he can no longer adjust 
 himself to the new ones. In America, where there are 
 so many foreigners, it is extremely interesting to the 
 student of the law of habit, to compare those who came 
 from Europe as adults, with their descendants of the 
 first and second generations. The former retain the an- 
 cestral habits; and the latter have discarded them, they 
 are a new type, because they have new habits; and they 
 have new habits because they were subjected to the new 
 conditions during life's plastic period. 
 
 The law of habit is what makes accumulation of 
 power possible. It preserves what has been gained and 
 sets the mental and physical forces free to work on a 
 higher plane. If an act did not become easier with repe- 
 tition, the results of that act would be lost as soon as it 
 was performed. The best product of a boy's first effort 
 to make a bow and arrow is not that bow and arrow, but 
 the permanent effect it has on his powers. His first bow 
 and arrow are very poor products, perhaps so poor that 
 they are practically useless. But he is a better mechanic. 
 His judgment in the selection of wood and his skill in 
 cutting are better, and these remain with him, while the 
 bow and arrow may go into the fire. His next perform- 
 ance is based upon this new skill ; and it in turn contrib- 
 utes toward his permanent power. While the law of 
 
16 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 habit dooms ns to live out our lives along the lines in 
 vrhich they are cast in youth, this same law makes our 
 action along those lines constantly more effective through 
 the accumulation of power. Our knowledge, like our 
 physical acts, becomes mechanical. If the law of habit 
 did not take charge of the multiplication table and reduce 
 our knowledge of it to the "mechanical stage/^ we could 
 never make progress in numbers. 
 
 So both action and knowledge are committed to the 
 keeping of the law of habit, with the result that the con- 
 scious powers of the mind are left permanently free to 
 deal with new questions. The mind can use all that has 
 been gained, without the necessity of reproducing it pain- 
 fully when it is wanted again. On the old foundation of 
 action and knowledge that have become mechanical, on 
 the modified nervous structure, rest our skill and the pos- 
 sibility of progress. Over these dead but solid acquisi- 
 tions, the powers of the mind rise to higher thought and 
 action. 
 
 The student's attitude toward this all-powerful law 
 of habit needs to be clearly conceived and carefully at- 
 tended to. It is his most powerful friend only while he 
 remains master of the situation. While it preserves what 
 has been gained and enables the mind to work on ever 
 higher levels, it may put the mind to sleep entirely. The 
 action of intellect and will are only spasmodic in the aver- 
 age man, because he has become a creature of habit. A 
 new kind of act or a new idea startles him, and he repels 
 it. He no longer has a growin.g point. The student, 
 
HABIT: FRIEND OR ENEMY 17 
 
 while lie acciimnlates, under the law of habit, a strong 
 and hesiYj body of wood in the trunk of knowledge, must 
 keep the terminal bud of intellectual action alive and 
 healthy and directed upward. The one thing that he has 
 most of all to dread is that this bud will wither. When 
 it is dead, the intellectual tree may long remain green, 
 but growth is over with. 
 
 The history of both men and nations reveals the 
 steadying eifect of habit, and also its deadening effect. 
 Very few people are convinced or converted by argument. 
 Most men believe what has been believed and do as their 
 fathers did. Those periods are rare in the history of 
 humanity, when some great idea has worked its way into 
 the minds of men and overthrown the views of the past. 
 But even when such a change has come, it is never thor- 
 oughly done by argument upon adults who were trained 
 in the older views. The change is completely worked out 
 only in the younger generation, which adopts the new 
 views while mind and body are fresh. The older views 
 shrivel and die, mostly because those who held them pass 
 off the stage of power. One of the most striking in- 
 stances of this truth is the history of the principles that 
 Darwin promulgated. Some of his strongest supporters, 
 and he himself, felt that his views must make progress, 
 not so much by remodelling the opinions of older men, 
 as by capturing the young mind of the world. And it was 
 so. Not by argument, but by training, is the world 
 slowly moving from its old to its new moorings ; and there 
 it is held again by the conservative force of habit. 
 
18 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 A bookful of illustrations might be written to show 
 that the adoption of one way of thinking, one line of ac- 
 tion, one direction of growth, tends to shut out the pos- 
 sibility of development in any other direction. There can 
 be but little hope of radical change after the individuality 
 is once fixed. A habit and its results, either in a person 
 or a nation, do not fall, like the walls of Jericho, at the 
 blast of trumpets. The will may in most matters be 
 normally strong, but habit, by its very nature, tends to 
 destroy the authority of will. A change of habit requires 
 not only a change of mind, but of body as well. It calls 
 for a complete re-organization of the nervous matter of 
 the brain and spinal cord. 
 
 When once wrinkles are formed in a coat sleeve it 
 will always yield along the lines of the old grooves and 
 ridges, even though a new arm be thrust into it. It is no 
 longer a question of forming a set of wrinkles; they are 
 there and must be ousted. A new arm in the sleeve may 
 force modification, but it cannot drive out of existence 
 the old lines of weakness. 
 
 Sometimes the pettiest examples illustrate well the su- 
 preme difficulty of change in either loiowledge or a course 
 of action or of growth. One of my students, in learning 
 the names of the German alphabet, got the pronuncia- 
 tion of four or five of them wrong. He wanted to cor- 
 rect the mistakes from the outset, but no amount of criti- 
 cism had any apparent effect. Finally he set himself to 
 work with tremendous energy and succeeded. But it cost 
 him at least four or five times as much energy to undo 
 
HABIT: FRIEND OR ENEMY 19 
 
 those few errors as it had originally cost him to learn the 
 whole alphabet. 
 
 This principle has a well nigh universal application. 
 Linnaeus made great contributions to both knowledge and 
 method in the field of science; and his doctrines carried 
 great authority with them. His classification of plants 
 was fully adopted in England and Germany, but not so 
 enthusiastically in France. Where then would the nat- 
 ural classification, which ran counter to the Linnaean 
 classification, be most likely to be worked out and most 
 surely take root? In France. England and Germany 
 were very much slower in accepting the natural classifica- 
 tion because it conflicted with beliefs and modes of 
 thought already current. Wherever a belief or a mode of 
 thought has once been fully adopted, a new one is always 
 most vigorously resisted. As Bagehot said: "The great- 
 est pain of the human race is the pain of a new idea." 
 
 The geological history of the pig tribe furnishes ex- 
 amples of the same principle, that when once modification 
 has started in some particular direction, it is practically 
 impossible to wheel about, undo the results and start 
 again along other lines. At many points in the history 
 of the pig tribe, ambitious off-shoots underwent special 
 modifications and became adapted to special conditions 
 and kinds of life. Some of these were swifter and more 
 graceful than the typical pig, but when the conditions 
 changed in their surroundings, they could no longer adapt 
 themselves to a new environment, and they perished from 
 the face of the earth. They could make progress only in 
 
20 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 the direction in which they had started. The typical pig, 
 with its general powers "iinmodified, with its ability to live 
 on anything anywhere, under any conditions, has survived, 
 with piggish obstinacy, all its more ambitious relatives. 
 
 Plants, as well as animals, reveal this principle. The 
 Venus' Fly-Trap, that peculiar, highly-modified, insect- 
 catching plant, is a wonderful creation, with astonishing 
 adaptations for catching insects. But it is the only spe- 
 cies in its genus, is confined to a small area in North 
 Carolina, and is surely doomed to perish from the earth. 
 Its sister genus of the sundews, which manage to catch 
 insects by much simpler means, are not highly modified, 
 and are much like common plants, contains three hun- 
 dred different species and they are found in all parts of 
 the world. 
 
 A high degree of adaptation to one kind of life shuts 
 out the possibility of adaptation to any other kind. In 
 the conduct of men, long indulgence in error makes a 
 right life thereafter a practical impossibility. The brand 
 has been burned into the very tissues. The being has 
 been changed. When once the mind has been filled with 
 unsound knowledge and has been trained in wrong 
 methods of thought, it is almost impossible to remodel 
 that knowledge and those ways of thinking in the inter- 
 ests of truth. 
 
 No human being can busy himself about any kind of 
 thing without forming habits of action and thought. 
 The law is irresistible. When this force has reached its 
 maximum there is nothing left to do, for the vast major- 
 
HABIT: FRIEND OR ENEMY 21 
 
 ity of men, but to follow the lines already laid down and 
 make the best of it, unless along with all the other habits 
 has grown strong and tall the habit of self-mastery. If 
 the life has been one of mental and moral error, it is not 
 very likely to turn into the paths of truth and righteous- 
 ness. The most it can do is to stand by the wayside and 
 beckon "unmodified" youth into the right path. For 
 rare is the spirit that can make the colossal struggle for 
 release from these laAvs of physical, mental and moral 
 change. The changes must come. Habits of thought 
 and action will be formed. It is the business of the stu- 
 dent to see to it that he sets himself in the right direc- 
 tion, that his habits of study, of thought, of conduct, his 
 views of life, are started right. Thenceforth the law of 
 habit is his strongest and truest friend. It makes sure 
 for him everything that he has struggled for. 
 
 He must see to it that his powers are trained to 
 respond to his best desires. The mind that wills to do 
 one thing, in a body trained to do another, is a house 
 divided against itself. ]^o man ever realizes his ideals; 
 and perhaps it is better that his life should not be all 
 planned in advance, but should be a perpetual re-adjust- 
 ment to new and unforeseen conditions. But success, in 
 any situation into which a man may be thrown by circum- 
 stances, can never come to one with a divided house. A 
 competent mind with a brain and body trained to "come 
 to heel,^' cannot be a failure anywhere. A mind and 
 body, well trained under the powerful law of habit, makes 
 a pure and vigorous and successful life normal and easy. 
 
22 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 When the will and the impulses and the force of habit are 
 agreed for evil^ the combination makes a successful villain; 
 when they are agreed for good, no combination of circum- 
 stances can make a man a failure. But when the house 
 is divided against itself, the product is no man at all — 
 only a thing of disgust. 
 
 What has been said about the law of habit, and the 
 irresistible force of habit has been said primarily for the 
 purpose of applying it to the question of education from 
 the student's own point of view. Success depends on 
 the careful co-operation of all the powers in pursuit of 
 one clearly defined object. There must be no irrecon- 
 cilable elements in the character — will to do one thing 
 with habits trained to do another. From this point of 
 view education becomes the development of certain hab- 
 its. Every chapter in this book, with a little remodelling, 
 could be made a subhead under the general subject of 
 habit. 
 
INTEREST 23 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 INTEREST. 
 
 Half a dozen people may be speaking at once close 
 to a listener, but he listens only to a single voice. He 
 remains oblivions to the others because his attention, 
 gnided by his interest, is concentrated on that one. Onr 
 mental capacity, our physical powers, are monopolized by 
 that which, for some reason or other, is attractive to ns. 
 The attraction may be very strong, appealing powerfully 
 to the feelings; or it may be a remote attraction, appeal- 
 ing only to the intellect. It is not my purpose to enter 
 into an analysis of the nature of interest; but only to 
 point out some of its practical bearings on the work of 
 the student. 
 
 Shall a student pursue only those things that spon- 
 taneously interest him? If he must develop interest in 
 some things for which he has no inherent liking, what 
 kind of interest shall it be ? Shall the burden of exciting 
 the student's interest in his work be laid on the teacher's 
 shoulders, or shaU the student hold himself responsible 
 for the cultivation of genuine interest in all the phases of 
 his work? 
 
 The gravest problem that teachers have to deal with 
 is that of awakening and sustaining the interest of the 
 
24 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 student in his studies. There is less hopeless incapacity 
 among scholars than many people think. The high- 
 schools lose more students after the first year or two 
 because the latter have lost their interest in the work 
 than because of incapacity or the grinding necessity of 
 working for a living. Without interest in a thing thb 
 intellect will not work upon it; interest is the fuel to the 
 engine. From the teacher's point of view the student 
 himself is the responsible party; without interest on his 
 part there can be no such thing as education. 
 
 The reason why it is so hard to teach a young child 
 is because its attention cannot be riveted. It has no in- 
 terests that last for more than a minute or two. It has 
 no thought for its own future hunger; for its clothes or 
 its nurture. There is nothing yet permanently fixed in 
 its mind, around which its thought and its action revolve. 
 It is interested only in what is immediately before it; 
 now a rag-doll and then a butterfly; now a flower and 
 then a kitten. It does not know how to postpone a pres- 
 ent pleasure for a future pleasure or profit. It has no 
 organized interests; there is no steady purpose running 
 through its life. Its interest and attention are of the 
 wandering, impulsive type that flits from object to object 
 as each strikes its fancy. 
 
 As it is with the child, so it is largely with the sav- 
 age. The future, even the immediate future, is a dim 
 and far away thing that has little or no bearing on pres- 
 ent conduct. Now in what important intellectual respect 
 does the highest type of civilization differ from the men- 
 
INTEREST 25 
 
 tal attitude of the savage and the child? It may be 
 said that the fundamental quality in the complex con- 
 ception that we call civilization is the quality of fore- 
 sight, providence, exercising thought and energy in the 
 present, for some future good. To the civilized man 
 the future is a definite thing, to be taken carefully into 
 account both for himself and his family. Civilization 
 makes it possible to look steadily into the future and 
 provide for it. There is no grave daily danger that our 
 present efforts to secure some future good will come to 
 naught. The conditions of life are so well established 
 that we are confident we shall be allowed to reap what 
 we have sown. It is this condition of more or less cer- 
 tainty concerning the future that makes us willing to 
 sacrifice present pleasures for more lasting ones that will 
 come only in the future. 
 
 But there arises, hourly, in every mind, the question : 
 "Shall I yield to my present impulse, gratify my present 
 interest, or sacrifice these and bend my energies to secure 
 some better, future good?" The student especially is 
 called upon to face squarely this issue; because the very 
 nature of his calling makes it necessary to decide whether 
 he shall serve his present desires and interests, or make 
 present sacrifices in the service of the more remote and 
 permanent interests of his life. The very fact that he 
 is educating himself would indicate that he is going 
 through the process of getting ready for something, that 
 all his present labors are intended to yield their results 
 many years hence. He is supposed to be sacrificing time 
 
26 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 and money and energy now for a later reward. This 
 principle needs to be enforced in the details of a stndent^s 
 work as well as in the larger outlines of his general pur- 
 pose. The problem perpetually recurs: "Is it worth 
 while, in this particular case, to sacrifice present pleas- 
 ure and comfort to the more remote good?^^ 
 
 It is much easier to preach the doctrine of the sacri- 
 fice of present interests in favor of the remote and per- 
 manent interests than it is to persuade men of its value 
 as a universal principle of action. In recent years there 
 has been much discussion of the question of good roads 
 in the country. Now good roads were at least as im- 
 portant twenty years before the discussion began as they 
 are now. But it was the advent of the bicycle that made 
 the question a vital one. Bad roads and bicycles do not 
 harmonize. When a man has to pedal his own wheel he 
 makes a vigorous disturbance to get a good road. He 
 wants his labor reduced to a minimum. If a farmer had 
 to pull his own wagon it would be to him an invincible 
 argument in favor of good roads; because good roads 
 would mean the removal of his physical distress. An im- 
 mediate, present interest in favor of good roads would be 
 developed at once. 
 
 But the problem, as it presents itself to the general 
 population, takes the form of alternatives. The farmer 
 merely wants to get to town and back. It is easier for 
 him to struggle over a bad road, carry a smaller load, 
 worry his horses, lose time and vex his temper, than to 
 stop and improve the road before driving over it. It is 
 
INTEREST 27 
 
 cheaper, easier and more to his present interest, to leave 
 the road as it is. To improve the road would mean a 
 large present sacrifice for a series of comparatively small 
 benefits distributed over a long future. In the short run 
 it is better to leave things as they are ; but in the long run 
 the farmer^s horses and wagons would look better, accom- 
 plish more and last longer, and he would be richer and 
 happier and would keep in closer touch with civilization 
 if he would make the present sacrifice for the future 
 good; if he would let his remote interests determine his 
 line of action. The important point about all this is that 
 the big sacrifice will occur but once, and the benefits will 
 be constant and will affect every phase of his life and busi- 
 ness. 
 
 It is said that in Africa there are well-beaten trails 
 that run as straight as the flight of a crow for hundreds 
 of miles through the great forests. But there is hardly 
 a rod of such a trail that does not have a little bend in 
 it. It turns first to the right and then to the left, as 
 if a flying crow had carried a swinging pendulum to mark 
 the course of the trail. Even savages know how to travel 
 a straight course for a hundred miles, but they cannot 
 keep the little curves and zigzags out of the trail. It is 
 easier for each individual, on every occasion when he 
 comes to a rock or a stump or fallen tree, to go around 
 it than to remove it. In the long run it would be profit- 
 able to remove the obstacles by combined effort of the 
 travellers, and straighten the trail. But on each separate 
 occasion that the obstacle ^^arises,^^ it is not worth while. 
 
28 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 And that is why a trail that funs straight across the 
 country has in it those thousands of little time-killing, 
 back-breaking crooks. It requires leadership and a 
 strong impression of permanent benefits to make the 
 present sacrifice. 
 
 There are other problems of this nature in which 
 whole nations are interested. It is a serious thing to 
 decide whether a whole people shall make a large sacri- 
 fice of present, immediate interests to secure some dis- 
 tant permanent good. The English-speaking races use a 
 language whose spelling is antiquated and ridiculous. It 
 takes an English-speaking child at least a year longer to 
 learn to read its mother tongue than it does a German 
 child ; because each sound is represented by several differ- 
 ent letters or combinations of letters (as in h&au, though, 
 doe, no, how), and often the same letter stands for several 
 different sounds. Our written language is an ^^asinine 
 feast of sow-thistles'' set before our children in their 
 tenderest years. 
 
 Historically this crude and curious spelling is inter- 
 esting and has a vast significance; but practically it is a 
 millstone about the necks of our little ones. This con- 
 dition of things is so evidently in violation of the so- 
 called practical sense of the Anglo-Saxon race, and such 
 a serious crime against the intellectual possibilities of 
 that race, that a theorist might suppose the old condition 
 of things would not be allowed to continue for a single 
 year. 
 
 But it is altogether a question of the relative 
 
INTEREST 29 
 
 strength of the immediate interests of ourselves and the 
 remote interests of our children. If the changes that 
 need to be made to simplify our written language were 
 only slight, or if large, would cause no serious, even tem- 
 porary inconvenience to anyone, the change would be 
 made over night. And we would congratulate ourselves 
 on our generous foresight for the good of those that are 
 yet to come. But the present loss of time and money 
 and the amount of energy required to re-adjust ourselves 
 to any new spelling would be very great; and the change 
 cannot be made, even though the present sacrifice would 
 be but a driblet compared with the great gain to the 
 coming generations. The remote interests suffer utter 
 collapse because the conflicting present interests are 
 powerful. 
 
 Now education, in its very nature, is a serious, long- 
 drawn-out attempt to sacrifice present convenience and 
 success at the altar of the remote and permanent inter- 
 ests of human life. It is a deliberate attempt to build a 
 good road for future use. And the student who is the 
 one primarily interested in this business, has to weigh 
 the matter and make his decision in the face of obstacles. 
 
THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 CHAPTEE lY. 
 
 SIMPLE AND COMPOUND INTEREST. 
 
 In the end, all lines of action become a question of 
 forming a habit. As was said in the last chapter, the 
 very nature of a student's calling is the best evidence 
 that in his case there is to be a determined sacrifice of 
 present interests for the purpose of securing the perma- 
 nent benefits that can be reaped only in later years. But 
 every human being, even a student, tends to lapse into 
 the haphazard, hand-to-mouth mode of life in which 
 remote interests play at best a subordinate and only sub- 
 conscious part. The vital question with the student is: 
 shall he habitually act upon impulse, giving thought to 
 and securing only immediate pleasant results, or shall he 
 act habitually by voluntary effort, with a view to making 
 his present acts yield the largest possible rewards in the 
 more distant future? 
 
 Since everyone, no matter what his calling, meets 
 things in which he takes no interest, which are not attrac- 
 tive to him, which may even be distasteful, the student 
 must frequently face and answer the question whether 
 he will pursue only those things that please him now, or 
 whether he will exercise his pugnacity on difficult and dis- 
 tasteful things, and forever dispose of them by doing 
 
SIMPLE AND COMPOUND INTEREST 31 
 
 them, in the accomplishment of his more permanent pur- 
 poses. In recent years the courses of study in school and 
 college have been so enlarged that each student is sup- 
 posed to be able to choose only those things that he can 
 take some interest in, that have an inherent attraction 
 for him. He can now more easily and thoroughly pre- 
 pare himself for the calling he has chosen, because he is 
 not obliged to groan and labor over things that only re- 
 pel him. But while the modern plan of elective studies 
 has given a larger and stronger interest to the work of 
 each individual, the fundamental question remains the 
 same. Will he dodge or will he fight? There is always 
 and everywhere in life a residue of uninteresting matters 
 that have to be considered and done, if any kind of 
 definite purpose is to be realized. 
 
 If one is merely indifferent to a line of work, a strong 
 conviction that it ought to be done for the sake of 
 more remote and permanent interests, may lead one to 
 do it with a fair degree of mental and physical comfort. 
 But things that are repugnant at the outset call for 
 something more than an ordinary act of will. When no 
 other feeling will impel to action, it is well to have in 
 reserve the feeling of anger and to let it blaze out at the 
 thought that there is anything in the way of success. If 
 one has no interest in doing a difficult or repugnant but 
 necessary thing, one can still interest himself by crush- 
 ing it because it is a difiiculty, because it challenges the 
 fighting qualities. 
 
 I know of no other spirit in which to face that in- 
 
32 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 evitable residue of unpleasant work that every student 
 meets. "Failure" may as well be branded at the out- 
 set on the forehead of him who will do only the work 
 that is pleasant to him at the moment he decides to do it. 
 He is still the victim of his own impulses^ and cannot 
 subdue his intellect and will to the service of a steady and 
 useful purpose. He may be a genius, but he is not a man. 
 
 But while one's fighting qualities need to be appealed 
 to at many points in a career of study, and one needs to 
 keep steadily in mind the great remote end of all the 
 work while doing what is now uninteresting, interest in 
 the distasteful thing itself begins to grow as the work 
 progresses. The doctrine of compound interest applies 
 to the student's work as well as to the capitalist's money. 
 Herbert Spencer wrote many pages of philosophy to 
 show how rapidly effects of every kind are multiplied if 
 the force at work is only constant. For purposes of cal- 
 culation, the rate of increase at compound interest is 
 permanently printed in tabular form. Jesus Christ put 
 the doctrine into a sentence: "Whosoever hath, to him 
 shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall 
 be taken even that which he thinketh that he hath." 
 
 While it is necessary to do many present things by 
 sheer force of will, if the permanent interests of life are 
 to be faithfully served, no man or woman of spirit needs 
 to feel that such labor must remain uninteresting while 
 it lasts or leave an unpleasant after-taste in memory. As 
 has been said, we are necessarily heedless of most things 
 that happen around us ; but in the mind that is quick and 
 
SIMPLE AND COMPOUND INTEREST 33 
 
 not dead, alert and not asleep, interest will rise from 
 work that is apparently most uninteresting; and when 
 once that new, immediate interest is born, it is not likely 
 to die. 
 
 A friend of the writer had to support himself while 
 preparing for entrance into college. This bread and but- 
 ter interest was very immediate, pressing and constant. 
 It sharpened amazingly his capacity for seeing work that 
 needed to be done. One day he saw a dilapidated fence 
 and offered to repair it for the owner. The latter did 
 not want his fence patched. He wanted a new one. 
 '^Can you build me a new fence T' "Yes, sir.^^ And the 
 agreement was made. With the young man it was a case 
 of pure self-assurance that had been cultivated in the 
 hard school of strenuous endeavor. Before that time he 
 had no interest in fences. Why should he work at things 
 that did not interest him? Fences had never meant 
 anything to him except that they were things to climb 
 over or crawl through or tear trousers on. 
 
 As long as he had to work anyhow, he might have 
 hunted longer, until he found a job that was easy. If 
 he had had a mind to follow the ^T.ines of least resist- 
 ance,^' he would have avoided the fence. But he was not 
 built that way. His mental action was clear. He 
 wanted an education; to get that he wanted money; to 
 get that he wanted work. He would have had no inter- 
 est in fence-building, if the more remote interest of an 
 education had not stimulated him. But he had the 
 capacity for developing a quick and immediate interest 
 
34 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 even in a fence. From that moment every fence taught 
 him a lesson. Distances between posts, the number of. 
 nails used, the depth of post-holes, all had a lively interest 
 for him. Board fence, picket fence, iron fence, rail 
 fence each taught him something. Before he knew it 
 he was a connoisseur of fences. 
 
 He built a good fence and fairly earned his money. 
 But he did something far more important than either. 
 He had developed a new interest and a new habit — of 
 studying fences. He could no more let a fence alone 
 than a dog can let a cat alone. Later he became state 
 entomologist for one of our most prosperous states. I do 
 not think his knowledge of fences secured him his posi- 
 tion; but it was the power of creatmg a new, immediate 
 interest in a piece of work undertaken for the sake of his 
 more permanent desires, and the power of transforming 
 that temporary interest into a new permanent interest 
 that has made him so successful in life. 
 
 Students by the thousands choose to prepare them- 
 selves for special callings, but are unwilling to sacrifice 
 their feelings in making the necessary preparation. 
 Would-be doctors dislike chemistry and physiology, and 
 study as little of them as possible, and do that little in 
 just as poor a fashion as the law allows. Would-be me- 
 chanical, civil, and electrical engineers dislike algebra, 
 and beg to be excused from it. Would-be lawyers often 
 feel a strong distaste for history; and instead of exercis- 
 ing their manhood in a little matter of conquest, they 
 seek to belittle the importance of the task that lies be- 
 
SIMPLE AND COMPOUND INTEREST 35 
 
 fore them and avoid it if they can. One must have some 
 sort of interest, either temporary or permanent, or he 
 will not act at all. Every student is bound to meet, 
 sooner or later, tasks that have no immediate interest for 
 him; and there is no choice but to master them as they 
 come. After a while the spirit of habitual mastery is 
 developed, and nothing seems too hard or too repulsive. 
 If a student lacks interest in a task he can substitute 
 pugnacity for it until an interest is developed; and that 
 is bound to follow at the heels of the first success. 
 
 The difficulty that the student has to deal with is, 
 that with all of us, the present life is much more vivid 
 and real than what is yet far away. Our present desires, 
 pleasures, comfort, ease, are much more substantial in 
 our eyes than any distant good that can come from pres- 
 ent effort. A present sacrifice is easily made by resolu- 
 tion; but it is another matter to enforce it. So in the 
 execution of a fixed purpose to have an education for 
 future use, our present interests, our momentary im- 
 pulses, are always interfering with the steady progress 
 towards the fulfilment of the distant end. But no man 
 ever made a path that was worth anything who kept his 
 eyes fixed on his feet or let them wander at random 
 from object to object of present interest. 
 
 A hundred men might tramp over a plowed field and 
 still fail to make a path. But, if one of them, before he 
 started, Jifnew where he w^as going and kept his eye fi:xed 
 on the distant object, he would stumble sturdily over 
 the clods instead of dodging them and disregard the 
 
36 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 dead-furrows instead of trying to follow them for com- 
 fort's sake. His track would be only one in a hundred. 
 There would still be no path. But his track, though no 
 deeper than any other, would show such striking charac- 
 teristics that an obserrer could distinguish it at once. 
 The strides would be uniform, there would be plain an 
 utter disregard of both local difficulties and temptations, 
 and the track would be straight. If that man were to 
 make another trip, in the same state of mind, all the 
 tramping of the ninety-nine would be in vain and dis- 
 appear. His track would be the trail, and they all, like 
 sheep, would follow. The way-faring man, though a 
 fool, would not err therein; and maybe in his lucid mo- 
 ments he could understand the reason why the trail ran 
 where it did. After the trail was made, he, too, might 
 accidentally become aware of the object on which the 
 first man's eye had been fixed. 
 
 And so of intellectual results. If the distant, per- 
 manent interests are always kept in view, the local and 
 present interests are easily and steadily subordinated. 
 Not only will the performance be easier, but the very 
 first results will show the striking characteristics that 
 all labor shows which is intended, not to gratify the im- 
 pulses of the moment, but to serve the ends of a life- 
 time. Work done in that spirit with such a motive, is 
 work whose results are useful afterwards. This, to my 
 mind, is the reason why every stroke of a student's work 
 should be done with the ultimate end of his labors in 
 view. That is the distinguishing characteristic of all 
 
SIMPLE AND COMPOUND INTEREST 37 
 
 work of any worth that has* ever been done in the world ; 
 it is the hallmark of every permanent product of the 
 human mind that is valued as a heritage by thinking 
 men. 
 
 Work thus done once is ready for habit to fix per- 
 manently in the intellectual structure. Knowledge thus 
 gained is clear and purposeful, and its impression is 
 deeper than that made in random trails of thought. It 
 is easier to do the second time, and one is more likely 
 to do it again. Intellectual work done under those con- 
 ditions has "the right of way." If the main purpose of 
 the student's life is kept permanently in view, he learns 
 more, learns it better and more rapidly than if he is con- 
 stantly consulting his temporary comfort and conven- 
 ience. 
 
 Work done in this spirit is the only good material 
 for habit to seize upon. If, as in the making of the 
 trail, the student promptly repeats his work, either by 
 reviewing it or putting it to immediate and regular use, 
 it is secure against all the so-called faults of memory. 
 
 To my thinking, two main results are produced by 
 education, both of which depend on how the interest of 
 the individual is centered, and both of which may be ex- 
 pressed in terms of habit. One great outcome of a good 
 education is the ability to do a thing correctly and skill- 
 fully at the first effort. This is the great good after 
 which students consciously or unconsciously strive. And 
 if with the development of this power has grown a bound- 
 less love of truth, the student has entered within the 
 
38 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 sacred gate of a successful intellectual life. But this 
 ability is the fruit of long and silent and often painful 
 practice. It is the habit of doing intellectual work with 
 the final purpose always in view. 
 
 An immortal example of the lasting quality of the 
 habit of doing things thoroughly, once for all, is the in- 
 tellectual life of Charles Darwin. When, as a young 
 man, he made the famous four years' voyage in Her 
 Majesty's Ship Beagle, he had, at each stopping place, 
 only one opportunity to make scientific observations. If 
 he should leave any of his work inaccurate and incom- 
 plete, it must remain so forever; for he had no time to 
 return in order to make additions and corrections, a 
 proceeding that is chronic with most students. So all his 
 great powers were bent to the service of his permanent 
 interests. He made strenuous and constant effort to 
 secure fullness and accuracy of observation in order that 
 the reasoning afterwards based on the results might not 
 be defective or false. This trait of his mental action 
 remained a habit throughout life. It stood him in good 
 stead in the long and laborious years of his later scientific 
 career. He never had to do a thing twice. 
 
 A second permanent result secured to the good 
 student is a large body of valuable knowledge; valuable 
 because it is accurate and can be depended upon, easily 
 accessible because it has become subject to the law of 
 habit. It is so fixed, that when one item recurs to the 
 mind, the rest comes trooping back with no apparent 
 effort of thought to recall it. It has become mechanical. 
 
SIMPLE AND COMPOUND INTEREST 39 
 
 Not only the alphabet, the multiplication table, the de- 
 clensions and conjugations of foreign languages, but 
 every group of facts that belong together can, by prac- 
 tice, be subjected to the law of habit and made secure 
 against the so-called whims of memory. 
 
 The science of war is compressed into books; but 
 the art of war is a matter of nerve-training. The regu- 
 lars fight the first battles and hold disaster by the throat 
 until the volunteers are ready. The difference between 
 them is that with the regulars obedience, endurance and 
 courage have become habits. In every emergency they 
 can do the right thing at once. They not only know what 
 the volunteers know — ^but they have developed a per- 
 manent state of mind in regard to that knowledge. So 
 with the scholar. The will is re-enforced by a great 
 body of accurate knowledge made familiar by constant 
 practice. 
 
40 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 CHAPTEE Y. 
 
 ATTENTION", 
 
 Attention is the concentration of the mental pow- 
 ers npon a single object. All normal human beings are 
 capable of exercising it. The student's interest in the 
 subject therefore relates not so much to the mere exist- 
 ence of the power as to the way in which it is applied. 
 The surest test of a highly trained mind is the power of 
 perfect and steady concentration of the attention upon a 
 single line of thought. The importance of this power 
 the student cannot over-estimate. 
 
 ISTow a little child's life is filled with attentiveness. 
 But it is not the kind that leads to any kind of accom- 
 plishment. A beautiful butterfly attracts it so strongly 
 that it forgets all the rest of the world. Its toys and 
 its mother's admonition not to wade in the wet grass are 
 forgotten in the perfect concentration of its attention. 
 But a beautiful flower takes its turn at beckoning to the 
 mental powers of the child. Then the flower is dropped 
 for something else that is new. The senses are busy, but 
 there is no reflection. The attention is not driven to 
 anything by the force of the will. The attraction is 
 from the outside, and the response to it is always imme- 
 diate because there is no internal thought to control it. 
 
ATTENTION 41 
 
 The trouble with a child's attention is that all the possi- 
 bilities of each new object are at once exhausted. There 
 is nothing new about it any more. 
 
 Monotony kills attention; and the child has no new 
 interest in the thing. Its color, its form, its motion are 
 soon observed and then there is nothing left. Nothing 
 but thinking, behind the working of the five senses, can 
 bring out new views of the old thing; but that is just 
 what the young child does not do. It has no permanent 
 interest in butterflies or roses, no permanent interests 
 of any sort. And attention cannot be steadily held on 
 anything, even by the most strenuous act of the will, 
 without a motive for such concentration. 
 
 Culture begins with the fixing of the attention upon 
 a few definite things by direct and persistent effort of the 
 will. And it will be worth while to consider a little the 
 conditions under which alone this power can be culti- 
 vated. 
 
 Inability to concentrate the attention and keep it 
 fixed is the most striking and fateful mark of a weak or 
 untrained mind. But there are certain conditions un- 
 der which the most highly trained mind' cannot keep the 
 attention riveted. Everyone has felt the difficulty of 
 keeping the thought and imagination fixed on a single 
 object for which search is being made in a uniform mass 
 of grass or sand. Extreme weariness soon kills even the 
 desire to find the thing. The mind persists in letting go 
 and wandering; and it requires tremendous will power to 
 make the search a steady and prolonged one. The object 
 
42 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 is repeatedly overlooked, simply because the image of it 
 cannot be kept clear, and the mind is not at work upon 
 it. There is no food for thought. Even though other 
 things do not tend to distract the mind by their attrac- 
 tiveness, still it cannot fix and hold the attention on any- 
 thing that does not stimulate reflection. Attention can- 
 not be permanently fixed upon anything without an ac- 
 companying train of thought. 
 
 But trains of thought run only where there are 
 tracks. The reason why the child's thought does not 
 take any definite direction and keep it, is because there 
 are no permanent interests in its mind sufficiently well 
 established to furnish a track for thought to run upon. 
 It is only when, by active thinking, the subject that the 
 mind is now attending to, can be made a part of some 
 greater subject, can be connected with some larger and 
 more permanent interest, that attention can be riveted 
 upon it. And the length of time during which interest 
 can be kept riveted upon a subject, or the number of 
 times it can be brought back to it, will usually depend 
 upon the number of ways in which it can be connected 
 with other things, that are already known or have been 
 already thought about. 
 
 The monotonous thump of an Indian drum, as it 
 booms across the moon-lit lake from the pines where 
 the bucks are dancing, to the tent where the listener lies 
 awake, may attract his attention for only an instant and 
 then be neglected as nothing but a dull and stupid sound. 
 But if other things are called up by it, if it has meaning 
 
ATTENTION 43 
 
 for him, it may be weird and beautiful music and awaken 
 wonderful trains of thought and feeling. The mind wiU. 
 muse on prehistoric man and on the fate of the race; 
 wonder whether civilization makes men happier; and 
 ever and ever come back to catch anew the heavy, musical 
 beat, and then to follow away some other new thought 
 into the future or the past. As long as the sound 
 awakens thought, it will make the imagination dance its 
 beautiful maze across the hard, resounding floor of rea- 
 son. But when it ceases to do this, it will no longer be 
 attended to. 
 
 There is only one alternative. When once the sound 
 has ceased to waken thought, attention may for a time 
 be riveted on it by sheer force of will. By the shutting 
 out all other objects of thought that are attractive, that 
 dull, monotonous sound is given full control, and puts 
 both the mind and the man to sleep. The surest way to 
 cultivate an attitude of non-attention — of waking sleep or 
 actual sleep — is to exclude from the mind all objects 
 upon which the imagination can play, and keep the at- 
 tention fixed by force of will upon something that will 
 not grow, that does not waken the thought. Utter ex- 
 haustion, entire withdrawal of the mind — sleep — inter- 
 venes. 
 
 Whether the beautiful Minnehaha falls shall rivet 
 the attention for only a few minutes or for hours, depends 
 on whether the mind sees something new in it or con- 
 nected with it, with every passing moment. Attention 
 dies of thirst in the mental desert of monotony. Whether 
 
44 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 the glint and flash and music of the water shall hold 
 the mind fixed upon the beauty of the falls depends on 
 whether their charms are kept new and the feelings are 
 kept fresh. The water may still be there and its music 
 be just as loud, but they will be seen and heard only 
 while they are suggestive. As soon as they cease to sug- 
 gest new associations the subject will be dropped. The 
 continuous sight and sound of Minnehaha, if other sub- 
 jects of thought are excluded, will dull the faculties and 
 bring on drowsiness. 
 
 The mind may be startled into new activity by 
 merely stopping the ears. The sight without the sound 
 wakens an entirely new train of thought. The light and 
 limpid silence, the beauty without the music, touches and 
 wakens hitherto unknown phases of feeling. So, too, 
 when the eyes are shut, the sound alone is different from 
 what it is when coupled with the sight. It conjures up 
 old thoughts and wakens new ones by linking itself with 
 other, long-forgotten sounds. 
 
 The scientific side of the subject seems a more som- 
 bre topic of attention; but it is even more fruitful in its 
 effects. Why is it a falls, and not a rapids? Why 
 could we walk under and behind the falls and look out 
 through the watery veil? Simple problem with a simple 
 solution, if only the mind has grappling hooks with which 
 to fasten the attention. 
 
 The solid rock above, the softer rock beneath, the 
 rythmic flashes and the musical roar of the falling water, 
 the cool, damp shade, the spirit of Minnehaha, bride of 
 
ATTENTION 45 
 
 Hiawatha, images of swollen waters in the springtime 
 and frozen wonders in the winter, and last of all perhaps 
 the thought that the beautiful falls is dying for want of 
 a steady water-supply, all hold the attention fixed. It 
 needs no coercion while the topic grows into manifold 
 trains of thought. The will seems indeed to be itself 
 coerced to let the mind attend to the expanding thought. 
 The little falls may thus grow and change and fasten 
 itself to a thousand memories of other times till it has 
 become a permanent part of the intellectual life. The 
 memory of it remains rich and fruitful, for whenever it 
 comes back to mind on the wings of the imagination, it 
 brings with it the deepest thoughts and purest feelings of 
 the human soul. 
 
 From the student's point of view the effect of the 
 will upon attention needs to be kept constantly in view. 
 If a subject is not sufficiently interesting to hold the at- 
 tention, if it does not awaken thought and so make itself 
 attractive, the will must be exercised. For it is the 
 student's chief business to so train the attention that it 
 can be steadily fixed. If he recognizes clearly the fact 
 that, in order to make attention steady and persistent, 
 the subject attended to must waken thought, his duty 
 lies plain before him. For a short time attention can be 
 fixed on an uninteresting thing by force, but hardly for 
 more than an instant. There is often recognizable a curi- 
 ous, instantaneous effort to develop the object of atten- 
 tion — that is, to analyze it, explain it, call up associations 
 for it, to assign a place for it in our scheme of knowl- 
 
46 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 edge. And this is the point at which the student^s effort 
 must be directed in cultivating steady attention. 
 
 He constantly meets things that are not directly 
 interesting but that need to be considered at once, for 
 the good they will do afterwards. He is therefore under 
 the stern necessity of making a practice of concentrating 
 his attention by force of will, and as soon as it is fixed, 
 of seeking by every means to start trains of thought 
 about the subject, to develop it, to make it grow upon 
 the mind, so that there will promptly arise a direct inter- 
 est in the thing itself. Then the mind pursues the sub- 
 ject for what there is in it. 
 
 It has already been pointed out that if the student's 
 great purpose is strong and clear, and constantly kept in 
 view, it has a profound effect on his present labors. It 
 prevents the shiftiness that makes the average life so in- 
 effective. This remote interest can never be lost sight 
 of without disaster to the student's intellectual growth, 
 for it is the anchor of his life. Local and present' diffi- 
 culties are overcome, instead of being dodged, only in 
 the presence of a far-off, permanent, over-powering good 
 that is constantly kept in view. 
 
 Dun's great commercial agency secures and furnishes 
 to business houses information concerning the commer- 
 cial standing and integrity of every business man in the 
 country who wishes to have dealings with them. It asks 
 the individual himself to give the details of his own busi- 
 ness standing and to give references, from whom the 
 agency can make independent inquiry about him. One of 
 
ATTENTION 47 
 
 the curious and apparently irrelevant questions that it 
 asks is, "Is he married?" What can the answer to that 
 question have to do with a man's commercial standing 
 and integrity? 
 
 In the long run, and in determining the average 
 value of men, the answer has a good deal to do with them. 
 A family dependent on him gives to a man permanent 
 pleasures that he will not readily forego, and life-long 
 obligations which as a rule he will not voluntarily lay 
 aside. It is not so easy for him to "quit and begin over 
 again." It turns his business into a means to a higher 
 and permanent end. He is more certain to have steady 
 habits, to conserve his powers for legitimate purposes, to 
 bend his energies steadily to the accomplishment of what 
 he undertakes. His family is the surest pledge that he 
 will make a success of himself, because his attention is 
 permanently concentrated on one object. And because 
 his attention is permanently fixed on that one object, he 
 will also fix it, by force of will or in any other possible 
 way, upon every detail of his business. 
 
 Such a permanent interest as the student's ambition 
 for an education, and the desire to realize clearly con- 
 ceived ideals and willingness to make sacrifices for them, 
 if allowed to exercise their full influence on the details 
 of the daily work, throw those petty details into an en- 
 tirely new light, give them an interest of their own, 
 as a necessary part of the great whole. The perfection 
 of any part of our knowledge seems to bear a direct rela- 
 
48 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 tion to its importance in the scheme as a whole. What- 
 ever seems unimportant to the main purpose is not likely 
 to receive the attention of the individual, and if it does 
 not receive his attention it will be indefinite, hazy and 
 worthless. 
 
 The woodsman who spends the prime of his life in 
 the forest, hunting information about pine lands, devel- 
 ops all the skill of an expert. He sees every pine, can 
 estimate accurately the number of feet of lumber the 
 land will yield per acre or quarter section, notes carefully 
 the distances to the banks of streams, and the character of 
 the land, whether dry or swampy. He is very alert for 
 everything that has a direct bearing on his business. 
 Along with this essential information, and skill in finding 
 and handling it, he has accumulated a large mass of 
 collateral information. He thinks he knows the differ- 
 ent kinds of trees in the forest well. He would resent 
 an insinuation that he did not know all about elms. He 
 can recognize one as far as it can be seen. But if he 
 were required to give the information on which to base 
 a scientific definition of an elm-tree, if he were asked to 
 describe the peculiar qualities of the elm by which he 
 recognized it he might be at an utter loss. He is what is 
 called an impressionist. He knows the elm as a whole, 
 that it is different from all other trees; but he may be 
 utterly unable to give a good description of the mode of 
 branching, the shape and character of the leaves, and the 
 peculiar way in which the bark is cracked — the characters 
 on which the impression as a whole depends. And if he 
 
ATTENTION 49 
 
 fails, the reason is, that his attention was never fixed on 
 each one separately. 
 
 It may sound like a hard saying, but the great bulk 
 of what we know belongs in the same class with the 
 pine-hunter^s knowledge of the elm. It is this kind of 
 knowledge that makes boys and girls say frankly, "I 
 know, but I can^t tell it"; and causes grown men and 
 women to give somewhat more elegant apologies for the 
 indefiniteness of what they know. We cannot define the 
 commonest things, though we may know enough to recog- 
 nize them, and we may know what they are for. 
 
 The reason for this is not far to seek, but much more 
 difficult to overcome. Our knowledge of nearly all things 
 never had its start from a sharp act of attention, followed 
 by careful consideration and association of this new 
 knowledge with what we already know. Like Topsy, it 
 was not born, it only "growed," bit by bit, until we think 
 we know a lot of things that we do not know at all. It was 
 ^^absorbed." Such knowledge always lacks both accuracy 
 and clearness of detail. 
 
 Imperfection of voluntary attention is a general 
 characteristic of the human mind. It is the chief cause of 
 the infinite imperfection of our knowledge as compared, 
 not with ideal knowledge, but with what it might actually 
 be. 
 
 A class of eight fairly bright, well-read young men 
 was reading Irving's Alhambra, and each in turn was 
 called upon to define and distinguish the two words 
 
50 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 elegance and grmideur. Everyone made the attempt; no 
 one felt that he did not know; but no one could do it 
 satisfactorily. The saying from the primary grades "I 
 know but I can't tell'' was quoted to them^, and they 
 accepted it as a good description of their condition. A 
 curious companion piece to this is the fact that in the 
 same lesson occurred several words which none of them 
 had ever seen before. These they had to look up care- 
 full}^, and they gave correct definitions for all of them. 
 They had all seen the words elegance and grandewr 
 scores of times in their reading, and had often used 
 them. When asked why they were content to leave 
 matters thus when the very purpose of their reading was 
 to study the style of Irving, they answered that they 
 thought they knew. 
 
 They depended on something that they never had. 
 They never did know the meanings of elegance and grand' 
 eur and the distinction between them. They felt somc*- 
 thing in connection with the two words and that was all. 
 The reason for this condition of things lies near at 
 hand. The attention had never been deliberately directed 
 toward the meaning of either word. Not one of the class 
 had ever studied carefully either word separately or the 
 two together for purposes of comparison and discrim- 
 ination. Their knowledge of the two words had, uncon- 
 sciously and without effort, been absorbed, bit by bit, 
 during a long period of time, from the various contexts 
 in which they had been seen and heard. These students 
 saw the distinction between the words ^^through a glass, 
 
ATTENTION 51 
 
 darkly/' Not one of them had ever attended to the ele- 
 ments that go to make up the conception of grandeur. 
 
 The facts set forth in the preceding paragraphs have 
 another important lesson for the student. Not only was 
 the knowledge of those young men very imperfect^ but 
 the chances, as shown above, were all against their ever 
 improving it. The two words with which they were more 
 or less familiar and which they were likely to meet again 
 at every turn whenever they read good literature, were 
 left without attention; while other words, which they 
 had never met before and were never likely to meet 
 again, they studied very carefully. This apparently 
 strange performance is not abnormal, but perfectly char- 
 acteristic of most people. 
 
 Direct attention to the significance of those words, 
 when they were first met in the studenfs intellectual career, 
 would have resulted in an analysis of their meaning and 
 an accurate understanding of what they stand for. If 
 that had happened at the outset, every later recurrence 
 of the word grandeur would have increased its signifi- 
 cance. Thought could work upon it, the idea could grow. 
 Every new context would add some new suggestion to 
 the old meaning, because the word was understood. 
 Without this clear understanding of the idea from the 
 outset there is no nucleus to which new experience can 
 cling, and it fades into nothingness again. It may be 
 laid down as a mental axiom that knowledge of any 
 subject cannot improve, no matter how much it is studied, 
 unless strenuous attention is given to the first stages of 
 
52 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 that knowledge, so that there will be a nucleus around 
 which the later additions can gather. 
 
 If attention is not carefully concentrated upon the 
 first steps, it is not likely to be later; it is not easily 
 fixed upon what is already "familiar/^ Our lives are full 
 of the proof of this truth. Men and women listen to 
 soul-stirring sermons and sing inspiring hymns withoiit 
 a twitch of muscle or a tinge of color in thought or feel- 
 ing, — ^not because they do not believe them, but because 
 attention has been withdrawn. The performance of these 
 things has become habitual, — it is a mere beating of time. 
 Steady attention to what is said and sung would result in 
 a religious upheaval. Most of our reading is like this. 
 The movement is mechanical ; there is no thinking. The 
 idea ceases to develop and the attention is withdrawn. 
 Like the organ-grinder, we turn the crank all day — and 
 are utterly deaf to the tune. This is the pit that the 
 student falls into, and steep and slippery are the sides 
 thereof. 
 
 It is infinitely more difficult to make a healthy tree 
 out of a scrubby little plant than it is to attend carefully 
 to the plant from the time the seed is placed in the 
 ground. It is the wrong start that ruins both trees 
 and men. It is the wrong start that makes our knowledge 
 hazy and worthless. A far-reaching interest in every 
 detail is what secures attention to what is done at every 
 step, and attention to each detail, .especially the first in 
 the series, is essential to success. After a tree is once well- 
 started, it develops resisting powers of its own. It can 
 
ATTENTION 53 
 
 cope with conditions around it on its own account. And 
 if one's knowledge of a subject is started right, by close 
 attention, it will far more readily grow right thereafter. 
 
 When the mind has once considered a subject even 
 in the crudest and most haphazard fashion, it is not very 
 likely to get reconsideration. When even the most imper- 
 fect attention has once been given to a fact, it is never 
 likely to recover from the effects of that imperfection. 
 
 It is this kind of imperfection of attention that viti- 
 ates so much of every student's work. Some details, of 
 course, have no vital bearing on the results. One may 
 have a very dear friend and yet not know the color of his 
 eyes. This might be called an insignificant detail. If it 
 were important to know, one could find out easily at the 
 next meeting with that friend. But in a student's work, 
 things always depend on each other. An error of detail 
 due to lack of attention, vitiates the whole result. Once 
 a trifle of this sort nearly forced the writer out of college. 
 A railway mail clerk sent a letter addressed to a town 
 in one state to a town of the same name in an adjoining 
 state. He was apparently more familiar with the town in 
 the latter state, habit was in its favor, the presumption 
 was in his favor, that a letter coming from that direction 
 was intended for that town. The postmaster held it until 
 it came up to be advertised. He had doubtless handled 
 the letter every day. But attention to the name of the 
 state had nothing to do with the matter. That had been 
 ^'attended to" long ago. The chances indeed were all 
 against its being attended to, because, had not judgment 
 
54 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 been prononnced ? The necessity of advertising created a 
 new situation; and then the address was carefully noted 
 and a very important business letter was forwarded. 
 
 The same kind of importance attaches to the details 
 of a student^s work, because each depends on the others 
 for its value. Of his work especially it is true that there 
 are twenty ways of doing it wrong and there is only one 
 way of doing it right. There may be a hundred steps 
 in the process, and a single error at any point destroys 
 the value of the whole. It is only when the vital impor- 
 tance of each detail to the value of the results as a whole 
 is fully realized that attention is likely to be habitually 
 concentrated on each detail when it is first dealt with. 
 
 The worst errors of the student are due, not to ignor- 
 ance but to lack of attention at every point to all the 
 conditions of the problem or question that he is dealing 
 with, which he really understands as well as anyone does. 
 It is not ignorance, but inattention, that spoils so much 
 of the student's work; whether he is solving a problem in 
 algebra, translating a Latin sentence, or making a chem- 
 ical experiment. One error in the writing of a plus or 
 minus sign, or in the use of a conjunction, or in carelessly 
 using a re-agent from the wrong bottle, spoils the whole 
 performance. Many never learn to avoid this kind of 
 error. In every instance it is a case of doing one thing 
 and thinking of another, of "keeping the hands at work 
 and giving the head a holiday.'^ Chronic lapse of atten- 
 tion from the vital details that make up the whole of an 
 algebraic problem or the problem of a human life is what 
 
ATTENTION 55 
 
 keeps the ninety and nine out among the barren hills 
 of failure. And steady, strenuous, habitual concentration 
 of all the powers of the mind, so that each detail is cor- 
 rectly dealt with, is what guides the hundredth man 
 through the beautiful gates of success. 
 
56 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 EFFECT OF MENTAL ALERTNESS ON SCHOLAESHIP. 
 
 One of the ends to be sought in the training of at- 
 tention is a habit of mental alertness. Facility in direct- 
 ing and riveting the attention will grow silently with the 
 years. But in addition to that will be developed a state of 
 expectation, a feeling that things will happen. Even 
 though the mind may often be mistaken about what is 
 going to happen, the chronic attitude of alertness keeps 
 it ready to receive what is coming. It is this attitude 
 of readiness that makes the acquisition of new knowl- 
 edge so easy and effective in the trained scholar. 
 
 The surest way for either a small boy or a man to do 
 the least amount of work with the relatively greatest 
 expenditure of energy and waste of time is to bring his 
 hoe down at every stroke with just enough force to miss 
 cutting the weeds. There is always a pathetic feature 
 about the second stroke of the hoe at a weed. The worker 
 has reduced himself to a minimum of courage by previous 
 failure, for courage does not thrive on failure. But he 
 also reasons that the weed, being already half cut, does 
 not need so hard a stroke; whereas in reality the weed, 
 already wounded and limp, is harder to cut than if it 
 had been done at the first blow. The lack of attention 
 
EFFECT OF MENTAL ALERTNESS 57 
 
 constantly results in failure to adjust the effort accurately 
 to the results to be accomplished. Of course, the real 
 cause of the inefficiency may he laziness. But the lazy 
 man is always the hardest worker relatively, because he 
 accomplishes the smallest possible results with the effort 
 that he does make. Keeping busy, either voluntarily or 
 under compulsion, is no sign that valuable work is being 
 done. Half as many strokes of the hoe, carefully gauged 
 so that just a little more than enough energy is applied, 
 will cut more weeds, and cut them better. Concentration 
 of the mental powers on the work in hand makes weed- 
 cutting easier. It results in more progress with less effort. 
 A hot-air furnace can be made to devour tons of coal 
 without ever heating a single room. The stoker only needs 
 to be so listless that he does not put in quite enough coal 
 and fails to regulate the fire properly. The coal and his 
 time are utterly wasted, because his mind was not given to 
 his business so that there might be a careful adjustment 
 of the fire to the work to he done. The main object is 
 entirely missed because the attention is not concentrated 
 on the little difference between failure and success. Just 
 a little more time, a little more coal, and a little more 
 brains, all of them available, represent the difference 
 between a cold house and a warm one. All real efficiency 
 is represented by the surplus energy, by the last small 
 margin of effort. But that last effective addition to ordi- 
 nary fruitless effort is never made unless the attention 
 is riveted on the results to be attained, which converts 
 the effort into a means to an end. 
 
58 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 Half the mental energy of students is worse than 
 wasted because it produces no results ; it cuts no weeds, it 
 heats no rooms. An obscure impression will not remain 
 in the memory at all, and if by chance it is recalled, it is 
 valueless because it lacks clearness of detail and there is 
 always uncertainty whether it is in the rfght place when it 
 does come back to the mind. Now the clearness of an im- 
 pression depends directly on the degree to which the mind 
 was concentrated on the subject when that impression was 
 made. The value of the first impression depends on its viv- 
 idness, whether the matter under consideration is a rule 
 in algebra or the beauty of Minnehaha ; and vividness de- 
 pends on the intensity of attention. 
 
 Steady attention makes the student^s knowledge au- 
 thoritative and reliable. He knows that he knows it. It is 
 easy to remember, and there is no need of constantly veri- 
 iying it whenever it is used afterwards. Under such 
 conditions a spirit of confidence is bred which makes 
 vigorous mental action easy and pleasant. Confidence 
 that what has been done is correct, because carefully at- 
 tended to, makes new work stimulating instead of de- 
 pressing. 
 
 Half the human race, even in civilized countries, dies 
 before the age of twenty-one. Many disasters resulting in 
 death are unavoidable. But at least a very large propor- 
 tion of the deaths that occur before the natural term of 
 life is complete are due to inattention to "minor details.'^ 
 In an algebraic problem these details have their true value 
 revealed in the answer. The answer to an error in the 
 
EFFECT OF MENTAL ALERTNESS 59 
 
 course of life is often death. One man breaks his neck 
 by walking through a skylight, another is killed by a 
 falling brick, another is sent into eternity by an explosion 
 or a street car. Legions of lives have been lost or per- 
 manently crippled by measles or scarlet fever merely be- 
 cause the sick ones did not stay in bed long enough. 
 Neglect of the first chill or tickle in the throat is the 
 plu's or minus sign in the problem, and the answer is 
 often pneumonia, consumption, death. In all these cases 
 it was failure to attend to details that caused the troublti. 
 Some one committed an avoidable blunder. 
 
 The real importance of a detail is never understood 
 unless it is attended to. A detail cannot be safely neg- 
 lected until it has been attended to and the mind has had 
 an opportunity to pass upon it. The argument can, of 
 course, be made that constant, strenuous attention to ev- 
 ery detail would produce exhaustion, and that is true. 
 But habit makes even attention easy. And it is not a 
 question whether, at a given moment, the mind shall be 
 attentive or asleep. During waking hours it is always 
 occupied with something. The only question is, shall it 
 be occupied with the business in hand. If the mind is in 
 a theatre while the body is left to the care of the spinal 
 cord while it crosses the street, there is likely to be a col- 
 lision. It is not a question of wearing out the mind by 
 constant attention, but of keeping the attention fixed 
 where it belongs. 
 
 What makes it so difficult to train the attention is 
 that steady concentration does not seem necessary. In 
 
60 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 the ordinary events of life^ it is possible to patch up a 
 faihire by doing the work over again. The consequences 
 of inattention and error are not grievous enough to startle 
 the mind into a state of permanent alertness. We are to 
 a large extent protected from the consequences of in- 
 attention. But if men would take a long look around 
 them it would become evident at once that only a very 
 small percentage of men and women are successful in any 
 of the callings of life. And this is so because of their 
 chronic indifference to each detail as it comes up. 
 
 Whether a drop of water shall go into the Atlantic or 
 the Pacific may depend on a little gust of wind on the 
 Rocky Mountain water-shed. After it has fallen, no one 
 is likely to bring it back. Whether a whole passage under 
 translation shall be misunderstood may depend on the 
 careless treatment of a little word of only three letters. 
 
 Nearly all wild animals have this mental alertness 
 developed in an intense degree. Birds and beasts cannot 
 ask the question that the little child asks, "What comes 
 next?" But they all know that something serious is 
 likely to happen at any time, and they are in a state of 
 chronic readiness. A robin will hardly pull a new-found 
 worm out of the ground without first taking a careful 
 look around. When the humming-bird is perched, its head 
 is in motion all the time. That state of mind is what 
 makes it possible to deal effectively and correctly with 
 everything that comes up and as soon as it comes up. 
 
 This chronic keenness of the mental powers bears 
 fruit in swift and accurate results. Expectation may 
 
EFFECT OF MENTAL ALERTNESS 61 
 
 often go wrong; 'but no kind of result will escape atten- 
 tion. When I was a yonng boy my older brother and I 
 hunted the cattle every night for miles up and down the 
 river bottoms. I have often been impressed since with the 
 fact that things are not what they seem ; but even yet it 
 seems to me that a cow-bell is the most deceptive thing in 
 the world. It was always so important that we should 
 hear the bells and correctly fix their direction that our 
 powers sometimes seemed to run away with us. We 
 seemed to hear them where they were not. These were 
 not imaginings of a roving fancy. We had to deal with 
 hard, cold facts, but in our anxiety to hear the bells 
 our senses deceived us. x\lertness led us into some mis- 
 takes; but we never failed to hear the bells when they 
 did ring within ear-shot; because, for the time at least, 
 they were the only object of our lives. But there is not 
 much danger from over-alertness. The danger lies in 
 the other direction. 
 
 The timid little wild rabbit seems to be anxious all 
 the time. Its senses are acute and nothing escapes 
 its notice. But the skunk is extremely careless. The 
 former's future depends on its present attentiveness. 
 The latter has an obnoxious means of defense. It can 
 be deliberate and careless because it is not obliged to be 
 alert. And here lies open before us the reason for the 
 chronic carelessness and inattention of civilized youth to 
 the strenuous things of life. 
 
 Society protects its individuals from harm. We 
 delegate our alertness to the police department and the 
 
62 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 fire brigao'e. The search for food and other comforts 
 rests upon the shoulders of the older members of the com- 
 munity. The mind, during the period of its development, 
 is entirely relieved from the stress of life. If the habit 
 of steady and close attention is developed during that 
 period, it must be entirely voluntary. There is no coercion 
 of stern necessity. The conditions for the symmetrical 
 development of the intellectual powers are ideal in the 
 lives of American youth. The educational labors placed 
 before them are carefully selected. They are so graded 
 that they cultivate the spirit of hope and the desire 
 to make the struggle for mastery. Ideals are fostered. 
 But the factor of necessity is eliminated and the oppor- 
 tunities for carelessness become terrible temptations be- 
 cause no fatal consequences immediately follow careless- 
 ness and inattention. 
 
 The importance of the will in the student's success 
 will be discussed elsewhere. But he needs to remember 
 that the habit of steady and prolonged concentration of 
 his mental powers, however this attention may be at- 
 tracted or riveted, is the indispensable condition of ac- 
 curate, rapid and useful work. 
 
OBSERVATION 63 
 
 CHAPTEE YIl. 
 
 OBSERVATION. 
 
 The senses either directly or indirectly furnish ns 
 with all the materials of human knowledge. All the ob- 
 jects of love and hate, pain and pleasure, come into the 
 world of our thought through the medium of the eyes 
 and ears and other organs of sense. Observation, in its 
 broadest sense, is therefore the first great step in the 
 development of knowledge. It is not, however, the simple 
 process that the uncritical mind usually thinks it is. Good 
 eyes and ears are no guarantee of good powers of observa- 
 tion; for if it were so, defects in those powers could be 
 cured by spectacles and ear-trumpets. 
 
 Nor is mere intentness in looking at a thing a sure 
 mark of good observation. A calf may be an adept at 
 gazing, but very much of a fool, even from the calf point 
 of view. As it stands and looks at you through the fence, 
 it is manifestly intent enough upon what is passing before 
 it, and you may be reasonably sure that it has a pair of 
 good eyes; but there is no sort of guarantee that by 
 gazing that calf has learned a single thing. 
 
 The controlling factor in observation is not the 
 senses but the mind. One cannot drink water without 
 swallowing; no more can anyone see or hear — observe — 
 
64 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 without thinking. Observation of any kind really involves 
 the action of all the powers of the mind. Observation 
 means both looking at and seeing into a thing; that is 
 scrutiny; and there is no real scrutiny without attention, 
 comparison, discrimination, association and reflection. 
 
 Good observation involves not only looking at a thing 
 but analyzing it, taking it to pieces, so that one may 
 know what it is made of. Many people who live in sec- 
 tions of the country where granite is the common rock, 
 do not even know its name. They simply know it as 
 "rock". Others, people who have seen other kinds, know 
 enough to distinguish granite from limestone; but they 
 do this '"by the look of the rock," and not from any 
 detailed knowledge of either kind. They know that lime- 
 stone is gray and granite another kind of gray or even 
 pink, and coarser. But anything like real observation 
 never entered into the question. Their knowledge of rock 
 was forced on them from the outside, not developed by 
 any internal mental activity. 
 
 In order that there may be any real knowledge of 
 granite it needs to be taken, at least mentally, to pieces. 
 A real observer, though he may never have seen a piece of 
 granite before, will see immediately that it is not a simple 
 material but is made up of three kinds of minerals; and 
 that they are very different from each other — one the scaly 
 mica, one the more or less transparent, very hard and 
 glassy-looking quartz that breaks unevenly, and third, the 
 moderately hard, white or pink feldspar that breaks with a 
 smooth face. After he has thus taken the granite apart 
 
OBSERVATION 65 
 
 lie really knows something about it. He can put it to- 
 gether again mentally, and can tell why granite has its 
 own peculiar color of gray or pink and how the combina- 
 tion of the three minerals produces it. 
 
 There is another vital step in the process of observa- 
 tion. After the granite has been mentally taken apart 
 and put together again, after the observer has exercised 
 this rather unusual gift of second sight — to steal a good 
 word from a vicious environment — after he has made 
 the analysis, or while he is making it, he will compare 
 the rock wath other things of tlie same kind. Either 
 mentally or by means of specimens actually at hand, he 
 compares it with gneiss and the rest of the granitic series. 
 And now he is in a position to judge of the quality 
 of his particular kind of granite. He knows where it be- 
 longs among its kind ; knows whether its "grain" is coarse 
 or fine, whether it will make a good building-stone or is 
 good for nothing but a road-bed. 
 
 The observer may now stop, or he may carry his 
 observations to any length by making engineering tests 
 concerning the strength of the rock and chemical tests 
 on the minerals it contains. But whether he goes on or 
 stops, whether his knowledge of granite remains relatively 
 deep or shallow, it is valuable, because the process of get- 
 ting it was correct. It may not be absolutely accurate, 
 but more mental action of the same kind will make it 
 accurate. 
 
 It is clear then that observation, in its best sense, 
 is not a simple process ; but involves the exercise of all the 
 
66 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 powers of the mind. It is a question of getting at the 
 facts. And what is true of granite is true of a Latin or a 
 German sentence or of any other subject. It involves an- 
 alysis. A knowledge of a sentence involves taking it 
 apart, consideration of the rules of construction, a knowl- 
 edge of the words and their meanings. When it has been 
 analyzed, so that its components are known and 
 their relations to each other are clearly understood, it 
 can be treated as a unit once more ; and its relation with 
 all the rest of the passage can be intelligently determined. 
 A piece of knowledge that has been thus dealt with 
 is a permanent acquisition. As long as the fire of the 
 intellect burns that bit of knowledge will glow. 
 
 Defective observation furnishes nearly all the 
 stumbling blocks in the path of the intellectual life. The 
 materials of knowledge upon which the mind depends in 
 making up its judgments are so uncertain and unreliable, 
 that half the effort of a lifetime is spent in tinkering into 
 usable shape the knowledge that we already have. 
 
 N"o observation at all on a subject is infinitely worse 
 than even poor observation. Second-hand knowledge, the 
 bTilk of the contents of our minds, is not what colors our 
 thoughts and gives form and force to our expression. 
 The mental powers cannot play without blocks. N'early 
 all American children know something about bears; but 
 most of them never saw one. They have no good image of 
 a bear to think with. But let a child once see a single 
 bear; that bear will be forever after the type of all 
 the bears it reads about. The size and shape, and move- 
 
OBSERVATION 67 
 
 inents of that particular bear have affected the imagina- 
 tion for life. That is the picture that always returns 
 whenever "bear" is mentioned. It is the one real thing, 
 the one case of actual observation, that has yielded a 
 fertile idea. It looms out of and gives meaning to 
 the great mass of wordy stuff that the child has heard and 
 read about bears. No matter how many bears may 
 be seen afterwards, that first image, which came when the 
 mind was wide awake, remains the type and most inter- 
 esting instance of "bear observation." 
 
 Even when the mind is dealing only indirectly with 
 facts, when it is romancing most vigorously, the power 
 and beauty of its work depend upon a vast store of actual 
 facts garnered by long and close observation. Great 
 power of expression is developed only by the mind 
 with great powers of observation. If it comes con- 
 stantly in contact with actual things, its descriptions 
 are vivid, its style is lucid; it leaves upon the reader 
 an overwhelming sense of mastery. What is said has the 
 flavor of authority, the reader submits to be taught 
 because the very adjectives and figures of speech reveal 
 real knowledge. There runs through the style an ele- 
 ment of power which is derived only from long and close 
 familiarity with facts. 
 
 As there can be no real power of expression or style 
 in language unless the mind is equipped with a large 
 body of concrete facts, so no mere "strength of mind," 
 without such facts, will ever make a real scholar. Bacon 
 
68 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 has given us a picture of a body of men with powerful 
 minds but with little substantial knowledge. He found 
 himself, at Cambridge, England, "amid men of sharp and 
 strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety 
 of reading, their wits being shut up in the cells of a few 
 authors, chiefly Aristotle, their dictator, as their persons 
 were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges ; and 
 who, knowing little history, either of nature or time, did, 
 out of no great quantity of matter, and infinite agitation 
 of wit, spin cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fine- 
 ness of thread, and work, but of no substance or profit". 
 One might listen till the end of the world to lectures 
 on the principles of Zoology and not get as much really 
 valuable knowledge that will cling to the mind as one may 
 get by looking ten minutes at a fly with a pocket lens 
 or even with the naked eye. Neither child nor man can 
 get any real grasp of a subject that has not been intro- 
 duced by a preliminary course of actual observation. No 
 strength of mind in either teacher or student can take 
 the place of facts. One might read volumes on the doc- 
 trine of evolution and become a firm believer — and yet 
 be as helpless as a baby in the presence of an unbeliever. 
 A little chloroform; a scalpel and scissors or in case of 
 dire necessity a jack-knife and a tooth-pick for tools; 
 a rabbit, a bird, a frog, a tadpole and a fish ; and the time 
 and patience to dissect carefufly and compare their arte- 
 rial systems, would be worth a library full of books to the 
 would-be defender of the doctrine. A man cannot be 
 frightened away from his facts. 
 
OBSERVATION 69 
 
 One may, by means of rules of grammar and rhetoric, 
 make faultless English, but it will be lifeless too, unless 
 the mind is familiar with the best English that has ever 
 been made. We accomplish far less by rule than we do by 
 observation and imitation. A careful study of a few 
 great books like Shakspere and the Bible puts the student 
 in a position to tell whether the rules are good or not. 
 If he has often tasted the real thing, he is able to judge 
 of the value of a recipe. 
 
 Our education is too wordy. We know too many 
 things and do not know them well enough. Words are 
 excessively poor substitutes for things. We strain and 
 groan inwardly to grasp the significance of what is said, 
 when a simple illustration would make the whole thing 
 plain, when a single sharply observed fact would turn 
 the explanation into child^s play. "Much study is a weari- 
 ness of the flesh" because there are not actual facts 
 enough from personal observation for the mind to make 
 images out of. 
 
 If you want your feelings stirred, a good description of 
 a mountain storm will do it. But if you want them singed 
 for life, if you want to know mist and rain and wind 
 and thunder and lightning at first hand, if you want a 
 standard that will serve to measure noise and storm 
 by as long as you live, sit out doors on your bundle of 
 bedding, near the foot of Yosemite Falls at two o'clock 
 in the morning. Be sure that your stomach is empty, 
 too, even the lion hears and sees more things and thinks 
 
70 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 more surely and quickly — ^he is a better observer when he 
 is hungry. 
 
 We are made to believe too many things by the per- 
 sistent noise and desk-pounding of the talker and by the 
 ceaseless iteration of the writer. Slowly but surely beliefs 
 are slipped into the pigeon holes of our minds without our 
 having ever thoroughly analyzed them. But when a 
 mental crisis comes, when the real test of putting into 
 actual use what we have acquired comes, then it is easy 
 to see and feel the difference between a fact that has been 
 carefully observed and one that has been heard about. 
 Even with the best of opportunities for observation we 
 are obliged to accept many things on hearsay, at second 
 hand. But no student can be considered a success who 
 does not seek to verify at the earliest opportunity infor- 
 mation thus received from others. We are all under the 
 temptation of persistently using second hand informa- 
 tion even when it is possible to make a personal observa- 
 tion for ourselves. The writer once took a whole course 
 in Physical Geography without going out of the school- 
 room to verify a single statement of the book. The whole 
 subject was a mere matter of words. 
 
 The grave danger everywhere in education is the 
 almost irresistible tendency to get the information that is 
 wanted, in the shortest and easiest way. That way is 
 through a book. It is the line of least resistance. In the 
 short run, it is profitable to get all information at second 
 hand, because it is easier ; in the long run it pays to be an 
 independent, accurate observer, because knowledge se- 
 
OBSERVATION 71 
 
 cured in that way is vivid and permanent. There is an 
 almost religious power of conviction in a fact, which mere 
 words about that fact will not even begin to rouse. 
 
72 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 CHAPTEK YIIL 
 
 GROWTH OF THE POWER OF OBSERVATION. 
 
 The ability to observe for one's self seems to l)e born 
 with some men. In others the growth of this power is 
 so slow, that even in their later years they seem unable 
 to see what is before them. This slowness of improvement 
 is due to the fact that the power of observation is not 
 a simple thing, like staring at a post, but a name for the 
 concentrated application of all the powers of the intellect 
 upon the object of immediate attention. 
 
 It is easy to build a house, and it grows fast after 
 it is begun. One thing can be done at a time. If the 
 power of observation could be built in this way, on the 
 principle of "one thing at a time," by attending first to 
 the memory and then to the power of thought and then 
 to the power of attention, the steps of the process could 
 be watched, the progress made could be easily measured 
 and one could decide what needed to be done next. 
 
 But observation is not built ; it grows, like the human 
 body. Our physical growth would be a fitful thing if it 
 were regulated by ourselves. Length and strength of arm 
 and leg, and size of brain are all provided for at once. 
 Growth is imperceptible and yet certain because it takes 
 place in all the parts at once. No one part can grow 
 
GROWTH OF THE POWER OF OBSERVATION 73 
 
 while the others rest, without producing a monster. We 
 cannot comprehend it or keep track of the details ; the re- 
 sponsibility,, if we had to assume it, would overwhelm us 
 at once. 
 
 It is this disastrous assumption of responsibility for 
 things with which he need have no concern at all that 
 raises the mountains of difficulty before the student. 
 For the physical health and development it is enough to 
 know that judicious eating and exercise will make the 
 body grow. The laws of life attend to that, if we attend 
 properly to the matter of food. And so of the develop- 
 ment of intellectual power. We can watch the increase 
 in our information ; but the more vital thing, the increase 
 of power, takes place so slowly that it cannot be observed ; 
 but the growth is certain because it is ubiquitous. 
 
 Two important conditions enter into the cultivation 
 of the power of observation; and without a proper real- 
 ization of these, it is futile to try to understand the 
 process. We attend to and observe closely only those 
 things which have some sort of interest for us; and we 
 see only what we are looking for. 
 
 When the barber came away from his visit to the 
 palace and was asked what he thought of the king, he 
 summed up his observations with the remark that he 
 thought the king was exceedingly well trimmed. Being 
 a barber, he could observe this feature critically and ex- 
 haustively. His power of observation ended where his 
 training and his interest ended. When Charles Darwin's 
 party landed on Tierra del Fuego, the wretched natives 
 
74 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 looked upon the little boats as marvels of perfection; 
 because these came within range of their interests and 
 understanding. The big ship in the offing did not at- 
 tract them, they did not observe it carefully because it 
 was too big for them. 
 
 The point is that every man's powers of observation 
 are restricted in practice to the things that have some sort 
 of interest for him. They must have some sort of vital 
 connection with his life and thought in order to stimulate 
 mental activity. The man or woman seeking culture 
 needs to be aware that the extent to which his powers 
 of observation are exercised depends on the extent and 
 depth and variety of his intellectual interests. 
 
 The principle that one sees only what he is looking 
 for, lies at the foundation of the peculiar way in which 
 progress is made in the search for knowledge. Search 
 implies some sort of knowledge of what is going to be 
 found. Haphazard observation is like haphazard walking 
 — it leads nowhere and ends in weariness. 
 
 Let us illustrate this principle from an experience 
 common to most men and women. The vast majority of 
 intelligent people have no reliable conception of what 
 constitutes a good picture or statue. They may feel 
 blindly that a painting is good; but they cannot really 
 appreciate it because it is not in their power to make an 
 intelligent observation of it. They have no means of an- 
 alyzing it, they do not understand what combination of 
 qualities constitutes a good picture, they cannot think 
 separately of each of its qualities. They have no theory 
 
GROWTH OF THE POWER OF OBSERVATION 75 
 
 of art, no standard to go by. They do not know what to 
 look for. 
 
 I should not dare venture an opinion on any work 
 of art, because I never had any teaching even in the rudi- 
 ments of the subject. At one time a picture was for 
 the most part a matter of size and color. But there 
 came a time when I could form a humble opinion in si- 
 lence. The necessary power to appreciate a picture did 
 not come to me by much staring; I read Lessing^s Lao- 
 coon. It stimulated me because it lent me the power of 
 analysis. It taught me what the elements are that (con- 
 stitute a work of art. Ever since that reading art has 
 been a pleasure to me. My opinion is worthless to oth- 
 ers ; but I know at least something about what to loolc for. 
 A world of pleasure was opened to me through this essay 
 because it gave me a theory of art. Even the possibility 
 of observation was wanting till I was taught what to look 
 for; and this was done by placing in my hands some of 
 the general principles of art. 
 
 Charles Darwin relates an instance strikingly illus- 
 trative of this general inability to see things without the 
 help of theory or general principles. When still a young 
 man, he accompanied Sedgwick, the great geologist, to 
 Wales to study the Cambrian rocks and collect fossils. 
 At Cym Idwal they literally trod upon the evidences of 
 glacial action in the past. Moraines, stray boulders, all 
 the most striking evidence of glaciation lay exposed be- 
 fore them, mutely pleading to be seen and interpreted. 
 The facts seemed actually to be thrust upon them. He 
 
76 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 wrote in after years that if a house had been bnrned on 
 the spot, the ruins conld not have furnished better evi- 
 dence of a fire than all these things gave of the former 
 existence of glaciers there. 
 
 But neither of these men, the one soon to become 
 a famous scientific observer, the other already famous, 
 saw anything at all. They were as blind to the facts and 
 their meaning as a ploughman would have been. The 
 failure to see was certainly not due to stupidity, nor to 
 the lack of training; but solely to the fact that there 
 was as yet no glacial theory by the help of which to 
 look for and see these facts. Nobody else saw anything. 
 After Charpentier, who was familiar with the work of 
 the existing Alpine glaciers, had suggested that the Al- 
 pine boulders scattered over the Jura mountains far away 
 from their origin, had been carried there by glaciers, 
 and Agassiz had expanded the "glacial theory" to explain 
 the same kind of phenomena elsewhere, it was easier to 
 see the glacial phenomena, scattered as they are over all 
 of northern Europe. Things which fifty years ago were 
 hardly seen at all, now constitute the materials of a 
 whole branch of geological science. The work of the 
 great ice-sheet, in carving valleys, scratching rocks and 
 transporting gravel and boulders, and the work of the 
 floods of water from its southern edges in sorting soils, 
 changing ancient river courses and cutting new ones are 
 as charming to read about as any romance can be. Men 
 see the facts now because they are looking for them. 
 
 It is not possible to tell, even with the help of the- 
 
GROWTH OF THE POWER OF OBSERVATION 77 
 
 ory exactly what ought to be found; many mistakes have 
 been made which have thrown men off the trail of truth. 
 But it is known that mighty forces were at work and that 
 they produced consequences that can be unravelled. The 
 whole point of view is different from what it was in 
 Darwin's early days. After the theory of glacial action 
 in the northern hemisphere became thoroughly under- 
 stood the knowledge of glacial geology grew by such 
 long, swift leaps that it would seem as if the men of 
 former years must have been utterly stupid not to see 
 the facts before. Facts for which an explanation is al- 
 ready at hand are easy to find, and when found are easily 
 fitted into the scheme of facts already known. Facts 
 for which no explanation is ready are not likely to be 
 either seen or looked for. 
 
 This is why the world's progress in learning things- 
 has been so slow, and why the course of true knowledge 
 is so zigzag. Progress is largely a matter of weapons, 
 in the purely intellectual life as well as in war and com- 
 merce. A new force like electricity no more surely 
 changes the face of the business world, the long-range 
 repeating rifle no more surely transforms warfare, than 
 a theory, even though only partly true, multiplies the 
 powers of the thinking observer. There must be pio- 
 neering done in intellectual things to get some general 
 explanation, and then the solid road-bed is built by work- 
 ing backwards by the light of the new theory. 
 
 So it is that observation of a fact of any kind in- 
 volves two important sets of acts. It must be analyzed^ 
 
78 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 taken apart, so that its nature may be understood, and it 
 must be explained, associated with all the other known 
 facts of its kind and treated as an illustration of a gen- 
 eral principle or as the effect of some cause. 
 
 It will only be necessary to give some further illus- 
 trations to show that mere isolated facts, that have 
 forced themselves upon the attention, but have not been 
 really observed, are of very little value to the intellectual 
 life ; and that there can be no good observation unless the 
 mind is equipped with general principles, so that, as 
 soon as the facts come under notice, they can be brought 
 into close relation with all the facts already known. 
 
 If two men walk down the dry bed of a western 
 stream that flows only during the winter, both will see 
 rocks and gravel and sand. But here they part intellect- 
 ual company. One of them, who knows something of 
 the effects of water action, perhaps only that such a force 
 as water, acting constantly in one direction must produce 
 well-marked results, can see, as he passes from the slopes 
 to the level stretches, that the stones become smaller, 
 gravel is more common and is succeeded by stretches 
 of sand. His active mind grasps the fact that the 
 lessening force of the water drops the stones first and 
 carries the sand farther along. Explanation such as 
 this is a violent stimulant to further active observa- 
 tion; the subject grows. He is struck by the fact 
 that there are no rolling stones in the steeper parts of 
 the stream. They are all packed and can be safely 
 stepped upon and trusted to keep their places; because 
 
GROWTH OF THE POWER OF OBSERVATION 79 
 
 the water would push a loose stone along until it im- 
 bedded itself in a firm resting place. Lower down, the 
 little stones, if they are shingly in their nature, are laid 
 like the shingles on a roof — the long way parallel with 
 the course of the stream, the lower end projecting and 
 the upper end buried beneath those farther up. To the 
 real observer there is an explanation for the fact. That 
 is the position of least resistance, the only one in which 
 they can shed water. If the upper end of a stone pro- 
 jected, the water would topple it over and push it out of 
 place. 
 
 These explanations are all so simple that to give 
 them seems ridiculous ; but that is the gist of science and 
 sound scholarship. Because he thinks, the arrangement 
 of rock and gravel and sand is as orderly as the words 
 in a line of English poetry. Every fact is a record left 
 by some force that has been at work, and he interprets 
 the record. 
 
 The other man is not like unto him. He sees the 
 rock and gravel and sand, but the only observation that 
 he makes as he passes down the stream-bed is that the 
 walking is hard. He leaves the bed and takes to the cow- 
 trail on the bank, for the same reason that the cow does. 
 He has the cow's type of mind. There is no further ob- 
 servation because the relations of things to each other 
 are not seen. The first few facts arouse no thought, so 
 the rest all remain entirely unobserved. 
 
 In succeeding chapters great emphasis will be laid 
 upon the matter of right thinking. It is only necessary 
 
80 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 here to point out how a mind well-equipped with general 
 ideas can assimilate new facts, how good observation de- 
 pends on the ability to dispose of each new fact, as it 
 comes up, as a part of some system of thought. 
 
 Every reader can in later life recall some of the 
 most interesting experiences of childhood and see how 
 much was missed in the way of new observations because 
 the real significance of the things that were seen was not 
 understood. It is well for us that childhood is the most 
 impressionable age, the time when the retentive memory 
 is at its best; because, if it were not so, while the power 
 of thought is yet undeveloped, while there is yet little 
 capacity for thinking out the relations of things to each 
 other, there could hardly be any memories of childhood. 
 Even at their best, the memories of childhood are wo- 
 fully defective because so much was missed, so much 
 remained unobserved, for the reasons given above. 
 
 In my early boyhood I swam and fished and poled 
 canoes in a river that was wonderful to me. It seemed 
 to be made for the use of boys — moderate in size, but 
 large enough for our capacities. It seemed to have a 
 very obliging nature. There were plenty of deep holes 
 for fishing and swimming, and always on the opposite 
 shore was a sand-bar. It was a great convenience to have 
 a sand-bar to dress and undress and play and burn our 
 naked, wet backs upon ; and a sloping bottom on which to 
 wade straight into deep water. And when we did not want 
 to swim, things were admirably fixed for wading. The 
 
GROWTH OF THE POWER OF OBSERVATION 81 
 
 shallow riffles always stretched from the lower end of one 
 sand-bar to the upper end of the next bar below, which 
 was always on the other side of the river. There was 
 also one remarkable inconvenience, which was felt most 
 keenly when we wanted to cover distances in the canoe. 
 Then the river was made up entirely of *^ends/^ and the 
 cattle traveled faster than we did by cutting through 
 the woods at every bend and coming to the bank again 
 below. Of course, this was exasperating but that is all 
 we knew or felt about the facts. 
 
 I remember each of these things distinctly, by itself, 
 because of constant association with them during a long 
 period of time, because they all came in touch with my 
 desires and necessities. But I never thought of them 
 all together, holes and sand-bars, riffles and bends, as the 
 effects of one constantly working cause, as being appar- 
 ently related to each other by the laws of nature. If I 
 had been wide awake to the fact that in one place the 
 bank is steep and the water is deep because the current 
 there drove against the bank, and that below this place 
 on the same side of the river is a sand-bar because the 
 current slackened when it struck the bank and had to 
 drop the material it got there before it gathered speed 
 again; and if I had known that in a winding river the 
 current dashes first into one bank and then into the 
 other, I should have known wliy our sand-bars always had 
 holes opposite them and why the riffles crossed the river 
 obliquely. And I should have seen a multitude of things 
 that I never saw in my boyhood at all. 
 
82 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 There were some funny little '^half-moon lakes'' — 
 they looked big to us then — hid away in the river bot- 
 toms, too, made especially for us to catch frogs in. We 
 were very familiar with them, — for had we not hunted 
 hell-divers in vain and peppered the frogs daily to see 
 them jump off the logs into the water? But many of 
 the best of all these facts were utterly forgotten. They 
 were linked only with our temporary interests and when 
 these passed awa}^, the facts themselves were dumped on 
 the rubbish heap of forgetfulness. 
 
 When later in life I became familiar with the prin- 
 ciples of water action, whither should my mind turn for 
 illustrations but to the rivers of my boyhood? All the 
 facts that I could remember underwent a wonderful 
 transformation. They became related to each other; all 
 that I remembered was explained. But there were great 
 gaps of information left unfilled. Observation had not 
 followed the facts, that they might be understood. They 
 had merely been thrust upon the attention. Would the 
 memory of a crescent pool in the woods be less vivid if 
 I had observed that it was once a bend in the river ; that 
 the latter at high water had taken a short cut and made 
 a straight bed for itself and left the bend in the woods, 
 and choked it up at both ends to be a frog-pond for the 
 boys ? 
 
 The observations of even the most impressionable 
 period of life are fatally defective, from the student's 
 point of view, unless they are made in the light of gen- 
 
GROWTH OF THE POWER OF OBSERVATION 83 
 
 eral explanations that link all the facts together; because 
 it is the desire to understand all the connections hetv-ecn 
 facts that makes observation complete and exhaustive. 
 
84 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 DISCRIMINATION. 
 
 If all the material objects in the world were spheri- 
 cal, we should never think of making shape a subject of 
 study. The work of comparison could never begin where 
 there were no differences that could be detected. And, 
 on the other hand, if all the objects of knowledge were 
 entirely different from each other, so that no two had 
 any qualities in common, there would be no basis for the 
 growth of knowledge. No one ever feels called upon 
 either to compare or discriminate between an apple and 
 the sound of thunder. The powers of the human mind 
 can be exercised only on things that are alike in some 
 repects and unlike in others. It is only in the presence 
 of different shapes that the mind begins to deal with 
 the subject of shape by itself. It is only in dealing with 
 different colors, that the subject of color becomes a dis- 
 tinct subject of thought. 
 
 At the very foundation of the intellectual life lie 
 two mental processes that are as mutually dependent on 
 each other as the reciprocal strokes of a pendulum. 
 These are discrimination and association. The latter 
 will be dealt with in a separate chapter. The process of 
 discrimination is carried only as far as the individual's 
 
DISCRIMINATION 85 
 
 interests require it. Most men are very poor judges of 
 cloth because they have never cultivated the power of 
 discrimination in that direction. They have a hazy 
 knowledge that many differences exist, without knowing 
 or being able to tell in what those differences consist. 
 They can tell the difference between calico and woolen 
 cloth; but not between woolen cloth and its cotton imi- 
 tations. The larger differences between things are al- 
 ways striking enough to take care of themselves. It is 
 when things are very much alike that the trouble begins; 
 and then the power to discriminate needs to be con- 
 sciously trained. And training makes the expert. 
 
 Sound scholarship depends largely on the power of 
 discrimination. To illustrate its importance, I shall take 
 an example that seems utterly insignificant. In so small 
 a matter as the failure to discriminate the forms of two 
 letters of the German alphabet there often lies a ter- 
 rible possibility of evil to sound scholarship. I have 
 known scores of students of sound mental endowments 
 who persistently ignored the slight difference in form 
 between the German f (s) and f (/), and confused them 
 in the pronunciation of words until no amount of criti- 
 cism or even censure seemed able to correct the habitual 
 error. The initial error was so slight that it would seem 
 to come well within the limits of blunders that can safely 
 be neglected. But the confusion produced by the failure 
 to make this single little discrimination between two 
 printed letters of the alphabet and to preserve it care- 
 fully in practice, ruined the pronunciation of otherwise 
 
86 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 good students. But there was another and far more dis- 
 astrous effect. Every word that contained one of the 
 mis-learned letters was likely to be looked for in the 
 wrong place in the dictionary. The words were mis- 
 understood, the context would throw no light on their 
 meaning, they were dull, unorganizahle elements, they 
 would not fit anywhere. German reading was a farce; 
 knowledge of the German language was hopelessly de- 
 fective. Eight judgment was impossible. 
 
 This failure of discrimination was not due to poor 
 eyesight, or to lack of intellectual capacity; but to sheer 
 indisposition, almost stubborn unwillingness to at- 
 tend to differences that seemed too minute to be worthy 
 of consideration. This one instance is only a sample of 
 quite a number of errors that are possible in dealing with 
 the German alphabet. And at every point in the stu- 
 dent's career the same problem comes up, in every day's 
 work in every subject that is dealt with. The more mi- 
 nute the differences between two things, the more likely 
 they are to be overlooked; or worse still, if seen, to be 
 ignored, until the very capacity for observing those dif- 
 ferences seems to be lost. 
 
 The vast importance of this matter comes home to 
 the student only when he realizes that every fact that 
 comes to him he uses at once as a tool with which to se- 
 cure new facts. If each fact, when it is acquired, could 
 be safely tucked away in a mental pigeon-hole where it 
 would have no effect on the work of securing and dealing 
 with other facts, this subject of careful discrimination 
 
DISCRIMINATION 87 
 
 would not be a serious matter. There are various 
 reasons for poor discrimination. But the most serious 
 one is humanity's common failing — what Bagehot calls 
 "an irritable desire to act directly/' The lack of pa- 
 tience to make careful preparation and weigh all the con- 
 ditions before each step is taken, results in a failure to 
 discriminate. 
 
 The thing chiefly to be desired for the student is 
 that his knowledge of everything he touches shall be ac- 
 curate, as far as it goes. It is impossible for him, at his 
 stage of the work to know all there is to know, even 
 about the German alphabet. But discrimination in this 
 and in all other matters needs to be made so thorough 
 that the student shall not think that a fact is one thing 
 when it is really another. Flies burn off their wings in 
 a gas flame because of a lack of discrimination. The 
 student just as surely destroys the keen edge and the 
 temper of his intellectual tools by failing to make a 
 steady business of discrimination among facts. 
 
 There are great differences among people in their 
 powers of recognizing similarities or differences. Some 
 are highly gifted with the power of seeing analogies. In 
 a succeeding chapter it will be shown at some length how 
 largely all our thinking depends on the power to recog- 
 nize the qualities which things have in common. Bain 
 and others have pointed out that a far-reaching power to 
 see likenesses among things that are apparently unlike 
 is the foundation of what is called genius. Without this 
 unifying power there can be no breadth and depth of 
 
88 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 mental grasp. Many of our figures of speech are based 
 on the recognition of similarities between things; our 
 power to classify objects of knowledge and reason con- 
 cerning them is based on this power of mental associa- 
 tion. 
 
 But intellectual accuracy and soundness of judgment, 
 the authoritativeness of our knowledge, depend on clear 
 discrimination of things among which there are but slight 
 dift'erences. Locke has written strong words about the 
 difference between wit and judgment which every student 
 would do well to ponder. Wit is based on the recogni- 
 tion of similarities. Sound judgment is not based on 
 figures of speech; it is not misled by similarities; does 
 not confuse things that are in any respect unlike. The 
 recognition of similarities among things leads to power- 
 ful mental grasp and to poetic beauty. But truth is 
 built on discrimination. It is thinking of things as 
 being alike which are in reality not alike that leads into 
 errors and blocks intellectual progress. Accurate scien- 
 tific work, scholarly translation of a language, powerful 
 literary expression are all dependent upon the power of 
 discrimination. What are refinement of manner, liter- 
 ary taste, scientific penetration? Not merely the power 
 to see resemblances, but the power to make acute dis- 
 crimination among things that look alike to others, and 
 to act correctly on such facts. 
 
 Some people seem to have a native "feeling" for 
 what is correct, in manners, literary style, forms of ex- 
 pression, conduct. It looks as if such a power must be 
 
DISCRIMINATION 89 
 
 born with the individual; that it cannot be trained. 
 Doubtless as Tristram Shandy was a better logician with- 
 out schooling than many highly trained scholars were, 
 so many men and women are by nature gifted with great 
 powers of discrimination. But all men are possessed 
 of capabilities in this respect which are but little if at 
 all developed. 
 
 The most worthless kind of knowledge that one can 
 have about things is such as this: that there is a differ- 
 ence between two words or between two trees, without 
 one's being able to tell what that difference is. The only 
 remedy for such a state of things is comparison, by which 
 two things or ideas are brought together and examined 
 at the same time, for the purpose of finding out in what 
 they are alike and in what they differ. The trouble with 
 most of our knowledge is that it has been gathered up 
 in a miscellaneous way in the course of years without 
 conscious effort to emphasize the differences between 
 things. 
 
 There are at least two ways of doing everything. 
 And one very dry way to study words is to sit down and 
 study column after column of them in a formal way. 
 But the practice of purposely comparing words, in the 
 study of languages, for example, in order to learn exactly 
 how they differ from each other, so that the exactly fit- 
 ting word may always be used, changes the whole char- 
 acter of a student's knowledge. That is what makes 
 him an expert, whether he is dealing with words or trees 
 or historical facts. No matter how incomplete one's 
 
90 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 knowledge may be at a given time, the process is right, 
 and more work of the same kind will make it perfect. 
 
 The word expert carries with it such a strong com- 
 mercial flavor that one might hesitate to use it in a dis- 
 cussion intended for those who are seeking culture. But 
 what is skill in judging music, art, or literature? On 
 what is the skill dependent that can produce a perfect 
 symphony or painting or poem? Great power to dis- 
 criminate tones and colors and forms of expression that 
 are not recognized as distinct at all by the mass of men. 
 The habit of very careful comparison and long training 
 in distinguishing things that are only minutely differ- 
 ent, are what make the expert in all departments of life. 
 
 The last degree of expertness may deal with differ- 
 ences so minute that they cannot be described. They 
 seem to be a matter of indefinable feeling. The wool- 
 buyer may be able to detect whether a bale of wool has 
 been water-logged by means of a rope with one end fixed 
 in the bale and the other end floating in a creek. But, 
 however able he may be to detect fraud, the finest and 
 best work is done in judging real wool — recognizing the 
 minute differences that nature herself has produced on 
 the backs of sheep. The differences that he can detect 
 may baffle his powers of description, but he gives correct 
 judgment. This power is extremely slow of growth. But 
 the student inevitably acquires it if his process is correct. 
 If he takes the time to make careful comparison and dis- 
 cover the exact nature of the differences between things, 
 the knowledge thus gained will be his firm friend, and he 
 
DISCRIMINATION 91 
 
 will develop, in large measure, that tact in conduct, apt- 
 ness in the use of words, tremendous power of interpre- 
 tation, which seem to be gifts bestowed by nature only 
 on the favored few. 
 
 As has already been said, discrimination must cease 
 somewhere; and in this matter we must in the end be 
 guided by what our interests are, by what we have at 
 stake. During my college days it would have been folly 
 for me to discriminate the sounds that my feet made on 
 the sidewalk at every step. I could have no interest in 
 such a thing. But the old blind man that trod for years 
 the same plank walk that I did, had a vital interest in 
 the sound of every foot-fall. He could walk blocks at 
 a stretch without using his cane; and when he reached 
 the corner at which he turned homeward he could stop 
 within a foot of the center of the walk, wheel on his heel 
 and go home without using his cane at all. Blind-folded 
 I would have been perfectly helpless; but he distin- 
 guished among sensations of the very existence of which 
 I was unaware. If I had used my powers in my college 
 work as effectively as he used his in the business of get- 
 ting home. I should have been not only a better, but a 
 different kind of scholar. 
 
 It is no small part of the student's work to learn to 
 discriminate habitually, by means of active scrutiny, be- 
 tween things whose' differences are small. He is not 
 at liberty to be content, like other men, with differences 
 that are so great that they force themselves upon him; 
 he is under the moral necessity of looking for and hunt- 
 
92 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 ing out the smaller differences between things and con- 
 sciousl}" stating those differences to himself in the in- 
 terests of accuracy and sound knowledge. 
 
 But it must not be forgotten that mere ability to 
 recognize differences between things does not make a 
 good thinker. It is only one of the conditions of sound 
 thinking. A man may have very acute powers of dis- 
 crimination and yet lack, in large measure, the com- 
 panion power of associating things that are really alike 
 and drawing general truths from those likenesses. A 
 mind in which the power of discrimination outweighs 
 that of association is likely to be loaded with a vast quan- 
 tity of accurate details, cyclopedic in its nature, but 
 without much power of organizing this vast store of 
 knowledge and drawing general truths from it. The 
 mind, on the other hand, gifted with great powers of as- 
 sociation, but deficient in discrimination, is likely to be 
 speculative, unhampered by the quality of its facts. It 
 will revel in flights of reasoning and its work will look 
 very brilliant ; but the results will not bear investigation, 
 they will not stand long in the place that belongs to truth. 
 
 What discrimination at its best actually does is to 
 furnish valuable material for the powers of association 
 to work upon. Merely recognizing that things are differ- 
 ent leads to nothing. Unless the power of detecting 
 differences between things is accompanied by good power 
 of detecting resemblances among things, there will be 
 but little power of constructive thought, of generaliza- 
 tion, no sweep of conception, no grasp of large and gen- 
 
DISCRIMINATION 93 
 
 eral problems. The two powers are really reciprocal. 
 In the well-trained mind there is constant interaction 
 between the two. As soon as discrimination has taken 
 a strong hold of a new fact and clearly revealed its na- 
 ture, — as soon as it is recognized to be different from 
 the other things with which it is associated and is sep- 
 arated from them in thought, the mind immediately 
 seeks to bring this new fact into a mental association 
 with other things that are known to be like it. 
 
 From my early childhood black-bird concerts have 
 had a strange charm for me. I had never analyzed the 
 "concert music" and discriminated the different sounds 
 that make it up. Later in life I learned, somewhat to 
 my astonishment, that crows, black-birds and blue-jays 
 are all very closely related, and belong among the true 
 singing birds. The humor of the latter fact drew my 
 attention to the sounds they made, and I discovered a 
 remarkable likeness in their ordinary call-notes. After 
 that they all cawed, only in different keys. Thenceforth 
 their music as well as their anatomy testified that they 
 were relatives. 
 
 But the black-bird concert, with its mysterious, out- 
 landish charm still stood out by itself. It was only long 
 afterwards, when the close relationship of the birds and 
 the similarity of their calls had grown perfectly familiar, 
 that I undertook to analyze it. As soon as I began to 
 listen for the separate sounds that go to make the con- 
 cert, not only the quantity of sound, but the remarkable 
 double nature of the music, became impressive. Com- 
 
94 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 mingled with the liquid, musical whistle is the plain old 
 black-bird caw, I inmiediately associated this element 
 with other things that were like it, and so emphasized the 
 difference between the two notes that enter into the con- 
 cert. 
 
 This illustration seems strangely chosen; but I do 
 not expect others to become bewitched by black-bird con- 
 certs because I have been. The illustration was selected 
 for its simplicity; and it shows clearly the effect of edu- 
 cation on the power of discrimination. I did not analyze 
 the music of the black-bird until I was fairly well 
 equipped with a variety of information bearing on the 
 general subject of those birds. It was only after the 
 "concert" had been surrounded by organized knowledge 
 and it was left as an island of unreduced ignorance, that 
 it was subjected to analysis. The extent to which we are 
 willing to isolate one element from the others connected 
 with it, and group it with things that are like itself, de- 
 pends on the general range of our knowledge. The ac- 
 curacy, clearness and variety of what we already know 
 determines the extent to which the mind will "pick out'^ 
 new materials and bring them into old groups. 
 
 The mind that has cultivated a well-balanced com- 
 bination of patient discrimination and bold association 
 and general reasoning, is in possession of the power to 
 hunt the truth and mercilessly verify its results. It must 
 be listened to; its work will last. Even though time 
 should prove that some or even many of its results are 
 wrong, yet the process of reaching those results is correct 
 
DISCRIMINATION 95 
 
 and they mark a necessary stage in the growth of later 
 
 and better knowledge. More of the same kind of ivork 
 will remove the error and reveal the truth. 
 
96 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 association: illustrations. 
 
 Probably every normal person has at some time 
 stopped short in a train of thought and asked himself 
 why his thoughts have succeeded each other in the order 
 in which they have come to him. Whether in reverie or 
 a hard and long-continued course of reasoning, each 
 thought, in dying away, gives birth to the next one. The 
 mind passes, almost instantaneously, by apparently the 
 wildest and most unaccountable dashes, from one end of 
 the universe to the other, and brings together in thought 
 things that of themselves seem to furnish no apparent 
 reason for being thought of together. But there is a 
 fundamental mental principle that governs the association 
 of ideas that succeed each other throughout our waking 
 hours. Why it should be as it is with our minds, is a 
 problem that has presented itself for solution to philoso- 
 phers since the time of Aristotle; and doubtless ages be- 
 fore his time, the skin-clad shepherd, in some reflective 
 moment, asked himself the same question. 
 
 It is not the purpose of this book to discuss the ques- 
 tion from a psychological point of view ; but to accept 
 the principle of mental association as we find it, — abso- 
 lutely master of all our thoughts — and to draw out a little 
 
ASSOCIATION : ILLUSTRATIONS 97 
 
 its bearings on the problem of education from the stu- 
 dent's point of view. Each one can find in his own ex- 
 perience the best examples to illustrate the workings of 
 the principle. 
 
 One cloudy, cold and wet winter evening, I stood 
 outdoors in the depressing twilight in a mountain-girded 
 valley twenty miles from the Pacific, and heard the sul- 
 len roar of the unseen ocean. It was the kind of deep, 
 resistless, muffled sound, that seemed to mutter more 
 than speak of mightier things that it might do. That 
 sound at another time would probably have recalled 
 visions of cliff and beach and surf and shells and tide- 
 pools and sea-urchins in their little pot-holes in the solid 
 rock and the odor of the sea. But none of these things 
 returned to consciousness. The muffled roar brought 
 back another majestic sound. I had seen Niagara Falls 
 on a sunny summer noon-day, when water and mist and 
 sky were bright, and there was no suggestion of gloom. 
 The roar of the ocean had called up something that was 
 like itself. 
 
 But why, when the roar of Niagara had been sum- 
 moned across almost three thousand miles of intervening 
 plains and mountains and across the intervening years, 
 did that deep eternal monotone bring back with it all 
 the other qualities of that piece of Nature's wonder work 
 and even the thoughts inspired in me at sight of them? 
 Why did the rushing and glinting and falling of the 
 water come back with the roar? And after them all, 
 why did memory drag out again the solemn thoughts of 
 
98 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 eternity and almighty power that had heaved through me 
 in that wonderful hour? There I stood, oblivious to the 
 cold and darkening gloom, and revelled once more in 
 thought of the beautiful and sublime. 
 
 Why, in less than a minute, did this great complex 
 of vision and feeling — the steadiness of this mighty thing 
 and the sunny beauty of the day — allow me to be carried 
 on a flash of thought to a terrible night in the moun- 
 tains, when almighty power seemed to have turned an- 
 archist, when darkness and fog and rain depressed the 
 soul, when shock drove sleep away, when mountain-split- 
 ting thunder made the heart stand still and violated all 
 the laws of order by refusing to die away, when Echo, 
 that only murmured and babbled in the sunshine, growled 
 and roared incessantly in a voice that knew no modula- 
 tion, until the cliffs above us quivered with excitement? 
 
 The ocean's roar recalled something else that was 
 like it. This law of association lij similarity lies at the 
 root of the mind's most wonderful work. "Birds of a 
 feather flock together" is a law of our thinking; and 
 maybe a law controlling the forces of the universe. It 
 mil bear much thinking about. 
 
 When once the sound of Niagara had possession of 
 the mind, instead of recalling immediately another sound, 
 it recalled all the other experiences that the mind went 
 through at the time that sound was heard — not other 
 similar sounds, but entirely different things, sunshine, 
 flashing water, mist and rainbow, and musings on power 
 and eternity. It may be laid down as another mental 
 
ASSOCIATION: ILLUSTRATIONS 99 
 
 commonplaoe that things and qualities of every nature, 
 no matter how different from each other they may be, 
 when once they are experienced together, will ever after tend 
 to come back in memory together. This law of associa- 
 tion hy contiguity causes all the elements of an experi- 
 ence, no matter how unlike they are, to come trooping 
 back together, and usually in the order in which they 
 were first experienced. As soon as I thought of ^iaga- 
 ra^s roar, all the other things that I saw and heard and 
 thought and felt at the same time came back until the 
 whole scene stood pictured before me again. 
 
 Then suddenly the noise of the Falls recalled the roar 
 of a mountain storm; but no sooner had association by 
 similarity brought back the latter, then association by 
 contiguity recalled all the attendant circumstances that 
 combined with the noise to make up a model storm. And 
 so our thought trips on from point to point of our old 
 experiences; and all the time by the law of contiguity, 
 the mind keeps the order of experience that nature gave, 
 and by the law of similarity creates out of the chaos of 
 experience an order all its own. 
 
 It is within the range of possibility that, when mem- 
 ory takes up the thread of former experience, one should 
 follow exactly the course of the former experience, re- 
 calling every attendant detail minutely and in its proper 
 place. Memory then would only drift once more exactly 
 where the thought had traveled before. There is a type 
 of mind that tends to be thus obedient to the law of as- 
 sociation by contiguity. But by itself, it represents only 
 L.ofC. 
 
100 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 a lower type of mental power. I might, obedient to the 
 law of similarity, when I see a crawling ant, recall in 
 dull succession all the experiences of ants that I had 
 ever had, and all in their proper order. But it would be 
 a stupid piece of work and withal both unpleasant and 
 unprofitable. What actually happens is, that a normal 
 mind, in passing from one object of thought to another 
 under the law of association by similarity and contiguity, 
 selects the experiences that were pleasant or impressive, 
 that for some reason or other, we cannot always tell 
 why, have a sort of tone that distinguishes them from all 
 the rest, and which at the same time have a pertinent 
 bearing upon what is at the time passing in the mind. 
 
 What actually happens, in my own case, when the 
 sight of a line of black ants starts a train of thought at 
 all, is that I recall a terrible battle between black ants 
 that I witnessed once in a forest. The grim and silent 
 warriors fought till the old log and the ground around 
 it were strewn with antennae, legs, heads and beheaded 
 bodies. I did not see a coward among them. Every one 
 held on until he died; and even the jaws of his dissevered 
 head stayed locked where he had bitten last, so that his 
 enemy still carried his head around as an unwelcome 
 adornment. 
 
 The other thousands of droves of black ants that I 
 have seen in my life are apparently lost to memory; I 
 cannot recall the most of them; all there is left is an 
 indefinite impression of the frequency of such a sight 
 and of the numbers usually seen. The reason this par- 
 
ASSOCIATION: ILLUSTRATIONS 101 
 
 ticular scene associates itself so commonly with any drove 
 of black ants that I may see, is that this experience was 
 new to me, and striking and terrible in a way. T had 
 often wished to see such a battle; had often read about 
 the doughty little warriors. I was mentally prepared to 
 be interested; I was in a state of expectation, and ob- 
 served all the details. My mind worked vigorously on 
 the subject as the fight went on. The impression it left 
 was unusual and vivid. 
 
 The sight of a red ant much more surely associates 
 with itself another experience. It always recalls the 
 little red ants that crawled at their leisure through my 
 mustache while I tried in vain to sleep on a hillside on 
 the North Fork of the Stanislaus River in California. 
 The reason this particular scene occupies the right of 
 way in the association of my ideas is because it was so 
 unique and impressive. I did not dare to kill the too 
 familiar ants, because they were more malodorous in 
 death than they were in life. As soon as the law of 
 similarity has done its work and called up the hillside 
 ants, the law of contiguity is just as effective in bring- 
 ing back all the circumstances of that memorable scene. 
 Every item in it was new and impressive on its own ac- 
 count. The uncanny ants recall our constant slipping 
 down the hillside in our blankets in spite of the bed of 
 boughs; and then comes back the thought of the donkey, 
 who ate patiently of a rotten log because the sheep had 
 passed that way to the high Sierras, and where the sheep 
 have been not even a donkey can live in comfort. And 
 
102 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 her peculiar tastes made another deep impression. I had 
 often driven cows and colts through the deep Wisconsin 
 snows to browse the buds of the new-made brush heaps. 
 So we carried her maple leaves on broken boughs ; but she 
 preferred the rotten log. 
 
 All the details of that night's experience were new 
 and striking, and so they cling tenaciously together in 
 memory; even the little incidents of salt and pepper at 
 the supper-making drop into place in the vivid procession 
 of images. 
 
 It is important to realize that the question as to what 
 experiences, what knowledge, shall be recalled and be- 
 come associated with what we happen at present to be 
 thinking about, depends on how that knowledge or experi- 
 ence was first acquired. The student need not now 
 trouble himself about the "poet's eye, in a fine frenzy 
 rolling" and seeing similarities and connections among 
 things not given to common mortals to see. He needs to 
 impress himself with the fact that those things are most 
 likely to serve him afterward under the law of associa- 
 tion of ideas, which had most interest for him and im- 
 pressed him most deeply at the time that they were ex- 
 perienced. 
 
 There is one other case of association which can be 
 distinguished from the two that have been described. 
 Socrates gave an independent position to the principle 
 of association by contrast. Our common speech, and the 
 highest types of literature are filled with the idea of con- 
 trast and antithesis. We think, as it were, in extremes. 
 
ASSOCIATION: ILLUSTRATIONS 103 
 
 Angels recall devils; good recalls evil; bitter and sweet 
 are constant associates in our thought. The "neutral 
 tints/^ in colors, tastes or morals, do not seem striking 
 enough to be easily associated in thought or to appeal to 
 us. It would seem that things that represent extremes 
 of difference are habitually thought of together and that 
 association by similarity breaks down badly at this point. 
 
 But analysis of the subject has shown that the prin- 
 ciple of contrast really comes under the head of associa- 
 tion by similarity. Angels and devils are only the two 
 extremes of the same hind of thing. Bitter and sweet 
 are the two extremes of taste. In Pharaoh's dreams the 
 seven fat and the seven lean kine, and the seven full and 
 seven thin ears of corn betokened seven years of plenty 
 and seven more of famine. The figures of the dreams 
 are true to the fundamental principle of similarity. 
 There is no chaotic mental confusion of years of plenty 
 with thin ears of corn. And where the contracts are 
 made, it is the two extremes of the same kind of thing 
 that are involved. The seven fat with the seven lean 
 Icvne; the seven full with the seven thin eai^s of corn. 
 The mind, when it deals with contrasts, grasps, as it were, 
 the two ends of all such series. Even then the points of 
 similarity are emphasized. No contrast is drawn between 
 things that are fundamentally unlike. We are not in- 
 clined to associate together by contrast, hot and yellow, 
 goodness and the color blue. 
 
 Duns and powder, explosion and death have become 
 closely associated in our minds, and we conduct ourselves 
 
104 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 circumspectly. We are so sure that guns do not go about 
 alone, that if we hear the report of a rifle we invariably 
 look for the man. Certain things have always occurred 
 together in our experience, and we make the grave as- 
 sumption that they will always occur together. When 
 one of them comes to our attention we immediately as- 
 sume the existence of the rest. If I see a dog's tail dis- 
 appearing around the corner of the house I "know" there 
 is a dog at the other end of it. I have seen myriads of 
 dogs' tails, but never a tail traveling independently. One 
 tail, one dog. Invariable association of the two in my 
 experience has made the association of the two in my 
 thoaght inevitable. My eyes supply the tail, my mind 
 supplies the dog to complete the association. 
 
 This is the power by means of which we are con- 
 stantly piecing out our imperfect knowledge. We act 
 all the time upon our confidence that such associations as 
 we have become acquainted with, are permanent and re- 
 liable. I hear a thud on the porch, and invariably act 
 in response to it, because it means that my morning paper 
 has come. The dull thud has meaning only because it is 
 associated in my mind with so many other things. That 
 is why a single sound may determine my occupation for 
 half an hour to come. The law of association gives 
 all their meaning to otherwise stupid facts. Because this 
 is so, and because the student's present business in life 
 is to train his mental powers, a little attention to this lav/ 
 of association and its bearing on the quality of our knowl- 
 edge, is of very great importance. All his years of edu- 
 
ASSOCIATION: ILLUSTRATIONS 105 
 
 < 
 
 cation are, in theory at least, a longdrawn voluntary 
 effort to improve the quality of his mental action, and to 
 secure accurate and valuable knowledge. 
 
 Now the way in which the different items of his 
 knowledge shall forever be associated together, depends 
 on the way he consciously arranges them when he first 
 comes in contact with them. He is deliberately accumu- 
 lating material and power for future use ; and it behooves 
 him to remember that the law of association will faith- 
 fully reproduce his accumulations, whether their first ar- 
 rangement was perfect or utterly faulty. Where empha- 
 sis is laid in the beginning, there will be the facts which 
 force their way into the memory on the slightest provo- 
 cation. Flaws and errors come with what is valuable. 
 We never recall everything. Some facts and experiences 
 will always hold the right of way at the expense of others 
 that are bound to lose their little vitality in the stalls of 
 memory, until they seem to be hopelessly lost. It is 
 vitally important that the student shall deliberately and 
 always associate the items of his knowledge in such an 
 order that they will teach him the most truth afterwards, 
 ^^unch" them in such an arrangement that when one is 
 recalled it will always recall the rest. This topic will be 
 treated more fully under Memory. 
 
 Now what is it that determines which of a thousand 
 possible trains of thought shall become the actual one? 
 We can at least lay our fingers on some of the elements 
 of the answer. Thought, as it moves along, passes al- 
 ways to the facts that for some reason or other are the 
 
106 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 most impressive. These are not only easily acquired, but 
 easily retained and recalled; they seem to return almost 
 without invitation. Others^, which can be recalled only 
 after the most careful mental "search," are not likely to 
 play a dominant part in coloring and directing the course 
 of our thought. 
 
 It may be laid down as a fundamental characteristic 
 of both men and animals that we are most interested in 
 a thing while it is new to us. That is when it makes its 
 lasting impression. It is Nature's way of teaching her 
 children to be careful and to make each new item of 
 knowledge effective. Which of our past experiences shall 
 be called upon and associated with a present experience, 
 in what direction our thought shall run when it is stimu- 
 lated into activity by a present incident, depends not only 
 on the vividness of particular past impressions, but also 
 upon the general drift of our more recent thinking. 
 
 In the year 1900 I sat in the sun and listened to a 
 fine technical description of a repeating rifle that I held 
 in my hands. The rifle made the speaker think of the 
 coming vacation and the deer that he would slay; for he 
 was a Ximrod, with more heart for the forest than for 
 his books. There was no great probability that the pres- 
 ence of the gun would lead his mind very far away from 
 the thought of the northern hill forests. They had the 
 right of way. 
 
 Before October 11, 1899, that rifle would surely have 
 set me thinking about the Chippewa sub-chief who in 
 the depths of a Wisconsin forest, walked up to me as I 
 
ASSOCIATION: ILLUSTRATIONS 107 
 
 sat at the foot of a tree^ and offered to sell me an old 
 Phoenix rifle for "six or five or four dollars/^ But in 
 1900, even long after the British had occupied the two 
 South African Republics, my whole thought was often 
 given to the effect of modern guns on human liberty. At 
 tliat particular time, therefore, the rifle on my knees at 
 once associated itself in thought with the Boer war and 
 the stout resistance that the handful of mounted farmers 
 was making to one of the biggest and proudest armies on 
 earth. It led me to think once more that pipe-clay and 
 uniforms and social distinction are no longer either neces- 
 sary or desirable equipments of a fighting man ; that the 
 fighting unit would thereafter always be a man, a horse 
 and a repeating rifle. I thought of this, too, which must 
 often have impressed itself on many British minds, that 
 they had met the Dutch before, and who could know but 
 they might have to do it again ? Then I thought of how 
 the final stand in the struggle for human liberty is al- 
 ways made outdoors in the everlasting hills. Boers, 
 Cubans, Swiss and Welsh and Maccabees came back in 
 thought because it was the year nineteen hundred when 
 I looked at the repeating rifle. The train of thought 
 which the rifle would awaken was determined by what I 
 had been thinking about recently. 
 
108 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 CHAPTEK XL 
 
 association: the original order of experience. 
 
 It has been said in the previous chapter that there 
 are two strikingly different ways in which the mind may 
 re-consider the knowledge which it possesses, and the 
 experiences that it has had. There are two different 
 orders or arrangements : the order of experience and the 
 order of reason. In the former arrangement the law of 
 association hy contiguity brings back everything to the 
 mind in its original setting. Each thing recalls what 
 was next to it or associated with it in time or place. All 
 things that were together once in experience remain to- 
 gether in the memory. If this were the only way in 
 which the facts of our lives could be associated, our 
 "thinking" could never be anything more than a pale, 
 emaciated repetition of the past. There could be no new 
 combinations in our thought. 
 
 But even the dullest normal mind is capable of tak- 
 ing its past experience to pieces and bringing together in 
 thought the things that are in some respects alike. Two 
 experiences may be thought of in succession, whether they 
 occurred originally in two successive hours of the same 
 day or were separated by a space of twenty years. It is 
 
ASSOCIATION: ORDER OF EXPERIENCE 109 
 
 their likeness to each other that causes them to be 
 brought together in thought. 
 
 These two ways of associating the objects of knowl- 
 edge or experience distinguish two radically different 
 types of mind. Every mind possesses both these means 
 of association. But some minds possess in a very marked 
 degree the power of associating objects according to their 
 likeness; while others seem to plod along the old ruts 
 that were worn by the original experiences. 
 
 The well-balanced mind, which keeps a strong hold 
 of its past, in which experiences remain distinct and or- 
 derly and furnish vivid, accurate and complete images 
 when they are recalled, and which at the same time pos- 
 sesses in a marked degree the power of rearranging the 
 facts of knowledge and experience and organizing them 
 into groups of lilce hinds upon which the reasoning pow- 
 ers can be brought to bear, possesses in its mental move- 
 ment the two kinds of association in a mutually helpful 
 relation. 
 
 In order to make clear how the two kinds of asso- 
 ciation constantly intermingle in the course of thought, 
 I shall draw further upon personal experiences. The 
 reader himself can supply instances that will suit his 
 purposes better than any examples that can be drawn 
 from the mental experiences of others. Such processes 
 are going on in everybody's mind all the time. 
 
 Whenever I hear or see the word porcupine I imme- 
 diately think of one or another of several experiences. 
 But when one has once returned to memory, I am likely 
 
110 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 after dwelling upon it a little, to pass to the next, until 
 all the important porcupine experiences of my life have 
 been recalled. 
 
 The sight or the sound of the word is utterly unlike 
 the animal it stands for. The only reason why the word 
 recalls the animal is because that particular word and 
 that particular animal have always been associated by 
 contiguity. When one recurs to the mind it brings back 
 the other, because they have been in mind together be- 
 fore. The word always calls up some individual porcupine, 
 and usually the first to respond is the big female that my 
 younger brothers and I smoked out of a hollow tree in 
 the river bottoms of our native haunts one bright, cold, 
 winter morning. As soon as I think of this animal the 
 whole flood of details returns. Each item takes its place 
 where it belongs ; but no two of them are alihe. Memory 
 brings back the bits of nibbled bark on the snow at the 
 bases of the neighboring trees, by means of which we 
 located the animal. Then comes the hollow tree itself; 
 the failure of our last match and our final success at mak- 
 ing a fire by shooting a gun into a carefully heaped pile 
 of dry leaves and whittled shavings ; the patience required 
 to nurse the sparks into a flame; our cold hands; the 
 slowness of the smoking process because there was no hole 
 above to allow a draft to pass up the tree; the tantaliz- 
 ing way in which the porcupine frequently backed down 
 near the opening to get a whiff of fresh air ; the final suc- 
 cessful struggle ; our careful dissection of the animal af- 
 ter we got home; and the derisive remarks that our sis- 
 
ASSOCIATION: ORDER OF EXPERIENCE 111 
 
 ters have hurled at us these many years since then. 
 These items never fail to come back together. But up to 
 this point the association has been entirely one of con- 
 tiguity. N"o one of the details is like any of the rest. 
 
 But once reminded of porcupines, I often stay on the 
 porcupine trail. Association by similarity brings back an- 
 other porcupine: a scene in which I saw a young brute 
 dash a bucket of scalding water on the poor beast as it 
 ran for its life, and heard its horrible, long-drawn squawk 
 of anguish. Every detail of this scene comes back, con- 
 trolled by the law of contiguity. Then the law of asso- 
 ciation by similarity carries me on to a pest of porcupines. 
 
 Way back in the "woods," where farms were new and 
 few, men were building a dam and a saw-mill on a little 
 stream. I was teaching school, and often walked three 
 miles after school for the pleasure of seeing another set 
 of faces and watching the men work. The woods were 
 full of porcupines, and they had an overmastering pas- 
 sion for the handles of tools — axes, picks, spades — and of- 
 ten gnawed them nearly in two at the places where the 
 soiled and sweaty hands of men had rubbed, and left a 
 taste that those prickly wanderers could not forego. 
 Having a desire to help rid the neigbborhood of the pest, 
 I always cut a walking stick of hazel or water-ibeech and 
 often despatched three or four porcupines on a single 
 trip. In the cases of some of these experiences I can 
 after all these years, recall the minutest details — how the 
 animals curled up for self-defense and even the little 
 sticks and brush and logs that lay around. When the 
 
112 * THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 "memory-^ of these things ceases to be interesting the law 
 of similarity brings back another porcupine — one that I 
 never saw. Our dog had had an injudicious fight with 
 him one night and brought home both his jaws full of 
 quills. His gaping mouth, our midnight labors to re- 
 lieve him, and his almost human moans are all kept to- 
 gether by the law of contiguity. 
 
 Similarity again brings back porcupines — this time 
 imaginary ones ; the porcupine trail of my thought usually 
 ends in my early childhood at a time when I had never 
 yet seen a porcupine but had heard and imagined much 
 about the animal. There was an unoccupied farm near 
 a place where we often went for raspberries. Some 
 friends a little older and much wiser than myself firmly 
 believed and taught me to believe that on the farther 
 edge of that field the porcupines sat in the black and 
 blasted trees and threw their quills with their tails at 
 passers-by many rods away on the road. The farm, the 
 road, the distant trees, which I never ventured to ap- 
 proach, the imagined shape and size of the animals, the 
 very thoughts and feelings about that, my childhood 
 bugaboo, come back in a vivid train. The mighty power 
 of association by contiguity brings back the items in 
 great sheaves, just as they were bound together in the 
 original experience. 
 
 At this point the porcupine trail ends in the trees, 
 and the law of similarity, taking another tack, tows my 
 thoughts along to the other vagaries of my childhood. 
 There is thus in our common, unguided thought a con- 
 
ASSOCIATION: ORDER OF EXPERIENCE 113 
 
 stant succession of associations, some sort of similarity 
 carrying the thought across the tracks of experience from 
 one to another that is like it; and the bond of contiguity 
 calling up details to fill out the picture of each experience. 
 
 Association of ideas by contiguity not only makes 
 memory and an intellectual life possible ; it tends to make 
 us its slaves. If we were to change our terms a little we 
 would find ourselves again discussing the subject of habit. 
 Not only are things recalled in the groupings in which 
 they originally occurred, but usually in the very same or- 
 der. This is especially true of things that have been fre- 
 quently recalled in a given order. The sight or sound 
 of the letter a recalls h, and h recalls c. But c never 
 spontaneously arouses thought of h; and the bond of asso- 
 ciation is not from h to a. It is hardy possible to realize 
 how vastly important this tendency of mind is. Without 
 it there would be inevitable mental chaos. Attention is 
 elsewhere called to the fact that the letters of the alphabet 
 can be arranged in so many different ways that a hundred 
 million men working steadily for a hundred million years, 
 and writing each forty sheets a day and on each sheet 
 forty different arrangements, would not at the end of 
 that time have exhausted all the possible arrangements. 
 
 Now it is possible to imagine a condition of mind 
 in which experience could not be recalled in the original 
 order. But mental chaos would be the result. There 
 would be no stability of knowledge and mental progress 
 would be impossible. So strong is this tendency to asso- 
 ciate things in the order in which they were first learned 
 
114 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 or experienced that we are rarely tempted to try any 
 other way. If the effort is made at all, we pitch upon the 
 reverse order; we say the alphabet backwards. This is 
 the next easiest thing because the letters retain their 
 same relative positions. There are other, more sensible 
 arrangements of the alphabet than the one we all have 
 learned, but the scientific superiority of such an arrange- 
 ment is of no help to us unless we have learned to asso- 
 ciate the letters in the new order. 
 
 What is true of the alphabet is true of the multiplica- 
 tion table. Each item recalls the next in the order in 
 which they were first learned. The same is true of the 
 declension of a noun or the conjugation of a verb. If 
 anything is thought of, it only recalls the part that im- 
 mediately followed it in the original arrangement. 
 
 How does the mind "find" a fact that it has "lost"? 
 By hunting for it among the facts that were known to be 
 its original associates. If an umbrella is left somewhere 
 on a shopping tour the owner seeks first of all to recall 
 to mind the last place where he is sure he had it. At 
 every stopping place, by diligent search the umbrella can 
 be made to re-appear among its associates. Its presence 
 there is connected with everything that was done at that 
 point. By and by a place is reached where the umbrella 
 no longer forms a part of the recalled experience. Now 
 vigorous attention to details will soon reveal the place 
 where it disappeared. So small a matter as opening the 
 door with the umbrella hand will show that it was gone 
 when that place was reached. 
 
ASSOCIATION: ORDER OF EXPERIENCE 115 
 
 What is true of a lost umbrella is true of any fact 
 that we seek to recall. We call up all the facts with 
 which it was associated, and they, by their combined in- 
 fluence, bring back the fact that is sought. It will return 
 almost involuntarily as a member of a g^roup, whereas a 
 sheer effort to remember it might be forever in vain. 
 
 Sometimes when in my boyhood, the herd had been 
 started homeward on the trail, I would find a heifer miss- 
 ing, and would worry over her absence. A long and anx- 
 ious search was usually in vain. After some experience 
 I learned that it was perfectly safe to leave such a heifer 
 to her own wits, as long as I took care of her associates. 
 Usually within five minutes she would gallop into the 
 -herd and ^^athe herself in their companionship.". Her 
 life could not be lived apart from them. And so of facts. 
 No matter what sort of fact it may be, its old associates 
 will drag it along with them. If they are all called in and 
 kept before the thought it will soon be found among 
 them. 
 
116 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 ASSOCIATION ACCORDING TO SIMILARITY. 
 
 The power to reproduce the items of our knowledge 
 and experience in the order in which they were first met 
 cannot be over-rated. But no matter how powerfully a 
 mind may be gifted in this respect, it will always remain 
 a commonplace, prosaic, encyclopedic mind, unless it is 
 likewise gifted with the power of association by similarity. 
 While the former reproduces experience, the latter re- 
 arranges knowledge in the order of reason, the order in 
 which the higher activities of the intellect can be brought 
 to play upon it. 
 
 The poetic mind, that speaks in figures of speech, 
 that makes those noiseless, ineffable allusions and the 
 mighty sweeps of thought and feeling that make our 
 spirits quiver in the reading, owes its power to the gift 
 of association by similarity. Sooner or later every think- 
 ing mind must organize its knowledge by bringing to- 
 gether the things that are alike, and habitually thinking 
 of them together. When we begin to think in similars 
 it becomes possible to extract general truths from the 
 jumble of facts. 
 
 No two things are exactly alike in all respects. 
 When the mind associates things together on the basis 
 
ASSOCIATION ACCORDING TO SIMILARITY 117 
 
 of similarity, it selects only one or a few of the qualities 
 of each object for comparison. In the rhyme beginning 
 
 ^'Twinkle, twinkle, little star," 
 the association of the star and the diamond in the simile 
 is based on the single quality of brightness. When a 
 poetic author describes the mist and says that the young 
 beech wept tears for its mother that fell in the storm, 
 the likeness on which the figure of speech is based is 
 only that of the trickling and dropping water. But an 
 association like this is powerful by its suggestiveness. 
 The association, though based on a single quality, when 
 it is once made, opens the way to personification and a 
 transfer of all the other human qualities usually asso- 
 ciated with tears — darkness and death and woe — to the 
 weeping tree. 
 
 All human thought and speech are permeated by 
 the principle of association by similarity. We con- 
 stantly think and speak of things that are like the par- 
 ticular thing we are dealing with. We cannot even say 
 of a smiling baby that it has a rosy complexion, or of 
 a fool that his conduct was asinine, or of a quarrel that 
 there was a heated discussion, without making use of the 
 principle. Not only adjectives but nouns owe their sug- 
 gestiveness and usefulness to this kind of association. 
 The indescribable and mysterious power of speech of 
 poetic men, that quality of words which seems to open 
 up dim and distant vistas of thought without giving ex- 
 pression to it, is due in great part to intangible associa- 
 tions by similarity. The dull associations of our com- 
 
118 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 monplace minds carry with them nothing of that unex- 
 pressed suggestiveness. 
 
 In more prosy matters, in history and science, we do 
 not go so far afield in making comparisons, hnt even here 
 the ablest minds possess a subtle power of penetration, 
 insight that is akin to the poet's power, and is based on 
 the ability to recognize resemblances between things that 
 are far apart or seem very unlike. It is this subtle power 
 of suggestion, which the principle of association accord- 
 ing to similarities possesses, that makes the thought of 
 some men so rich and fruitful. 
 
 But what has all this to do with the student's busi- 
 ness of acquisition? Everything. To my thinking, the 
 student's most critical experience with any piece of 
 knowledge is his first contact with it. What he does with 
 it then determines forever its usefulness to him. If he 
 takes the time to understand a fact thoroughly, and 
 deliberately seeks to associate it at once with as many 
 other related facts as possible, if it is made a part of a 
 well-knit, valuable group of similar facts, it will forever 
 be his faithful servant. Memory will find it no burden, 
 because it is associated with its like, attention will hover 
 over it, interest will cling to it for the sake of its asso- 
 ciations. It will yield itself readily to the uses of reason, 
 because, by being associated with related facts, it is in 
 a position to corroborate the truth they have to tell. 
 
 Of course, this all looks well on paper; but it takes 
 time, and a great deal of it, to deal thus deliberately with 
 every new fact. It requires reflection, comparison, the 
 
ASSOCIATION ACCORDING TO SIMILARITY 119 
 
 exercise of all the intellectual powers upon each new fact 
 as it comes up. It is a time-killing process. Time can 
 be saved temporarily by merely memorizing the fact off 
 hand without reflection, and without trying to get its 
 bearings. 
 
 Near a railway station at which a narrow-gauge and 
 a broad-gauge road cross and run parallel for some dis- 
 tance, I always took a lively interest in the race out of 
 the station between the light narrow-gauge engine with 
 its train of dainty cars and the more ponderous engine 
 with its heavy broad-gauge load. Invariably the little 
 engine crept ahead and soon was away in the lead, puffing 
 defiance at its cumbersome rival. But the laws of physics 
 were on the side of the broad-gauge engine. It lost in 
 speed at first because it was gathering up momentum. 
 Its loss was only apparent. Eod by rod it gained again 
 and fairly rushed past the other train, leaving its spit- 
 ting and coughing little rival hopelessly behind. Size 
 and weight — its temporary handicap — constituted its per- 
 manent superiority after the lapse of the first few min- 
 utes. 
 
 There are also a narrow-gauge and a broad-gauge way 
 of coming in contact with and disposing of knowledge for 
 future use. The constant temptation is to seek present 
 effects and be content with them. But the time spent 
 on each fact as it comes up gives permanent momentum 
 to it. When once the momentum of carefully wrought- 
 out knowledge is brought to bear on further acquisition, 
 it simply overwhelms the more usual, time-serving 
 
120 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 method. I believe that the failure of the student to form 
 the habit of associating every new fact carefully with 
 others to which it is related is the most serious draw- 
 back to intellectual progress. And I believe that he is 
 an intellectual master who has once learned to seek the 
 full significance and all the bearings of each new fact on 
 the spot, and binds it up with its proper associates, so 
 that it will forever after reappear in its right place, and 
 reveal each time its proper message. He has entered 
 within the inner veil of learning and intellectual power. 
 The student who does not at least seek to develop this 
 habit had better leave his studies and go to chasing the 
 butterflies and bees for fun. 
 
ASSOCIATION: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 121 
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 association: some practical applications. 
 
 It was pointed out in a previous chapter that words 
 are associated with the objects for which they stand by 
 the principle of contiguity. As a rule, the word and the 
 object have nothing in common. The word ox recalls the 
 hollow-horned, cloven-hoofed, cud-chewing beast, because 
 it has always been associated with these qualities, not be- 
 cause it is like any or all of them. Words are the sym- 
 bols used to represent things that are not present. 
 Their function is to recall to mind the objects them- 
 selves. 
 
 Among all the associations which the intellect is 
 called upon to form, the most commonplace and most 
 important is the association between words and the ideas 
 and objects for which those words stand. Our whole in- 
 tellectual life is based on this system of symbols. If a 
 word, whenever it is seen or heard, calls up vividly the 
 object for which it stands — if there is a real association 
 between the word and the object — the individual's 
 thought will be vivid and substantial. 
 
 N"ow a man of very poor imagination or thinking 
 powers is often also a man of few words; and a man of 
 great intellectual power is likely to have command of a 
 
122 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 large vocabulary, or, if his words are few, he is likely 
 to be a master in their use. But it is not true that a 
 man with a large vocabulary is necessarily a profound 
 or vivid thinker. Training in the use of words alone 
 does not improve the quality of one's thinking. Vitality 
 of thought depends on the vitality of association between 
 words and the things they stand for, or whether, when 
 a word is seen or heard or thought about, it will actually 
 recall the object. 
 
 A great deal has been said about our modern wordy 
 education; we multiply words and in doing so actually 
 flush out of our minds what knowledge and power is 
 already there. We tend to deal with words as we do 
 with algebraic symbols — we combine and separate them 
 in their grammatical relations with hardly a thought of 
 what those words are standing for. This tendency to 
 deal with the symbol and neglect, in our thinking, the 
 thing for which the symbol stands, is largely due to the 
 fact that we have words for very many things which we 
 have never seen or experienced at all. With the great 
 modern increase of books and periodicals this tendency 
 threatens to become chronic. 
 
 If one has actually heard or seen or felt something 
 and then gets a word to serve as the symbol of it, the 
 association between the word and the thing it stands for 
 is likely to be very close. If the quantity of our actual 
 experience can be made to keep some sort of pace with 
 the growth of our vocabulary, there will be less danger of 
 the failure to associate word and thing. So much of our 
 
ASSOCIATION: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 123 
 
 knowledge comes to us at second hand that many of ns 
 become mere traders in words. We think only words; 
 and the things themselves, but poorly represented by con- 
 fused imagery, tend to drop entirely out of consideration. 
 
 A little attention to the symbols of arithmetic and 
 algebra will make the subject plainer. Francis Gait on 
 tells of a South African native who would give one sheep 
 for two plugs of tobacco, but would not give two sheep 
 for four plugs. He had a very practical interest in real 
 things, but mathematical symbols were missing, so he 
 could not carry his thought beyond the first simple step. 
 A farmer who has five horses worth one hundred dollars 
 apiece is likely to make full use of arithmetic. He has 
 learned that 5x100=500 under all circumstances; it is al- 
 ways true for him, no matter whether he is dealing with 
 sheep or horses or pebbles on a beach. But his interest 
 is likely to be always practical. He is not likely to con- 
 tent himself wdth the thought that 5x100=500. For him 
 the symbols of arithmetic will have horses and dollars as 
 their material associates. 
 
 But if, instead of being a farmer, one is merely 
 studying arithmetic, real objects are no longer an im- 
 portant consideration. 5 and 100 may stand for any ob- 
 jects whatever; the relations between the quantities be- 
 come the chief consideration. Then one begins to deal 
 with numbers alone. Quite early in a child^s study of 
 arithmetic it ceases to think of any objects that the 
 numbers might represent. It is a dealer in numbers and 
 not horses. 
 
124 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 In algebra the mathematician still further strips the 
 process of concreteness. In the simple equation — 
 
 X and y not only do not represent mate- 
 rial objects, they do not even represent any particular 
 numbers. They teach nothing about horses or sheep or 
 numbers. They are symbols pure and simple, stripped of 
 all connection with real things. In algebra the interest 
 does not lie in the objects that a and &, x and y might 
 represent; it is the relation hetween quantities that is the 
 subject of study. The fact that the sum of two quanti- 
 ties (whatever they may be) multiplied by itself equals 
 the sum of the squares of those two quantities plus twice 
 the product of the first by the second, is what is intended 
 to be taught. Neither the x nor the y, nor their various 
 combinations call up an image, because they are not 
 symbols of anything in particular. Here we have a 
 whole science which deals with mere symbols that have 
 no association with real objects or ideas. The symbols 
 are purposely stripped of all specific meaning, and when 
 once the mind has begun to lay stress on the relations 
 of increase, decrease and equality, it readily drops all 
 thought of any real things for which the symbols might 
 stand. It is this readiness of the mind to lose the asso- 
 ciation between a word and the thing it stands for, and to 
 deal with the word by itself, treating it as an indefinite 
 S3rmbol which awaJcens no clear image, that makes a 
 "wordy" education such a common and such a valueless 
 thing. 
 
ASSOCIATION: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 125 
 
 Just as soon as words are combined into sentences 
 the mind has grammatical relations among words to 
 deal with, as in algebra it deals with quantitative rela- 
 tions. Now if the association between the words and the 
 things they stand for is hazy and precarious, it is likely 
 to be lost sight of altogether. The mind dwells on the 
 grammatical relations and the words serve merely as in- 
 definite symbols, like x and y. In this mental state one 
 can read a whole page and when he reaches the bottom 
 not know anything. This is, in short, accepting words as 
 a substitute for a real knowledge of things. 
 
 It is hardly fair to call this an intellectual crime, 
 for crime is supposed to be an act contrary to the gen- 
 eral practice of the community in which the act is done. 
 When a whole community indulges in conduct so coarse 
 that it is indefensible from our standpoint, and lacks 
 certain powers and qualifications, we do not call it a com- 
 munity of criminals. We only say it is at a low stage 
 of civilization. By the same token, the defect that has 
 been discussed is not an intellectual crime, for it is the 
 common failing of reading communities. Words are 
 multiplied and the growth of real knowledge and intel- 
 lectual power come crawling slowly after. It is the easi- 
 est thing to do at any given time, and the worst of all 
 the halbits that the student can fall into. 
 
 There is only one antidote for this constant menace 
 to real culture, perpetual care that real things shall be 
 the objects of thought. To one who has ever tasted an 
 orange, the word has permanent, pleasant associations. 
 
126 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 they seem to become a part of it, so that the word itself 
 almost seems to be pleasant. One experience with a 
 skunk will make the name forever odious. It could never 
 thereafter be used as a S3rmbol for pleasant objects of 
 thought. In these cases, the association of word with 
 the object it stands for is extremely close. 
 
 But when we pass to the higher realms of thought 
 and feeling, and speak of elegance and grandeur, many 
 people who are perfectly familiar with the words cannot 
 call up any definite ideas for which the words stand. 
 They are merely indefinite symbols. What does grandeur 
 mean to one who has never seen anything but the com- 
 monplace ? Slight and superficial contact with facts and 
 a large vocabulary produce a mental condition in which 
 even the few real objects of experience can play no effec- 
 tive part in thought. To a man who has had a wide ex- 
 perience, grandeur calls up the chaotic bulk and beauty 
 of a mountain range, the irresistible storm at sea, or the 
 stately charm of a mighty temple. Only he who has 
 seen and heard and felt things like those he reads about 
 can keep a close association between words and things; 
 because he has vivid and appropriate images stored away 
 that are called up when the words are used. As soon as 
 a student loses his contact with facts, his education be- 
 comes a jugglery with empty symbols. 
 
 While there is a great and fundamental difficulty in 
 keeping up a vital association between words and the 
 ideas they represent in studying in one's native tongue. 
 
ASSOCIATION: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 127 
 
 this difficulty is many fold greater in the study of a 
 foreign language. Let us begin with an actual case. 
 
 An English-speaking student, in reading half a page 
 of German, twice met the word Eisen (iron), once near 
 the top of the page and again near the end of the pas- 
 sage. He had "studied the lesson," but when he met 
 the word at the top of the page he had forgotten its 
 meaning and had to be told. Now merely being told 
 a thing is the poorest way to learn it. So he immediately 
 forgot again. When he met the word a second time, and 
 did not know it, his attention was called to the same word 
 at the top of the page. He rememhered then that he had 
 seen it, but could not recall its meaning. This seems like 
 an extreme case. But he was capable of doing good 
 work as a student; and his case was very common, and 
 illustrates a natural tendency. 
 
 What was the matter? He failed to develop any 
 kind of association for the word Eisen, when he first 
 met it, and consequently it was a stranger to him every 
 time he saw it. Let us see what even a student of ele- 
 mentary German could have done with the word, if he 
 had been willing to make the student's sacrifice. By 
 close attention to the context in which the word first 
 occurred he could have associated its meaning with all 
 the rest of the words that formed its surroundings. He 
 might be unable to tell what it meant the next time he 
 met it, but by reverting to its first occurrence, he would 
 have recalled its meaning without fail. This is a very 
 common way of remembering things. 
 
128 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 A better way would have been to establish, by men- 
 tal effort, a strong association between the German word 
 Eisen and the English word iron. This could have been 
 done in either of two ways : first, by the principle of con- 
 tiguity, bringing the two words together and thinking of 
 them together until one would recall the other; second, 
 by the principle of similarity, making note of their resem- 
 blances and differences. In this latter method we fall 
 upon an example of how much easier it is to remember 
 things in groups, how much easier it is to remember each 
 fact as a member of a class than it is to remember it 
 without such associations. 
 
 By working upon the principle of similarity the stu- 
 dent could instantaneously have made note of the fact 
 that the German word has the letter 5 where the English 
 word has r, and that the two words are otherwise alike 
 in sound. That is to say, they are alike, with a differ- 
 ence. This alone ought to make the word recall its 
 proper English meaning in any connection. But that 
 particular difference might be a troublesome little item 
 to remember. Now if, instead of being content with 
 what he could see at a glance, the student had had enough 
 of the scholar's instinct to pursue the matter at all, he 
 would have learned that the troublesome little difference, 
 an s for an r, is itself an example of a whole class of like 
 occurrences, that it illustrates the tendency to rhotacism, 
 to change an s into an r in the Indo-European languages. 
 Not only would it have been remembered forever that 
 Eisen means iron; the strange relation of the two words 
 
ASSOCIATION: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 129 
 
 to each other would have opened up a whole new field 
 of associations. The mind would thenceforth be ready 
 to notice a rhotacism wherever it occurred. Was and 
 were, lose and forlorn in English, Eisen and ii'on, Hase 
 and hare, in German to English; genus and genera in 
 Latin, would sooner or later all fall into the new group 
 of facts. Not only is a word more easily rememhered 
 thus ; that is the way a scholar is made. Instead of hav- 
 ing one paltry association by contiguity with the English 
 word, the Germ^an word becomes the type of a whole 
 class, the example of a linguistic tendency. 
 
 It takes time and mental power to work this way. 
 The sooner the fact is recognized and acted upon the 
 better. There is no other right way. It is easier to 
 brace up a rotten fence-post than it is to set a new one. 
 But there is not much difference, aside from cuffs and 
 collar, between a slovenly farmer and a slovenly student. 
 
 There is another and still better way to deal with 
 the word Eisen, and that is to form a strong mental asso- 
 ciation between the word and the substance for which 
 it stands. I have known little German children, who 
 learned to speak English well in six weeks. Their vocab- 
 ulary, at the end of that time, was not large, but the asso- 
 ciations between words and the objects for which they 
 stand was perfectly correct. They might have studied 
 English out of books for two years and still be very un- 
 certain about the meanings of their words. Their suc- 
 cess and their certainty were due to the fact that they 
 did not try to associate the new English words with the 
 
130 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 old, familiar German words. They saw the objects first 
 and. then heard English words for them. They asso- 
 ciated the new English words directly with the old, 
 familiar things. 
 
 • The reason why the great majority of able German, 
 Greek and Latin scholars are utterly unable to speak 
 the langnages of which they are in all other respects 
 such perfect masters, is because they associate the for- 
 eign words first with the words of their native tongue, 
 and then the object itself is thought about in English. 
 If they would do as the little immigrants did, associate 
 the foreign words directly with the things for which 
 they stand, aqiui with the liquid itself instead of the 
 word water, they would talk the new language readily too. 
 It is not easy at first to understand how much more 
 readily words are remembered and how much more effec- 
 tively they can be handled, if all their possible associa- 
 tions are fully under control. It may seem as if the 
 discussion were running to a fine point now instead of 
 dealing with large and important questions of scholar- 
 ship. But what has been said lies at the very founda- 
 tion of good thinking. Any one can readily test the mat- 
 ter in a simple way by copying a long quotation. In 
 reading half of a sentence or long clause and then break- 
 ing off to copy, the words convey no meaning; they are 
 only an arbitrary succession of symbols, and are very 
 hard to remember even till they can be written down. 
 But if one reads the clause or sentence to a finish, so 
 that the thought expressed in the words is grasped by the 
 
ASSOCIATION: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 131 
 
 mind, the words are held in place by their association. 
 One can remember more of them and remember them 
 longer. 
 
 Items that are in any way related help each other to 
 be remembered. Thus, "Man is made for action^' can be 
 fairly well remembered. But "Man is made for action, 
 and not for subtle reasoning," has much more than double 
 the power over the memory, for the two opposing 
 thoughts constantly re-enforce each other. It is like 
 standing on two legs instead of one. They re-enforce 
 even by opposing each other. 
 
 One of the chief tasks of the active mind is to ar- 
 range things in such a way that the associations be- 
 tween them will be strong and helpful. The usual ar- 
 rangement of things is not always the most helpful one. 
 Ordinarily, learning the names of the letters of the Ger- 
 man alphabet is a confusing and uninteresting task. 
 Many students never succeed completely. The differ- 
 ences between the names of the same letters in the two 
 languages seem to be haphazard. But if those differences 
 are grouped into similaTities, they can all be learned cor- 
 rectly and permanently in a few minutes. Thus : 
 English de, ce, de, e, ge, pe, te, become, in German, M, tsa, 
 da, a, ga, pa, ta; and can be learned almost in a trice, if 
 the mind will only look for the similarities and see for 
 itself that wherever the English has a final long e, the 
 sound becomes in German a final long a (as pronounced 
 in English). Wherever English has initial short e , Pf, 
 ely em, en, es, the German has the same sound. Thus 
 
132 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 half of the alphabet is already disposed of;, and in such 
 a way that it cannot be forgotten. The other letters can 
 be dealt with partly in the same way and partly as 
 anomalies. But even the latter are capable of partial 
 association by careful comparison with the English. 
 However imperfect such a help may be it nevertheless 
 represents simply and clearly the principle of reducing 
 the number of separate unrelated things to be learned 
 by arranging them in groups and learning to work by 
 means of the similarities on which the whole groups are 
 based. 
 
 Even among words themselves it is possible to make 
 such groupings, which increase enormously the power 
 of the mind to understand their meanings and remember 
 them. Infer, prefer, ref^r, defer, confer, effefrent , circum- 
 ference and all their relatives can be made useful members 
 of the vocabulary if the common element (fero, to bear) 
 is recognized and used in trying to understand them. 
 This process, of course, at once involves a separate 
 consideration of each of the Latin prefixes, circum, 
 con, de, e, in, pre, re. When this is done there is already 
 in the hands of the student a power which he cannot 
 overestimate. Fero, duco, mitto, and every one of the 
 other simple Latin words becomes tTie center of a whole 
 group. 
 
 It is not always desirable to follow such a line of 
 thought to its limit whenever it comes up ; but it is emi- 
 nently desirable that the mind should cultivate the habit 
 of dealing with its knowledge in this way. 
 
ASSOCIATION: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 133 
 
 Nothing can be more disastrous to healthy intellec- 
 tual progress than the desultory, inaccurate, ineffective 
 thinking built upon facts that are thrown together in 
 the mind without care, that are not arranged in natural 
 groups. One may know that Washington was born in 
 1733 and that good potatoes can be grown on sandy 
 soil; that red-squirrels can tell a good nut from a bad 
 one and that Sir Galahad's strength was as the strength 
 of ten because his heart was pure. Every one of these 
 facts is interesting; but can these four facts be put 
 together so that men can reason about them, and draw 
 conclusions from them? The amount of truth that shall 
 come into the possession of the mind depends on the way 
 in which facts are associated with each other when they 
 are first learned and whenever they are recalled. It is the 
 vast consequences in the way of true and vigorous think- 
 ing and larger grasp that follow upon careful and correct 
 association of facts with each other, that have the deepest 
 interest for the student, and render it worth his while to 
 make the student's sacrifice of time and mental energy 
 to secure such mental associations. 
 
 How likely is it that the student will remember 
 that DeGrama rounded Cape of Good Hope in 1497? 
 An independent traveller is quite likely to lose his life 
 in the hidden crevasses of a glacier, while a group of 
 men connected by a rope gives assurance of almost perfect 
 safety to every member. If by accident, one should fall, 
 it is the rope that brings him back. The date of DeGama's 
 
134 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 feat is much more likely to be remembered if it is tied to 
 the historical rope along with its associates. 
 
 Even if the fact were remembered by itself, what 
 would be the good of it? A student of my acquaintance 
 once crammed for an examination and actually remem- 
 bered by sheer force the date of the rounding of the Cape. 
 But when asked to explain the historical significance 
 of the act, he failed utterly. The fact was worthless 
 to him. How much it would have meant to hi« thinking 
 power, if he had been aware that it was the successful ter- 
 mination of a long series of strenuous efforts to find a 
 southeast passage to India, that it was the climax of a 
 long drama of maritime enterprise which included inci- 
 dentally the discovery of the Madeira and the Canary Isl- 
 ands, Cape Verde and the Coast of Guinea. If his mind 
 could have followed the successive expeditions as each 
 in its turn pressed farther into the unknown South, if 
 he had been impressed with the fact that all this enter- 
 prise had been inspired by the desire to improve the 
 commercial relations with India, he would have placed 
 the bald and lonesome fact in its natural setting, associ- 
 ated it with its own context. And facts in their proper 
 setting are as eloquent as the words in an epic; by them- 
 selves they are as dull as the same words in a dictionar_y. 
 Forty tons of chain links are worth no more than any 
 other old iron unless they are interlinked. The same is 
 true of historioal or any other facts. 
 
 Those who know most are best fitted to learn, 
 chiefly because they have a large body of varied and well 
 
ASSOCIATION: PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS 135 
 
 organized knowledge with which to connect each new 
 fact. It finds itself at home at once in a vast array of 
 closely related facts. Associations are easily formed for 
 it. It strikes the mind at once as an individual member 
 of an already well-known group, as a missing link in an 
 otherwise complete chain of facts, as the effect of a known 
 cause, or as the cause of a known effect, or as a long 
 sought item of knowledge that completes the information 
 on the subject to which it belongs. 
 
 But the student does not need to know much before 
 he begins to exercise his powers of association. To him 
 that hath shall be given. It is to the first crude efforts 
 that perfect skill owes its greatest debt. Deliberate 
 choice of associations for each new fact, after careful 
 consideration of its natural relationships, is what, in the 
 long course of time, makes the powerful thinker and the 
 strong, reliable memory. 
 
136 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 CLASSIFICATION. 
 
 In the last few chapters stress has been laid on the 
 part played by the principle of the association of ideas 
 in all our thinking; and the importance of giving it 
 deliberate attention in the training of one's own mental 
 powers has been duly emphasized. To make the matter 
 more impressive, let us consider the reason why the stu- 
 dent learns things so rapidly wliich the world was so long 
 in learning. In a few weeks he can get a tolerably good 
 outline knowledge of a subject of which whole ages of the 
 world remained entirely ignorant. 
 
 Take as an example Grimm's law of the shifting 
 of consonants only so far as it concerns the relation of the 
 English and German languages. It seems perfectly easy 
 for the student to see that where English has th, German 
 has dy as in thi^. dies; thumb, Daume; thick, dick; that 
 English V and d are displaced by German h and t, as in 
 dove, Tauhe; love, Lidte; shove, sliieben; middle, mittel; 
 widoiv, Witttue. In a few days the ordinary student can 
 develop an elementary knowledge of this principle of the 
 shifting of consonants into a powerful intellectual weapon 
 in the pursuit of knowledge and into a means of deeper 
 insight into the relationship of the two languages than 
 
CLASSIFICATION 137 
 
 he could have dreamed of having before he became aware 
 of the principle. 
 
 Why did the world have to wait until the nineteenth 
 century for Grimm to make a scientific statement of the 
 law that governs consonantal changes in the Indo-Euro- 
 pean languages when a common student can get a toler- 
 ably fair grasp of the subject in so short a time ? There 
 had surely been enough linguistic scholars in the world 
 before his time, and they had done their best to be real 
 scholars. Whj^ was the world^s penetrative power so ob- 
 tuse compared with the insight of a beginner in the study 
 of language? 
 
 The answer is easy ; and the surest way for anyone to 
 avoid intellectual self-conceit is to remember that answer 
 carefully and all the time. In every subject that the 
 student studies, from Grimm^s law' to Geology, the in- 
 formation is carefully classified for him in advance. The 
 hard work is all done. The world was slow in doing it, 
 but it did better than any individual ever did. After 
 Grimm and his predecessors have dug out the facts 
 that are scattered everywhere at random in the languages 
 concerned; after the facts that are alike have all been 
 placed side by side, and the general truth that they then 
 reveal has been stated clearly, it is an easy matter to com- 
 prehend and apply the principle; and that is all the stu- 
 dent does. 
 
 In systematic botany it is infinitely easier to classify 
 plants with the help of the "key" than it was to make 
 the key from a study of the plants. It required many 
 
138 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 generations of able botanists to carry on the collection 
 and comparison of plants before a natural classification 
 was worked out, in which all the plants that really be- 
 longed together were put in the same groups. We would 
 be less inclined to sneer at the stupidity of former times, 
 if we always realized how infinitely difficult it is to under- 
 stand or even be aware of the existence of any subject 
 before the facts relating to it have been associated under 
 the principle of similarity. 
 
 When a little child puts all its yellow flowers in one 
 hand and its blue ones in the other, it has accomplished 
 an act of classification. A single statement, a definition, 
 can now be made that will cover all the flowers in each 
 hand. The child may do no more than hold one of the 
 bunches up to its mother and say "blue"; but it has 
 done a complete act of classification. It has separated the 
 unlike, put together the like, and made a statement that 
 applys to everything that is included in one of the groups. 
 
 Every common name in the language implies classi- 
 fication. Building is a general name for a large variety 
 of structures, but they all have the same name because 
 they have certain qualities in common, and on those com- 
 mon qualities the definition of the group is based. Walls 
 and a roof make a building. Under this broad definition^ 
 smaller groups can be made. House and ham constitute 
 two distinct sub-groups of buildings and the definition 
 of each is based on the use the building is put to. Every 
 time an adjective is added to a common noun, a new 
 group is made. There will be fewer objects in the group, 
 
CLASSIFICATION 139 
 
 but there will be more facts about the group in the 
 definition of it. House includes many more objects than 
 smohe-house. But the definition of the latter deals with 
 more facts. Not only must the walls and roof be men- 
 tioned, the word smohe introduces all the characteristic 
 elemehts of that kind of a house : ham, sausage, dry punk- 
 wood that will make a smoke, the thick odor of the three 
 comibined, the dark inner walls, are all associations intro- 
 duced by the word smoke, and they furnish suggestions 
 for the larger definition. 
 
 Now, if a student has presented to him a carefully 
 classified group of facts a little reflection will bring out 
 the general truths. If some friendly hand lays before 
 him the fruits and flowers of many plants to ^^study" and 
 places in one group the fruits and flowers of the huckle- 
 berry, blueberry, cranberry, heath, American laurel, trail- 
 ing arbutus, wintergreen, swamp pink, and Indian pipe, he 
 can easily, if he keeps his thoughts fixed on the similarities, 
 make a tolerably good definition of the family of heath- 
 worts, in spite of their great differences. Or if he is fur- 
 nished with a badly jumbled heap of fruits and flowers, 
 and with it, good definitions of the families to which they 
 belong, he can, with the help of those definitions, easily 
 sort the pile into separate families of plants. 
 
 If he is furnished with a good list of examples, thus : 
 dun?iy dick, Daume, drei, du, dein, Donner, 
 thin, thich, thumb, three, thou, thine, thunder, 
 he can be easily led to draw a general statement from the 
 facts and make at least a beginning of the rule that gov- 
 
140 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 erns consonantal differences between English and Ger- 
 man. Or if he is furnished with the general statement 
 that under certain conditions wherever initial d occurs 
 in German it is represented by th in English, he can make 
 the list himself; for with the general rule in his posses- 
 sion he can easily pick the illustrations of the rule out of 
 any printed page, no matter how widely scattered they 
 may be. 
 
 But that is not the way the world's knowledge grew; 
 it is only a device to make rapid accumulation of knowl- 
 edge possible for the student and prepare him for the real 
 task. 
 
 The end sought in classification is order, the reduction 
 of a vast number of things into a few hinds. But at the 
 outset the world had neither a classified group of facts 
 from which to draw up general truths, nor the general 
 truths by the help of which to reduce the facts to groups. 
 It was a clear case of not even knowing whether there 
 was anything to know. The facts of the universe are for 
 the most part badly mixed. If nature is at times inclined 
 to write in a legible hand she is likely, a little later, 
 to write something entirely different the other way across 
 the page. Humanity is obliged to gather painfully the 
 facts that nature has scattered and reduce them to the 
 only order in which they can be reasoned about. But 
 usually the facts are so widely scattered that their rela- 
 tionship to each other is not likely to be recognized at 
 all. It was only after the world became profoundly im- 
 pressed with the truth that all things are effects of some 
 
CLASSIFICATION 141 
 
 cause, that all things can be grouped and described by 
 general statements, that the human mind developed the 
 haMt of studying facts. 
 
 When a beginning has once been made, no matter 
 how small or crude it is, progress becomes more rapid 
 and steady until it seems as if nothing could any longer 
 resist explanation. But somehow and from somewhere 
 must come the suggestion that certain things belong to- 
 gether. Three things can he arranged in six different 
 ways, four can be arranged in twenty-four ways ; the seven 
 days of the week can he arranged in 5040 different ways, 
 and the twenty-four letters of the alphabet can be ar- 
 ranged in 620,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 different 
 ways. And until that first, fateful suggestion comes to 
 serve as a starting point, there is never likely to be any- 
 thing but a hopeless jumble of facts, there is no reason 
 for trying to arrange them in one way rather than in any 
 other. 
 
 But while we may not be able to tell why the alpha- 
 bet is arranged in the order in which we learn it and use 
 it in vocabularies we constantly act upon a tacit universal 
 agreement to have it so. For us this particular arrange- 
 ment of the alphabet is not a matter of science but pure 
 habit. We are all obliged to conform to this established 
 habit ; for any one who did not conform to this particular 
 arrangement of the alphabet would lose all intellectual 
 contact with his fellow-men. The alphabet itself could be 
 arranged in several other ways, each of which would have a 
 usefulness of its own. The usual arrangement teaches 
 
142 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 us nothing at all; but its universal use is what makes it 
 possible for us all to use the same dictionaries, in short, 
 for us all to work in harmony. 
 
 It would seem then that one of the most worthless 
 ways to arrange a large number of words or names would 
 be the present alphabetical order, if it were desired to do 
 any reasoning about the facts after they were thus ar- 
 ranged. Apparently the only useful purpose that the 
 alphabetical arrangement of words and names can possibly 
 serve is to make it easy to find any given word, or 
 name, or fact. The value of this arrangement must not 
 be belittled. Only a sm.all proportion of students realize 
 the power which good indexes of all kinds place in their 
 hands, if they will only use them freely for the purpose of 
 gathering together the facts. Only the small minority 
 ever learn the real value of an index in the prosecution 
 of their studies. 
 
 But an alphabetical arrangement of words does teach 
 a good many things that are not considered at all when 
 the arrangement is made. The truth is that it would 
 probably be impossible to arrange any set of facts in any 
 kind of orderly way without discovering afterwards that 
 it reveals truths that were entirely unlooked for. Al- 
 though we know of no good reason, apart from habit, why 
 we should arrange the letters of the alphabet in the usual 
 order, the matter takes an entirely different aspect when 
 we come to group together all the words beginning with 
 a given letter. We place closest together the words that 
 are nearest alike in spelling, beginning with the initial 
 
CLASSIFICATION 143 
 
 letter, and following the same principle for each letter in 
 each word. The result is that a good many "natural 
 groups" of words are formed and wholly incidentally the 
 material is put in good shape to teach some general truth. 
 
 If one is sufficiently alert to look for such groups, 
 it is easy to notice that whole pages of sl dictionary are 
 taken up with words beginning with the single prefix in; 
 but that there are very few words with the prefix in- whose 
 stems begin with b, I, m, p , or r. A study of the words 
 as they are grouped will reveal the fact that in is the 
 original form of the prefix and that it comes from two 
 sources, the Anglo-Saxon, and the Latin, bringing with 
 it special meanings from each source ; that before / the in 
 becomes il, before r it becomes ir, and before &, m, and 
 p , it becomes irn. A study of these facts in turn will 
 lead to reflection upon the assimilation of one letter to 
 the sound of another, so that the organs of speech may 
 have no difficulty in pronouncing them. 
 
 This example seems almost too dry and simple to 
 mention, but it is not so dry and simple as it looks. Given 
 a mind that is awake, every little point like this may 
 become the origin of a whole new field of knowledge. 
 
 Suppose, on the other hand, a student is puzzled to 
 know why get is pronounced with a hard g and gem with 
 a soft g. It is an anomaly and a sore puzzle only until 
 he thinks it worth while to consider the matter from a 
 general point of view. The "reason why" of such a 
 thing must be brought under a rule; and a rule can be 
 drawn only from a classified list of words. The easiest 
 
144 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 thing to do is to go to a dictionary and grasp the whole 
 subject vigorously instead of dabbling merely with get 
 and gem. Even in a common academic dictionary it is 
 no task to see that the initial g is soft before e in the 
 words of Latin origin and hard in those of Germanic 
 origin. 
 
 Of course^ it may not always be the wisest way to 
 search out a particular piece of information. Many 
 of the "rules" that a student could extract from an 
 alphabetical arrangement of words were recognized and 
 carefully written long before he was born. The point 
 I wish to make is that any classification that is valuable 
 in a single respect, is likely to furnish the observant mind 
 with new and unexpected information that was wholly 
 unanticipated when the classification was made. It re- 
 quires close attention to exhaust the information that 
 any classification of facts can suggest. 
 
 A city directory is only a convenient means of find- 
 ing names and addresses. But it can teach a good many 
 important truths about the city it represents. Certain 
 kinds of names are characteristic of certain races of men. 
 The number of O'Briens, O'Haras and McCartys, of 
 Schmidt and Schneider and of Goldstein can be made 
 to indicate roughly the proportion of Irishmen, Germans, 
 German Jews, etc., to the whole population. A moder- 
 ate amount of attention to the streets on which these 
 people live will enable one to locate the colonies of Irish- 
 men, Germans, Eussians, on the accompanying map. In 
 
CLASSIFICATION 145 
 
 the same way the businesss directory easily reveals the 
 location of the wholesale district, the foundries, "news- 
 paper row," and all the other businesses that tend to 
 congregate in sections. 
 
 Let us suppose just as useless a classification as one 
 could well imagine. Suppose that some one, in 1948, 
 should arrange in alphabetical order the names of all 
 the men in the civilized world, using the Christian name 
 instead of the surname as the basis of classification and 
 giving their age and nativity. Would it teach anything 
 at all? He would probably find a considerable number 
 of men whose names would be bunched together because 
 
 their Christian names were all "George Dewey .'^ 
 
 He would find them all about fifty years old and all of 
 American origin, with never a Spaniard among them. 
 The facts would be ready for an inference; and it would 
 probably be that some George Dewey had made an impres- 
 sion on the American world, that numerous baby boys 
 had been named after him, and that the Spaniards felt 
 no friendly interest in him. 
 
 But while it has been shown that any classification, 
 even one most unlikely to be useful for scientific purposes, 
 often reveals important and interesting truths, it must 
 not be inferred that classification is an infallible magi- 
 cian's wand by means of which to bring order out of chaos 
 at once and to discover truth. Arranging objects in any 
 one of the numberless possible ways merely to see if that 
 arrangement will reveal some truth is likely to be useful 
 
146 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 only for the purpose of killing time. It has been already 
 shown that it is impossible to group objects in all the 
 conceivable arrangements. The motive for making a 
 classification of any kind is usually some similarity among 
 objects that has been spontaneously recognized. When 
 once a few objects are recognized to be alike in any re- 
 spect, this similarity furnishes the basis for the first rude 
 attempts at classification. 
 
 Take the earliest written classification of animals — 
 from the book of Genesis. It recognizes as groups, the 
 birds of the air, the beasts of the field, the creeping 
 things on the earth, and the fishes in the sea. This classi- 
 fication is immemorial because it is inevitable, and it will 
 always remain a popular classification for the same rea- 
 son. The first classifications of any objects will be based 
 on the most obvious and striking characters. Birds are so 
 very much alike and so different from all other animals 
 that the group is bound to be recognized. Now in the 
 popular mind the most striking character of birds is the 
 power of flight. But as soon as a systematic effort is 
 made to classify birds with the power of flight as the 
 basis of arrangement, a multitude of difficulties arise. 
 There are birds that can hardly walk or fly, but can swim 
 well ; there are others that can run but can neither swim 
 nor fly; and bats can fly as well as birds. So that while 
 the most obvious character may serve for ordinary pur- 
 poses of classification, it may fail utterly if put to a rigid 
 test. It will not fit some of the animals that certainly 
 
CLASSIFICATION 147 
 
 'belong in the group, and includes animals that just as 
 certainly do not belong there. 
 
 The great importance of classification arises from the 
 fact that a series of objects that have some one character 
 in common are very likely to be alike also in many other 
 respects. Common sense would immediately save its 
 definition of birds by adding other important characters 
 that always seem to be found in combination, and which 
 together make birds what they are. It can easily make 
 a much better definition of a bird by calling it a tooth- 
 less, feathered, egg-laying biped with front limibs modified 
 for flight. Such a definition marks a decided advance. 
 All living birds will answer to some at least of the char- 
 acters. Bats are easily shut out, and so are the lowest 
 mammals, the egg-laying monotremes. 
 
 It appears, therefore, that a classification is likely 
 to be natural and complete in proportion to the number 
 and importance of the characters that can be used in 
 framing it. But the process of reaching such perfection 
 is painfully slow and devious. How shall it be known in 
 advance what characters always occur together, and which 
 are the most important? An animal's mode of locomo- 
 tion may be very important for its "personal purposes; but 
 it may be only a stumbling block to one trying to classify 
 birds accurately. The only thing that can be done is to 
 make a classification of birds on the basis of such simi- 
 larities as are readily recognized. Careful study is bound 
 to reveal other characters associated with those already 
 
148 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 known, for example, that a bird's aorta turns to the 
 right, while a mammaFs turns to the left. 
 
 But, as accurate knowledge slowly increases, even the 
 best of classifications and the definitions based on them 
 seem to break down. It was discovered during the past 
 century that in ancient geological times there were birds 
 with long tails and serried rows of dangerous-looking 
 teeth. The increase of knowledge finally led to an en- 
 tirely different view of birds. They are now known to be 
 closely related to the reptiles and are placed side by side 
 with them in the group Sauropsida. This group is based 
 on the characters which birds and reptiles have in com- 
 mon. The two groups are distinguished from each other 
 in a far more painstaking way than formerly. 
 
 This breaking down of old knowledge does not indi- 
 cate that the method of acquiring it was wrong. It only 
 proves once more that we constantly begin to work with 
 the most obvious facts, and only slowly succeed in reach- 
 ing a perfectly natural classification by penetrating be- 
 hind the most striking appearances. 
 
 Anyone can readily recall instances of how easy it is 
 to be deceived. No boy who ever brushed his bare legs 
 against the stinging nettles would dream of putting those 
 little enemies of his in the same group of plants with the 
 elms and the hop-vine. But while they are so different 
 in appearance, close examination shows that their 
 flowers, fruits and leaves, in fact all the characters that 
 are now regarded as important, prove them to be very 
 
CLASSIFICATION 149 
 
 much alike. In some of the previous chapters it has been 
 pointed out that careful scrutiny is necessary to a right 
 understanding of things. The spontaneous associations 
 that we make among things are always based on striking, 
 easily observed facts. The power of flight is impressive, 
 and greatly unlike the power to walk. To the casual ob- 
 server a tree is very different from an herb in appearance. 
 But sometimes those striking appearances are utterly de- 
 ceiving to one who is seeking the real relationships of 
 plants to one another. 
 
 There is no mechanical way in which the best char- 
 acter can be chosen at the outset for purposes of classi- 
 fication. We start, of necessity, with that which is plain- 
 est, most evident to us at the time. The first steps in 
 any effort at classification are tolerably sure to prove 
 themselves artificial with the later growth of knowledge. 
 But it is only by trying on any given character, just as 
 we try on clothes, that we can be sure that we are on the 
 right track. 
 
 The process of classification looks easy ; but even the 
 slow progress that the world has made in the various de- 
 partments of organized knowledge has taxed to the ut- 
 most the sagacity of the best-trained men. And the end 
 is not yet. Each generation has improved somewhat the 
 classification of plants, until now botanists feel that they 
 have a natural arrangement ; but there is still a great deal 
 to be cleared up. 
 
 In casual thought we constantly pitch upon appear- 
 
150 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 ances as a basis of comparison. Law may still treat the 
 whale as a fish, but science insists that it is mnch more 
 closely related to the mouse. "Common sense" would say 
 that the nettle and some of the other common weeds are 
 fairly close together, but science says the nettle and the 
 elm are relatives. A novice would quite likely begin his 
 work by using the horns of certain animals as a basis of 
 classification, and in a little while he would discover that 
 the character he has chosen is utterly worthless, because 
 the presence of horns would put the male of the deer 
 and sheep in one group and the females of the same 
 species in another. Horns can, of course, be used as a 
 basis of classification, but when the groups are made, they 
 are practically worthless; they do not teach much truth. 
 
 The direction of progress in making a perfect classifi- 
 cation of any set of objects, is toward discovering charac- 
 ters that will reveal the true relationships of the facts. 
 If one such character is once secured, for example, feath- 
 ers as a distinguishing character for birds, and all animals 
 possessing that character are grouped together, it will in- 
 variably 'be found that other very important characters 
 are associated with it. Feathers mean egg-layers and the 
 presence of front wings modified for flight, and an aortic 
 arch that turns to the right. As soon as such a correla- 
 tion of different characters is well established the group 
 must be recognized as a natural one. 
 
 When the mind once habitually associates such a 
 group of natural characters together, it uses it as a means 
 
CLASSIFICATION 151 
 
 of discovery. We feel sure that those things will always 
 be found together. Every feathered creature is assumed 
 to be an egg-layer with a right aortic arch. A good 
 zoologist can tell from a single tooth what kind of an 
 animal carried it around in its mouth; because a given 
 kind of tooth is associated with certain other bodily struct- 
 ures and physical habits. This lends a marvelous power 
 to our thought. It furnishes the basis for inference. 
 
 But the fancied security of a natural classification 
 may receive a rude shock at any time. In the course of 
 time, up from the dim past looms the bird with teeth and 
 long tail. It would seem as if the whole classification of 
 birds would be shattered and that confidence would be 
 displaced by discouragement. 
 
 But instead of being a cause for despair, such ap- 
 parent break-downs of old systems and old definitions, are 
 only the 'beginning of broader views, deeper insight, and 
 the opportunity for a still better expression of all the 
 facts. The presence of teeth, a well-developed tail and 
 other antique characters in fossil birds serves to show 
 still more closely the connection between modern birds 
 and reptiles than the living structures do. It is true that 
 the ancient birds are very different from the modern but 
 those differences all point in the same direction. They 
 teach a great new truth; they enlarge the intellectual 
 vision ; what seems to some like nothing but a rude shock 
 to the stability of our knowledge seems to others like a 
 new revelation. It opens up new intellectual views, as 
 
152 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 lifting the eyes from the ground to the horizon makes a 
 new world for the observer. It must be remembered that 
 classification is only a tool, that truth is the end sought; 
 and that in the very act of overthrowing an old classifica- 
 tion, the mind may be taking a long stride nearer the 
 truth. 
 
 The importance of the general subject of the associa- 
 tion of ideas and its technical expression in the process of 
 classification cannot be sufticiently emphasized in a chap- 
 ter. It will be found to be really the burden of the next 
 chapter, on Memory, as well as most of the others. It 
 lies at the very root of intellectual power. The mere 
 reading of a chapter or two on the subject cannot take 
 the place of constant attention to the process in the stu- 
 dent's daily work. It is not merely dealing with facts, 
 but the way in which he deals with them, that is the test 
 of the student's training. This process of association and 
 classification of facts by means of which truth is brought 
 to the surface cannot be too closely attended to, or too 
 assiduously cultivated. 
 
MEMORY 153 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 MEMORY. 
 
 Of all the intellectual powers, memory is most sus- 
 ceptible to the treatment of quacks, and has suffered 
 most from devices for its improvement. The wonder 
 about memory is, not that it fails to retain so much, but 
 that it succeeds in retaining so much of the countless 
 thousands of mental experiences that the life passes 
 through in the course of years. 
 
 The emphasis that has been laid upon memory in the 
 training of the mind has not been misplaced. The great 
 defects of memory cannot be minimized. But most of 
 the devices for its improvement have led to no permanent 
 good results, because, like quack medicines, they deal 
 mostly with the symptoms and fail entirely to touch the 
 constitutional traits to which the defects are due. The 
 flaws of memory are no worse than the flaws of reasoning. 
 Most of our common, unstudied reasoning is false. But 
 we remain for the most part blissfully unaware of its fatal 
 defects. We make mistakes but do not realize them im- 
 mediately. There is no shock, because the effect of our 
 false reasoning is delayed. We make mistakes and avoid 
 them next time. But when memory fail's on a particular 
 
154 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 point it is a simple, striking fact. We realize the effect 
 of the failure fully because we realize it immediately. 
 
 There is probably no direct cure for the defects of 
 memory. Just as a good physician, in treating many 
 wasting diseases, finds it necessary to let the symptoms 
 take care of themselves while he carefully builds up the 
 general physical constitution in order to develop power 
 to resist and throw off disease; so in the treatment of 
 memory, the real question is not merely one of sheer cling- 
 ing to facts after they have been once secured, but it is 
 a question of the way in which the knowledge is first pre- 
 sented to the mind. 
 
 The careless human mind is engrossed only with the 
 present; it has neither far-reaching mental vision into 
 the future nor apparently any certain means of penetrat- 
 ing again the rapidly growing twilight of the past. The 
 spirit of civilization might be defined as the inspiration 
 to gaze steadily into the future and provide for it. It is 
 only with the growth of civilization that steady anticipa- 
 tion takes the place of prophecy. And all this peering 
 into the future with more or less success is the outcome 
 of remembering past experiences and using them as a 
 basis for our judgments. 
 
 Neither forward-looking nor backward-looking by it- 
 self is of any substantial value. The mind that is con- 
 stantly looking into and picturing the future without test- 
 ing those images of the fancy by the images of the mem- 
 ory is sure to be a mind littered with day-dreams. The 
 
MEMORY 155 
 
 thinking has no effect upon and no relation to the pass- 
 ing life. Vain imaginings, beatific visions, the wild hope- 
 fulness aroused by the uncontrolled mental imagery are 
 always shattered by the dull thuds of cold experience. 
 
 The mind that spends its time and energy recalling 
 the past likewise leaves the practical life unguided. The 
 present life is apparently only an uninteresting by-play 
 of the outer world ; it is moved along and buffeted by cir- 
 cumstances; while the mind broods upon the past and 
 bewails the fact that it is only a memory. It draws 
 neither inspiration nor lessons from it, but merely dwells 
 upon it. 
 
 The competent mind, the mind that helps to mold 
 and control the IndividuaFs present existence, foresees the- 
 probable events of the future and provides for them. And 
 it draws upon experience — memory — for the materials 
 upon which to base its judgments and its acts. It taxes 
 what is known in order to enable it to forecast what is yet 
 unknown. It is perhaps safe to say that one of the prin- 
 cipal reasons why so very small a proportion of human 
 minds are in any sense competent to deal with new prob- 
 lems, new conditions, hitherto unexperienced circum- 
 stances, is because the vast majority of men fail to use 
 the past in trying to understand the future, fail to make^ 
 what is already known explain the unknown that is under 
 immediate consideration. 
 
 Every teacher daily wears away the force of his life 
 trying to make his pupils understand the problem under 
 
156 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 consideration by means of what they have learned before. 
 It is because students do not remember and apply to the 
 new case, what was learned about a former one, that prog- 
 ress is so slow, that every new step has to be taken as if it 
 were one into utter darkness. Students are constantly 
 making translations from foreign languages into English 
 which have no meaning, which are only jumbles of ill- 
 fitting words ; and all because they treat every phrase and 
 clause and sentence as absolutely independent of what 
 stands all around it. It is the past, what is known, that 
 furnishes the only possible explanation of the future, of 
 the unknown. It is the context that gives its vital mean- 
 ing to every word in a sentence, to every sentence in a 
 paragraph. The student who "hangs to the story," who 
 remembers every step that has been taken, in order to make 
 it help explain what is coming — or if he has forgotten it, 
 goes back to recall it for that purpose — can always tell 
 when his translation is correct, and never feels satisfied 
 until it is. What he already knows makes him feel 
 sharply any error and realize keenly the satisfaction of 
 having harmonized each clause and sentence and phase of 
 thought with what has gone before. 
 
 Now, the student wants memory to hold fast the 
 facts for future effect; not to brood upon and mumble 
 over when the teeth have begun to chatter and the power 
 of thought is failing. With this thought uppermost, let 
 us consider the question of memory a little more in detail. 
 
 There are memory-freaks that possess almost super- 
 
MEMORY . 157 
 
 human powers. But they are so unusual that they have 
 no interest for the present discussion. There is no doubt 
 that under the general head of memory are included sev- 
 eral quite distinct ways in which men seek to retain ex- 
 periences that they have once had. But in a brief dis- 
 cussion like this I shall attempt to call attention to only 
 a few important features of the matter which have a 
 direct bearing on the student's voluntary effort to remem- 
 ber. 
 
 Let us take from Hiawatha the passage which 
 describes the young Indian's first hunting trip and make 
 note of the different ways in which it can be treated in the 
 effort to learn it. Noble passages of poetry, dates and 
 names in history, the details of any body of knowledge 
 slip away in spite of strenuous efforts to recall them. If 
 once the method of remembering is fairly considered, the 
 problem of forgetting will take care of itself. 
 
 As Hiawatha walked, his little forest friends besought 
 him not to shoot them ; 
 
 ^'But he heeded not nor heard them. 
 For his thoughts were with the red deer; 
 On their tracks his eyes were fastened. 
 Leading downward to the river. 
 To the ford across the river. 
 And as one in slumber walked he. 
 Hidden in the alder bushes, 
 There he waited till the deer came, 
 Till he saw two antlers lifted, 
 
158 . THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 Saw two eyes look from the thicket, 
 Saw two nostrils point to windward, 
 And a deer came down the pathway, 
 Flecked with leafy light and shadow." 
 
 The most common way of dealing with this passage, 
 in an effort to commit it to memory, would be to handle 
 it as a mere succession of words. They would be learned 
 so that when one word is remembered or spoken, it recalls 
 the next following word, and so on through the whole 
 passage. There is very commonly nothing but a mere as- 
 sociation of words with each other in a certain order. 
 Both children and older people habitually, when they 
 make a voluntary effort to commit a thing to memory, 
 learn and remember it in this way. Each word calls up 
 the next; and if one word is forgotten, or worse still, if 
 several are forgotten, the memory has entirely lost its 
 hold. The only chain of association is broken, and there 
 is but little hope of recovering it at all. 
 
 This is pure memorizing, lip memorizing, by sheer 
 force of will and endless repetition. It is what makes 
 the routine work of so man}^ studies the grinding curse 
 of childhood, and it is the common method of older stu- 
 dents who have never learned the art of thinking. It is 
 this kind of learning, significantly designated by the ex- 
 pression ^^committing to memory," that lends itself so 
 readily to quack treatment. 
 
 But it is just as well to raise the question at once, 
 whether this kind of verbal memory can be trained at all. 
 
MEMORY 159 
 
 There is an urgent feeling that the power of remembering 
 is improved by much "committing to memory." It has 
 been often urged that if a regular practice is made of 
 memorizing passages of poetry and oratory, important 
 historical and other facts, the memory is improved by the 
 process. But that is very doubtful. Of course, the 
 poetry and the facts will be useful. The more one learns 
 thoroughly, the more he will remember in later life. But 
 that is not improving the power of remembering; it is 
 only loading more things into the memory to carry along. 
 It is very doubtful whether ten years of steady effort at 
 mere verbal memorizing would make the memory any 
 more powerful to deal with new facts. 
 
 One may commit to memory the year 1732 as the 
 date of Washington's birth. By sheer force of will it can 
 be attended to so often and so long that it will never be 
 forgotten. In the course of time such a bit of informa- 
 tion becomes a free lance of the memory. It comes back 
 readily, and as it were, at its own sweet will. It is so well 
 'learned" that it often breaks in upon the thought when 
 it has no business there ; when the mind is more properly 
 occupied with other things. But no amount of that kind 
 of memory work is likely to improve one's ability to deal 
 with new facts. ■ 
 
 A change does take place in the course of time, so 
 that the memory, with practice, does become more power- 
 ful ; but the change is not due to the mere force of much 
 memorizing. Even the most bungling kind of practice 
 
160 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 makes the performer more skillful. But the increasing 
 skill is not due to the continuation of the bungling. Im- 
 provement in power of any kind almost invariably means 
 a change of met^wd in the way the thing is done. In learn- 
 ing to hoe potatoes, improvement actually means apply- 
 ing less muscular effort instead of more. Perfect skill 
 merely means the elimination of unnecessary effort and 
 perfect adaptation of every movement to the work to be 
 done. The most skillful workman is never the hardest 
 worker ; he comes out at the end of the day not only with 
 the most and neatest work done, but with the least back- 
 ache. Skill is the substitution of reason in place of brute 
 force. 
 
 What actually takes place when there is any real im- 
 provement in the power to remember, is a radical change 
 in the method of first acquiring new information. If once 
 the mind, instead of merely trying to make certain words 
 hang together in a certain order, concentrates its energy 
 strongly on the successive acts of the little Indian and the 
 deer, a powerful weapon is added to the memory. If a 
 vivid mental pantomime accompanies the effort to learn 
 the words, if the learner clearly pictures to himself the 
 successive movements of the two, feels in a measure what 
 the boy felt, appreciates the significance of the acts of 
 the deer, has a strong sense that all these successive acts 
 are parts of a play that is moving rapidly toward a climax 
 sought by the boy and feared by the deer, the whole 
 method of learning has been changed. The association is 
 
MEMORY 161 
 
 no longer a mere association of words with one another in 
 a certain order ; but of choice and powerful words with a 
 vivid mental picture. When memory is called upon to 
 bring back the passage, it will begin at once to play on 
 these images of the little drama; and they are likely to 
 return in their original order because each act in the 
 drama is felt to be the natural antecedent of the next one. 
 The words are made vivid by association with the vivid 
 images, and are readily recalled because of this associa- 
 tion. 
 
 When once the mind dwells strongly and persistently 
 on the thoughts expressed, those lines of Hiawatha be- 
 come a pleasure instead of a burden. When the thought 
 is the burden of the mind and the words are only means 
 for its expression, whole lines might be lost at first in 
 reciting; but the thought can be picked up again, and 
 then the words come back almost of their own accord. 
 
 This method is no cure-all; it does not provide 
 against carelessness or guarantee perfection. In fact, it 
 is possible to repeat the "substance" of the passage and 
 do no injustice to the poetic imagery, and still not repeat 
 the words accurately at all. Mistakes in quoting are no 
 more justifiable under this method of learning than under 
 any other; but perhaps the temptation to neglect perfec- 
 tion in repeating the words exactly is increased by the fact 
 that the "substance of the story" can be so readily repro- 
 duced. Argument about the matter is out of place. 
 Slovenliness in quoting poetry or repeating facts can never 
 
162 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 be justified by one who has his own intellectual welfare at 
 heart. The best method of training the memory must 
 include training in accuracy as well as facility. 
 
 The true training of memory consists, not in loading 
 it down, but in keeping it unloaded and increasing its 
 power to recall. And the surest way to recall any item of 
 knowledge is by means of the associations which have been 
 formed between it and other facts. 
 
 Little children suffer much in learning the multipli- 
 cation table. Some of that suffering is unavoidable, for 
 no alleviation can be offered on the score of interest or 
 pleasure or beauty. What part of the table is it that the 
 child learns quickly and surely? Learning the fives is 
 always a relief, because there is a simple rule to remem- 
 ber the succession by. In the list of answers there is first 
 a five and then a cipher, constantly repeated. The an- 
 swers have something in common ; they fall under a sim- 
 ple general rule. I have known a little boy to learn the 
 nines in five minutes, after it was pointed out to him that 
 at each step the tens in the answer increased by one and 
 the units figure decreased by one. 
 
 I say he "learned" the nines in five minutes. He 
 could not at once give any answer at random, without 
 thinking ; that only came after longer familiarity with the 
 table. But he was never lost; he had within himself the 
 power to reproduce the table of the nines and find the an- 
 swer wanted. He might have to do some thinking before 
 
MEMORY 163 
 
 he could say that 7x9 = 63; but he always said it after a 
 little consideration. There was a superb confidence in 
 the way in which he would set out upon the task of finding 
 what he wanted. With constant use, he began to remem- 
 ber each product by itself, without the help of the rule ; 
 and now he probably never stops to think of it. But the 
 great value of the simple little rule in first learning the 
 nines, lay in the fact that by means of it, all the facts 
 were at once brought permanently into the jurisdiction of 
 the memory, and in such a way that they could not escape. 
 If they were forgotten, they could be reproduced. 
 
 What is true of the multiplication table is true of 
 the declension of nouns and of the conjugation of verbs 
 in a foreign language, or of any other subject, in any 
 field of the intellectual life upon which thought can be 
 spent. It is temporarily easier to learn a conjugation by 
 rote than to learn the few general rules by means of 
 which the whole conjugation can be built up. The latter 
 process requires much more strenuous thought. In build- 
 ing up a conjugation from rules, a good many things 
 have to be thought about at every step. It is taxing; it 
 requires mental effort. In memorizing things by rote, 
 real thinking is reduced to a minimum. But it is at this 
 critical point that so many students commit intellectual 
 folly; they choose the method that is temporarily easier, 
 at a sacrifice of permanent power. He who tries to learn 
 to swim by straddling a slab will always be a water-fool. 
 He never feels a sense of personal power. 
 
164 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 So with the student. If he is forever trying to re- 
 member things by the way he saw them printed, he is 
 helpless and a hopeless slave. But when once he grasps 
 vigorously the general principles, he has discovered his 
 intellectual self. The spirit of mastery has come over 
 him. It is ever afterward in his power to reproduce any 
 item of knowledge that he needs or wishes. Laws and 
 principles are few; separate facts are innumerable. By 
 prompt mastery of the former, the latter are easily sub- 
 dued, memory is spared and the mind made rich. The 
 great danger of the scholar is inability to recover again 
 what he has once learned. Rapidity and directness of 
 recall are matters of comparatively subordinate impor- 
 taneo: they are easily developed by constant use of the 
 facts. 
 
 The student may as well accept the truth of the 
 German proverb and act upon it: "Aller Anfang ist 
 schwer,'' Every beginning is hard. The teacher who 
 seeks to make a student's task easy by avoiding the gen- 
 eral principles that underlie a subject not only deceives 
 himself; he is a public criminal. The student who shys 
 at a strong effort to master the rule, and prefers to learn 
 by rote, is permanently depriving himself of the pleasure 
 that comes of wielding intellectual power. 
 
 It would be very comfortable if every loaded wagon 
 could be started from an inclined plane. A span of young 
 horses might give so much less trouble in the breaking if 
 it were made easier for them to walk and pull than to 
 
MEMORY 165 
 
 stand still. But they would be more stupid in old age 
 than in their youth. Xo right start is easy ; no more for 
 the student than for a dumb beast. 
 
166 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 A GOOD MEMORY DEPENDS ON GOOD THINKING. 
 
 If what has been said in the last chapter is true, the 
 great increase in the power of memory which often comes 
 to a faithful student results from transferring the mental 
 energy from the succession of mere words to the thoughts 
 expressed by those words. The grasp of the memory de- 
 pends on the mental grasp of the thought. And thought, 
 to be cohesive, must make every fact a part of some great- 
 er whole, must bring it under some rule or general law. 
 Real increase in the power to remember means an impor- 
 tant change in the whole attitude toward facts. 
 
 It is extremely interesting to watch a good student, 
 in any ordinary recitation, recite first what he has al- 
 ready prepared, and afterwards attack a passage of a 
 foreign language which he has never studied before. 
 Even in the best of students there is a chronic, inherent 
 tendency to lapse from sharp and clear-cut thinking to 
 mere remembering. In reciting what he has already pre- 
 pared the tendency constantly is to repeat the translation 
 just as it was made in the first place. There is no vigor- 
 ous thinking. It is a case of mere old-fashioned verbal 
 memory, and the result is that the student repeats all his 
 
GOOD MEMORY DEPENDS ON GOOD THINKING 167 
 
 mistakes as well as his successes, just as he made them 
 when he studied the lesson. 
 
 Now watch him when he assaults a passage never 
 read before. A different mental tone is roused at sight 
 of it. The lion in him begins to stir. The spirit of mas- 
 tery comes over him. He summons all his mental forces ; 
 there are all the signs of mental labor. He is thinking 
 hard. The translation is crude enough, but there is a 
 vigor and freshness about the mental movement, an at- 
 mosphere of energy about it that is charming, after the 
 listless machine-like process of repeating a prepared les- 
 son. 
 
 It is when the student ceases to think and only tries 
 to "remember," that he falls into the rut of verbal mem- 
 ory. If the same student, always assuming that he is a 
 good one, after preparing a lesson, uses all the knowledge 
 he already has of it in order to understand it again instead 
 of merely trying to remember it, he will penetrate deeper 
 into the meaning of the passage every time he goes over 
 it. Such a mental attitude is inspiring ; only it is slow in 
 coming to birth, and in constant danger of being stifled by 
 verbal memorizing. From whatever point of view the 
 matter is approached, the question of improving the power 
 to remember invariably leads to the answer that the only 
 real solution lies in better, clearer, more vigorous think- 
 ing. 
 
 The famous and often-quoted case of Thurlow Weed 
 may as well be pressed once more into service. He was a 
 
168 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 great New York editor and politician; and his calling 
 made him feel ver}^ keenly the defects of his memory. He 
 could not remember the faces and names of the many men 
 he met; the happenings of the moment did not make a 
 lasting impression on him. He conld not recall things 
 which were important to him afterwards. 
 
 He finally resolved to review, at the end of each day, 
 the happenings of that day, and so accustom himself to 
 recall more surely and accurately what he had seen and 
 done. In short, he would improve his memory. He 
 adopted the practice, which he kept up for fifty years, of 
 telling his wife every night the history of the day's do- 
 ings. And he became a marvel to himself. He could re- 
 member faces and names, could give the substance of what 
 he had written and said and could tell what he had seen; 
 and he could do it all easily. In his case there could be 
 no question about the marvelous improvement in the pow- 
 er to remember. The secret of such a power would be 
 worth much fine gold to most men of the world as well as 
 to scholars both the ripe and the immature. 
 
 We are concerned with what really caused the im- 
 provement. Could Thurlow Weed remember the details 
 of Tuesday better merely because he had exerted his 
 memory in rehearsing to his wife the happenings of Mon- 
 day? Prof. William James has doubtless given the true 
 explanation of Weed's increased power to remember. He 
 has pointedly remarked that the improvement of memory 
 was really an improvement in attention and observation. 
 
GOOD MEMORY DEPENDS ON GOOD THINKING 169 
 
 The fact that when night came he would call upon him- 
 self to relate what had happened during the day had a 
 very stimulating effect upon his attention throughout the 
 day. It caused his intellect to dance a lively attendance 
 upon everything that happened as it came aJorig, to per- 
 form that very important act of reflection upon everything 
 that happened just as soon as it was over with, which re- 
 moved the fatal blur from the first impression and made 
 it forever vivid. 
 
 The systematic, abbreviated nightly review of all 
 that happened during the day gave the final touch of 
 permanence to that day's experience. It made the day's 
 experience more valuable to him by the calm reflections it 
 induced, and the opportunity it gave him of comparing 
 •and connecting the facts of that day with the rest of the 
 best and most important experiences of his life. It was 
 not sheer practice in recalling that wrought the change in 
 him. It was a change of method. By habitually applying 
 his thinking powers to the details, as they occurred, his 
 experiences always left clear impressions, and the imme- 
 diate and regular review fixed them, organized them and 
 associated them with his general experiences. 
 
 A day's experience is comparatively safe in any man's 
 memory, if it is treated as Weed treated the details of liis 
 life. There was no mystery about his ability to remem- 
 ber names and faces and all other things both long and 
 well. It was doubtless a case of strenuous application of 
 thinking powers which are usually more than half asleep. 
 
170 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 The fateful influence of the first impression we re- 
 ceive of anything, upon our whole later attitude toward 
 the information then acquired, has been already dwelt 
 upon. An error in observation, inadequate comprehen- 
 sion, a misinterpretation at the outset, makes accuracy, 
 clearness and stability a practical impossibility afterwards. 
 The first impression propagates itself with all its defects; 
 and plants itself so firmly that it can be removed or im- 
 proved only by a violent mental wrench. It is as difficult 
 as the eradication of a bad habit. Most of the experi- 
 ences of life aside from those of daily routine, are not 
 usually repeated ; and unless they are surely and correctly 
 fixed they are lost or valueless. 
 
 The student's task is to seek deliberately and by 
 every available means, to make the first impression im- 
 pressive. If he fails to do this his knowledge will have 
 but little passing value and no future value whatever. It 
 will be only mental litter. He cannot set up the defense 
 of the old lady whom the minister asked on Monday what 
 help she had gained from the sermon on Sunday. She 
 had to admit that she did not remember anything; but 
 she cleared herself with a figure of speech. The clothes 
 that she had been washing no longer held any of the 
 water, but they were clean; so she had forgotten what 
 was said, but she was better for what she had heard. 
 The student cannot afford to get only the passing tempo- 
 rary effect of study and lose the facts immediately so 
 that he can never recover them. 
 
GOOD MEMORY DEPENDS ON GOOD THINKING 171 
 
 There are two ways in which one may seek to grasp 
 a subject or the task of a day. A novel, to be an artistic 
 success, must proceed by steady progress toward a climax, 
 and yet the elements of uncertainty must be great enough 
 to keep the reader's interest keyed up. The zest of life 
 itself comes largely from the fact that we can plan for it 
 only in part. It would be barren of its best influence if 
 the future could be fully foreseen or if it were utterly be- 
 yond our ken. It is the delightful uncertainty tempered 
 with perpetual hope that makes life what it is and keeps 
 us active. In our reading and in our other pleasurable 
 activities we are like the little bear in the story : "We like 
 to be made nervous." If this were the student's chief 
 aim he would do well to seek only the temporary impres- 
 sion for the sake of the feeling it produces. 
 
 But his aim is solid, permanent acquisition. To re- 
 turn to the novel, what the student wants is to grasp it 
 as a plot, a structure, and a work of art. He wants to 
 see what relation each part bears to the whole. He wants 
 to "see the wheels go 'round.'' To this end he would do 
 well to read the end of the story first. Then he would 
 have the result of all the sentiment and passion and 
 agony and what not in mind as he reads each detail. He 
 would then be able to read everything in the light of the 
 final outcome, and Judge of the relative value and see the 
 relation of each part to the whole. This method would 
 largely eliminate feeling from the task, but it would give 
 a much stronger mental grasp of the whole and of each 
 part at a single reading. 
 
172 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 It has been said of Sir Henry Maine, the author of 
 Ancient Law, that he could tear the heart out of a book 
 at a single reading. It was also true of him that his 
 thought was clear and his memory good. At bottom the 
 two powers are really one. The power to retain in mem- 
 ory the contents of a book, depends entirely on the power 
 to grasp its contents when it is read. The masterful 
 reader has a masterful memory. 
 
 It is interesting to watch the development of mental 
 power in a good student. He may not be conscious of 
 what is taking place within him; he may only come to 
 feel, in the course of time, that he has become a master 
 in the art of learning. But the process involves a com- 
 plete change of front towards the facts that he tries to 
 learn. Instead of dwelling upon and trying to remember 
 each detail separately as it comes up, each paragraph as 
 he reads it, each word and clause as he translates it, with- 
 out reference to what has gone before or what is coming 
 after, he learns in time to grasp the subject as a whole. 
 His mind searches for and clings to the general truth, 
 to the underlying principle, and tries to understand each 
 detail in its relation to the whole. The increased vitality 
 of his memory is due to this powerful habit of grappling 
 at the earliest possible moment with the whole of the 
 subject, and thinking about it as a whole while he deals 
 with the details. 
 
 Every powerful scholar, whose memory is true to 
 him, possesses this power of seizing at once upon the es- 
 
GOOD MEMORY DEPENDS ON GOOD THINKING 17a 
 
 sence of what is read or heard or seen; and by means of 
 this clear and sweeping mental grasp he is able to cling- 
 successfully to a vast body of details that would otherwise 
 make no impression and be utterly lost. Of course, this 
 power comes very slowly — like everything else that is 
 worth having — its soil is long study and broad training. 
 
 A student does not need to be a philosopher to start, 
 with, in order to acquire this power. He only needs to 
 avail himself of what he has. If he is dissecting the- 
 pneumo-gastric nerve of a cat he can cut and pick and 
 peer a whole day and be no wiser when he quits than 
 when he began; and he can forget immediately every- 
 thing he has done. But if he traces the nerve to the 
 medulla oblongata and then to its extremities in lungs 
 and stomach and heart and all the time keeps thinking 
 about the parts that are connecM hy it, his knowledge of 
 the nerve when he gets through, will be organized into^ 
 a system. 
 
 The right way to approach any subject or any day's 
 lesson or any fact is to prepare the mind for its reception 
 by a review of what has gone before and is already known. 
 The student who does not think over yesterday's work 
 before he begins that of to-day, who does not think over 
 his dissection of the nervous system of the bird that he 
 has studied, before he begins to dissect the nerves of the- 
 rabbit which he has not studied, fails to make use of the^ 
 "flying start." He fails to prepare himself to understand 
 what is coming. An honest review places the mind in a. 
 state of expectant attention. 
 
174 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 The next step is to forecast as far as possible what 
 is to be expected when the advance is made. If the sub- 
 ject is a translation, the best thing that can be done to 
 increase both speed and accuracy, is to read the whole 
 passage at sight without help of grammar or dictionary. 
 This preliminary struggle to understand what is new has 
 a double effect. It puts to the severest possible test what 
 the student already knows ; and even though only an occa- 
 sional word or clause is understood, it gives invaluable 
 help in understanding the drift of the work when it comes 
 to be more laboriously done. Even the most ignorant 
 road-builder knows enough to blaze the trees through the 
 woods before he begins the slower work of clearing. By 
 doing so he gives himself direction. 
 
 When the same plan is followed in study, the intel- 
 lect is thoroughly awakened to the problem; and it acts 
 much more vigorously in assaulting it. The few gleams 
 of light that penetrate the dense unknown put the mind 
 not only in a waking but a working state. This first inde- 
 pendent reading becomes by practice more valuable be- 
 cause it becomes more thorough and satisfactory. With 
 the known thoroughly reviewed and the unknown given 
 a good preliminary survey, the new task becomes interest- 
 ing because the elements for its successful solution are 
 present. The past is thoroughly understood, the nature 
 of the task ahead is in a measure comprehended and the 
 mind itself is in a high state of activity. 
 
 What is true of language study is true of mathe- 
 
GOOD MEMORY DEPENDS ON GOOD THINKING 175 
 
 matics or history, or of the more practical-looking prob- 
 lems of the laboratory or of the great and difficult prob- 
 lems of the thoroughly trained, original, scientific investi- 
 gator. The student who does not and cannot get a fore- 
 cast of what he is studying, who does not at the earliest 
 moment get hold of the controlling thought of his sub- 
 ject, may not be an idler, but is an aimless worker. 
 
 What has all this to do with memory? What is 
 thoroughly understood in the getting and is carefully 
 thought over afterwards will be remembered. Memory 
 will hold safely what is committed to her in baskets woven 
 of the tough fibres of thought. 
 
 Of course there is difficulty connected with the 
 method of study suggested above. The temptation to 
 which man most readily yields is the temptation to pres- 
 ent convenience; and thinking is another name for stren- 
 uous endeavor. Effort to secure something apparently 
 distant is the rock that wrecks the ambitions of all human- 
 ity, except that of the thousandth man. But the general 
 who did not plan his campaign could not meet success- 
 fully the manoeuvres of his enemy. The business man 
 who did not draw on his experience to form his judgments 
 about the future, and did not forecast the future before 
 entering it with business risks, would be doomed to feed 
 on the thistles of disappointment. The student who 
 does not bring up all he knows to bear upon the problem 
 that is ahead and does not seek to get some understand- 
 ing of the nature of what is to come, is whipped before he 
 
176 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 begins. He may recite a lesson,, he may pass an examin- 
 ation, he may get a diploma, but he is not developing in- 
 tellectual power. 
 
 One phase of this subject has been several times men- 
 tioned but has not been fully developed. In order to 
 transform anything that is thoroughly understood into a 
 permanent acquisition that can be readily reproduced in 
 all its original completeness whenever it is wanted, after- 
 thought is absolutely necessary. Children and most 
 grown people are not given to reflective afterthought. 
 The experiences of the moment pass by and are never pur- 
 posely recalled. What is read leaves only a vanishing im- 
 pression. All things seem to be obliterated by what fol- 
 lows next. 
 
 Each passing thought, whether it is only casual or 
 the result of careful study, has a more or less marked tem- 
 porary effect. But the everlasting changes that go on 
 in thought wipe out what has gone before; and generally 
 the fading process is rapid. Details go first, and then 
 the larger outlines, until nothing is left except the re- 
 membrance that something has been forgotten. 
 
 The student's only safety lies in re-consideration of 
 each subject at the earliest possible moment. After- 
 thought, to be effective in fixing things permanently in 
 the mind, must be performed while even the details are 
 yet fresh and have not yet suffered from the perpetual 
 flow of thought. The truth of this statement needs no 
 corroboration. It lies at the door of everyone's experi- 
 ence. 
 
GOOD MEMORY DEPENDS ON GOOD THINKING 177 
 
 The student to be sure, whose time is yet divided 
 among several subjects, who hurries from one topic to 
 the consideration of another several times each day, is 
 almost compelled to drop a subject entirely as soon as it 
 is presented to him. This, coupled with the normal re- 
 luctance to do a thing until it can no longer be avoided 
 deprives most students of a habit which would strengthen 
 tenfold their hold upon what they have learned. It was 
 the immediate and deliberate review that made Thurlow 
 Weed alert during the day, and gave the regular oppor- 
 tunity for afterthought which always distinguishes knowl- 
 edge thus dealt with from the common passing experiences 
 that are not promptly and purposely recalled. This 
 prompt afterthought, while the details are yet fresh, is 
 the salvation of knowledge. 
 
 Most students, at the conclusion of a period of work 
 or recitation, close their books and intellects, too, upon 
 the subject that has been dealt with. Notebooks are 
 trusted to retain what has been heard. In the laboratory, 
 the mind utterly lets go of the subject as soon as the 
 hands let go of the tools. There is not the slightest effort 
 at reflection upon what has been done, until preparation 
 for the next sitting becomes absolutely compulsory. But 
 what is the comparative value of thinking over and ex- 
 panding the notes on a lecture or reviewing a lesson, if so 
 long a time has elapsed that all the details and perhaps 
 even the chief bearings of the subject have become hazy 
 or been lost ? One would be considered foolish for allow- 
 
178 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 ing a cucumber to rot before pickling it, because its good- 
 ness consists in its freshness. But we do not call our- 
 selves or allow others to call us anything for neglecting 
 to fix the new facts while they still have vitality. We 
 carry so large a part of our knowledge under our arms in- 
 stead of under our scalps because the notebooks save us 
 from the apparent necessity of immediate review and 
 afterthought. We think that what is written is preserved. 
 
 The notorious ineffectiveness of cramming, so far as 
 real intellectual training is concerned, is due to the fact 
 that there is a large amount of absorption without steady 
 afterthought. There is no time left to fix facts by re- 
 view. Cramming consists in the vigorous use of what 
 some one has aptly called minute-hand memory. 
 
 Nothing that passes into the human mind is exempt 
 from the fading process. The most soul-stirring thoughts 
 and the most startling experiences become dim in time, 
 and even if they are not forgotten, grow more and more 
 ghostlike. Only those things are permanently well re- 
 membered which float in the great current of daily 
 thought. If a subject is constantly dwelt upon by the 
 mind, its details are always well remembered. 
 
 This leads us directly to the fact that sooner or later 
 every worthy mind becomes dominated by one or a few 
 great truths, one or at most a few great principles. When 
 this condition is reached, the individual's knowledge be- 
 comes an organic system. Facts cluster around a great 
 truth because of the bearing it has on them and which 
 
GOOD MEMORY DEPENDS ON GOOD THINKING 179 
 
 they have on it. Not only are one's thought and studies 
 and observations then all directed toward testing and ex- 
 emplifying the one great central truth and toward the 
 search for facts which relate directly to it ; but the casual 
 products of experience, all that is incidentally read, heard 
 or observed, is made to contribute toward and is brought 
 into some sort of connection with the dominating central 
 truth. Something of value is extracted from nearly all 
 apparently useless scraps of information and is absorbed 
 into the growing structure of thought. Under these 
 conditions facts are readily recalled, because they are for- 
 ever eddying somewhere in the great and steady current 
 of thought. Such a great idea, dominating one's think- 
 ing, acts like a magnet; it picks up and makes valuable 
 facts and bits of truth which otherwise would be passed 
 without notice. 
 
 I believe that every student in whom the leaven of 
 the intellectual life is really working is, sooner or later 
 in his development seized with a great truth. All his 
 thinking powers are bent upon its unfolding. All that 
 he has hitherto experienced or learned is brought to bear 
 upon it in some way, all that he sees and hears and reads 
 bears out his faith in it or in some way throws light upon 
 it. His whole life, both past and present, clusters round 
 it. His best powers of expression are devoted to its 
 service, and it seems to him to be the masterpiece of his 
 life. He may be aware of what is going on within him, 
 and mav feel that this is his real intellectual birth. 
 
180 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 Later he may learn to his chagrin that his "new 
 great truth" is as old as the first rosy streaks in the dis- 
 tant dawn of civilization, that it has always been known, 
 and treated through the ages as a commonplace of human 
 thought ; or that it has been exploded in every new gener- 
 ation and its falsity made plain to all save the beginners 
 in intellectual life. He may outgrow this first intellec- 
 tual love, and even wish to forget it. But the memory 
 of it will remain with him throughout the years of his in- 
 tellectual power. It marks the beginning of his real men- 
 tal life. The vigor which that first big idea roused and 
 the latent mental power that it called into conscious ac- 
 tivity are never lost again if the intellectual life is healthy 
 and can find other great ideas to feed upon. Under such 
 conditions memory produces wonders that are undreamed 
 of in a mental life that fritters itself away upon isolated 
 fragments of thought. 
 
 The thinking world as a whole has alternating periods 
 of lethargy and of sublime inspiration. When it is seized 
 by a great idea it fairly leaps into powerful, progressive 
 thought. Before 1859, there was a long period of eddies 
 and cross-currents. But when Darwin hurled the princi- 
 ple of Natural Selection into the world of thought, the 
 lion was aroused. Earth never saw so great intellectual 
 enthusiasm, such great progress in so short a time. The 
 world^s thought about every serious subject has been 
 more or less re-shaped by its influence. And the world^s 
 memory awoke. Old and half-forgotten facts and whole 
 
GOOD MEMORY DEPENDS ON GOOD THINKING 181 
 
 systems of neglected knowleclge whirled into place as part 
 of the great system. New, almost undreamed of fields 
 were explored effectively. The world mind is becoming 
 more and more judicial toward this great, upheaving 
 thought. The first fright and the first enthusiasm have 
 gone. But the world's thinking will never again be like 
 what it was before the principle of Natural Selection was 
 dropped into it. The world's memory of its old facts has 
 become permanently vivid because they have taken on a 
 new significance, they have been worked into an intellec- 
 tual pattern. 
 
 Darwin himself was an illustrious example of the 
 truth that this chapter has sought to bring out. Nearly 
 his whole life was devoted to the development and proof 
 of one great principle, and to tracing its consequences. 
 Everything he met in the way of information was brought 
 to bear upon his theory. He searched books and sought 
 information from living men and labored incessantly on 
 original investigations, all for one purpose. He brought 
 all nature and the intellectual labors of all men of all 
 times under tribute to his one great thought. Will any 
 fact of value be lost to such a man? He will doubtless 
 forget many things, many more perhaps than most other 
 people ever learn. Things are not remembered merely 
 for the sake of remembering. But the reproductive mem- 
 ory brings back the facts again when the mind returns to 
 the great subject upon which it has spent the vigor of its 
 youth and young maturity. And when the facts come 
 
182 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 back, they return in natural groups because they were 
 welded at the outset into a great chain of thought. What 
 is true of the memory of a great thinker must sooner or 
 later become true of the memory of the humblest suc- 
 cessful student. The cultivated memory leans for its 
 strength upon general truths to which all its separate facts 
 cling. 
 
 It is possible for any one, under any circumstances, to 
 remember a few things well by constantly recalling them, 
 even though they have no vital connection in thought 
 with other things. But one of the chief desirable results 
 of a good education is the formation of systems of 
 thought, getting possession of a great truth or principle 
 and regarding all facts in the light of it. This habit re- 
 sults in a vast and lasting power to recall all facts in their 
 rational relations. Under the sway of thought memory 
 becomes both voluminous and accurate. 
 
REASONING: ILLUSTRATIONS 183 
 
 CHAPTER XVIL 
 reasoning: illustrations. 
 
 It has been truly said that any fool can reason. The 
 poorest specimen of unskilled workman, incompetent from 
 lack of sense and a breaker of tools from awkwardness, 
 can associate the twelve-o'clock dinner-horn with "quitting 
 time and something to eat." There is in this case neither 
 dullness of perception nor want of will. 
 
 But a horse can do just as severe intellectual work as 
 this. One fall I drove five horses to a gang plow on a 
 prairie farm in Dakota. We went our weary rounds all 
 day without much sign of intelligence on anybody's part. 
 We usually reached the far end of the farm on our last 
 round about sundown. As a rule there was little intellec- 
 tual stimulus in the ashy blue sky and brown prairie, but 
 when the sun wedged itself between the two on the horizon 
 there was beauty in Dakota. When we reached the end 
 of the furrow and the plowshares rose out of the earth, 
 even the tired horses stood still and lifted their heavy 
 heads to gaze at the western sky. Perhaps no poetic fancy 
 flashed through their brains; even the driver made short 
 work of fancy then. But when the team turned home- 
 ward and started down the last furrow the horse-mind be- 
 gan to make associations. 
 
184 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 One of the horses was an iron gray, the biggest horse 
 and the biggest dunce in the team. He did not know 
 enough to "stand over" when any one was feeding him; 
 did not know enough to keep his feet off the driver's in 
 the stall. But amazing intelligence appeared at sundown. 
 No sooner did he feel the tightening bit that meant "turn 
 into the furrow" than it dawned on him that the stable, 
 with rest and food, was half a mile away. 
 
 On that turn he always led the way with a semi-mi- 
 raculous action of his long legs and clumsy feet. He al- 
 most pulled the other four horses and the plow and driver 
 half a mile at greater speed than I could worry out of 
 him under the lash at any other time of day. He always 
 reached the stable in a wringing sweat. The great gray 
 beast looms up before me now, at the end of fifteen years ; 
 the quality of his intelligence was so impressive that even 
 now, whenever I think of him, I brace myself in imagina- 
 tion against the side of the stall in physical argument 
 with the brute that had "reasoning power" enough to 
 recognize quitting time, but could not bide his time about 
 getting home. 
 
 Much of the reasoning that we do is of the same na- 
 ture as That done by the stupid laborer when he hears the 
 dinner-horn, and by the stupid horse. In such cases, sev- 
 eral things occur together so often that they become 
 closely associated in memory. Apparently there is little 
 more involved here than association by contiguity, which 
 mental power men and beasts no doubt possess in com- 
 mon. 
 
REASONING: ILLUSTRATIONS 185 
 
 The kind of reasoning displayed here is adapted 
 to the dead and dreary routine of any kind of life that 
 knows no change but that of endless repetition. In 
 these conditions it is effective, and enough to secure 
 the practical comfort of man and beast. There is no 
 mental strain in such a mental performance, nor any 
 spiritual exuberance either. The joy is a low-grade, 
 physical one. 
 
 It is the reasoning of routine, but not of emer- 
 gency. The horn might blow near the noon hour be- 
 cause the fat in the pan had caught fire and the house 
 was burning; or the driver might conclude to make 
 one more round in the gloaming in order to finish a 
 "land." Such occasional accidents severely jar the com- 
 fortable mental combination. But subsequent regular- 
 ity with which certain things always occur together and 
 the strong force of habit immediately restore the men- 
 tal equanimity. 
 
 But if the "accidental variations" become so nu- 
 merous as to make the habitual associations uncertain, 
 man and beast may both lose hold of the real connections 
 between things. Instinct and the force of habit- reduce 
 enormously the tax upon our reasoning powers because 
 they take absolute control of all the routine elements 
 of our lives, and make them steadily and monotonously 
 repeat themselves. But what a crisis comes when a 
 sudden and unannounced change of the common cir- 
 cumstances arises, what ridiculous situations habit then 
 
186 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 creates, — before attention has been attracted and rea- 
 son has had opportunity to reconsider the general situ- 
 ation ! It is when such accidental variations become 
 common that a higher type of reasoning is required. The 
 higher life is not merely one of routine, but of emergen- 
 cies also, of new combinations leading to new results. It 
 is the power to anticipate and provide for these that marks 
 the higher levels of human reasoning. 
 
 A few illustrations will help to make clear the in- 
 creasing complexity of problems that the mind has to 
 deal with. If a dog should lie down near his master 
 while the latter digs a hole in the ground, even the dog 
 would connect his master's presence in the hole with 
 the dirt that flies out at measured intervals. If he 
 should afterwards happen upon the hole in his master's 
 absence he would probably not say to himself, "Ah! a 
 hole; this pile of dirt came out of it; this is the work 
 of man." A dog may be able to generalize in this fashion 
 but we have no proof that he would do so. But it would 
 be very dog-like for him to mount the heap of dirt, cock 
 his head and ears, and look into the hole for his master. 
 The hole and the dirt suggest his master because his 
 master is associated with those things in the dog's ex- 
 perience. The next time he sees two of the elements 
 in the combination — the hole and the dirt — he looks for 
 the third, his master. 
 
 If a man should see a hole with a pile of dirt be- 
 side it, he would infer that someone had been digging 
 
REASONING: ILLUSTRATIONS 187 
 
 there, and would feel very certain about it. If he should 
 see dirt suddenly flying out of the hole he would infer 
 at once that a man was there and at work. Flying dirt 
 would be the "proof.'' It is an effect, and the usual 
 agent, a man, is assumed without hesitation as the 
 cause. The observer might peer into the hole; but it 
 is not likely that he would do it for the purpose of con- 
 vincing himself that a man was there. He knows that 
 well enough already. If he looks in, it will probably be 
 merely to find out what man it is, and why the work 
 is being done. 
 
 The inference that a man is working below is based 
 on frequent previous observations of the same combina- 
 tion. Man, hole, flying dirt, have all been seen before. 
 It is always probable — practically certain — that com- 
 binations observed before, will hold true again; when 
 part of the facts are observed the rest are inferred. 
 The certainty is due to the observer's previous experi- 
 ence of the same kind of thing. 
 
 When we come to deal with cases, however, in which 
 there has been no previous direct observation, the prob- 
 lem is no longer so simple and direct; and what is worse, 
 the mind may not recognize that there is any problem 
 at all. Suppose, for example, a great cliff of hard,, 
 flinty quartzite like that on the shore of Devil's Lake, 
 Wisconsin, with a big talus of broken rock sloping away 
 at its base. Now I will venture the assertion that very 
 many men and women, not necessarily stupid, have seen 
 
188 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 them both, and have thought of the former as being very 
 high, and of the latter as extending to the water; but 
 without ever thinking of cliff and talus together and 
 their connection with each other; and much less have 
 they come, by seeing these, to do any general thinking 
 about cliffs and the inevitable talus of rock and soil at 
 their base. The mere fact that two things are close 
 together gives no assurance that the mind will work out 
 any connection between them. There stands the cliff 
 and there lies the talus, dead, inert, staring facts. 
 
 But if any untutored man of fairly good intellect 
 were asked, "Why is the talus there?" if, in other 
 words, he were startled by the suggestion of a connection 
 between them, the chances are that he would give a cor- 
 rect answer, that the pieces had broken and fallen from 
 the face of the cliff, and had heaped up in a sloping mass 
 at its foot. He would look, and then he would see above 
 him, pieces large and small, loose or nearly so, and he 
 might then even stand in expectation of seeing one fall. 
 Everything would be full of suggestion to him, and 
 the relation of the talus to the cliff would be perfectly 
 plain, although he might never have seen the combina- 
 tion before. But the directness with which he reaches 
 the conclusion, and its apparent certainty are based upon 
 lifelong previous experience. Observations that have 
 left no tangible record in the memory, the bricks and 
 luortar of unremembered experience form the road-bed 
 of his way of thinhing. He may not recall at all that 
 
REASONING: ILLUSTRATIONS 189 
 
 lie has seen thousands of things fall, as wood from a 
 corded heap, or sand on a steep incline; none of these 
 things may be remembered when he looks at the talus, 
 but all of these experiences, unwittingly to him, have 
 been built into the foundation of his thinking. They 
 form the basis of "common sense'^ by means of which he 
 reaches his conclusions. 
 
 For us the chief interest of the above examples lies 
 in the fact that nearly all men would attend spontane- 
 ously to dirt flying from a hole in the ground, because 
 the process goes on before their eyes. All they need to 
 do is to look; it is no tax on tHe brain. But probably 
 comparatively few who have seen that cliff and talus 
 have ever thought at all about the relation of the one 
 to the other. Everything is at perfect rest as if things 
 had been thus since the morning of creation; and the 
 mind remains a blank. A singing mosquito can always 
 get a hearing; but the vast and silent witnesses of na- 
 ture are the last to get attention. They have no bills 
 to puncture us with ; we have no special organ — no higher 
 sense — that lets in the mighty truths. They come but 
 slowly by the devious and much obstructed paths of men- 
 tal effort. 
 
 But even in this problem of the cliff and its talus, 
 the elements are simple and close at hand. When time 
 enough has been allowed the rest is easy thinking. Eea- 
 soning on the subject is likely to be right reasoning. But 
 suppose the case of a rock concerning which nothing is 
 
190 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 known nor can be directly inferred — the time when 
 it came, the place that it came from, and the way in 
 which it came — time, space and the necessary force all 
 a mystery. 
 
 There is a big black rock — "Lone Eock" — a thing 
 of many tons that lies partly exposed and no one knows 
 how deeply imbedded high up on the shrubby bank of 
 a mountain stream in a little canyon in California, with 
 no other rock like it in the neighborhood. The loose 
 rocks in the creek and on the banks are easily accounted 
 for; they came from the neighboring cliffs. It certain- 
 ly is not native in the place where it lies ; it is a stranger, 
 and a puzzle. Such a phenomenon is strange enough 
 to attract some attention. And it is around this kind 
 of problem that the human mind delights to play in the 
 lurid and ineffective lightning flashes of opinion and 
 theory. 
 
 We are all much more prone than we like to admit, 
 to use explanations that are second hand. It is inevi- 
 table that we should undertake to explain the unknown 
 by the kno^vn. Xow we all have faith in a rock's ability 
 to fall. And the only explanation that I ever heard from 
 either man or boy about the presence of Lone Eock in 
 that place was that it was a meteorile: it had fallen 
 there. 
 
 The explanation had the virtue of slight plausibility. 
 Meteorites do fall. None who gave the explanation were 
 handicapped by any actual knowledge of meteorites. In 
 
REASONING: ILLUSTRATIONS 191 
 
 fact, a rock that had fallen out of the universe into a 
 creek bed would naturally be black. Those who under- 
 took to explain its presence knew nothing about the 
 Tocks any distance from that neighborhood; and any- 
 way, rocks like that would not move horizontally; so it 
 must have fallen. But I had seen in museums meteor- 
 ites that had actually fallen; was badly contaminated 
 with geological doctrines and the notion that things in 
 this world are less prone to fall into place than they are 
 to be carried or pushed into place; and had in my life 
 seen other blue-black rock not unlike this particular one. 
 In short, having on hand a considerable stock of trouble- 
 some information and theory, I rejected the meteorite 
 doctrine and believed that Lone Eock was of the "earth, 
 earthy." 
 
 Its getting there was a prehistoric fact and could 
 not be proved by witnesses. But I had in mind a theory 
 of how it got there, and a large, indefinite feeling of the 
 distant wlien. My little boy and I had given ourselves 
 a roving commission to have fun and find out things in 
 that general neighborhood during two summer months, 
 and I thought it might help him intellectually if he 
 helped me to solve the problem of Lone Eock. It might 
 be possible to determine whence it came. Men are hung 
 for things that no one ever saw them do; so we might 
 be able to tell whence this rock was borne. 
 
 We began by making a big assumption — that it came 
 down stream. This bald assumption gave us no mental 
 
192 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 discomfort, it had no competitors. It seemed to be the 
 only possible one. To his mind it was the natural thing 
 to assume, and the theory that I had framed required it. 
 One day we left camp, several miles above the Rock, and 
 traveled over the hills to the upper reaches of the wild 
 and tortuous stream-bed. There was no wild and tor- 
 tuous stream, only occasional pools. I mention this fact 
 to show how much we used our faith to complete our 
 "knowledge," how much we inferred about things that 
 we never saw, that were only suggested by circumstan- 
 tial evidence. Still, we knew it was the bed of a stream, 
 though we had never seen running water in its upper 
 reaches. 
 
 We had not gone far down the bed, when we came 
 upon a great formation of blue-black rock, cut through 
 by the rushing stream that we never saw, and reaching 
 back under the hills. Along the sides of the stream 
 gigantic blocks of it, broken loose from the solid for- 
 mation, but only a little out of place and scarcely water- 
 worn, lay ready, as it were, to be carried off by some 
 mighty force. As we passed out from between these 
 great blocks of blue-black rock, there passed into our 
 minds the "certainty" that we had found the native seat 
 of Lone Rock. Just below the down-stream edge of the 
 formation, we still found large boulders of it, a little 
 more water and weather-worn. 
 
 Even the little boy could believe that such large 
 rocks could be pushed somehow so short a distance; in 
 
REASONING: ILLUSTRATIONS 193 
 
 fact, he could see that they must have leen, because there 
 was the big formation from which they came, and there 
 they lay, dowoi hill from home. He knew something 
 about the demi-gods of Greece and their ability to move 
 things, but we had carefully excluded them from con- 
 sideration. He had rolled some quite heavy rocks down 
 hill himself, but had never seen at work any force capable 
 of moving such as these. With the help of a few sug- 
 gestions about floods of water and frozen jams of ice and 
 logs and trees he began to conceive of natural powers 
 great enough to move big rocks; and in a little while 
 he was as wild a speculator and as active a geologist as 
 any one, young or old, that I ever saw. When once his 
 mind had taken the first short step of moving a big rock 
 a little way down hill, he realized that more of the same 
 kind of push in the same direction would account for 
 Lone Eock several miles below. 
 
 Now all that has been said about Lone Eock sounds 
 like what it really is: the philosophy of an eleven year 
 old boy. He moved swiftly and with a fair degree of 
 certainty toward a great geological theory and the solu- 
 tion of a hard problem for which most men and boys 
 gave an explanation without investigation. 
 
 But not even the first step could have been taken 
 without the friendly push of suggestion. With this 
 help, judiciously and sparingly given, he was aggressive 
 enough in looking for facts and making explanations. 
 
 It was after he had grasped the general doctrine of 
 
194 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 ice and water action that he became a really active and 
 interested observer. When he understood, in a meas- 
 ure, the cause, he could see a multitude of effects all 
 about him, which otherwise he would never have seen 
 at all; and he became even in the course of half a day 
 tolerably expert in explaining what he saw, and showed 
 especially a very striking increase in his power of obser- 
 vation. Having a little knowledge of the probable cause 
 of these things gave him second-sight. 
 
 Without help he would have been helpless. But in 
 what would I have been better off than he in the presence 
 of the problem of Lone Eock, if I had not first had sugges- 
 tions from others such as I gave him? There lay the 
 hard and cold and homeless, friendless fact. I could 
 probably have done no more with it than he. It is quite 
 likely that I would not only not have inferred a reason- 
 able explanation, but would not even have sought seri- 
 ously for one. If I had never heard of the glacial period 
 and learned something of ice and water action and of all 
 the consequences that these involve, I would have stood 
 before the big, black mystery as helpless as my little boy. 
 
 The most important lesson that was driven home to 
 him that day so that it may stay with him through life, 
 was the impression that everything that he saw about 
 him was an effect, produced by some cause capable of pro- 
 ducing it. The desire to explain things or have them 
 explained — the mind-hunger for truth — grew apace for 
 
REASONING: ILLUSTRATIONS 195 
 
 half a day. His childish powers discovered themselves — 
 things could be explained, and he could at least struggle 
 with such problems although he blundered. 
 
196 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 reasoning: a larger problem. 
 
 Let us see whether the world at large and the best 
 minds in it have a more direct and certain way of reach- 
 ing explanations than my little boy and I had. Take 
 the same kind of problem that we tried to solve in the 
 creek-bed. 
 
 Plowmen had picked up bits of native copper scores 
 and even hundreds of miles south of the Lake Superior 
 copper-bearing formations; and they inferred that In- 
 dians had dropped them where they were found. The 
 Indians themselves had from time immemorial caught 
 fish and gathered wild rice on the thousands of lakes 
 of northern Wisconsin and Minnesota, without perhaps 
 even wondering at their existence or their number. That 
 was their world. They neither knew nor cared whether 
 there might be fewer lakes of different character in the 
 world or even a few hundred miles from where they Jived. 
 
 The white lumbermen of the same region cut the 
 marsh hay off the myriad swamps for winter use in the 
 logging camps knowing and caring nothing about how 
 the country came to be a land of swamps. The farm- 
 
REASONING: A LARGER PROBLEM 197 
 
 ers and especially the farmer boys of Canada and the 
 northern part of the United States have gathered the 
 stones on their rocky farms and have built them into 
 long stone walls without knowing what it was that scat- 
 tered them so mischievously. They thought of them 
 only as a perennial cause of back-ache. The few that 
 did stop to wonder how they came there were no wiser 
 at the last than at the first. Limpid lakes with no out- 
 let, scenery that ought to rouse thought in any man, 
 farmer or poet or philosopher; the grooved and polished 
 rocks, clay soils and bedded gravels, lakes and swamps 
 and ancient beaches, both in America and Europe, sent 
 up their mute appeal to be recognized and explained. 
 
 But the human mind, that wizard of the universe, 
 went on in its sordid career of catching fish and raising 
 grain and herding cattle to satisfy the stomach; or in- 
 dulged in the semi-glorious task of spilling blood and 
 compelling others to do its bidding and its labors. No 
 man dreamed that all these things were due to one great 
 force that had "worked over" the face of the northern 
 earth. How could they imagine that things so different 
 from each other were in any way related? It is not 
 probable that anyone ever would have dreamed that won- 
 derful truth if someone had not at some time and some- 
 where seen the cause itself at work. 
 
 If a little boy can in half a day, with the help of 
 judicious suggestion, make such apparently large scien- 
 tific strides, why did it take the intellect of Europe all 
 
198 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 the ages until the first half of the nineteenth century to 
 find out how the great erratic blocE:s of Alpine rock got 
 across the valleys of the Ehone and Aar from the Alps to 
 the slopes and even summits of the Jura Mountains? 
 It is so easy to get information out of books, and to 
 understand what we are told that we marvel at the world 
 for being so slow in finding out big truths. With a little 
 suggestion and guidance we can grasp a big principle and 
 revel in its consequences even in half a day. Why should 
 the mind of the world be so dull of penetration as not 
 to get even a glimpse of a great truth until ages have 
 rolled away and whole races of men have delved in and 
 trodden upon and lived and died upon and been buried 
 in the mute, magnificent evidence that there was a gla- 
 cial period in the world's history? 
 
 The difference is all due to the fact that if one can 
 see the cause that produces a thing at work on the spot, 
 or has seen it produce similar results elsewhere, or has 
 had its action explained to him so that he gets a con- 
 ception of how the effects were produced, the mind has 
 an extremely easy task to perform. Time and patience 
 and industry will clear up all the facts. The theory of 
 how the effects were produced throws light on every new 
 fact that is observed. It is a lamp to the intellect; it 
 lights things up so they can be seen and then explained. 
 That is why it was so easy for me to investigate the 
 origin of Lone Eock and help a little boy grasp the the- 
 ory and make the explanation for himself. It was not 
 
REASONING: A LARGER PROBLEM 199 
 
 a stroke of genius; it was only applying a truth which 
 others had discovered. 
 
 But if the mind has never in any way been made 
 aware of the cause that has produced the results that 
 are noticed, if nothing whatever is known on the subject, 
 how can it even begin to think about them correctly? 
 What reason could man have given himself for suppos- 
 ing that the distribution of the stray bits of copper, er- 
 ratic rocks, boulder clays, sands and silts, the ancient 
 fresh water beaches and the thousands of lakes and 
 swamps of the cooler temperate zone were all effects of 
 a single great cause? 
 
 Men did the perfectly natural thing with all these 
 facts. They never regarded them as having any connec- 
 tion with one another. They gave the most reasonable 
 explanation for each kind of fact. PloA\Tiien thought 
 the Indians dropped the copper. A pious or even an 
 impious farmer might suppose that the devil had strewn 
 the stones afield for the discipline or annoyance of man- 
 kind. The smaller facts like these would secure atten- 
 tion and receive each its own separate explanation. But 
 the larger facts were not likely to be seen at all. The 
 peculiar distribution of lakes, the peculiar soils and scen- 
 ery would not even be regarded as peculiar because they 
 are so extensive. Our vision is too limited. The biggest 
 facts escape our notice and the whole magnificent group 
 of facts is not recognized as a group at all. When each 
 little fact has received an explanation of its own, it is 
 
200 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 less likely than ever that we shall think of all the facts 
 together as the effects of one cause. 
 
 We do not see very much of all that is to be seen. 
 But what we do actually see and think about at all the 
 mind makes an effort to explain, whether with the help 
 of ice and water action or of demigods and devils. In 
 the presence of facts that we cannot understand we are 
 like cattle — gaze awhile and turn away. But a fact that 
 is once explained has perennial interest for us, even 
 though the explanation is wrong, because it wakens 
 thought in us. It pipes its simple little tune of truth 
 in our ears until we feel the world is full of music. The 
 intellectual hope of the world lies in the fact that we 
 are prone to give explanations. If we were more care- 
 ful in seeking them and less ready to accept the easiest 
 and most striking one, truth would make much more 
 rapid progress. Now let us see how the world ever 
 came to hit upon the glacial theory as a general explana- 
 tion of all the facts that have been mentioned. 
 
 Both peasants and savants of Switzerland were 
 acquainted with the glaciers. Their movements and 
 their work had been given scientific attention. The 
 problems of terminal and lateral moraines were no more 
 difficult than that of talus and cliff described in a previ- 
 ous chapter. The action of water at the foot of the 
 glacier was a matter of direct observation. The cause 
 and the effects were there together and could be observed 
 in close connection. The ice carried the boulders and 
 
REASONING: A LARGER PROBLEM 201 
 
 pushed the detritus and scored the rocks, and the water 
 worked over and sorted and laid down the sand and peb- 
 bles. 
 
 The problem of the Alpine boulders over on the 
 Jura Mountains was like that of Lone Eock. They 
 were away from their native seat, with the cause of their 
 removal gone. But they had not only gone down hill 
 but up again on the other side of the valley. Charpen- 
 tier, who had studied the alpine glaciers and their work 
 in carrying and pushing rocks, in 1834 expressed the be- 
 lief that those stray boulders on the Jura range had been 
 carried from the Alps by glaciers which once extended 
 across the intervening valley. This was a bold generali- 
 zation. But it was only an extension of a force already 
 known and well understood. That force was only called 
 upon to act on a larger scale and in the same direction. 
 Nothing new was added to the conception of a glacier 
 except magnitude. Effects, the cause of which was ab- 
 sent, were explained by inferring a cause well known and 
 producing similar effects near hy. 
 
 And now began a scientific marvel that is still, over 
 half a century later, unrolling itself before the eyes of a 
 waking and wondering world. At this point Louis 
 Agassiz, the generalizer, became interested. He ex- 
 pressed the belief that glaciers had not only crossed the 
 valleys, but that ice had filled those valleys and covered 
 the foot-hills, too, that the whole region had once been 
 ice-bound, and that the present glaciers of the Alps are 
 
202 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 nothing more than retreating remnants. The evidence 
 was there to support his view. Then he went to Scot- 
 land, where he and Buckland studied half a dozen areas 
 that revealed all the characteristic evidence of glacial 
 action. 
 
 The magic key that unlocked this great new world 
 of glacial geology had to be made in a glacier country. 
 As soon as the effects of glacial action were understood, 
 and when once it was known that those effects existed 
 where glaciers no longer were, ah! then, having eyes, 
 men saw the evidence that they had blindly trampled on 
 and waddled in for ages without knowing that it existed. 
 
 Now we know that not only Switzerland and Scot- 
 land but all of northern Europe and Canada and the 
 northern United States and our western ranges are 
 scarred and scored and written over and over like a pal- 
 impsest with layer upon layer of unmistakable evidence 
 of former glacial action. It was ice that covered the 
 north temperate zone and grooved the solid rocks and 
 scattered the boulders afield and sprinkled the bits of 
 copper to southward and plowed out the lakes and 
 dammed up and changed the river courses and wiped out 
 scores of species of plants and animals and drove others 
 out of their northern homes and left them stranded 
 on the temperate mountain tops; that pushed up the 
 gravelly hills and finally melted into water that made 
 the great lake beaches where now are fields of waving 
 grain. 
 
REASONING: A LARGER PROBLEM 203 
 
 No romance can be written that would be more fas- 
 cinating to a thoughtful student than the marvellous 
 history of glacial geology. In the short time since Char- 
 pentier made his suggestion a whole new science has de- 
 veloped. The field to be covered is so vast, and the 
 knowledge already wrought out so comprehensive that it 
 requires years of training to make an expert glacial geol- 
 ogist. 
 
204 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 CHAPTEE XIX. 
 
 reasoning: how the mind struggles after a truth. 
 
 The brief sketch of the glacial theory given in the 
 last chapter shows how sound knowledge actually grows. 
 It was chosen as an illustration because the subject is 
 recent, its history short, its strides have been enormous, 
 because it has explained a multitude of facts, some of 
 which all men can see, and because the great existing 
 glaciers of Alaska and the ice-fields of Greenland and 
 the Antarctic continent are yielding and will yield still 
 more important scientific knowledge by the light of which 
 to interpret the evidence where ice no longer exists. 
 
 Before the cause was recognized, most of the facts 
 were not recognized at all. The few that attracted at- 
 tention were given, each its separate explanation. In 
 the absence of the true cause, how could the mind con- 
 ceive of any connection between things so different as 
 parallel grooves in the solid rock, scattered bits of copper, 
 and the stranding of cold-temperate species of plants 
 and animals on the high mountains in the temperate 
 regions ? No amount of study of the effects would avail ; 
 it would not be known what effects belonged together. 
 Until the cause itself could be seen at work, there could 
 
REASONING: HOW THE MIND STRUGGLES 205 
 
 be no hope of seeing the effects it had produced in regions 
 where it was no longer present. 
 
 It was not only the common people who did not 
 see and understand; the best trained scientific investi- 
 gators trampled on the evidence without seeing it. Each 
 little shred of remarkable evidence that was seen, was 
 explained by some cause already known. When one is 
 once on the wrong track in making explanations, they 
 become more and more elaborate and complex, like the 
 Ptolemaic system of astronomy, instead of more simple 
 and straightforward. It is only when the mind is mov- 
 ing toward the solid ground of truth that explanations 
 grow more and more simple and satisfactory; and the^ 
 strangely different facts are all brought into beautiful 
 harmony. 
 
 The most striking effect that the introduction of 
 the glacial theory produced was that it enabled men to 
 see. As soon as the cause was understood the scenery^ 
 of the old glacial region was viewed through new eyes 
 and interpreted. The beaches of ancient and vast fresh 
 water lakes could be traced where before there were only 
 unmeaning ridges; old and choked-up river courses were 
 traced where nothing at all was seen before. Wild rice 
 and marsh hay and fishing and duck-hunting could now 
 be seen to be related to one another and the theory. 
 The great mass of diverse facts becomes a web of circum- 
 stantial evidence, as soon as the cause is understood. 
 
 When a small boy exclaims, ^Tapa, I have added' 
 
206 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 three numbers together and the sum is forty; what are 
 the numbers?'' he knows that he has the easy end of the 
 task and that his fatlier may never be able to tell what 
 numbers he used. Most of the problems of nature and 
 of life are presented to us in much the same way. Na- 
 ture makes the combinations and then usually wipes the 
 slate, leaving nothing but the results. Our task is, — 
 given the results, to find the causes; given the answers, 
 to find the numbers that were used. Take, for example, 
 this simple little puzzle: 
 
 "Never did I rob a china shop or steal a chop in the 
 market, but one day, l)ick, his chum, Annie, and I set 
 out on a marauding expedition. Dick said he would 
 lasso us, at which we laughed, but it made my heart 
 wag nervously. Then we found Flo Marsh and Ella Eoss 
 m idle chat engaged, and calling Ella and Flo toward 
 us, we invited them to go with us, but they declined. We 
 berated them soundly, as Esau berated his brother, Flo 
 sat like a cherub in injured innocence. 'Let's stop in 
 here,' said I, *^for Harry Bell.' 'In I go,' replied Dick, 
 but he soon returned, saying he feared he would be stung 
 by a bee or an asp. 'Oh, ridiculous,' I cried, 'A bee, 
 tho' venturesome, may not sting you, and anyway, it is 
 said to bring luck.' But Dick, crying 'Ou!' nodded his 
 head at me and said, 'Eob, Alf, Ernest, and all the rest 
 of you, I'm going home.' " 
 
REASONING: HOW THE MIND STRUGGLES 207 
 
 The maker of the puzzle decided to bury a list of 
 famous names, and wrote out a more or less sensible 
 combination of words, among which the names are con- 
 cealed. His task was direct, synthetic. Anyone able to 
 write could do it in some fashion. He 'would not even 
 have to know the names of musical composers in ad- 
 vance. He could pick them at random, to suit his de- 
 sires, from a music book. 
 
 The task of the guesser is of an entirely different 
 nature. The puzzle is very simple both on account of 
 its nature and on account of the shallow way in which 
 the names are ^^uried." But it requires some skill in 
 dealing with such things and some knowledge of musical 
 matters even to make a beginning. Without these, there 
 is no way to start. Suppose one is not acquainted with 
 the names involved. How can he recognize them? Un- 
 der such conditions the names Beethoven, Chopin, Ros- 
 sini, Wagner, and the rest could never be discovered. 
 Nor is it an easy matter to appeal to books. Perhaps 
 that particular combination of names could not be found 
 in any available book outside of a biography of music. 
 Even with the latter book, it would require very, very 
 long study to pick out the right names both in the book 
 and in the puzzle and bring them together. 
 
 Anyone having any knowledge of music can pick 
 out the names readily, because Wagner and Beethoven 
 are names that he would surely know. But we are work- 
 ing now under the supposition that the guesser does not 
 
208 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 know so much as this. Let us consider the puzzle from 
 the latter standpoint. To begin with, the whole popu- 
 lation of the earth might read the puzzle and not recog- 
 nize that it is one. Telling a person that there is a 
 puzzle is what makes a guesser out of him. It makes 
 him look for something. But even then he would be at 
 an utter loss. To get him started at all it would be nec- 
 essary to tell him what kind of a puzzle it is; what sort 
 of hidden thing he must look for. If one stops to think, 
 it is easy to see that the largest and hardest part of the 
 work has to be done in advance in order to make even a 
 guesser out of a person. A little reflection on so sim- 
 ple a thing will lead most of us to pass milder judg- 
 ment on the "stupidity" of the world for not seeing and 
 learning things faster and reasoning better. 
 
 When once the nature of the problem is understood, 
 the mind begins to feel about for solid footing. It seeks 
 all the time to escape from the attitude of guesser and 
 to take up the position of a maker of the puzzle. Prob- 
 ably the first step will be the assumption that the names 
 are famous. Here at the very outset appeal is made 
 to a probable "general truth" in order to get at particu- 
 lar facts. In a biography of music, the famous names 
 will have the longest biographies, so by the help of this 
 general assumption the guesser will know in advance 
 which names to pounce upon. The mind has already 
 departed a long way from the position of guesser. It is 
 trying now to be a maker of the puzzle. 
 
REASONING: HOW THE MIND STRUGGLES 209 
 
 But it will require skill and some knowledge of good 
 English to get help from the written words. Assuming 
 the guesser has some skill and training in English, he 
 can see "indications." When he reads the words "my 
 heart wag nervously," and "a bee, tho' venturesome," he 
 will make a careful examination as surely as a cat will 
 stalk a gopher-hole. He knows those expressions are 
 unusual English, and will look in those connections for 
 the names. In this fashion the puzzle is solved. The 
 guesser at every step is making strenuous efforts to equip 
 himself with the same knowledge that the maker of the 
 puzzle had; then he can see what is in the puzzle. 
 
 Take a simple problem in algebra. Suppose a stu- 
 dent is given no rule to go by, but is simply told to fac- 
 tor x'^-\-2xy-\-y'^. He must know a good deal in advance 
 about numbers, quantities, signs and factors before he 
 can do anything at all with this specific problem. If 
 he knows that it is a product the facts begin to look 
 suggestive. He knows that x^ is x times x, and y"^ is y 
 times y. The mind would instantly try in some way to 
 put these factors together. In other words, the student 
 turns himself into a multiplier, not a divider. He has 
 a theory and tries it. He may make many mistakes. 
 But he would follow the same plan with variations as if 
 that were the fundamental law of search. Which it is. 
 He would find at last that the factors are (x-'ry) (x-{-y). 
 But he would also find that there is no royal road to the 
 truth. He is asked to analyze a product, and he does 
 
210 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 it by a series of efforts at synthesis, at putting things 
 together, at producing the product. His progress would 
 be rapid in proportion as he could shift his position from 
 that of analyzer to that of combiner. 
 
 Just as soon as this one problem is solved he can 
 draw a general truth out of it. The sum of two quanti- 
 ties multiplied by itself, equals the sum of their squares 
 plus twice the product of the quantities. From that mo- 
 ment he is a deductive philosopher. He is in possession 
 of a general principle and he works it on every new case 
 as savagely as if he were the worst old deductive debater 
 of mediaeval times. This example has furnished him 
 with a type. Every new problem is treated as a member 
 of a class of problems under a general rule. The mind 
 has not merely discovered a new fact. It has opened 
 up a whole new field of investigation. Now it has the 
 power to recognize products, can search for other cases, 
 and treat them at once and effectively as particular 
 cases under an established rule. 
 
 Now let us recall the glacial theory. Ages passed 
 before men recognized that there was evidence to con- 
 sider. A few remarkable things were noticed, but nobody 
 knew what they were evidence of. Men gave to each re- 
 markable fact a separate explanation and left the rest 
 unobserved. The erratic rocks on the Jura Mountains 
 were a puzzle. They came to be recognized as one, and 
 that was a very long stride toward explanation. When a 
 man arose who knew about the work of actual glaciers 
 
REASONING: HOW THE MIND STRUGGLES 211 
 
 and also knew about the erratic blocks across the great 
 valley, and thought of the two together, then science 
 could put itself in the position of one knowing the cause 
 and thinking of it as still acting. Charpentier extended 
 glacial action to regions where it was no longer at work. 
 Agassiz made another generalization, extended the prin- 
 ciple over vast areas. Now, with the cause known, cer- 
 tain things were always seen to occur in combination. 
 They were seen because they were to be expected, if 
 produced by such a cause. Men knew there was some- 
 thing to look for, knew what it was like, and were in a 
 mood to look for it. That is why glacial geology grew 
 apace in so short a time. The facts could be explained 
 by the new cause and could be explained in no other 
 way. The mind had climbed up the hill and could now 
 slide down. 
 
212 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 CHAPTEE XX. 
 
 keasoning: its progress depends on recognition of 
 similarities. 
 
 The chances are all against anyone's recognizing a gen- 
 eral truth or law at a hazard by merely looking at facts 
 one at a time. Nor has anyone ever made much intel- 
 lectual progress by gathering a miscellaneous lot of facts 
 and then gazing at them. He might gaze thus for a cen- 
 tury, and the larger his heap of facts became, the more 
 confused and chaotic it would be. From somewhere and 
 at some time must come a suggestion of some kind of 
 connection between the new facts and facts that were 
 known before. It does not require much of a sugges- 
 tion to rouse the alert and sensitive mind into activity. 
 If the state of expectant attention is well-developed and 
 chronic, a hint may be enough to start one on a voyage 
 of discovery. 
 
 A little reflection upon the illustrations used in 
 previous chapters will make it clear that our progress in 
 reasoning is due to the recognition of similarities between 
 things. Direct observation upon the glaciers assured 
 men that certain facts always occurred together. The 
 relation of cause and effect was actually observed. Now 
 
REASONING : RECOGNITION OF SIMILARITIES 213 
 
 our minds and the universe are so constituted that we 
 can infer the whole when we see a part. If we know that 
 certain things always occur together, then, when we see 
 part of the facts, we infer that the others are there or 
 were there, even though we do not see them. The men- 
 tal process amounts to this: certain things have always 
 occurred together in our experience, and therefore they 
 will occur grouped in that way again. 
 
 When Charpentier announced that glaciers had car- 
 ried the erratic blocks over onto the Jura slopes, he was 
 merely inferring that because part of a certain group of 
 facts was before him, the rest must have been there at 
 some time. We feel certain that the relation of cause 
 and effect is constant. If we have seen both cause and 
 effect before, and then see some or all of the effects again, 
 we feel sure that the cause also once existed. And if 
 we see a cause at work we are confident that the effects 
 are there. If part of the facts are missing we confidently 
 hunt for them. The ingrained belief that similar effects 
 are produced by similar causes brings about the organiza- 
 tion of our knowledge on the highest plane of reasoning. 
 The magic principle of association binds the facts to- 
 gether with an unbreakable cord. Where boulder clay 
 and copper drift are found, moraines and grooves in the 
 rocks are likely to be, and ice must have been at some 
 time. The mind is sure that its fundamental laws of 
 association cannot lead it far astray. 
 
 It is this recognition of identity that makes it possi- 
 
214 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 ble for us to reach out into the unknown and explain 
 new facts at all. The far-reaching similarities of na- 
 ture make possible our mental groupings of facts and 
 give us intellectual mastery. The power, first of detect- 
 ing similarities and then of looking for them elsewhere, 
 underlies the power to reason. It is the basis of the 
 simplest inferences of the child^ and of the most subtle 
 and far-reaching conclusions of the trained scientific en- 
 quirer. The difference lies in the quality and thorough- 
 ness of the process. 
 
 And this association must always be found between a 
 fact that is already known and one that is new. It is 
 extremely unlikely that anyone will derive much valuable 
 knowledge merely from comparing two or more strange 
 things entirely by guess. Step by step each new fact 
 is assimilated with old ones already known. With the 
 addition of new knowledge the old conceptions are modi- 
 fied, improved and enlarged. The theory of glacial ac- 
 tion is very different now from what it was sixty years 
 ago. But at every step, each new fact was interpreted 
 with the help of the body of knowledge already on hand. 
 
 It has often been said that the Greek and Roman 
 intellects were in all respects the equals of the modern 
 mind. That is doubtless true. But we have the great ad- 
 vantage of two thousand years of accumulated knowl- 
 edge. Human power depends on the tools it has to work 
 with. Our knowledge is vastly greater and more accurate 
 
REASONING: RECOGNITION OF SIMILARITIES 215 
 
 than theirs was; and our appliances for doing work are 
 vastly better and more numerons. 
 
 We can build only with the help of what is already 
 known. Every new act, every uttered word is colored 
 by what has gone before in the life. We can tell from 
 a man^s talk what his training has been; from his fig- 
 ures of speech where he came from and with Avhat sort 
 of work he has always busied himself; from the senti- 
 ments he expresses, the manner of his moral life in the 
 past. The pupil is usually a disciple of his teacher. 
 The son generally votes as his father voted. We think 
 and speak and act, always with the past as a basis. We 
 cannot cut loose from past knowledge and opinion, and 
 we would not if we could. For it provides us with our 
 only possible starting points of thought. 
 
 The unscholarly mind has no settled purpose con- 
 cerning its facts. There is no guiding principle, no gen- 
 eral motive in the thinking, no desire to place each fact 
 in its right relations from the outset. But after all, 
 as the wind unwittingly and in rude fashion separates 
 the dead leaves and groups them in hollows and fence 
 corners and leaves the green ones in groups on the trees, 
 so the inborn laws of mental action tend to work over 
 and reduce to order the chaotic knowledge that tumbles 
 hap-hazard upon the attention of the individual. He 
 neither seeks facts systematically nor takes care of them 
 after they come to him. But slowly out of the chaos 
 there grows, without his effort, a crude system of thought. 
 
216 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 Some people have this feeling for mental order more 
 strongly developed than others. Their minds instinct- 
 ively recognize similarities without ever consciously for- 
 mulating what they do. They become fairly good spell- 
 ers, even though they never learned the rules of spelling. 
 They cannot tell why it is so ; but it is because they have 
 a strong feeling for similarities. They seem to act ac- 
 cording to general rules that they never learned nor 
 consciously stated to themselves. Even in the unschol- 
 arly mind the laws of thought keep chaos at bay by 
 grouping facts according to their similarities and slowly 
 working out explanations. But it is the student's ac- 
 knowledged business to attend consciously and purposely 
 to this matter, and reduce his knowledge, so far as lies 
 in his power, by reasoning about it as fast as he accumu- 
 lates it. 
 
 A vast body of human knowledge, much of the most 
 important that we guide our lives by, is only dimly un- 
 derstood or wholly unexplained. Many of the old prov- 
 erbs told truths that experience had found to be so, but 
 which were not comprehended. The connection between 
 the tides and the moon was observed without any knowl- 
 edge of gravitation. The causal relation between a low- 
 ering morning and a rainy day needed not be understood 
 at all to make the knowledge practically effective. The 
 modern weather bureau can give reasons and make more 
 accurate predictions, but the value of the original obser- 
 vation cannot be belittled. 
 
REASONING: RECOGNITION OF SIMILARITIES 217 
 
 Such knowledge as that described above is empirical. 
 It has value, but is unexplained. The first knowledge 
 of each individual and the earliest and most important 
 practical knowledge of the race was of this kind. Cer- 
 tain connections between facts were observed, as that fire 
 hardens brick as well as wooden spear-points. But no 
 attempt was made, nor is any attempt usually made even 
 now to give a scientific explanation of the process. For 
 practical purposes it is not necessary. The bulk of hu- 
 manity lives by the light of such empirical knowledge. 
 
 Quinine has long been known to be a specific for 
 malaria ; and suffering humanity has gratefully swallowed 
 the bitter medicine without knowing why it produces its 
 effects. Physicians understood it no better than the 
 burning and shivering victim. But humanity, not know- 
 ing the cause of the disease, took the medicine, went 
 straightway and laid itself down where the infection con- 
 tinued its deadly work. Pitiful sight, in the light of 
 recent science. Now what has happened? Eeason, the 
 piercing weapon of scientific investigation, has solved the 
 mystery. Science had done what it could to study the 
 disease after the victim was sick. Much was known about 
 the stages of the disease and the changes in the blood 
 that were due to the infection. Ifow the cause is known. 
 Malaria is due to a parasite that passes through part 
 of its development in man and part in certain species 
 of mosquito. The disease is transmitted from an old 
 to a new victim by the mosquito. 
 
218 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 Quinine is still valuable. But the guilty mosquitos 
 (genus Anopheles) exist wherever there is malaria; and 
 now that the causal relations of the disease are under- 
 stood^ prevention is likely to outdo the business of curing 
 malaria. Mosquito-breeding rain-barrels, pools of stag- 
 nant water, and swamps are receiving attention now. 
 Systematic withdrawal at nightfall into mosquito-proof 
 houses by itself will secure human beings against malaria 
 in the deadly Campagna near Eome. A thin sheet of 
 petroleum floating on a water-surface closes the breath- 
 ing pores of the mosquito larvae and kills them before 
 they leave the water. Drainage of standing pools and 
 swamps removes mosquitos and malaria at a single stroke. 
 
 The former scraps of empirical knowledge on the 
 subject seem almost contemptible now. The new truth 
 not merely adds knowledge to the old. It explains what 
 was IvQown and changes the whole point of view. Now 
 the world's knowledge of malaria is rational. It under- 
 stands the causal relations. Man or mosquito must con- 
 quer, because the enemy is in sight; there will be no 
 more "shelling the woods.'' And the chances are all 
 against the mosquito. Its power will be badly crippled 
 if it cannot be destroyed. Knowledge of the subject is 
 now of a different kind. 
 
 What has been done for malaria has been done for 
 yellow fever. The mosquito is guilty. Hitherto, men 
 have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars disinfecting 
 persons and clothing and ships. They labored blindly, 
 
REASONING : RECOGNITION OF SIMILARITIES 219^ 
 
 because there was no rational knowledge of the disease. 
 The facts were not explained till their cause was known.. 
 And in assailing the problem of yellow fever, science used 
 the new knowledge about malaria. The light of one new 
 truth leads to others like it. The bond of similarity 
 made possible the extension of rational knowledge to a 
 new subject. 
 
 In the progress of the individual mind, as well as in 
 the experience of the race, empirical, unexplained knowl- 
 edge, must give place to rational knowledge. The causal 
 relations of facts to each other must be understood and 
 expressed in general principles. This transformation 
 of partial, accidental, but valuable knowledge into ra- 
 tional and thoroughly organized knowledge, goes on as 
 long as there is mental progress in the individual or the- 
 race. When it ceases, growth is at an end. The thinker 
 drops back to the level of the animal and the creature of 
 habit. 
 
 It is a vital concern of the student to keep up stead- 
 ily the process of reducing his knowledge to a rational 
 state, in which all the facts are brought into their true 
 relations with each other. The constant temptation of 
 living things is to become parasites. Even the eagle is 
 willing to let the hawk catch the fish and then help him- 
 self to it. The quickest and largest results with the least 
 effort is a guide of life to which students, like all others, 
 fall victims. Accepting information ready-made, ex- 
 plained, organized under principles, and applied, is fol- 
 
220 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 lowing the lines of least resistance. Originality, the spirit 
 of research, deciphering the hidden meaning of things, is 
 following the lines of greatest resistance. But the two 
 methods do not result merely in a different quantity of 
 knowledge : the latter produces an entirely different kind. 
 
 We cannot, of course, free ourselves from the work 
 that others have done before us, and the opinions they 
 have held. While we profit by them abundantly, we are 
 also in a real sense their slaves. And with so great a 
 mass of knowledge and opinion ready-made, we are very 
 prone to accept them without a serious review of their 
 value. The structure of knowledge and opinion that has 
 been reared by humanity is a mighty heritage of intel- 
 lectual strength transmitted to us. But every student, 
 to save his intellectual manhood, must hold both fact and 
 opinion at arm's length long enough to examine it care- 
 fully and determine its value to him. 
 
 Lessing, in a hot religious debate, said more than a 
 hundred years ago, "If God held in His right hand all 
 truth and in his left the lone but ever active desire for 
 truth, though coupled with the condition that I should 
 keep forever falling into error, and should say to me, 
 Thoose,' I should seize his left hand and say, father, 
 give, pure truth is after all only for thee alone.' " The 
 question with us all finally narrows itself to this: Shall 
 we accept our opinions and facts in bulk on the authority 
 of others, or shall we be habitual searchers after truth 
 under the constant liability and fear of making mistakes? 
 
REASONING : RECOGNITION OF SIMILARITIES 221 
 
 The test of the student's strength is the amount of 
 independent energy with which he throws his reasoning 
 powers upon the problems that are presented to him. If 
 the subject to be studied is the arterial system of a mam- 
 mal, and the place is a laboratory, and the teacher says, 
 "Catch a live cat and work out its arterial system," and 
 then puts his feet on the table and reads the report of 
 the latest dog-show, the student has just cause for com- 
 plaint, because there is none of the preliminary sug- 
 gestion without which none of us can make a start. If, 
 on the other hand, all the preliminary work is done for 
 the student, which is often easier for the teacher, and he 
 is provided with a book that gives detailed directions for 
 every step, the student will be so perfectly guided that 
 the faint impulses to originality are smothered. If ev- 
 ery branch of the arterial system is described, its course 
 explained, and even what to cut and what not to cut is 
 carefully told in detail, the net result of a day's work, 
 even for a good student, is likely to be the summing up : 
 "Yes, it is just as the book says." Then he "goeth his 
 way, and straightway forgetteth." 
 
 It is initial ignorance of where to look and how to 
 take the preliminary steps that kills progress and the de- 
 sire for it. But if the student is shown how to prepare 
 the animal without destroying the very parts he is to 
 study, and has the aorta pointed out to him, all the rest 
 should be within his reach. If left to himself, he would 
 have to use his reason as well as his scalpel in finding the 
 
222 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 branches, at every touch of the knife, at every clip of the 
 scissors. When he had finished he might not be able 
 to give the names of all the parts ; but he would know his 
 subject so well that if it were necessary he could give good 
 names to them himself. Instead of forgetting what he 
 had done, there would be an imperishable addition to his 
 knowledge because there was lively reasoning at its birth. 
 AYork thus done is valuable because it is transfused with 
 thought. The slavery, parasitism, intellectual degenera- 
 tion is due to constant assistance. Without it, only half 
 as much work may be done, but the results will be ten- 
 fold more valuable; and a hundredfold more intellectual 
 power is developed if the student works out the problem 
 with his own head as well as with his own hands. It is 
 hard at first. But after a little the joy of working grows 
 and there is a glow of feeling that drives the hands and 
 the head to success. Error and failure become only in- 
 cidents. 
 
 This method is difficult to apply, but its fruit is 
 easily recognized. It alone can give the student the last- 
 ing impression that everything — every word in a sentence, 
 every letter in a word, the shape and size and place of 
 every pebble, every sound of nature, every shade of color 
 in every flower's petals, every tint in the ever-changing 
 sky — is full of significance, is a record of forces that have 
 been and are still at work. The mind early loses its art- 
 less inquisitiveness, and falls into the dull routine of 
 
REASONING : RECOGNITION OF SIMILARITIES 223 
 
 habit, unless it is kept awake by the process of real, per- 
 sonal investigation. 
 
 One of the most permanent convictions imbedded in 
 great productive minds, in all fields of learning, is this, 
 that all things need to be explained and that sooner or 
 later explanations can be given. Darwin and Tyndall, 
 Faraday and Von Baer and all their kind were alive with 
 the feeling that all the facts around them were written 
 records, that they had a truth to tell which could be in- 
 terpreted by whoever had eyes to see. Such men trained 
 their great powers on thousands of little things which 
 others had seen before them but had not tried to under- 
 stand. This intense sensitiveness to the lisping, whisper- 
 ing, truth-telling and truth-concealing nature about us 
 is a great gift, and intellectual success is measured by 
 the degree to which it is cultivated. The senses grow 
 keen by constant use, there is no other way of training 
 them. And the mind grows sensitive to truth by work- 
 ing on it. 
 
224 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 SOME FURTHER CONDITIONS OF SOUND REASONING. 
 
 No effort has been spared to make the fact impressive 
 that mere reasoning does not make one an intellectual 
 success. Some very important conditions have to be con- 
 sidered, on which the quality of one's reasoning depends. 
 
 Nature and life are so constituted that there is cer- 
 tainty nowhere. We are obliged to act confidently upon 
 probability. He who keeps himself in a state of doubt 
 till he knows all the facts, whether in school or in busi- 
 ness, will never do anything but sit and wait and be mis- 
 erable. It is absolutely necessary to act upon partial 
 knowledge, so there is always risk connected with every 
 decision. But that is what constitutes the spice of life. 
 We must place confidence in the law of our mind which 
 says that what has been true once will be true again 
 under similar circumstances. But we can never be sure 
 that the circumstances are exactly similar. 
 
 Therefore as long as the human mind continues to 
 grow in power, and its knowledge continues to grow in 
 perfection, there must constantly be readjustment. The 
 mind not only has to work over and organize its knowledge 
 into consistent beliefs and opinions, but must constantly 
 
FURTHER CONDITIONS OF SOUND REASONING 22o 
 
 reorganize it. Knowledge that seemed perfect and com- 
 plete yesterday, will seem utterly inadequate and poor to- 
 morrow. But this is no mark of human weakness. It 
 is a sign of growing strength, of new and better knowl- 
 edge. It is only a proof of Bagehot^s profound remark 
 that "the price of improvement is that the unimproved 
 shall always look degraded." 
 
 Progress toward truth is very slow. It is an easy 
 matter to draw inferences, but the law of our thought, 
 that what is true of one thing is true of every other that 
 is like it, is dangerous, because we are so far away from 
 the facts. We have to reason so much about things we 
 cannot actually see or investigate, that the more sweep- 
 ing our inferences are the more likely they are to be 
 jwrong. There may somewhere be a break of continuity 
 among the facts of which we are not and cannot be aware. 
 
 A little study of logic is likely to make one feel that 
 he can reason his way straight from common ignorance 
 to the profoundest truth. 
 
 "Xow, Huxley from one bone could make 
 An unknown beast; so if I take 
 This spout of water, and from thence 
 Construct a whale by inference, 
 A whale, I venture to assert, 
 Must be an animated squirt ! 
 Thus, children, we the truth may sift 
 By use of logic's priceless gift." 
 
226 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 I This ridiculous view of logic is not so serious an ex- 
 aggeration of the facts as it may seem. We expect logic 
 to do things for which it was never intended. It is like 
 a fanning mill ; what was not put in the hopper will not 
 come out of the mill, no matter how hard the fans are 
 made to blow. 
 
 I once taught geography to a young boy who did not 
 care for geography or any other study. He was no fool; 
 so at last, in my despair, I told him, as a test of his think- 
 ing power, that I would give him five minutes to tell me 
 where all the large cities of Ireland were. He came back 
 before his time was up and not only told me they were 
 all on the coast, but told me the reason why. They 
 formed the working joints of commerce between Ireland 
 and the rest of the world. He felt like a master then. 
 I gave him the United States to study, and he explained 
 the locations of the big coast cities. With the help of 
 a gentle hint he was able to point out the head of navi- 
 gation on many of the principal rivers. But the problem 
 of American cities after a while became so complex that 
 he almost lost sight of his original "great truth'^ and had 
 to invent a variety of explanations. The farther he went 
 the more apparent it became to him that simple reason- 
 ing from his first discovered truth would not carry him 
 through his task. A wide knowledge of geographical and 
 commercial conditions was necessary to an understanding 
 of the location of many American cities. Sagacity, the 
 mental quality which distinguishes the wise man from 
 
FURTHER CONDITIONS OF SOUND REASONING 227 
 
 both the fool and the logical machine, is a prime requisite 
 in reaching truth. 
 
 I have tried before to show that merely telling a 
 thing does not make it a permanent piece of knowledge 
 for the hearer. It is then nearly always forgotten. It 
 must be experienced. One may tell a child a hundred 
 times that a hot stove will hurt. It knows the fact, but 
 the fact is unimpressive. It must touch the stove; then 
 the fact is burned into its mind as well as onto its hand. 
 Thenceforth the child can reason very accurately. "Hot 
 stoves burn; this stove is hot; therefore it will burn," is 
 unassailable logic. Animal safety depends on the power 
 to avoid repeated accidents. 
 
 We give no special credit for ability to reason in 
 this way. The power is common to men and animals, and 
 it saves much misery. But the moment the facts become 
 a little different, or slightly complicated, most men be- 
 come absolutely helpless. If we could always tread on 
 the ground of absolute certainty there would be no dis- 
 tinction between the wise man and the fool. But since 
 we cannot, caution and discrimination in forming conclu- 
 sions distinguish the former from the latter. The lan- 
 guage is full of names, ill-defined but familiar, for the 
 mental characteristic that distinguishes the two kinds of 
 men. Judgment, sagacity, common sense, wisdom, ex- 
 press from different points of view and in different degrees 
 the fact that so-called reasoning alone is about as likely 
 to lead into error as into the truth, to accident as to 
 safety. 
 
228 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 All normal men and women know that a blazing lamp 
 will set a house on fire. They reason quickly and cor- 
 rectly. But the vast majority of them who try to carry 
 exploded, blazing lamps outdoors burn themselves badly 
 and often burn themselves to death. The infinite pity 
 of it all is that sagacity often plays no part at all on the 
 stage of life with heroism and sacrifice for others. If, 
 instead of running with the blazing lamps in front of 
 them, the flames fairly licking oif their clothing, they 
 merely turned around and backed out, so that the blaze 
 and heat would move away from them, they could accom- 
 plish all that their splendid courage inspires them to do, 
 without suffering such fearful fatal consequences to them- 
 selves. 
 
 Faraday, the great physicist, said that the greatest 
 weakness in scientific men is deficiency of judgment. He 
 meant this to apply in matters in which those men should 
 be expert. In the long run the difference between theory 
 and practice, failure and success, unsound and sound rea- 
 soning, folly and wisdom, is due to the presence of good 
 judgment, sagacity, in selecting the right facts to reason 
 upon. Every step of a logical process may be absolutely 
 correct and the conclusion be utterly false, because only 
 part of the facts, or only the least important, have been 
 used in making the inferences. Good judgment is the 
 ability to weigh all the facts, give each its proper influ- 
 ence and draw right conclusions. What is true in this 
 respect of scientific reasoning is true in the reasoning of 
 common life. 
 
FURTHER CONDITIONS OF SOUND REASONING 229 
 
 One may understand a general principle perfectly, 
 and even be familiar with many of its applications in 
 science and practical life. But that is no guarantee that 
 in a new or hitherto unthought-of combination of cir- 
 cumstances the application of the principle will be real- 
 ized. A student of physics may work for weeks on the 
 theory of the expansion of gases, prove the truth over 
 and over that gases expand on the application of heat. 
 But it is not at all unlikely that he will ride home from 
 his experiments and lean his bicycle against the house in 
 the sunniest and hottest corner. When he comes out 
 again he finds a tire exploded. 
 
 He can quickly reach the correct conclusion about 
 the cause; for he has a great advantage over others. 
 His training in physics, while it played him false in the 
 matter of foresight, has developed a quick and accurate 
 hindsight or power of explanation. Air in the tire and 
 heat in the corner: gas, heat, expansion, explosion. 
 Scholarly theory and practical fact seem so far apart and 
 yet so near. Foresight, sagacity, judgment, common 
 sense, are apparently set at naught by such an act. A 
 young physicist ought to know better. But he is not 
 very different from the most of us. His training makes 
 the new experience much more valuable to him than it 
 would be to others. If his mind is something more than 
 a dumping ground for facts, the experience startles him 
 into mental activity on the subject in an entirely new 
 field — the practical side. 
 
230 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 In a general way it may be said that human thinking 
 is defective chiefly from the failure to consider all the 
 facts that apply to the case in hand. Most of onr opin- 
 ions of men in both their public and private relations, 
 most of our conclusions in the fields of scholarship and 
 practical life are faulty because, through ignorance or 
 prejudice or indolence or carelessness we fail to take into 
 account all the facts that ought to be considered. This 
 curse rests heavily, not only on the masses of men, but 
 upon well-trained men as well. 
 
 The neglect of a single condition may produce utter 
 failure, even though all other things are carefully at- 
 tended to. I once saw a boy undertake to noose a lizard 
 with a noose made of a spear of grass. It was apparent 
 enough by the way he went about it that he had often 
 caught lizards before. The lizard only blinked and 
 waited ; the noose was properly made, and went easily over 
 its head, and the loop closed around its neck. But the 
 animal darted away almost without a struggle. The boy 
 had used a spear of grass that was just a little too dry, 
 in bending, it broke a little too completely at one place 
 and held together only by the outer skin. When the 
 lizard jumped it snapped. Failure is so characteristic 
 of human activity because the neglect of an apparently 
 unimportant little factor can mar the whole result of 
 long and cautious effort. 
 
 Even when our judgments do not lead to utter fail- 
 ure, they may be so burdened with error as to be prac- 
 
FURTHER CONDITIONS OF SOUND REASONING 231 
 
 tically valueless for future use. There was a time when 
 it was thought that pacing off distances was accurate 
 enough a mode of measurement to use in determining 
 latitude. Now the most accurate instruments, thor- 
 oughly trained observers, carefully chosen places for obser- 
 vation and measurement, and endless repetition of the 
 observations are all brought to bear upon the subject, 
 in order to eliminate, as far as possible, every source of 
 error in the determination of latitude. What may seem 
 to be fairly well-done and satisfactory to-day is worthless 
 to-morrow. Eesults of every kind can be made perma- 
 nently satisfactory only by the most careful elimination 
 of all possible sources of error. 
 
 But the elimination of error from our thinking is no 
 easy matter. It is not only by using more accurate in- 
 struments but by the development of infinite patience in 
 the individual character that it becomes possible to hunt 
 down the minor and hidden errors that vitiate human 
 thought. 
 
 First we make mistakes on a large scale because we do 
 not recognize the likenesses between things that look radi- 
 cally different. We fail to get hold of the real greatness 
 of a truth because we fail to perceive the likenesses be- 
 tween the two extremes of a series of similar things. We 
 do not see, we have to be taught that the burning of a 
 straw-heap and the rusting of a plow-share are the same 
 process of oxidation and that the vast apparent differ- 
 ence is due to the fact that the one is slower than the 
 
232 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 other. The power to penetrate below the difference-? 
 and recognize the likenesses is given only to him who is 
 willing to serve a long apprenticeship in the search for 
 truth. 
 
 At the other extreme is the constant danger of error 
 due to neglect of minor differences. Charles Darwin 
 wanted to find out once which of two sets of plants on 
 which he was experimenting produced the more seed. Or- 
 dinarily it would seem sufficient to examine a few cases, 
 because anything but a slight difference would be easily 
 discovered. But he was dealing with small differences, 
 and it was very important that there should be no mis- 
 take. So he deliberately counted twenty thousand seeds 
 under a microscope before he regarded the question as 
 settled. He spent a life-time doing work that way; and 
 the reason why his work has lasted so well is because he 
 pursued every little question until, l)y his merciless ex- 
 haustivoness, he had fairly proved the view that he finally 
 held. 
 
 The ability to see facts clearly and to appreciate dif- 
 ferences commonly neglected comes only from long prac- 
 tice in looking for them. In the course of time a keen- 
 ness of mental vision, a sharpness of observation, is devel- 
 oped which would astonish the student who is only begin- 
 ning his training. 
 
 The openings to any new line of thought are likely 
 to be small. What many people never see at all, are 
 pounced upon as indications by more observing men; 
 
FURTHER CONDITIONS OF SOUND REASONING 233 
 
 and tliese little whispering suggestions ma}^ lead the mind 
 into a great new field of thought. Any untrained mind 
 can remember, perforce, that in a certain year there was 
 a heavy rainfall in California. The facts were great and 
 striking. Wind and falling sheets of water were spectacu- 
 lar. The softened ground let go the roots and trees both 
 big and little leaned over as in weariness. Even a stupid, 
 garrulous crone can repeat the story in the years to come. 
 But that rain has left a record that stupidity never reads. 
 It not only left its record on the account books of the 
 people, but wrote the story secretly around the heart of 
 every tree that was growing that year. 
 
 The tongue of the untrained man is fed only by his 
 memory. But one who has been trained to read signifi- 
 cance into things that others do not see at all, could read 
 the fine writing of nature in the trunks of all the trees. 
 The broad, thick band of wood that grew that year is the 
 record written round the heart of every tree that was 
 alive in the forests at that time. One who saw the big 
 rain would easily associate the rings of wood in the trunks 
 of the Monterey pines with the rain that caused them. 
 But even one who did not see it could surely infer the 
 cause of the big rings that were formed in all the trees 
 during the same year. And the succeeding rings would 
 tell tales of lean and thirsty years. His thought once 
 started might develop into an investigation that would 
 lead him to the reports of the weather bureau and the 
 account books of the hardware men who installed hun- 
 
234 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 dreds of pumping plants in the orchards to offset the 
 lack of rain. 
 
 With all of us, in all we undertake to do, the chances 
 of error are enormous, and the training that results in 
 real intellectual power must create in the mind a habit 
 of looking for more facts and a certainty that every fact 
 has a tale to tell. A man who depends on his intuitive 
 ability to get at the truth at once, is untrustworthy both 
 in scholarship and in business. To be sure, a business 
 man of long experience gives important decisions in the 
 morning concerning the business of the day, and it seems 
 as if those decisions had been made after only slight con- 
 sideration. But the outsider who observes this apparent 
 spontaneity of judgment does not know how long and 
 carefully those questions were weighed secretly during the 
 day and night before. He does not know how to estimate 
 the powerful effect of that business man's past experience 
 on his present judgment. The man himself may not be 
 aware of what it is that gives him the necessary sagacity 
 to deal with a particular case. But the great substratum 
 of experience mostly forgotten and buried beneath his 
 present consciousness, furnishes the indefinable but solid 
 basis of common sense which makes him see things 
 promptly in their true light. 
 
 Neither do scientific men turn out great ideas spon- 
 taneously. They labor silently over their views and look 
 for their own mistakes, and at last present to ihe world 
 only the results that have been wrought over and over, 
 
FURTHER CONDITIONS OF SOUND REASONING 235 
 
 carefully and painfully, in secret. The public knows in 
 a general way how even the best established scientific 
 views undergo change as knowledge improves. But it 
 would marvel, indeed, if it knew how many tentative 
 views, how much of speculative thought, what multitudes 
 of fancies that they had supposed were facts, scientific 
 men quietly cast aside as their minds slowly work their 
 way toward the truth. 
 
 The same thing is true in all things relating to the 
 higher and finer judgments of men. There is no intuitive 
 road to the truth. Good judgment lies at the far end 
 of a long and up-hill road. But the well-trained mind 
 comes after awhile to feel the right and the wrong at each 
 step. There is an indefinable intellectual sense developed 
 which brings sound judgment with it. Sagacity grows 
 only slowly and silently in the carefully cultivated soil of 
 experience. It does not come ^^y first intention.'^ 
 
 It is by expecting that something will happen that 
 the robin constantly saves its life. The same kind of habit 
 of expectant attention is developed in the right-thinking 
 mind. The life in which expectation plays no part is of 
 no value to itself or to any one else. As the habit of 
 anticipation grows, the mind learns not only to expect 
 that something is coming, but to foresee more or less 
 accurately what it will be. Experience develops the power 
 to interpret little indications aright, whether the matter 
 under consideration is a Latin translation or a weather 
 prediction. 
 
2So THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 Most students who work hard have at some tnne 
 struggled persisterxtly with a subject that constantly 
 baffled them. And perhaps when failure seemed most 
 certain, an understanding of the subject has come as if 
 by inspiration. A new insight into what was poorly im- 
 derstood seems to be the result of happy accident. But 
 such happy accidents occur only to those who are prepared 
 for them. The great inventions that startle the com- 
 mercial world, the great scientific discoveries that revolu- 
 tionize human thought, and the little mental triumphs of 
 the student in his daily studies are all the result of long 
 previous labor and patient searching. Though the final 
 success, the final insight, seems so sudden and startling, 
 so disconnected from what has gone before, it is after 
 all, "the vexing, forward-reaching sense" coupled with 
 sagacity that leads as if by intuition straight to the de- 
 sired result. 
 
REFLECTION 237 
 
 CHAPTEK XXII. 
 
 REFLECTIOX. 
 
 Winning a battle is not all a general has to do. Un- 
 less he promptly and carefully reaps the fruits of his 
 victory he had better never have fought at all. Unless 
 the student takes the time to reap the fruits of his sys- 
 tematic efforts by careful reflection on what he has done, 
 his labor is largely wasted. Old Confucius came into the 
 world late enough to be able to observe that "Learning 
 without thought is time lost.^^ 
 
 Telling students to muse upon their work^ to think,, 
 seems much like telling men to be good. They have 
 been told this since the beginning of the world but they^ 
 are still prone to do evil as the sparks fly upward. Suc- 
 cess that comes of effort instead of luck in any depart- 
 ment of life depends on hard and steady thinking. Mere- 
 ly trying to understand or repeat the thinking that is 
 done by others does not bring success either to a grocery 
 clerk or a philosopher. 
 
 In dealing with any subject, either as students or as 
 practical people of the world, the most of us are inclined 
 to let go before the subject is "worked out." Interest 
 in other things draws away the mind from its regular 
 
238 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 duties before they are thoroughly done. The clerk who 
 has his hat on and his hand on the door-knob when the 
 clock strikes six has taken his mind completely off his 
 duties; he need not look for promotion. He is no 
 thinker. 
 
 If on the other hand the mind remains fixed on a 
 topic so that results can be worked out, it still labors 
 under humanity^s handicap — an irritable desire to act 
 directly. We cannot brook delay or postpone results long 
 enough to give careful reflection to what we are doing. 
 No thread of thought is spun, no garment of reflection 
 is woven. Is it any wonder that our knowledge is so im- 
 perfect and unreliable and our notions are so far away 
 from the truth? The robin might as well expect living 
 nestlings without brooding on its eggs as for a human 
 being to expect profit from storing up facts without 
 brooding over them. 
 
 Facts without afterthought have no common pur- 
 pose ; they only get in each other's way. When once they 
 are brought by reflection to point toward a common truth, 
 their combined force is not merely the force of one fact 
 multiplied by their number. The courage of a single 
 wolf is a very doubtful quantity; one may have mixed 
 feelings concerning it, and quite likely contempt for a 
 single wolf will not be absent in the mixture. The same 
 is true of a single fact. It may slip in and out of con- 
 sciousness on wolfish, padded feet, but it commands no 
 respect, gives no inspiration. 
 
REFLECTION 239 
 
 But seven wolves leave no doubt upon the mind. 
 Their courage is no longer the courage of a single wolf 
 multiplied by seven. It is the courage of the pach that 
 makes it dangerous and makes men wish that there were 
 fire between it and them. The mysterious new power of 
 organization and mutual support has entered as a new and 
 most important factor. Each wolf makes a different 
 kind of wolf out of each of the other six. Every snarl 
 and yelp gives hotter, quicker breath to all the pack, till 
 the victim is brought to bay in terror. The facts that 
 constitute our learning likewise draw all their interest 
 and importance from being carefully thought over and 
 brought into close relation with their fellows. They give 
 each other mutual support. Each becomes a proof of the 
 truth of the others. 
 
 It is the constant learning of more and more facts 
 without thinking about them that produces the hopeless 
 confusion revealed in examination papers and which is so 
 constantly and despairingly discussed and so often made 
 the butt of ridicule. 
 
 A class in English literature was given a series of 
 selections from the Old Testament to study for their 
 historical and literary value. No religious requirements 
 were connected with the reading. The purpose was to 
 familiarize the class with those great Old Testament 
 characters and passages that have permeated all litera- 
 ture with allusions, and without a direct knowledge of 
 which every reader of modern literature and every stu- 
 
240 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 dent of mediaeval and modern art is at a constant and 
 serious loss. 
 
 In the examination, one of the young men, in answer 
 to a question concerning the historical position and char- 
 acter of Moses, said, "Moses was born in a manger, and 
 found and brought up by the daughter of a shepherd; he 
 was born in Israel and lived there till a young man."' 
 
 This fearful and hopeless confusion of facts would be 
 more laughable and less pitiful if such intellectual per- 
 formances were not so desperately common. They are 
 not oddities, but fairly represent a large part of the mis- 
 cellaneous knowledge that is ordinarily accumulated even 
 under the guidance of teachers. But the student is the 
 culpable party. His curse is lack of thought on what 
 he is doing at the time he does it, and reflection after the 
 work is completed. That is what leads to all the mental 
 confusion that crops up afterwards when the facts get 
 hopelessly mixed. And it is not likely that they will 
 ever be brought back into their original connections again. 
 After the first impression is made each fact is allowed to 
 shift for itself without further attention. Too much of 
 the student's work is left in the stage of "first opinion'' — 
 crude, unconsidered and defective. 
 
 The student's natural excuse is that the tendency 
 of the times so burdens him with quantity of work that 
 it is with him a sheer question of getting over the ground, 
 let alone cultivating it carefully by the reflective process. 
 But a little afterthought goes a long way. In the long 
 
REFLECTION 241 
 
 run the surest way to master large quantities of work is 
 to give careful thought to every step. Thought and after- 
 thought become a habit by and by, and the time so often 
 lost because of a poor understanding of a subject is all 
 saved when once the habit of reflection is established. 
 To be specific, ten minutes of reflection will save half an 
 hour of digging before the day is over. 
 
 It is nearly true that reading, and repetition of what 
 others have said — so-called study — on the one hand, and 
 real thinking on the other hand are in inverse ratio. A 
 really productive thinker may do much reading; but he 
 makes his reading incidental to his thinking. When 
 such a man reads he reaches out after the crucial facts. 
 He is after the kind of information that will help settle 
 something one way or the other. Lincoln, Bunyan, the 
 antique Edmund Eich, were all men of small reading, as 
 we speak of reading now; but what they read, they used 
 to feed the furnaces of their thought. 
 
 I do not wish even to seem to belittle the value of 
 reading. Breadth of thought and culture, soundness of 
 reasoning, require a wide range of knowledge. It is a 
 fact, however, that the vast and growing literature of the 
 present is affecting the quality of our wit. We learn to 
 read with no intention of giving the matter a second 
 thought. A large supply of facts, a wide range of ac- 
 curate knowledge is indispensable to sound thinking. 
 But much reading is fatal to the development of the 
 higher intellectual powers unless these retain the mas- 
 
242 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 tery over all the material that is brought before the mind. 
 Truth reveals itself only slowly, and our desire to act di- 
 rectly, to have a conclusion promptly, makes most of us 
 followers of those who are willing to wait and think. It 
 is important to know the truth at the beginning of life; 
 but wisdom comes only at the end. It is only when the 
 facts are all summed up and carefully thought over that 
 the truth reveals itself. 
 
 The leaves of the trees unfold and fill the earth with 
 green ; they grow brilliant when bitten by the frost ; they 
 fall and are forgotten and are followed by others just as 
 good. But the permanent part of the tree is of slower 
 growth, silent and imperceptible. The daily tasks pursue 
 one another through the seasons, and each seems like the 
 other. But the power of thought grows large and abides. 
 It upholds the fabric of knowledge because it built each 
 item and gave it vitality. Final success, explanation, 
 penetration, insight, may seem sudden and startling, but 
 it is only the late fruit of steady and accurate thinking 
 carried on silently through the years. 
 
THE IMPULSIVE AND VASCILLATING WILLS 243 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIII. 
 
 THE IMPULSIVE AND THE VASCILLATING WILL. 
 
 The writer may as well make a confession here that 
 is not made in the preface. This book is written to the 
 willing student. And by willingness I mean not merely 
 the willingness of inclination but of active force. What 
 will be said in this chapter, therefore, will have chiefly 
 a negative value for him. It will deal largely with states 
 of mind that had better be avoided. The following chap- 
 ter will discuss what seems to me to be the desirable 
 qualities of the will. ' 
 
 The drunkard drinks and the boy plays because im- 
 pulse is the master. Present gratification is the only 
 motive that rules the conduct. There is no regard for 
 consequences, no consideration, no serious thought about 
 the bearing of the present act upon the near or distant 
 future. In such a character there is no reflection be- 
 tween the first thought and the action; no influence of 
 remote interests or the interests of others upon the pres- 
 ent conduct. Such a life of impulse is a stream over 
 which the judgment exercises no apparent control. 
 
 A typically impulsive will acts in entire absence of 
 reflection. It is swayed at every step by a single thought. 
 
244 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 No deliberate judgment is first passed upon all the pos- 
 sible motives for action or the absence of it. Each new 
 circumstance sways the mind completely and excites to 
 action. The senses and passions fix upon whatever is at 
 hand, and gratification, immediate and complete, is the 
 only matter that enters as a motive. Every act, however, 
 is followed by a complicated network of consequences. 
 But the life of impulse leaves these out of consideration 
 at every step, and is always unprepared for what is com- 
 ing. Responsibility is set at naught. Such a life is one 
 of careless drifting with the stream of interest or of 
 cruel buffeting against the consequences of unconsidered 
 acts. As soon as the immediate interest has been ex- 
 hausted the life has to hunt for a new hold upon the 
 world. A new start has to be made. The chief difficulty 
 here is the lack of permanent motives to action or re- 
 straint. There being no such guide, the will is free to 
 act without the friction of deliberate reflection, and the 
 course of conduct as well as the course of thought is likely 
 to be a series of errors. 
 
 There is a curious, but not uncommon, effect pro- 
 duced in the class-room by what has been aptly called 
 the explosive will. From among my experiences there 
 stands out the case of a student of French. He had 
 studied carefully the principles of the grammar; but 
 when it came to the reading of French, he made a bad 
 failure of it, because there was in his character a com- 
 bination of low reflective power with great explosiveness. 
 
THE IMPULSIVE AND VASCILLATING WILLS 245 
 
 There was inability to gather up all the data necessary 
 for making a right decision, inability to wait until delib- 
 eration had done its work. The translation of every sen- 
 tence that he touched was a succession of errors, because 
 he could not "keep cool" till he had considered all the 
 facts. In one effort he might give careful attention to 
 the tense of the verb and answer before attending to its 
 number. In the next effort on the same sentence he 
 might reverse the process. Only by constant criticism 
 and check upon his explosiveness could he be finally in- 
 duced to correlate his facts and squeeze the truth out of 
 them. 
 
 His case was unique, however, because this trait was 
 so pronounced in him. The type of mind, in a less ex- 
 treme form, is quite common. At bottom, this explo- 
 siveness seems to be due to the fact that out of the cloud 
 of facts that ought to be considered, one stands forth 
 so clearly from the general haziness that it wields an 
 almost unhindered intiuence upon the mind; and imme- 
 diate action follows. The student of French referred to 
 always did most of his thinking after he had spoken. 
 As soon as he understood a single point in a sentence, 
 he seemed to be under the dire necessity of giving ex- 
 pression to his knowledge, regardless of the other points 
 that were entitled to equal consideration. 
 
 Great explosions come from the sudden release of 
 tremendous force that may have been long in gathering. 
 The action of the will may be very sudden and violent 
 
246 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 after long, undue repression; But that is entirely differ- 
 ent from the everlasting pop-pop-popping of the explo- 
 sive will that goes off on the slightest provocation and 
 leads to action that is not preceded by deliberation. 
 
 The other extreme is seen in individuals who habitu- 
 ally give long and careful consideration to any proposed 
 line of action. One who acts without deliberation, but on 
 the inspiration of each momentary impulse, is likely to 
 be an "active" individual, busy all the time; but his ac- 
 tivity is not industry because it has no ultimate ends in 
 view. In the type now to be discussed the will is con- 
 stantly checked by the spirit of deliberation. Professor 
 James has given a fine description of the two types of 
 mind in his Principles of Psychology; and he shows that 
 the latter type does not necessarily imply an ineffective 
 life. It habitually gives consideration to all the factors 
 that can possibly enter into the question at issue; the 
 thinking is clear, the decision is definite; the reasons for 
 the judgment are sound. In such a type the decision so 
 frequently is that it is not worth while to act, that it 
 leaves the impression that the life is a negative, ineffect- 
 ive one. Whereas the explosive individual is constantly 
 busy carrying his various impulses into effect, the delib- 
 erative individual seems incapable of effective action. 
 
 But this is not so. Such a character may appear 
 defective in will power, while it may really be symmetri- 
 cal. Its life is likely to be steady and quiet. It may 
 commit errors of judgment. Its reasons for not acting 
 
THE IMPULSIVE AND VASCILLATING WILLS 247 
 
 may not always appeal to the sound judgment of others, 
 but they are easily understood. Inaction is not due to 
 confusion of thought or inability to reach a decision. 
 One thus gifted may act only rarely; but when he does 
 act, he is likely to act with great force, because his mind 
 is made up. Not uncommonly this apparent sluggish- 
 ness of the will is coupled with great stubbornness of 
 purpose when action is once taken. 
 
 Every thoughtful individual can draw from his own 
 experience illustrations of errors of judgment. Some 
 time after an apparently important thing has been done it 
 becomes plain that it was not nearly so important as it 
 looked. Acts that were omitted because their reasons 
 appeared unimportant, sometimes look very different at 
 the end of a day or a week. They assume an impor- 
 tance that is wholly unlooked for. Things that promised 
 satisfaction turn into ashes when touched; and things 
 that we dreaded to approach and worried much about 
 seem to lose all their significance after a little. Time, 
 "the great independent variable," gives a lengthening 
 perspective to the details of our lives which robs them of 
 the original value that we assigned to them. Some that 
 we treated as insignificant become large with importance, 
 and others, to which we assigned vast significance, dwindle 
 into paltry details. 
 
 The impulsive type of mind is likely to be forever 
 fallino^ into this kind of error of judgment. Acting al- 
 ways on simple, momentary motives, it gets no mental 
 
248 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 perspective by means of which to judge rightly of a given 
 course of thought or action. The deliberate type is 
 likely to see things in their true light. The deliberative 
 individual may lose many of the legitimate passing pleas- 
 ures of life, but he is not likely to lose the solid attain- 
 ments which one with the explosive nature never can se- 
 cure. 
 
 There is, however, a much worse condition than either 
 of those described above, one especially fatal to the best 
 interests of the student. He is bound by the nature of 
 his calling to be an accurate and systematic thinker. But 
 thought, to be of any value, must furnish elective mo- 
 tives for action. The thought itself will be untrue to 
 reality unless kept running in a well-marked channel that 
 opens out into action. The state of mind in which a 
 consistent train of reasoning is carried through but does 
 not result in any kind of action, can even make a fool 
 out of a genius. Motives, if felt, are not strong enough 
 to produce action. 
 
 I am not speaking now of the contemplative mind, 
 which stands, as it were, by the roadside of life and makes 
 notes upon experience, which purposely remains in the at- 
 titude of observer and commentator of the action of 
 others. I refer to the state of mind in which the desira- 
 bility of a course of action is recognized and acknowledged 
 but there is not enough desire or will power to carry the 
 thought into effect. Most human beings love action of 
 some kind, and give some sort of exercise to their vital 
 
THE IMPULSIVE AND VASCILLATING WILLS 249 
 
 powers. It is in the presence of difficulties that thought 
 becomes more and more widely separated from action. 
 The lack of moral force to carry the clearly conceived 
 notion through into reality over obstacles tends constant- 
 ly to weaken the relation between the individual's 
 thoughts and his acts. There is no difficulty in thinking 
 out a plan or a line of reasoning; and the stress of life 
 is avoided by stopping short of action. Under such con- 
 ditions such action as there is, results from the pressure 
 of circumstances, while the thought becomes more and 
 more disconnected from reality. 
 
 Even the scientific man, who is supposed to deal ex- 
 clusively with hard, cold facts must have a powerful im- 
 agination to light the way for his slow and dogged think- 
 ing. But he always brings imagination to heel and makes 
 it the servant of real investigation. It is chained to facts 
 and must carry them along. Its flight is constantly 
 checked and changed and hampered by tests. 
 
 When a habit of day-dreaming and shirking reality is 
 once cultivated, is deliberately invited to govern the men- 
 tal life, will power is likely to be at its lowest ebb. The 
 most beautiful and consistent day-dreams flourish best in 
 the absence of the healthy, robust action of the will. 
 Speculation in science and philosophy is the easiest and 
 wildest where the facts are fewest and most obscure, and 
 experiment does not enter to disturb the course of 
 thought. Theory is most complete and perfect where 
 there is no chance or mood for practice. 
 
250 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 To make the character flaccid and ineffective it is not 
 necessary that the mind should dwell largely upon no- 
 tions that cannot be put into execution. There is a con- 
 stant temptation to let thought have its free course and 
 to stop just short of action, even when we are thinking 
 upon wholesome, nearby things that can be carried into 
 effect. The difficulty seems to be in that first exercise of 
 the will that leads to action. Legions of men and women 
 keep their minds actively at work upon the possibilities 
 of life, but do not take the first step required for their 
 realization. This state of mind, once chronic, makes ac- 
 tion pale and sickly. This flabby quality of thought that 
 lacks the bony stiffening of the will is more common, espe- 
 cially among students, than most of us would be willing 
 to admit. In the end the individual seems to lose all 
 ability to crystallize his thought or even his desire into 
 action. Circumstances may eoerce him to act, but that 
 is shabby training for the will. 
 
 There is one doubtful improvement on this state of 
 things. There are multitudes who conceive clearly and 
 reflect fairly well, and who spend much moral energy firm- 
 ly resolving to accomplish certain results. Eesolutions re- 
 late largely to action at a definite time in the future. 
 They are mostly a concession to the righteousness of the 
 thought and a provision for postponing the action. A 
 resolution is only the shadow of the will; and shadows 
 are mostly worthless. 
 
 Alongside this poor apology for will power belongs 
 
THE IMPULSIVE AND VASCILLATING WILLS 251 
 
 the vascillating whiffle-tree will, that alternately begins 
 and abandons action. It finds no secure backing in 
 careful judgment. If for any reason action of any kind 
 is begun, the reason soon appears a poor one; other rea- 
 sons arise for doing otherwise. Decisions are readily 
 reached and action may be prompt, but no sooner has per- 
 formance begun than confusion arises; new considera- 
 tions come up and produce hesitation that ends in a halt. 
 Then comes further deliberation, and another start, that, 
 loses its force before the friction is overcome. The will 
 keeps whipping back and forth like a tree-top in the wind. 
 Chronic uncertainty finally pervades the whole life. Such 
 an individual is in practical life marked by the community 
 as one to be avoided when anything is to be accomplished. 
 Not only is he no helper of others; he is a check on all 
 straight-forward action. 
 
252 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE AGONY OF STARTING. 
 
 The reason so many good ideas are never carried into 
 practical effect is that there is a period of agony that 
 intervenes between the thought and effective action. Th* 
 beginning of any action is more difficult than its continu- 
 ance. Even a horse knows that. It costs blood to start 
 a load that is easily pulled after it is moving. But there 
 is comfort in the thought that the law has no exceptions. 
 Every force acts more slowly at first. Gravitation does 
 not agonize over the fact that at the first instant, a stone's 
 movement is very slow ; nor does it draw courage from the 
 sure knowledge that the stone will move faster after a 
 while. The force of gravity simply makes the steady pull, 
 and the speed of motion increases inevitably. The same 
 is true of the efforts of horses and men; only they feel 
 bound to agonize more or less over the start. 
 
 I believe that in the experience of nearly all minds 
 there is more or less of this difficulty, inertia, resistance 
 to action even after the thought is clear and the resolu- 
 tion to act has been made. I believe, too, that every man 
 and woman who hopes for a successful life must come to 
 recognize clearly and frankly this difficulty of making the 
 
THE AGONY OF STARTING 253 
 
 start. No one who, having recognized it, is unwilling to 
 serve his apprenticeship through this preliminary period 
 will ever carry into execution his most worthy thought and 
 desire. Whether the question is one merely of studying 
 a lesson or writing a paper or making a dissection in the 
 laboratory, or of pursuing a whole course of study, the 
 success of the actual execution depends absolutely on the 
 quality of the action of the reason and the will during 
 this preliminary struggle, no matter whether it is short or 
 long. 
 
 The unhappy period of getting under way is the home 
 of lost souls. There lie bleaching the bones of all the 
 hopes and desires, and all the puny and half-developed 
 efforts of humanity. One learns to cross this unprom- 
 ising valley of preliminary effort; but a thousand never 
 see the farther heights of success. They try a little 
 and fail; henceforth they are pushed hither and thither 
 by the harsh hand of circumstance. 
 
 There is no road around this valley. There must 
 sooner or later be developed a sublime faith, that the ap- 
 parently weak and fruitless first efforts are only a nec- 
 essary prelude to what will surely be strong and steady 
 action with big results. But this easy faith that ultimate 
 success comes through preliminary effort and distress is 
 the growth of time and practice. 
 
 One of the chief difficulties in the mind's way may 
 be dealt with a little in detail. When we peer into the 
 future, time is fore-shortened. All the parts of a future 
 
254 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 experience, as we gaze upon it expectantly from the 
 present, seem bunched together. Dreams of pleasure 
 and profit usually leave out of consideration the long 
 labors preliminary to their achievement, so the joy seems 
 all undiluted. So, too, all sorts of difficulties, however 
 well they may be understood, seem crowded close to- 
 gether. In our thought they are not diluted, spread far 
 apart by time. 
 
 One of the essential conditions of success, either in 
 study or in business or in social life is that the mind 
 shall have a clear grasp of the difficulties to be met, 
 a clear view of what is coming. The plans that are laid 
 must include provision not only for all known difficul- 
 ties, but for unforeseen emergencies. It is never safe 
 to belittle a task when preparations are made for its 
 execution. But after the task has been considered, when 
 its nature is understood, and its diffieulties fully realized 
 and planned for, then the will needs to be focussed on 
 the initial step alone. A large proportion of human 
 failure is due to the fact that all the obstacles loom up 
 immediately in front of the mind's eye. The lengthening 
 course of time and its effect are not sufficiently thought 
 about. It is because the moral courage is called upon 
 to face and, as it were, to act against all the obstacles 
 at once, and that, too, at the beginning, that makes tasks 
 of every kind so much dreaded. Obstacles are the great 
 sifters of men. Only those with faith that the first blow 
 counts, though it may show no results, are willing to 
 
THE AGONY OF STARTING 255 
 
 give the blow and follow it with another. They know 
 that all things must yield, if they are struck often and 
 hard enough. 
 
 The absence of results after the first efforts dampens 
 first enthusiasm and then hope and interest. When these 
 are smothered, action ceases. There is never effort with- 
 out faith. But even the worst failure in an effort to 
 perform a student's task is a valuable experience. It 
 helps to clear the ground. Failures reveal the false no- 
 tions with which the mind started. Every failure, if 
 correctly valued, brings the mind nearer to success. Only 
 children and inexperienced enthusiasts expect first 
 thought to ripen into successful action. The relation 
 between thought and reality, theory and practice, is not 
 so close as that. 
 
 It is important to remember in this connection that 
 difficulties dissolve in the doing. No matter how weak 
 a student's first results may be, no matter how faint the 
 first gleam of his understanding of his task, that little 
 is the most powerful weapon that has yet been forged 
 for further struggle. Comprehension now has something 
 to take hold upon. The mind can grasp the little that 
 it has, and use it in looking for more. The power of 
 performance is cumulative. The mind of the student 
 may not be sensibly stronger at the end of a half hour 
 of struggle, but its capacity for effective thinking is 
 vastly greater, because with every effort put forth some- 
 thing new is gained that lends help in understanding 
 
256 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 everything that is touched afterwards. The hands may 
 be the same, but the tools are better. 
 
 It is at the beginning of each task, and at the begin- 
 ning of the student's career, that this principle of cumu- 
 lative power needs to be realized. The amount of time 
 spent in preliminary doubt, half-heartedness and misery 
 over lack of good progress will depend largely on faith. 
 The time will be short or long, minutes or hours, accord- 
 ing as one is or is not confident that the difficulty is only 
 the friction of getting started. 
 
 The general perversity of things often serves to check 
 an individual's action by disappointing him. Nothing 
 seems to turn out as expected. Hope and expectation 
 seem blasted at the outset. But while we cannot too 
 greatly emphasize the importance of trying to foresee a 
 result, it is well to remember that realization is usually 
 widely different from expectation and usually falls far 
 short. The effect of constantly disappointing expecta- 
 tion depends on the attitude of the mind. 
 
 The real attitude of the scientific man toward 
 what is yet unknown is based upon an unquenchable de- 
 sire to know the reality that is hidden behind the myste- 
 rious curtain. Desire for truth is the distinguishing 
 mark of the true philosopher, no matter whether it ful- 
 fills his expectations or smashes them to atoms. Disap- 
 pointment in his expectations does not check his efforts, 
 because he is not merely seeking to fulfill those expecta- 
 tions and gratify his hopes. He is trying to find the 
 truth. 
 
THE AGONY OF STARTING 257 
 
 If after he makes his first efforts he finds his expec- 
 tations flatly contradicted by the results, the failure only 
 serves to correct his judgment, and brings him nearer 
 the truth. In short, the scientific man must be open- 
 minded, in a state of expectant attention, confident that 
 something is to be learned, with willingness and a dogged 
 determination to find it out, and with the love of truth 
 so strong in him that, no matter what the results may 
 prove to be, he will accept them frankly as the real ob- 
 ject for which he was looking. 
 
 If a general's happiness and hope of fame depended 
 on his carrying out in every detail the plan of a cam- 
 paign that he had mapped out in advance, his chance of 
 disappointment would be great indeed. His will is ob- 
 structed at every turn by a perverse opponent. But if 
 his ultimate aim is the capture of the enemy's men and 
 guns and territory, his best powers are kept constantly 
 at work to meet new conditions. And what is true of the 
 scientific man or the soldier is true of the business man 
 or the student. Expectations do not constitute the sum 
 of life; often, perhaps, they do not even represent the 
 best that may befall. To wring success out of failure 
 is both the doom and the glory of the real man. 
 
258 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE PETRIFIED WILLI HABITUAL MASTERY. 
 
 The only valuable action is action that is persisted 
 in. Nothing produces results of any value in science or 
 study or business except following up the first results 
 and securing the total cumulative effect of steady action. 
 No general can win a campaign by merely winning a 
 victory, unless he follows up the victory. A broad range 
 of vision is of no value to the hunter who does not give 
 steady pursuit. It is the after strokes that, outwardl}- 
 at least, count for most. Contentment with the first 
 fruits never wrought any good to either a soldier or a- 
 scholar. 
 
 Eecent history has furnished the world a remarkable 
 example of a petrified national will. The Boer farmers 
 first startled the world by the courage with which they 
 faced tremendous odds and by their remarkable successes. 
 But that first feeling of excitement over the semi-mirac- 
 ulous gave way to chronic astonishment at the persist- 
 ence with which the Boers held out against their enemies 
 and apparently smashed all the doctrines of probability 
 by sheer force of will. 
 
 The only reason that can be given why the Boers 
 did not yield at certain critical and apparently hopeless 
 
THE PETRIFIED WILL; HABITUAL MASTERY 259 
 
 stages of the war is that they simply would not change 
 their minds, and their enemies, who had done nearly 
 everything else, could not change their minds for them. 
 Stubbornness of will, even under the most distressing 
 circumstances, has made their struggle stand out among 
 the marvels of history. With most of their men and 
 nearly all their women and children prisoners, with their 
 initial resources exhausted, with but slight opportunities 
 to replenish their necessities, their petrified will found a 
 way in the wilderness to keep soul and body together, 
 to evade the enemy, to puzzle the world and make a 
 mighty people wish that they had waited for a friendly 
 destiny to accomplish the conquest by peaceful means. 
 The world may pity and puzzle ; but it was a case of un- 
 limited resources against a petrified national will. 
 
 It would be an easy matter to cite illustrious exam- 
 ples of how eartVs great captains have conquered adverse 
 conditions and scored a great though belated triumph 
 simply because they would not yield. But we need not 
 appeal to them. Fixity of purpose, a will that clings with 
 teeth and claws, that calls into service every mental de- 
 vice and power is essential to success in the hour of study 
 as well as in the hour of battle, to the success of the bare- 
 foot boy as well as to that of the warrior. 
 
 The desire to have hold of a bull-frog is likely to 
 be strong in every boy that has ever heard one sing. But 
 not every boy gets his desire. A squad of boys may throw 
 sticks and stones and roil the water of the pond. But, 
 while they may all be gifted with equal powers of devising 
 
260 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 means to ends, they are not equally endowed with the 
 tendency to cling to a purpose through failure. The de- 
 sire for a bull-frog may be stronger in some than in 
 others, but that does not determine who will stay longest 
 at the pond. The boy who first suggested catching one 
 may be the first to leave. They may all straggle home 
 and leave behind the lad who at first felt the least de- 
 sire for a bull-frog. He may not be impulsive or enthusi- 
 astic; his feelings are slow in growing. But his will is 
 like a steel trap ; it can shut, but it cannot open. 
 
 All the efforts of the crowd have only made his task 
 more hopeless; because the water is disturbed and so 
 are the feelings of the frogs. They grasped the mean- 
 ing of the situation quicker than the boys, and hid. But 
 this boy has learned some important things; he knows 
 now how not to catch a bull-frog. He seems to have no 
 equipment left except the desire and the will, and failure 
 for experience. But for him there is only one desire, 
 and he has a will that never whiffles. That combination 
 lays under tribute the highest and best thinking of which 
 the mind is capable. 
 
 When the sun has gone down and supper time is 
 past; when the mud has settled to the bottom of the 
 pond and the water is clear again; when the moon is up 
 and the frogs are singing, that boy plods home. He is 
 dirty, wet and hungry and has evil forebodings of what 
 is in store. But there is a kicking bull-frog in his hand, 
 and that is enough. He does not know what part the 
 frog can play in appeasing the wrath to come, but he 
 
THE PETRIFIED WILL; HABITUAL MASTERY 261 
 
 will offer him in evidence and yield him up in sacrifice. 
 It is not the frog alone, but the triumph that bears him 
 up and makes him think it was worth while. 
 
 Of course, it may well be admitted that there is a 
 limit to the exercise of a stubborn will. Will and wis- 
 dom sometimes part company, and it becomes a nice 
 question as to when to use discretion and quit. Person- 
 ally, I have seen so much failure, due to lack of stubborn 
 purpose, and have so carefully studied the failures and 
 triumphs of students, that I prefer the stubborn will, 
 even though it sometimes brings disaster. I am inclined 
 to think that no disaster this side of death is irretriev- 
 able; and such a will can use disaster to retrieve success. 
 
 Brilliant scholars are always charming in a teacher's 
 eyes ; but I think their value is mostly temporary. Brill- 
 iant scholarship is no sign of coming success unless the 
 character that possesses it is also endowed with great 
 executive force, with a strong and finely tempered will 
 that never breaks. But nature does not often make this 
 combination. While one has a fine head, some other fel- 
 low, with a somewhat duller head, may have the necessary 
 streak of stubbornness and the 'power to act. And the lat- 
 ter wins — not the prizes in school, but those of practical 
 life, and, in the end, those of sound scholarship, too. 
 All the "self-made'' men and women are endowed with 
 powerful wills coupled with resourcefulness. They have 
 used the usually moderate gifts of nature so effectively 
 that they have outstripped and now outshine many 
 brighter minds who had opportunity thrust upon them. 
 
262 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 I had two students under observation at the same 
 time for two years. Both had had about the same oppor- 
 tunities, but one was quick and the other slow. The one 
 could learn a thing while the other was getting ready. 
 But the genius never learned to overcome anything that 
 he did not like. He never voluntarily removed an obstacle, 
 but always sought to avoid it. Each year he encountered 
 something that did not suit his taste. In things that 
 he liked he was a master; from everything else he asked 
 to be excused. 
 
 Slow-In-The-Head was not master of anything. He 
 had a clear mind, but had to work for everything he got. 
 But he made a fight out of everything that he undertook. 
 Pugnacity seemed to be a ruling trait with him. Th6 
 first few weeks of his new school life looked to others 
 like weeks of agony. But he never asked for a truce nor 
 for time to catch his breath. When ^'brighter" students 
 complained that they were driven with work, and he was 
 asked his opinion of the matter, he only said, with a sug- 
 gestive snap of his hard-set lower jaw, "I have no kick to 
 make." 
 
 Both entered college. The bright student went 
 home in a few weeks, by invitation, because at college 
 they did not drive students to things they did not like, 
 and he would not drive himself. The other is a college 
 man — an honor to himself and to everyone who helped 
 him get an education. Moderate intellectual powers 
 coupled with a dogged disposition to accomplish some- 
 
THE PETRIFIED WILL; HABITUAL MASTERY 263 
 
 thing, with big fighting and small dodging powers, fur- 
 nish the best material for a really solid character. 
 
 A burning-glass in motion never set fire to anything. 
 But even a lens of ice, held steady, will make a fire. 
 There is little use to talk about training the attention, 
 memory, and powers of observation, unless the will is 
 trained to keep a strong and steady hold upon the move- 
 ments of the intellectual life. And I believe that all men 
 and women who are not mentally defective are capable 
 of training their wills. A few are so strongly endowed 
 by nature with the gift of habitual mastery that they 
 seem to need no training. They are the born leaders. 
 They throw all who come in contact with them at once 
 into the subordinate attitude of helpers. But, while the 
 world needs and uses these gifted leaders, the individual 
 student is under obligation to learn to lead himself, to 
 cultivate the spirit of habitual mastery, until prompt and 
 effective action upon every subject and occasion becomes 
 the normal individual trait. 
 
 There is an unwritten law on the farm which says that 
 the older brother mny drive the horses and that the younger 
 brother shall jump off the wagon and open the gates and 
 bars. Sometimes the younger brother is one of the gifted 
 ones, and raises his head of dominion al)ove the rest of 
 the family. But such occasional exceptions only prove 
 the terrible strength of the law that one shall lead and 
 the other follow. It is a law of brute as well as of human 
 life— this law of leadership. When once it is accepted, 
 
264 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 disputes disappear, responsibility is concentrated, and 
 more and better work is done. 
 
 But what about the younger boy, who is handicapped 
 by the fate of birth ? It is a small matter that he should 
 have to forego the proud pleasure of driving the horses 
 except when, in a spirit of benevolence, the older brother 
 makes concessions. With the privilege of mastery goes 
 the weight of responsibility. When there is hard work, 
 the older brother has to do the hardest part of it. When 
 there is perplexity or danger, he has to make the deci- 
 sions, take the initiative and see that all goes well. He 
 is the last to enter school in the fall and the first to leave 
 it in the spring. His education, apparently, is sadly sac- 
 rificed to the interests of the family. 
 
 Nobody sees what has been done to the younger 
 brother. When the leader leads, the others cease to 
 think. This is not due to lack of capacity, but to lack 
 of opportunity. Yielding the mastery to others, even 
 though it may not breed personal weakness, makes the 
 individual defenseless from lack of practice. This fact 
 is not impressive until the leader is removed. Kill the 
 leader and the herd of elk will mill ; and while it is wheel- 
 ing round, the whole herd can be killed by a single man 
 before another leader is developed. This is the interval 
 of disaster — the time when the habit of following works 
 havoc and reveals the greatness of the weakness. When 
 the older brother is withdrawn the younger one tastes 
 the bitter-sweets of leadership without training. 
 
 The same truth holds good for nations. When the 
 
THE PETRIFIED WILL ; HABITUAL MASTERY 265 
 
 Eomans withdrew from Britain, after four hundred years 
 of mastery, the natives had lost the art of self-help, and 
 were at the mercy of invaders. Their appeal for help 
 was pitiful. They had lost capacity for initiative and 
 leadership, and the development of it seemed out of the 
 question. Many a nation has suffered terribly in war 
 while it was going through the intermediate agony of 
 developing real leaders. "There is always a man for the 
 crisis" — proof of slumbering capacity repressed by fixed 
 conditions. But the punishment that comes to the na- 
 tion while it is training its leader is a fearful price to pay. 
 
 It takes many years of harsh experience in later life 
 for a younger brother to overcome the effect of the rela- 
 tion that he bore in boyhood to a competent older brother. 
 When he goes from home the spirit of dependence and 
 hesitation follows him till he has learned how to exercise 
 his judgment and will effectively. He may have more of 
 the learning gained from books, but in the serious crises 
 of life that confront them both, it is the older brother 
 who sets his sound, cool judgment to work and enters 
 upon steady and vigorous action that makes things come 
 out right, while his younger and perhaps more gifted 
 brother is hesitating. There is a vast difference between 
 book-learning and personal power. 
 
 The heaviest emphasis throughout this whole book 
 has been on the necessity for cultivating clear and ac- 
 curate thinking. A good memory and all the other de- 
 sirable mental traits shall be added unto him that trains 
 himself to clear and cautious thous^ht. That is the first 
 
266 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 requisite for an intellectual life. The second is like nnto 
 it : habitual mastery, the power and chronic habit of carry- 
 ing into execution the vigorous thought in spite of ob- 
 stacles and so-called impossibilities. The will is the back- 
 bone, of the character. If that is a cotton string, there 
 may be ever so much capacity for absorbing knowledge, 
 but no use will be made of it. 
 
 There can be no hope of a well-regulated life, no 
 assurance of habitual success, unless the will is trained 
 to act regularly, steadily, vigorously, to act promptly and 
 persistently upon a well-considered plan, and to brush 
 difficulties aside as incidents subordinate to the main 
 issue. 
 
 This training must begin by acting out one's thought, 
 even if the action seems ever so crippled at first. The 
 power to do increases with the doing. In the silence of 
 the years will grow up a character that feels the constant 
 joy of accomplishment. The moral culture that comes 
 from such training of the will can never be taken away. 
 The man is never the same again after a period of con- 
 stant, earnest, obstinate effort. Through the vista of 
 the years he can see the growth of personal power, of 
 whose development he may, at the time of its growth, 
 have been entirely unaware. 
 
 The object of all this exercise of will is to train it to 
 act promptly and confidently, not merely in the pres- 
 ence of oft-repeated difficulties, where habit will come to 
 its aid; but to act in the same way when face to face 
 with new, unusual difficulties. If one has the necessary 
 
THE PETRIFIED WILL; HABITUAL MASTERY 26T 
 
 confidence and willingness within him to meet a great 
 difficulty at a single impact, all after-action becomes 
 easy. Shall a small boy plant his feet cautiously in the 
 edge of the river, dip up a handful of water and wet his 
 arms, "to get used to the cold," or shall he jump from 
 the spring-board and go in head first, leaving no time- 
 for the long-drawn-out agony of getting wet? Shall the 
 will remove such difficulties piece-meal, and so develop 
 the habit of shivering at the thought of action, or shall it, 
 when the decision is made, brush aside the difficulties by 
 shortening them? 
 
 I like the story of young Fred Ouillette, "pilot and 
 son of a pilot .... a hero to the boys of Montreal, a 
 figure to be stared at always by anxious passengers.'^ 
 Cleveland Moffett told it in St. Nicholas for April, 1901, 
 and it has in it the secret of the making of a man, the 
 explanation of how habitual mastery is made easy. 
 
 In Canada, the land of pilots and hardy watermen, 
 "there are not ten — perhaps not six — men to-day, French 
 or English or Indian, who would dare the peril" of shoot- 
 ing the Lachine Eapids at Montreal with a steamer-load 
 of passengers. Fred Ouillette is one of the six. Moffett 
 talked with him about it and tells what the pilot said. 
 
 "He emphasized this, for instance, as essential in a 
 man who would face that fury of waters with many lives 
 in his keeping: he must not be afraid. One would say 
 that the rapids feel where the mastery is, whether with 
 them or with the pilot, and woe to him if pounding heart 
 or wavering hand betray him. The rapids will have no 
 
268 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 mercy. And there are pilots, it appears, who know the 
 Lachine Eapids, every foot of them, and could do Ouil- 
 lette's work perfectly if Ouillette were standing near, yet 
 would fail entirely if left alone. Every danger they can 
 overcome but the one that lies in themselves. They 
 •cannot brave their own fear. He cited the case of a 
 pilot's son who had worked in the Lachine Rapids for 
 years, helping his father, and learned the river as well 
 as a man can know it. At the old man's death, this son 
 announced that he would take his father's place, and 
 shoot the rapids as they always had done; yet a season 
 passed, then a second season, and always he postponed 
 beginning, and, with one excuse or another, took his boats 
 through the Lachine Canal, a safe but tame short cut, 
 not likely to draw tourists. 
 
 " ^Not start heem right, that f adder,' said Ouillette. 
 ^Now too late. Now nevair he can learn heem right.' 
 
 " "^Why, how should he have started him ?' I asked. 
 
 " ^Same way like my fadder start me.' And then, in 
 his jerky Canadian speech, he explained how this was. 
 
 ^^Ouillette went back to his own young manhood, to 
 the years when he, too, stood by his father's side and 
 watched him take the big boats down. What a picture 
 he drew in his queer, rugged phrases ! I could see the 
 old pilot braced at the six-foot wheel, with three men 
 in oilskins standing by to help him put her over, Fred 
 one of the three. And it was ^Hip !' 'Bas !' 'Hip !' 'Bas !' 
 ('Up!' 'Down!' 'Up!' 'Down!') until the increasing roar 
 of the cataract drowned all words, and then it v/as a jerk 
 
THE PETRIFIED WILL ; HABITUAL MASTERY 269^ 
 
 of shoulders or head, this way or that, while the men 
 strained at the spokes. Never once was the wheel at 
 rest after they entered the rapids, but spinning, spinning- 
 always, while the boat shot like a snake through black 
 rocks and churning chasms. 
 
 "They used to take the boats — as Ouillette takes 
 them still — at Cornwall, sixty miles up the river, and,, 
 before coming to Lachine, would shoot the swift Coteau 
 Eapids, where many a life has gone, then the terrifying^ 
 Cedar Eapids, which seem the most dangerous of all, and 
 finall}^, the Split-rock Eapids, w^hich some say are the- 
 most dangerous. And each year, as the season opened, 
 Fred would ask his father to let him take the wheel some 
 day when the river was high and the rocks well covered,. 
 and the boat lightly laden, wishing thus to try the rapids 
 under the easiest conditions. But his father would look 
 at him and say : ^Do you know the river, my son ? Are 
 you sure you know the river ? And Fred would answer : 
 'Father, I think I do.^ For how could he be sure until 
 he had stood the test? 
 
 "So it went on from year to year, and Ouillette was 
 almost despairing of a chance to show himself worthy of 
 his father's teaching, when, suddenly, the chance came 
 in a way never to be forgotten. It was late in the sum- 
 mer, and the rapids, being low, were at their very worst, 
 since the rocks were nearer the surface. Besides that, 
 on this particular day they were carrying a heavy load,, 
 and the wind was southeast, blowing hard — the very wind 
 to make trouble at the bad places. They had shot. 
 
270 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 through all the rapids but the last, and were well below 
 the Lachine bridge when the elder Ouillette asked the 
 boy, ^My son, do you know the river?' 
 
 "And Fred answered as usual, without any thought 
 of what was coming next, Tather, I think I do/ 
 
 "They were just at the danger-point now, and all 
 the straining waters were sucking them down to the first 
 plunge. 
 
 " ^Then take her through,' said the old man, stepping 
 hack; ^there is the wheel.' 
 
 " ^My f adder he make terreble thing for me — too 
 much terreble thing,' said Ouillette, shaking his head at 
 the memory. 
 
 "But he took her through somehow, half blinded by 
 the swirl of water and the shock. At the wheel he stood, 
 and with a touch of his father's hand now and then to 
 help him, he brought the boat down safely. There was 
 a kind of Spartan philosophy in the old man's action. 
 His idea was that, could he once make his son face the 
 worst of this business and come out unharmed, then never 
 would the boy know fear again, for all the rest would 
 
 be easier than what he had already done Fred 
 
 Ouillette has been fearless in the rapids ever since." 
 
 Courage and force of will can be made a habit as well 
 as giving attention. Quality of action, like quality of 
 thought, is the final test of manhood. A well-trained 
 will, like a well-trained horse, never leaves a load where 
 it found it. It neither hunts difficulties nor dodges them. 
 
 There is one quality of the will that has not yet 
 
THE PETRIFIED WILL; HABITUAL MASTERY 271 
 
 been mentioned. The universe goes on in rythmic pulses. 
 Work and rest alternate. The mind that has learned to 
 take a prompt and vice-like grip upon a task needs to 
 learn to let entirely go of it at intervals. Some minds 
 get into the state of one who has grasped the poles of a 
 powerful electric battery. When once they take hold of 
 a subject, they cannot let go again. Some fatal force 
 holds them there. The child that h^as become so keyed 
 up that it does not stop its play when tired, but goes on 
 and on by sheer tension of the nerves, finally finds relief 
 in collapse and a fit of crying. The statesman or busi- 
 ness man who at night cannot let go of the problems that 
 he handles by day, will pay the price with insomnia. His 
 relief comes by collapse and prolonged, enforced, and 
 unprofitable idleness. The student, too, who carries the 
 thought of his work wherever he goes, who carries his 
 text-books to a concert, who does not have regular periods 
 of stress and relief, in whom there is no well-marked 
 pulse of action and repose, governed by an efficient will, 
 can never hope for the genuine pleasures that come of 
 normal, healthy action of either mind or body. 
 
272 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 THE FEELINGS. 
 
 We have hitherto tried to answer the question, "How 
 train the mental powers, and how carry thought into ac- 
 tion?" In other words, we have dealt with method, but 
 have said practically nothing about the material of life — 
 the kind of thoughts it is best to think and the kind of 
 action that constitutes a successful life. Now that the 
 development of capacity has been discussed, the book 
 might be closed. But the principles that have been laid 
 down are just as applicable to the making of a first-class 
 rascal as to the development of personal worth and up- 
 rightness. I have some strong convictions about the rela- 
 tive value of ability and character; and the rest of the 
 book will be devoted to a discussion of the materials of 
 life. 
 
 Our feelings are our masters. It is not worth while 
 here to raise the nice point as to which comes first — 
 thought or feeling. All we need to accept now is the 
 fact that thought and action and feeling all react on and 
 influence one another. Feelings are produced by inward 
 thought or outward influences, and they in turn start 
 our thought and action. The outward life and the in- 
 ward thought may be described, in a large sense, as a 
 
THE FEELINGS 273 
 
 continuous effort to express the feelings. The feelings, 
 the sentiments, lie close about the roots of conduct. 
 Schiller quaintly put feeling in the foreground of human 
 life when he said, "While philosophers are disputing about 
 the government of the world, Hunger and Love are per- 
 forming the task." Feeling is really the fundamental 
 fact, and intellect and will are its servants. The culti- 
 vation of the feelings is therefore at least as important 
 as the cultivation of the other mental powers by means 
 of which we gratify and give expression to them. 
 
 If there is to be calmness of spirit and effectiveness 
 in the conduct of life, there must be a standard of feeling. 
 The question, at least with the serious student, is, shall 
 his feelings be a succession of momentary passions and 
 temporary enthusiasms, like the snapping and crackling 
 and flashing of burning leaves and twigs, followed by dull 
 and ashy reaction ? Or shall they be the deep and steady 
 feelings that accompany deep-rooted principles of life, 
 that never flare, but burn and smolder steadily beneath 
 the surface, unnoticed by spectators, like the burning of 
 the deep forest soil after the surface fire has rushed past 
 and gone out? 
 
 It has been found necessary repeatedly in the course 
 of this book, to emphasize the contrast between minds 
 swayed by the immediate temporary interests of the hour 
 or the day and minds that are steadily dominated by per- 
 manent interests. The one kind of life is an impulsive, 
 unguided career. The other kind aims at definite, far- 
 reaching results, and all the personal powers and all out- 
 
274 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 ward circumstances^ are forced to contribute toward the 
 accomplishment of those definite ends. In the latter case 
 there is likely to be a wholesale sacrifice of present temp- 
 tations, pleasures, and successes, a rejection of immediate 
 results in favor of others, more ideal and distant. Such 
 choice of the more permanent interests of life and the 
 sacrifice of temporary successes, usually has a profound 
 effect on the feelings and results in a rapid development 
 of character. 
 
 It often happens, of course, that such a choice even, 
 may be bad. Many men bend the energies of a lifetime 
 and spend the hard-earned competence of a whole family 
 to satisfy the spirit of revenge. Some great wrong, com- 
 mitted by another, stirs into activity the fires of a ven- 
 geance that never burns low till ruin lies like a black pall 
 over the lives of both the aggressor and the aggrieved. 
 The feelings of pride, doubt, revenge, malevolence and all 
 their like may be as firmly intrenched in the life and 
 govern its whole course as completely as humility, faith, 
 forgiveness and benevolence. 
 
 Selfishness and sympathy, meanness and justice, hate 
 and love, do not rule a life together. One or another is 
 likely to become permanent. In a mind governed by the 
 nobler permanent interests there may be violent whirl- 
 pools of feeling, due to constitutional defects or extraor- 
 dinary combinations of exciting circumstances, but the 
 current of feeling recovers itself and follows a steady 
 course. If the choice is a good one, the spirit of self- 
 control increases with every sacrifice that is made of a 
 
THE FEELINGS 275 
 
 present pleasure to a future good. A great difference 
 in qualit}' of character between a shiftless, impulsive^ in- 
 consequent individual and one whose conduct is outlined 
 for a lifetime is not only steadiness of purpose in the 
 latter, but great steadiness of the feelings. 
 
 N"ature will have the toll for the force that she ex- 
 pends. Wild enthusiasm and the fierce flaring of passion 
 must be atoned for by despondency and pain. If the pen- 
 dulum is touched it will swing both ways. Many a 
 thoughtful mother dreads to hear immoderate laughter 
 accompany the play of her little brood, for she knows, 
 as well as the philosopher knows what the pendulum will 
 do, that pain and weeping follow close on its heels. The 
 law of action and re-action is the law that governs the 
 feelings, too. Mild alternations of the gay and the grave 
 are pleasurable; the extremes cause the pain. 
 
 But even the life of impulse, of feeling uncontrolled 
 by the large and permanent hopes and beliefs of a life- 
 time, is better than one in which feeling is present but 
 leads to no action at all. It is possible to let the feel- 
 ings play and be worked upon until action becomes prac- 
 tically impossible. Chronic novel-readers often weep 
 over fictitious woes of imaginary heroes and heroines, 
 but have no feeling whatever stirred in them by actual 
 want or suffering or the patient heroism of life. Feeling 
 has so long failed to lead to action, that action is repug- 
 nant; the life goes up in the smoke of ineffectiveness. 
 Incompetence is characteristic of this type. The victim 
 seeks the excitements of imaginary tragedy and comedy 
 
276 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 in order to create the feelings he desires. The feeling 
 is the total reward; and the slavery is as hopeless and 
 degrading as that of the morphine fiend who slinks into 
 an alley or hallway to "take the shot" that re-awakens 
 his dormant dreaming powers. 
 
 The day-dreamer, too, is the hopeless victim of feel- 
 ing that finds no expression in activity. He conjures np 
 his rosy dreams again and again for the sake of the feel- 
 ings that accompany them. And when once this habit 
 has fixed itself upon him, there is less hope for him than 
 for the dry bones in the valley of Ezekiel's vision. Noth- 
 ing but the hard, unfeeling knocks of a relentless world 
 can re-awaken a spirit, thus enthralled, to healthier sym- 
 pathy for the real things of life. One who wants to make 
 himself intellectually effective has to see to it that his 
 feelings are not left to the control of pure imagination 
 but that they shall be harnessed, as a working force, with 
 his thinking and willing powers, into a team that shall 
 deal directly with realities. 
 
 But we need to return once more to the "impulsive 
 life." It is not enough that the feelings shall spend 
 themselves on real things, and lead to some sort of action. 
 The chances always are, that action dictated by uncon- 
 trolled impulse, will do more injury than good. A parent 
 may ruin a child by a "quick succession of kicks and 
 kindness," each of them dictated by the spontaneous feel- 
 ing of the moment; while similar treatment, distributed 
 with reference to the real deserts of the child instead of 
 the impulses of the parent might do real good. 
 
THE FEELINGS 277 
 
 The silly woman that carries flowers to a murderer's 
 cell, and the insane mob that takes him from jail and 
 hangs him, are very much alike. There is no balance- 
 wheel of judgment, no steadying influence of clearly 
 thought-out principles. Feelings hold ungoverned sway; 
 and action follows directly upon impulse. The woman's 
 lack of a large, correct view of life, the absence of the 
 sense of justice to counterbalance sympathy, results in 
 failure to pick out the one really entitled to sympathy. 
 
 The mob is no better than the man it hangs. His 
 perverse, ungoverned feelings spurred him to do murder, 
 and theirs do likewise. Indignation over crime is a very 
 creditable feeling and one that well becomes a decent 
 citizen. But reverence for law and faith in the power of 
 the community to deal with crime are absent in the mob; 
 there is no counter-irritant for the wild feeling of indig- 
 nation and it becomes ungovernable. Sensible action can 
 result only from a steady interplay of feelings which 
 modify and balance each other and give judgment an op- 
 portunity to consider the merits of the case at issue. 
 Civic responsibility is so greatly diluted in a republican 
 commonwealth that there is not connected with it any 
 permanent feeling powerful enough to lead the individual 
 to steady action looking toward the improvement of ju- 
 dicial methods. Instead of untying the Gordian knot, 
 he cuts it. Instead of acting under the quieter desire for 
 peace and order he gives way to a violent, barbaric feel- 
 ing which leads him to do violence as bad as that he seeks 
 to punish. 
 
278 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 A man may have very powerful feelings, and yet his 
 conduct be noble and judicious. If violent feelings lead 
 to violent action it is not alone because of the force of 
 the feelings, but because other feelings that would easily 
 counteract them have not been cultivated. A violent, 
 unbroken colt can be managed in a team, if there is a 
 steady, well-trained horse on the other side of the wagon- 
 tongue. But in the absence of the steady horse there will 
 surely be a runaway. So with the citizen. In quiet 
 times he is indiiferent to the enforcement of the law, 
 so he does not develop a feeling of reverence for it; and 
 that is why, when the excitement comes, he is not himself 
 a law-abiding citizen. There is feeling enough, but it is 
 misplaced and unbalanced. 
 
SCIENCE CULTURE AND FEELING 279 
 
 CHAPTEE XXVII. 
 
 SCIENCE CULTURE AND FEELING. 
 
 There is another phase of the subject of feeling that 
 is of great interest to the student. He may become one 
 of the class who devote themselves exclusively to one line 
 of activity. The result of this concentration is usually 
 the shrivelling of the greater number of the noble feelings 
 that give life such pleasing variety. Monotony of inter- 
 est results in monotony of feeling; and there is a tend- 
 ency to one of two extremes. A single, great feeling de- 
 velops in connection with the subject on which the mind 
 is concentrated and overwhelms and unbalances the life, 
 or all feeling dies out and the life is left cold and blood- 
 less. 
 
 I do not believe, as many people think, that deep and 
 constant devotion to one line of thought necessarily tram- 
 ples the power of feeling into the dust. The classical ex- 
 ample of single hearted devotion to a great subject in the 
 past generation has been Charles Darwin. In youth he 
 loved music, but in later life lost all taste for it. He 
 devoted a long life filled with physical suffering to the 
 establishment of great scientific principles; and from his 
 experience it has been argued that science blights the 
 noble feelings that are fed by the fine arts. 
 
280 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 ' But I believe the true explanation is that the love 
 of music died in him, not because he devoted himself 
 to scientific subjects, but because he did not attend to 
 music. Pleasures die with the possessions that gave them 
 birth. If the joys of life all flow from money, they dis- 
 appear with its loss. The despair which results is due to 
 the lack of other interests, which, if they were present 
 in the mind, might still make life well worth living. 
 
 Darwin is not the only man of science who has wit- 
 nessed in himself the loss of some of the feelings that fill 
 life with sunshine. Karl Von Baer, the father of em- 
 bryology, a man of keen intellect, well-balanced powers 
 and broad sympathies, susceptible to all the finer feelings 
 of humanity, records of himself the same neglect of the 
 brighter things of life and its effect on him. He went 
 outside the walls of the town one day and found men 
 harvesting in the fields. Then it dawned on him, that in 
 his devotion to the infant science of embryology, he had 
 not set foot outside the walls during the whole of spring 
 and summer. The grain had been sown and the fields 
 had turned first green, then golden, without his knowing 
 or thinking about it. But he had been a country boy, 
 and feeling for nature's beauty was not yet dead in him. 
 He lay down and wept over what he had missed in life, 
 and asked himself whether he was doing the best for him- 
 self. The question came to him, whether it was worth 
 while, for his own sake or that of the world, that he 
 should stunt his life in order to find out a few more facts 
 about the development of animals. Would not the world 
 
SCIENCE CULTURE AND FEELING 281 
 
 find it all out sooner or later, even if he, the great loser, 
 did a little less, if he did not sacrifice all the beauty and 
 pleasure of life ? That day was a revelation to him. Be- 
 fore Von Baer had worn out his life and lost the power 
 to be a wholesome man, he abandoned his professorship 
 and went back into the wide, heaving, breathing, feeling 
 world and tasted the gifts of a rugged, vital life as an 
 expert government explorer. 
 
 Those who lose their lives in the loss of their higher 
 sensibilities are themselves to blame. They devote their 
 energies to a single subject and make no allowance for 
 the rhythmic movement of work and pleasure, effort and 
 repose, struggle and peace that normally controls the life 
 of men and animals. Feeling must be freshened. Even 
 the dull and hopeless laborer returns to his work in the 
 morning with feelings different from those with which he 
 left it the night before. His work has not changed; but 
 it looks different to him because he has changed. He 
 has rested and been about other things, and now it is 
 a little new to him again. 
 
 Feeling gives fertility to thought and a healthy glow 
 to conduct. But constant devotion to a single subject 
 never did anything but blast the wholesome feelings. 
 This stripping the actual life of all feeling is usually 
 done unconsciously and not with malice aforethought. 
 But time works fatal changes in us that we are entirely 
 unaware of. Neither science, nor any other one subject, 
 can be both work and play for a soul that does not want 
 to shrivel. In fact, the more deeply science digs, the 
 
282 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 more need for the light of a joyous life. Neither sci- 
 ence nor art by itself can build a symmetrical life. 
 
 Science, for example, can write an accurate defini- 
 tion of a tree : "A perennial woody plant having a single, 
 self-supporting stem or trunk, the whole being not less 
 than twenty or twenty-five feet in height." This defini- 
 tion is the result of much deep thought. But in order 
 to make the definition, the beauty and grace and strength 
 of individual trees all had to be eliminated. Who ever 
 had a pulse of feeling beat within him from contem- 
 plating such a definition ? A half -grown boy might suffer 
 some feeling in connection with it: perplexity at not 
 understanding it, or disgust at the necessity of attending 
 to such an emaciated ghost of a thing. 
 
 But he knows the difference between a shrub and a 
 white birch tree, even if he cannot understand the defini- 
 tion. That birch tree was made to try the souls of boys. 
 Every shivering leaf, every rag of fluttering, papery bark 
 is calling him with a living voice — no need of a definition 
 here — to climb the single difficult stem to a height of 
 more than twenty feet. If he is a real boy he will try 
 to climb that tree. That is life welling forth from a 
 fountain of feeling. The pale light of science is a poor 
 substitute for the light of human sunshine. 
 
 For the scientific man or student or business man 
 who is under the constant temptation to concentrate his 
 efforts closely and constantly upon one thing, the only safe 
 course is the cultivation of numerous permanent interests 
 that appeal to the higher sentiments. Frivolity and dis- 
 
SCIENCE CULTURE AND FEELING 283. 
 
 sipation give relief from the mental tension due to long 
 and intense application, but they leave no pleasant after- 
 taste, no desirable effect upon the character. The sounds 
 est pleasures are connected with the permanent interests 
 of life. The relaxations of culture leave the mind and 
 body fresh. They make all things look new. 
 
 As we pass on through the thickets of experience, and 
 growing knowledge ripens into wisdom, a silent but pro- 
 found change is bound to come over all the sensibilities. 
 What once roused anger or admiration, hope or courage,, 
 no longer does so under the more penetrating gaze of a 
 mature intellect. It no longer gives the satisfaction 
 that it once gave. But while time subdues the feelings,, 
 it is disastrous to have them aborted. A confidence that 
 there is good in what has passed and more good in what is 
 yet to come must pervade the mind of him who would 
 ripen well in the autumn of life. A broad outlook upon 
 life, sympathy for and insight into the work and wants- 
 of others, in other fields of activity, are essential to the 
 retention of sound feeling as life slips through the fin- 
 gers. The greater the necessity one is under to concen- 
 trate all his activity in one pursuit, the more essential it 
 is that the sunshine and showers of right feeling should 
 not be omitted; and they come only with the cultivation 
 of the nobler interests of life. 
 
 It may be true that sound judgment and broad cul- 
 ture, while they widen the scope of the feelings, also- 
 weaken them in some respects. Some of our most gen^ 
 erous acts can be performed only while our general no- 
 
284 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 tions are immature. Two men walk down the same street. 
 The first drops a nickel into every beggar's hat. He feels 
 generous and acts promptly. Both he and the beggar 
 have an immediate reward of pleasant feeling. But his 
 acts have no lasting qualities, and neither do his feel- 
 ings. His conduct will vary sadly even in different parts 
 of the same day; and in time he may altogether lose his 
 interest in the business of giving. He may suspect after 
 a while that he has been helping rascals and turn ugly 
 toward the begging business. 
 
 The other man drops never a nickel in any beggar's 
 hat. He may be just as deeply anxious to help a little 
 in life's struggle, but he loses the passing pleasure be- 
 cause he hnows too much. He is guided by broad prin- 
 ciples of charity and realizes that such giving does more 
 harm than good. He knows that charity organizations can 
 care for all in real distress ; that some beggars get more by 
 begging than other men do by honest labor ; that in giving 
 promiscuously he would only be helping to blight the 
 spirit of self-help. He may give ten times as much 
 through charity organizations as the other man gives di- 
 rectly ; but he seems to be at a great disadvantage. Look- 
 ing, as he does, farther into the future, to the ultimate 
 effects of his acts, he destroys the spectacular element 
 of giving. His premeditation seems to destroy feeling. 
 
 But in suppressing impulse and foregoing the little 
 passing pleasures of self-sacrifice, he is laying the founda- 
 tion of a life-long interest. As the fruit of his conduct 
 ripens slowly, the pleasure in it, instead of being fitful. 
 
SCIENCE CULTURE AND FEELING 285 
 
 is steady and increases as the years go by. There is 
 abundant compensation of feeling to him who is willing 
 to make it cluster round great interests. But it re- 
 quires self-control and steadfastness of spirit. It is easier 
 to take the present pleasure and let the future take care 
 of itself. 
 
 A poor man in New York city faithfully does a piece 
 of work. When he seeks to collect the bill, he is abused 
 and defrauded of his pay. What can he do? Might 
 makes right. The amount is too small to justify legal 
 proceedings, and he cannot afford to employ counsel; 
 and in the end he would be beaten by the sheer process of 
 wearing out. What can a true citizen do to help this 
 case? He cannot afford to take up the legal struggle; 
 and he cannot bear to leave the man helpless. By giving 
 him the much needed money trouble is avoided, relief is 
 given, and the feelings of sympathy are gratified. But all 
 these effects are temporary. The permanent effects are 
 as follows: 
 
 One more rascal has been victorious and will regfard 
 his policy as a successful one. One more poor man has 
 been made to feel the twinge that goes with accepting 
 what has not been earned — the loss of pride, the sting 
 of beggary, the conviction that there is no justice on earth 
 for the poor. One more philanthropist has added to his 
 experience another element of gloom, re-enforced the 
 feeling that might makes right — and received the thanks 
 of a crest-fallen honest man. The total permanent effect 
 is bad — on the loser, the winner and the giver. 
 
286 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 But there is another way, that appeals to other feel- 
 ings and deals out justice as well as mercy. Jacob Kiis, 
 who has shown how a noble life may be moulded with 
 nothing but a clear head, a sound heart and willing hands, 
 has described that other way. It is a "law hospital" that 
 enforces the honest claims of defrauded poor men. The 
 philanthropist can contribute toward its fi-ghting fund. 
 The poor man gets his own, keeps his self-respect and 
 carries away the feeling that justice is not blind to the 
 rights of the poor ; the rascal pays his debt, suffers defeat, 
 and is made to philosophize anew on the old adage that 
 honesty is the best policy ; the philanthropist has a broader 
 outlook, a postponed but deeper pleasure, and the feeling 
 that he is an element in the mighty forces that are work- 
 ing toward the realization of justice and righteousness — 
 the highest ideals of the race. 
 
 The principle that I have tried to bring out with 
 illustrations drawn from the field of philanthropy holds 
 true for all the phases of human activity. Quietness, 
 dignity, lasting quality, can be given to the feelings only 
 by setting up standards that will still be bearing fruit in 
 ihe autumn of life. The sentiments of purity, truth, 
 faith, benevolence, justice, are likely often to receive 
 severe shocks, but if the individual is equipped with high 
 ideals the sense of permanence and triumph will underlie 
 feeling, thought and conduct. 
 
IDEALS 287 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 IDEALS. 
 
 Milton wrote to Hartlieb : "I call, therefore, a com- 
 plete and generous education that which fits a man to 
 perform justly, skillfully and magnanimously, all the of- 
 fices, both public and private, of peace and war." That is 
 a comprehensive definition of a good education. It in- 
 cludes everything that can give strength and nobility to 
 the individual — permanent courage, good citizenship, good 
 morals, willingness to serve and suffer for the good of men 
 and of the nation. Something more will be said here- 
 after about the difference between ability and the pur- 
 pose that is in the heart of a man; and it has been al- 
 ready sufficiently emphasized that conduct is profoundly 
 affected by keeping the thought centered on the higher 
 and permanent interests of life. Our effective ideals 
 can be read out of the conduct of our lives. All that 
 we do is circumstantial evidence of what we think and 
 believe. 
 
 But ideals, to be effective, must receive some- 
 thing more than mere acknowledgment that they 
 are good. The old Scotchman's version of St. PauFs 
 doctrine is: "What I would do, I couldna', and 
 
288 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 what I could do, I wouldna'." One can easily admit 
 that justice, honesty, purity, truth, are good, and at the 
 same time be unjust, dishonest, vile and false. If our 
 ideals are to be of any value, the feelings must cluster 
 closely round them. There must be not only assent to 
 their value, but conviction that they are right for each 
 particular individual, and that it is necessary to live them 
 and uphold them. It is not so difficult a thing as it might 
 appear, to acknowledge and believe one thing and do the 
 opposite. Whether one shall really live up to his ideals 
 depends on whether his feelings are under the control of 
 those ideals. 
 
 The planting of standards of living and belief, of 
 righteousness, purity, truth, and all the better senti- 
 ments, in the soil of the feelings is therefore a matter 
 of deep concern. 'Now a fine sentiment, a noble ideal, 
 cannot be implanted in a soul by an argument, no matter 
 how logical. Ideals have to grow; and they grow slowly, 
 like the woody fibre of a tree. They are, as it were, the 
 permanent sediment of our thinking and acting; they are 
 what is left to us after our separate experiences are over 
 with. 
 
 There has been no end of testimony to the effect that 
 we grow, rather than allow ourselves to be argued, into 
 the permanent states of mind which we call our working 
 ideals. The best Christians are those who were born and 
 brought up in Christian homes. Their moral fibre is 
 made out of Christian ideals. There is no serious con- 
 flict of motives, no terrible warfare of the feelings for 
 
IDEALS 289 
 
 supremacy, because to such a mind there is almost only 
 one possible view of life. 
 
 Those who have the best control of their mother 
 tongue, who are most sensitive to offenses against good 
 literary taste and to the beauties of style are the men 
 and women who grew up in an atmosphere of culture. 
 They use good language as naturally as they eat their 
 food. They do not know any better (or worse) than 
 to speak and write well. The soundest excuse for what 
 we do and the way we do it, is that we do it the way we 
 learned it. Habit, the burden of the first chapter in the 
 book, still has its heavy hand upon us here. "Train up 
 a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he 
 will not depart from it." In such a one there is perfect 
 harmony among his ideals, feelings and actions ; and there 
 is likely to be less need of repentance than among those 
 who live part of their lives under the guidance of one 
 set of ideals and the rest of it under another set. The 
 circle of his thought is large, his sympathies are wide, 
 the sense of duty strong, so that he throws off temporary 
 evil easily — gloom, passion, hatred, pride — and steadily 
 absorbs the good. This breadth and harmony of thought 
 and feeling are the surest pledge of spiritual success. 
 They fix in the life the feeling that "all is well." 
 
 This all means, of course, that the best time to adopt 
 ideals is in childhood, when we are least able to compre- 
 hend them. Such a doctrine seems like an intellectual 
 outrage. But it is just as well to yield our consent to 
 it, because it is the principle on which human life is con- 
 
290 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 ducted. The acts of our childhood and youth are the 
 most far-reaching acts of our lives. We choose our hus- 
 bands and wives and our professions without the light of 
 experience. All the most influential habits are fully 
 developed while judgment is most immature. So, in 
 spite of the gravity of the matter, it is hardly worth 
 while to consider the doctrine that it is best to postpone 
 the adoption of ideals until maturity and of professions 
 until old age, for meanwhile we die. 
 
 It is true of all our standards, that if they are to 
 be the sure and safe guides of conduct, they must become 
 woven into our inmost being; they must grow into the 
 life instead of being driven into it, like a knife or a bullet, 
 from the outside. They must represent not merely be- 
 liefs that are acknowledged to be good, they must be 
 modes of conduct. Childhood, youth, and the few first 
 years of young manhood and womanhood are the only 
 years in which either mind or body grow. The years will 
 bring greater strength and riper judgment, but the face 
 and form of the body are made for life, and so are the 
 prospects of the spirit. 
 
 Ideals can never be two-faced. In a normal life 
 there cannot be one set of principles to guide by day and 
 another to guide by night, one mode of life on duty and 
 another on vacation. Neither is there any period in life 
 when ideals can be laid aside or thrown to the winds, 
 with the expectation that they can be calmly resumed at 
 pleasure. There is a widespread belief that it does no 
 serious permanent harm for a young man to make a 
 
IDEALS 291 
 
 fool of himself for a few years; that the chances are 
 always good that he will recover. This easy faith in 
 Mother Nature's patience is badly misplaced. Human 
 fathers and mothers are often more blissfully ignorant of 
 the real lives that their sons and daughters are leading 
 than any other people on earth. And even when they 
 know a little of what is going on within and without, they 
 condone the faults and feel sure that maturity will bring 
 the youngsters back to their senses. But Mother Nature 
 is neither blind nor ignorant; and she neither will nor 
 needs to condone anything. She cripples or kills the fool, 
 because she prefers the other kind and has plenty of in- 
 dividuals to draw from. 
 
 She neither teaches nor practices the doctrine that 
 youth can throw the nobler sentiments to the winds and 
 indulge the passions for a time and that afterwards the 
 spirit may recover itself and grow into a desirable ma- 
 turity. She knows that this doctrine is as false a guide 
 as the will-o'-the-wisp on the dank, dark marsh. She 
 provides no moral acids that will remove the stains and 
 the stench of misconduct. 
 
 A limb may die on a green tree, it may break off 
 and even the knot may rot away. If the tree is young 
 and vigorous the sore place may heal over with new wood 
 and bark, so that nothing shows of the old defect. But 
 there is a rotten hole inside. The flaw may never show 
 again; but if the wind breaks that tree it will break at 
 the rotten place. And anyway, the ax of the woodsman 
 will reveal the written record when it lays the tree low. 
 
292 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 Somewhere and somehow every violation of the normal 
 growth will tell its gruesome tale because it has made 
 a scar, a constitutional weakness. 
 
 To every one who succumbs in youth to physical, in- 
 tellectual and moral folly, and sows wild oats, one of two 
 things will happen in later life. After the period of un- 
 wholesome living, he either will not, or he will adopt and 
 struggle toward the realization of pure ideals. If he 
 does not, he may still cease all gross misconduct because 
 it is no longer worth while. He may pass for a decent 
 citizen and do no injury to the morals of a younger 
 generation by example. But the music of his life is full 
 of the minor tones of moral discord. His attitude toward 
 moral questions, the suggestiveness of his language, all 
 point to the slimy record left inside. Thousands of such 
 men and women are classed as decent citizens because 
 they are outside of jail. But they are best kept away 
 from, when it is possible to identify them. 
 
 If after a period of folly there is a real revival or 
 new growth of better sentiment, the case is one worthy 
 of the most profound sympathy. The greater part of a 
 really educated man's activity takes place inwardly. The 
 better part of his life consists of reflection. This man 
 never forgets. He would be willing to shed his blood for 
 the privilege of washing out the memory of his evil deeds. 
 The more sensitive he grows, the more he curses the day 
 he went astray. He cannot get away from himself, and 
 his very ideals become the judges that condemn his rec- 
 ord. As Babbage has put it in that splendid old book, 
 
IDEALS 293 
 
 the Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, "It is remarkable that 
 those whom the world least accuses, accuse themselves the 
 most, and that a foolish speech, which at the time of 
 its utterance was unobserved as such by all who heard 
 it, shall yet remain fixed in the memory of him who pro- 
 nounced it, with a tenacity which he vainly seeks to com- 
 municate to more agreeable subjects of reflection." The 
 terrible after-taste of evil-doing is most sickening to him 
 in whom the character has afterwards grown purest and 
 noblest. Reminiscence is painful in proportion as the 
 record is stained with misconduct; and the life that has 
 gone through folly in youth and then recovered itself is 
 doomed to permanent secret sadness. 
 
 Youth cannot violate the laws of purity and upright- 
 ness and expect old age to make it right. Repentance 
 does not change the record. A part of the tree of life 
 is sacrificed. If the feelings are early fettered to ideals 
 of peace and purity, good-will, justice, uprightness and 
 benevolence, and there is no shock or disturbance of their 
 mutual growth there will be a life of deep and perma- 
 nent tranquility beneath the superficial turbulence of cir- 
 cumstances. That life will be a wholesome influence in 
 the chaotic jostle of human struggle, full of hope and 
 faith that truth will triumph and that all is well. 
 
294 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIX. 
 
 SOME ELEMENTS OF CHARACTEE. 
 
 The most consummate villain furnishes just as good 
 material for the study of psychology as the noblest saint. 
 It is in the practical use of the mental powers that char- 
 acter is involved. All living nature is endowed with 
 the fundamental desire to secure what is pleasant, but 
 character, good character, for no other is relevant in this 
 discussion, is built not upon what is pleasant, but upon 
 a clear recognition of what is good, a complete accept- 
 ance of it and a life whose acts are controlled by it. 
 
 An anonymous poet has sung: 
 
 "Sculptors of life are we, as we stand, 
 With our lives uncarved before us; 
 Waiting the hour when, at God's command. 
 Our life dream passes o'er us. 
 Let us carve it then on the yielding stone,^' 
 
 The sentiment is good, but it does not give us full 
 credit for our real condition. The sculptor, when the 
 angel dream comes o'er him, can choose the finest marble 
 in which to do his carving. His inspiration might burn 
 very low if he were given no choice of materials and were 
 told to take a block of coarse-grained granite or eveii 
 
SOME ELEMENTS OF CHARACTER 295 
 
 a piece of bass-wood and give expression to his beautiful 
 vision. When it comes to shaping character, we are 
 placed here without choice of material or tools with which 
 to carve a seemly life. Our mental powers and capacity 
 for feeling are fore-ordained for us. The circumstances 
 in which we shall find our ideals and give expression to 
 them are not of our choosing. 
 
 But we make the fatal mistake in losing courage and 
 deciding to be nobody in particular because we think the 
 marble of Pentelicus or Carrara is the only fit material 
 for carving. A prisoner, when he craves to do some- 
 thing, can make some wonderful things with nothing but 
 a cracker-box for material and a common nail for a tool. 
 One who craves to know the exact structure of an ani- 
 mal, can make a better dissection with a toothpick and 
 a common jack-knife than any other fellow can with an 
 elegant set of tools. 
 
 "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, 
 But in ourselves, that we are underlings." 
 
 It is not the poor materials and tools that were given 
 us to work with, — the mediocre mental and physical gifts 
 — that cause the real trouble. It is lack of desire and 
 purpose to use what we have. Marble makes a good 
 statue, but granite makes a good keystone. And here lies 
 the real test of solid worth. Genius may do wonder- 
 ful things, but it usually fits but ill into the solid masonry 
 of life and is poor material from which to carve a char- 
 acter. 
 
296 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 It is the poor use that is made of the gifts we have 
 that causes all the trouble. A carpenter who "measures 
 by guess and saws by guess" cannot hold his job one day. 
 He does more harm than good. He wastes material and 
 only gets in the way. A carpenter's wand is his foot- 
 rule. With it he secures symmetry, proportion, accuracy, 
 saves his time and his material, and turns out a satis- 
 factory job. He has a standard to go by. He uses that 
 same standard in all his ivork, everytvhere and alivays. A 
 distinction is often drawn between the exact sciences and 
 the merely descriptive sciences, much to the apparent 
 discredit of the latter. And the distinction is based en- 
 tirely on the fact that in the former, — ph5^sics, and the 
 like, — it is possible to use exact standards of measure- 
 ment to work with, while in botany, anthropology and 
 some other sciences this has been hardly possible hitherto. 
 Governments take the most extreme care to establish 
 standards of weights and measures and to preserve as 
 nearly as possible perfect models for purposes of com- 
 parison. In business and in scholarship, confidence, se- 
 curity, accuracy, permanent results, require fixed stand- 
 ards of measurement, whether that standard is a good 
 dollar, a foot-rule, a pound weight or a foot-pound. It 
 does not require very long or very profound thought to 
 realize that everywhere, standards of measurement are 
 what make it possible to do business quickly and on a 
 large scale, what enable men to know at every step the 
 value of what has been done and what it is necessary to do 
 next. I do not believe, with some people, that the ability 
 
SOME ELEMENTS OF CHARACTER 297 
 
 to measure everything exactly constitutes perfect sci- 
 ence or perfect business, but without this a high degree of 
 civilization would be impossible. 
 
 If it is so important that there should be true stand- 
 ard pounds and yards in order that the pennies, in busi- 
 ness life, shall always go into the right pocket, how can 
 the thoughtful man or woman hope to judge the acts 
 of others correctly or to check and guide properly his own 
 performance, unless he has clearly thought-out standards 
 of conduct to go by, standards that he uses always, on 
 himself as well as others. The lack of well-established 
 and fully accepted principles of conduct is what causes 
 ns to be at one moment on one side of an important 
 question and the next moment on the other side. We do 
 a thing confidently and afterwards seriously question the 
 value or propriety of the act, or do something diametri- 
 cally opposed to it because there is no constant, guiding 
 principle. We fail to approve our own acts so often be- 
 cause they are fastened to no anchor chain of principle. 
 
 But neither the standards of measurement in science 
 and business nor the standards of conduct used in the 
 building of the individual character are determined upon 
 and fixed by an hour^s reflection and an arbitrary, off-hand 
 decision. They are the slow and painful work of years. 
 The carpenter^s feeling toward his foot-rule, his appre- 
 ciation of its value, did not arise from his merely being 
 told that it is a unit of measurement, but from practice 
 in the use of it. One can get along very well without 
 a pocket-knife; the feeling that it is indispensable has 
 
298 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 come from its constant use. So of ideals, beliefs and 
 sentiments. They come to be established in the mind, 
 come to flourish and to be consistently acted upon only 
 as their worth is recognized in practice. 
 
 It is not enough, either, to expect these things to 
 be effective in life unless the measuring rods of principle 
 are used in silent thinking as well as in noisy action. 
 The beauties of nature are made possible only by the 
 silent and weariless processes that precede them. They 
 are the audible and visible evidence that mighty work 
 has been done in silence. There could be no rush and 
 roar and gleam of many waters if the powers of the sun 
 had not first silently lifted the invisible mists into the 
 sky and the waters had not first gathered silently under- 
 ground. And so it is only when the strong and silent 
 processes of the mind meditate upon, approve, and apply 
 the measuring rods of the moral life to the passing events 
 that character becomes a working force. 
 
 Much is said about the good man and the good citizen. 
 But the goodness of most men is negative. They do 
 not violate the moral and statute laws of the community; 
 they are good because they keep out of jail. But what 
 active force of character does the average citizen wield? 
 What is his real influence in the formation of public 
 opinion, in the cultivation of powerful sentiment against 
 wrong and in favor of right ? How powerful is the sway 
 of the average good citizen over the thoughts and feelings 
 of his own family? He accepts sound principles readily 
 
SOME ELEMENTS OF CHARACTER 299* 
 
 enough, but does not enforce them either in his own 
 private or public life. 
 
 In an American city of twenty-five thousand people,, 
 blessed with beauty of location and splendid commercial 
 opportunities, a city in which the "moral element" could 
 in twenty-four hours clean out the Augean stables of 
 political and social filth, a minister of the gospel stood up- 
 in his pulpit not long ago and told the men of his con^ 
 gregation, who ranked among the "best and most influ- 
 ential people" of the place, that so far as the public wel- 
 fare was concerned, a thousand of them and their like 
 could leave town and they would never be missed. He- 
 told them a sad truth. They were negatively good 
 enough, but they lacked potential. Those same men 
 could be excited on occasion. They might even help to 
 hang a vile criminal; but there is no thoughtful connec- 
 tion between the views they hold and their private and 
 public lives. There is no driving force of a vital sense of 
 duty. 
 
 It is not enough for the world to know what a man 
 can do; it is important to know what he will do. A 
 body of water at the top of a hill has potential; if it 
 is turned loose it will do work. At the bottom of a 
 hill it is nothing but a mosquito pond. It is a condi- 
 tion of moral preparedness, of delicate hair-trigger ad- 
 justment to the calls of duty that constitutes a wholesome, 
 effective character. It is potential manhood and woman- 
 hood that counts. What will he do under certain condi- 
 tions? The whole community may be sure that a man 
 
:300 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 will be law-abiding, but the question is, will his moral 
 character ?(;or^f Is it aggressive ? 
 
 The great confidence that some men inspire is due 
 to the fact that their characters are positive. They leave 
 the impression of boundless integrity. Their honesty is 
 ^energetic. They are the captains of finance who are en- 
 trusted with the wealth of others; the lawyers that are 
 -given control of the vital interests of many men and 
 women. Their integrity is not a variable quantity; they 
 are not honest in great things and pettifoggers in smaller 
 ones. They are actively true to whatever calls for their 
 loyalty. 
 
 It may seem like a far cry from a great lawyer to a 
 plodding student. In the former case we note the power 
 that he wields because of his integrity. At the student's 
 stage of life integrity brings no rewards of money and 
 power. It would seem that it must be its own reward. 
 IBut quantity of results in the end depends on quality of 
 results at the outset. The liar and thief in school will 
 "be a liar and thief in practical life. He may condone 
 Tiis acts by belittling their importance, but the point of 
 ihe business comes out in another place. The writer en- 
 tertains the hope that he has succeeded, in this book, in 
 emphasizing the fact that, in order to secure the most 
 valuable results of any kind, in the intellectual life, there 
 must never, under any circumstances, be any deviation from 
 the correct method, when that is once recognized. And 
 i;his is far more vitally true of the moral than of the 
 purely intellectual phases of the student's life. 
 
SOME ELEMENTS OF CHARACTER 301 
 
 In nothing that the student does will he do his best 
 unless he does it honestly. It will not serve him well, 
 nor bear the scrutiny of others until it is permeated with 
 the moral force of boundless integrity. If he will look 
 after its quality, the quantity will be taken care of hj 
 time. What he needs is to have the right conception 
 and a deathless purpose to realize it in action. Ease, fa- 
 cility, speed, all the elements of permanent satisfaction 
 in any line of work or conduct, all result from right con- 
 ception and purpose. They can no more be retarded or 
 shut out than the falling rain drops can be persuaded to 
 stay in the sky when the vapors have condensed. 
 
 While we are dealing with the matter of integrity, 
 it may as well be pointed out that the student is often ex- 
 posed to conditions that are anything but uplifting. The- 
 school and college world is startled every now and then 
 into a discussion of the evils of students' cheating; and 
 much resonant praise is given to the "honor system,^' 
 wherein every student is given free rein to cheat or be- 
 honest, as he chooses. This system relieves some people- 
 from the performance of moral duty, but does not improve- 
 matters. It is safer to trust a bull-dog with a pet kitten 
 than to put a thief on his honor. The system gives the- 
 thief free rein to do as he pleases and puts the honest 
 student at a disadvantage. 
 
 The honest student's attitude on this question is im- 
 portant. He does not accuse his neighbors of treating 
 him like a thief because they lock their doors at night.- 
 He does not fly into a passion when he sees a policema» 
 
302 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 on the corner. He would think his neighbor foolish for 
 not locking his door; and is inclined to be thankful that 
 "there are policemen. Both create a comfortable atmos- 
 phere for the honest man, by making life hard for the 
 thief. And when the school or college teacher makes 
 provision against dishonesty he should have the energetic 
 support of every honest student. The individual student 
 is morally responsible for the sentiment that exists in 
 school or college. It is a fact that "men are not made 
 honest by legislation." Legislation is for the protection 
 of those who are honest. Those who have in them the 
 promise of honesty and uprightness are entitled to the 
 protection of so-called moral legislation. It is the stu- 
 dent^s business to help make honesty the normal spirit of 
 •conduct. 
 
 N'o man or woman can be honest in some respects 
 ■and dishonest in others. There sometimes seems to be 
 ■such a contradictory state, but such people turn honesty 
 into a commercial commodity. He who cheats in school, 
 does not cheat and steal horses out of school because it 
 would be unprofitable. He is an opportunist; he cheats 
 when it is profitable and is honest when that is profitable. 
 He makes merchandise of moral principles. 
 
 Uprightness of character is based on something more 
 fundamental than particular cases of honesty. It is con- 
 stant moral motive that keeps the life in perfect peace 
 tind guides conduct safely through the tangles of expe- 
 xience. 
 
 A young American in these days is trained to do 
 
SOME ELEMENTS OF CHARACTER 303 
 
 mostly what seemeth good in his own eyes. Independence 
 of judgment and conduct is more characteristic of us than 
 of any other people on earth. But that fact carries with 
 it a terrible responsibility. The attitude of mind which 
 the student makes habitual during his school and col- 
 lege days will be his attitude through life. If, with so 
 great liberty of thought and action, there does not go a 
 spirit of voluntary obedience to authority, of hearty ac- 
 quiescence in sound moral principles and a desire to 
 make them effective in life while in school, the mature 
 man will find himself in a state of chronic mental rebellion 
 against the best standards of his community, and will be 
 an undesirable citizen. One who has so great liberty of 
 thought and action needs to be deeply imbued with the 
 doctrine formulated by Huxley, that we have only one 
 clear, inviolable right, and that is the right to behave. 
 The spirit of resistance to written or unwritten obliga- 
 tions while in school makes men and women who are in 
 later life untrustworthy. It is a matter of grave impor- 
 tance to the development of character to learn to yield 
 voluntarily in judgment to the decisions of superiors. In 
 after years we learn that the judgment of our elders, based 
 on long and wide experience, has no counterpart in the 
 minds of the young men and women who are just begin- 
 ning to try their powers on the complicated factors of 
 life. 
 
 One may think lightly of the minor matters of the 
 irresponsible period of school life, but unless the indi- 
 vidual is guided in his minor as well as in his major acts 
 
304 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 by sound principles he will surely develop the moral slov- 
 enliness characteristic of so many men and women. One 
 may have the smallpox and still live and be healthy, but 
 the pits remain. The photographer may tell one more 
 lie by removing the pits from the negative of your picture, 
 but he cannot remove them from your face. It is that 
 dreaded moral slovenliness, disregard for truth and honor 
 and virtue, without being actually criminal in the eyes 
 of the statute law, that makes the opinions of so many 
 men and women two-faced, their influence negative, their 
 lives so soggy, so unmusical. If character is to have ring- 
 ing quality it must be made of the bell-metal of sound 
 principles, and the casting must be attended to with care, 
 from start to finish. Any flaw will spoil the music. 
 
CONCLUSION 305 
 
 CHAPTEE XXX. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Xothing has been said in this book about what a stu- 
 dent ought to study. There has been a generation of end- 
 less discussion on this subject by the teachers, and it 
 will doubtless continue to be talked about for a long time 
 to come. What we are interested in now is the method 
 and the spirit in which a student approaches and does his 
 work. 
 
 The trouble with the masses, even of educated men 
 and women, is that they content themselves with a moun- 
 tain of memory and a pinch of reason. They accept the 
 thought of others in prepared packages and take it into 
 their systems without assimilating it. They are heavily 
 weighted with well organized knowledge and noble ideals 
 that have no real bearing or effect on their lives, because 
 they were accepted without exhaustive thinking. That 
 is why it is so exasperatingly true that in great crises 
 most people throw their beliefs to the winds and act upon 
 the powerful feelings that happen to be roused at the 
 moment. Thoreau became acquainted with a wood-chop- 
 per in the winter snows at Walden pond, and said of him, 
 "I occasionally observed that he was thinking for himself 
 and expressing his own opinion, a phenomenon so rare 
 
306 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 that I would any day walk ten miles to observe it." The 
 danger to students, as to others, is, that they will approve 
 of a statement of fact or principle and handle it suffi- 
 ciently to remember it without forcing it into service, 
 and making it prove its worth in practice. 
 
 Ignorance is no bar to great intellectual power; but 
 carelessness will ruin the finest work of the greatest 
 genius. And power alone will not yield results unless it 
 is yoked with patience. Desire alone is a sickly compan- 
 ion to a student unless he cultivates alongside it the fight- 
 ing qualities that make acquisition necessary and habitual. 
 
 When a piece of work is done one may feel relieved 
 at the thought that it is over with. So much the ox is 
 capable of. When the yoke is taken off he rubs his neck 
 against a post, and lies down with a long snoof of relief. 
 But any human workman that is worthy of the name will 
 experience at least a modest thrill of satisfaction that he 
 has accomplished something, that he has triumphed over 
 conditions that lay before him. 
 
 But there is an attitude of mind toward work before 
 as well as after it is done. The contemplation of any 
 kind of task may be habitually sickening; the student 
 may creep to his work when goaded by time and stern 
 necessity, keeping his eyes carefully averted from its at- 
 tractive features. Or the thought of coming effort may 
 make the blood mount and the spirit rise, and the powers 
 assert themselves. He need not, at the scent of what is 
 coming, paw in the valley and mock at fear, like the war- 
 horse in the book of Job, nor swallow the ground with 
 
CONCLUSION 307 
 
 fierceness and rage, and smell the battle afar off. But if 
 the thought of coming struggle does not rouse in him 
 the best qualities of a vigorous manhood and inspire some- 
 thing of the feeling of joy that comes of action, there will 
 be no pleasure in the work itself nor satisfaction in the 
 results. 
 
 Anticipation can do its best service and give the rosy- 
 glow of real beauty to one's life only if it is kept fixed on 
 the common affairs that are directly ahead. It is the 
 working at one thing and letting thought and anticipa- 
 tion dwell on other things — the picnic things of life — 
 that lends dull monotony to study, that makes student 
 and workman so unreliable, so loath to begin and so ready 
 to quit. The concentration of all the feelings upon the 
 work in hand is what produces the moral energy that bat- 
 ters down difficulties. Keen attention makes the driest 
 subject interesting. Vigorous effort is bound to produce 
 buoyant feeling. No matter how slow-minded a student 
 may be, if he keeps his head clear by active thinking and 
 his powers at work by a strong will, he is bound to de- 
 velop a solid and masterful personality. 
 
 'Not genius, but the willingness to struggle and the 
 undying hope of success are the qualities best suited to 
 the development of strong manhood and womanhood. It 
 is not in having but in getting that the pleasure of life 
 is found. Nature's first commandment in the decalogue 
 of success is, "Create your own environment." Accurate 
 thinking and a powerful will are developed only in the 
 mill of life. Self-command, rightly directed power. 
 
308 THE ART OF STUDY 
 
 sound judgment and right ideals are not given to heaven- 
 born genius; they come to life in the dust and sweat of 
 a steady struggle. 
 
 It is not so much what a man works at as the way in 
 which he does it that is the key to inward approval and 
 outward success. There is charm and some peace and 
 happiness in any set of conditions that is dattled with. 
 Sit down and wish you were endowed with better powers 
 and given better opportunities, and anything you touch 
 will be "an asinine feast of sow-thistles and brambles." 
 But no matter how heavy the handicap of circumstance, 
 nor how dense the initial ignorance, nor how apparently 
 weak the untrained powers may be, show a spirit of ha- 
 bitual mastery, and I will, in the words of Milton, 
 "straight conduct you to a hillside, where I will point you 
 out the right path of a virtuous and noble education; la- 
 borious, indeed, at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so 
 green, so full of goodly prospect, and melodious sounds 
 on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more 
 charming.'' 
 
 It is not unusual brain power that makes the best 
 student, but a combination of strong motive and strong 
 will, and patient, steady action. What Huxley said of 
 scientific men will always be true of the student. "Truth 
 has yielded herself rather to their patience, their love, 
 their single-heartedness, and their self-denial, than to 
 their logical acumen." 
 
 Eealization never comes true to our expectations. We 
 look for the higher, but seem to grasp only the lower and 
 
CONCLUSION 309 
 
 lesser good. By middle life we find ourselves where the 
 fondest and wildest imaginings of our youth never car- 
 ried us. But power is cumulative, whichever way we 
 move. Action makes action easier. Nature's interest is 
 always compound, both for reward and punishment. The 
 dull movement of a student's routine life seems to leave 
 no visible trace, but Time takes care of the single blows 
 that are given, if only they are true and strong. The 
 hour-hand of fate not only points, but moves. The silent 
 years make clear the knowledge that was dim, and strong 
 and accurate the powers whose existence was hardly recog- 
 nized. 
 
I^vi^. 
 
 2.6 
 
 l%<i^ 
 
UG. 25 1902 
 1 COPY DEL. TOCAT.OIV. 
 AUG. 26 1902