How to Learn Easily/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
BOOKS AND THEIR EDUCATIVE USE
Many wise minds have written volumes and multitudes of wise essays on books and their use. For such learning we may refer directly to Bacon, Montaigne, Carlyle, Emerson, and the rest—at hand everywhere. But I wish to suggest, in connection with this matter of learning, that the choice of books, both of textbooks indirectly and of other kinds more directly, is a test, in itself, and a criterion in a way of our likelihood of becoming well educated—of our general educability. Nothing gets our range more quickly than our choice and use of books. Millionaires sometimes furnish the library of a new home with books bought by the linear shelf-yard and, next to their space, think most of their bindings. But, as they, perhaps, finally realize, there is no known subtle influence passing from an idea printed in a paragraph of a book to the subconscious mind of a near-by person however great may be his desire to learn, or however closely surrounded with such printed symbols of ideas he may be!
The transfer from the printed page to the cortex of the brain means long and continuous labor, years of it, unnumbered days and nights of it. There cannot be a rule for the actual study of all books. Some books require concentrated attention for their mastery, and some do not. Some call for thoughtful revery running along with their reading, and some demand concentrated attention to the books' ideas themselves, if the reader would become really learned.
The amount of time actually spent on some lessons in seventy-five classes in the University of Iowa has been reported by Professor Irving King ("School and Society", December 4, 1915). Of the 2567 students who answered the questions of the investigator about 61 per cent used one and a half hours or less on the particular lesson assignments from which the statistics were made. Eight per cent used one half hour or less, and 5 per cent three hours or more. If we may take these figures as average values (and they are the only available data at present and as far as they go surely wholly reliable) we can judge fairly well for ourselves whether or not we are doing ourselves, our time, and our money justice in the effort we habitually put forth in reading or in studying lessons. If we are assigning ourselves lessons, we can judge roughly from these averages whether they are of average traditional length and properly used. The concentration of the attention is far more important to easy learning than is the length of its continuous application. Here in the most certain way is quality far more than quantity. Thus Professor King's statistics are more suggestive than really significant for any one student. In any one reported case it might have been that the student concentrated and learned not only faster but better (as we shall see shortly) than another who misused six-fold as much time. Still, this factor would seem to be averaged as much as the others and we need not suppose that it would harm the validity of the results. As a practical point they suggest that one-and-a half hours is plenty long enough for most students to spend on a lesson. If either too little or too much this period is more likely the latter, according to modern physiologic ideas.
Despite the necessity of "keeping everlastingly at it" if one would become really learned, and the consequent need of using time to the best advantage, (to the really best advantage) there is small profit or none at all in carrying books about in the pocket and in the school bag, as we see many people do, for reading on the steam cars, street cars, and in other public places. Of course in general this is pure affectation. Any one who does it out of a serious intention of making the most of his time is doing so on a real misunderstanding, for usually the time is far too much broken to allow any adequate learning-compensation for the loss of rest of the eyes and brain, and the loss of observation during travel, even though it be only downtown. Every man, woman, or child sitting across the aisle, every intelligent horse or dog in sight, is a "book" for study better, under such circumstances, than most bookbinders have ever put together. Therefore it is idle to try to get knowledge out of books in a haphazard way, in distracted periods, each lasting only a very short time. "One thing at a time and that done well," and in this case only with full attention! In general the time to read is when we are alone, at least in quiet, for then with economy we can really make the required book-cortex translation and transfer, and let the cortical neurones rustle unafraid.
For our present purpose we may make two classes of books: textbooks and books which are usable in this way, and others.
Textbooks are for direct, detailed study; that is their purpose. A good textbook contains the important facts and principles and the greater part of the essential information of the subject on which it treats. A textbook, as compared with other books, is very concentrated mind food, while the other books are usually not concentrated.
Real familiarity with full and authoritative textbooks is the backbone of educational information and understanding. Textbooks are our "old reliable" means of learning. This can be scarcely too much emphasized in these days of many social lectures and of other fashionable modes of pretended learning. The intensive use of books is based upon the substantial, old-fashioned recitation, and as we shall see a student can be very successful in reciting to himself. Relatively few students adequately realize the importance in the learning-mill of competent textbooks properly used.
For practical purposes it is advisable to consider the essential dynamic relationship between the four obvious elements of the problem of learning from books by the intensive study of them. These four elements we may denote as follows:—(1) the adequate textbook itself. (2) The real desire to learn its facts and its wisdom. (3) The forced and attentive study under the requisite pressure, great or small. (4) The transfer to the brain, and the associative process of interweaving with the knowledge and the wisdom already there. Of course there is every grade of learning-effort. When the effort based on interest is at its strongest, the outlines and some details of a whole new subject may be fixed in the mind in a few weeks or even in a few days. That is to say, this may readily be accomplished by a person who knows how to study, how especially to control his muscles and so to force his voluntary attention along the desired and, therefore, the interesting line of work. Obviously we are back again to generalized skill, the universal personal control over at least the voluntary muscles. It is sometimes actually surprising to observe how much of a new subject an active, vigorous boy or girl or an eager, hurried man can learn in a short time. This "cramming", I suspect, is done in schools even much more than most teachers realize. Many students everywhere almost entirely neglect study day by day and then by a dynamogenic spurt learn the whole subject, and sometimes adequately, and now and then even permanently, within a week or so, or even a few days. In order to accomplish this, they have to have this training-control of mind, which is really a training of the body. But a student who lacks this knowledge of how to study, how to steadily force his mind for repeated effective periods along hard, because definite, directions, cannot accomplish such intensive acquirement either soon or easily. Such students (and the great majority of learners are of this latter type) must first learn how to study in this way; or else use the ordinary traditional method for average students such as the average school everywhere provides!
Here we are considering the use of textbooks by a student who knows how to make the most of them. This dynamogenic process (the word's meaning is obvious) is a pleasure as well as a necessity, and is widely open to all. But few indeed realize that they possess this all-important power of rapid and easy learning from textbooks, of transferring the textbooks almost bodily and in a short time and for good, into their minds by way of their brains. The organism, body and mind, has to be trained to it. On the other hand, we may soon train ourselves once for all simply by doing this: Forcing the issue with all our might, and by repetition making it a habit. This we may call the intensive use of books. Probably in the long run this is not very economical for the most of us, for "it takes a bit out" of us. It is not what we can do, but what we can do economically that interests us in education. It is important, however, to us all to know how much we can do in emergency; and to know the mechanism thereof in part at least: a new chapter in educational science as well as in psychology and physiology.
Professor W. B. Cannon and his associates in the laboratory of physiology of the Harvard Medical School have recently worked out further details of the relations of emotional excitement to energy-expense in a way useful for our present purpose of learning how to study. Doctor Cannon says: "The close relation between emotion and muscular action has long been perceived. As Sherrington has pointed out, Emotion 'moves' us, hence the word itself. If developed in intensity, it impels toward vigorous movement. Every vigorous movement of the body . . . involves also the less noticeable coöperation of the viscera, especially of the circulatory and the respiratory. The extra demand made upon the muscles that move the frame involves a heightened action of the nutrient organs which supply to the muscles the material for their energy! The researches here reported have revealed a number of unsuspected ways in which muscular action is made more efficient because of emotional disturbances of the viscera. Every one of the visceral changes that have been noted—the cessation of processes in the alimentary canal (thus freeing the energy supply for other parts); the shifting of blood from the abdominal organs, whose activities are deferable, to the organs immediately essential to muscular exertion (the lungs, the heart, the central nervous system); the increased vigor of contraction of the heart; the quick abolition of the effects of muscular fatigue; the mobilizing of energy-giving sugar in the circulation; [an increased coagulability of the blood; and the dilation of the bronchioles, both demonstrated by Cannon]—every one of these visceral changes is directly serviceable in making the organism more effective in the violent display of energy which fear or rage or pain involve."
Now this "forcing the issue" through a book in contest with one's natural inertia, not to say frankly and truly oftentimes with one's natural or abnormal laziness, also comes to be explained. This firm and warm and vigorous determination to learn as fast as possible undoubtedly employs, and gets its often perfect success from, just these same dynamogenic processes. The bodily changes here would be less conspicuous than in acute rage or fear, but no psychologist can doubt that just the same they are also in action. (The same is true in other cases, notably worry, only that here fear acts to depress, as is its wont, rather than to stimulate.)
This "learning against time" has been studied carefully by Doctor G. C. Myers of the Brooklyn Training School for Teachers. The work tested was the learning of a list of unrelated words; twenty-six normal-school girls were given the task, thirteen having all the time they wished to use and thirteen being required to do the "stunt" in nine minutes. "Ten of the twenty-four," says Professor Myers, "made perfect records, and the imperfect records were, on the whole, about as good as those of the first group. This means that when the subjects knew they had only a limited time in which to do the task, almost half made perfect records in the time in which a perfect record was made by one of the first group, working without a time-limit. Furthermore, one does not know how many of the ten could have done the task in a shorter time than the nine minutes given. In addition, these ten out of twenty-four made perfect records in five minutes less time than the average time required by the nine who made perfect records in the first test. Moreover, the second group, though belonging to the same class, was a little inferior to the first in scholastic averages." These results by themselves certainly make out a strong argument-everywhere in general corroborated by experience—for the advantage of intensive effort in learning and in doing.
Professor Woodworth, of Columbia University summarized this question as follows:[1]—
"The contradictory results obtained according as retention is measured by the saving in re-learning or by the amount recalled make it desirable to introduce further variations into the study of the above question. One variation consists in avoiding the matter of individual differences, and examining the learning and retention of single associations by the same individual. In one of the experiments reported, an Italian-English vocabulary of twenty pairs of words was to be learned from auditory presentation. After one reading, the experimenter gave the Italian words as stimuli, allowing three to five seconds for each response, prompting and correcting, and so continuing till each correct response had been given once. Overlearning was avoided by dropping each pair from the list as soon as it was learned; but after all the responses had been correctly given, the experimenter read the whole list through once more. After an interval of two to twenty hours, the experimenter again used the Italian words as stimuli, and got the score of correct responses, and also a report of associative aids employed in remembering any of the pairs.
"Under these conditions, the more quickly learned pairs were the better retained. Thus:
Of the pairs learned in 1 reading, 73 per cent were recalled after the interval.
Of the pairs learned in 2 readings, 72 per cent were recalled after the interval.
Of the pairs learned in 3 readings, 63 per cent were recalled after the interval.
Of the pairs learned in 4 readings, 58 per cent were recalled after the interval.
Of the pairs learned in 5 readings, 38 per cent were recalled after the interval.
Of the pairs learned in 6-11 readings, 27 per cent were recalled after the interval.
"Since the aided pairs (pairs in which the subject saw some relation between the terms or developed some mnemonic to hold them together) were both more quickly learned and better retained than the unaided pairs, the advantage of quick learning probably lies partly in this association with aids. But this is not the whole story, for when the unaided pairs are considered by themselves, the quickly learned among them are better retained than the slowly learned; and, indeed, the quickness or slowness of learning makes more difference to retention where no aids are present than where they are present. We conclude that quick learning favors retention, and aided learning favors retention each independently; but that the two influences work together, inasmuch as the best aids suggest themselves promptly and promote quick learning."
But does this speed conduce also to retention as well as to time-saving and to mind-training? In other words, is work so done remembered? Apparently it is, for this matter of the rapidity of learning in relation to the retention of the matter learned, Professor W. H. Pyle of the University of Missouri has studied accurately. His summary of the results reads: "Twelve subjects were tested for their rate of learning a passage of easy prose, and for their retention of the passage after a lapse of twenty-four hours. The most rapid learners showed the highest percentage of retention."
Here again we are reminded, and forcibly, of the great importance, for economical learning, of expending much energy for short periods at a time. This matter can scarcely be too often emphasized as a practical point for easy learning.
Note-taking is just as essential in either the intensive or the extensive use of books as in taking lectures, if we would do our learning both well and economically. The process required is something like this:—Abstract each paragraph or topic after reading it carefully through twice, and write the gist of the abstract, in your own words so far as possible. Only the use of our own words will show that we really have abstracted the meaning, and that we appreciate the sense sufficiently well to be able to write it concisely out of our inner understanding. If, on the other hand, we make our abstract of a paragraph or a topic in words before us, in those of the book, it will be apt to degenerate practically into a process of copying, at least to some degree.
After a little more experience, the motor note-taking, that is that on paper, will be discontinued by most of us for we shall soon have discovered that the mental part of the process of taking notes has been transferred to our reading habit. In other words, after a little experience of this practice we shall find ourselves studying and reading by the abstracting and note-taking method, but without writing the notes save in our figurative sense of inscribing them on the productive and constructive tablets of our brain. If we try along this line we shall soon learn to think (i.e., abstract and extend) and read at the same time. Note-abstracting and integrating each paragraph or chapter or topic in the book is, then, a very fundamental thing indeed, because in this way we symbolically impress on our brains the gist of the matter in another part of the brain and also in a wholly different manner.
Another highly important and often neglected practical practice (especially for young students) is the systematic use of a dictionary "alongside" the book which they are reading. The very general neglect of the dictionary is one of the chief defects of present-day learning methods, in literature and in science, especially. This strange neglect is the cause, first, of the surprisingly small diction or vocabulary of which so very many educators are everywhere complaining. In the second place, it is in part the cause of the lack of power to use good English. In the third place, it is partly the cause of the lack of the thinking-habit, because it means a lack of associative material for the mind's use. If we really wish to develop these three large and basal fractions of an education, a good vocabulary, a good use of language, and a good thinking-habit, we shall cultivate intimacy with dictionaries, years on end. As we read, we should keep a list of the words encountered which are not familiar, and effectively familiar, to be looked for and investigated in the dictionary. The knowledge and mental breadth thus acquired are rapidly accumulative and bear interest of valuable intelligence compounded not only semi-annually but every night while one is asleep. Doctor A. A. Berle has expressed it well in his timely and suggestive "Teaching in the Home."[2]
"Now it must be reasonably clear that if books are to be used in the later education, the first thing to do is to get the ability to read them. Therefore the child-training will see to it that wherever a choice is possible the choice will fall upon the word which will be used in books, rather than in colloquial assemblies. I think I have said elsewhere that half the children in our high schools cannot read their textbooks, and this is undoubtedly true. Through our entire grade system we stick to the colloquial habit when we should be making the book habit. But it should be made even before that, namely in the home. At first sight, this seems like making the home conversation stiff, and void of the vivacity which is said to be the chief charm of non-bookish talk. But my observation and experience lead me to think that exactly the reverse is true. No conversation is so bright, so sparkling, or so enjoyable, as that which uses words with precision and enables the thought to play swiftly and with discrimination upon the fine shadows of meaning. Nothing enables one to use quotations with such telling effect. Nothing moves the mind to greater expertness or appreciation. One reason why an older generation had so much purer speech than ours seems to have, was because the fine old habit of reading aloud prevailed then, which introduced the reading vocabulary into the area of common conversation. Children heard their elders use not only pure speech but the dialect of knowledge. They gained from hearing poetry and fiction and sermons and classic literature, read at the family fireside, a great instrument of comparison which was a thought-builder, second to nothing.
"Obviously, then, intensive training must think first and foremost and all the time of English, and that not merely the pure English of popular speech, but the English of books."
The next few years will certainly develop much advance along just this line of educational and psychologic wisdom. This is the road to true, conceptual-efficient education, to the essential habit of productive self-reliant thought. The place for the student to begin this dictionary-use is in his textbooks.
The relation of ample diction (a large knowledge and ready use of very many words), of thought, and of intelligence is so close—these three-in-one are so wholly interdependent, that again, for double emphasis, it is suggested that the continual use of the dictionary, especially of an ample dictionary of synonyms and antonyms, is among all modes of educational "bother" among the most essential, because directly the most productive, especially for the young. It is most unfortunate that our grade-system does not include a deliberate study of the English word-books, since every new word really learned is a new concept and in general the ever-breeding germ of a new set of interwoven ideas—relating and inter-knitting without end, save as the cortical neurones cease their associations and grow cold.
As a point of practice the possession and use of printing outfits by young people between eight and eighteen is of very great educative value and for several obvious reasons. (1) This kind of play-work-study teaches orderliness automatically, for a disorderly printing shop, one in a general pi, so to say, like the mind itself, is self-destructive. (2) It teaches the nature and choice of words, giving the student an intensive knowledge, a "massive" conception of those, at least, which he sets up laboriously in his composing stick, adjusts in the form, and distributes again into their compartments. (3) Printing teaches punctuation (just now, unfortunately, to some extent out of fashion) and more quickly than any other method. (4) Hand-press work is an ideal form of mechanics for inculcating close observation, delicate visual and kinesthetic discrimination by eye and hand and finger. A good hand-printing press is a fairly complex instrument, built and operated on fundamental laws of physics, and if the student learns to do fine work, it rapidly develops the most careless and heedless into a person of fine discrimination of touch and kinesthesia and sight. (5) Composition of forms of type in ordinary, varied, job-work teaches the new printer that sense of harmony and proportion, of emphasis, logical and perceptual, and taste in general which are at the very basis of our modern literary work, particularly in its more practical and commercial phases. (6) Printing teaches patience and cleanliness, as well as industry and the principles of conducting a business. (7) This art, at once play, work, and study, is oftentimes the start of a life-long interest in the publishing business or in engraving. At any rate, if practiced adequately, it gives a boy or a girl a trade or even a craft which anywhere might earn him a livelihood at least. (8) Printing gives a taste and an appreciation of a well-made book. (9) Newspaper editors have been developed before this by the production of toy journals. Twenty or thirty fonts of small and varied type and a good hand-press, printing say 5 × 7 inches, may be considered, educationally, to be as good an investment for a hundred dollars as can be had; thirty dollars will accomplish the principles of the same results.
We should have as large a variety of textbooks aз it is possible for us to possess. This is an investment, rather than an expense; it means an income, not an intellectual or a financial deficit. Most of these textbooks should be kept. They are, in a sense, an important part of our minds. If we would insist on a definite, desirable number of textbooks to be owned, the number may be set at three on every subject. This number will give us a considerable variety of points of view on the same branch of learning or the same sciences, and make for wisdom as well as for knowledge.
Furthermore, we should have as much as is expedient of collateral reading, if we wish to get all we can out of our textbooks. This adds interest and many details, and makes particularly for breadth of mind in the subject which we are studying.
For purposes of completeness, and even of comparison with the principles of the present book, it may be useful to have before us also a summary of the ideas of an earlier writer on how to study, Professor F. M. McMurry, of Columbia University, as made by Professor J. E. W. Wallin, of St. Louis. He writes:—
"McMurry finds eight requisites of economic study. (1) The child must at the very outset feel a definite, specific purpose or need in his study—not the vague, general aim to acquire knowledge, culture, efficiency, power or skill, but some specific problem in the lesson assigned. This will supply a vital interest to energize effort, focalize and sustain attention; it will transform knowledge-getting from a mere collecting of facts at random to a discriminating choice of data relevant to the specific aim; and it will divert knowledge into practical channels. (2) Pupils should be taught to organize their reading matter around these leading points, and to subordinate the supporting data in the order of value. This involves keeping the central thoughts clearly in mind, the rapid gleaning or neglect of the unessential details, and the observance of a certain procedure in teaching. (3) Since the text must treat topics fragmentarily, require the child to reconstruct and supplement the text-book treatment by his own ideas and experiences. This requires the use of developmental instruction, texts with abundant details, emphasis on reflection as against verbal repetition, and versatility in methods of reproduction. (4) Children should be encouraged to assume a critical attitude toward what they read, and to pass independent judgments upon the credibility of the statements in print, owing to the fact that the latter are often exaggerated, one-sided, inadequate or false. (5) They should like-wise assume an unprejudiced, tentative attitude toward knowledge, because many of our conclusions are possibilities or probabilities rather than established certainties, because our attitudes are so prone to become dogmatic and ultraconservative, and because children incline to base their opinions on authority rather than reason. (6) Studying also involves memorizing, but its importance has been grossly exaggerated in past educational practice and theory. It has been made the pack horse of education, becoming practically synonymous with studying, so that children have rebelled against the intolerable drudgery of school life. The drill likewise has usurped too much attention, and has been a prolific cause of educational waste, stultifying instead of nourishing the child. This chapter, in contrast with the others, is destructive rather than constructive in tendency. (7) Children should be obliged to apply the information gained through study, since use or adaptation to environment is the end-point of ideas, of the capacities and abilities of animals and men, of the subject-matter of any branch of study whatsoever, and of all education. This is the goal of ideas as well as ideas, and can be realized not only in manual and constructive execution but also in skillful talking about the subject-matter. (8) Lastly, there should be ample provision for individuality in study." (These are the most desirably explicit directions for scientific economical learning which have been published up to the present time.)
A few words regarding books other than text-books, and especially as to their use, may be added properly in this connection, since oftentimes these are important factors in our easy learning. They lend breadth to our education as nothing else can do. Some books, for example, written for popular sale, have much basal science and philosophy in them because they are often summaries of many other far more fundamental treatises. Most of them are fragmentary, however, rather than really integrative, their material being chosen on other than a scientific basis by some more or less incompetent person. The reading or at least the acquaintance with the range and the main theses of numerous current and older books on subjects allied to that being studied, is in general quite necessary in order that a student may be accurately and wisely oriented and remain so. A thinker without many books well read is apt to become a pedant and a crank, just as a bookworm without thought is an encyclopedia and not a man or woman at all,—a passive, useful vegetable at most.
Many hard and serious students and scholars, especially adults, read evenings, or even at other times, purely for recreation; and many high-school and college students find time for much reading not directly related to their curriculum. In the early part of 1916 Professor J. Carleton Bell of Brooklyn and Itasca B. Swett of the University of Texas, reported the results of an investigation which they had made into the reading interests of the high-school students of Austin, 440 of them:—
With the girls, light fiction forms the largest part of voluntary reading. The general tendency is for this to decrease during the high-school period, but a decided fall in the low tenth grade is followed by a rise in the high tenth and low eleventh. With the boys, books of adventure take the high place occupied by light fiction with the girls. On the other hand, books of adventure with the girls drop to practically the same position as that held by light fiction with the boys. . . . The interest in standard fiction increases with both boys and girls as we go upward through the grades. The short story does not hold so high a place as might be expected either with boys or girls. Its position remains fairly constant through the grades. With the boys, children's books take about equal rank with short stories. With the girls they are much more popular. Their popularity with the girls increases as we advance in the grades, while with the boys it remains about stationary. Biography and essays show a slight increase in popularity with both boys and girls, but they don't take a high rank at any time."
History, science, and fairy stories were found to be so little read that their variations were not put into the graphic form. In general, plot provides the maximum interest for both girls. and boys—a matter that brain-tired adults. numerously and joyously will confirm. These results may be used as norms for the general reading guidance of young people.
Books after all are only tools; private books are seldom worn out; and second-hand books are of little sale-value, usually "fetching" only about. ten per cent of their original retail cost, even when not far from new. For these reasons and others we should not affectedly make fetishes of our books, but rather use them for all they (and we) are worth. It is a lot better to "break the back" of a book than to be long bothered in using it by its improper and inconvenient binding. It is far better to harm it commercially by writing notes on its margins, than to miss the value of these notes in our learning minds. We should buy good editions if we can afford them, but if not, cheap editions. The difference in the print, paper, and the like, if the reading-light be good, nowadays is not of relative importance for the simple reason that now type and paper are much cheaper and therefore better, and that more reprints are made than in former times.
Most work with books should be done in the daytime, for usually the nighttime is for recreation and for sleep. We frequently see a student try to read (as well as to sleep) with a strong light shining directly or indirectly into his eyes. This matter is of great importance, because a strong light shining directly into the eyes irritates the brain, as well as the eyes themselves. The forenoon is the best time for the best book work, (that which is original and intensive) but the quiet early night is a good time also. It is well always to insist on a good light behind the reader and not in front, unless the eyes be shaded by some-kind of really opaque shade—the usual translucent or transparent green shade is not opaque. A direct, unshaded electric light is too bright for most eyes. A good kerosene lamp or two gas flames (a naked flame and a mantle-flame mixed) is much better than direct electricity; strong electric light reflected from the ceiling is ideal, but in most cases such light is not sufficiently intense for easy reading.
A note-book should be near by, "handy", in all reading, provided we wish really to learn the book, and learn it economically. We should read the preface; and usually the introduction of a book (however contrary this advice may be to common habit), because the preface and the introduction together usually orient us, set us going aright, and will satisfy that curiosity which otherwise is sure to be aroused during the reading of the book. If our impatience positively cannot be withstood, do by all means look a second or two at the last chapter, so that curiosity may not disturb the mind any further. We should always. look over the table of contents, if not the necessary index, so that we may know at all times about where we are in the book. Then, too, we shall know better what, if anything, to "skim", and of what to lay permanent hold. In general, we should be warned against skimming a book unless we are certain in advance that the book really deserves to be skimmed. This is essentially a habit of inattention; but, on the other hand, sometimes our attention can be used just in this way to the best advantage, provided we acquire the habit of picking out rapidly, as we skim, the real essence of a page. This procedure is allied to the process of abstracting, already considered. Certainly much time is wasted in the slow reading of every word of certain books; there are books and books.
Remember that a book intends, most often at least, to represent some sort of a set of ideas. We should take this for granted anyhow, and make it our sole business as a student in reading the book to pick out these vital ideas. Since this essentially means comprehension, it is not surprisingly easy; yet it must be done, since nothing pedagogic will replace practice and careful training in this important matter. The young student at first reads or studies a book, equally, from the beginning to the end, putting the same amount of time and effort on each page. But the mind never works that way, outside of books! As we walked down the street yesterday looking in the attractive windows our minds did not spend so much time on some things along the way as on others; at camp, last summer, certain salient points made up our particular mental day, and no other camper's day as an unit was just like ours; each one's experience is unique; life is different for each human soul. Our mind's associations, our needs, our interests, and so on, should select what for us are the most salient points. Thus it is in reading. Francis Bacon familiarly says, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be digested", and more and more, with the ever-swelling and boundless tide of published books, is this old dictum appropriate. We each buy a copy of the same elaborate book, printed from precisely the same types, yet your book is never like my book! It means more or less or differently to you than it means to me; and its meanings for its readers are itself. Your books are not my books, although they be materially identical. They are not the same simply because your mind is unlike mine. Thus it is that in every book there are many books for many minds. We should try always to get ours out of every book we read. We should learn in reading and studying to pick our own. individual "book" out of a volume. In other words, we should learn to note the part that is for ourselves, and learn not to waste time on those parts of a book that are not for us, whether because familiar or incongruous.
Learn to read a book without reading on the average more than a quarter of it! Learn to get. the meat out! With the enormous number of books that are of real importance, no other method in truth is feasible; for economical learning nothing in the long run is more essential than this, the intensive, method. Learn to abstract, learn (as reviewers have to do) really to become. familiar with the most of a book without undue loss of time! In my reviewing work, I learn the gist of many new and variously difficult books in the course of a year, but (save exciting detective stories or novels) I read every word of scarcely half a dozen. The training-road to this goal is abstracting a paragraph by a sentence and then a chapter by a page of notes and so on to the end. We should be careful not to write into our notes. of a book our own ideas which have been suggested to us by the reading; this is a common bad habit of young students.
A few words as to periodical literature. To-day learning is slow and old-fashioned which does not include at least a few of the special technical magazines. Elementary study requires these as collateral reading; and advanced study requires them for advanced information and for integration, and to relate to ourselves the status of public opinion and taste.
The importance of bibliographies to students can scarcely be overestimated, because the knowledge of the name and title of a volume or of an article is often the next-best thing to its actual possession. Knowledge of the available libraries is essential, and the proper way of using them is wholly necessary to the really progressive student. Next to really knowing a good book, is to know, first, that it exists, second where, and third,—very often this is enough!
All these factors of book-use count not only in themselves, but also as indirect means of keeping the less conscious parts of the mind on its task of arranging and pushing your scholastic work.