Making the Most of One's Mind/Chapter 2
PLAN OF CAMPAIGN
IT is as essential in study as in warfare to have a satisfactory plan of campaign. Irregular desultory work never produces the same effect as that which is carried on with a definite purpose and on clearly thought-out lines. Our plans fall naturally into two groups, the one dealing with the subjects to be studied, and the other with the distribution of the time we can devote to each study. At school, and even at the university, the general lines of our subject-matter are laid down for us from above. We are told in broad outlines what to learn, though there is certainly a great deal of room left for personal organization of the details of this subject-matter. With this we shall deal at a later stage. Here we are specially interested in the distribution of our time.
We are all familiar with the time-tables that we find at school, on which the week's work and the work for each day are clearly set out. As pupils in a school we must conform to the time-table, so there is no more to be said on that head. But the school time is not the only time we give to study. Every pupil past the preparatory stage has, and ought to have, a certain amount of study to be done in his own time and at his own pace. This time must fit in, of course, with the requirements of the school. That is, if the school makes heavier demands in Latin than in Mathematics, then we must give a proportionately larger amount of home study to Latin. Further, the subjects to be studied each evening will be determined by the subjects to be taken up in class next day. The result of all this is that we must make up a sort of time-table for our home study, and it will be found necessary to make this time-table fit in with that of the school. But the moment you sit down to write out such a table you will find a certain difficulty. You will discover that the total amount of time needed for preparation varies from evening to evening. Some evenings are light and others are heavy. You will find that the teachers are quite aware of this. But though they do all they can to secure a fair degree of uniformity in the amount of work demanded each evening, it is impossible to arrange matters in the symmetrical way they would like. Accordingly, you will see it to be necessary to make not the evening but the week the unit on which you draw up your time-table. That is, you must see to it that if Tuesday evening, for example, is a specially heavy one, you do some of Tuesday night's work on Monday night. By this way of give and take you will find it possible to make ends meet in a reasonable way, instead of loafing on the easy evenings and overworking on the heavy ones. You must be responsible for your evening time-table, just as your teachers are responsible for the school one. It is accordingly rather important that you should take account of the nature of a time-table, so that you may be able to behave intelligently in making and using one. The following points deserve your attention.
I. In drawing up your time-table you must not be too heroic. When you first sit down to consider the whole question you will probably feel yourself in a glow of noble determination to do the thing very thoroughly. It is like making up one's mind to get up very early next morning. For the time being you are warm and comfortable and full of resolution. Nothing seems too drastic. You may as well be thorough about it when you are at it. Mr. H. G. Wells puts the case very graphically in his Love and Mr. Lewisham, where he gives an account of the inhuman time-table drawn up by that enthusiastic young person. Naturally he could not live up to it, and the trouble is that a time-table that falls through has its disastrous after effects. In order that you may live up to your time-table you must estimate very carefully beforehand your capacity for work. You must try to gauge this pretty accurately, for there is almost as much danger in under-estimating as in over-estimating your powers. No doubt it would be easy to make sure of overtaking all you laid out for yourself if you deliberately put your demands well below your powers. But the result of this working below our own natural level is extremely bad. It involves no call for strenuous effort. Everything goes smoothly and easily. We hardly rise above the level of a vegetable.
We must have ideals, otherwise we shall have no incentive to work. When Browning writes:
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?"
he suggests the essential quality of an ideal, which is that it can never be fully attained. When we work to attain something that we know to be well within our reach we are working for an end, not for an ideal. This appears a sensible way of working, and it cannot be denied that at first sight it seems an unsound policy to encourage people to work for an ideal, if we start with the assumption that an ideal is unattainable. Indeed, it looks as if the beginning of this section on time-tables was written just to warn you against undertaking something that you could not succeed in carrying out. But we must look more closely at what underlies this conception of the ideal. In your studies you may have come across the expression "the mathematical limit." If we take lb., lb., lb., lb., lb., lb., lb., lb., and add them all together we get very nearly a whole pound, in fact within a two-hundred-and-fifty-sixth part of a pound. This is near enough for all practical purposes; but still, if we go on adding always another fraction exactly half of the one preceding, we get nearer and nearer to a total of exactly one pound. One pound is here the mathematical limit of the sum of this series. But to reach that limit we would need to go for ever adding fractions, which enables us to understand the definition of the mathematical limit as "that which we can approach as nearly as we please, but never actually reach." This corresponds to our notion of an ideal. You remember that Goldsmith, referring to the horizon, has the suggestive lines:
"That, like the circle bounding earth and skies,
Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies."
So the ideal allures from far, and when pursued proves as unattainable as the horizon. But it does not cease to allure. Therein lies its power. Attainment satisfies us and we cease to strive. The unattained always attracts us: it is a perpetual challenge. To be sure, if it could be demonstrated to our satisfaction that it was not only unattained but unattainable, it might lose its charm. But the ideal is not unattainable in that absolute sense. We can never reach it, but we can approach it as nearly as we please. Thus we are attaining all the time without ever having attained, and the ideal retains to the end its wholesome allurement.
II. Applying this theory of the ideal to our time-table we find that it will be enough to make the amount of time to be given to study an end, and not an ideal. We have to fix a number of hours that we know to be within our power, and not start with the intention of working the maximum number of hours that our organism will stand. But though the number of hours should be chosen on the principle of the mere end, the kind of work done during these hours will give ample opportunity for the operation of the ideal.
In determining the number of hours to be included each week in our home time-table, various things have to be taken into account. To begin with, the number of hours devoted to study at school or college will have a determining influence. There is a traditional belief that an eight hours' working day is a reasonable arrangement. So that if you have five hours' work at school there should remain three hours to be accounted for at home. But if you have a six hours' day at school you will probably find that you have still need of three hours at home to keep up with your class work, and with a healthy boy or girl a nine (or even a ten) hours' day is not dangerous, though it certainly means strenuous work. The question of health is of the utmost importance, and if your parent or your medical attendant tells you that a nine (or ten) hours' day is injurious, then, of course, you must accept the decision and make your time-table accordingly. The important thing is to determine the total amount of time at your disposal for home study and make the best use of that. Other considerations besides health must be taken into account. There are some social duties that demand a certain amount of time—particularly in the case of girls. But this claim needs to be carefully scrutinized. Some young people are only too ready to take a very serious view of their social responsibilities, just as others are inclined to take an unduly pessimistic view of the effect of study on their health. Your conscience and your doctor must decide between them about the relation between work and play, while your parents must help your conscience to determine how much time you owe to society. If you are entitled to wear the toga virilis and are still a student, you will be well advised to keep society on pretty short rations in the matter of your time.
III. With regard to the distribution among the various subjects of your whole available time for home study, you must rely upon your own experience and your own judgment. It is well known that certain subjects, for example, Mathematics and Latin Prose, are more difficult, and therefore demand more time than others. Generally speaking, therefore, you will give to such subjects a bigger share of your time than to others. But here you must take account of your own special capacity and tastes. It may be that you are specially good at mathematics and find constitutional history much harder. In that case history should get the preference in the time-table. Further, it sometimes happens that though you are not good at a certain subject you may have been a longer time at it than have the others in your class, and thus you may be for a term or two in advance of the rest of the class in that subject. Clearly you could afford, in such a case, to cut down the time you would ordinarily give to that subject and devote it to some others in which you happen to be weak.
IV. Having determined the total amount of time per week to be given to the various subjects, you have next to settle in what order these subjects. should occur on your time-table, and how they should be distributed throughout the week. Here there are certain general principles that may give you some help.
(a) The more difficult subjects should always be taken when the mind is freshest. This is usually at the beginning, or very near the beginning, of a period of study. Accordingly, you will be well advised to put at those times the subject that you find most difficulty in mastering. But this principle should be taken in connexion with another. It sometimes happens that you dislike some subject, though you have no great difficulty in dealing with it. Speaking generally, we dislike most those subjects that are for us the most difficult. But if for any reason we find a subject easy enough in a way, but unpleasant for us, then we should put that in the forefront. So with the end of a study period. That is the place for the easiest subjects, but if there is some subject that we find hard but still take a positive pleasure in, then it may be put at the end, where it stands as a sort of inducement to get at it by working off the less pleasant matters that precede it. Further help in deciding the order in which subjects should be studied will be found from a consideration of what will be said about fatigue a little later.
(b) It is found that in most cases the oftener a subject is taken in the week the better chance it has of getting justice. Thus, if you can afford only two and a half hours per week to a given subject, say French, this time might be divided into one hour on Monday, half an hour on Wednesday, and one hour on Friday. Or the time might be divided in the simple form of half an hour every day for five days. This latter distribution is found to be the more profitable. You seem to learn something between lessons, even though you may not open your book from one lesson to another. On the other hand, some subjects require a certain amount of preparation of materials for each lesson. Thus if you had two hours a week to devote to drawing, it would probably be better to have them in two separate hour-periods rather than in four half-hour-periods. The time spent in putting out and putting away the drawing materials would thus be lost only twice a week instead of four times.
(c) While the hardest subjects should generally come first and the easiest last, there is room for a certain alternation of the easy and the difficult. After a very hard subject a very easy one may be well used as a sort of rest after the strain. Still we must keep in view what we have said under (a) on this point. But whatever may be done in the way of alternating the easy and the difficult, there certainly ought to be an alternation according to the different kinds of subjects. Thus algebra should be followed by something quite different, say French; history might be followed by geometry, and geography by composition. It is obvious that this principle of alternation might be quite well combined with the alternation of the easy and the difficult, to say nothing of the repulsive and the attractive.
V. One great danger in the use of the time-table is rigidity. It is difficult to finish our work in each subject at the exact moment when a new subject is due. To obviate this difficulty it may be suggested that a small period of say fifteen or twenty minutes should be set apart at the end of each evening's work as a sort of reserve time to finish off any little thing we may have been forced to omit in any of the ordinary periods. But this plan is dangerous. The recognition of a fixed emergency time gives a sort of justification for not quite finishing the work at any period, and the tendency is to have a bad balance left over from every period. It is probably better to allow an occasional extension of one subject into the period of another. This is very bad, no doubt, but the important thing is that it is felt to be bad at the time. We cannot avoid feeling conscience-stricken when we know that we are favouring one subject at the expense of another. All subjects may claim an equal right in the reserve period. But the very fact that we know we are using Geometry time for French work makes us uncomfortable, and therefore drives us to avoid such incursions unless under genuine stress and strain. You must not allow pedantry to stop you to the moment, when a few minutes more might produce all the difference between complete and incomplete preparation; but if you cultivate a tenderness of conscience about overlappings you will be able to preserve an adherence to your times that is intelligent without being slavish. If your conscience is in good working order you may experiment with a reserve period, with the full resolve to use it as seldom as possible as an emergency extension for any one subject, and as often as possible as a revision period for each subject in turn. If you cannot depend on your conscience, avoid having a reserve period in your time-table.
At the present time a great deal of attention is given to the question of over-pressure in schools. It is probable that with most young people there is more danger of under-pressure than over-pressure. It is an unwholesome thing to be continually thinking about one's health, and it is not desirable to encourage young people to think that their main business is to make sure that they do not do too much work. All the same, in order that you may have the proper information to guide you in managing your work, it is worth while telling you some of the facts that have come out in the many investigations that have recently been made into the nature of fatigue. Sometimes we hear of mental fatigue, as if it were different from other kinds of fatigue. But it would appear that the effects produced by mental work are very much the same as those produced by any other kind of work.
To begin with, we are not to regard fatigue as something to be avoided. After honest work we ought to be fatigued. What we should be afraid of and try to avoid is over-fatigue. The difference between the two may be said to be that over-fatigue demands special means to remove it. If after a piece of work you are tired and, as you are apt to say, "worn out," you go to bed and have a good sleep and waken up refreshed, you have been merely normally fatigued. But if when you go to bed you are, as we sometimes say, too tired to sleep, or if when you do sleep you waken up still tired, and the tiredness hangs about you all the next day and interferes with your effectiveness in work, then you have been over-fatigued. Again a warning is needed. You must not be always on the look out for symptoms of tiredness. If they need to be looked for they may be safely neglected. On the other hand, there are those who find the symptoms all too easily. These are they of whom it is contemptuously said, "they were born tired."
What you are mainly concerned with is the effect of fatigue upon your work. Now it is worth while noting that the moment you start upon a piece of work the fatigue effect begins to set in. It is not noticeable for quite a long while and does not make its influence felt till the work has exhausted a certain amount of your energy. But it goes on increasing in amount and tends to reduce the effectiveness of your efforts. But there are other influences at work at the same time. There is first what is called the practice effect, which represents the increased skill we acquire in doing anything by the very practice we get in doing it. Suppose we are working out equations in algebra, we acquire by practice greater case in manipulating the material as the lesson goes on; and the same is true of such a different operation as memorizing the irregularities of the French verb. The other force at work produces what may be called the "swing" effect. Apart from the skill we attain by practice in a particular operation, we acquire, as we go along, a certain swing that carries us on. This is what we mean when we say that we have warmed up to our work.
Now the curious thing is that at the beginning of a period of study all three forces start work, and all three effects go on increasing as the study proceeds. But at first the fatigue effect makes little progress, while the practice effect and the swing effect progress rapidly. By and by, however, the practice and the swing effects reach their maximum and cannot become greater, while the fatigue effect steadily increases. At length a time comes when the fatigue effect more than counterbalances the other two and the effectiveness of study begins to diminish. It goes on diminishing till by and by it becomes unprofitable to carry on the work.
The following diagram illustrates what takes place in a period of two hours' work. Beginning at A the
Fatigue Curve.
Reproduced from Binet and Henri's La Fatigue Intellectuelle,
by kind permission of Messrs. Schleicher Frères, Paris.
effectiveness of the work, so far from increasing rapidly, begins at first by actually decreasing. This results from the distraction that we experience at the beginning of a lesson. We are busy fighting against all the other interests that claim our attention. But when we have settled our account with the matters that occupied our minds just before the lesson began, and that have made a fight for their place in our minds before they finally give way to the matters we are studying, there is a rapid increase in the effectiveness of our work, owing to the growing practice and swing effects. This goes on up to C, at which point the fatigue effect is able just to counterbalance the combined forces of the other two. After that there is a steady fall to D. In the ordinary course this fall would continue, but when it gets close to the end of the study period we are stimulated a little by two things. First there is the prospect of a speedy release from toil, and this cheers us up. Then there is the working of our conscience that tells us that our time is now very short, and therefore there is the more need for effort. The result is a little spurt at the end, which has been compared to what the old postilions used to call "the spurt for the avenue," meaning the little reserve force that they husbanded in their horses during a long journey so that they might make a creditable appearance as they drove up to the door of the grand house.
We see, then, from the "curve of fatigue," as the diagram is called, that there is always a loss at the beginning of a new lesson, because of the distraction and because the practice and the swing effects take a little time to make themselves felt. In consequence you may think that it was bad advice to ask you to take five half-hour lessons rather than two lessons of an hour each and another of half an hour. But there is an interesting fact to be taken into account here. The swing effect, it is true, is lost every time we give up a lesson and resume it again after an interval. But the practice effect is carried over from one lesson to another. Experiments have been made to determine how long the practice effect lasts, and it has been found that the practice effect of a single hour's work was preserved and carried over to the morrow, and was not entirely lost even after a lapse of thirty-eight to forty-seven hours. Since the fatigue effect very rapidly disappears, we have thus a great advantage, and it is this advantage that makes progress possible. Naturally the smaller the interval between the lessons the more perfectly is the practice effect carried forward. Accordingly it is wiser to distribute our time over as many different study-periods as can be conveniently arranged, so long as they are not too short to secure the full benefit of both the swing effect and the practice effect.
The actual length of the study-period to be devoted to each subject will depend upon the nature of the subject and the nature and stage of advancement of the student. In schools we have to arrange matters to suit groups, and all we can do is to get some sort of average and do the best we can with that. With the advanced classes the ordinary periods are 40 min., 45 min. and 50 min. With younger classes the period is usually much smaller. In order to get some sort of general rule that will suit all cases it has been suggested that the following sliding scale might be adopted with advantage:
Multiply the number of years in the pupil's age by "two, and the result will give you the number of minutes that forms the suitable lesson-period for that pupil."
In your own case you will probably find that forty minutes forms a very suitable average period of study for a subject. A few subjects may be satisfied with thirty minutes, and some will demand a whole hour. But if you are not trammelled by school or college conditions, you may quite wisely exercise a fair amount of freedom in your arrangements. You may, for example, adopt what is called the intensive method and concentrate on your subjects one after the other. Thus mathematics in its different branches might monopolize a whole evening three times a week for a month, the other subjects having to content themselves with short commons till their turn came for intensive treatment. Some students find this method works extremely well, but it should always be used with the safeguard that you take a wide sweep in your plan of campaign and secure that there is a real periodicity in the intensive study. That is, you would take the year as the unit, so that each subject would have a chance of getting its turn say three or four times a year. If a shorter period is taken, you will find yourself inclined to stop the system just when a disagreeable subject is going to have its innings. Further, this intensive plan should be limited to the major subjects. Certain of the minor subjects should get uniform attention all the way through.
It seems only natural to expect that the various subjects of study should have different fatigue-producing effects. Some demand much harder work than others. In point of fact, experiments have been made, the results of which have led to the following classification, in which 100 is accepted as the maximum power of producing fatigue:
Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
100 | |
Latin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
91 | |
Greek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
90 | |
Gymnastics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
90 | |
History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
85 | |
Geography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
85 | |
Arithmetic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
82 | |
French . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
82 | |
German (the mother tongue) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
82 | |
Nature Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
80 | |
Drawing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
77 | |
Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . |
77 | |
This table is the outcome of the experiments of a German called Wagner, but the results do not quite agree with those of another experimenter called Kemsies, who puts the subjects in the following order, according to their fatigue-producing power:
- Gymnastics.
- Mathematics.
- Foreign Languages.
- Religion.
- German (mother tongue).
- Nature Study and Geography.
- History.
- Singing and Drawing.
We need not be surprised that these two tables do not agree. There are so many things to be taken into account that it is almost impossible to get accurate results. For one thing, the kind of teacher makes all the difference in the world. There are easy-going teachers of mathematics who do not take much out of their pupils, and there are strict teachers of drawing who send their classes away much more fatigued than those from the laxer teachers of harder subjects. For you the most important source of probable error in estimating the fatigue-producing power of subjects is the confusion between two quite different things. We are very apt to think that we are fatigued when we are only bored. Ennui or boredom comes upon us when we cannot get up sufficient interest in what we are doing. We may be quite fresh and ready for any amount of work at other things, but not at this particular thing that disgusts us. It is in cases like this that a change of subject is as good as a rest. If we are really fatigued the only remedy is to rest, but if we are merely bored we may obtain relief by turning to something else for a while and then coming back to the tiresome subject.
You must not, however, too readily resort to this change of subject. If you are sure that it is a matter of being bored and not of being really fatigued, you must be very careful not to yield too easily to the desire for change. To give up as soon as you are a little bored is contemptible. You must face the uninteresting in order to attain to something else that is interesting. The encouraging thing is that if we do apply ourselves to what has no attraction for us we gradually acquire a sort of pleasure in the work. If this were not so, it would be necessary to give up certain kinds of work altogether, since the mind finds it impossible to attend by mere force of will to any subject in which no interest whatever can be aroused. To the earnest student, however, there are no such subjects. There is always a way of connecting the dry subject, somehow or other, with matter that really does interest us. No doubt it would be a mistake to confine yourself for long periods to these specially uninteresting subjects, and your purpose will be served if you give them their fair share of attention and do not surrender at the first appearance of boredom.
A somewhat similar problem arises in connexion with genuine fatigue. It may be asked: Is it possible to do effective work when we are fatigued? It appears that it is possible. Suppose that the student works on till his usual time for going to bed. He is worn out and quite ready to fall asleep. But for some reason or other it is imperative that a certain piece of work should be done that night. The student goes doggedly on, determined to finish his work in spite of his weariness. By and by a curious thing happens. The drowsiness passes away, the mind becomes clear again, and indeed appears to be clearer than usual. This renewed vigour is sometimes called "mental second wind," and investigations have been made to find out whether the work done under its influence is really good, whether, in fact, it stands the test of "next morning." The conclusion reached by those who have looked into the matter is that in most cases the work done under these unusual conditions is quite good. But the report is not so favourable when we come to consider the effect upon the mind of the student. His work may not suffer, but he does. The essay he produces may be an excellent essay, but it has cost more than usual. This mental second wind is an unwholesome thing. It appears that drowsiness and the other symptoms of fatigue are nature's warning that rest is needed. If the warning is neglected nature removes the symptoms and allows the work to go on, but at the price that she always demands from people who work under pathological conditions. Investigation seems to show that when we are what we usually call fatigued, we are not exhausted. We have reserves of energy upon which we can draw. This is a beneficent arrangement of nature to meet the emergencies of life, and occasions sometimes arise on which it is justifiable to call out our reserves to meet special needs. But the student must realize that it is a dangerous business using emergency means in ordinary circumstances. So it is well to avoid falling back upon our mental second wind unless there is some genuine need for it.
So far it has been taken for granted that the student is connected with some school or college, and that accordingly his work as a whole has been planned out by some one else. But it may quite well happen that you who are reading this are what is called a private student. You may be conducting your studies entirely on your own responsibility, and therefore in need of some little guidance on the planning out of your work as a whole. Now in approaching a new subject there are two main ways of arranging your work. One may be called the Method of Complete Detail, the other the Rapid Impression Method. The first proceeds on the good old-fashioned way of dealing in full detail with everything as it comes, and mastering each part of the subject in its due order and in all its parts. In the second the student takes a scamper over the whole ground as rapidly as possible, in order to get a general idea of what it is all about, and then by and by goes over the same ground in greater and greater detail. Each method has its advantages and its dangers. The Method of Complete Detail commends itself to those who are greatly attracted by the ordinary ideal of thoroughness. It seems the natural thing to begin at the beginning and go right on. But it is not always a very intelligent way of approaching a subject. The student sometimes is put into such a position that he cannot see the wood for the trees. His attention is so much occupied with details that he is unable to form any general idea of what it is all about. It is sometimes months after he has begun a study that a glimmering of what it all means dawns upon him. On the other hand, the Rapid Impression Method is very attractive to the quick-witted, keen, easily interested student, who gallops with great joy through the whole subject, gathering interest as he goes. When it is necessary, however, to begin to go over the matter again in greater detail this type of student is apt to flag.
You will see that in a general way the detailed method attracts those of hard wits, while the quick-witted probably prefer the Rapid Impression Method. You must accordingly consider to which of the two classes you belong and face the problem with a knowledge of your bias. You will doubtless have no difficulty in making up your mind which way your inclinations turn; but you must decide for yourself which of the two methods is most likely to be advantageous to you, being the person you are and in the circumstances in which you find yourself. You will almost certainly feel that there is a rather close balancing of advantages and disadvantages between the two methods, and you will be inclined, to make some sort of compromise method of your own so as to combine the advantages of both; and in this you will be wise. For what such a compromise means is that you have made a special application of certain general principles in such a way as to meet circumstances as they exist here and now.
To begin with, if this is the first occasion on which you seek to make an application of your knowledge of how you stand in relation to the two kinds of wit, you will probably find that you are not quite sure whether your wit is hard or quick. In some subjects you seem to belong to the quick wits and in others to the hard. You will be wise then, in taking the nature of the subject into account in classifying your powers, and you cannot go far wrong in making your compromise between the two methods depend upon the nature of your own temperament. If you feel yourself to be too quick-witted, too motor, too ready to jump to conclusions, too easily bored with detail, you will be well advised to give your studies a bias towards the Complete Detail Method. If, on the other hand, you were inclined at school to depend entirely on the directions of your teachers, to take each day's work for granted, to regard everything, in fact, as "all in the day's work," then a bias towards the other method will be to your advantage. The ordinary workaday student, the person who takes no responsibility for the results of his work, the sort of student, in short, who is not in the least likely to read a book like the present, is the person who stands most in need of the Rapid Impression Method. But after all, were it not for the danger of appearing to underestimate the value of thoroughness, it would be safe to ask all students to give their work a bias towards Rapid Impressionism. The really earnest student may be trusted not to misunderstand or misuse the more attractive method, but he must be warned to lose no opportunity of stiffening his willpower by applying himself to the less attractive details.