Making the Most of One's Mind/Chapter 8

by John Adams (1857-1934)

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LISTENING AND NOTE-MAKING

GREAT as is the difference, many people do not discriminate between hearing and listening. To hear is merely to exercise one of our senses, to allow certain stimuli to produce a certain reaction on the brain with a corresponding effect commonly called a state of consciousness. We are intellectually passive in the process. Certain sounds appeal to our ear, and we may or may not attach a meaning to them, but in any case we are not exerting ourselves in the matter. In listening all this is changed. We hear as before, but we hear with a purpose: we put ourselves in the way of hearing: we direct our hearing. When anything of interest is uttered within our hearing, we are said to prick up our ears, which is only another way of saying that hearing has passed into listening.

Some people are said to be good listeners, but very often they turn out to be nothing more than good actors. It is said, by those who know, that a good actor is easily detected by the way in which he listens on the stage. The poor actor thinks he has done his duty when he has said his piece to the best of his ability, but the good actor is as keen on his work after he has spoken as while he was speaking. He is acting all the time. He must not only hear what the other actors say, but he must seem to hear. He must convey the impression that he is listening. A good listener in society often contents himself with seeming to listen. The student, however, must not only appear to listen, he must really listen. He must give his mind to what is being said.

Even in an ordinary class-lesson, during which the teacher does a certain amount of telling, and a certain amount of questioning, the pupil must expend some energy in listening; but when it comes to what is technically known as a lecture, the strain of listening is greatly increased. Preaching has been defined as "an animated dialogue with one part left out." The definition might be passed over to lecturing, with perhaps the omission of the word "animated," for all lectures cannot claim to have the rousing power that ought to be found in all sermons. The important thing in dealing with lecturing is to understand that it implies two aspects, the speaking aspect and the listening aspect; and that both aspects are active. Lecturing is thus a bi-polar process. But so is ordinary teaching. There is always the teaching pole and the learning pole. But in the ordinary class-lesson this polarity is made manifest. There is open give and take, overt action and reaction. In the lecture all the activity appears to be on one side. The speaker seems to be doing all the work while the audience merely sit passively, and are acted upon. But this is only an appearance. So long as the audience is listening there is activity. It is true that quite a large number of an ordinary audience are merely hearing, some of them probably do not even hear. But wherever there is intelligent listening there is active action and reaction going on between the lecturer and his audience. The listeners respond to the stimuli supplied by the lecturer. Sometimes they agree with him, sometimes they differ from him, but always they react in some way or other upon what he says. They may be finding illustration of the truth of what he is saying, or they may be calling up cases that seem to discredit his generalizations, but in all cases they are supplying, for themselves, the one part left out.

Leaving out of account those whose minds are wool-gathering, and who therefore do not hear at all, and those who merely hear without giving their mind to the subject, and dealing only with those who are really listening, we find that even with this intelligent remnant there is not that steady attention that is sometimes supposed. After an hour's lecture it is not uncommon to find many who think they have been listening steadily all the time. But this is not really the case: all listening is intermittent. We found that attention is always more or less rhythmical in its action. The concentration beat and diffusion beat that we have already considered leave their mark on listening. Sometimes the listener gives his close attention to the very words that are being said; at others he allows his mind to play round what has just been said, neglecting for moment the present words of the lecturer. But this is a mark of intelligent attention not inattention. In point of fact in listening, as in reading a book or in reading music, the mind always goes on a little in advance of what the senses present to us. In reading aloud we always anticipate what is coming. Most intelligent readers have their eyes far ahead of the words they are actually uttering at any given moment. The skilled musician's eye outruns the touch of his fingers on the strings or keys. So in listening, the mark of the expert is his power to project himself into the mind of the speaker, and anticipate what is coming. The really capable listener often goes far ahead of the speaker, and waits for him at what may be called the parting of the ways in dealing with the subject. "When he comes to this point, will he take this direction or that?" the trained listener will ask himself. Indeed the intelligent listener is asking himself questions all the while. His mind is not merely acted upon by the stimuli supplied by the speaker: it plays around all the ideas presented, and comes to its own conclusions. If you wish to make the best use of lectures, you must be prepared to take a very active part in the work.

Inexperienced listeners often lose a great deal of the matter presented to them. In listening to an ordinary sermon, for instance, most people carry away only isolated parts of the whole. They listen in patches, and from what they hear are influenced by the power of association, and let their minds wander. This seems a little like what we have said happens in the case of intelligent listeners, but there is this marked difference. In both cases, no doubt, the mind is allowed to play round the subject, but the intelligent listener limits the attention to ideas that are connected with the main subject, while the careless listener allows association to carry his mind wherever it pleases. Further, the intelligent listener, giving his attention to the subject as a whole, is able to discriminate, as he goes along, which are the really important points and which are more or less subordinate. He utilizes the time given to subordinate points to make good his mastery of the important ones. The unintelligent listener allows his mind to wander off, now after important things, and again after unimportant, without discriminating between them.

The student's attitude towards a lecture must vary according to the nature of the lecture. Broadly speaking the lectures to which the student is called fall into two classes. They are either inspirational or didactic. Some lectures, particularly in literature, philosophy and art, are meant mainly to stimulate the mind, to rouse enthusiasm, to guide taste. The communication of knowledge is a subordinate end in such lectures. As we have seen in dealing with constructive and assimilative study, we can never quite dissociate the manipulation of knowledge from the acquiring of knowledge. But in inspirational lectures the emphasis is on the application and appreciation of knowledge rather than upon its acquisition. We learn a great deal from such lectures, though not in the form of what may be called new facts.

Take the case of a lecture delivered by Sir Walter Raleigh of Oxford on "How to Read Poetry." I do not think I ever heard a more useful lecture, and yet none of the audience went away with many new facts. They did, however, carry away a multitude of new impressions. Many of them would certainly behave differently with regard to poetry from that day forward. I have called the lecture useful because I think it could not help producing a practical effect on the persons who had intelligence enough to understand it. But probably the best term to apply to it would be instructive. Very commonly the word instruction is used as if it were merely another term for the communication of knowledge. But literally it means something quite different, and it may tend towards clearness if we try to keep the literal meaning of the word, though you will remember that it is not commonly used in the sense to which I propose to restrict it here. In Latin the word instruere means to arrange in proper order, and in particular to draw up in order of battle. Applied to education, then, the word instruction might be wisely limited to the meaning of arranging our ideas, putting them in their proper order. By their proper order we naturally mean the order that is best for the particular purpose we may have in view at the time. The teacher who is a good instructor in this sense is the man who has the power to arrange all our ideas in the best way to deal with the subject he is teaching at the time. He draws up our ideas in the order of battle in our struggle to acquire knowledge.

It will be evident that instruction does not necessarily include the imparting of new facts, though it does imply the giving of new points of view. It is quite possible to read a book and get from it no new separate individual fact, and yet to get up from reading it with the justifiable feeling that you have a better grip of the things you knew before; that, in fact, you have enriched your knowledge, though you may not have increased the number of isolated facts at your command.

On one occasion a well-known pleasure steamer full of tourists lay off Constantinople for several days. After the sightseers had spent some days among the interesting places on shore, a distinguished literary man among them gave his fellow tourists a lecture on Constantinople. His discourse gave great satisfaction to the ladies on board, but the men were harder to please. There arose a discussion in the smoking-room, in the course of which it was maintained that the lecture did not contain anything new. One of those betting men who infest smoking-rooms went so far as to make a wager that no one could point to any fact in the lecture that was not to be found in Baedeker's Guide-Book. The wager was taken up, but the unfortunate defender of the lecturer was unable to produce a single element that the smoking-room people would recognize as a new fact. The money was handed over and the smoking-room came to the complacent conclusion that the lecture was bad—which was where the smoking-room was dismally at fault. All the hard facts, no doubt, had been forestalled by Baedeker. But the same facts made quite a different appearance, and conveyed quite a different impression when they were presented in the lecture. As found in the guide-book, the facts were dead, inert matter: as they came from the mouth of the speaker, they lived and palpitated. Further, they were presented in a way that gave meaning to the experiences the tourists had had during their wanderings through the city. They were presented in the order that suited the particular occasion: some were emphasized, some lightly passed over, so that the whole effect was harmonious. As found in the guide-book, the facts were all of equal importance: there was no light and shade among them: they were the same for the whole world. As presented in the lecture, the facts were not different from what they were in the book, but they produced a different effect. The lecturer, in fact, did not inform his audience, but he did instruct them.

A lecture like this one on Constantinople does not bear publication, since its main value was in its applicability to the special circumstances of the case. Sir Walter Raleigh's lecture is still less fit for publication, for quite a different reason. Its value consisted mainly in the illustrations. By reading poetry in wrong ways and in right, he showed how poetry should and should not be read. No form of words could convey the effect of his voice and manner. To illustrate, for example, the fallacy of the popular advice of the teacher to the pupil "Read as you would speak," he read over with great dignity and in a sonorous voice the passage:

"And when Saul saw David go forth against the Philistine, he said unto Abner, the captain of the host, Whose son is this youth? And Abner said, As thy soul liveth, O king, I cannot tell."

Then he repeated the passage in a colloquial way, jerking his thumb over his shoulder to indicate where David was supposed to be. Now the repetition of this incident to you has only irritated you. My report has not conveyed to you anything like the impression that the lecturer did to his audience. Your own experience has probably shown you how foolish it is to try to make people get enthusiastic over a speech that you have heard but they have not. Certain things cannot be communicated by a mere report.

There are, however, other kinds of lectures that are quite suited for report. Their main function is to communicate or at least to organize knowledge, and the facts communicated may be quite well reproduced in black and white for the use of another. We are at present, however, more interested in the students who themselves attend lectures, and who are aware that though they hear a lecture it does not follow that they are able to retain all the information it supplies. Experiments have been made to determine how long the mind can retain on the average the new matter that is presented to it. The results are rather startling. They are thus expressed by a competent psychologist, when speaking of the result of the teaching at any class-lesson in the ordinary school course:

"Remember that about half of the new matter presented is forgotten after the first half-hour, two-thirds in nine hours, three-quarters after six days, and four-fifths after a month."^[1]

It is absolutely necessary, therefore, that the student should make some arrangement by which it is possible to revive his impressions. He must make some permanent record by means of which he may be able to recall at will the important facts communicated by the lecturer. For the genuine student this matter of making a record of what he hears is of the first importance. Dante tells us that—

"He listens to some purpose who takes note."

But to take note is not quite the same thing as to take notes. Sometimes, indeed, the two may be antagonistic. The need to take notes may prevent the student from genuinely taking note. Obviously the mere fact that he has to give a certain amount of attention to the mechanical process of recording what he hears tends to weaken the student's power of appreciating its meaning—at any rate, for the time. Accordingly it is desirable that we should give this matter our serious attention. There are various forms of note-taking, and each deserves consideration.

I. There is first of all the verbatim report. To adopt this method implies a knowledge of shorthand sufficient to write about 130 words a minute. Few students possess such skill; so it is comforting to reflect that this form of lecture note-taking is not necessary, not even desirable. A knowledge of shorthand for use in other parts of his work is an excellent thing for the student. But those who have no skill in shorthand may console themselves by remembering that no lecture is worth reproducing word for word. If it is so full of matter that every individual sentence is essential, then the lecture is over-loaded and as a lecture is bad. It ought to form a chapter in a textbook. If, on the other hand, the lecture is an inspirational one and depends upon its excellent expression, then in its written form it will lack that personal vivacity that the lecture-room makes possible. In this case the student during the delivery would have to miss the thing that gave the lecture its main value, in order to be able at his leisure afterwards to get its purely secondary value. What gives a lecture its importance as compared with an essay is that in the lecture we are brought into the actual presence of a man who is at home in the particular subject that he is dealing with. If we spend our whole time, then, in writing down what he is saying, we lose the only thing that justifies our preferring the lecture to a published work.

Still it may well be that as a mere matter of communicating knowledge the lecture may occasionally occupy a specially commanding position. It may contain matter that is not to be obtained elsewhere. In this case it is obviously necessary to write down this special matter in order to make it our own. This, however, is seldom the case nowadays, particularly in the lectures that students are called upon to attend. If a great scholar or savant is giving the results of his studies, everybody who attends his lecture knows that it will be published almost immediately, and that in any case a much better report will be published in next day's papers than any ordinary hearer could make for himself. But it is the main business of a lecturer to students to present established facts in the most effective way, rather than to present facts of which he has the monopoly. It is not to be forgotten that lecturers do excellent work by presenting facts in the way that is most convenient for the particular persons they are addressing. All that is said may be found in books, but those books may not be readily accessible, and in any case young students may not have the time to seek out the knowledge that is widely scattered over many books. In view of all this, it is clear that it is not necessary to write down every word that any lecturer says, however distinguished he may be. In every lecture there must be a certain amount of "padding," that is material to fill up space. This is not written by way of complaint. Padding in a lecture is as useful and as necessary as connective tissue in the human body. It is necessary that the various organs of the body should be kept together and the interstices decently filled up. Accordingly, there is found in the body a certain neutral substance known as connective tissue. In its negative way it is of vital importance. So in a lecture, the important and significant points must be kept in their proper relation to one another by an appropriate amount of verbal matter that is not in itself of value. In taking notes you will find this mental connective tissue an excellent thing to omit.

It has to be remembered that a lecture is not merely a chapter from a text-book read aloud to an audience. A delivered address differs in kind from a printed pamphlet. The very style of the English is different in the two cases. If you care to look into this matter you will easily note the difference. You will probably remember from your text-books in English that there are two kinds of sentences, the loose and the periodic. Experience shows me that students, when asked their opinion about which of these kinds is the better, vote overwhelmingly in favour of the periodic. The name naturally produces this result. What can you expect from a sentence that is deliberately labelled "loose." And yet there is a great deal to be said in favour of this style of sentence in lecturing as opposed to writing. If you take careful note of the language of your lecturers, you will find that the sentences are mostly loose.

You remember that the loose sentence is one that begins in an easy, straightforward way and goes on from point to point without elaboration and making each clear as it arises.

If you turn to your Robinson Crusoe you will find that it begins: "I was born in the year 1632, in the City of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull: he got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose relations . . ." and so on. Each point as it rises explains itself, and there is no reason why the sentence should stop at one place rather than another, except the consideration of length. The periodic sentence, on the other hand, is so organized that the full meaning cannot be known till the end has been reached. All the conditional clauses are placed first, and it is only at the end that the full meaning becomes clear.

"That St. Paul was struck blind at Damascus, that he had to gaze steadfastly in order to distinguish the High Priest, that he wrote to the Galatians in large characters, that these same Galatians were at one time willing to give even their own eyes for him, all lead us to believe that . . ."

Up to this point it is almost impossible to guess what the meaning of the whole sentence is. But when the words are added:

". . . St. Paul's 'thorn in the flesh' consisted in a weakness of the eyes," we are clear about what the author means, whether we agree with him or no.

Now of the two kinds of sentences it will be admitted that the loose is the better for the purposes of the lecturer. The periodic sentence is quite admissible in print, for the reader may turn back to the beginning of the sentence and see whether the arguments there offered justify the conclusion reached. But the mere listener is not in this position. If a long sentence depends for its ultimate meaning upon the last clause, it is plain that the listener is placed at a great disadvantage. You will not make the mistake of thinking that all this forms a plea for careless composition in a lecture. All that is claimed is that the composition of a lecture should be different in kind from that of a printed essay. So with the arrangement of matter. Certain things are permissible in a lecture that would be out of place in a book. For example, not only is a certain amount of repetition not objectionable in a lecture, it is positively desirable. This does not mean mere verbal repetition, but repetition of the same matter in a slightly different form. Necessary as are these repetitions, they need not appear in the student's notes.

II. The second kind of note-taking is, if anything, worse than the verbatim form. It consists in writing out as much of the lecture as the student can manage to get down in longhand. This really is an attempt to treat the lecture as a sort of dictation lesson. The question was, indeed, seriously discussed long ago among the Jesuits—who are noted for their skill as teachers—whether lecturing should be so carried on that every word of the lecturer could be taken down in longhand. The result of the discussion was that dictation, for they recognized that this was what the proposal amounted to, was rejected as uneducational. A compromise between the verbatim and the dictation method is sometimes adopted by professors, who insist upon their students really listening to them while lecturing, but who make up for the prohibition of note-taking during the delivery of the lecture by pausing every ten minutes or so and dictating a short paragraph containing the substance of what has been said. If you care to turn to Sir William Hamilton's published lectures, you will find these dictated passages marked by a little circle. If you read over the lecture first and then read over the dictated paragraphs consecutively, you will find that these paragraphs contain the essence of the whole lecture.

What weighs a good deal with students in their attempts to get as much of the very words of the lecture as they can, is that in many cases the lecturer is also the examiner in the subject, and there is an ineradicable belief among students that the lecturer always likes to get back his own words. You may rest assured that the belief is unfounded. Even the most conceited lecturer soon tires of his own words frequently repeated. You will fare much better at your examination if you rely upon mastering the meaning, and clothing it in your own language. The inevitable result of the desire to write down the bulk of the lecture is that the students lose the meaning of the lecture as a whole. In the pursuit of the shadow they lose the substance. They are kept so busy writing down the mere words that they have no time to give to the sense. Further, the hand-writing degenerates under the strain, with the result that the students first of all spend the whole lecture hour merely scribbling down as much as they can, then they have to waste a great deal of time deciphering the very words they have written, and finally they have to enter upon a struggle to get some meaning out of the whole.

III. Accordingly, there is a natural tendency to adopt the third kind of note-taking, which has at least the great advantage that it permits of intelligent listening. This consists in writing down nothing but striking facts or expressions, whatever, in short, appeals to the student as worthy of special notice. In a didactic lecture, for example, a great many individual facts are usually given, and many of these are worth noting at once, since the facts are useful in themselves, and can be jotted down without undue expenditure of time and without distracting attention from the main subject of the lecture. But sometimes a series of facts or figures is given, not for the value of any single fact or figure, but for the cumulative effect of the whole. To prove that a particular act of legislation produced a certain definite effect on a particular industry, the lecturer may quote lists of annual returns. These make their proper effect, but it is not necessary for the student to get them all down in his notebook. It is enough if he notes the general statement to be proved and the source from which the quoted figures are derived. The skilful lecturer strives to put in a tabular form all the information that he wishes his students to take down. This he puts upon the blackboard, and it is for the student to determine—if the lecturer gives no hint—whether the table is worth reproducing in the notebook or not. As a rule the lecturer makes an allowance of time for taking down such tables as he considers necessary.

The tendency of this form of note-taking is to be quite unsystematic. All that it does is to save certain facts from the wreckage, and to leave certain marks by which lost treasure may be recovered. Very often these marks need not be at all elaborate. A single word may be sufficient to recall and elaborate illustrations that in their original form took quite a while to work out. This was the method adopted long ago in reporting the speeches made in the House of Commons when it was not permitted to make notes on the spot. Those whose business it was to give an account of what took place in Parliament made some surreptitious notes of striking points, and then went home and worked up the speech again from memory as well as they could. Something of the same kind must be done by the student, for unless the notes are worked up into a reasonably intelligible shape they soon cease to have any value at all. At the time, they have a suggestive value: the mind is able at once to respond to all the suggestions of each of the scanty notes, but after the interval of a day or two they lose this power and become nothing more than a means of tantalizing the student, who knows that they used to have a meaning, but is now unable to recall what it is.

Accordingly there is urgent need for the student who has taken notes of this kind to elaborate then as soon as possible. This is usually called "writing up" the notes, and often entails a heavy expenditure of time. Since the notes are necessarily not self-interpretive, if they are left over for a day or two the result is disastrous. Even when the notes are fairly intelligible in themselves, it is always desirable to expand some of them, and to supply connecting links here and there, so as to make quite sure that there will be no misunderstanding of their meaning in the future. There is the additional advantage that the mere fact of revising the notes revives the impressions made during the lecture, and therefore strengthens the mind's grip upon them.

IV. Many lectures, however, are not made up of mere statements of fact that can be recorded in the straightforward way we have been considering. They demand consecutive thinking throughout the whole period devoted to them. This is the kind of lecture that demands serious attention during its actual delivery. The student must listen to it as it comes from the lecturer's lips, or it is useless at the time, and beyond the power of recall at a later stage. The style of notes that such a lecture demands is what may be called the skeleton outline. There is no time for writing out complete sentences if the student is to keep on following the speaker's thought, and yet there are usually very few catchwords, or definite concrete facts to seize upon as guides. On the other hand, such lectures are usually prepared with considerable care, and therefore follow a definite plan. Sometimes the lecturer is good enough to explain this plan. He tells the audience at the beginning exactly what he proposes to do, and then proceeds to do it. He tells them, for example, that he intends to deal with his subject under the following heads, which he then proceeds to state. Sometimes he goes further and supplies sub-heads. There is, of course, danger here of the lecturer becoming pedantic and paying more attention to classification than to the essentials dealt with. But this is the lecturer's look out. It is the business of the student to take down all the heads that are supplied, and to fill in under each head as many sub-heads as he thinks are implied in the treatment. Frequently, however, lecturers prefer to keep their classification to themselves. They, of course, have the necessary heads and sub-heads, but they think it inartistic to proclaim them. In this case it is the student's business to unearth the heads for himself.

To do this successfully demands a good deal of practice, but it is practice that well repays the time spent upon it, since it really implies a training in logical analysis. A student who can make up a fairly accurate analytical classification of the matters dealt with in a lecture has proved himself a master in his craft. To acquire this skill, however, the prudent student will begin outside the lecture-room. He cannot afford to muddle important lectures in his early attempts. As we learn shooting by beginning with a fixed mark and then passing on to flying objects, so we should begin our analytical note-making with a printed lecture, and pass on to a spoken one only after skill has been acquired in dealing with the more amenable printed form. You cannot do better than begin by reading over the printed lectures of some master of the craft, and then making from the text a set of heads and sub- heads. Take, for example, a series of lectures on art that Ruskin once delivered to his students at Oxford. These are now published in the form of a book under the title of The Eagle's Nest. They are specially useful for your purpose, since they are very well arranged, rather short (they are somewhat abbreviated from the form in which they were actually delivered), contain suggestions of classification, and are in themselves very interesting. Some of Huxley's popular lectures, such as those on "Coal" and "A Piece of Chalk," will form thoroughly good matter for further practice. In order that you may understand precisely the sort of thing that is wanted, I supply at the end of this chapter an analysis of the kind I mean, made from Chapter IV of this book. You should turn back to Chapter IV and reread it, making such notes as you think necessary, then turn to the analysis and compare what you have done with what you find there.

After you have done some of Ruskin's lectures and some of Huxley's—or some other lectures that you may have by you, for it is not necessary to have the special lectures mentioned above—you will find yourself beginning to understand the sort of thing to look for in a lecture or article. You will soon be able to determine whether a lecture is well organized or not. For you will not infrequently find that it is impossible to discover suitable heads and sub-heads, for the excellent reason that there are none to discover. After this practice with printed matter, you will find yourself in a much better position to deal with an ordinary lecture delivered to a real audience.

The advantage of setting about finding the appropriate headings is that it puts you in the most favourable position for listening to the lecture. You come to it with your mind prepared. There are certain questions that you want answered. Knowing the nature of the subject, you wonder whether the lecturer will take it in this way or in that. You may know nothing at all about the details of the subject, and yet coming prepared in a general way for the subject, you are in a position to fit in each of the facts presented into its proper place in relation to other facts and to the subject as a whole. It is the business of the lecturer to put himself in the place of his audience and present his facts in such a way as to meet the special needs of the audience here and now before him. But his work is ever so much more effective if his audience meet him half-way. To get the full benefit of a lecture the hearer must bestir himself, and must feel responsible for at least half of the activity going on.

It is sometimes said that at the end of a well delivered and well listened-to lecture the audience should have in their minds exactly the mental content on the subject that was in the mind of the lecturer just before the lecture. The same view is sometimes expressed by saying that at the end of a well delivered lecture the notes in the pupil's note-books should coincide with the notes on the lecturer's sheets. But this does not by any means follow. The lecturer uses his notes for a purpose quite other than that of the listener. He may put down a great many facts that are of value as illustrations and yet are not worthy to be copied down by the students. The lecturer, for example, may in his notes write out in full a long quotation from some authority. Merely to refer to the authority and explain in a general way what the authority thinks of the question is not enough. A paraphrase does not satisfy: the very words are essential. On the other hand, the student may dismiss this with a mere note of the name of the authority, the reference to where the words are to be found, and perhaps a phrase indicat- ing the kind of evidence contained in the passage. The lecturer may have a large page of manuscript taken up with a passage from J. S. Mill, while the student may merely write the words: "Mill's Logic, Bk. I, chap. v. §4 Ethology = Science of Character."

In other cases the balance will be readjusted, for a mere word or two may be enough to suggest to the lecturer what has to be said upon some aspect of the subject with which he is very familiar while for the sake of his future comfort the student will be wise to jot down several phrases. In fact, the notes of the lecturer are modified by his special knowledge of the subject, the special needs of the particular class he is dealing with at the time, and also by the personal peculiarities of the lecturer himself. In the same way the students have each a personality that will be reflected in the kind of notes taken. Even in a well arranged class there are great differences among the students with regard to their previous knowledge of the subject, to say nothing of their personal peculiarities. All these may and should be reflected in the notes. Yet when all allowance has been made for the expression of peculiarities, there must be a fundamental residuum of likeness in all the notes that are well made. There is a sort of lowest common denominator that should be implicit in every set of notes. The essential points should be present in each and in the same order. A skilful person, familiar with the subject matter, from an examination of any three sets of satisfactory notes on a given lecture should be able to reconstruct that lecture very much as it was delivered. For the student it will be enough to be able to reproduce the lecture as it affected him.

ANALYSIS OF CHAPTER IV

I. The Two Kinds of Study—assimilative and constructive.

A. Relation of student to his surroundings.

a. Absorbing and being absorbed by them.

b. Result of reaction: being at home in his surroundings.

B. Turning fact into faculty.

a. Knowledge as impression and as expression.

i.i Static—mental content (making outer inner).

ii. Dynamic—mental activity (making inner outer).

b. Relativity of value of facts.

C. Acquisitive study—depending largely upon memory.

D. Constructive study—involving some form of reasoning.

a. Manipulation of Knowledge, and application to new cases.

b. Apperception.

i.i Power of mental content.

ii. Assimilation instead of Acquisition.

E. Necessary interpenetration of the two methods of study.

a. In Assimilation reason must play at least a small part.

b. In Construction we must acquire some new knowledge.

F. Preferences of students.

a. Commonplace students—assimilative.

b. Students with initiative—constructive.

II. The Building up of Knowledge.

A. Realm of the Uncertain: Guessing and its bad reputation.

B. Realm of the Certain.

a. The Laws of Thought as Thought.

i.ii Identity.

ii.i Non-Contradiction.

iii. Excluded Middle.

b. Conditions of uniform result of honest thinking.

i.ii Adequate knowledge.

ii.i Absence of bias.

iii. Application of the mind.

C. The Realm of Guesswork.

a. Random Shots.

b. Relation to hypothesis.

D. Practical Thinking.

a. The two main kinds of Reasoning.

i.i Deductive (true of class, true of individual).

1. Cause of certainty of results.

2. Advantages of the method.

ii. Inductive (Uniformity of Nature).

1. Cause of uncertainty of results.

2. Advantages of method.

b. Progress in Premiss-making or Premiss-finding.

i.i Number of cases to secure sound induction. Value and dangers of general rules.

ii. Natural connexions involved in cases. Nature and use of Analogy.

III. Applications of Thought.

A. Fitting of means to ends on idcational plane.

B. Fumbling and pictorial Thinking.

C. The place and importance of therefore.

1. Felix Arnold, Attention and Interest, p. 242.