Up to now I have dealt with thinking almost as if it could be carried on without external aid. As with cautionary and constructive thought, I have perhaps been led to do this because of a reaction from the usual insistence upon reading as indispensable to mental improvement, and the corresponding neglect of the need for in­de­pen­dent thinking. Men thought before there were books, and men can still think without reading, but they cannot. ... I was about to remark that they could not read without thinking, but on second thought I am inclined to doubt it. However, we have clung to the natural order, for we first considered unaided thinking, then the help given by conversation and dispute, and finally we are to examine the aid rendered by reading. There can be no doubt that this order follows the development of thought both in the individual and in the human race.

While no complaint can be made of lack of quantity in what has been written on reading, most of it has not taken up the subject from the proper standpoint; still less has dealt with it in the right manner. There has been counsel galore urging people to read; and recently there has been a great deal of advice on what to read. But comparatively very little has been said on how to read. At one time reading was regarded an untainted virtue, later it was seen that it did us no good unless we read good books, and now there is a dawning con­scious­ness that even if we read good books they will benefit us little unless we read them in the right way.

But even where this con­scious­ness has been felt, little attempt has been made to solve the problem sys­tem­at­ical­ly. Leisurely discourses, pretty aphor­isms, and dogmatic rules have been the forms in which the question has been dealt with. Such conflicting adages as “A good book should be read over and over again”; and “The art of reading is the art of skipping,” are not very serviceable. The necessity of some sort of orderly treatment is evident.

Before we consider how to read, some queer person may ask us to put the previous question, “Should we read at all?” Now the value of reading has, in times past, been seriously doubted by thinkers and non-thinkers. The philosopher Democritus put out his eyes so that, ceasing to read, he might think. We are not going to follow his example. But we can readily sympathize with him when we think of the many learned men who have read themselves into dreamy stupidity; men who know what everybody else thought, but who never have any thoughts of their own. We must admit that the arguments of these cranks are at least good medicine for the prevalent belief that the more a man reads the more he will know and the better thinker he will become.

Learning to think by reading is like learning to draw by tracing. In each case we make the work of another man our basis, instead of observing directly from Nature. The practice has its value, it is true; but no man ever became a great artist by tracing, and no man will ever become a great thinker by reading. It can never become a substitute for thought. At best, as John Locke says, “Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge, it is thinking makes what we read ours.”15

Our problem may be divided in two parts: (1) What ratio should our reading bear to in­de­pen­dent thinking, and (2) how should we read when we do read?

It may be thought that we can learn something about the first question by investigating the practice of great thinkers. But the outcome of such an investigation is likely to be disappointment. Kant, for instance, was an omnivorous reader; so were Huxley and Sir William Hamilton; and outside the circle of philosophers, men as unlike as Gibbon, Macaulay, Milton and Thomas A. Edison. On the other hand, Spencer seldom ever read, and Hobbes is famous for his remark that if he had read as much as other men he would have known as little. Auguste Comte was unique in that he read copiously until he conceived his Positive Philosophy, and then hardly at all until the end of his life.

Even were it found that most great thinkers adhered to nearly the same practice, it would prove little; for how could we tell whether they were good thinkers on account of, or in spite of it?

We can agree a priori, however, with the remark of Schopenhauer that “the safest way to have no thoughts of one’s own is to take up a book every moment one has nothing else to do.” And we may agree with him further: “A man should read only when his thoughts stagnate at their source, which will happen often enough even with the best of minds. On the other hand, to take up a book for the purpose of scaring away one’s own original thoughts is a sin against the Holy Spirit. It is like running away from Nature to look at a museum of dried plants, or gaze at a landscape in copper-plate.”16

It would be folly to lay down any fixed math­e­mat­i­cal ratio be­tween the time we should de­vote to read­ing and the time we should give to thinking. But one hour given to read­ing plus one hour given to think­ing would be certainly more ben­e­fi­cial than two hours devoted entirely to reading.

You can find quite a number of serious-minded men who put by a certain period each day for reading. But how many of them put by any time at all for thinking? It would be unjust to say they do not think. But at best their thinking is merely accidental—and ap­par­ent­ly considered so. Surely it is as important that we lay aside a definite period each day for thinking as it is that we lay aside some time for reading. But how much this time should be and whether it should bear any specific ratio to the time given to reading can best be decided after a con­si­der­a­tion of the problem of how to read.

This problem has unfortunately been much mis­con­ceived. Those who have laid stress on the maxim, “A good book should be read over and over again,” have done so in the belief that this is the best way to get the most out of a par­tic­u­lar book. But the object of reading is not to get the best out of any one book, but out of reading in general. A realization of this end will change our problem somewhat.

It will bring us to a con­si­der­a­tion, for example, of the law of diminishing returns. While the more we re-read a book the more we get out of it, it must be remembered that with a few possible exceptions, every time we re-read it we add less to our knowledge than we did the previous time. This means that we can usually make much faster progress by reading other books, in which case we do not merely read over what we already know for the most part. Whether re-reading is ever justified, and when, is a question which will be considered a little later.

The law of diminishing returns applies to an entire subject as well as to a single book. That is to say, past a certain point, every book we read on a par­tic­u­lar subject, while it will probably add to our knowledge, will not yield as much return as a book of equal merit on another subject, new to us.

The problem of reading asks how we can acquire the greatest number of ideas, and how we can arrive at truth rather than the verdict of an author. It assumes a limited time and asks how we can use that time most profitably. Not least of all, it asks how we can best combine our reading with original thought.

From the remarks already made, it is evident that we cannot prescribe any one method for dealing with all books. Even works of similar nature and merit will be treated in different ways, depending on the order in which we read them, and like conditions. The mastery of any book will not be an end in itself. It will be subordinated to the larger end of obtaining the best from reading as a whole. But for the sake of clearness, I shall for the present consider our end as the mastery of some par­tic­u­lar subject, and shall indicate a plan of reading to best serve that end. Needful qualifications will come later.

I shall first outline a typical plan of study, and then review and explain it in detail.

Assuming you have chosen a subject, your first step should be to do a little unaided thinking on it. Next I would advise the selection of a comprehensive text book. This should be read critically and written note made of the problems taken up which you do not believe have been adequately treated, or the solutions of which are in any way unsatisfactory. These you should think out for yourself. A second book may in some cases be read in the same thorough manner as this first one, and the problems recorded in the same way. After that all books on that subject may be read “hop, skip and jump” fashion, for the new problems or solutions they suggest.

I do not expect the foregoing plan to be strictly adhered to, for the nature of the subject studied will make certain changes necessary. However, it demands more detailed explanation and perhaps defense.

Let us take up the first step advised—giving a little unaided thought to the subject. My only reason for advising “a little” thinking, is that I know if I asked more the reader would probably do nothing at all. Indeed many readers will fail to see the necessity of thinking about a subject before studying it. Many may even question the possibility of doing so. “How is a man to think about a subject on which he knows nothing?” you ask. Let us, however, consider.

The very fact that you want to study a subject implies that the phenomena with which it deals are not clear to you. You desire to study economics, for instance, because you feel that you do not understand everything you should about the production, distribution and consumption of wealth. In other words, something about these phenomena puzzles you—you have some unsolved problems. Very well. These problems are your materials. Try to solve them.

“But how can I solve them when I know nothing of economics?”

Kindly consider what a science is. A science is nothing more than the organized solution of a number of related problems. These problems and their answers have been changed and added to the ages through. But when the science first started there was no literature on it. It originated from the attempts of men to solve those problems which spontaneously occurred to them. Before they started thinking these men knew nothing of the science. The men who came after them availed themselves of the thoughts of those before, and added to these. The whole process has been one of thought added to thought. Yet, in spite of this, people still cling to the belief, even if they do not openly avow it, that we never can make any headway by thinking, but that in order to be educated, or cultured, or to have any knowledge, we must be reading, reading, reading.17

I almost blush for this elaborate defense. Everybody will admit the necessity for thinking—in the abstract. But how do we regard it in the concrete? When we see a man reading a good book, we think of him as educating himself. When we perceive a man without a book, even though we may happen to know that he is engaged in reflection, we do not look upon him as educating himself, though we may regard him as intelligent. In short, our habitual idea of thought is that it is a process of reviewing what we already know, but not of adding anything to our knowledge. Of course no one would openly avow this opinion, but it is the common acting belief none the less. The objections to thought are inarticulate and half-conscious. I am trying to make them articulate in order to answer them.

To return, then, to the remark that we should use as materials for unaided thinking the problems which occur spontaneously. You will find when you begin to solve these that other problems will arise, and that up to a certain point, the deeper you go into a subject—the more critical you are in your thinking—the more problems will occur. Perhaps it would be too much to ask you to solve all of these. Yet even a little of this preliminary thinking will be of immense help in reading. It will give you a far better sense of the importance of different problems which a book considers, and you will not judge their significance merely by the space it devotes to them. An author may indeed bring before us certain problems which had not hitherto occurred, and stimulate in us a sense of their importance. But this artificial stimulation can never take the place of natural and spontaneous wonder. Once we have obtained a solution of a problem which has arisen spontaneously and from within, we do not easily forget it. Our in­de­pen­dent thinking, too, will have given us an idea of the difficulties presented by problems, and will make us more critical in reading and more appreciative of the solutions of an author. Not least of all, if we read first we are extremely liable to fall into the routine and traditional ways of considering a subject, whereas if we first think, we are more likely in our in­sophist­i­ca­tion to hit upon an idea of real originality.

One last objection to thinking before reading remains. Schopenhauer has answered it in his forcible manner:

“A man may have discovered some portion of truth or wisdom after spending a great deal of time and trouble in thinking it over for himself, adding thought to thought; and it may sometimes happen that he could have found it all ready to hand in a book and spared himself the trouble. But even so it is a hundred times more valuable, for he has acquired it by thinking it out for himself. For it is only when we gain our knowledge in this way that it enters as an integral part, a living member, into the whole system of our thought; that it stands in complete and firm relation with what we know, that it is understood with all that underlies it and follows from it, that it wears the color, the precise shade, the dis­tin­guish­ing mark, of our own way of thinking, that it comes exactly at the right time, just as we felt the need for it; that it stands fast and cannot be forgotten.”18

Despite the strong case that Schopenhauer makes out, I am satisfied with my former advice—that a little thinking will suffice. Not only because, as already said, the reader will probably do nothing if advised to do more; but because after a certain amount of thinking has been done, it is more profitable to avail ourselves of the wisdom of the ages, stored in books, and to do our thinking after we have acquired the main outlines of this wisdom. For when we think a problem out, with the feeling that even after we have obtained a solution we shall probably find it in a book later, we have not the incentive that we have when we feel we have covered most of the old ground and that thinking may bring us into new territory.

The practice of Gibbon remains to be considered: “After glancing my eye over the design and order of a new book, I suspended the perusal until I had finished the task of self-examination; till I had revolved in a solitary walk all that I knew or believed, or had thought on the subject of the whole work, or of some par­tic­u­lar chapter. I was then qualified to discern how much the author added to my original stock, and I was sometimes satisfied by the agreement, sometimes armed by the opposition of our ideas.”19

The trouble with this method is that it is not critical enough; that is, critical in the proper sense. It almost amounts to making sure what your prejudices are, and then taking care to use them as spectacles through which to read. We always do judge a book more or less by our previous prejudices and opinions. We cannot help it. But our justification lies in the manner we have obtained these opinions; whether we have infected them from our environment, or have held them because we wanted them to be true, or have arrived at them from substantial evidence and sound reasoning. If Gibbon had taken a critical attitude toward his former knowledge and opinions to make sure they were correct, and had then applied them to his reading, his course would have been more justifiable and profitable.

In certain subjects, however, Gibbon’s is the only method which can with profit be used. In the study of geography, grammar, a foreign language, or the facts of history, it is well, before reading, simply to review what we already know. Here we cannot be critical because there is really nothing to reason about. Whether George Washington ought to have crossed the Delaware, whether “shall” and “will” ought to be used as they are in English, whether the verb “avoir” ought to be parsed as it is, or whether Hoboken ought to be in New Jersey, are questions which might reasonably be asked, but which would be needless, because for the purposes we would most likely have in mind in reading such facts it would be sufficient to know that these things are so. We might include mathematics among the subjects to be treated in this fashion. Though it is a rational science, there is such unanimity regarding its propositions that the critical attitude is almost a waste of mental energy. In mathematics, to understand is to agree.

We come to the second step outlined in our plan of study—the selection of a comprehensive text book.

Every large subject has gathered about it a vast literature, more than one man can ever hope to cover completely. This literature may be said to consist wholly of two things: information as to facts, and opinions on those facts. In other words, any book you read on that subject will probably contain some facts new to you and will contain also the thoughts and reflections of the author. Of course you should endeavor to learn as many facts as possible. But it is not necessary to know all that has been thought about the subject. You are supposed to have a mind of your own; you are supposed to do some thinking for yourself. But though it is not necessary that you know all that has been thought, it is well that you know at least part of what has been thought, and so far as possible, the best part. For as just pointed out, if you attempt to think out an entire subject for yourself you will expend great energy and time in arriving at conclusions which have probably already been arrived at during the generations that the subject has had its being. Therefore you should endeavor to get, in as short a time as possible, the greatest number of important facts and the main outlines of the best that has been thought.

So if you sincerely intend to master any subject, the best way to begin is by the selection of the most comprehensive and authoritative work you can secure.

The man who desires to study any subject is commonly advised to read first a small “introductory” book, then a larger one, and finally the largest and most authoritative volumes. The trouble with this practice is that you will have to study each book in turn. If you take up the most thorough book first you need merely glance through the smaller books, for the chances are that they will contain little that is new to you, unless they happen to be more recent. The only justification for reading a small book first is that the larger books are apt to be technical and to assume a certain knowledge of the subject. However, the authoritative treatise or treatises on a subject usually refer far less to the smaller books than the smaller books do to them. Any greater depth of thought which the larger works may possess can be made up for by increased con­cen­tration on the part of the reader. Of course if a man does not intend to master a subject thoroughly, but only to get some idea of its broad outlines, the case is different. He would then be justified in reading a small work.

Another advantage of beginning a subject with the study of a comprehensive and authoritative volume or main textbook, is that you avoid confusion. The man who has mastered one foreign language, say French, will always find his knowledge of great benefit to him for the study of another language, such as Spanish. But any one who has begun at about the same time the study of two or more foreign languages must remember his confusion, and how his vague knowledge of one tongue hindered him in the acquisition of the other.

So with reading. When we peruse a book in the usual casual way we do not master it. And when we read a book on the same subject immediately after it, the different viewpoint is liable to cause bewilderment and make us worse off than before the second book was started. We do not like to devote a lot of time to one book, but would rather run through several books in the same time, believing that we thereby gain more ideas. We are just as mistaken as a beginner in swimming who would attempt to learn several strokes before having mastered one well enough to keep afloat.

A main text being of such importance, its choice involves responsibility. But how are we to know whether one book is superior to another until we have read both? And if we are confronted with this difficulty even when familiar with a subject, how much greater must be our task when we know nothing of it? These difficulties do not appear so formidable in practice.

Failing other means, the best method of selecting a main text is by reputation. If we do not even know what book has the best reputation, we can easily find out by referring to so acknowledged an authority as the Encyclopedia Britannica, and consulting the bibliography in the article on the subject.

But reputation does not furnish the only means of selecting. By merely glancing through a book, stopping here and there to read entire paragraphs—a task of ten or fifteen minutes—we can form an estimate which later reading will usually justify. For an author betrays himself in every line he writes; every slightest remark reveals in some manner the breadth and depth of his thought. But just how well we can judge a book in this way depends both on our own ability and on the time we devote to glancing through it.

A few general requirements in a main text have been implied in stating the purpose of having one. The book with the best reputation is not necessarily the best for you. In economics Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, though easily the most famous book on the subject, would hardly be suitable as a main text because it has been superseded. But though recency is always an asset, this does not mean that the most recent book is always or even usually the best. The common idea, though it is usually but vaguely formulated, is that the writer of the more recent book has had all the previous books to draw upon, and has therefore been able to extract the best from all of them and add to this his own thoughts. The fallacy of this has been pointed out in the trenchant language of Schopenhauer:

“The writer of the new book often does not understand the old books thoroughly, and yet he is unwilling to take their exact words; so he bungles them and says in his own bad way that which has been said very much better and more clearly by the old writers, who wrote from their own lively knowledge of the subject. The new writer frequently omits the best things they say, their most striking illustrations, their happiest remarks, because he does not see their value or feel how pregnant they are. The only thing that appeals to him is what is shallow and insipid.”

The value of recency will depend on the subject; while it would be essential in aviation, its importance would be far less in ethics.

It is not well to take as your main text a book presenting a number of different and conflicting viewpoints. One purpose of a main text is to avoid confusion. Do not start the study of psychology, for instance, by reading a history of the subject giving the views of different thinkers. Begin by taking up one definite system.

Finally, be sure to select a book covering the entire field. Do not, for instance, take a volume on the tariff to begin the study of economics.

We pass now to the third step advised—to read critically. By this I do not mean that we should read skeptically or to confute everything an author says. I mean simply that we should resist our natural tendency to have our minds swayed by every opinion he expresses. I mean that before allowing an idea to slip into our minds we should first challenge its truth; we should examine its evidence.

Perhaps you have listened to a de­bate. After the af­fir­ma­tive had made his im­pas­sioned plea you were all for the af­fir­ma­tive. When the neg­a­tive came for­ward and pre­sent­ed his case, you found yourself favoring him. ... Why do de­baters always try to get the last say? Why is it that in a formal debate, the af­fir­ma­tive, which usually has the last say, is most often the side that wins? I could state the reason bluntly. But if I did the honorable judges of such con­tro­versies would not feel that their critical powers had been com­pli­ment­ed.

The tendency to absorb the opinions of others manifests itself to just as great a degree in reading. I have held debating up as an example merely because it brings out more strongly, more strikingly, the effects of such a tendency. But how can it be resisted?

If we have thought out a subject thoroughly, if we have acquired a stock of clear and definite ideas on it, criticism in reading will largely take care of itself. By dint of our own thinking we will know what is relevant and what is not; we shall be able to judge the truth and importance of the various arguments offered. The chances are, however, that we shall not have given much previous thinking to the subject, and that even if we have we shall not have gone as far as the author, who doubtless availed himself of other books. Consequently certain problems which he takes up will not even have occurred to us, and hence will not have received our con­si­der­a­tion.

But where our thinking has not helped us, and even where it has, we should look critically upon every statement of an author, instead of lazily acquiescing in it. The difference between critical and ordinary reading, is that in the former we look for objections, in the latter we wait until they happen to occur to us. Even then we do not hold our ob­jec­tions steadily in mind; we are as likely as not to accept later arguments based upon one we have previously objected to. In order to avoid this perhaps the best we can do when we object to any statement or believe we have found a fallacy, is to make written note of it in the margin. To some extent this will prevent forgetting it. Too few or too many marginal notes are both extremes to be shunned. If we make too many we shall be apt to lose a true sense of pro­portion and fail to distinguish es­sential crit­i­cisms from non­es­sentials. The only way we can keep clear of this extreme is to avoid quibbling and hair-splitting, making only such written criticisms as we feel we could unblushingly defend before the author himself. Often however we may feel that a state­ment is untrue, or that an argument is fal­lac­ious, and yet be unable to point out just where or how it is so. In this case perhaps the best plan would be merely to put a question mark in the margin in order to remind ourselves that the statement has not been fully accepted.

We ought to make sure what we object to because it is a peculiarity of the human mind that it does not require evidence for a statement before accepting it; it generally accepts any statement which has no evidence against it. Unless we reject a statement and know why we have done so, it is liable to insinuate itself in our reasoning, and the longer it remains the more difficult it is to get rid of it. This is why it is so important to avoid as many pitfalls as possible at the beginning of a subject.

The reader may find that even when he reads critically he will accept a certain statement at the time; and then perhaps much later, say a month, an objection to that statement will occur to him, or he will see that it at least ought to be qualified. For an explanation of this we must go back to an analysis of the thinking process. Every idea which enters the mind, either from in­de­pen­dent thinking or from reading, is accepted as true if it is in full conformity with our past experience as we remember it. In all thinking or reading, the new idea arouses associates on its entrance. An hypothesis or principle, for instance, arouses in our minds past experiences of par­tic­u­lar instances. If all these conform it is accepted. But in ordinary uncritical reading or thinking, only a few associates are aroused. In critical reading, we look for as many associates as possible, especially those which do not conform. It is this purpose kept in mind which helps to recall and awaken these associates. No matter how critical our attitude, however, we cannot at any given time recall every relevant associate, though later a “non-conforming” associate is likely to occur to us by pure accident.

While you are criticising a book line by line, and after you have finished reading it, you should note the importance and relevancy of the arguments accepted and rejected. While an author may make a statement with which you disagree, its truth or falsehood may not affect the rest of what he has to say, or it may affect merely a few corollaries drawn from it. In other cases the truth of his entire conclusion may depend upon it. Again, an author may in­con­tro­vert­ibly prove something—which is entirely without bearing on the subject. This means that you should keep the precise question constantly before your mind.

Often you will find an author making a statement which really amounts to nothing more than a mere airing of his prejudices, or at best the bare statement of a conclusion. If he says, “Socialism is the greatest menace of our civilization,” and leaves it go at that, not telling how or why, you should mentally note this as a statement, as a statement merely; you should not allow it to influence your opinion either way. Finally, remember that though you may be able to refute every argument an author brings forward in support of a conclusion, his conclusion may still be correct. It is possible for a man to be right for the wrong reasons.

While I believe all the foregoing sug­ges­tions are judicious and necessary, I am willing to admit that their wisdom may reasonably be doubted. But there is one practice about which there can be no controversy—that of making sure you thoroughly understand every idea of an author. While most people will not verbally contradict this advice, their actual practice may be a continual contradiction of it. They will be in such haste to finish a book that they will not stop to make sure they really understand the more difficult or obscure passages. Just what they hope to gain it is difficult to say. If they think it is wasting time to try to understand every idea, it is surely a greater waste of time to read an idea without understanding it. To be sure, the difficulty of understanding may be the fault of the author. It may be due to his involved and muddled way of expressing himself. It may be the vagueness of the idea itself. But if anything this is all the greater reason why you should attempt to understand it. It is the only way you can find whether or not the author himself really knew what he was talking about. To understand thoroughly the thought of another does not necessarily mean to sympathize with it; it does not mean to ask how that other came by it. It means merely to substitute as far as possible concrete mental images for the words he uses, and analyze those images to discover to what extent they agree with facts.

Better to carry this out, you might follow another practice of immense value. Whenever you are puzzled as to an author’s meaning, or whenever you do not care to accept his solution of a problem but are undecided as to what the solution is, or whenever you want to carry an idea further than he has, or above all, whenever an original and important relevant thought is suggested to you, you should take your eyes from your book—shut it if necessary—and let your thinking flow on; give it fair play, even if it takes an hour before your vein of suggested thought exhausts itself. Of course this practice will prevent you from finishing a book as soon as you otherwise would. And if finishing a book be your aim, I have nothing to say. But if your end is to attain true, sound knowledge, knowledge which you will retain; if your object is to become a thinker, the practice will prove of unspeakable benefit. It will not interfere with con­cen­tration. Remember your object is to con­cen­trate primarily on the subject, not on the book; you intend to become a thinker, not an interpreter or a commentator or a disciple of any author.

And there are two reasons why this thinking should not be put off until after you have finished a book. The first and more important is that after you have finished reading, most of the ideas will have unrecallably dropped out of mind. The second is that when you are undecided about the solution of a problem, you will often find later arguments depending upon that solution. Unless its truth or falsity is decided in your own mind you will not know how to deal with these later arguments.

I have spoken of feeling that an argument is fallacious, and of being unable to point out just where it is so. To cease reading for a while, and to endeavor to make these inarticulate objections articulate, is excellent practice for training analytic powers and developing clearness of thought.

Another way of reading a book is what I may call the anticipating method. Whenever a writer has started to explain something, or whenever you see that he is about to, stop reading and try to think out the explanation for yourself. Sometimes such thinking will anticipate only a paragraph, at other times an entire chapter. School and college text-books, and in fact formal text-books generally, often contain lists of questions at the end of the chapters. Where you find these, read them before you read the chapter, and where possible try to answer them by your own thinking. This practice will make you understand an explanation much more easily. If your thinking agrees with the author’s explanation it will give you self-confidence. It will make you realize whether or not you understand an explanation. If you were not able to think the thing out for yourself you will appreciate the author’s explanation. If your thinking disagrees with that of the author you will have an opportunity to correct him—or be corrected. In either case your opinion will rest on firmer grounds. Not least of all you will be getting practice in self-thinking.

After reading and criticising a book, it is a good practice to study one taking a different viewpoint, or written even in direct opposition. You will doubtless find that it points out many fallacies and controverts many statements in the first book, which you allowed to pass unchallenged. Ask yourself what the trouble was. Was your attitude too receptive? Did you swallow words without substituting clear mental images? Did you fail to trace out the consequences of a statement? All these questions will help you do better the next time.

Because of your ignorance of the facts, your failure to refute a conclusion will sometimes not be your fault. But even here, though you cannot contradict an author’s statement of facts, you can criticise conclusions drawn from those facts.

Take an instance. In making an inquiry into the causes of fatigue, Professor Mosso of Turin selected two dogs as nearly alike as possible. One he kept tied, and the other he exercised until it was thoroughly tired. He then transfused blood of the tired dog into the veins of the rested one, and produced in the latter every sign of fatigue. From this he concluded that fatigue was due to certain poisons in the blood.

Now we cannot contradict the fact of this experiment: that the rested animal was made to look tired. But we can question the inference drawn. The truth of the conclusion aside, was the evidence sufficient to establish it? Might not, for instance, similar results have been produced upon the rested dog if blood of another rested dog had been transfused into it? Had Mosso made such an experiment? Other objections should easily occur to one.

Questions which admit of treatment by studying both sides are too numerous to mention. The literature of philosophy furnishes par­tic­u­larly good material. Examples which at present occur to me are Sir William Hamilton’s philosophy versus Mill’s Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy, and Herbert Spencer’s First Principles versus William James’ essay, Herbert Spencer’s Autobiography and Henri Bergson’s criticism of Spencer in his Creative Evolution.

Uncritical students of the history of philosophy often find themselves agreeing with each thinker in turn, no matter how much he contradicts previous thinkers, and end by acquiescing in the last system they read about. I remember a philosophy class which completed its studies with Pragmatism. Of course it was merely a coincidence, but at the end of the course fully nine-tenths of the students declared themselves Pragmatists!

It is almost needless to remark that an author who pretends to point out fallacies in another is not necessarily right. There are men who pride themselves on “reading both sides of a subject”; but unless they have been critical, their knowledge is not half as clear or as likely to be true as that of a man who has read only one side, but who has read it critically.

We have now to consider the next step outlined in the suggested plan of reading—“written note should be made of the problems taken up which you do not believe have been adequately treated, or the solutions of which are in any way unsatisfactory. These you should think out for yourself.”

When reading a book you will often come across a statement, perhaps an entire chapter, with which you disagree. This disagreement should be recorded in the form of a question; as for instance, “Is such and such the case?” You may doubt whether an author’s explanation really explains. You may have a vague inarticulate suspicion that he is sliding over facts, or that his solution is too superficial. This suspicion should also be recorded in the form of a question. Often again, while reading, a problem connected with the subject will occur to you which the author has not even considered. This too should be recorded.

All these questions should unfailingly be written, either in the margin or on a piece of paper or notebook kept always at hand. You should then set aside a definite time for thinking and attempt to solve the questions for yourself.

And in thinking for yourself you should not make the author’s remarks the basis of your thinking. You should deal with a problem almost as if it had never occurred to any one else but you. Simply because somebody else has been satisfied with a certain solution, that is no reason why you should be. You should deal directly with the facts, data and phenomena under con­si­der­a­tion; not with the opinions of others about those facts, data and phenomena. You should not ask yourself whether the pragmatists are right, or whether the nominalists are right, or the socialists, or the evolutionists, or the Democrats, or the Presbyterians, or the hedonists, or what not. You should not ask yourself which “school” of thinking you ought to belong to. You should think a problem out for yourself, in every way that phrase implies. At the end you may, incidentally, find yourself agreeing in the main with some school of thought. However, this will be only accidental, and your thought will be much more likely to be true. But you should never agree with a school of thought any more than in­de­pen­dent thinking leads you to.

Of problems dealt with in this manner, some will take ten minutes, others a week. If you encounter a par­tic­u­larly obstinate problem it may be best to leave it for a while, say a week or two or even longer, and go on with other problems. When problems are thus recurrently treated it may take months, even years, before a satisfactory solution is reached. In such cases you should be willing to give months and even years to their solution. If a problem is not important enough to devote so much time to you may be forced to abandon it; but you should constantly keep in mind the fact that you have not solved it, and you should be willing to admit to others that you have not solved it. Never allow mere in­tel­lec­tual laziness to stifle your doubts and make you think you have solved a problem, when you know in your heart of hearts that you have worked yourself into the state of belief merely to save yourself mental discomfort.

When most of your problems have been solved and your views made definite you may resume your reading. You may proceed to other books on the subject.

As to the sug­ges­tion that another book on the subject might be dealt with in the same manner as this first one: this will depend largely on the individual subject. It will depend on just what books have been written on that subject. If none completely or adequately covers the field, or if there are two or more good books representing radically different viewpoints, more than one book probably ought to be studied in this comprehensive manner. But this must be left to the reader’s discretion.

We come now to the last part of our plan—“after that all books may be read ‘hop, skip and jump’ fashion, for the new problems or solutions they suggest.”

I have already implied the necessity for this in formulating the law of diminishing returns. After we have read several books on a subject it would be manifestly foolish to continue reading books on that same subject in toto. We would merely be going over again knowledge already in our possession, instead of using our time more profitably by entering new territory. But any good book will contain something unique; some facts or principles to be found nowhere else; or perhaps merely an unusually clear way of explaining some old principle, or a new light on it. This we should endeavor to get without wasting our time by plowing through the entire volume.

Theoretically our problem is difficult; on its face it would seem impossible. We are to read all the important parts of a book; that is, the parts most important for us, and nothing but the important parts. But until we read it how are we to know whether any given part of a book is important? In practice, however, our difficulty is not so formidable.

We can eliminate the greater mass of the relatively useless part of a book by a glance at its table of contents. If we see there titles which suggest subjects or aspects of subjects in which we are not interested, or that we feel we already know enough about, or that are simply outside the par­tic­u­lar purpose we have in consulting that book at all, we can omit those chapters and confine ourselves to the others....

When we were children first learning to read we had to look at every letter in a word, then spell it out. Finally its meaning dawned upon us. As we became more proficient we did not have to look at every letter; we could read words as wholes with the same rapidity as the separate letters. Accurate psy­cho­log­i­cal tests have determined that a man can read such words as “and” and “the” with even greater rapidity than any single letter composing them. We finally reach the point where we can read short phrases at the same rate as we formerly could single words.

But the secret of the scholar who can cover efficiently much more ground than ordinary men is not so much that he reads faster, as that he reads less. In other words, instead of reading every word he glances down a page and sees certain “cue” words or rather “cue” phrases, for the eye and mind take in phrases as wholes. If he is familiar with the subject (and he is not to employ this method unless and until he is) he knows immediately, by “a sort of instinct” as Buckle called it, whether any new or valuable thought is on that page. When he finds that there is he involuntarily slackens his pace and reads that thought at ordinary reading pace or even slower. Sometimes indeed he will read whole chapters slowly, word for word, if the contents are sufficiently novel and important to warrant it.

Read by this “hop, skip and jump” fashion a book the size of the present volume might take an hour or even less. But it is almost impossible to give even an approximate estimate of the time such reading ought to take. Of course the longer you spend the more you will get out of a book, but the return per time invested will be less and less. On the other hand if you read the book too fast you may be wasting your time altogether; you may end by understanding nothing at all. Much will depend upon the originality and depth of the book, upon the reader’s familiarity with the subject, and upon his native mental qualities.

Many may object to practicing the foregoing method because they have a vague feeling that it is their duty to read every word in a book. I suspect that the real reason for this is simply so that when asked they can con­sci­en­tious­ly say they have read the book. Whereas if they had followed this skipping method they would be able to say only that they had “glanced through it” or at best that they had “read parts of it.” To this objection I have nothing to say, for I am confining my remarks to those in search of truth and knowledge rather than conversation and the good opinion of those who believe that reading from cover to cover is the only path to wisdom. I might point out in passing, however, that if we do follow this method there will be a half dozen books which we can say we have “glanced through” to one which we would otherwise have been able to say we had “read.”

This way of dealing with a book is constructive and positive as opposed to the negative method of critical reading. For we read for sug­ges­tion only; we carry forward some line of thought of an author, which is better for in­tel­lec­tual development than trying to find if he was wrong and where he was wrong. Not only is this positive method more interesting; in some respects it is better even for criticism. For in carrying forward an author’s line of thought, noting its consequences and implications and considering different cases where it applies, we find whether or not it leads to absurd conclusions; whether or not all concrete instances conform with it. It should be kept in mind that this method is not to be followed until the main text-book has been studied. Consequently when it is followed your mind will have been fortified by previous reading and thinking; valuable thoughts of an author will tend to impress you and be remembered, while his trite or erroneous ideas will tend to be ignored.

But after all, what is important is not your attitude or method at the time of reading a book, but the thinking done later. The critical attitude has its shortcomings, for when we are on the lookout for an author’s mistakes we often miss the full significance of his truths. On the other hand when “reading for sug­ges­tion” we may too often allow an error to pass unquestioned. But both these disadvantages may be overcome if we do enough thinking afterward.

Only one thing I must insist on: make sure you understand every sentence of a book. Do not “guess” you understand it. Do not slide over it in the hope that the author will explain it later. Do not work yourself into the belief that after all it is not really important. Rather than this, better by far do not read the book at all. Not only will you get little or nothing from it but you will be forming the worst of in­tel­lec­tual habits—that of thinking you understand when you do not. If you have made every reasonable effort to understand an author and then have not succeeded, write in the margin “I do not understand this,” or draw a line alongside the sentence or passage. If you have to do this too often you should put the volume aside for a time. It is either too advanced for you or it is not worth reading.

As to the thinking you do after reading. Often problems connected with the subject of a book you have read may arise spontaneously in mind, or an objection to a statement may suddenly occur to you when thinking on some other topic. Of course when this happens you should not stifle your thoughts. But besides this, definite periods should be put aside for thinking on what you have read and on the problems you have written. I cannot insist on this too strenuously or too often.

A good task to set before yourself is to take every idea you agree with in a book and try to treat it as a “germ.” Tell yourself that you will develop it beyond the point where the author left off. Of course this will not always be possible. You will seldom succeed. But there is nothing like hitching your wagon to a star, and it will do no harm to set this up as an ideal.

A few miscellaneous problems remain to be considered.

How should we deal with authors with whom we disagree fundamentally? Herbert Spencer relates that he twice started Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, but disagreeing fundamentally with the first and main proposition he ceased reading. Now to do this is to give an author too much credit for consistency. For even if every other proposition he sets forth is ostensibly a corollary from his leading one, some of them will contain much truth. It is impossible to be consistently wrong. Add to this the possibility that the author may be right on his first proposition after all. However, no book with a viewpoint radically different from our own should be used as a main text, for we would get little benefit from it. If the book is by an obscure author we may safely lay it aside altogether. But if it is by so famous and so bepraised a philosopher as Kant we should at least glance through the entire volume for sug­ges­tions.

How many times ought we to read a book? I have already partly answered this in formulating the law of diminishing returns. Few books are worth re-reading. Rather than read one book twice on any given subject it will most often be more profitable to read another book on it. For the second will not only serve as a review of previous knowledge, but will furnish you with new ideas, different aspects and new problems.

Certain books, however, can never be replaced by others. They occupy this position either because they deal with a subject not elsewhere dealt with or because they take an entirely novel aspect, or solely because they are the works of supreme genius, for while the main conclusions reached in works of this last type may be found elsewhere, the manner of thinking can never be. These books should be read twice. The main text-book selected on any subject will usually be chosen because it is the best and most comprehensive work on that subject. For this reason it should be read a second time even if such reading is only of the hop, skip and jump variety.

We should not re-read a book immediately upon the first completion but should always allow a long interval to elapse. There are several reasons for this. After an interval we acquire perspective; we are in a position to know whether a book has done us any good and just about how much. We may find after this interval that a work of which we thought quite highly at the time of reading has really not helped us appreciably either in thought or action. We may find that we have outgrown the need of it. Even if we finally decide to re-read we shall find the wait of immense help to our memory. If we re-read a book after an interval of six months, three years after our second reading we will remember its contents much better than if we had read it three times in unbroken succession. Add to this that in the lapse of time we shall have forgotten most of the work, and shall therefore approach it the second time with greater interest than if it were still fresh in mind; that our experience, reading and thinking in the meantime will make us see every sentence in a different light, enabling us to judge our own marginal criticisms (if we have made any) as well as the book, and the advantage of waiting cannot be doubted. I do not believe it will ever be necessary to read a book more than twice, that is, so far as thought and knowledge are concerned. With books read for their style or for mere amusement the case is different.

How long should one read at a sitting? Some men find that their thought is choked by reading. Some find it stimulated. But results vary according to the length of time reading is carried on. Reading for very long periods at a stretch often deadens original thought. The writer finds that he nearly always derives benefit from reading for short periods, say ten or fifteen minutes. This is in some measure due to the increased con­cen­tration which short periods allow. On the other hand, some people find that a certain momentum is acquired during long reading periods. The reader can only experiment to find how long a period best suits his individual case.

How about con­cen­tration? This has been considered in relation to in­de­pen­dent thinking, but in reading the problem is somewhat different. In thinking our task is to choose relevant associates. In reading the associates are chosen for us. Our task is to stick to them, instead of following the associates which occur to us either from what we read or from sights and sounds about us. But associates which occur to us from what we read are of two kinds: relevant and irrelevant, and the former should of course be followed out. This however should be done deliberately, in the manner I have previously indicated, and when the vein of suggested thought has been exhausted we should bring attention back to our book. The problem of con­cen­tration is not a very serious one in reading. It may sometimes be difficult to con­cen­trate on a book. But it is infinitely easier than con­cen­trating on a problem by unaided in­de­pen­dent thought.

The plan of reading I have laid out is merely suggestive. What I chiefly wanted to show was that all books cannot be treated alike, that we cannot lay down dogmatic inflexible rules to apply to every volume. Our method of reading will vary with the nature of a book or of the subject it treats. It will depend upon the books we have already read and even upon the books we contemplate reading later.

The good you get out of reading will depend entirely on how you allow it to affect you. If every book you read suggests more problems, gives you worth-while questions and topics to think about in spare moments, enriches your in­tel­lec­tual life and stimulates your thought, it is performing its proper function. But if you read solely to answer problems you cannot answer for yourself, if every time you are puzzled about anything you run to a book to have it explained, and accept without question the explanation there given; in short, if you use your reading to save yourself from thinking, you had better stop reading altogether. Smoking is a far less harmful form of dissipation.

I have not yet definitely indicated the ratio which time given to reading should bear to time devoted to thinking. I have avoided this because of the many factors to be taken into account. But if the reader happens to have a spare hour to devote to the improvement of his mind, he will not go very far wrong if he gives thirty minutes to reading and thirty minutes to thinking. His thinking may be on the subject he has read, or part of it may be on other problems. That is not so important. But the reader must not imagine that his thinking need be restricted to these thirty minutes or any other thirty minutes. The glorious advantage of thinking is that it can be fitted in at any odd moment. The entire apparatus for carrying it on is always with you. You do not even need a book for it. I remind the reader of this at the risk of repeating myself.

It was pointed out at the beginning of this chapter that the reading of any book is not an end in itself, but should be subordinated to the larger end of obtaining the best from reading in general. But for the sake of clearness our end was temporarily considered as the mastery of some par­tic­u­lar subject. I indicated a plan of reading to best serve that end. I also promised that needful qualifications would come later.

In stating the law of diminishing returns it was pointed out that it applied to whole subjects as well as to books, that “past a certain point every book we read on a subject, while it will probably add to our knowledge, will not yield as much return as a book of equal merit on another subject new to us.”

While this is true it applies to but a small extent when subjects are read by the method just outlined, for while we do not get as much out of any book as we would out of one of equal merit on another subject, we read it so much faster that the return per time and energy expended is practically as great. This fast reading is made possible by our previous knowledge on the old subject. If the book on the new subject were read in the same manner, we might get little or nothing from it.

With this objection out of the way I suggest that the reader get a specialty. Books read in the ordinary unsys­tem­at­ic fashion, now on this subject and now on that, leave little permanent impression. Even if they do, we feel that though our range of reading may be wide we have at best but a smattering of many things. In the final analysis a smattering of knowledge is in most cases of no more use than total ignorance. Better by far be ignorant of many things and know one thing well, than know many things badly.

Besides the utility of having a specialty is the pleasure we derive. There is always an intense satisfaction in feeling that one is an “expert,” an “authority” in some subject. When some Congressman makes an inaccurate remark which trespasses on your specialty you can write a letter to the Times or the Sun explaining the error of his ways, and incidentally exhibiting your own limitless erudition. When your friends get into an argument on some question within your chosen field they will remark, “Ask John Jones. He ought to know.” And even when you have to confess abysmal ignorance on some question outside of your domains, you may still have the satisfaction of believing that people are excusing you within themselves with an “Oh, well, but he knows a lot about someology.”

One writer estimates that “fifteen minutes a day or a half hour three days a week devoted to one definite study will make one a master in that field in a dozen years.”20 This statement should interest those people who “haven’t the time” to take up any specialty outside their own business, but who spend at least half an hour every day in newspaper or magazine reading—with nothing to show for it at the end of twenty years.

Just what subject you make your specialty I am not at present concerned. It may be aeronautics, astronomy, banking, Greek history, differential calculus, social psychology, electricity, music, philosophy of law, submarines, soap manufacture, religion, metaphysics, sun-motors, education, literary style or the moon. But whatever it is, it ought to be a subject in which you are interested for its own sake—which most frequently means one which you do not make your vocation. If you get tired of it, drop it and take up something in which you are interested. Your thinking and study should be pursued as a pleasure—not as a duty.

If your subject is a narrow one, if let us say it is merely a branch of what is generally considered a science, you should first get a clear idea of the broad outlines of the science before taking the specialty up. Should you, for instance, select the tariff, begin your study by using as your main text a book on general economics.

Even if you make your specialty an entire science you will derive great help by reading in other sciences. In ethics, for instance, a knowledge of psychology, biology and sociology will prove of surprising value. This means that for the sake of knowing the specialty itself, if for nothing else, you should not pursue it exclusively. If ever you find yourself in danger of doing this it would be well to lay down a rule that every third or fourth book you read must be one which does not deal with the subject you have chosen as your own.