Part 15

If a person had never been to a city and you wanted to give him an idea of it, you would show him photographs taken from different viewpoints. One photograph would correct and supplement the other. And the more photographic viewpoints he saw the more complete and accurate would be his idea—the more his concept would approximate the actual city. But he could never more than approximate; he could never obtain the idea of a man who had visited that city.

An author’s language is a photograph of his thought. He can never actually transfer an idea, but by wording it in different ways he can show different photographs of it.

If, for example, a second wording does not conform with the first concept which a reader has formed, the reader will be obliged to modify that concept. And if the idea is repeated in a number of different ways he will have to modify his concept so much that he will gradually more and more approximate the idea of the author.

I remember the story in some educational treatise of an inspector who entered a school room, asked the teacher what she had been giving her class, and finally took up a book and asked the following question, “If you were to dig a hole thousands and thousands of feet deep, would it be cooler near the bottom or near the top, and why?” Not a child answered. Finally the teacher said, “I’m sure they know the answer but I don’t think you put the question in the right way.” So taking the book she asked, “In what state is the center of the earth?” Immediately came the reply from the whole class in chorus, “The center of the earth is in a state of igneous fusion.” . . .

There is, and has been for the past generation, a great cry in educational circles that we should teach things, not words. In some instances this is inadvisable, even impracticable. But if the teacher in the foregoing story had taken the trouble to word her idea in at least more than one way, she might have implanted a real idea in her pupils. She would at least have found that as it was they had none.

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One more question remains. If you are writing a composition, a letter, an essay, or even a book, what is the best way to get down all your thoughts, without losing any of value; to get them down in the best order and in the best style? In other words what is the path of greatest efficiency in transferring thoughts from your mind to paper?

We have already considered such devices as shorthand. Of course dictation, where it is possible, is an obvious advantage. But I mean here to consider the aspects of the problem which apply more especially to compositions of some length.

It is related of Auguste Comte that he composed his books by thinking them over down to the minutest details, down to the very phraseology of the sentences, before penning a single word, but that when he came to writing he could turn out an astounding amount of work in a given time. Unless a person have a remarkable memory, however, he will forget most of what he has thought by the time he comes to writing it. Comte’s method might nevertheless be profitably applied to short sections of compositions. And where conciseness or perspicuity are desired, it will often be found useful to think out an entire sentence before writing a word of it.

Perhaps the best way of ensuring efficiency in writing is by the card system. This consists in writing on a separate card every valuable idea that occurs to you, immediately after it occurs. When you finally come to writing you can arrange these cards in any order desired, throwing out the ideas you no longer consider important, and adding those which are necessary to complete or round out the work.

THINGS WORTH THINKING ABOUT

The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder, is but a pair of spectacles behind which there is no eye.—CARLYLE.

Up to now I have treated exclusively of how to think, but have made no mention of what to think. I have treated of the best methods of dealing with different subjects and questions; I have not considered what subjects or problems are most worth dealing with.

Of course the important thing is that you do think. It is not absolutely essential that the results of your thinking are results which can be directly made use of. Thinking is an end in itself. Most men imagine that “thinking for the sake of thinking” may appeal to philosophers, but means nothing to them, as they like to think only when by so doing they can forward some practical end. These people do themselves an injustice.

Perhaps you, O reader, are among them. If so, let me appeal to your personal experience. Have you ever tried to solve a toy puzzle, tried to take the two wire hooks apart without bending them? Or have you ever stopped to tackle a problem on the family page of your evening or Sunday newspaper? “A grocer buys fifteen dozen eggs, he sells—” you know what I mean. You admit that you have. Exactly. You have been thinking for the mere sake of thinking.

If you protest that you didn’t care about the thinking, that you took no pleasure in the thinking, which was merely incidental, but that what really urged you on and gave you pleasure was the solution of the puzzle, you are again deceiving yourself. The thinking was not incidental. Thinking and problem solving are identical. The fact is that you set yourself to solving a problem, to removing a mental hindrance, for the mere sake of getting the answer, with absolutely no thought of what you were going to do with the answer when you got it.

But if you can derive so much pleasure from thinking which you cannot put to use, how much greater should be your pleasure when your conclusions can be utilized? For when you think of something useful, you have not only the present pleasure of solving your problem, but the ulterior pleasure of applying your solution to action, or to the solution of some further problem. And while I again admit that thinking is an end in itself, this does not prevent it from being at the same time a means to some further end. After all is said there is really no reason why we should be prejudiced against problems or subjects that are useful.

The mere decision that we should think of useful questions is insufficient. Very few questions are without some use. Even the solution of the family page puzzle might some day be useful in solving a similar problem arising in your own business; and even if this never came to pass you might spring the puzzle on your friends, and make yourself socially more interesting. Thought given to a question in a debating book now before me, “Resolved, that Ferocious Wild Beasts are more to be dreaded than Venomous Reptiles,” might result in knowledge which would come handy in selecting equipment if one decided to journey to the wilderness of South America. But there are millions of problems of as much use as these; and it is not within the power of one lone mortal, of years three score and ten, to compass even a corner of them. Our question is not—what problems are of use?, but—of how much use are certain problems?, or stated in another way,—what is the relative utility of problems?

Any adequate consideration of this question would involve the selection of some criterion for utility, and the testing of individual problems by that criterion. But to treat such a question with anything like justice is beyond the scope of this book; it would require almost a volume in itself. It is almost the same as the problem, What knowledge is of most worth?, and the most masterly treatise on that question which has ever been written can be found in Herbert Spencer’s epoch-making little work, Education. I sincerely hope that the reader study this. But I hope even more earnestly that before he does so he first think the problem out independently, for it is one of the most important he can put before himself.

But our present question—that of the relative importance of problems—is slightly different from that of the relative importance of knowledge. The first deals with thought and the second with information, or the materials of thought; the first with a process of getting knowledge and the second with knowledge itself.

I believe for example that a knowledge of his own body and of the laws of health is the most valuable a man can have, but there are few problems concerning the body which I would include in the first rank. There are several reasons for this. In the first place, while it may be true that such questions taken as a whole are more important than any other class of questions, taken separately they are relatively minor; there are no one or two questions of all-encompassing importance to which all the others are subsidiary. Moreover, such questions, while they undoubtedly require thought for their solution, depend to a relatively great extent on observation and experiment. No sane medical student would sit down and follow out a lengthy course of reasoning as to where the heart is; he would merely observe or dissect, or consult the book of a man who had dissected, and save mental fatigue. Not least of all, questions of physiology require extensive, highly technical and detailed information—information which requires years of special study to acquire—before any thinking that is at all safe can be put upon them. So in estimating the relative value of problems, there are other considerations besides the value of knowledge.

But it is not my purpose here to discuss the general principles upon which the selection of worth-while questions should be made. That task I leave to the reader. I have chosen rather the concrete path of suggesting a list of questions which I consider of great import. I believe that no matter how much thought the reader gives to any one of them he will not be losing his time.

I have elsewhere pointed out that the more knowledge a man has the more problems he will have. It is equally true that unless a man has some knowledge on a subject he will not be able to appreciate or even understand some of its most important problems. It is only when we begin to think of subjects that we discover problems and realize their significance. In stating most of the following problems, therefore, I have often thought it necessary to add a few sentences in explanation, and have sometimes stated a question in a variety of forms in order to more clearly convey the thought.

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Are specific characteristics, acquired during the lifetime of an individual, inherited by his offspring? I have referred so often to this problem and its importance that further explanation is hardly necessary. “Characteristics” of course refer to intellectual and moral as well as physical characteristics.

What is the influence of the individual mind on society and of social environment on the individual?

Does the form of government determine the character of a people, or does the character of a people determine their form of government? Or do government and character react on each other, and how? The same question may be asked of all other social institutions. Does the religion of a people determine their character, or does the character of a people determine their religion? This whole problem is somewhat similar to that immediately preceding, regarding the interaction of the individual and the social mind.

Is society for the benefit of the individual or is the individual for the benefit of society?