Thinking and learning to think, Nathan C. Schaeffer [each kindness read aloud txt] 📗
- Author: Nathan C. Schaeffer
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There is no more important element of emotion for teachers to cultivate than that which enters into the feeling of interest. Interest sustains the power of thought, diminishes the need of effort in the direction of voluntary attention, and lies at the basis of all successful teaching, book-making, and public speaking. The teacher, the writer, the speaker who wearies us has lost his power over us. The lesson, the book, the sermon that interests us has found an entrance to our minds; the greater the interest the more potent and profound the influence upon the inner life.
The moment a teacher begins to lose interest in a subject, that moment he begins to lose his ability to teach that subject. From this point of view the recent graduate has a manifest advantage over the old pedagogue whose interest in the subjects of instruction has been dulled by frequent repetition. The latter can keep himself from reaching the dead-line by keeping up his studies in the allied departments of knowledge, and by watching the growth of mind and heart in his pupils,—a growth that always reveals something new and interesting by reason of the boundless possibilities that slumber in every human being. The interest in the growing mind is spontaneously transferred to the branches of knowledge which stimulate that growth, and, in ways that no one can explain, the interest which the teacher feels is communicated to the pupils whose minds are prepared to grasp his instruction.
By far the larger proportion of books taken from our free libraries are books of fiction,—books which appeal to our emotional life. It shows that even those who are habitual readers can be best reached through the emotions. Of course, the act of reading proves that their feelings are reached through the intellect; yet it cannot be denied that emotion is the element of their inner life which sustains the interest in the novel. Appeals to the intellect which do not touch the heart fail to reach the deepest depths of our being, and hence fail to stimulate in others the productive powers of the soul. Only thoughts which come from the heart can reach the heart. This is true of the child and the adult, of the reader and the listener, of the scientist and the man of affairs, of the author and the editor, of the orator and the philosopher, of the teacher, and, in short, of all whose duty it is to stimulate the thinking and to influence the conduct of their fellow-men.
XIXTHINKING AND WILLING
Strong reasons make strong actions.
Shakespeare.
Bad thoughts quickly ripen into bad actions.
Bishop Portens.
The man of thought strikes deepest, and strikes safely.
Savage.
Reason is the director of man’s will, discovering in action what is good; for the laws of well-doing are the dictates of right reason.
Hooker.
XIXTHINKING AND WILLING
Much thinking is spontaneous, in the sense that there is no conscious effort of the will to direct and control the activity of the mind. Under normal conditions the stream of thought flows onward, like the current of water in the bed of a river. When the onward movement is interrupted, an act of volition may be needed to bring the mind back to the regular channel. There are forms of intellectual activity called dreaming, reverie, and meditation, in which the ideas follow each other without any effort to regulate them. Often they are fanciful, incoherent, and illogical; they are suggested by passing objects, by musical sounds, perhaps by the stimulating influence of a drug or narcotic. Few can start a train of thought, winding up their minds as they would a clock, and then letting it run down until the discourse, lecture, or newspaper article is complete, no conscious effort of the will being required to keep the mind from wandering. This may be partly a gift of nature, but mostly it is the result of discipline.
What is discipline? We speak of mental discipline, of military discipline, of family discipline. What is the element which all these have in common? An army is under discipline when every soldier and every officer is subject to the will of his superior, so that the entire body of men can be moved against the foe at the will of the commanding general. A family is under discipline when the entire household is under the control of the head of the house. The school is under discipline when all the pupils are subject to the will of the teacher, and to the rules which he has laid down for the regulation of conduct. The mind is under discipline when its powers are under the control of the will, and its activities are in accord with the laws of thought. It is important to ascertain the laws of thought which underlie correct thinking. These are developed and discussed in treatises on logic,—a science that should be mastered not only by those who must meet others in the field of argument and controversy, but by all who seek to regulate the thinking of their own minds, or to aid others in the formation of correct habits of thought.
Fortunately, the law of habit here comes into play to lighten the conscious effort of the will. When the intellect, through the guidance of a conscious will, has acted according to the forms of thought in which the logician can find no fallacies, it tends to act again in that way, and the next time a less expenditure of conscious effort is required. The thinking of the teacher, if correct and logical, tends to beget correct and logical habits of thought on the part of the pupil. It is a piece of good fortune to fall under the dominating influence of a towering intellect. For a time the growing mind that is engaged in thinking the thoughts, and mastering the speculations, the reflections, the reasonings, of a master who is such not merely in name, but also in fact, may be in a subjection very like unto intellectual slavery. Sooner or later the day of emancipation arrives; and those who were not under the invigorating tuition of such an intellectual giant are surprised at the thought-power developed by the youth whose equal they hitherto fancied themselves to be.
Those who expect to spend their days in teaching, lecturing, preaching, pleading, or writing have great reason to strive after the discipline which results in placing all the powers of mind and heart under the control of the will. The feelings which interfere with reflection should be repressed and expelled by strenuous effort. The emotions which stimulate thinking should be cherished and fostered. The inner nexus, which binds ideas in logical trains of thought, should be followed until the habit becomes second nature.
Thinking which goes forward according to some established habit requires less effort than intellectual work that is accompanied with much volitional effort. This fact serves as a valuable indication to men who must do intellectual work for the press or the pulpit or the lecture-room. Perhaps no one is better qualified to speak on this point than Dr. Carpenter, who studied mental action from the physiological point of view, and whose publications show the quality, as well as the quantity, of his intellectual labor. He says,—
“To individuals of ordinary mental activity who have been trained in the habit of methodical and connected thinking, a very considerable amount of work is quite natural; and when such persons are in good bodily health, and the subject of their labor is congenial to them,—especially if it be one that has been chosen by themselves, as furnishing a centre of attraction around which their thoughts spontaneously tend to range themselves,—their intellectual operations require but little of the controlling or directing power of the will, and may be continued for long periods together without fatigue. But from the moment when an indisposition is experienced to keep the attention fixed upon the subject, and the thoughts wander from it unless coerced by the will, the mental activity loses its spontaneous or automatic character; and (as in the act of walking) more effort is required to maintain it volitionally during a brief period, and more fatigue is subsequently experienced from such exertion than would be involved in the continuance of an automatic operation through a period many times as long. Hence he has found it practically the greatest economy of mental labor to work vigorously when he feels disposed to do so, and to refrain from exertion, so far as possible, when it is felt to be an exertion. Of course, this rule is by no means universally applicable; for there are many individuals who would pass their whole time in listless inactivity if not actually spurred on by the feeling of necessity. But it holds good for those who are sufficiently attracted by objects of interest before them, or who have in their worldly position a sufficiently strong motive to exertion to make them feel that they must work; the question with them being, how they can attain their desired results with the least expenditure of mental effort.”[55]
There is a danger to which public speakers are exposed, against which the efforts of a resolute will are not too potent. To capture a crowd that is more easily moved by jokes than by argument, the speaker resorts to sallies of wit and humor and turns the laugh upon an opponent. The temptation to cultivate one’s gifts in this direction is very strong, and when yielded to, it destroys the powers of logical reflection and consecutive thought. Wit is illogical, because it introduces into the current of thought what is foreign to the subject in hand, the incongruity giving rise to the laughter. Wit and humor serve a useful purpose in acting as a safety-valve to let off the discontent which accumulates in the human breast, and may be used for that purpose with great effect. But they should never be allowed to divert the stream of thought from its logical channel. The reputation for wit and humor may dispose people to laugh at everything a man says. It destroys their respect for his judgment and impairs his power to follow a line of thought to its legitimate conclusion. The ability to discuss a theme in all its bearings and details implies the power to investigate a subject in its essence and relations, to resolve an idea into its elements, and to present these in the form most easily understood,—an object which is as far from the purposes of the funny man as the poles are from the equator.
All thinking tends towards the expression of thought. “Every expression of thought,” says Tracy, “whether it be word, or mark, or gesture, is the result of an active will, and as such may be classed among the movements.” Word, mark, and gesture do not exhaust the list of movements by which the mind expresses thought. Every handicraft is a form of expressing thought quite as important as writing and speaking and gesticulating. The fine arts and the useful arts are so many ways through which the will passes into thinking and issues in the expression of thought. Movements for reform are the intense expressions of great thoughts which have their origin in the heart. The men who spend their lives in the atmosphere of colleges and universities are apt to be satisfied if they have expressed their thoughts in a lecture or on the printed page. They live in books, and their thinking
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