Self Help, Samuel Smiles [good romance books to read .txt] 📗
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the mode in which he had conducted his studies, and thus explained
the secret of his success. “I resolved,” said he, “when beginning
to read law, to make everything I acquired perfectly my own, and
never to go to a second thing till I had entirely accomplished the
first. Many of my competitors read as much in a day as I read in a
week; but, at the end of twelve months, my knowledge was as fresh
as the day it was acquired, while theirs had glided away from
recollection.”
It is not the quantity of study that one gets through, or the
amount of reading, that makes a wise man; but the appositeness of
the study to the purpose for which it is pursued; the concentration
of the mind for the time being on the subject under consideration;
and the habitual discipline by which the whole system of mental
application is regulated. Abernethy was even of opinion that there
was a point of saturation in his own mind, and that if he took into
it something more than it could hold, it only had the effect of
pushing something else out. Speaking of the study of medicine, he
said, “If a man has a clear idea of what he desires to do, he will
seldom fail in selecting the proper means of accomplishing it.”
The most profitable study is that which is conducted with a
definite aim and object. By thoroughly mastering any given branch
of knowledge we render it more available for use at any moment.
Hence it is not enough merely to have books, or to know where to
read for information as we want it. Practical wisdom, for the
purposes of life, must be carried about with us, and be ready for
use at call. It is not sufficient that we have a fund laid up at
home, but not a farthing in the pocket: we must carry about with
us a store of the current coin of knowledge ready for exchange on
all occasions, else we are comparatively helpless when the
opportunity for using it occurs.
Decision and promptitude are as requisite in self-culture as in
business. The growth of these qualities may be encouraged by
accustoming young people to rely upon their own resources, leaving
them to enjoy as much freedom of action in early life as is
practicable. Too much guidance and restraint hinder the formation
of habits of self-help. They are like bladders tied under the arms
of one who has not taught himself to swim. Want of confidence is
perhaps a greater obstacle to improvement than is generally
imagined. It has been said that half the failures in life arise
from pulling in one’s horse while he is leaping. Dr. Johnson was
accustomed to attribute his success to confidence in his own
powers. True modesty is quite compatible with a due estimate of
one’s own merits, and does not demand the abnegation of all merit.
Though there are those who deceive themselves by putting a false
figure before their ciphers, the want of confidence, the want of
faith in one’s self, and consequently the want of promptitude in
action, is a defect of character which is found to stand very much
in the way of individual progress; and the reason why so little is
done, is generally because so little is attempted.
There is usually no want of desire on the part of most persons to
arrive at the results of self-culture, but there is a great
aversion to pay the inevitable price for it, of hard work. Dr.
Johnson held that “impatience of study was the mental disease of
the present generation;” and the remark is still applicable. We
may not believe that there is a royal road to learning, but we seem
to believe very firmly in a “popular” one. In education, we invent
labour-saving processes, seek short cuts to science, learn French
and Latin “in twelve lessons,” or “without a master.” We resemble
the lady of fashion, who engaged a master to teach her on condition
that he did not plague her with verbs and participles. We get our
smattering of science in the same way; we learn chemistry by
listening to a short course of lectures enlivened by experiments,
and when we have inhaled laughing gas, seen green water turned to
red, and phosphorus burnt in oxygen, we have got our smattering, of
which the most that can be said is, that though it may be better
than nothing, it is yet good for nothing. Thus we often imagine we
are being educated while we are only being amused.
The facility with which young people are thus induced to acquire
knowledge, without study and labour, is not education. It occupies
but does not enrich the mind. It imparts a stimulus for the time,
and produces a sort of intellectual keenness and cleverness; but,
without an implanted purpose and a higher object than mere
pleasure, it will bring with it no solid advantage. In such cases
knowledge produces but a passing impression; a sensation, but no
more; it is, in fact, the merest epicurism of intelligence—
sensuous, but certainly not intellectual. Thus the best qualities
of many minds, those which are evoked by vigorous effort and
independent action, sleep a deep sleep, and are often never called
to life, except by the rough awakening of sudden calamity or
suffering, which, in such cases, comes as a blessing, if it serves
to rouse up a courageous spirit that, but for it, would have slept
on.
Accustomed to acquire information under the guise of amusement,
young people will soon reject that which is presented to them under
the aspect of study and labour. Learning their knowledge and
science in sport, they will be too apt to make sport of both; while
the habit of intellectual dissipation, thus engendered, cannot
fail, in course of time, to produce a thoroughly emasculating
effect both upon their mind and character. “Multifarious reading,”
said Robertson of Brighton, “weakens the mind like smoking, and is
an excuse for its lying dormant. It is the idlest of all
idlenesses, and leaves more of impotency than any other.”
The evil is a growing one, and operates in various ways. Its least
mischief is shallowness; its greatest, the aversion to steady
labour which it induces, and the low and feeble tone of mind which
it encourages. If we would be really wise, we must diligently
apply ourselves, and confront the same continuous application which
our forefathers did; for labour is still, and ever will be, the
inevitable price set upon everything which is valuable. We must be
satisfied to work with a purpose, and wait the results with
patience. All progress, of the best kind, is slow; but to him who
works faithfully and zealously the reward will, doubtless, be
vouchsafed in good time. The spirit of industry, embodied in a
man’s daily life, will gradually lead him to exercise his powers on
objects outside himself, of greater dignity and more extended
usefulness. And still we must labour on; for the work of self-culture is never finished. “To be employed,” said the poet Gray,
“is to be happy.” “It is better to wear out than rust out,” said
Bishop Cumberland. “Have we not all eternity to rest in?”
exclaimed Arnauld. “Repos ailleurs” was the motto of Marnix de St.
Aldegonde, the energetic and ever-working friend of William the
Silent.
It is the use we make of the powers entrusted to us, which
constitutes our only just claim to respect. He who employs his one
talent aright is as much to be honoured as he to whom ten talents
have been given. There is really no more personal merit attaching
to the possession of superior intellectual powers than there is in
the succession to a large estate. How are those powers used—how
is that estate employed? The mind may accumulate large stores of
knowledge without any useful purpose; but the knowledge must be
allied to goodness and wisdom, and embodied in upright character,
else it is naught. Pestalozzi even held intellectual training by
itself to be pernicious; insisting that the roots of all knowledge
must strike and feed in the soil of the rightly-governed will. The
acquisition of knowledge may, it is true, protect a man against the
meaner felonies of life; but not in any degree against its selfish
vices, unless fortified by sound principles and habits. Hence do
we find in daily life so many instances of men who are well-informed in intellect, but utterly deformed in character; filled
with the learning of the schools, yet possessing little practical
wisdom, and offering examples for warning rather than imitation.
An often quoted expression at this day is that “Knowledge is
power;” but so also are fanaticism, despotism, and ambition.
Knowledge of itself, unless wisely directed, might merely make bad
men more dangerous, and the society in which it was regarded as the
highest good, little better than a pandemonium.
It is possible that at this day we may even exaggerate the
importance of literary culture. We are apt to imagine that because
we possess many libraries, institutes, and museums, we are making
great progress. But such facilities may as often be a hindrance as
a help to individual self-culture of the highest kind. The
possession of a library, or the free use of it, no more constitutes
learning, than the possession of wealth constitutes generosity.
Though we undoubtedly possess great facilities it is nevertheless
true, as of old, that wisdom and understanding can only become the
possession of individual men by travelling the old road of
observation, attention, perseverance, and industry. The possession
of the mere materials of knowledge is something very different from
wisdom and understanding, which are reached through a higher kind
of discipline than that of reading,—which is often but a mere
passive reception of other men’s thoughts; there being little or no
active effort of mind in the transaction. Then how much of our
reading is but the indulgence of a sort of intellectual dram-drinking, imparting a grateful excitement for the moment, without
the slightest effect in improving and enriching the mind or
building up the character. Thus many indulge themselves in the
conceit that they are cultivating their minds, when they are only
employed in the humbler occupation of killing time, of which
perhaps the best that can be said is that it keeps them from doing
worse things.
It is also to be borne in mind that the experience gathered from
books, though often valuable, is but of the nature of LEARNING;
whereas the experience gained from actual life is of the nature of
WISDOM; and a small store of the latter is worth vastly more than
any stock of the former. Lord Bolingbroke truly said that
“Whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us
better men and citizens, is at best but a specious and ingenious
sort of idleness, and the knowledge we acquire by it, only a
creditable kind of ignorance—nothing more.”
Useful and instructive though good reading may be, it is yet only
one mode of cultivating the mind; and is much less influential than
practical experience and good example in the formation of
character. There were wise, valiant, and true-hearted men bred in
England, long before the existence of a reading public. Magna
Charta was secured by men who signed the deed with their marks.
Though altogether unskilled in the art of deciphering the literary
signs by which principles were denominated upon paper, they yet
understood and appreciated, and boldly contended for, the things
themselves. Thus the foundations of English liberty were laid by
men, who, though illiterate, were nevertheless of the very highest
stamp of character. And it must be admitted that the chief object
of culture is, not merely to fill the mind with other men’s
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