Mind reading

“ Even the reading of books which require deep and continuous thought is only a preparation for this higher exercise of the faculties—a useful, indeed a necessary preparation, because it promotes the habit of fixing the attention and concentrating the powers of the mind on any given point. In assimilating the thoughts of others, however, with your own mind and memory, the mind itself remains nearly passive; it is as the wax that receives the impression, and must for this purpose be in a suitable state of impressibility. ”

“ This is true, however, only of what may be called vitalized reading--reading, not with the eyes alone, nor with the mind alone, but with the stored experiences of life, with the emotions that it has brought, with the attitudes toward men and things and ideas that it has given--in a word, with imagination. ”

“ And, after all, there is a method of satisfying yourself that is far more conclusive than the reading of any results of experiments of others—and that is to learn to perform the feats of Mind Reading yourself. ”

“ Observation, reading, and writing are the chief means by which thought is stimulated, the mind developed, and the intellect cultivated. The habit of looking and the habit of thinking are closely related. A man thinks as he sees; and for a mind like Shakespeare's, for instance, observation is almost the only thing that is necessary for its development. ”

“ Psychology can only lay down the general rule.
Second, take that mind-wandering which at a later age may trouble us whilst reading or listening to a discourse. If attention be the reproduction of the sensation from within, the habit of reading not merely with the eye, and of listening not merely with the ear, but of articulating to one's self the words seen or heard, ought to deepen one's{237} attention to the latter. ”

“ If it be politely laid down again, or perhaps lounged over for a few minutes, and then, ‘I can’t read this stupid book! Would you hand me the second volume of “The Mysterious Murder”?’ you may be equally sure that there is something wrong in the mental digestion.
If this paper has given you any useful hints on the important subject of reading, and made you see that it [Pg 31] is one’s duty no less than one’s interest to ‘read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest’ the good books that fall in your way, its purpose will be fulfilled. ”

“ When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading; the greater part of the work of thought is already done for us. This is why it relieves us to take up a book after being occupied with our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another's thoughts. ”

“ After all, what is reading but a vice, like drink or venery or any other form of excessive self-indulgence? One reads to tickle and amuse one’s mind; one reads, above all, to prevent oneself thinking. ”

“ By keeping your mind pure, following the forgotten physical directions, taking plenty of mental exercise in reading books of high mental and moral tone, hearing good speakers and indulging in independent thought, this vital principle will be directed to the brain, where it will be converted into intellectual brilliancy and mental vigor. ”

“ Hence the need for every impressible mind to be, by reading or speech, held in living association with an original mind able to combat those suggestions of doubt and even unbelief, which the look of things must often occasion—a look which comes from our inability to gain other than fragmentary visions of the work that the Father worketh hitherto. ”

“ There are not, however, many references to book study; and such as we find are chiefly directed to the one aim of painful and laborious examination, first, of an author's meaning, and next of the goodness of his arguments. Two or three sentences will give the clue. "Those who have read of everything, are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. ”

“ For even a moderate proficiency in the art of reading two requirements are essential: (1) A cultivated mind quick to perceive the sequence of thoughts which the words to be read logically express, and equally quick in its power sympathetically to appreciate the sentiment with which the words are informed—the feeling, emotion, passion, which pervades them—but which they suggest rather than actually portray ”

“ It is for this reason that the student must seek to discipline each apparently isolated faculty of the mind.
[721]
In observing, it is not enough mentally to picture what you read. You must go even more into detail than that. You must observe words. Did you ever read “Martin Eden,” that wonderful study in mental development and self-analysis, written by Jack London, revealing in retrospect his own mental processes? It will more than pay you for the trouble of reading. ”

“ Pause. It must be quite clear that when we are reading silently, for the purpose of getting the thought for ourselves, our minds are at work as has been described. We shall now examine how this work done by the mind affects the voice and produces what we call good expression when we are reading aloud for the purpose of conveying thought to others. As an illustration we shall take an example from The Glove and the Lions:
The nobles fill'd the benches round, the ladies by their side, And 'mongst them Count de Lorge, with one he hoped to make his bride. ”

“ For the rest the single reading and narration as described in connection with other work is sufficient in this subject also. Children cannot tell what they have not seen with the mind’s eye, which we know as imagination, and they cannot see what is not told in their books with some vividness and some grasp of the subject. ”

“ V A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE In anything fit to be called by the name of reading, the process itself should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves, and rise from the perusal, our mind filled with the busiest, kaleidoscopic dance of images, incapable of sleep or of continuous thought. The words, if the book be eloquent, should run thence-forward in our ears like the noise of breakers, and the story, if it be a story, repeat itself in a thousand coloured pictures to the eye. ”

“ A Mind at the Mercy of Associations.--We will consider, then, the nature and the functions of attention. The mind--with the possible exception of the state of coma--is never idle; ideas are for ever passing through the brain, by day and by night, sleeping or walking, mad or sane. We take a great deal too much upon ourselves when we suppose that we are the authors and intenders of the thoughts we think. ”

“ Apprehension of generals and particulars, comparison, distinction, inference, performed under the review of consciousness, capable of being remembered and applied to direct the conduct of life—these are the characteristics of the action of mind, in every grade; where they are present, there is thought. And who will dare to deny even to the uninstructed deaf-mute the possession of ideas, of cognitions multitudinous and various, of power to combine observations and draw conclusions from them, of reasonings, of imaginings, of hopes? ”

“ But instead of following up this natural indication, and developing the thought by the exercise of the reason, we proceed as if the being under our charge were incapable of reason; we overload the memory of the child with a multitude of words, whose value he cannot understand until later in life, and perhaps never. The true direction of the mind is to proceed from the thought to the word, and not from the word to the thought. ”

“ If you wish to become intellectually strong, after reading with the closest attention, form this habit: frequently close your book and sit and think, or stand and walk and think—but think, contemplate, reflect. ”

“ Consider for a moment the human brain as the repository of all impressions made on the mind from childhood upwards. Thus viewed, it becomes, as it were, an encyclopedia of all knowledge which the conscious mind has stored, each item recording an idea of a certain quality, in such language as circumstances may at the time have dictated. ”

“ When you read, then, or speak from memory, if you will let thought create feeling before you speak, you will avoid mechanical reading and speaking, and be effective in conveying the thought and feeling both together. ”

“ Distinction between Thought and Attention.—By Thought is here meant the voluntary reproduction in our own minds of those states of consciousness, or (to use a phrase more familiar to the religious reader) of those inward experiences, to which, as to his best and most authentic documents, the teacher of moral and religious truth refers us. In Attention, we keep the mind passive; in Thought, we rouse it into activity. ”

“ Yet the very habit of proposing these questions, however they may be answered, will involve the calling of ourselves to account for our reading, and the consideration of it in the light of wisdom and duty.
The distinct consciousness of some object at present before us, imparts a manifoldly greater interest to the contents of any volume. It imparts to the reader an appropriate power, a force of affinity, by which he insensibly and unconsciously attracts to himself all that has a near or even a remote relation to the end for which he reads. ”

“ By the Sensation, we mean the whole state of consciousness, under an actual or present impression of sense, as in looking at the moon, in listening to music, in tasting wine. By the Idea is meant the state of mind that remains after the sensible agent is withdrawn, or that may be afterwards recovered by the force of recollection. ”

“ But as soon as we recognize in mental life this our power to modify our knowledge by means of our own activity, just so soon do all the old comparisons of the mind to a wax tablet, to a sheet of paper, or to other like passive subjects of impression, lose for us their meaning. ”

“ It is possible for anyone to become a mind reader. It is necessary only to note and think out the meaning of character signs and thoughts. Trained specific observation will read and interpret these signs. ”

“ One must have perceptions, and thought’s severest wrestlings—cogitatio and meditatio—before reaching that first stage of wide and sure intelligence, which relates [Pg 364] to the creature world, and affords a broad basis of assurance, whence at last the soul shall spring to God. Intellectual perceptions and rational knowledge, and all the mind’s puttings together of its data in inductions and deductions and constructions, form a basis for contemplation, and yield material upon which the emotional side of human nature may exercise itself in yearning and devotion. ”

“ But while there is but one mind in all the universe that can have knowledge of what is passing in your mind and retain it all—THE INFINITE MIND; and while no one page of any book, however large, even if it be what book-makers call elephant folio, can possibly hold the record of what any boy here says and thinks in a single day, you may, and you do, all of you, write words good or bad on the page before you. ”

“ Then the divine thrill of curiosity is keenest; then your memory is fresh, and can be trained; your mind is plastic, and you can form sound habits. You can teach yourself to respect truth and to seek it, you can teach yourself accuracy, open-mindedness, flexibility, persistence in the search for understanding. ”

“ Judgment, forethought, common-sense, inference, ingenuity, genius, reason, and abstract thought, are all exercises of the cognitive or perceptive power of mind, and consist, all of them, in nothing more nor less than the discerning of relations among stimuli. ”

“ To most readers new emotions and unaccustomed trains of thought spring up in the mind, awakening and enkindling the desire for deeper and fuller insight into the great truths there brought to view; and as one proceeds ideas continually cluster around the mind with all the interest and freshness which novelty and a deep insight into our nature can give them. ”

“ We have already discussed the possibility of developing the innervation of the state, the distribution of books, the stimulation and direction of reading, and all the peripheral aspects of literature, and we come now to the difficult and intricate problem of whether we can do anything, and what it is we may do, to stimulate the central thought. ”

“ Give an undivided attention to what you wish to learn, and be not satisfied with once repeating a lesson but meditate upon its contents until they are firmly engraven on your mind. Accustom yourselves always to render an account of what you read, either to yourself, or to some other person. Every night examine what you have learned during the day ”

“ Many persons have the feeling that it is a moral duty, after having begun a book, to read it through. Here is the recommendation that our reading for a time "converge to one point"; that we find, for example, what several psychologies have to say on one topic, such as memory, rather than read one psychology from cover to cover. ”

“ It is much confused in modern discussions, and the word "mind," which formerly always meant the operations of the intellect only, has come in recent times to be used in the sense of feeling only, the thinking process itself being described as a form of feeling. ”

“ We must first have images of concrete things and ideas of abstract qualities and relations; we must next have the memory of words and then the capacity so to associate each idea or image with a particular word that, when the word is heard, the idea shall forthwith enter our mind. ”