Self-study

“ In repelling the reproach of narrowness, to which our elective system at Cambridge undoubtedly frequently leads, how often have I urged the self-evident proposition that to arouse a love of study in any subject, I care not how subordinate its importance or how limited its scope, is to take the first step toward making your man a scholar; [Pg 84] while to fail to gain his interest in any study is to lose the whole end of education—and what is true of the man is still more true of the child. ”

“ I have said that lectures do not supply mental training; that only personal study can do that. The next question is, What study? And that is a question which I do not answer in a hurry, when I say, The study of natural history. It is not, certainly, a study which a young man entering on the business of self-education would be likely to take up. To him, naturally, man is the most important subject. His first wish is to know the human world; to know what men are, what they have thought, what they have done. ”

“ The contents of any course of education should be small in comparison with the attainments which it renders possible. This large, broad, life-long self-education lies in the power to study alone without the fear of a master or the ordeal of an examination before one. ”

“ A quickened conscience, a moral uplift, a desire to do right, a noble ideal, mark the beginning; but self-study, a rigid and persistent self-analysis, taking account of stock of all our resources and capacities, all our real possessions and opportunities, is the scientific process by which man may become master of his own life and evolve to higher and still higher planes of being, even here in the present life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And consequently not one devoted student in a thousand has a chance of knowing what he has a right to know of the gradations and variations in expression, the development and the self-discipline in display, of the most transcendent intelligence that ever illuminated humanity. ”

“ The unconscious nature of the man subordinates his skill wholly to its own uses. In like manner, in every kind of self-expression, the student who puts imagination, vitality, and sincerity into the work of preliminary education, comes at last to full command of himself, and gives complete expression to that which is deepest and most individual in him. Time, discipline, study, and thought enrich every nature which is receptive and responsive. ”

“ Also, that part of self-education consisting in the application to books is distinct from the other forms of mental cultivation, namely, conversing, disputing, original composition, and tutorial aid. Each of these has its own rules or methods, which I do not mean to notice except by brief allusion.
In connection with the Plan of study, it is material to ask what the individual is studying for. Each profession, each accomplishment, has its own course of education. If book reading is an essential part, then the choice of books must follow the line of the special pursuit. ”

“ The using of knowledge, involving the selection of the more promising part and its application until it becomes a part of the self and even habitual, is impossible without a high degree of mental vigor. Finally, the precautions to be taken in order to preserve a tolerant attitude presuppose a personality moved by purposes far higher than those of the average person. Altogether, therefore, proper study is impossible without a self that is energetic and firm. ”

“ Accurate knowledge of details is indeed necessary to the accomplishment of any thing useful, but the walls must be built before the rooms can be adorned. In either sort of study, superficial or profound, I hold self-instruction to be the most efficacious ”

“ The author is an ardent advocate of the self-survey in preference to the survey by outside experts. He says, “The study of higher education which is most needed today is study by colleges themselves of themselves, and by each college of itself.” ”

“ Here special honors and privileges may well be granted to those who are silent if only the teacher makes it clear that a reward for the exercise of self-control is just as legitimate as a diploma for courses in study completed. ”

“ No means of education gives the mind so much satisfaction and confidence in truth and reality as the study of the object lessons received while living in a garden of Nature, an invited guest.
“All self-educated persons,” says Doctor Newman, “are likely to have more thought, more mind, more philosophy, than those who are forced to load their minds with a score of subjects against an examination—who have too much on their hands to indulge in thinking or investigation.... ”

“ So much the more reason have we to be grateful to the few who are endeavouring to make up our deficiencies by self-prompted study, and especially to those self—denying men who, under circumstances of no small difficulty, are or have been devoting themselves to the work of collecting and giving to the world original materials. ”

“ A considerable part of the working day should be set apart for voluntary self-directed study, but the pupil should write an account of what he or she is studying, with an abstract of any information acquired. ”

“ The same principle, of varying the mode in which the mind receives knowledge, is recognized in modern systems of education, with a view to avoid the self-conceit and intolerant pride which solitary study is apt to engender, as well as because, from the living voice of the teacher, the young scholar learns in that practical, simple mode which is most valuable and efficient, as it is that, in which alone all his knowledge of the living and speaking world must be obtained. ”

“ But if we wisely and carefully test all experience, being willing to descend low enough to learn and study so that the instrument may be tuned and perfected, we may avoid the pitfalls, or be able to cross them should they be inevitable, whereas if we are deluded by supposed self-illumination, and run after that to the exclusion of all study, we will perhaps, enjoy a period of excitement and of self-satisfaction, but it will end, and the end will be bitter. ”

“ The rigid system of self-culture which she pursued through her life was the outgrowth of her ambition and of her intense interest in things, an interest which we have noticed as being one of the leading elements in her happiness. Reading, study, conversation, observation, writing, travel, were in turns employed in her course of self-discipline. ”

“ But the distance between twenty and sixty—the life beginning and the life advancing toward its close— was frequently apparent; also between an active, original mind, requiring humanity for its study, and one whose whole bent was among the dry bones of ancient learning—the difference, in short, between learning and knowledge—the mere student and the man who only uses study as a means to the perfecting of his whole nature, his complete existence as a human being. ”

“ College and After COLLEGES and universities afford the opportunity for the attainment of a measure of self-knowledge, self-reli- ance and self-development, which in the home is often apt to come too slowly, and, learned at first hand with the world, is bought frequently at the price of an experience which dwarfs, if it does not altogether destroy, some of the finer fruits of those essential qualities of manhood. ”

“ It should be to assist in interpreting the knowledge that the student himself gets—to fit it to his own life needs and to help him learn how to study and how to think for himself. In other words, this information in which we deal should not be an end in itself, but a means to an end. ”

“ Turning from the tests of Genius which, in the Progressive Scholar at least, are inscrutable, we have now only to exhaust the indications of Integrity in Study, and we shall then have completed the portraiture of the true follower of learning. The honest Student is to us the only True Student ”

“ But the teacher herself has been at least something of a student while teaching; and she may have made an extensive study of the learning process as treated under apperception, attention, induction, and deduction, interest, etc. How, then, has she escaped a close acquaintance with the principal factors in study? The answer is that as a teacher she has always thought of herself as giving aid, and has never felt the need of examining into her own method of study. Why should she, if she has never been conscious of any particular weakness in that respect? ”

“ In short, she has been too much absorbed in herself to analyze the problems of independent study to be undertaken by her pupils, and yet not enough absorbed in herself to investigate her own study. Her psychology and pedagogy have not been valueless by any means; but, lacking the imagination to picture her pupils at work alone, and the sympathy to feel their confusion at such times, she has not been prompted to make an examination of the requirements they should meet when separated from her. ”

“ After a little time spent in copying these, your own predilections must determine your future course of study; only remember, whatever school you follow, it must be only to learn method, not to imitate result, and to acquaint yourself with the minds of other men, but not to adopt them as your own. Be assured that no good can come of our work but as it arises simply out of our own true natures, and the necessities of the time around us, though in many respects an evil one. ”

“ No one should ever be able to finish the history of his own education, because it is co-extensive with his life. In my father’s autobiography written shortly before his death, he attempts to sum up the effect of this self-education on himself, both as concerns his experimental research and also in regard to the literary part of his work. An instance of his modest estimate of his own mental progress, is so characteristic that I shall venture to quote it. ”

“ All learning is self-teaching. It is upon the working of the pupil's own mind that his progress in knowledge depends. The great business of the master is to teach the pupil to teach himself.
"Thinking, not growth, makes manhood," says Isaac Taylor. ”

“ Of course this is a platitude; but just consider that, if this be true of us, and true of us in those very subjects in which we have been training ourselves ever since we were seven years old, how much stronger is the point of it when it is applied to lecture-audiences that have not studied their subject, that have not even the elements of the study made accessible to them before they come, and that have not yet the means of following up the lessons that are then first propounded to them. ”

“ If you are a student force yourself to think independently; if a teacher compel your [Pg 30] youth to express their own minds. In listening to a lecture weigh the evidence as presented, cultivate a polite skepticism, not affected but genuine, keep a running fire of interrogation marks in your mind, and you will finally develop a mind of your own. Do not climb that mountain of learning in the hope that when you reach the summit you will be able to think for yourself; think for yourself while you are climbing. ”

“ Finally, when the scholar wishes it, he will examine him formally, but his real work will be to teach the scholar to make his own observations, to solve his own problems, to find his own aids to study in books, dictionaries, maps, etc., to fight his way through his own difficulties to victory and so reach the only moral reward for his trouble with broadened insight and increased strength. ”

“ Mental discipline had then the same relation to human activity that it has now. Until schools were created, all study was in the direction of real or apparent utility; all study outside of the schools is at present for knowledge or utility. ”

“ But these need not occupy the whole of your spare time; and, there are other branches of learning which ought immediately to follow. If your own calling or profession require book-study, books treating of that are to be preferred to all others; for, the first thing, the first object in life, is to secure the honest means of obtaining sustenance, raiment, and a state of being suitable to your rank, be that rank what it may: excellence in your own calling is, therefore, the first thing to be aimed at. ”

“ The relation of the mind to a study is determined by the nature of the mind and the nature of the study, and there seems to be no reason in psychology why a college-preparatory subject should be taught differently to one fitting for the duties of life. ”

“ In Part One of this book we have attempted to show the benefits which follow upon self-knowledge as to vocation. But this is only one phase, after all, of your life and activity. Obedience to the injunction, "know thyself," will help, also, to solve many of the hard problems you meet in education, social life, religion, morality, and family relations. The man who, through character analysis, has a scientific knowledge of himself, has therein a valuable guide to self-development and self-improvement. He knows which qualities to cultivate and which to restrain. ”

“ I studied myself as an isolated individual, and I studied myself in relation to others, and it was as a result of this study that I finally made a most disconcerting discovery—a discovery which was not made until I had184 entered upon my professorship, and which shocked me inexpressibly and bade fair, for a time, to put an end to my career as a teacher. ”