The Art of Thinking

A familiar scene. Five o'clock late in October, sunset over the reddening garden. You are standing near the doorsill, looking, and not looking, thinking. Somebody steals by and you hear the words whispered "a penny for your thoughts." What is your answer?

Later in the day you are deep, or seem to be deep, in a book. But your face does not look as it usually does when you are happy in your reading: your contracted brow reveals intense concentration, too intense for mere reading. In fact, you are miles away, and to the questions: "What are you thinking? What book is that?" you answer very much as you did when caught in that reverie, during the afternoon: "Oh! Thinking of nothing" or, "Thinking of all sorts of things." Indeed, you were thinking of so many things that it was as if you had been thinking of nothing. Once more you were conscious of something experienced many times before: our mind is not like a brilliantly lit and perfectly ordered room; it is much more like an encumbered garret inhabited by moths born and grown up in half lights: our thoughts; the moment we open the door to see them better the drab little butterflies vanish.

If you will refer to §c. of Chapter 6, Part II, on the danger of weak reading, you will know what to expect from this. Reading, to most people, means an ashamed way of killing time disguised under a dignified name. Trifling with print in that manner quickly diminishes the resilience of the intellect. It goes directly against an Art of Thinking.

If you wish to use books as an adjunct to thought, they must be books that will not merely amuse or put your mind to sleep, but, on the contrary, will keep it wide awake and alert.