The difference between the effect that thinking for oneself and that reading has on the mind is incredibly great; hence it is continually developing that original difference in minds which induces one man to think and another to read.  Reading forces thoughts upon the mind which are as foreign and heterogeneous to the bent and mood in which it may be for the moment, as the seal is to the wax on which it stamps its imprint.  The mind thus suffers total compulsion from without; it has first this and first that to think about, for which it has at the time neither instinct nor liking.

On the other hand, when a man thinks for himself he follows his own impulse, which either his external surroundings or some kind of recollection has determined at the moment.  His visible surroundings do not leave upon his mind one single definite thought as reading does, but merely supply him with material and occasion to think over what is in keeping with his nature and present mood.  This is why much reading robs the mind of all elasticity; it is like keeping a spring under a continuous, heavy weight.  If a man does not want to think, the safest plan is to take up a book directly he has a spare moment.

This practice accounts for the fact that learning makes most men more stupid and foolish than they are by nature, and prevents their writings from being a success; they remain, as Pope has said,

  “For ever reading, never to be read.”—­Dunciad iii. 194.

Men of learning are those who have read the contents of books.  Thinkers, geniuses, and those who have enlightened the world and furthered the race of men, are those who have made direct use of the book of the world.

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Indeed, it is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them.  For it is these that he really and completely understands.  To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of some one else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

The thought we read is related to the thought which rises in us, as the fossilised impress of a prehistoric plant is to a plant budding out in spring.

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Reading is merely a substitute for one’s own thoughts.  A man allows his thoughts to be put into leading-strings.

Further, many books serve only to show how many wrong paths there are, and how widely a man may stray if he allows himself to be led by them.  But he who is guided by his genius, that is to say, he who thinks for himself, who thinks voluntarily and rightly, possesses the compass wherewith to find the right course.  A man, therefore, should only read when the source of his own thoughts stagnates; which is often the case with the best of minds.