[LOCKE’S CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING.]

The transition from Milton to Locke is the inverse of that from Hobbes to Milton.  Locke was also a man of few books.  If he had been sent to school under Milton, as he might have been,[16] he would have very soon thrown up the learned drudgery prescribed for him, and would have bolted.

The practical outcome of Locke’s enquiries respecting the human faculties is to be found in the little treatise named—­“The Conduct of the Understanding”.  It is an earnest appeal in favour of devotion to the attainment of truth, and an exposure of all the various sources of error, moral and intellectual; more especially prejudices and bias.  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.  We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great deal of collections, unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.”  Farther:  “Books and reading are looked upon to be the great helps of the understanding, and instruments of knowledge, as it must be allowed that they are; and yet I beg leave to question whether these do not prove a hindrance to many, and keep several bookish men from attaining to solid and true knowledge”.  Here, again, is his stern way of dealing with any author:—­“To fix in the mind the clear and distinct idea of the question stripped of words; and so likewise, in the train of argumentation, to take up the author’s ideas, neglecting his words, observing how they connect or separate those in the question.”  Of this last, more afterwards.

[WATT’S IMPROVEMENT OF THE MIND.]

A disciple of Locke, and a man of considerable and various powers, the non-conformist divine Isaac Watts, produced perhaps the first considerable didactic treatise on Study.  I refer, of course, to his well-known work entitled “The Improvement of the Mind”; on which, he tells us, he was occupied at intervals for twenty years.  It has two Parts:  one on the acquisition of knowledge; the other on Communication or leaching.  The scheme is a very wide one.  Observation, Reading, attending Lectures, Conversation,—­are all included.  To the word “Study,” Watts attaches a special meaning, namely Meditation and Reflection, together with the control or regulation of all the exercises of the mind.  I doubt if this meaning is well supported by usage.  At all events it is not the signification that I propose to attach to the term.  Observation is an art in itself:  so is Conversation, whether amicable or contentious.  The proportions that these exercises should bear to reading, would fairly claim a place in the complete Art of Study.