HELPS TO STUDYING 193 



HELPS TO STUDYING- 



By Professor JOSEPH W. RICHARDS, Ph.D. 



LEHIGH UNIVERSITY 



TO study means to concentrate the mind and attention on a subject, 

 and to keep it there until the difficulties are mastered and the 

 subject understood. 



Aside from the philosophical principles involved in absorption of 

 the mind upon one idea or in one line of thought, there are certain 

 physical or even mechanical aids to this end which are well to know. 

 The writer is not skilled in mental philosophy, but has observed cer- 

 tain simple facts pertinent to the subject of studying which may assist 

 others, and therefore he takes this opportunity of setting them forth. 

 Any one can easily determine for himself how true they are, or whether 

 they apply to him personally or not. 



The first enemy to concentration is a roving attention, the coming 

 up into the mind of thoughts or recollections foreign to the matter 

 being studied. I have seen a student, supposedly hard at his task, fix 

 his eyes abstractedly on a corner of the room and think for five or ten 

 minutes of something else, then suddenly recollect that his lesson was 

 not being thus mastered, and with an effort, and perhaps a yawn, bring 

 his attention back to his book. Such a youth is in a pretty bad way, as 

 far as study is concerned, yet the remedy is simple, if he will apply it. 

 I have spoken of the effort to bring his attention back to the book; let 

 him, as soon as he feels the inclination to let his attention wander from 

 the book, make the same effort to keep it there, and he will nip the 

 evil in the bud. It is no harder, surely, to hold the attention, to pre- 

 vent it wandering, than it is to bring it back after it has wandered. 

 But, said youth may say " That is fearfully hard work " ; to which we 

 reply that study is admittedly hard work, but the hardest part of it is 

 just this effort to keep the mind steadily on the subject studied. What 

 we mean is, that the student must make a hard, determined and ear- 

 nest fight to keep his attention from roving, that he must fetch his 

 mind back to the straight road by a vigorous mental effort, as soon as 

 he finds it tending to stray, just as a skilful driver reins his horse back 

 into the highway the instant he sees it turn towards a byway. Keep 

 your mind and its activity well in hand, be its master and compel it to 

 do what you want it to do. Such is mental power. 



The next enemy is noise or interruption of any kind, be it even so 

 melodious as the finest music. It acts, of course, by distracting the at- 



