EDUCATION THROUGH READING 147 



no whit the less valuable for this. Thought going into the mind may 

 change form, as food turns into blood, but it is never lost. 



However, though the jotting down of impressions against paragraphs 

 read is never, in itself, useless, it is none the less proper to warn you 

 against writing too many of these memoranda. Very frequent or very 

 long pauses for that purpose not only consume time but also interrupt 

 interest and dim the impression made on you by the author's thought as 

 a whole. Moreover, it is pleasant to reflect that the older you grow in 

 the reading business the less you will need to remit reading for the sake 

 of a note and the less likely you will be to do so unnecessarily. Take 

 notes, then, but not too many. 



Notes should be written in ink, legibly, each with careful reference 

 to book, chapter and paragraph or page. You will never know which of 

 your many entries you may by and by wish to appeal to, and it would be 

 a pity in time of need, to have aid near, of which, owing to negligent 

 writing, you could not avail yourself. Use for notes very ordinary blank 

 books, or pads, of good paper, writing on only one side of a leaf, so that 

 each leaf may be readily detached if necessary. Take notes, not many, 

 but few, perfectly plain, and on easily detachable leaves. 



We have been explaining that the reader must "take" notes: "We 

 now urge that he must " make " notes, by which is meant something ad- 

 ditional and more important. The new point is this : that you should 

 not be satisfied with thinking your author's thoughts after him, but 

 should follow out all fertile suggestions made by him, into reflections of 

 your own. Horace Bushnell used to say that he could never possibly 

 read a book through. If it did not " find " him he threw it away on that 

 account. If it did "find" him he was early beguiled by it into inde- 

 pendent cogitations, which interested him more than the author's, so 

 that he deserted the book on their account. These reactions of the read- 

 ers's own mentality are the very best fruit of reading. Encourage them : 

 give up to them: let them divert and master you. The book which 

 drives you from itself by rousing you to amend, refute or amplify its 

 teaching is precisely the book you need. It is life-giving food for your 

 mind. 



You here discover what was meant by the remark that we digest 

 mental stores in conserving them and conserve them by digesting. 



All thought-germs of your own, no less than the plants not your own 

 that you culled from the other man's garden; the original matters no 

 less than the memoranda, must be laid away, so many green flowers, for 

 preservation in note-books. Use one and the same series of books for 

 both sorts of products. 



So far as you can manage it, whether with the notes you have taken 

 or with the notes you have made, confine each note to one subject and 

 to one page of the book, leaving the rest of the page blank. If a note 



