Page:Of the conduct of the understanding (IA ofconductofunder00lock).pdf/74

68 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 load of collections; unless we chew them over again they will not give us strength and nourishment. There are indeed in some writers visible instances of deep thoughts, close and acute reasoning, and ideas well pursued. The light these would give would be of great use if their reader would observe and imitate them; all the rest at best are but particulars fit to be turned into knowledge, but that can be done only by our own meditation and examining the reach, force, and coherence of what is said, and then as far as we apprehend and see the connection of ideas so far it is ours; without that it is but so much loose matter floating in our brain. The memory may be stored, but the judgment is little better, and the stock of knowledge not increased by being able to repeat what others have said or produce the arguments we have found in them. Such a knowledge as this is but knowledge by hearsay, and the ostentation of it is at best but talking by rote, and very often upon weak and wrong principles. For all that is to be found in books is not built upon true foundations, nor always rightly deduced from the