Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/177

Rh comprehension of the laws of nature or understanding of the principles which are symbolized by the language which the student may have acquired ability to use fluently. In other words, a full knowledge of the names of things may be acquired by study, together with ability to talk fluently about them without much personal comprehension, or, as we say, grasp, of the things described. This possibility I have seen realized particularly among students who from their youth have been rigidly trained in the old classical method of education. Men trained strictly by this method understand words with precision and acquire a full vocabulary. They may be able to speak eloquently on subjects of which they know little. I have seen such scholars (juniors or seniors in college), who upon receiving the clue to the subject on which they were expected to write examination papers, could spin out a creditable set of answers quite superior to those written by their less trained (literarily) companions, whose real comprehension of the subject, as shown by other tests, was vastly superior to their own.

The pure student also may be said to be hindered from doing his best by stopping to investigate either the meaning or the application of the simple statements recorded in the verbal text before him. This learning by rote is an evil result of carrying study to excess, but it is also a definite aim of study pure and simple. A second result, more or less evil and which comes also as a natural result of pure study, is the tendency to lead the learner to accept, without question, the correctness of the statements he learns. He learns to depend upon others for his knowledge, and thus the expression 'getting knowledge at second-hand' becomes an actuality for the pure student. Although a successful student, he may fail not only to comprehend what he learns, but fail to think for himself. Nevertheless, the learning of other people's knowledge is an essential step in educating one's intellectual powers for higher work. We must have a wide knowledge of words and their meanings, and a good facility in the use of language, before we can successfully carry on systematic thought; and the more full and precise his vocabulary the wider and deeper will be the possibilities of both the investigator and the man of original research. Study is thus an essential preparation for investigation; but if the two be mixed too early in one's educational progress, the results will be deficient by virtue both of the inaccuracy of the learning and of the immaturity of the investigation.

A student who begins to investigate too early will, on the one hand, degrade the quality of his scholarship, and, on the other, he will find that the immature conceptions of science which he first forms must often be abandoned upon fuller investigation; or if retained will lessen the value of his results and place him in secondary rank as an investigator.