Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/260

254 social and other engagements, besides the loafing hour, the theater, concert, special lectures galore, the newspapers and magazines to scan, the letters to write home and other places, applications for schools to make, etc., one might well exclaim, "And when do the}' find time to study?"

Many students take on altogether too many activities. In my own observation I have known several students who arrested their development badly by getting too many irons in the fire. A student's popularity is not infrequently the cause of his intellectual arrest. By attempting debates, athletics, dramatics, study and society, all at the same time, his energies are dissipated, his growth stunted, while his plodding companion by everlastingly keeping at a few things finally becomes a master and frequently astonishes even himself as well as his acquaintances. Even short courses with too much variety, except for inspiration, are uneconomical, because they do not lay permanent foundations. Too many open lecture courses provided by faculties may easily be distracting and a source of dissipation. The student must learn to say no to the siren's voice which continually beckons him on to new fields.

I sometimes feel that there ought to be some course labeled "thinking" in which the individual should be isolated from everybody long enough to really empty his mind of all ideas which are merely echoes, and then to discern what are really his own. With all the distraction of congested social life, the time may come when it would be a blessing for the state to imprison a few great men each year and allow them only pen, ink and paper. It may have been a fortunate thing for the world that John Bunyan languished in prison until his thoughts had had time to germinate and come to full fruition. Possibly the blind Milton, shut away from the distractions of visual stimuli, may have looked within and discovered thoughts struggling for expression, but stifled with ephemeral ideas of sense perception.

While we are rightly emphasizing group activities as an aid in developing altruism, I wonder whether students do not sometimes misinterpret its meaning. Self-activity is fundamental in the process of acquisition of knowledge. No knowledge is of much value that is not made one's own personal possession. This means more than the recital of words and formulæ gained from books and companions. In their desire to be helpful I sometimes see students in groups, even sitting on the stairways when the crowds are passing, believing they are studying together. When one hears the bits of gossip interspersed between the formulæ, the declensions and historical dates one wonders where the calm reflection, deep concentration, analysis, comparison, doubt, contemplation, deliberation, complete abstraction, enter in.

An oversocial room-mate who persists in retailing the gossip of the day during the hour set apart for study is an uneconomical acquisition.