THE STREAM OF THOUGHT IN LISTENING AND READING

Reading is thinking along a prescribed line that lies goldenly beneath the flow of words.

BRUMBAUGH.

Whittier uses words as stepping-stones upon which with a light and joyous bound he crosses and recrosses at will the rapid and rushing stream of thought.

LONGFELLOW.

To listen well is to think well,—the hearing ear must be attended by the alert mind, eager to seize upon incoming sensations and weave them into a garland of thought.

Words, however well constructed originally, are always tending, like coins, to have their inscription worn off by passing from hand to hand; and the only possible mode of reviving it is to be ever stamping it afresh by living in the habitual contemplation of the phenomena themselves, and not resting in our familiarity with the words that express them.

XIV

THE STREAM OF THOUGHT IN LISTENING AND READING

Two men engaged in speculative pursuits met after one had published a book. Let us speak of them as A and B.

A: I have just read your new book. Many things in it please me very much, but in it you say so and so, with which I do not find myself in full accord.

B: I say nothing of the kind in that book.

A: I surely read your book.

B: You never read a book in your life. You read some sentences or paragraphs; your mind begins to react upon what you have read; and ere long you imagine that your inferences are the conclusions of the author.

A: I have a notion to write a psychology, and to set forth my views in full.

B: Don’t you do it. You know no psychology. You have been of great service in stimulating others to think; you are a most delightful lecturer; but you have never mastered psychology.

If a third party could have listened to the conversation, what stream of consciousness would have started in his mind? Possibly surprise at the frankness of B and the composure of A, mingled with thoughts of what they were discussing. In other words, a strong tinge of feeling would be perceptible in the stream of thought. In the minds of the two engaged in the dialogue, feeling must have greatly modified the current of thought. The greatest kindness that can be shown to some men is to oppose or criticise their views. Opposition and criticism stimulate their thinking, and rouse their mental powers to the highest possible tension and activity. In men of the opposite temperament, feeling beclouds their thinking, and makes the stream of thought more sluggish. The common prejudice against appeals to feeling are due to the abuse of the right which every orator has of addressing the feelings through the intellect, and of thereby moving the will. To move the will is the essence and aim of all eloquence. In listening or lecturing, in reading or composing, some form of emotion always accompanies the stream of thought. The orator may move the hearer to tears or to laughter; he is not untrue to his mission if he can thereby win a vote, secure a verdict, or move the hearer to action. A lecture is addressed primarily to the understanding. It is greatly improved if the stream of thought which it starts and supplies is accompanied by feelings of interest and the pleasurable emotions attendant upon novelty, curiosity, or admiring approval. The consciousness that we understand a lecture is accompanied by pleasurable emotions which help to sustain the attention.

The writer once paid a shilling to hear Spurgeon. It was his purpose to get a good seat, so that he might study this famous preacher’s gestures and delivery, the quality of his voice, and the secret of his eloquence. The text was hardly announced before every one in the audience, including the writer, forgot all about Spurgeon, and thought only of his message to the thousands before him. The secret of his oratory lay in his ability to make the audience forget everything except the gospel he was preaching. If people, after hearing a speaker, talk of his fine delivery, his flowery language and beautiful figures of speech, or his peculiarities of pronunciation and other eccentricities, it is proof positive that he has failed. Instead of holding the attention to what he was saying, the audience was thinking of his manner and delivery. A well-printed book has the advantage of keeping the author’s personal characteristics from interfering with the stream of thought. It has the disadvantage of losing all the helps to listening and thinking which come from the tones of the voice and eloquent delivery.

The accusation of B against A, referred to at the beginning of this chapter, is applicable to many readers. For several sentences the mind is riveted upon the author’s meaning. Presently a train of thought starts; the eye runs along the sentences to the bottom of the page. On turning the page, the reader wakes up to the consciousness that his mind does not retain, perhaps never had the slightest notion of the contents of said page. Often the train of thought leads to no goal; the thinking resembles the process of wool-gathering, the tufts of wool on bushes and hedges necessitating much wandering to little purpose.