s THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE MIND. practised with regard to the authors which you read, viz. If the method of a book be irregular, reduce it into form by a little analysis of your, own, or by hints in the margin ; if those things are heaped together which should be separated, you may wisely distinguish and divide them. If several things relating to the same subject are scattered up and down separately through the treatise, you may bring them all to one view by references ; or if themetier of a book be really valuableand deserving, you may throw it into a better method, reduce it to a more logical scheme, or abridge it into a lesser form ; all these practices will have a tendency both to advance your skill in logic and method, to im- proveyour judgment in general, and to give you a fuller survey of that subject in particular. When you have finished the treatise with all your observations upon it, recollect and deter- mine what real improvements you have made by reading that author. VIII. Ifa book has no index to it, or good table of contents it is very useful to make one as you are reading it ; not with that exactness as to include the sense of every page and paragraph, which should be done if you designed to print it ; but it is suffi- cient in your index to take notice only of those parts of the book which are new to you, or which you think well written, and well worthy of your remembrance or review. Shall I be so free as to assure my younger friends, from my Own experience, that these methods of reading will cost some pains in the first years of your study, and especially in the first authors which you peruse in any science, or on any particular subject ; but the profit will richly compensate the pains. And in the following years of life, after you have read a few valuable books on any special subject in this manner, it will be very easy to read others of the same kind, because you will not usually find very much new matter in them which you have not already examined. IX. If the writer be remarkable for any peculiar excellen- cies or defects in his style or manner of writing, make just ob- servations upon this also ; and whatever ornaments you find there, or whatsoever blemishes occur in the language or man- ner of the writer, you tray make just remarks upon them.-- And remember, that one book read over in this manner, with all this laborious meditation, will tend more to enrich your understanding, than the skimming over the surface of twenty authors. X. By perusing books in the manner I. have described, you will make all your reading subservient not only to the enlarge- ment of your treasures of knowledge, but also to the improve- ìnent of yotìr reasoning powers. There are many who read with constancyanddiligence, and yet make no advances in true knowledgeby it. They are de-
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