p. 148 | A WAY TO GROW WISE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Tuesday, March 10, 1885.

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 62, No. 10. Whole No. 1605.

A WAY TO GROW WISE.

After reading a book, or an article, or any other item of information from any reliable source, before turning your attention to other things, give two or three minutes’ quiet thought to the subject that has just been presented to your mind; see how much you can remember concerning it; and if there are any new instructive facts, or points of especial interest, that impressed you as you read, force yourself to recall them. It may be a little trouble at first until your mind gets under control and learns to obey your will; but the very effort to think it all out will engrave the facts upon the memory,—so deeply that they will not be effaced by the rushing in of a new and different set of ideas: whereas, if the matter is given no further consideration at all, the impressions you have received will fade away so entirely that within a few weeks you are totally unable to remember more than the outline of them.

Form the good habit, then, of always viewing what has just been read. It exercises and disciplines the mental faculties, strengthens the memory, and teaches concentration of thought.

You will soon learn, in this way, to think and reason intelligently, to separate and classify different kinds of information; to train the mind, instead of being a lumber room in which the various contents are thrown together in careless confusion and disorder, to become a storehouse where each special fact or item of knowledge, neatly labelled, has its own particular place, and is ready for use the instant there is need of it.—St. Nicholas