the methods of study: the purposes as determining the

methods.

What to look for in studying. Study that is undertaken for a specific purpose always seems more tangible to the student than general study. In reading for a debate, a report, or a dissertation, the need of selection and of mastery is prominent from the beginning. The student knows what he is after, and works accordingly. In any special assignment in a literary or historical text the particular point to be noticed is commonly made known by the instructor - an author's view of some phase of human life, a chronicler's significant omissions, a scientist's way of attacking a difficult problem. Comparisons between one author and another are often recommended. An earlier and a later statement of some theory by the same writer are brought together. In these and other ways study of literary texts and of collateral readings has an advantage over a textbook. Study of the textbook has no specific purpose less broad than the course itself. It is like any other daily task that is to be faithfully done by one who is preparing for the future. A general purpose to excel in intellectual power, and especially to get the most out of the particular course in question, is the motive power.

A wise teacher undertakes to give all study, even of textbooks, a more specific aim by the classroom discussions. From the student's point of view this matter of motive can often be settled by asking himself, as he turns to a chapter in his textbook, "What am I looking for in this passage? Why is it supposed to be important? Why did the author put it in?" Many apparently superfluous chapters become necessary upon a review of the general outline of the subject. What seems to be repetition is seen to be enlargement, reënforcement. What seems to be obvious is emphasized because it is the premise for a conclusion that is not obvious. There is usually a reason for everything that finds its way into a well-constructed textbook.

Study in the interrogative mood. There will be abundant specific motive for the study of any text if the student keeps before him the threefold inquiry:

1. What is the writer trying to do?

2. How well has he done it ?

3. What good has it done, or can it do, for the world?

This shifts the third question from a mere lazy "What's the use?" to a judgment of value, based on the judgments of fact in the first and second. So placed, the question of value is natural, proper, inevitable. First, one must discover the writer's aim; then, one must estimate his relative success in accomplishing that aim; and finally, one must attempt to see what it means in terms of personal value, of worth for the world and the individual. This inquiring habit of mind should dominate all textbook study. A freshman might well set before his eyes, as he studies, a sheet of white paper with a large question mark (?) in the center of it, signifying "What? How? Why?" He is to challenge the book, and the book will challenge him.

In such an interrogative mood, one sits down with a textbook of history or literature to "get the lesson." Or one sits in the library with a volume from which a chapter of collateral reading has been assigned. In either case there is writing to be done as the reading proceeds. In the case of a textbook owned by the student, the book itself should be marked as suggested below. In the case of borrowed texts or library books, the writing is done in a notebook, which must be always at hand. For marking a textbook a pencil is better than a pen, for one may wish to change the notes after further consideration.

How to mark a book for analysis. As was suggested in Chapter II, the first reading of a study passage should be moderately rapid. The principal purpose of it is to grasp the larger units, the grand divisions, of the assignment. The sen

tences marking these should be underlined in the text, and numbered I, II, III, etc., in the margin; or, in using a book not one's own, they should be copied into a notebook, with spaces between. Subheads should next be written in for each paragraph, or group of paragraphs, which treats a new phase of the subject; or these, too, may be indicated by underlining key-sentences; in either case appropriate letters, A, B, C, show the relation of these to the main points. In textbooks which have subheads and numbers already supplied, mere underlining of a key-word or phrase will often help to fix the outline in the mind. This marking of the book or copying of an outline into the notebook has a twofold purpose: first, to aid the judgment and the memory by the physical act of writing; secondly, to give the eye, and so the mind, something to focus on during the more careful second reading of the passage.

What fly-leaves are for. There is a kind of study-notes which cannot be written into the margins because of lack of space. These are the brief tabulations of a complicated subject, like the declensions, or conjugations, or rules for tenses, in a Latin or French grammar; or the great fundamental laws of chemistry; or a series of scattered events, like the Crusades, or the relations of England and France in history. The flyleaves of textbooks are the place for such outlines and tables; better than a notebook, since material of this kind belongs with the text. To see the contents of half a dozen chapters thus set forth in a single scheme of one's own devising (never borrowed) is to feel a new and exhilarating sense of mastery over the material.

Learning a lesson not mere memorizing. The task now is to "learn" the lesson so surveyed and mapped. To learn a lesson is to supplement the text by relating it to other known facts; to organize it into a unified whole made up of related parts; to judge of the relative worth of its statements, considered in their relation to one another and to other standards; and finally to fix in the memory, by logical association, so

much of the outline as will suggest the rest. There is only one book on the art of study which gives practical suggestions valuable for college students, and even that is written largely from the elementary teacher's point of view: McMurry's How to Study and Teaching how to Study. Chapters V, VI, and VII, in that book, on "The Organization of Ideas," "Judging of the Soundness and General Worth of Statements," and "Memorizing," are invaluable for the college student, and should be read in connection with this chapter. Notes of these chapters should be preserved. The whole book is useful for students intending to teach.

An example of study: 1. the preliminary survey.To apply these principles to a text, we may choose such a passage as Chapter XII in Cheyney's A Short History of England, on "The Early Tudor Period." Let us assume that the student is reading this as collateral material for a course in the history of English literature. He finds that the chapter covers fifty pages, containing 103 paragraphs, divided into fifty-two sections, with subheads in black-face type. Such an assignment, too long for a course in English history, is not excessive for a rapid survey course in literature, for the reason that the bearing of the period on literature can be stated under a few points. The chapter covers the reigns of Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary. The reign of Henry VII covers eleven pages, that of Henry VIII twenty, of Edward VI nine, of Lady Jane Grey one, of Mary seven, the summary one page. Evidently the two Henrys are more important than their successors. Furthermore, a survey of the material as outlined in the subheads shows that the really vital things in the chapter are the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. It becomes imperative, therefore, that the student should know what these two great movements meant in England; how they came to be; how they expressed themselves in literature; what they led to in the brief reigns of Edward VI and Mary.

2. The second reading: organizing the material. With this clew to the intrinsic importance of the period and its special significance for literature, the student is in a position to reread the chapter. He must now fix firmly in his mind the introduction of printing into England, the revival of classical studies, the names and work of Caxton, More, Erasmus, Tyndale and Coverdale, Cranmer. It is the destructive work of the age represented in the ruined abbeys all over England, and the constructive work represented in the English Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, that really count for literature. Using his judgment and his previous knowledge of literature to view this period in such a perspective, the student in his second reading skims or skips whole pages of political and ecclesiastical detail. On the other hand, certain political affairs otherwise unimportant to the literary student become interesting on account of their connection with poetry or drama. Shakespeare's Henry VIII and Scott's Marmion, hitherto familiar to the student, are now associated by their subjects with this early Tudor period. A reader who knows anything of English architecture recognizes in the period the end of Perpen'dicular Gothic and the beginning of the so-called Tudor style; events represented respectively by Henry VII's chapel at Westminster, and Wolsey's palace at Hampton Court. It is the period that marks the end of medieval and the beginning of modern history. Here "lingered the last enchantments of the Middle Ages ;" here began the restless modern striving toward a free mind, a free spirit, and a free state.

The importance of restating the main points for oneself. Now the student is not likely to imagine that his own restatement of the significance of the period in subheads or outlines of his own making is superior or equal to the author's. Why make it then? Because it is " a poor thing, but mine own." It is the organizing of thought, as McMurry calls it; marshaling ideas, and putting first things in the front rank, second things in the rear, and immaterial things, if there be