intellectual attainments of the
mere man of learning are like a large palette, full of all sorts of
colors, which at most are systematically arranged, but devoid of
harmony, connection and meaning.

Reading is thinking with some one else's head instead of one's own. To
think with one's own head is always to aim at developing a coherent
whole--a system, even though it be not a strictly complete one; and
nothing hinders this so much as too strong a current of others'
thoughts, such as comes of continual reading. These thoughts,
springing every one of them from different minds, belonging to
different systems, and tinged with different colors, never of
themselves flow together into an intellectual whole; they never form a
unity of knowledge, or insight, or conviction; but, rather, fill
the head with a Babylonian confusion of tongues. The mind that is
over-loaded with alien thought is thus deprived of all clear insight,
and is well-nigh disorganized. This is a state of things observable
in many men of learning; and it makes them inferior in sound sense,
correct judgment and practical tact, to many illiterate persons,
who, after obtaining a little knowledge from without, by means of
experience, intercourse with others, and a small amount of reading,
have always subordinated it to, and embodied it with, their own
thought.

The really scientific _thinker_ does the same thing as these
illiterate persons, but on a larger scale. Although he has need
of much knowledge, and so must read a great deal, his mind is
nevertheless strong enough to master it all, to assimilate and
incorporate it with the system of his thoughts, and so to make it
fit in with the organic unity of his insight, which, though vast, is
always growing. And in the process, his own thought, like the bass in
an organ, always dominates everything and is never drowned by other
tones, as happens with minds which are full of mere antiquarian lore;
where shreds of music, as it were, in every key, mingle confusedly,
and no fundamental note is heard at all.

Those who have spent their lives in reading, and taken their wisdom
from books, are like people who have obtained precise information
about a country from the descriptions of many travellers. Such
people can tell a great deal about it; but, after all, they have no
connected, clear, and profound knowledge of its real condition. But
those who have spent their lives in thinking, resemble the travellers
themselves; t