the practise of
consecutive thinking, by which we mean _welding a number of separate
thought-links into a chain that will hold_. Take one link at a time, see
that each naturally belongs with the ones you link to it, and remember
that a single missing link means _no chain_.

Thinking is the most fascinating and exhilarating of all mental
exercises. Once realize that your opinion on a subject does not
represent the choice you have made between what Dr. Cerebrum has written
and Professor Cerebellum has said, but is the result of your own
earnestly-applied brain-energy, and you will gain a confidence in your
ability to speak on that subject that nothing will be able to shake.
Your thought will have given you both power and reserve power.

Someone has condensed the relation of thought to knowledge in these
pungent, homely lines:

"Don't give me the man who thinks he thinks,
Don't give me the man who thinks he knows,
But give me the man who knows he thinks,
And I have the man who knows he knows!"

_Reading As a Stimulus to Thought_

No matter how dry the cow, however, nor how poor our ability to milk,
there is still the milkman--we can read what others have seen and felt
and thought. Often, indeed, such records will kindle within us that
pre-essential and vital spark, the _desire_ to be a thinker.

The following selection is taken from one of Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis's
lectures, as given in "A Man's Value to Society." Dr. Hillis is a most
fluent speaker--he never refers to notes. He has reserve power. His mind
is a veritable treasure-house of facts and ideas. See how he draws from
a knowledge of fifteen different general or special subjects: geology,
plant life, Palestine, chemistry, Eskimos, mythology, literature, The
Nile, history, law, wit, evolution, religion, biography, and
electricity. Surely, it needs no sage to discover that the secret of
this man's reserve power is the old secret of our artesian well whose
abundance surges from unseen depths.

_THE USES OF BOOKS AND READING[9]_

Each Kingsley approaches a stone as a jeweler approaches a casket to
unlock the hidden gems. Geikie causes the bit of hard coal to unroll
the juicy bud, the thick odorous leaves, the pungent boughs, until
the bit of carbon enlarges into the beauty of a tropic forest. That
little book of Grant Allen's called "How Plants Grow" exhibits trees
and shrubs as eating, drinking and marrying.