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