The Art of Thinking

Ernest Dimnet

Description

Dimnet's classic on the art of thinking provides the most useful tips and advice on how to improve one's mind, improve concentration and thinking better, and even answers some timeless and all-important questions such as "how do I be myself" and "how do I find myself." Finding an answer to these questions, Dimnet explains, is crucial to the production of any original thought. We must know ourselves in order to think for ourselves. This book is the key to effective thinking in today's complex world. Learn how the way we think can greatly improve the way we live.

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Confiance en soi et estime de soi
• Développement personnel
• développement personnel
• Personal Growth
• Self-Esteem
• Self-help
• Confiance
• Confiance en soi

Informations

• Publié par: Rare Treasure Editions
• Date de parution: 05 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 10
• EAN13: 9781774643044
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Art of Thinking
by Ernest Dimnet

First published in 1928
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
[e-mail]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

THE ART OF THINKING


by ERNEST DIMNET

PREFACE
What writer would dare to appropriate Voltaire’sverse in Le Pauvre Diable , and would dare to sayof his reader:
Il me choisit pour l’aider à penser?
Yet, it is a fact that millions of men and womenare anxious to take lessons in the Art of Thinkingand that some other men and women have to takethe risk of seeming presumptuous in offering thoselessons.
Anybody who does it need not be a genius. Geniushas never been supposed to be a particularly goodteacher of any art. It is better that the teacher ofthe Art of Thinking should not be a person whoknows no difficulty in thinking, or produces suchbrilliant thoughts that they will be disheartening tothe tyro. A delicate physician does not give the exampleof health—any woodsman can do that—heonly gives the example of a small capital of healthintelligently increased: yet, we know he can be moreuseful from his comprehension of indifferent healthand from his appreciation of hygiene, and we oftenprefer him. The author of this book is certainly notprepared to say that he has acted, or even is nowacting, up to his own principles; still he is not braggingin saying that he has probably felt their valuemore than many people nearer to genius than he is.Is not this enough? And is not a keen desire to be ofuse a sufficient claim to give modest advice?
The reader will soon find that this book, whateverits shortcomings, has been written for him. Its effortat being lucid and brief, its aversion to philosophicaljargon, its antipathy for a discouraging and generallyuseless bibliographical display, all come from a wishto help instead of dazzle. Most books are composedwith the more or less avowed object of being worksof art, that is to say of being an end in themselvesand ultimately rousing admiration. Egotism, in writingof any art, especially of an Art of Thinking,would be criminal, and it can be honestly said it hashad as little a share as possible in the preparationof this work.
It will be enough if the reader is conscious ofsympathy to which he has a right, and of a continuousstriving to help him in his effort to think hisbest and live his noblest.
Part One
ON THINKING
1. ON THINKING
A familiar scene. Five o’clock late in October. Thesunset over the reddening garden. You are standingnear the doorsill, looking, and not looking, thinking.Somebody steals by and you hear the words whispered“a penny for your thoughts.” What is youranswer?
Later in the day you are deep, or seem to bedeep, in a book. But your face does not look as itusually does when you are happy in your reading:your contracted brow reveals intense concentration,too intense for mere reading. In fact, you are milesaway, and to the questions: “What are you thinking?What book is that?” you answer very much as youdid when caught in that reverie, during the afternoon:“Oh! Thinking of nothing”; or, “Thinking ofall sorts of things.” Indeed, you were thinking of somany things that it was as if you had been thinkingof nothing. Once more you were conscious of somethingexperienced many times before: our mind isnot like a brilliantly lit and perfectly ordered room;it is much more like an encumbered garret inhabitedby moths born and grown up in half lights: ourthoughts; the moment we open the door to see thembetter the drab little butterflies vanish.
The consciousness of this phenomenon is discouraging,of course. This accounts for the fact that,when offered a penny for our thoughts, we generallylook, not only puzzled, but embarrassed, and anxious to be let alone not only by the questioner butby the question as well. We are like the puppy whois willing to bark once at his own image in the mirrorand to snap eagerly behind it, but who, after thesecond trial, looks away in disgust. Yet, with somecuriosity and some practice, it is not impossible tohave, at least, a peep at one’s mind. It should notbe attempted when we are too abstracted, that is tosay, when our consciousness is completely off itsguard but there are favorable occasions. When weare reading the newspaper and the quickly changingsubjects begin to tire, without quite exhausting us;when the motion of the train or of the car sets ourthoughts to a certain rhythm which may soon becomeabstraction or drowsiness, but still is only aslackening of the mental processes; when the lecturewe hear is neither good enough to rivet our attention,nor bad enough to irritate us; then, and everytime we are in a mental lull, is our chance to get aglimpse of our mind as it really works and as it revealsour innermost nature. By a sudden stiffeningof our consciousness, a quick face-about inwards,we can, as it were, solidify a section of mental streamwhich, during three or four seconds, will lie readyfor our inspection. If one succeeds in doing it once,one will certainly feel like doing it again, for noexamination of conscience is so strikingly illuminatingas that one, and the more frequent it will be, theeasier, at least during certain periods, it will alsobecome.
Why not do it now? A penny for your thoughts!What are you thinking of? . . .
You look up, surprised at what you regard as anexhibition of very poor taste in a writer.
—“ Thinking? Why, I am thinking of your book.You may not be as interested in writing, as I am inreading it. I love this subject. ”
—“Yes, I saw you were remarkably attentive;that’s why I interrupted you. Had you been wandering,it would have been useless. So you love thissubject?”
—“ I do indeed, and wish you would go on. Booksshould not talk. ”
—“When you say you love this subject, you meanit interests you, it excites something in you; in short,it makes you think.”
—“ Quite. ”
—“Of course, these thoughts which occur to youas you read are your own, they are no mere reflectionsof what I am saying, and that is the chief reasonfor which you enjoy them as they rise from behindmy sentences. Is it not so?”
—“ Very likely, Sir. I begin to like this conversation. ”
—“Yes, it is about you; I knew you would like it.So, these thoughts which are your own and notmine are exterior to this book. Don’t you think theycould be called a sort of distraction?”
—“ It would be rather unfair, Sir. I assure you Iam following you closely; yet, I must admit that Iam not trying to memorize what you say: it wouldspoil all the pleasure I find in this. I am even willingto admit that my pleasure is my own and thereforemight be called, as you say, a sort of distraction.In fact, I was thinking . . . ”
—“Ah! here we are! You were thinking . . . ?”
—“ Well, I was thinking of a farm, up in Maine,where there used to be a garret like the one you spoke of. In summer, when we were there, the smellof winter apples was still in it, and I loved it. Iwould sit there for hours, as a boy, thinking. Yousee, after all, I was thinking of thinking. As a matterof fact, often when I see the picture which givesme the deepest impression of happy thinking—theportrait of Erasmus writing—I think of the old garret.I have no doubt that I thought of Erasmus, afew minutes ago, for I was positively annoyed, for amoment, at the recollection of a man who oncestood before that picture and asked me: who is thisold fellow looking down his long nose? I hate a fool.The memory of this one actually made me fidget inmy chair, and I had to make an effort to think ofsomething else. ”
—“You see that I was not far wrong; you havebeen thinking of a number of things which were notin this book.”
—“ Yes, but they came because of the book, andI should not be surprised if I were to think of yourbook, remember whole passages of it, I mean, to-morrowwhile doing important work at my office. ”
—“Thank you. Have you been thinking of thattoo?”
—“ Why, it would be difficult not to. What I shallbe signing to-morrow involves a sum I might takefive years to make. However, I am almost sure thateverything will go well and I can buy poor Jim thepartnership he wants. ”
—“In the meantime here’s the penny I owe you.For I begin to know your thoughts pretty well.Naturally they are, every one of them, about you,and that is as it should be. There are, of course, inyour mind, thoughts hidden so deep that no amount of digging up could reveal them, but there is nodoubt that they would be even nearer your ego than those you have discovered in the course of ourconversation. Sometimes, very unexpectedly, we becomeaware of the tingling of our arteries in ourheads, even of the fact that we are alive; this consciousnessis of no use whatever to us, unless itsomehow concurs in keeping us alive, but we arelavish when our Self is at stake. Do not imaginethat I am reproaching you.”
—“ You would be ungrateful, for let me repeatthat I have seldom read anything so attentively asthis book. ”
—“Certainly. Yet, you must also admit that whileyou were interested in this book you were interestedin something else. It is so with everybody. Have youever heard that Sir Walter Scott, when he had foundthe nucleus of a new novel by which his imaginationwould naturally be engrossed, would, however, readvolume after volume that had no reference to hissubject, merely because reading intensified the workingof his brain? These books did for his power ofinvention what the crowds in the city did for Dickens’s.When you say that you were reading thisbook attentively, you mean that your intellect wasexpending some share of your consciousness—letus say one fifth or, at best, one third of it—on thebook. But your intellect is only a sor