iret, othe art of thinking fa the art of, vein neal and the net tam envy BRE eta ones by one Take sear Salt Nocnaton a, wob Batis couth—for two or three hours Bad tov te simply" aad, tenn Birouly" sous praome, hae Annoyances, remembering that "you Sevigne asta" to. enifes "You will soon discover Why aries mind his discoveries Ing in'ted through the morning These sentences are fair examples vf the author's manner throughout two thirds of the book. He engages fne slightly protesting attention vith slightly fallacious advice: we arch some of his enthusiasm, bat hecopt neither his premises nor his counsel without some qualifeation. Sanyo busy person has achieved isolation in the midst of worldly of an envelope, and his literature was confined to the Bible and a book of jokes. The truth is that there is an infinite diversity of paths, or perhaps no paths at all, but an open plain, leading to the feitadel of the Self.
Which of us has not been astonished at the wisdom of some shepherd or gillie, or the philosophy acquired by some uunlettered sailor during the night watches, alone with the sea? Constant company with clever people, cither in life or literature, and constant scrutiny of our own mental processes, is likely to produce diffidence end sterility. One thinker need be no wiser than another who has followed a different path. The Abbé Dinmet can only tell us, in the end, what we already know in our hearts, Anyone who hopes to cemently by merely reading thi book will be rightly disillusioned, but the Abbs Dimnet has achieved is purpose, fully and completely, if he merely arrests our attention. That he does with a vengeance. "Spectator." the man and set beyond The east Of fevins game andthe sense Whose falcon soul sits fast....0."
Moreover, matutinal orgies off trospcction assisted by strong" ten are probably more likely to. induce tis to think we think than to achieve any' useful result. Descartes ws H genius with an overmastering pur-Sore—lesser mortals are likely profit tele by lying in bed, except to sleep, and would be better advised to take a glass of cold water and a brisk walk if they want to think! clearly. Although, then, the ABE Dinmet's advice isnot always wise, it is generally amusing and often shrewd.
"We can understand this book raving a vogue fu the United States, where Inv. Arnold Beunctt'scleverer and more concise "Tow to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day" was considered to be flippant. But we doubt its popularity elsewhere, We are told that we must read the best of everything. We must docket and file our letters, marking, important passages in ved pencil, we must keep written notes of our plans, we must out out columns of our daily newspaper, "we must be able to spread out a map of the world and read frontiers and their problems like a book, The xame can be said of philosophy." Can it? And should we do these things in order to think?
Socrates would be surprised. Yet this is ood: "Reading, to most people, means an ashamed way of killing time, disguised under a dignified name. Trifling with print in that manner diminishes the resilifence of the intellect." to thought, we must choose those Ju order to uso books ax a help) which do not Full us, but keep us wide awake and alert, "The book that makes us think... is the book we drop on our knee after reading tone page, because what it says starts us irresistibly questioning, contr:
tin, supplementing." Certainly the Abbé is successful in getting the reader to argue with hin, and that mean achievement.' No one who has ever tried his hand at com: position could allow the following to pass: "Genius never plods. What writer doos not realize that his most successful pages are the ones that gare him the least trouble?" We question that, yet we must: admit truth and neatness of "Genius power, resulting in ease," and "A desire satisfied is net a desire any more, It is a pity.
"The doctrine underlying this book," says the author in another place, "is that thought alone counts, and that thought cannot ce-exist with anything that is not ourself in its highest and noblest possibility. Analysed, this phrase means that thought is as intangible and une teachable as the true Self, and that Knowledize is discovery, net acquisi tion. All that book or teacher can is to show us certain paths, Accepting these obvious limitations with humour and humility, the author (being delightfully haman) allows us to infer that his path of press-cuttings, memoranda and the Best Literature is a royal road. Yet Abraham Lincoln scribbled the Gettysburg Oration hastily on the back
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.