Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Habits of Study.—Early Productions.—Notes on the Mind. The Habits of study, which Edwards formed in very early youth, were-not only strict and severe, and this in every branch of literature, but in one respect, peculiar. Even while a boy, he began to study, with his pen in his hand: not for the purpose of copying off the thoughts of others, but for the purpose of writing down, and preserving, the thoughts suggested to his own mind, from the course of study which he was pursuing. This most useful practice, he commenced in several branches of study very early; and he steadily pursued it in all his studies through life. His pen appears to have been, in a sense, always in his hand. From this practice, steadily persevered in, he derived the very great advantages of thinking continually during each period of study ; of thinking accurately; of thinking connectedly; of thinking habitually at all times; of banishing from his mind every subject, which was not worthy of continued and systematic thought; of pursuing each given subject of thought as far as he was able, at the happy moment when it opened spontaneously on his mind ; of pursuing every such subject afterwards, in regular sequence, starting anew from the point where he had previously left off, when again it opened upon him, in some new and interesting light; of preserving his best thoughts, his best associations, his best images, and then arranging them under their proper heads, ready for subsequent use ; of regularly strengthening the faculty of thinking and reasoning, by constant and powerful exercise; and, above all, of gradually moulding himself into a thinking being—a being, who, instead of regarding thinking and reasoning as labour, could find no high enjoyment but in intense, systematic and certain thought...