How To Study and Teaching How To Study | Page 5

or that the reports about some of our friends alarm us. The occasions that call forth thought are infinite in number and kind. But the essential fact is that study does not normally take place except under the stimulus or spur of particular conditions, and of conditions, too, that are unsatisfactory.
It does not take place even then unless we become conscious of the strained situation, of the want of harmony between what is and what might be. For ages malarial fever was accepted as a visitation by Divine Providence, or as a natural inconvenience, like bad weather. People were not disturbed by lack of harmony between what actually was and what might be, because they did not conceive the possibility of preventing the disease. Accordingly they took it as a matter of course, and made no study of its cause. Very recently, on the other hand, people have become conscious of the possibility of exterminating malaria. The imagined state has made the real one more and more intolerable; and, as this feeling of dissatisfaction has grown more acute, study of the cause of the disease has grown more intense, until it has finally been discovered. Thus a lively consciousness of the unsatisfactoriness of a situation is the necessary prerequisite to its investigation; it furnishes the motive for it.
It has ever been so in the history of evolution. Study has not taken place without stimulus or motive. It has always had the practical task of lifting us out of our difficulties, either material or spiritual, and placing us on our feet. In this way it has been merely an instrument--though a most important one--in securing our proper adjustment or adaptation to our environment.[Footnote: For discussion of this subject, see Studies in Logical Theory, by John Dewey. See, also, Systematic Study in Elementary Schools, by Dr. Lida B. Earhart, Chapters 1 and 2.]
The variety of response to the demand for study
After we have become acutely conscious of a misfit somewhere in our experience, the actual study done to right it varies indefinitely with the individual. The savage follows a hit-and-miss method of investigation, and really makes his advances by happy guesses rather than by close application. Charles Lamb's Dissertation on Roast Pig furnishes a typical example of such accidents.
The average civilized man of the present does only a little better. How seldom, for instance, is the diet prescribed for a dyspeptic--whether by himself or by a physician--the result of any intelligent study! The true scientist, however, goes at his task in a careful and systematic way. Recall, for instance, how the cause of yellow fever has been discovered. For years people had attributed the disease to invisible particles which they called "fomites." These were supposed to be given off by the sick, and spread by means of their clothing and other articles used by them. Investigation caused this theory to be abandoned. Then, since Dr. J. C. Nott of Mobile had suggested, in 1848, that the fever might be carried by the mosquito, and Dr. C. J. Finlay of Havana had declared, in 1881, that a mosquito of a certain kind would carry the fever from one patient to another, this variety of mosquito was assumed by Dr. Walter Reed, in 1900, to be the source of the disease, and was subjected to very close investigation by him. Several men voluntarily received its bite and contracted the fever. Soon, enough cases were collected to establish the probable correctness of the assumption. The remedy suggested--the utter destruction of this particular kind of mosquito, including its eggs and larvae--was so efficacious in combating the disease in Havana in 1901, and in New Orleans in 1905, that the theory is now considered established. Thus systematic study has relieved us of one of the most dreaded diseases to which mankind has been subject.
The principal factors in study
An extensive study, like this investigation, into the cause of yellow fever employs induction very plainly. It also employs deduction extensively, inasmuch as hypotheses that have been reached more or less inductively have to be widely applied and tested, and further conclusions have to be drawn from them. Such a study, therefore, involving both induction and deduction and their numerous short cuts, contains the essential factors common to the investigation of other topics, or to study in general; for different subjects cannot vary greatly when it comes to the general method of their attack. An analysis, therefore, which reveals the principal factors in this study is likely to bring to light the main factors of study in general.
1. The finding of specific purposes, as one factor in study
If the search for the cause of yellow fever were traced more fully, one striking feature discovered would be the fact that the investigation was never aimless. The need of unraveling the mystery