ests the resort to book lore for the knowledge that we are in quest
of. There is a considerable propriety in restricting it to this meaning;
or, at all events, in treating the art of becoming wise through reading,
as different from the arts of observing facts at first hand. In short,
study should not be made co-extensive with knowledge getting, but with
book learning. In thus narrowing the field, we have the obvious advantage
of cultivating it more carefully, and the unobvious, but very real,
advantage of dealing with one homogeneous subject.

In the current phrase, "_studying under_ some one," there is a more
express reference to being taught by a master, as in listening to
lectures. There is, however, the implication that the learner is
applying his own mind to the special field, and, at the same time, is
not neglecting the other sources of knowledge, such as books. The master
is looked upon rather as a guide to enquiry, than as the sole fountain
of the information sought.

Thus, then, the mental exercise that we now call "study" began when
books began; when knowledge was reduced to language and laid out
systematically in verbal compositions. A certain form of it existed in
the days when language was as yet oral merely; when there might be long
compositions existing only in the memory of experts, and communicable by
speech alone. But study then was a very simple affair: it would consist
mainly in attentive listening to recitation, so as to store up in the
memory what was thus communicated. The art, if any, would attach equally
to the reciter and to the listener; the duty of the one would be to
accommodate his lessons in time, quantity, and mode of delivery to the
retentive capacity of the other; who, in his turn, would be required to
con and recapitulate what he had been told, until he made it his own,
whatever it might be worth.

[BOOK STUDY AMONG THE ANCIENTS]

Even when books came into existence, an art of study would be at first
very simple. The whole extent of book literature among the Jews before
Christ would be soon read; and, when once read, there was nothing left
but to re-read it in whole or in part, with a view of committal to
memory, whether for meditative reflection, or for awakening the
emotions. We see, in the Psalms of David, the emphasis attached to
mental dwelling on the particulars of the Mosaic Law, as the nourishment
of the feelings of devotion.

The Greek Literature about 350 B.C., when Aris