The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, April 1885Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Philosophy
The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, April 1885
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Chautauqua Institution -- Periodicals; Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle -- Periodicals
3. Select and furnish your Chautauqua corner. Do not be too anxious
to have it harmonize with other corners of the room. Put shelves for
your books “required” and for “review.” On the lowest shelf pile THE
CHAUTAUQUANS. On the wall put up the motto cards, the list of memorial
days, the Chautauqua calendar, the photograph or engraving of the Hall
of Philosophy, and such other Chautauqua views as you approve. Put up
busts or engravings of the great leaders—Homer, Cicero, Dante, Milton,
Goethe. Somewhere place a picture of Bryant, the earliest distinguished
friend of the C. L. S. C. By gradual additions fill the Chautauqua corner
with pictures and bookshelves, busts and mottoes, all in the line of
your reading, until the other corners and the intervening walls shall be
filled with reminders of Chautauqua and the world of literature, science
and art it represents. And if somehow you can place on the wall that
matchless engraving representing the great Master with his two disciples
on the way to Emmaus, you will, in a sense, sanctify your room, and set
forth most effectively, the aim, scope and spirit of the great Chautauqua
movement. In such a room, or in such a corner, can students be solitary?
4. You will greatly increase your power by systematic habits. One may
“read up” at any time, but the regular daily reading which renders
unnecessary what is called “reading up,” is much the better way. It
renders the work comparatively light; it makes the C. L. S. C. a help
to other less congenial work of the day into which it falls like a
refreshing shower. It forces life into a system which always expedites
and lightens labor. It schools the will. It brings lower duties into
proper subjection to the higher. It is every way better to do each day’s
work as each day comes. Thus working alone, but systematically, one keeps
the hand in and does not lose grasp, taste or delight.
5. Though compelled to work alone, make casual contacts with others
afford opportunities for drawing them out, for finding out what they
know, or for corroborating your own views. Ask questions. Elicit
opinions. Start conversation. Try to tell what you know or think. Tell
your children. Tell your neighbors. As you interest them, you set them in
search of knowledge, which finding, they will later on report to you, and
you thus give them a start in lines of self-improvement.
6. This setting others at work in quest of knowledge for you is a most
practicable way of getting knowledge and doing good to the finders
thereof.
Write out ten different questions, and give one to each of ten young boys
and girls of a high school, for example. They will ransack libraries,
consult teachers, find out and report what you want to know, and be
immensely helped by the knowledge found and the service rendered. Though
alone, you need not work alone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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