The book-philosopher merely reports what one person has said and another meant, or the objections raised by a third, and so on.  He compares different opinions, ponders, criticises, and tries to get at the truth of the matter; herein on a par with the critical historian.  For instance, he will set out to inquire whether Leibnitz was not for some time a follower of Spinoza, and questions of a like nature.  The curious student of such matters may find conspicuous examples of what I mean in Herbart’s Analytical Elucidation of Morality and Natural Right, and in the same author’s Letters on Freedom.  Surprise may be felt that a man of the kind should put himself to so much trouble; for, on the face of it, if he would only examine the matter for himself, he would speedily attain his object by the exercise of a little thought.  But there is a small difficulty in the way.  It does not depend upon his own will.  A man can always sit down and read, but not—­think.  It is with thoughts as with men; they cannot always be summoned at pleasure; we must wait for them to come.  Thought about a subject must appear of itself, by a happy and harmonious combination of external stimulus with mental temper and attention; and it is just that which never seems to come to these people.

This truth may be illustrated by what happens in the case of matters affecting our own personal interest.  When it is necessary to come to some resolution in a matter of that kind, we cannot well sit down at any given moment and think over the merits of the case and make up our mind; for, if we try to do so, we often find ourselves unable, at that particular moment, to keep our mind fixed upon the subject; it wanders off to other things.  Aversion to the matter in question is sometimes to blame for this.  In such a case we should not use force, but wait for the proper frame of mind to come of itself.  It often comes unexpectedly and returns again and again; and the variety of temper in which we approach it at different moments puts the matter always in a fresh light.  It is this long process which is understood by the term a ripe resolution. For the work of coming to a resolution must be distributed; and in the process much that is overlooked at one moment occurs to us at another; and the repugnance vanishes when we find, as we usually do, on a closer inspection, that things are not so bad as they seemed.

This rule applies to the life of the intellect as well as to matters of practice.  A man must wait for the right moment.  Not even the greatest mind is capable of thinking for itself at all times.  Hence a great mind does well to spend its leisure in reading, which, as I have said, is a substitute for thought; it brings stuff to the mind by letting another person do the thinking; although that is always done in a manner not our own.  Therefore, a man should not read too much, in order that his mind may not become accustomed to the substitute and thereby