“In the process of learning, the very thing that ought to be a great help, namely, a great desire to learn, often becomes for many people an impediment. They want to take in everything at the same time, and are able to retain nothing as a result. For as excess food does not nourish, but disgusts the stomach, weighing down and weakening the rest of the body, so a great abundance of things ingested all at once into the memory slips away heedlessly now and weakens the memory for the future. So always let those who are eager to learn read widely, but let them select a few things each day that their memory can digest, and in this way let them store away three or four things or more, as each one’s ability or leisure will allow, as the special profit of that day. By reading other things, they will succeed in preserving by meditation what they have already learned and daily reading will make more familiar to them what they have yet to master.” Piero Paolo Vergerio, “Character and Studies Befitting a Free-Born Youth,” in The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to Be An Educated Human Being, ed. Richard M. Gamble. Wilmington 2007, pp. 321-322. [Emphasis added]
Vergerio, the early fifteenth-century teacher, explains how good students must not overwhelm their minds with too much reading. Commit small bits of ideas to memory on a daily basis. When a student attempts to learn many things too quickly it gives the mind a “stomach ache.” Vergerio follows the classical and medieval tradition of comparing reading to eating. Slowly chewing one’s food makes for better digestion. Similarly, slowly and steadily reading increases one’s abilities to remember and ultimately to truly learn.
