Chapter 6, The First Hebrew Algebra, part 3

Never be satisfied with being up-to-date. Think, in your slack time, of how people before you did things. While you are at school my little book, Logic of Arithmetic, will help you to find out many things about your ancestors which may amuse and interest you; but, as soon as you leave school and choose your own reading, take care to read up the histories of the struggles and difficulties of the people who formerly dealt with your own subject (whatever that may be).

If you find the whole of the data too complicated to deal with, and judge that it is necessary to eliminate one or more of them, in order to reduce your material within the compass of your own power to manage, do it as a provisional necessity. Take care to register the fact that you have done so, and to arrange your mind, from the first, on the understanding that the eliminated data will have to come back. Forget them during the working out of your experimental equation; but never give way to the feeling that they are got rid of and done with. Be very careful not to disturb other people's relationships to each other. For instance, if a teacher is explaining something to another pupil, never speak till she has done. Beware of the sentimental craving to be “in it.” Any studying-group profits by right working relations being set up between any two members; and ultimately each member profits. The whole group suffers from any distraction between any two. Therefore listen and learn what you can; but never disturb or distract. Take care not to become a parasite; do not lazily appropriate the results of other people's labour, but learn and labour truly to get your own living. Take care that everything you possess, whether physical, mental, or spiritual, shall be the result of your own toil as well as other people's; and remember that you are bound to pay, in some shape or way, everyone who helps you.