Original text:

Historical lessons make people wise; Poetry makes people clever; Mathematics makes people fine; Natural history makes people deep; The study of ethics makes people solemn; Logic and rhetoric make people eloquent. "Learning changes temperament". Not particularly, there is no mental defect that cannot be remedied by considerable learning. The purpose of reading for learning is entertainment, decoration and growth.

The main use of learning in entertainment is to live in seclusion and keep quiet; The use of learning in decoration is rhetoric; The purpose of learning in long-term talent is to judge and deal with affairs. Because experienced people are good at implementation, they may be able to judge a small number of things one by one; However, good general discussion and planning and arrangement of affairs come from learned people. Spending too much time on learning is laziness.

It is false to use knowledge too much as decoration; It is a scholar's quirk to judge things completely according to the rules of learning. Learning exercises nature, and itself is exercised by experience; Talent is like wild flowers and plants, they need to learn to prune; The knowledge itself, if not limited by experience, is too general. The deceitful man despises learning, the foolish man envies learning, and the wise man uses learning.

Because knowledge itself still doesn't teach people how to use them; This way of application is beyond learning, and an intelligence above learning can only be obtained by observation and experience. Don't study for refutation, nor for faith and blind obedience; Nor can it be for talk and discussion; We should aim at being able to weigh the weight and examine things.

Analysis:

This is an argumentative essay. This paper discusses the purpose of learning and the goal and way of studying. The author thinks that reading for learning has three purposes: entertainment (seclusion and quiet), decoration (familiarity with language) and increasing knowledge. The goal of scholarship is to "weigh the weight and examine things." In terms of research methods, the author advocates that different books should be read in different ways: selective reading, full reading, diligent reading and careful reading, in order to obtain high benefits.

Moreover, reading should be combined with talks, writing and notes, and combined with making up one's "spiritual defects" to "change one's temperament by learning." These viewpoints, to a certain extent, reflect the author's materialistic thought and attitude of attaching importance to practical science, and still have cognitive significance and reference value.