mechanical drill, for example. Such drill is often necessary in the
mastery of thought.

Not just any thinking and any drill, however, may be counted as study.
At least only such thinking and such drill are here included within
the term as are integral parts of the mental work that is necessary in
the accomplishment of valuable purposes. Thinking that is done at
random, and drills that have no object beyond acquaintance with dead
facts, as those upon dates, lists of words, and location of places,
for instance, are unworthy of being considered a part of study.

Day-dreaming, giving way to reverie and to casual fancy, too, is not
to be regarded as study. Not because it is not well to indulge in such
activity at times, but because it is not serious enough to be called
work. Study is systematic work, and not play. Reading for recreation,
further, is not study. It is certainly very desirable and even
necessary, just as play is. It even partakes of many of the
characteristics of true study, and reaps many of its benefits. No
doubt, too, the extensive reading that children and youth now do might
well partake more fully of the nature of study. It would result in
more good and less harm; for, beyond a doubt, much careless reading is
injurious to habits of serious study. Yet it would be intolerable to
attempt to convert pleasure-reading fully into real study. That would
mean that we had become too serious.

On the whole, then, the term study as here used has largely the
meaning that is given to it in ordinary speech. Yet it is not entirely
the same; the term signifies a purposive and systematic, and therefore
a more limited, kind of work than much that goes under that name.