Don't swallow the words

A 12th-century thinker wrote that in the process of reading, words are to be chewed, ruminated, masticated, but not swallowed. To read is to eat with the eyes, but nutrition comes from mulling over the words and the ideas they carry. Swallowing too quickly hurts the mind's digestion, the medieval thinker noted, and forestalls memorisation.

We swallow all…