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Title: Books and how to make the most of them
Author: James Hosmer Penniman
Release date: June 6, 2024 [eBook #73783]
Language: English
Original publication: Syracuse, NY: C. W. Bardeen, Publisher / School Bulletin Publications, 1911
Credits: Jamie Brydone-Jack, Joeri de Ruiter and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BOOKS AND HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF THEM ***
Books and How to Make the
Most of Them
BY
JAMES HOSMER PENNIMAN
[Illustration: SCHOOL BULLETIN PUBLICATIONS · 1874]
C. W. BARDEEN, PUBLISHER
SYRACUSE, N. Y.
Copyright, 1911, by C. W. BARDEEN
There is probably no subject on which there has been more advice given
than on that of books and reading, but there are few upon which advice
is more necessary, for even so wise a man as Goethe said, “I have been
fifty years trying to learn how to read, and I have not learned yet.”
CONTENTS
I. The Miracle of Books 9
II. How to Use Books 18
III. Cultivating the Memory 26
IV. What to Read and the Abuse of Books 31
V. The Art of Reading 40
VI. Classification of Books 54
VII. Poetry 62
VIII. Biography 70
IX. History 77
X. Fiction 85
XI. Libraries and the Care of Books 91
Books and How to Make the Most of Them
CHAPTER I.
THE MIRACLE OF BOOKS.
A book is a miracle wrought by human agency. What more wonderful than
that the thought of a lifetime should be made visible and concentrated
so as to be carried in the pocket; that black lines and dots upon a
white page should bring before our minds the most beautiful images.
More remarkable than the telegraph or the telephone, a book not only
annihilates space but time, and carries the voice of David or Homer
across the seas of the ages.
The miracle of the widow’s cruse finds its literal realization in a
book. We may take all we can from it but there is just as much left for
others with the sole limitation that he gets the most from books who
has the most knowledge; to him that hath is given.
No other property is so peculiarly our own as our intellectual
possessions. They are always with us; no reversal of fortune can
deprive us of them. If we share our knowledge with another we still
have it, and perhaps in a more orderly and useful form as the result
of contact with a different mind, and the belief in the immortality of
the soul makes us sure that our mental acquisitions are taken with us
beyond the grave. Education and culture would be of small value if they
were to be terminated by the expiration of a few short years of life.
Books are the only work of man that may be said to be omniscient. They
are the stored-up memory of the race. As all our experience of life
would vanish without memory, so all accurate knowledge of mankind would
evaporate without books and we should have nothing to depend upon but
tradition.
Without books we should know nothing of the workings of the mighty
minds of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare or Milton. Without them
Caesar, Napoleon and Washington would be traditions. We can get but an
imperfect idea of the history of our country except from books. Books
alone make books possible, and nothing is more rare than a book which
does not depend for its material on other books.
Books stereotype and petrify language so that while the spoken word is
volatile and changeable we find in books the very words in which we
took delight years ago. We may cause to pass through our minds the same
thoughts in absolutely the same language that interested Dr. Johnson
or Milton; we may even follow out the mental processes of Plato or
Aristotle, and see what they enjoyed and note what they thought.
Books intensify thought; a book is better than conversation in that it
may be brooded over, revised, extended, polished and continued from
time to time, but it cannot answer questions except those anticipated
by its author. A writer will put into a book thoughts that he would not
or could not express in conversation, and through his books we may know
intimately a man who was known only superficially by his most familiar
contemporaries.
Books not only acquaint us with the thoughts of the great men of the
past but they enable us to make permanent our own thoughts, so that
if our ideas are worthy of being perpetuated those who live centuries
hence may be as familiar with our minds as we are with the minds of
Milton or Dante. A book enables the thought of one man to reach all
other inquiring men in ages to come. Men of whom their world was not
worthy have gained late recognition through their books; men whose
minds were far in advance of their time have handed down their thoughts
in books which have at last found appreciative readers.
The printing press has multiplied enormously our means of giving
currency to ideas, but thought is no more powerful now than in the time
of Plato or Aristotle. Men like these wrote books before the time of
Christ which are still consulted on the subjects of which they treat.
Many of the problems of life and death are as mysterious to us as they
were to them.
Better than any other relics the books of a nation show what it really
was. The Dark Ages are called so because few books were written in
them, and Africa is the Dark Continent because it has no literature.
No other works of man have done so much to spiritualize the race as
books. The Laocoon is not as inspiring a creation as the _Iliad_, the
Cologne Cathedral is not as civilizing as Dante’s _Divine Comedy_, and
it has been said that the works of Goethe have advanced the progress of
mankind more than all the conquests of Napoleon. Books have more soul
than any other human work. A house without books is as dark as a house
without windows.
Literature is the most enduring of the fine arts. No painter, sculptor,
or architect has erected so permanent a memorial as the poets have
done. Statues may be broken, pictures may fade or be consumed by fire,
even the pyramids may crumble away, but the thought contained in great
books such as the _Iliad_ and the _Aeneid_ is more nearly eternal than
marble or bronze. Lowell’s _Commemoration Ode_ forms a more durable
monument to Harvard’s dead heroes than Memorial Hall. There have been
other actions as fine as the charge of the Light Brigade, but it is
only those that the great poets have sung that are truly immortal in
our memories.
“For deeds doe die, however noblie donne,
And thoughts doe as themselves decay;
But wise words, taught in numbers for to runne,
Recorded by the Muses live for ay.”
--_Spenser._
Among the most lasting works of men are mosaics; they are not easily
broken, their colors do not fade and their outlines do not grow dim
with time. In the museum of the Capitol at Rome is the famous mosaic of
Pliny’s doves, rendered familiar by so many copies: three or four doves
perched on a broad-brimmed cup, absolutely as perfect in form and tint
as when Pliny saw them two thousand years ago. Yet these tiny bits of
stone joined by cement are not as permanent as the poems of Homer which
have as much human interest to-day as they had when Alexander read
them in the intervals of his pursuit of the Persians.
The plays of Shakespeare will last as long as the earth remains, and he
said,
“Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.”
The love of great books is in itself a mark of greatness. Biography
teaches no more practical lesson than this; that the world’s really
noble men have spent little time in reading any books but the best,
and that there has been a general agreement among them as to what the
best books are. Socrates was familiar with Homer and Aesop. Alexander
slept with Homer under his pillow. Montaigne alludes constantly to the
_Bible_ and to Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Seneca, Ovid and other classical
authors. Bacon makes frequent quotations from the _Bible_ and also
shows a knowledge of Aesop, Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, Montaigne
and other great writers. Emerson notes the fact that Montaigne was in
the libraries of Shakespeare and of Ben Jonson. Emerson read Chaucer,
Montaigne, Plutarch and Plato while at college and knew Shakespeare
almost by heart.
When we realize how few books the men of antiquity had we understand
that they were _obliged_ to read not many things but much. Homer
probably had no books at all. Socrates had very few and even Cicero,
the accomplished scholar, few in comparison with a modern library. He
never read Dante or Milton or Shakespeare.
The habit of communing with great thoughts gives health and vigor to
the mind. Men who habitually read the classics have a breadth of view
and a toughness of mental fibre which cannot be obtained by those whose
highest inspiration is derived from the newspaper and the last novel.
Reading the best books gives an elevation of thought which raises above
the level of common things, ennobles and makes fine the ordinary daily
occupations, dignifies life and makes it worth living. The woman who
keeps her _Bible_ open while she is sewing and refreshes herself with
the _Psalms_ or the _Gospels_ is deriving mental as well as spiritual
nourishment; without such inspiration her labor would fade into the
light of common day.
We need great books to take us out of ourselves, and to show us in true
perspective our relations to the past, the present and the future. We
may find from books if we have not learned from our own observation
the true heroism that is present in the pain and poverty and distress
of everyday life. “Books,” said Emerson, “impart sympathetic activity
to the moral powers. Go with mean people and you think life is mean.
Then read Plutarch, and the world is a proud place, peopled with men of
positive quality, with heroes and demigods standing around us, who will
not let us sleep.” Michael Angelo said “When I read Homer I look to see
if I am not twenty feet tall.”
CHAPTER II.
THE USE OF BOOKS.
“He that shall make search after knowledge, let him seek it where it
is,” said Montaigne of books.
Whatever your purpose, books will help you to accomplish it. They make
the knowledge of mankind our own if we know how to avail ourselves
of them. Only the wise can get the best out of books, they refuse to
deliver their message to the ignorant.
Next to knowing a thing yourself the most necessary thing is knowing
where to find it, and the method of getting at the information which is
stored in books is an art that must be acquired.
It is an education to take up some subject and master it, examining
all the books about it and weighing all the varying and conflicting
opinions. You never realize the depth of human knowledge and the
difficulty of judging what the truth is, until you have found out from
your own experience the infinite labor of mastering one small division
of one subject.
From catalogues and bibliographies you may make a list of the best
works on the subject that you are investigating and you must then
quarry from these books what is of use to you and arrange it in a
logical and orderly way.
You need not read all the books; some contain what you already
know, and in many of them there is repetition of what you have seen
elsewhere. You glance through one and find little to the purpose, the
table of contents of another shows that here and there is matter that
should be looked over, at last you come to a work by a great man, a
master of the subject, every word of which must be read and pondered on.
From these books you obtain references to others that you did not
know of; judgment must be shown in concentrating yourself on what is
of real value, and in not going out of your way to explore alluring
but useless by-paths. When you take many notes in blank books it is
difficult to refer to them unless you have an index, the making and
use of which requires time, but notes taken on one side of sheets of
loose paper may easily be sorted into large envelopes according to
the divisions of the subject, and as your investigations proceed and
your knowledge widens new divisions may readily be made. There is a
decided advantage in having all the notes of a kind together and when
they are on separate pieces of paper they may be pasted or pinned in
strips and their order changed at will. You may not have your note book
with you but a bit of blank paper can always be obtained. These notes
may be a word or two here to remind you of an idea, a quotation there,
accurately copied, and, most important of all, such original thoughts
as have occurred to you. You will strengthen your mind and also improve
your diction, by writing out fully the ideas that occur to you while
reading. When you do this, you will not read so many books, but you
will derive infinitely more good from those you do read. You will pay
more attention and will be careful that what you read is worth noting.
Take notes freely and as much as possible in your own language.
“Writing maketh an exact man.” According to Dr. Watts, more is gained
by writing out once than by reading five times. What you have taken
notes of is thereby fixed in your mind and when you have classified
your subject according to its natural divisions you have, in so doing,
formed new associations which will help you to remember it.
When your materials are collected and arranged, your work is half done.
What remains requires a mental faculty of a higher order:--the power of
coördination.
Just here the difference appears between a penny-a-liner and the author
of a book of permanent value. Both men may be industrious, both may
have good ideas, but the author has a breadth of mind which enables him
to coördinate his knowledge; he pursues a connected chain of thought
leading to definite conclusions, he has assimilated what he has found
in books, reinforced it by his own observation and study, and the
result is a compact and organic whole, a material addition to the
knowledge of the world.
In the _Fable for Critics_, Lowell thus describes the unorderly worker
among books:--
“Twould be endless to tell you the things that he knew,
All separate facts, undeniably true,
But with him or each other they’d nothing to do,
No power of combining, arranging, discerning,
Digested the masses he learned into learning.”
Try to see clearly the important divisions of a subject, to be fair
minded, to draw your own conclusions, to distinguish between the
probable and the improbable, to recognize the good points in each side
of conflicting theories. Especially learn to classify and arrange the
ideas you get from books and to unite them to what you already know.
If you can enjoy the study of some special subject connected with your
occupation and keep at it long enough to make yourself master of it,
you may by so doing educate yourself. You should not only study the
actual operations, but you should also familiarize yourself with what
has been written about them, and should make an effort to record a
permanent advance made by your own exertions.
“Knowledge of books in a man of business, is as a torch in the hands of
one who is willing and able to show those who are bewildered the way
which leads to prosperity and welfare,” says the _Spectator_. How much,
for example, has been lost in treasure and energy because politicians
who have not read history and political economy, ignorantly persist in
methods that have failed ever since the world began. “A prince without
letters,” said Ben Jonson, “is a pilot without eyes. All his government
is groping.” “It is manifest that all government of action is to be
gotten by knowledge, and knowledge, best, by gathering many knowledges,
which is reading,” wrote Sir Philip Sidney.
When you read a number of books on the same topic each throws light
on the other and you get deeper, clearer ideas. You think more. One
subject studied thoroughly has more educational value than many looked
at superficially. But while there is the greatest culture value in
taking up one line of thought and pursuing it as far as possible, the
importance of the broad foundation to build on must always be kept
before you. “What science and practical life alike need is not narrow
men, but broad men sharpened to a point,” says Dr. Nicholas Murray
Butler.
There is no occupation where a fund of general information is not
valuable, provided it be accurate. The knowledge of a little law is as
useful to the doctor as that of a little medicine is to the lawyer.
How much more useful a man is in all branches of his calling if he
knows thoroughly at least one part of it. You cannot do anything that
will add more to your value to yourself and to the world in general
than to study your occupation all your life. If your work as a student
ends with school or college, your usefulness will be limited and you
will always occupy a subordinate position.
Education is a life work, we have no time to waste, but we should take
time enough to do it well. Be satisfied with a slow advance if you are
getting ahead all the time, but do not be turned aside from the track.
Do not make the mistake of supposing that converse with the thoughts of
men as preserved in books can take the place of communion with living
men. You will get warped and unreal ideas of life if you do. Talk about
what you read with intellectual people. We are educated by association
with men, by pictures, by music, by nature as well as by the study
of books. Commune with other men but do not omit to commune with
yourself, only by so doing can you gain “that final and higher product
of knowledge which we call wisdom.” “Read to weigh and consider,” said
Bacon, that means to think. Wordsworth speaks of “knowledge purchased
with the loss of power,” and Huxley says, “the great end of life is not
knowledge but action. What men need is, as much knowledge as they can
assimilate and organize into a basis for action; give them more and it
may become injurious.”
CHAPTER III.
CULTIVATING THE MEMORY.
Most of us forget, as Andrew Lang says, “with an ease and readiness
only to be acquired by practice,” and would agree with Montaigne that
“if I be a man of some reading, yet I am a man of no remembering.”
To recall what we read we must first of all pay attention to it.
Attention has been styled the mother of memory. It is naturally united
to interest, we attend best to what we care most about, but we may
watch over our minds and force them to return when they wander and
attention may be made habitual by repeated and vigorous efforts of the
will.
“There must be continuity of work,” says Thomas A. Edison, the
inventor, “when you set out to do a certain thing never let anything
disturb you from doing that. This power of putting the thought on one
particular thing, and keeping it there for hours at time, comes from
practice, and it takes a long while to get in the habit. I remember,
a long while ago, I could only think ten minutes on a given subject
before something else would come to my mind. But after long practice I
can now keep my mind for hours on one topic without being distracted
with thoughts of other matters.”
On the other hand those who find difficulty in focusing the mind for
long periods of time may be comforted by the following opinion of
Professor William James than whom there is no better authority on
matters of this kind: “The total mental efficiency of a man is the
resultant of the working together of all his faculties. He is too
complex a being for any one of them to have the casting vote. If any
one of them do have the casting vote, it is more likely to be the
strength of his desire and passion, the strength of the interest he
takes in what is proposed; concentration, memory, reasoning power,
inventiveness, excellence of the senses,--all are subsidiary to this.
No matter how scatter-brained the type of a man’s successive fields
of consciousness may be, if he really _care_ for a subject, he will
return to it incessantly from his incessant wanderings, and first and
last do more with it, and get more result from it, than another person
whose attention may be more continuous during a given interval, but
whose passion for the subject is of a more languid and less permanent
sort.”
We must have a clear idea of what we read if we wish to retain it. We
cannot remember perfectly what we do not understand. We must think
about what we read, assimilate it and unite it to the knowledge that
we already possess. Every time we go over it in our minds we make the
impression clearer.
Professor James lays special stress on the aid to memory that is
derived by this association of ideas. “When we wish to fix a new thing
in either our own mind or a pupil’s, our conscious effort should not be
so much to _impress_ and _retain_ it as to connect it with something
else already there. The ‘secret of a good memory’ is thus the secret
of forming diverse and multiple associations with every fact we care
to retain. But this forming of associations with a fact--what is it
but thinking _about_ the fact as much as possible? Briefly, then, of
two men with the same outward experiences, _the one who thinks over his
experiences most_, and weaves them into the most systematic relations
with each other, will be the one with the best memory.”
When we read a number of books on the same subject the memory is
helped by the association of ideas, and on the other hand we have high
authority for the statement that the memory is weakened by aimless
reading. There is perhaps no one pursuit in which so much precious
time is wasted, no one in which the energies of mankind are expended
to so little purpose, as in such reading. “Nothing, in truth,” says
Dugald Stewart, “has such a tendency to weaken not only the powers
of invention but the intellectual powers in general, as a habit of
extensive and various reading without reflection.”
The habit of sharing the results of reading is as useful to ourselves
as it is to others. The scholar of whom Chaucer wrote “gladly wolde he
lerne and gladly teche,” probably had no difficulty in remembering what
he read.
The reproduction of what you have read by conversation or by writing
aids the memory while strengthening the mind.
Faraday says, “I hold it as a great point in self-education that the
student should be continually engaged in forming exact ideas, and in
expressing them clearly by language.” Professor James remarks, “a
thing merely read or heard, and never verbally reproduced, contracts
the weakest possible adhesion in the mind. Verbal recitation or
reproduction is thus a highly important kind of reactive behavior on
our impressions.”
Moreover, while cultivating the memory, the reproduction of ideas
from the works of writers like Addison, Newman, and Matthew Arnold
is valuable in the formation of a clear and simple style. It was by
careful reading of Addison and by afterwards reproducing the thought in
his own language that Franklin when a boy formed the habit of elegant
and exact expression that made whatever he wrote interesting.
CHAPTER IV.
WHAT TO READ AND THE ABUSE OF BOOKS.
Many people live in first-class houses, stay at first-class hotels,
travel in first-class steamships and railway trains and then read third
or fourth-class books. For them one book is about as good as another.
If one does not care for the world’s great books the fault is in him,
not in them, but he must realize the vastness of human knowledge and
understand that some of the wisest voices of all time have no message
for him.
There are nomadic readers who read as the gypsies live, camping
everywhere but for a night without purpose and without profit. Such
reading is mental dissipation. Desultory reading jumps from one book to
another. You might as well try to drink the sea as to read all books.
You must divide in order to conquer. Do not read blindly, know what you
are about. Have a definite aim and purpose. Do not read the first book
that comes to hand but when you hear of a book that you ought to read
make a note of it. By keeping a list of books you may shape your course
and make your reading a selection from a selection.
Do not prefer the new to the meritorious; by following Emerson’s advice
“read no book until it has been out a year,” you will avoid many
loud-trumpeted books. There is uncertainty in reading a new book, but
the value of the old books is well known. We need make no mistake.
Many of the oldest books are always new but there are books which were
once standards on historical and technical subjects that are now as out
of date as last year’s almanac. Be sure that what you read is reliable
and the best of its kind. Prefer quality to quantity. Read the great
books for yourself and do not be content with reading other people’s
impressions of them. Books about books are seldom useful unless one has
also read the works of which they treat.
Let the books that you select be those that have the approval of men
competent to judge, but bear in mind that the wisest man cannot select
the books that will best suit others; each must choose for himself.
People are always glad to recommend the books that have helped them but
they cannot tell whether such books will help you. You must find out
for yourself, no one else can do it for you. Do not be afraid to ask
anyone who knows more than you do. There is no information which people
are so ready to give as about books, indeed when you ask them they feel
flattered. When Franklin wished to make friends with a man that he
suspected of hostile sentiments he borrowed a book of him and returned
it promptly.
To find out what the best books are is no difficult matter, but to
find out what are the best books for us requires a self-knowledge that
takes life-long study. In reading we must feel our way, we cannot tell
what is best for us all at once. We need to get acquainted with our own
minds, to learn what our powers and tastes are. This takes time and
thought and, more than all, fair-mindedness in order that we may not
form too high or too low an estimate of our abilities. “If thou wouldst
profit by thy reading, read humbly, simply, honestly, and not desiring
to win a character for learning,” said Thomas a Kempis.
Have a clear view of literature, know what you like and why you like
it. Be honest with yourself, do not pretend to like what you do not
because other people do. Do not be afraid to be ignorant of many
things, it is the price you must pay for knowing a few things well. It
is only the stupid who pretend to know what they do not. An educated
man is not ashamed to say that he does not know. “The acknowledgment of
ignorance,” said Montaigne, “is one of the best and surest testimonies
of judgment that I can finde.” To know when you do know a thing and
when you do not, is the first step towards the attainment of sound
scholarship, and the next is to know where to go for information.
“Nothing is so prolific as a little known well.”
To have a general idea of what is worth reading and to know where to
turn for the books which are of vital importance to one’s development
must be the foundation of any plan for culture. It is one of the most
useful results of a liberal education that it gives a broad view of the
whole range of human thought, and shows what to consider and what to
reject; it teaches to distinguish as Lowell says between literature and
printed matter.
Follow the bent of your inclination but make a clear distinction
between the reading that you do with a purpose and that which you do
for pleasure, “what we read with inclination makes a strong impression.
What we read as a task is of little use,” said Doctor Johnson, and he
added “if we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in
fixing the attention, so there is but one half to be employed on what
we read.”
Much energy is wasted by conscientious readers over classic books that
are beyond their capacity. Plato and Aristotle are among the greatest
thinkers that the world has produced but their works are not within the
comprehension of every mind. Indeed Emerson says that, “There are not
in the world at any one time more than a dozen persons who read and
understand Plato.”
Do not think that because a statement is in print it is necessarily
true. You will often find conflicting statements in different books
on the same subject. “Some books are lies frae end to end,” said
Burns. Fortunately this can be said of few books but many contain
inaccuracies, mis-statements and exaggerations. Weigh and consider all
you read in the light of your own experience. Books like life of which
they are expressions and authors who produce them are of all kinds,
good and bad, uplifting and degrading, true and false. We must value
them for what they are, not for what they pretend to be, and, setting
aside our own preconceptions and prejudices, lay our minds open to
those who seriously and sincerely hold other views than ours.
The author tries to make us feel what he feels and see what he sees.
Some can do this without effort on our part and others like cuttle
fish cover themselves with clouds of their own obscurity. We soon
learn from the way a writer expresses himself whether he is accurate
or not and we depend upon those whom we find careful in making their
statements.
We get to love and trust authors as we get to know our friends by long
and familiar converse. The writers we should know best, with whose
lives and complete works we should make ourselves familiar are those
who have beauty of character added to grace of expression. Some men
like Burns and Goldsmith endear themselves to us in spite of pronounced
weaknesses.
Books give pleasure not only by what they contain but also by the
manner in which it is expressed. Beauty of language as well as of
thought make the works of Cardinal Newman and Matthew Arnold attractive
whether we agree with their conclusions or not and whether the subjects
of which they treat are of interest to us or not.
Milton tells us that we should have a vigilant eye how books demean
themselves. There is in some ways more danger from evil books than
from evil companions. Bad companions cannot be with us always and
bad books may be. Schopenhauer calls “bad books, those exuberant
weeds of literature that choke the true corn,” and even the gentle
Charles Lamb speaks with contempt of “things in books’ clothing.” The
only use of poor books is to teach us by comparison the value of good
ones. Rousseau thought that “the abuse of reading is destructive to
knowledge. Imagining ourselves to know everything we read, we conceive
it unnecessary to learn it by other means.”
“Literature is not shut up in books nor art in galleries: both are
taken in by unconscious absorption through the finer pores of mind
and character in the atmosphere of society,” said Lowell; and Emerson
wrote, “books are for the scholar’s idle times: when he can read
God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s
transcripts of their readings. But when the intervals of darkness come,
as come they must,--when the sun is hid and the stars withdraw their
shining,--we repair to the lamps which were kindled by their ray, to
guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn is.”
“No man should consider so highly of himself as to think he can receive
but little light from books, nor so meanly as to believe he can
discover nothing but what is to be learned from them.” wrote Doctor
Johnson, and Professor Blackie says, “all knowledge which comes from
books comes indirectly, by reflection, and by echo; true knowledge
grows from a living root in the thinking soul; and whatever it may
appropriate from without, it takes by living assimilation into a living
organism, not by mere borrowing.”
CHAPTER V.
THE ART OF READING.
“The most important step toward getting mental power is the acquisition
of a right method in work and a just standard of attainment,” says
President Elliot. The secret of success in reading is concentration.
The mind must be focused like a lens on just those books and just those
parts of them that are needed to accomplish the desired object. Have a
definite purpose and do not allow yourself to be turned aside from it.
There are those who read merely to get over a certain number of pages
and say that they have read a book. Printed words run before their eyes
and make no impression on their minds. In this age of hurry many rush
through books as trains rush through tunnels.
The true reader makes his reading give an account of itself. After you
have read a few pages stop and think it over and arrange it in your
mind. It takes time to ripen, the best growth is slow.
We can no more become acquainted with a book on a single reading than
we can know a man on a single meeting. “Between reading and study
there is the same difference as between a guest and a friend,” said
St. Bernard. Ruskin thought that reading the same thing over and over
again aided him greatly in getting thoroughly to the bottom of matters;
and Dr. W. T. Harris has remarked, “it is my experience with great
world poets that the first reading yields the smallest harvest. Each
succeeding reading becomes more profitable in geometrical ratio. At
first, Dante’s _Divine Comedy_ was a dumb show written over with hard,
dogmatic inscriptions. It has become to me the most eloquent exposition
of human freedom and divine grace.”
Bacon tells us that books are to be read in different ways. Some are to
be read here and there, others to be skimmed and a few to be studied.
Be content with gradual progress, the best growth is slow, but keep
constantly at it. Milton speaks of “industrious and select reading,”
and that is the only kind that gives true culture.
Says Walt Whitman, “the process of reading is not a half sleep, but in
the highest sense, an exercise, a gymnastic struggle; that the reader
is to do something for himself, must be on the alert, must himself or
herself construct indeed the poem, argument, history, metaphysical
essay--the text furnishing the hints, the clue, the start or framework.”
“Men give me some credit for genius. All the genius I have lies in
this: when I have a subject in hand I study it profoundly; day and
night it is before me. I explore it in all its bearings. My mind
becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort which I make the people are
pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and
thought.”--_Daniel Webster._
We must recognize the fact that there are many books of great value to
others that have no message for us. We may waste time in reading good
books that we do not understand. “It is of paramount importance,” says
Schopenhauer, “to acquire the art _not_ to read.”
Books should be ladders to lift us to a higher mental plane. No matter
how long or how industriously we read, we can never be elevated by
trash. The more literature we ponder on and make our own the better we
are for it, but the little thoughts of inferior men though they may
serve to occupy our minds can never improve them. And on the other hand
the habit of associating with the thoughts of noble men gives health
and robustness to the mind, which does not grow unless it is exerted on
something worthy of its strength.
The books that help us most are those which demand the exercise of our
highest powers, books which have a clear and definite purpose and that
appeal to the best that is in us. Such books are not to be understood
all at once, but every time we re-read them we get new light upon them.
We should not force ourselves to read what we do not understand, but
should read the best that we can enjoy and if that is not the best
there is, it will be in time if we persevere.
No other occupation is so well adapted to the profitable employment
of moments of leisure as reading. At any place, at any time, without
preparation we may read. Books are always ready to do for us all
that our mental state will admit. No man was ever so wretched that he
could not claim and receive the companionship and sympathy of the best
thought of the best men. No life is so cheerless that it cannot be
brightened by books.
Doctor Johnson thought that the most miserable man is he who cannot
read on a rainy day. How much those miss who have no love of reading,
how time must hang heavily on their hands in illness, in bad weather,
in the long evenings. Emerson liked to read and study in a tumultuous
privacy of storm.
Reading is often the only pleasure of the sick, bringing to their rooms
the heroes of all ages and the scenes of all climes so that they may
forget their sufferings in sailing the ocean with Columbus, or leaving
the smoke and turmoil of the city they may wander with Thoreau in leafy
nooks by the crystal waters of Walden. Sitting in a poor room, ill-fed
and ragged a man may entertain Sir Walter Scott or Lord Macaulay and
dismiss them without ceremony when he tires of them. The fact that we
can stop the talk of a book at will is one of the greatest advantages
of reading. Lord Macaulay might have bored one but his books never do.
Reading is the great solace of old age and is one of the few pleasures
which increases as the years go by.
Life should be a happy medium between the practical and the ideal;
those successful men of business who have no taste for literature often
appreciate their deficiencies quite as much as do the impractical
idealists who have never accomplished anything of real value. Darwin
devoted his mental energies so entirely to the consideration of facts,
that he lost all taste for imaginative literature and deeply regretted
that his mind in this respect was warped and one sided.
There are, however, many men who have become so dulled by the
practicalities of business that they consider it a waste of time to
read anything but the newspapers or the reports of the stock market.
The pleasure to be gotten from Shakespeare or Tennyson such persons
will never know.
Lack of time is made an excuse for superficial accomplishment, but
no one is so busy that he cannot find time to read if he will but
diligently make the most of his opportunities. “Dost thou value life,”
said Franklin, “then do not waste time for that is the stuff life is
made of.” “In studies, whatsoever a man commandeth upon himself, let him
set hours for it,” says Bacon, but, he adds, “whatsoever is agreeable
to his nature, let him take no care for any set hours, for his thoughts
will fly to it of themselves.”
A small fixed period devoted to study every day is far better than a
longer time given occasionally. The result is not only greater but the
mental effect is better. For by devoting a certain time every day to
the consideration of noble thoughts your mind which grows by what it
feeds on is given food for reflection so that it increases in power
even when you are not reading.
There are books not only for all sorts and conditions of men but also
for all the varying circumstances of the life of each and for all the
different mental phases through which they may pass. A book may have
a message for every one but not the same message for each; one it may
encourage, another it may rebuke; one it may lead further in the path
he is treading, another it may stop and turn into a better way. Habits
of thought due to inheritance or occupation modify and in some measure
determine the effect of a book and the nature of its message for each
reader.
You should adapt books to your mental state, after a hard day’s work
the mind easily wearies, while with the strength of the morning you may
read the very best that you are capable of. Read the hardest book first
and as your mind tires lay it aside and take up something easier. When
you find that you are not appreciating what you read stop and give your
mind a rest.
What we read depends upon our taste and taste determines character and
is determined by character. Taste may be cultivated and improved by
always preferring the higher to the lower when we have an opportunity
to make a choice, by improving the surroundings and associations, by
unconscious influence as well as by conscious effort. There is only one
way in which a love for good literature may be gained and that is by
reading good literature. People talk about the English classics and at
last almost convince themselves that they are familiar with them but
how many do you know who have really read Shakespeare?
There are constant allusions in literature and in life to books with
which everyone is supposed to be acquainted, such as the _Bible_,
_Homer_, _Shakespeare_, _Pilgrim’s Progress_, _Scott_ and _Longfellow_.
One cannot always choose his business in life, sometimes he is forced
to do the first thing that comes to hand, but he need not engage in
any recreation that he does not choose and it is his own fault if his
pleasures are mean ones. We often meet people whose minds seem flat and
stale because they derive their highest inspiration from nothing more
elevating than the daily papers.
A common knowledge of a good book may be at once the foundation of
mutual understanding and friendship. It establishes a bond of sympathy
between minds cultivated and informed by contact with noble thoughts.
Such sympathy is impossible for those whose minds owing to lack of
reading dwell ever in the present amid material things.
Do not content yourself with reading the observations of others; be an
observer yourself. Your reading should teach you to observe, but some
persons stultify themselves so by constant reading that they lose the
power to perceive. Our minds grow by exertion rather than by passive
reception. We are put in the world not only to accomplish a certain
amount of work, but also to develop our mental and spiritual powers to
the fullest extent; to make the most of ourselves.
By taking an interest in what is going on around us we may add a new
charm to life. We are surrounded by the wonderful and inspiring but
only the great man or woman has the sense to see it; for all the rest
life is hopelessly commonplace. The man who finds the most to admire
gets the most enjoyment out of life. The study of nature teaches us
to appreciate much that is beautiful in literature, and, on the other
hand, books help us to enjoy many things about us that otherwise we
should not have noticed. Men with finer faculties than ourselves have
observed and recorded for us beauties that without their aid we should
have been unable to perceive. “Books,” said Dryden, “are spectacles to
read nature.”
The power of a book to stimulate the mind is one of its most useful
qualities. Some books are more valuable for what they make us think
than for what they actually say. It is the reading that we make the
most of, whose substance incorporates itself with our mental equipment,
that develops and enlarges our faculties. What we read and assimilate
becomes part of the character. Rousseau’s _Emile_, for instance, is
one of the most suggestive books ever written; Pestalozzi, Froebel,
Herbert Spencer and many other educational thinkers have derived their
inspiration from Rousseau. Emerson is especially valuable for the new
trains of thought which he suggests. Furthermore a book is far from
useless when it arouses thoughtful dissent. Passages in the _Emile_
have furnished the texts for discussions that have marked advances in
educational thought.
We form our characters from the men and books that we associate with.
We cannot always choose our companions but we can choose our books, and
it is our own fault if they are mean books. A man may be known better
by the books he reads than by the company he keeps, we should be quite
as likely to find a judge making a companion of a pickpocket or gambler
as to find a low-minded man reading an essay by Lowell or Emerson. Tell
me what you read and I will tell you what you are. It is what we take
an interest in that stamps us.
Matthew Arnold gives a concise definition of culture when he says
that it is “to know the best that has been thought and said in
the world,” and he makes this idea clearer by saying “culture is
reading, but reading with a purpose to guide it and with system.”
He elsewhere states, “Culture is a study of the perfection which
consists in becoming something rather than in having something, in
an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of
circumstances.” Self-activity is called by Sir William Hamilton the
primary principle of education. By lovingly reading the best books we
may go on, year after year, giving ourselves a fuller education than
can be gained in any university, because it is life long;--eternity
long. Such an education requires time rather than money and any one who
has the determination to improve himself, may like Sir William Jones
“with the fortune of a peasant give himself the education of a prince.”
To read good books in a proper manner adds to life a charm whose
infinite variety age cannot wither nor custom stale. It was Huxley, the
man of science who said, “literature is the greatest of all sources of
refined pleasure and one of the great uses of a liberal education is
to enable us to enjoy that pleasure.” The gain is immense when we have
learned to like the things that are improving rather than those that
merely entertain. The remark of Samuel Royce that whenever intellectual
pleasures are in the ascendant civilization progresses, and whenever
sensual pleasures predominate civilization is on the wane, is as true
of the individual as of the race. The nations which have made an
impression on history have done so by intellectual vigor and not by
brute force. It is ideas not arms that determine destinies and books
are the vehicle of ideas.
CHAPTER VI.
CLASSIFICATION OF BOOKS.
The multitude of books impresses on us the shortness of human life,
and immortality never seems more desirable and necessary than in the
presence of a library.
The national library of France contains about three million books and
the British Museum requires forty miles of shelves to accommodate its
two million volumes. The room which contains the card catalogue of the
nine hundred thousand books of the Boston Public Library is as large as
the entire space of many a village library.
According to the purposes for which they have been written books may
be divided broadly into three classes. In the first place we have
books intended to convey information. This class is very numerous as
it includes histories, biographies, travels, text books and works on
technical subjects.
The second class comprises those written to amuse, and consists mainly
of works of fiction. This is also numerous, for it constitutes the
chief mental nourishment of the greater number of readers. It is
estimated that novels form fully three-fourths of the books issued by
circulating libraries.
The last class is composed of books written to inspire, to which belong
works of the sacred writers and of the great poets. Such books are
comparatively few in number, but they include much of the noblest work
of the noblest men whom the world has known.
These three divisions are not separated by hard and fast lines;
Hawthorne’s _Marble Faun_, for example, at once entertains, informs and
inspires, while, fortunately for us all, the number of books that amuse
and at the same time instruct is sufficient to supply pleasure and
profit for the longest life and the most varied tastes.
There is of course still another class of books that are no books,
works of this kind far outnumber all the others put together, and it
requires constant care in order to avoid them.
“Throw away none of your time,” says Lord Chesterfield, “upon those
trivial futile books, published for the amusement of idle and ignorant
readers; such sort of books swarm and buzz about one every day; flop
them away,--they have no sting.”
Ruskin calls attention to the difference between books written to
render thought permanent such as great poems and histories, books of
all time he calls them, and books written merely for the hour, the
useful or pleasant talk of some person you cannot otherwise converse
with, such as travels and novels which he says are not books at all but
merely letters or newspapers in print.
“A book,” he says, “is essentially not a talked thing, but a written
thing; and written, not with the view of mere communication, but of
permanence. The book of talk is printed only because its author cannot
speak to thousands of people at once; if he could, he would--the
volume is mere _multiplication_ of his voice. You cannot talk to your
friend in India; if you could, you would; you write instead; that is
mere _conveyance_ of voice. But a book is written, not to multiply
the voice merely, not to carry it merely, but to preserve it. The
author has something to say which he perceives to be true and useful,
or helpfully beautiful. In the sum of his life he finds this to be
the thing, or group of things, manifest to him:--this is the piece of
true knowledge, or sight, which his share of sunshine and earth has
permitted him to seize. He would fain set it down forever; engrave it
on rock, if he could; saying, ‘This is the best of me; ... this I saw
and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory.’ That is his
‘writing’; it is, in his small human way, and with whatever degree of
true inspiration is in him, his inscription, or scripture. That is a
‘Book’.”
DeQuincey has made a very famous division of books, which I quote at
length because though often referred to, it is seldom seen in its
entirety. He says: “There is the literature of knowledge and there
is the literature of power. The function of the first is to _teach_;
the function of the second is to _move_. The first is a rudder; the
second, an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive
understanding; the second speaks, ultimately it may happen, to the
higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of
pleasure and sympathy.
“Remotely, it may travel towards an object seated in what Lord Bacon
calls _dry_ light; but, proximately, it does and must operate, else
it ceases to be a literature of _power_, on and through that _humid_
light which clothes itself in the mists and glittering _iris_ of human
passions, desire and genial emotions.
“Men have so little reflected on the higher functions of literature, as
to find it a paradox if one should describe it as a mean or subordinate
purpose of books to give information. But this is a paradox only in
the sense which makes it honorable to be paradoxical. Whenever we talk
in ordinary language of seeking information, or gaining knowledge, we
understand the words as connected with something of absolute novelty.
But it is the grandeur of all truth, which _can_ occupy a very high
place in human interests, that it is never absolutely novel in the
meanest minds; it exists eternally by way of germ or latent principle
in the lowest as in the highest, needing to be developed but never
planted. To be capable of transplantation is the immediate criterion
of a truth that ranges on a lower scale. Besides which, there is a
rarer thing than truth, namely, power, or deep sympathy with truth.
What is the effect, for instance, upon society, of children? By the
pity, by the tenderness, and by the peculiar modes of admiration, which
connect themselves with the helplessness, with the innocence, and
with the simplicity of children, not only are the primal affections
strengthened and continually renewed, but the qualities which are
dearest in the sight of heaven--the frailty, for instance, which
appeals to forbearance, the innocence which symbolizes the heavenly,
and the simplicity which is most alien from the worldly, are kept up
in perpetual remembrance, and their ideals are continually refreshed.
A purpose of the same nature is answered by the higher literature,
viz:--the literature of power.
“What do you learn from _Paradise Lost_? Nothing at all. What do you
learn from a cookery-book? Something new--something that you did not
know before, in every paragraph. But would you therefore put the
wretched cookery-book on a higher level of estimation than the divine
poem? What you owe to Milton is not any knowledge, of which a million
separate items are still but a million of advancing steps on the same
earthly level; what you owe is _power_, that is exercise and expansion
to your own latent capacity of sympathy with the infinite, where every
pulse and each separate influx is a step upwards--a step ascending as
upon a Jacob’s ladder from earth to mysterious altitudes above the
earth. _All_ the steps of knowledge, from first to last, carry you
further on the same plane, but could never raise you one foot above
your ancient level of earth: whereas the very _first_ step in power is
a flight--is an ascending movement into another element where earth is
forgotten.”
The verdict of time is never wrong. Books that delighted generations
of men have done so because of real merit and these are the books that
have embodied the life thought of great men. Shallow books no matter
how brilliant they may be are short-lived. The best thoughts of the
best men endure in books that are true to human experience irrespective
of the century in which they were written. An author is great in
proportion as he perceives the universally true in life.
The books which do us good are the sincere books, those which are true
in the highest sense of the word which give noble and cheerful ideas of
life, which make us respect human nature, books written by men who have
a helpful message for their fellow strugglers.
There are books which mark epochs in the progress of the world just
as the discovery of America and the invention of printing do, and the
reading of a book sometimes marks an epoch in life. Great is the joy of
meeting a real book by a thoughtful man. Keats wrote on first looking
into Chapman’s Homer:--
“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken
Or like stout Cortes when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific--and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”
CHAPTER VII.
POETRY.
Poetry is the flower of literature, the most perfect utterance of the
human mind in no other of his works does man so nearly approach the
Divine, so that in every age the poet has been regarded as the inspired
mouthpiece of God. The prophet was the forth teller not merely the
foreteller and his message commanded attention and respect as coming
from a power above the speaker. Whatever may be said to the contrary
there still remains the fact that the greatest and noblest thoughts
which have ever occupied the mind of man have found their highest
and most permanent expression in poetry, the outward form of which
differing from the language of daily life is at once the accompaniment
and indication of the dignity of a great idea.
Wordsworth calls poetry the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge.
To the question, “What is a poet?” he replies, “He is a man speaking
to men; a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more
enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature,
and a more comprehensive Soul than are supposed to be common among
mankind. To these qualities he has added a disposition to be affected
more than other men by absent things as if they were present.”
Poetry is life crystalized into literature, its value is in its eternal
truth, in its universal adaptation to the higher needs of our nature.
It is because we find in poetry what we have observed but could not
formulate for ourselves that it impresses us so deeply. George Eliot
said of Wordsworth’s poems, “I never before met with so many of my own
feelings expressed just as I should like them.” “There is some awe
mixed with the joy of our surprise,” wrote Emerson, “when this poet,
who lived in some past world, two or three hundred years ago, says
that which lies close to my own Soul, that which I also had well-nigh
thought and said.”
Lowell thought that the highest office of a great poet is to show us
how much variety, freshness, and opportunity abides in the obvious
and the familiar. Great poets have concentrated in their works the
thought of an age. Gladstone says that the poems of Homer constitute
a world of their own. “The study of him is not a mere matter of
literary criticism, but is a full study of life in every one of its
departments.” Poetry has somewhat the same relation to prose that a
landscape painted by Corot bears to a photograph of the same scene. It
is truth idealized. The poets teach us to admire beauties in nature
that we have often looked at but never perceived. If it were not for
Scott few people would know of Loch Katrine.
There is just as beautiful scenery elsewhere, but we are waiting for
the poets to show it to us.
Sometimes the poets compress their observations of life and of the
working of the spirit of man into words which embody a great truth in a
little space. “Jewels five words long that on the stretch’d forefinger
of all Time sparkle forever.” Often the poets produce an impression
or make a picture by the use or a single appropriate word, as when
Tennyson says the cloud _smoulders_ on the cliff. He is master of the
art of calling up mental images by allusions to color, sound and smell,
and he carefully chooses from his enormous vocabulary the exact word to
produce the desired effect.
Lowell thought that the real literary genius stored up the apt or
pleasing word, and Ruskin said, “he is the best poet who can by the
fewest words touch the greatest number of secret chords of thought in
his reader’s own mind, and set them to work in their own way.”
The inspiration and delight derived from familiarity with the best
poetry is one of the most precious results of culture. More than any
other work of man poetry helps us to cherish the ideal and we look to
our ideals to counteract the hardness of our daily life, to strengthen
and uplift us. To read a great poet for a few minutes every day raises
one out of the commonplace. Matthew Arnold, who was one of the hardest
worked men of his time, used to read a hundred lines or more of
the _Odyssey_ before he went to bed. He said that “Good poetry does
undoubtedly tend to form the Soul and character; it tends to beget a
love of beauty and of truth in alliance together; it suggests however
indirectly high and noble principles of action, and it inspires the
emotions helpful in making principles operative,” and he added, “We
have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to
sustain us.”
It is one of the fortunate miracles of literature that so much of the
very best poetry is also within the comprehension of the humblest
understanding. Many of the poems which have been the delight and
consolation of men of the greatest mental capacities have also the
power to encourage and uplift those of far lower abilities. The _Psalms
of David_, for example, have heights and depths which have made them
the inspiration of men of all classes in all ages. Progress in the
understanding of the poets is the result of reading which, beginning
with those that are easiest to comprehend, goes on with increasing
power to those, who, like Wordsworth, are philosophical and deep
and those, who, like Browning, present particular difficulties the
overcoming of which is rewarded by a vast wealth of inspiring thought.
Matthew Arnold, who speaks with authority on these subjects says,
“Constantly in reading poetry a sense of the best, the really
excellent, and of the strength and joy to be drawn from it, should be
present in our minds, and should govern our estimate of what we read.”
and he remarks of the poet that, “if he is a real classic, if his work
belongs to the class of the very best (for this is the true and right
meaning of the word, _classic_, _classical_), then the great thing
for us is to feel and enjoy his work as deeply as ever we can, and
to appreciate the wide difference between it and all work which has
not the same high character. This is what is salutary, this is what
is formative, this is the great benefit to be got from the study of
poetry.”
It is not to be expected that at the first reading you can see all the
beauties that a word-painter like Tennyson spent years in elaborating.
A masterpiece cannot be read too carefully nor too often. To appreciate
a great picture like the Sistine Madonna, you must return to it again
and again and let its gracious sweetness sink into your soul. It is so
that you must study a great poem.
Hence it follows naturally that there is great culture value in storing
the memory with noble poems. While we should not go so far as to say
with Ruskin that no poetry is worth reading which is not worth learning
by heart, there is an inspiration in adorning our minds with as much as
we can learn accurately from the great poets; and this inspiration is
derived especially from the poetry we have known and loved in youth,
which has, from its very associations, a strength and sweetness that no
other can have.
“Many a noble poem,” says Henry Pancoast, “early acquired by a pure
effort of the memory and at first but dimly understood, has gradually
worked its way into the hidden depths of a child’s conscious life,
revealing its full power and beauty only by slow degrees, and
elevating, quickening, and enlarging his spirit in secrecy and in
silence.”
Poetry as the truest expression of the life and morals of an age is at
once a prophecy and a history. A prophecy as indicating that to which
the nation would aspire--a history as a record of the fact of past
aspiration. Concrete individual fact has little significance to poetry
except as the manifestation of an idea or of a universal truth.--The
poet is the embodiment of his age and his era and a full understanding
of his poetry gives us an insight into the very heart of them.
CHAPTER VIII.
BIOGRAPHY.
Great poetry is the expression of the spiritual life, not of the poet
merely, but of the poet in his capacity of forthteller of what is
divine and universal in human life. History deals with the life and
actions and motives of men in a particular age and treats of human
achievements and relations, and of their causes and effects. Both
Poetry and History are in a sense impersonal, being concerned not so
much with individuals as such, as with the ideals toward which or
the ideas with which men live their lives and do their work. It is
biography to which we turn for the most intimate and detailed personal
knowledge of a particular great man who may have been the poet whose
lines have met response in every heart or the writer whose mind has
guided a nation. As dealing with life itself biography may well be
regarded as one of the important divisions of literature. It may be
and usually is found to belong in both classes, the literature of
knowledge, and the literature of power. There is a directness about a
great biography that causes us to feel personally acquainted with the
subject of it.
“The great man,” says Carlyle, “does in good truth, belong to his own
age--nay, more so than any other man; being properly the synopsis and
epitome of such age with its interests and influences; but belongs
likewise to all ages, otherwise he is not great. What was transitory
in him passes away and an immortal part remains, the significance of
which is in strict speech inexhaustible--as that of every _real_ object
is. Aloft, conspicuous, on his enduring basis, he stands there, serene,
unaltering; silently addresses to every new generation a new lesson and
monition. Well is his life worth writing, worth interpreting; and ever,
in the new dialect of new times, of rewriting and reinterpreting;” and
he adds, “as the highest Gospel was a Biography, so is the Life of
every good man still an indubitable Gospel.”
There is an obvious similarity between the biography of a great man
by a great man and the portrait of a great man by a great artist.
The National Portrait Gallery in London makes real to us the men who
have been England’s glory in peace and war. No one can leave it after
looking on the faces of Gladstone and Tennyson and Sir John Franklin
and the hundreds of others who scorned delights and lived laborious
days without having a higher estimate of humanity and being nerved
to new efforts, and we may obtain the same effect in a more detailed
manner by reading the best biographies.
The number of great men who are alive at any one time is small, and
they are too much occupied to see any but those who have important
business with them, but we may study them at our leisure in their
biographies, and go over the events of years in a few hours.
A knowledge of the life of an author always adds interest to the
perusal of his books and is frequently of value in explaining them.
The study of the noble life in connection with the works of the noble
mind is one of the best foundations for liberal culture. Consider the
influence of an acquaintance with the entire works of Longfellow or
Lowell, read in connection with the life of the former by his brother,
or with the biography of the latter by Scudder. To know the atmosphere
which surrounded such men, the things towards which their interest
went out, the sources from which they drew their inspiration, the way
in which the common experiences of life, so familiar to us all grew
beautiful under their poetic imagination; a familiarity with all these
things will elevate a man’s whole life.
The light too which is thrown by biography on the conduct of life is
very great. Theory, philosophizing, opinions, reasoning, are of little
worth when compared with the actual facts of the life of a man who has
attained distinction in any department of human achievement. Reading of
this kind teaches us that chance is only to a small extent an element
of success, that nothing is attained by the brightest minds without
that infinite patience and labor which in itself is genius. To think of
the brave way in which such men met the trials that they were called
upon to endure is a most healthful remedy for warped and selfish ideas
of life.
Take the life of Scott by Lockhart; note the domestic tastes of the
author of _Waverly_, his kindly interest in the humblest persons around
him, the heroic way in which he nerved himself to meet single-handed
the overwhelming catastrophe of the failure of Constable, the way
in which, while struggling with physical weaknesses that would have
rendered another conscious only of his own sufferings, he retained his
simplicity and gentle thoughtfulness for others,--all these lessons may
be learned from that noble biography.
We should take a sympathetic interest in the lives of high-minded men,
and note how in spite of obstacles and failures they have accomplished
their purposes and how some have been great because they nobly tried
and in spite of the fact that they nobly failed. Nothing is more
helpful than to see that our ills are not peculiar to ourselves, but
that others have overcome the same difficulties that are perplexing us.
Biography teaches us to look at life from many points of view. In
reading biography, said Dr. Andrew Peabody, “I find myself translating
a life unlike what mine can ever be into terms of my own life, shaping
from it analogies, equivalents, and parallels for my own aims and
endeavors, studying modes of embodying its underlying principles in
forms, it may be of which he whose experience suggests them could never
have dreamed.”
Learn to make a distinction between the essential and fundamental
characteristics of a great man and such gossipy details as what he
had for breakfast and how he wore his hair. “It is the great error of
thoughtless biographers,” says Ruskin, “to attribute to the accident
which introduces some new phase of character, all the circumstances of
character which gave the accident importance.”
When a great man has written the story of his own life the result is a
book of double value. Emerson and George Eliot agreed in considering
the _Confessions of Rousseau_ the most interesting book they had ever
read. _Franklin’s_ _Autobiography_ is a model of keen and accurate
observation expressed in the clearest and simplest language.
_Boswell’s_ _Life of Johnson_ is commonly considered the best biography
in the language. Of this and _Lockhart’s_ _Scott_ Phillips Brooks says
that they are “worthy to be read and re-read, and read again by all men
who want to keep their manhood healthy, broad and brave, and true.”
CHAPTER IX.
HISTORY.
The object of history is to tell us not only what happened but the
causes and results of what happened, and this leads the historian
into almost every field of human interest. He deals, to be sure, with
facts, as far as he is able to ascertain them, but his generalizations
and interpretations of facts are an important part of his work. The
historian must abandon prejudice, preconception and predilection of
every kind. He must deal with the people, their ideas, development
and social movements as well as with the incidents of war and foreign
relations and the actions and influence of great men whose agency in
shaping the progress of events is often over-estimated.
As everything which passes through the human mind is necessarily
colored more or less by the particular mind through which it passes, we
find that the history of the same people during the same period will
not seem in all respects to be identical when presented by different
historians. Macaulay and Carlyle, each of whom wrote history with
extraordinary brilliancy, present to us pictures of the times of which
they wrote that for interest are wonderful but for accuracy are in many
respects less valuable than the histories written by authors of less
ability.
Psychologists tell us that the chief use of the study of history is
to train the judgment. It has other uses, however, which while not so
essential from the viewpoint of the psychologist, are important in
their bearing on the development of the individual. The breadth of view
which comes from a knowledge of the relations of men in another period
or land helps us in the understanding of the affairs of our own nation
or community in our own day. Human struggles, achievements or even
failures must ever interest the thoughtful man and the rise, progress
and decline or success of great movements in another age enables us
to judge intelligently of similar or other movements going on about
us. Narrowness and bigotry will ever exist even among men who are in
intention perfectly sincere and honest, but the man who is narrow
and bigoted in regard to any subject because of ignorance of history
or unwillingness to ascertain the full facts is dishonest to himself.
History is one of the most enlightening of studies and its effect upon
daily conduct if rightly viewed may be such as to lead men to a wider
and fuller application of the Golden Rule. In fact much of what the
historian is called upon to record has a direct relation to the Golden
Rule or rather to the frequent failure of men to observe it. To the
devout mind the working of God in history is clearly shown, and the
downfall of nations may be traced in many instances to a decline in
religious earnestness and to a consequent lowering of moral standards.
The thought that human history from the beginning has been one
continuous and progressive whole without a break or intermission of
any kind is an idea for the clear expression and emphasizing of which
we are greatly indebted to Thomas Arnold. The histories of Greece and
Rome are our histories, for from them has come the glorious heritage
of thought and social organization which we have in their literature
and in Roman law. All facts in history are in some way related, though
we often lose the connection through ignorance of intervening facts or
events, or through lack of knowledge of even whole centuries of human
life and struggle.
The _Old Testament_ regarded as actual human history is a series of
documents pulsating with the very life and heartbeats of real men. It
is no dry theology or book apart from great movements of mankind. It
is the living record of one part of our race. History interprets for
us the present and enables us to predict the future. It shows that
there are laws which govern human relationships and that a knowledge of
these laws will enable us to judge what is likely to come to pass. A
study of the method pursued by the men who have written great histories
reveals to us the diligence of investigation, the labor to secure
accuracy, the care to be impartial observers that must characterize the
writers of history as we now understand it. An important part of the
work of a modern historian consists in weighing and interpreting the
statements of writers of long ago who are often the only source we have
of information concerning the things of which they wrote. No source
of information is to be ignored. An inscription on a coin may unfold
a story to the patient searcher for historical knowledge; an Etruscan
tomb may modify our understanding of a passage of early Roman history;
a visit to the scene of one of Caesar’s battles may give us an entirely
different idea of the great general’s account of it.
John Fiske said that “The real history of a people includes everything
about them and is therefore an aggregate of innumerable facts. It is
impossible and undesirable to present all these facts or a millionth
part of them and so history must be a selection from infinite details.
Historic facts are not of equal value and the historian fixes upon
those only which he thinks will help him show the greater features of
a people’s origin, rise, progress and vicissitudes. It is desirable
to have at command the more important facts of history, but the
most precious thing history has to offer may be missed by one who
is chiefly employed in memorizing it. When history is viewed as an
assemblage of unrelated facts, conquering it naturally takes the form
of committing it to memory. When it is looked upon as a development--a
chain of causes and effects--it appeals more directly to the reason
and the understanding. Most of history we must forget, but we should
strive to retain something of interest in reading history, something of
power in following up a line of ordinary investigation, something of a
disposition to seek for the underlying causes of events, something of a
grasp of the mightier tendencies and movements of history that makes it
a teacher of the present out of the wealth of its past.”
History as contained in the biographies of representative men is both
delightful and profitable reading. Montaigne tells us that “the only
good histories are those that are written by such as commanded or were
imploid themselves in weighty affaires or that were partners in the
conduct of them, or that at least have had the fortune to manage others
of like qualitie.”
Our literature is especially rich in biographies and autobiographies
of men prominent in American history, such as Washington, Franklin
and Lincoln, and in personal memoirs such as those of Grant, Sherman,
Sheridan, Johnston and Longstreet. The accounts of the Civil War by
the Northern and Southern commanders form a valuable exercise of the
judgment for they show how honorable men may look at a question from
different points of view. Such reading should teach self reliance and
confidence as well as modesty and fairmindedness. One should first read
a short and reliable book, and, after he has obtained a knowledge of
the course of events, expand it by reading longer works and by making a
comparison of authorities. Study the history of our own country, but do
not forget that it cannot be perfectly understood without studying that
of other countries and especially that of England. Students of history
consider that Roman history unites the ancient world to the modern;
French history is the story of civilization from the twelfth to the
eighteenth century, European history centres in French history.
We may sometimes get an excellent idea of history from a historical
novel such as _The Virginians_ or _The Scarlet Letter_, for such
works give us a picture of social conditions of the times with great
historical characters appearing usually, if at all, in the background
or setting of the story.
CHAPTER X.
FICTION.
Fiction which includes two closely related forms, the novel or romance
and the drama, has two functions; the more important being the
interpreting and reflecting of life, the holding of the mirror up to
nature, as Hamlet called it, and the giving of pleasure as a result of
the presentation.
The romance which may be in the form of a novel or of a drama differs
from the ordinary novel as chiefly in dealing with the unusual and
improbable, including the supernatural. The novel performs to-day a
great part of what the drama performed practically alone in the days of
Elizabeth and James.
The close relation of the drama and the novel is seen in the fact that
the same story may be told in both forms and it is common to-day to see
a successful novel presented as a drama on the stage while on the other
hand, novels have sometimes been written from plays.
The novel and the drama are classed as fiction because they present
pictures that are usually not representations of actual fact, but no
novel or drama is worthy of consideration which is untrue to what
might happen in human life or to the great essential truths of human
relationships. This is not a distinction between moral and immoral
novels and dramas, for an immoral book may be true to facts in human
experience, but they are the facts of pathological conditions and not
of health.
An immoral book is one in which vice is made attractive and evil
is condoned and unpunished. The Elizabethan drama never made vice
triumphant and the sinner always was made to pay the just penalty for
his sin. The drama of the Restoration, narrower in human interest than
that of the Elizabethans, differed from the latter notably in the
attitude towards vice; sacred relationships were matters of jest by the
dissolute courtiers and their followers and vice was objectionable only
when found out. When our ideas of right and wrong are confused and our
conceptions of morality undermined by a book, it is to be avoided, for
it can only do us harm. No good book ever makes sin respectable though
it may of necessity present scenes in which disreputable characters
appear; one of the greatest examples of this is _Vanity Fair_.
Keener observers than we are, who saw deeper into the inner workings of
human nature have described in novels the operations and consequences
of love, hate, avarice, revenge and other emotions which are always
likely to move the heart. It is therefore of the utmost importance that
when we read fiction we should read none except that written by masters
who really did understand the soul of man, for when we read books by
inferior observers we get warped and false ideas. In giving impressions
of life the novel possesses a great advantage over biography, because,
out of respect for the memory of the dead and the feelings of the
living, the tendency of biography is to omit or to subdue harsh
experiences, so that books like the _Confessions of Rousseau_ which
describe the deepest workings and weaknesses of the heart of a real man
are exceedingly rare.
Treating of imaginary characters, the novelist may describe what he
actually sees without fear of hurting the feelings of anyone. The
tendency of many novels to conventionalize life and to express in set
phrases the tenderest emotions is another reason why we should read no
fiction but that which is true to life. We may occasionally be obliged
to read for information a book written by an inferior author but there
is no excuse for reading any novels but those of the highest class.
We should question fiction sharply as to its effect upon our natures;
if it does not have a wholesome and uplifting influence, no amount of
interest that it possesses should entitle it to consideration.
When you read fiction read that written by the masters, like Scott,
Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot. Read the great novels that the
judgment of the world has pronounced of permanent value but do not form
one of the large class whose chief inspiration is derived from the last
new novel. The new book that every one is talking about will probably
be forgotten in six months but _Ivanhoe_, _Henry Esmond_, _David
Copperfield_, and _Romola_ will last as long as the English language.
There are some classic stories like _Robinson Crusoe_, _Gulliver’s
Travels_ and _The Arabian Nights_ to which constant reference is made
and with which every educated person is expected to be familiar.
To keep up with the flood of modern fiction is impossible. There is
a great gain if we can find amusement in reading books which inform
as well as entertain. Prefer fact to fiction. Few are indifferent to
the pathos of Dickens and Thackeray but there is a chord touched in
reading of the actual heroism of brave men and women which no imaginary
character can affect so strongly. When we read poor DeLong’s record,
in the midst of that terrible Arctic winter on the Jeannette, “for
myself, I am doing all I can to make myself trusted and respected, and
I think I succeed, I try to be gentle but firm in correcting anything
I see wrong, and always calm and self-possessed.” we are moved by a
real human sympathy. Yet it is one of the miracles of the masters of
fiction that they make their characters so real to us. Lowell said he
knew the sound of Squire Weston’s voice; and for many people Baker
Street, London, is more definite as a landmark as the residence of the
imaginary Sherlock Holmes than of the real Mrs. Siddons.
CHAPTER XI.
LIBRARIES AND THE CARE OF BOOKS.
We do not get the most out of a book unless we own it; we cannot take
a personal interest in borrowed books, and, although it pleases Mr.
Augustine Birrell to think of the thousands of thumbs that have turned
over its pages with delight, it is difficult really to know a library
book with its soiled pages, battered cover and the date when it must be
returned impending like the Day of Judgment.
There is the same difference between a book that you own and a library
book that there is between a home and a hotel; the one is stamped
with the individuality of its owner, the other is common property. It
is pleasant to have a feeling of proprietorship in the great men of
the past and to speak of _my_ Homer or _my_ Shakespeare. How close
it brings us to a man when we possess a book with his autograph or
book-plate in it, or which, better still, he has read and marked. If
for instance, we owned Lowell’s _Don Quixote_ with the notes written on
its margin in repeated readings from which he drew the material for his
famous address, what an inspiration it would be.
The books that you skim you may borrow. If you buy them they will take
up room on your shelves that may be more profitably employed; but the
books that you wish to read again and again, to ponder over and to
study you must own.
You may have a library full of books, but what you really are is
determined by that part of them which you have read and laid to heart.
Yet the unconscious tuition of books has a real value, we learn to
love them by having them about us. Merely to surround ourselves with
great books and with the portraits of those who have written them has
a refining influence as constant as it is unnoticed. That the essay of
Emerson or the poem of Longfellow is where you can lay your hand on it,
that the kindly faces of the writers look down on you from the wall,
associations such as these sweeten and elevate life.
Although there is a luxurious beauty about an elegant edition that is
not to be lightly esteemed, there is a satisfaction in knowing that we
can derive as much food for thought from a cheap Shakespeare as from
a first folio. The truest book-lovers are those who love the thoughts
that the books contain. Complete editions of standard authors are the
best to own. The print should be large and the books easy to hold and
to open. If edited at all, the work should be done by a competent
scholar. It takes a great deal of editing to spoil a classic, but
nowadays there is too much editing, too much thinking is done for us.
Dr. Johnson thought that books that you may carry to the fire and hold
readily in your hand are the most useful.
The durability of the letter as well as the spirit of a book is
nowadays too often disregarded. Publishers recognize how much a
striking exterior has to do with the sale of a book and pay more
attention to making it attractive than durable. In former times men
had more respect for books. The vellum bound volumes of three hundred
years ago will be in good condition long after the books of to-day have
come to pieces and been thrown away.
If it be true that the degree of civilization of a people may be
measured by its respect for its dead, it is no less true that the
refinement of a household may be estimated by its care for its
books. Some men of letters, however, have been remarkable for their
ill-treatment of books. The poet Young turned down the leaf where there
was a passage that interested him, so that many of his books would not
shut. Voltaire noted his likes and dislikes in books with little regard
to whether they belonged to him or not, while Coleridge said you might
as well turn a bear into a tulip garden as let Wordsworth loose in your
library; and in his _Literary Reminiscences_ DeQuincey records a story
which makes every book-lover shudder, that Wordsworth cut pages of
Burke with a knife that had been used to butter toast.
Mr. Spofford gives some admirable directions for the care of books.
One should never draw books out from the shelf by their head-bands,
or by pulling at the binding, but by placing the finger firmly on the
top of the book, next to the binding and pressing down while drawing
out the volume. Do not wedge books tightly together; do not pile them
on top of each other; do not lay open books down upon their faces,
or place weights upon open books. Books should be kept dry, but not
too warm; if moist they mildew, if too warm they warp. No sensible
person would press plants in any book of value. Do not mark the place
by cards or letters. It weakens the binding. Use thin paper. Do not
touch the engravings in books. Remember that even clean hands may soil
dusty books. Those who follow the injunction of the _Prayer Book_ to
read and mark should be sure that they do so in their own books only.
The suggestion not to wet the fingers in turning the leaf would seem
needless did not observation show that there are persons with whom this
clownish custom still obtains.
A private library should be a growth. It marks the stages of progress
of the mind of its owner; no other property that a man leaves behind
him shows what he really was so fully as his books.
There are few hobbies a man can adopt from which as much enjoyment and
instruction may be derived as from the gradual acquisition of a lot of
books on some subject of special interest. Emerson’s advice “buy in the
line of your genius” is weighty and should be heeded. A man of moderate
means may gradually get together a more complete collection on his
specialty than the richest man could secure at short notice, and his
satisfaction in the growth of such a library can never be experienced
by the wealthy book collector who employs others to do the work for
him. All that is needed is steady attention to buying such books, as
opportunity presents itself. Many of the rarest and most valuable works
cannot be procured on demand and must be bought when found, or the
chance of securing them is gone, perhaps forever.
The gathering of such a collection may be made an education in itself,
and instead of leaving his books to be scattered at his death, as has
been the fate of so many libraries, a prudent man would provide that
they should be kept together and given to a permanent library. Many
an institution would be glad to add to a good private collection on a
particular subject its own books on the subject and make a memorial
alcove to the donor which would prove a far more sensible monument
than a shaft in the cemetery. Now that men have learned to respect
books public libraries are as nearly immortal as any human institution
can be. A great library is the only human institution that can take
all knowledge for its province. Such libraries are mines from which
knowledge may be quarried, and where the ideas of the past may be
adapted to the needs of the present.
In a collection of books on the same subject each adds value to the
other. Many libraries are an ill-assembled throng as useless as the
vast army of Darius.
There is such a thing as an embarrassment of riches. If you have too
many books about you, you may be bewildered so that you do not read
to advantage. “Successful work,” said Lowell, “is the result of a
due proportion between the task and the instrument. Southey, whose
literary industry was so remarkable within the range of his own
library, said ‘that he never should have accomplished anything, if his
energies had been buried under the vast stores of the British Museum.’”
As a workshop the public library may supplement, but it can rarely
take the place of the private library. DeQuincey said that for mere
purposes of study your own library is far preferable to the Bodleian
or the Vatican, and Emerson thought that the best of the Harvard
University library was in his study at home. That was the best for his
own use, because when a man is working in a special line of thought he
accumulates in time a collection of books on that subject that is more
complete than any but the largest library can supply, and he can work
with more facility with books that are familiar to him and ready to
his hand. Emerson’s books, however, would have been of little use to a
Civil Engineer or to an American Historian, while a public library must
provide for the needs of all students in whatever lines of research.
But Emerson was under constant indebtedness to the Harvard library,
in fact, that noble collection of books has played no small part in
the literary development of Boston as well as of the great University.
“The true University of these days,” said Carlyle, “is a collection of
books, and all education is to teach us how to read.”
* * * * *
Read in order that you may know more, be more, do more: books will help
you to accomplish all these things and these things make up the sum of
life, here and hereafter.
Transcriber’s Notes
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Small capitals are changed to all capitals.
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected
after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and
consultation of external sources. Except for those changes noted below,
all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have
been retained.
The following corrections have been applied to the text (before/after):
(p. 23)
... pilot with out eyes. ...
... pilot without eyes. ...
(p. 27)
... distracted with thoughs of ...
... distracted with thoughts of ...
(p. 28)
... and first, and last ...
... and first and last ...
(p. 29)
... difficulty in re membering what ...
... difficulty in remembering what ...
(p. 30)
... kind of re-active behavior ...
... kind of reactive behavior ...
(p. 31)
... THE ABUSE OF BOOKS
... THE ABUSE OF BOOKS.
(p. 31)
... first-class houses stay at ...
... first-class houses, stay at ...
(p. 38)
... Schopenhauer calls, “bad books, ...
... Schopenhauer calls “bad books, ...
(p. 38)
... of their readings
... of their readings.
(p. 42)
... ‘It is of paramount ...
... “It is of paramount ...
(p. 44)
... receive the companship and sympathy ...
... receive the companionship and sympathy ...
(p. 46)
... “In studies whatsoever ...
... “In studies, whatsoever ...
(p. 50)
... “Books,’ said Dryden, ...
... “Books,” said Dryden, ...
(p. 50)
... useful qualities Some books ...
... useful qualities. Some books ...
(p. 55)
... mental nourisment of the greater ...
... mental nourishment of the greater ...
(p. 59)
... connect them selves with ...
... connect themselves with ...
(p. 61)
... with a wild surprise--
... with a wild surmise--
(p. 63)
... among mankind To these ...
... among mankind. To these ...
(p. 64)
... opportunity abides n the obvious ...
... opportunity abides in the obvious ...
(p. 66)
... principles operative, and he ...
... principles operative,” and he ...
(p. 67)
... like Browning present ...
... like Browning, present ...
(p. 67)
... high character This is ...
... high character. This is ...
(p. 69)
... past aspiration, Concrete ...
... past aspiration. Concrete ...
(p. 75)
... says Ruskin, to attribute ...
... says Ruskin, “to attribute ...
(p. 83)
... to the moern; French history ...
... to the modern; French history ...
(p. 88)
... it posses should ...
... it possesses should ...
(p. 88)
... Dickens, Thackery and George Eliot. ...
... Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot. ...
(p. 92)
... borrow. if you ...
... borrow. If you ...
(p. 93)
... scholar. If takes a ...
... scholar. It takes a ...
(p. 93)
The durablity of the ...
The durability of the ...
(p. 99)
... here and hereafter,
... here and hereafter.
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