full of ideas, derived from hearing others talk, from learning and
reading, before one has anything like an extensive knowledge of the
world as it is and as one sees it. The observations which produce all
these ideas are said to come later on with experience; but until then
these ideas are applied wrongly, and accordingly both things and men are
judged wrongly, seen wrongly, and treated wrongly. And so it is that
education perverts the mind; and this is why, after a long spell of
learning and reading, we enter the world, in our youth, with views that
are partly simple, partly perverted; consequently we comport ourselves
with an air of anxiety at one time, at another of presumption. This is
because our head is full of ideas which we are now trying to make use
of, but almost always apply wrongly. This is the result of ὑστερον
προτερον (putting the cart before the horse), since we are directly
opposing the natural development of our mind by obtaining ideas first
and observations last; for teachers, instead of developing in a boy his
faculties of discernment and judgment, and of thinking for himself,
merely strive to stuff his head full of other people's thoughts.
Subsequently, all the opinions that have sprung from misapplied ideas
have to be rectified by a lengthy experience; and it is seldom that they
are completely rectified. This is why so few men of learning have such
sound common sense as is quite common among the illiterate.
* * * * *
From what has been said, the principal point in education is that _one's
knowledge of the world begins at the right end;_ and the attainment of
which might be designated as the aim of all education. But, as has been
pointed out, this depends principally on the observation of each thing
preceding the idea one forms of it; further, that narrow ideas precede
broader; so that the whole of one's instruction is given in the order
that the ideas themselves during formation must have followed. But
directly this order is not strictly adhered to, imperfect and
subsequently wrong ideas spring up; and finally there arises a perverted
view of the world in keeping with the nature of the individual--a view
such as almost every one holds for a long time, and most people to the
end of their lives. If a man analyses his own character, he will find
that it was not until he reached a very ripe age, and in some cases
quite unexpectedly, that he was able to rightly and clearly understand
many matters of a quite simple nature.
Previously, there had been an obscure point in his knowledge of the
world which had arisen through his omitting something in his early
education, whether he had been either artificially educated by men or
just naturally by his own experience. Therefore one should try to find
out the strictly natural course of knowledge, so that by keeping
methodically to it children may become acquainted with the affairs of
the world, without getting false ideas into their heads, which
frequently cannot be driven out again. In carrying this out, one must
next take care that children do not use words with which they connect no
clear meaning. Even children have, as a rule, that unhappy tendency of
being satisfied with words instead of wishing to understand things, and
of learning words by heart, so that they may make use of them when they
are in a difficulty. This tendency clings to them afterwards, so that
the knowledge of many learned men becomes mere verbosity.
However, the principal thing must always be to let one's observations
precede one's ideas, and not the reverse as is usually and unfortunately
the case; which may be likened to a child coming into the world with its
feet foremost, or a rhyme begun before thinking of its reason. While the
child's mind has made a very few observations one inculcates it with
ideas and opinions, which are, strictly speaking, prejudices. His
observations and experience are developed through this ready-made
apparatus instead of his ideas being developed out of his own
observations. In viewing the world one sees many things from many sides,
consequently this is not such a short or quick way of learning as that
which makes use of abstract ideas, and quickly comes to a decision about
everything; therefore preconceived ideas will not be rectified until
late, or it may be they are never rectified. For, when a man's view
contradicts his ideas, he will reject at the outset what it renders
evident as one-sided, nay, he will deny it and shut his eyes to it, so
that his preconceived ideas may remain unaffected. And so it happens
that many men go through life full of oddities, caprices, fancies, and
prejudices, until they finally become fixed ideas. He has never
attempted to abstract fundamental ideas from his own observations and
experience, because he has got everything ready-made from other people;
and it is for this very reason that he and countless others are so
insipid and shallow. Instead of such a system, the natural system of
education should be employed in educating children. No idea should be
impregnated but what has come through the medium of observations, or at
any rate been verified by them. A child would have fewer ideas, but they
would be well-grounded and correct. It would learn to measure things
according to its own standard and not according to another's. It would
then never acquire a thousand whims and prejudices which must be
eradicated by the greater part of subsequent experience and education.
Its mind would henceforth be accustomed to thoroughness and clearness;
the child would rely on its own judgment, and be free from prejudices.
And, in general, children should not get to know life, in any aspect
whatever, from the copy before they have learnt it from the original.
Instead, therefore, of hastening to place mere books in their hands, one
should make them gradually acquainted with things and the circumstances
of human life, and above everything one should take care to guide them
to a clear grasp of reality, and to teach them to obtain their ideas
directly from the real world, and to form them in keeping with it--but
not to get them from elsewhere, as from books, fables, or what others
have said--and then later to make use of such ready-made ideas in real
life. The result will be that their heads are full of chimeras and that
some will have a wrong comprehension of things, and others will
fruitlessly endeavour to remodel the world according to those chimeras,
and so get on to wrong paths both in theory and practice. For it is
incredible how much harm is done by false notions which have been
implanted early in life, only to develop later on into prejudices; the
later education which we get from the world and real life must be
employed in eradicating these early ideas. And this is why, as is
related by Diogenes Laertius, Antisthenes gave the following answer:
έρωτηθεις τι των μαθηματων ἀναγκαιοτατον, έφη, "το κακα ἀπομαθειν."
(_Interrogatus quaenam esset disciplina maxime necessaria, Mala, inquit,
dediscere_.)
* * * * *
Children should be kept from all kinds of instruction that may make
errors possible until their sixteenth year, that is to say, from
philosophy, religion, and general views of every description; because it
is the errors that are acquired in early days that remain, as a rule,
ineradicable, and because the faculty of judgment is the last to arrive
at maturity. They should only be interested in such things that make
errors impossible, such as mathematics, in things which are not very
dangerous, such as languages, natural science, history, and so forth; in
general, the branches of knowledge which are to be taken up at any age
must be within reach of the intellect at that age and perfectly
comprehensible to it. Childhood and youth are the time for collecting
data and getting to know specially and thoroughly individual and
particular things. On the other hand, all judgment of a general nature
must at that time be suspended, and final explanations left alone. One
should leave the faculty of judgment alone, as it only comes with
maturity and experience, and also take care that one does not anticipate
it by inculcating prejudice, when it will be crippled for ever.
On the contrary, the memory is to be specially exercised, as it has its
greatest strength and tenacity in youth; however, what has to be
retained must be chosen with the most careful and scrupulous
consideration. For as it is what we have learnt well in our youth that
lasts, we should take the greatest possible advantage of this precious
gift. If we picture to ourselves how deeply engraven on our memory the
people are whom we knew during the first twelve years of our life, and
how indelibly imprinted are also the events of that time, and most of
the things that we then experienced, heard, or learnt, the idea of
basing education on this susceptibility and tenacity of the youthful
mind will seem natural; in that the mind receives its impressions
according to a strict method and a regular system. But because the years
of youth that are assigned to man are only few, and the capacity for
remembering, in general, is always limited (and still more so the
capacity for remembering of the individual), everything depends on the
memory being filled with what is most essential and important in any
department of knowledge, to the exclusion of everything else. This
selection should be made by the most capable minds and masters in every
branch of knowledge after the most mature consideration, and the result
of it established. Such a selection must be based on a sifting of
matters which are necessary and important for a man to know in general,
and also for him to know in a particular profession or calling.
Knowledge of the first kind would have to be divided into graduated
courses, like an encyclopædia, corresponding to the degree of general
culture which each man has attained in his external circumstances; from
a course restricted to what is necessary for primary instruction up to
the matter contained in every branch of the philosophical faculty.
Knowledge of the second kind would, however, be reserved for him who had
really mastered the selection in all its branches. The whole would give
a canon specially devised for intellectual education, which naturally
would require revision every ten years. By such an arrangement the
youthful power of the memory would be put to the best advantage, and it
would furnish the faculty of judgment with excellent material when it
appeared later on.
* * * * *
What is meant by maturity of knowledge is that state of perfection to
which any one individual is able to bring it, when an exact
correspondence has been effected between the whole of his abstract ideas
and his own personal observations: whereby each of his ideas rests
directly or indirectly on a basis of observation, which alone gives it
any real value; and likewise he is able to place every observation that
he makes under the right idea corresponding to it.
_Maturity_ of knowledge is the work of experience alone, and
consequently of time. For the knowledge we acquire from our own
observation is, as a rule, distinct from that we get through abstract
ideas; the former is acquired in the natural way, while the latter comes
through good and bad instruction and what other people have told to us.
Consequently, in youth there is generally little harmony and connection
between our ideas, which mere expressions have fixed, and our real
knowledge, which has been acquired by observation. Later they both
gradually approach and correct each other; but maturity of knowledge
does not exist until they have become quite incorporated. This maturity
is quite independent of that other kind of perfection, the standard of
which may be high or low, I mean the perfection to which the capacities
of an individual may be brought; it is not based on a correspondence
between the abstract and intuitive knowledge, but on the degree of
intensity of each.
The most necessary thing for the practical man is the attainment of an
exact and thorough knowledge of _what is really going on in the world;_
but it is also the most irksome, for a man may continue studying until
old age without having learnt all that is to be learnt; while one can
master the most important things in the sciences in one's youth. In
getting such a knowledge of the world, it is as a novice that the boy
and youth have the first and most difficult lessons to learn; but
frequently even the matured man has still much to learn. The study is of
considerable difficulty in itself, but it is made doubly difficult by
_novels_, which depict the ways of the world and of men who do not exist
in real life. But these are accepted with the credulity of youth, and
become incorporated with the mind; so that now, in the place of purely
negative ignorance, a whole framework of wrong ideas, which are
positively wrong, crops up, subsequently confusing the schooling of
experience and representing the lesson it teaches in a false light. If
the youth was previously in the dark, he will now be led astray by a
will-o'-the-wisp: and with a girl this is still more frequently the
case. They have been deluded into an absolutely false view of life by
reading novels, and expectations have been raised that can never be
fulfilled. This generally has the most harmful effect on their whole
lives. Those men who had neither time nor opportunity to read novels in
their youth, such as those who work with their hands, have decided
advantage over them. Few of these novels are exempt from reproach--nay,
whose effect is contrary to bad. Before all others, for instance, _Gil
Blas_ and the other works of Le Sage (or rather their Spanish
originals); further, _The Vicar of Wakefield_, and to some extent the
novels of Walter Scott. _Don Quixote_ may be regarded as a satirical
presentation of the error in question.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] According to a notice from the Munich Society for the Protection of
Animals, the superfluous whipping and cracking were strictly forbidden
in Nuremberg in December 1858.
ON READING AND BOOKS.
Ignorance is degrading only when it is found in company with riches.
Want and penury restrain the poor man; his employment takes the place of
knowledge and occupies his thoughts: while rich men who are ignorant
live for their pleasure only, and resemble a beast; as may be seen
daily. They are to be reproached also for not having used wealth and
leisure for that which lends them their greatest value.
When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental
process. It is the same as the pupil, in learning to write, following
with his pen the lines that have been pencilled by the teacher.
Accordingly, in reading, the work of thinking is, for the greater part,
done for us. This is why we are consciously relieved when we turn to
reading after being occupied with our own thoughts. But, in reading, our
head is, however, really only the arena of some one else's thoughts. And
so it happens that the person who reads a great deal--that is to say,
almost the whole day, and recreates himself by spending the intervals in
thoughtless diversion, gradually loses the ability to think for himself;
just as a man who is always riding at last forgets how to walk. Such,
however, is the case with many men of learning: they have read
themselves stupid. For to read in every spare moment, and to read
constantly, is more paralysing to the mind than constant manual work,
which, at any rate, allows one to follow one's own thoughts. Just as a
spring, through the continual pressure of a foreign body, at last loses
its elasticity, so does the mind if it has another person's thoughts
continually forced upon it. And just as one spoils the stomach by
overfeeding and thereby impairs the whole body, so can one overload and
choke the mind by giving it too much nourishment. For the more one reads
the fewer are the traces left of what one has read; the mind is like a
tablet that has been written over and over. Hence it is impossible to
reflect; and it is only by reflection that one can assimilate what one
has read if one reads straight ahead without pondering over it later,
what has been read does not take root, but is for the most part lost.
Indeed, it is the same with mental as with bodily food: scarcely the
fifth part of what a man takes is assimilated; the remainder passes off
in evaporation, respiration, and the like.
From all this it may be concluded that thoughts put down on paper are
nothing more than footprints in the sand: one sees the road the man has
taken, but in order to know what he saw on the way, one requires his
eyes.
* * * * *
No literary quality can be attained by reading writers who possess it:
be it, for example, persuasiveness, imagination, the gift of drawing
comparisons, boldness or bitterness, brevity or grace, facility of
expression or wit, unexpected contrasts, a laconic manner, naïveté, and
the like. But if we are already gifted with these qualities--that is to
say, if we possess them _potentia_--we can call them forth and bring
them to consciousness; we can discern to what uses they are to be put;
we can be strengthened in our inclination, nay, may have courage, to use
them; we can judge by examples the effect of their application and so
learn the correct use of them; and it is only after we have accomplished
all this that we _actu_ possess these qualities. This is the only way in
which reading can form writing, since it teaches us the use to which we
can put our own natural gifts; and in order to do this it must be taken
for granted that these qualities are in us. Without them we learn
nothing from reading but cold, dead mannerisms, and we become mere
imitators.
* * * * *
The health officer should, in the interest of one's eyes, see that the
smallness of print has a fixed minimum, which must not be exceeded. When
I was in Venice in 1818, at which time the genuine Venetian chain was
still being made, a goldsmith told me that those who made the _catena
fina_ turned blind at thirty.
* * * * *
As the strata of the earth preserve in rows the beings which lived in
former times, so do the shelves of a library preserve in a like manner
the errors of the past and expositions concerning them. Like those
creatures, they too were full of life in their time and made a great
deal of noise; but now they are stiff and fossilised, and only of
interest to the literary palaeontologist.
* * * * *
According to Herodotus, Xerxes wept at the sight of his army, which was
too extensive for him to scan, at the thought that a hundred years hence
not one of all these would be alive. Who would not weep at the thought
in looking over a big catalogue that of all these books not one will be
in existence in ten years' time?
It is the same in literature as in life. Wherever one goes one
immediately comes upon the incorrigible mob of humanity. It exists
everywhere in legions; crowding, soiling everything, like flies in
summer. Hence the numberless bad books, those rank weeds of literature
which extract nourishment from the corn and choke it.
They monopolise the time, money, and attention which really belong to
good books and their noble aims; they are written merely with a view to
making money or procuring places. They are not only useless, but they do
positive harm. Nine-tenths of the whole of our present literature aims
solely at taking a few shillings out of the public's pocket, and to
accomplish this, author, publisher, and reviewer have joined forces.
There is a more cunning and worse trick, albeit a profitable one.
_Littérateurs_, hack-writers, and productive authors have succeeded,
contrary to good taste and the true culture of the age, in bringing the
world _elegante_ into leading-strings, so that they have been taught to
read _a tempo_ and all the same thing--namely, _the newest books_ order
that they may have material for conversation in their social circles.
Bad novels and similar productions from the pen of writers who were once
famous, such as Spindler, Bulwer, Eugène Sue, and so on, serve this
purpose. But what can be more miserable than the fate of a reading
public of this kind, that feels always impelled to read the latest
writings of extremely commonplace authors who write for money only, and
therefore exist in numbers? And for the sake of this they merely know by
name the works of the rare and superior writers, of all ages and
countries.
Literary newspapers, since they print the daily smatterings of
commonplace people, are especially a cunning means for robbing from the
aesthetic public the time which should be devoted to the genuine
productions of art for the furtherance of culture.
Hence, in regard to our subject, the art of _not_ reading is highly
important. This consists in not taking a book into one's hand merely
because it is interesting the great public at the time--such as
political or religious pamphlets, novels, poetry, and the like, which
make a noise and reach perhaps several editions in their first and last
years of existence. Remember rather that the man who writes for fools
always finds a large public: and only read for a limited and definite
time exclusively the works of great minds, those who surpass other men
of all times and countries, and whom the voice of fame points to as
such. These alone really educate and instruct.
One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad
books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.
In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read
what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.
* * * * *
Books are written sometimes about this, sometimes about that great
thinker of former times, and the public reads these books, but not the
works of the man himself. This is because it wants to read only what has
just been printed, and because _similis simili gaudet_, and it finds the
shallow, insipid gossip of some stupid head of to-day more homogeneous
and agreeable than the thoughts of great minds. I have to thank fate,
however, that a fine epigram of A.B. Schlegel, which has since been my
guiding star, came before my notice as a youth:
"Leset fleizig die Alten, die wahren eigentlich Alten
Was die Neuen davon sagen bedeutet nicht viel."
Oh, how like one commonplace mind is to another! How they are all
fashioned in one form! How they all think alike under similar
circumstances, and never differ! This is why their views are so personal
and petty. And a stupid public reads the worthless trash written by
these fellows for no other reason than that it has been printed to-day,
while it leaves the works of great thinkers undisturbed on the
bookshelves.
Incredible are the folly and perversity of a public that will leave
unread writings of the noblest and rarest of minds, of all times and all
countries, for the sake of reading the writings of commonplace persons
which appear daily, and breed every year in countless numbers like
flies; merely because these writings have been printed to-day and are
still wet from the press. It would be better if they were thrown on one
side and rejected the day they appeared, as they must be after the lapse
of a few years. They will then afford material for laughter as
illustrating the follies of a former time.
It is because people will only read what is _the newest_ instead of what
is the best of all ages, that writers remain in the narrow circle of
prevailing ideas, and that the age sinks deeper and deeper in its own
mire.
* * * * *
There are at all times two literatures which, although scarcely known to
each other, progress side by side--the one real, the other merely
apparent. The former grows into literature that _lasts_. Pursued by
people who live _for_ science or poetry, it goes its way earnestly and
quietly, but extremely slowly; and it produces in Europe scarcely a
dozen works in a century, which, however, are _permanent_. The other
literature is pursued by people who live _on_ science or poetry; it goes
at a gallop amid a great noise and shouting of those taking part, and
brings yearly many thousand works into the market. But after a few years
one asks, Where are they? where is their fame, which was so great
formerly? This class of literature may be distinguished as fleeting, the
other as permanent.
* * * * *