Why do we read books is one of those vast questions that need no
answer. As well ask, Why ought we to be good? or, Why do we believe in
a God? The whole universe of wisdom answers. To attempt an answer in a
single article would be like turning a spyglass for a moment toward the
stars. We take the great simple things for granted, like the air we
breathe. In a country that holds popular education to be the foundation
of all its liberties and fortunes, we do not find many people who need
to be argued into the belief that the reading of books is good for us;
even people who do not read much acknowledge vaguely that they ought to
read more.
There are, to be sure, men of rough worldly wisdom, even endowed with
spiritual insight, who distrust “book learning” and fall back on the
obvious truth that experience of life is the great teacher. Such
persons are in a measure justified in their conviction by the number of
unwise human beings who have read much but to no purpose.
The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head
is a living argument against mere reading. But we can meet such
argument by pointing out that the blockhead who cannot learn from books
cannot learn much from life, either. That sometimes useful citizen whom
it is fashionable to call a Philistine, and who calls himself a
“practical man,” often has under him a beginner fresh from the schools,
who is glib and confident in repeating bookish theories, but is not yet
skillful in applying them. If the practical man is thoughtless, he
sniffs at theory and points to his clumsy assistant as proof of the
uselessness of what is to be got from books. If he is wise, the
practical man realizes how much better off he would be, how much
farther his hard work and experience might have carried him, if he had
had the advantage of bookish training.
Moreover, the hard-headed skeptic, self-made and self-secure, who will
not traffic with the literature that touches his life work, is seldom
so confined to his own little shop that he will not, for recreation,
take holiday tours into the literature of other men’s lives and labors.
The man who does not like to read any books is, I am confident, seldom
found, and at the risk of slandering a patriot, I will express the
doubt whether he is a good citizen. Honest he may be, but certainly not
wise. The human race for thousands of years has been writing its
experiences, telling how it has met our everlasting problems, how it
has struggled with darkness and rejoiced in light. What fools we should
be to try to live our lives without the guidance and inspiration of the
generations that have gone before, without the joy, encouragement, and
sympathy that the best imaginations of our generation are distilling
into words. For literature is simply life selected and condensed into
books. In a few hours we can follow all that is recorded of the life of
Jesus--the best that He did in years of teaching and suffering all ours
for a day of reading, and the more deeply ours for a lifetime of
reading and meditation!
If the expression of life in words is strong and beautiful and true it
outlives empires, like the oldest books of the Old Testament. If it is
weak or trivial or untrue, it is forgotten like most of the “stories”
in yesterday’s newspaper, like most of the novels of last year. The
expression of truth, the transmission of knowledge and emotions between
man and man from generation to generation, these are the purposes of
literature. Not to read books is like being shut up in a dungeon while
life rushes by outside.
I happen to be writing in Christmas week, and I have read for the tenth
time “A Christmas Carol,” by Dickens, that amazing allegory in which
the hard, bitter facts of life are involved in a beautiful myth, that
wizard’s caldron in which humor bubbles and from which rise phantom
figures of religion and poetry. Can any one doubt that if this story
were read by every man, woman, and child in the world, Christmas would
be a happier time and the feelings of the race elevated and
strengthened? The story has power enough to defeat armies, to make
revolutions in the faith of men, and turn the cold markets of the world
into festival scenes of charity. If you know any mean person you may be
sure that he has not read “A Christmas Carol,” or that he read it long
ago and has forgotten it. I know there are persons who pretend that the
sentimentality of Dickens destroys their interest in him. I once took a
course with an over-refined, imperfectly educated professor of
literature, who advised me that in time I should outgrow my liking for
Dickens. It was only his way of recommending to me a kind of fiction
that I had not learned to like. In time I did learn to like it, but I
did not outgrow Dickens. A person who can read “A Christmas Carol”
aloud to the end and keep his voice steady is, I suspect, not a safe
person to trust with one’s purse or one’s honor.
It is not necessary to argue about the value of literature or even to
define it. One way of bringing ourselves to realize vividly what
literature can do for us is to enter the libraries of great men and see
what books have done for the acknowledged leaders of our race.
You will recall John Stuart Mill’s experience in reading Wordsworth.
Mill was a man of letters as well as a scientific economist and
philosopher, and we expect to find that men of letters have been
nourished on literature; reading must necessarily have been a large
part of their professional preparation. The examples of men of action
who have been molded and inspired by books will perhaps be more helpful
to remember; for most of us are not to be writers or to engage in
purely intellectual work; our ambitions point to a thousand different
careers in the world of action.
Lincoln was not primarily a man of letters, although he wrote noble
prose on occasion, and the art of expression was important, perhaps
indispensable, in his political success. He read deeply in the law and
in books on public questions. For general literature he had little
time, either during his early struggles or after his public life began,
and his autobiographical memorandum contains the significant words:
“Education defective.” But these more significant words are found in a
letter which he wrote to Hackett, the player: “Some of Shakespeare’s
plays I have never read, while others I have gone over perhaps as
frequently as any unprofessional reader. Among the latter are ‘Lear,’
‘Richard III,’ ‘Henry VIII,’ ‘Hamlet,’ and, especially, ‘Macbeth.’”
If he had not read these masterpieces, no doubt he would have become
President just the same and guided the country through its terrible
difficulties; but we may be fairly sure that the high philosophy by
which he lifted the political differences of his day above partisan
quarrels, the command of words which gives his letters and speeches
literary permanence apart from their biographical interest, the poetic
exaltation of the Gettysburg Address, these higher qualities of genius,
beyond the endowment of any native wit, came to Lincoln in some part
from the reading of books. It is important to note that he followed
Franklin’s advice to read much but not too many books; the list of
books mentioned in the biographical records of Lincoln is not long. But
he went over those half dozen plays “frequently.” We should remember,
too, that he based his ideals upon the Bible and his style upon the
King James Version. His writings abound in Biblical phrases.
We are accustomed to regard Lincoln as a thinker. His right arm in the
saddest duty of his life, General Grant, was a man of deeds; as Lincoln
said of him, he was a “copious worker and fighter, but a very meager
writer and telegrapher.” In his “Memoirs,” Grant makes a modest
confession about his reading:
“There is a fine library connected with the Academy [West Point] from
which cadets can get books to read in their quarters. I devoted more
time to these than to books relating to the course of studies. Much of
the time, I am sorry to say, was devoted to novels, but not those of a
trashy sort. I read all of Bulwer’s then published, Cooper’s,
Marryat’s, Scott’s, Washington Irving’s works, Lever’s, and many others
that I do not now remember.”
Grant was not a shining light in his school days, nor indeed in his
life until the Civil War, and at first sight he is not a striking
example of a great man influenced by books. Yet who can deny that the
fruit of that early reading is to be found in his “Memoirs,” in which a
man of action, unused to writing, and called upon to narrate great
events, discovers an easy adequate style? There is a dangerous kind of
conjecture in which many biographers indulge when they try to relate
logically the scattered events of a man’s life. A conjectured relation
is set down as a proved or unquestioned relation. I have said something
about this in [Footnote: See John Macy’s Guide to Reading, Chapter
VIII.] writing on biography, and I do not wish to violate my own
teachings. But we may, without harm, hazard the suggestion, which is
only a suggestion, that some of the chivalry of Scott’s heroes wove
itself into Grant’s instincts and inspired this businesslike, modern
general, in the days when politeness has lost some of its flourish, to
be the great gentleman he was at Appomattox when he quietly wrote into
the terms of the surrender that the Confederate officers should keep
their side arms. Stevenson’s account of the episode in his essay on
“Gentlemen” is heightened, though not above the dignity of the facts,
certainly not to a degree that is untrue to the facts, as they are to
be read in Grant’s simple narrative. Since I have agreed not to say
“ought to read,” I will only express the hope that the quotation from
Stevenson will lead you to the essay and to the volume that contains
it.
“On the day of the capitulation, Lee wore his presentation sword; it
was the first thing that Grant observed, and from that moment he had
but one thought: how to avoid taking it. A man, who should perhaps have
had the nature of an angel, but assuredly not the special virtues of a
gentleman, might have received the sword, and no more words about it;
he would have done well in a plain way. One who wished to be a
gentleman, and knew not how, might have received and returned it: he
would have done infamously ill, he would have proved himself a cad;
taking the stage for himself, leaving to his adversary confusion of
countenance and the ungraceful posture of a man condemned to offer
thanks. Grant without a word said, added to the terms this article:
‘All officers to retain their side arms’; and the problem was solved
and Lee kept his sword, and Grant went down to posterity, not perhaps a
fine gentleman, but a great one.”
Napoleon, who of all men of mighty deeds after Julius Caesar had the
greatest intellect, was a tireless reader, and since he needed only
four or five hours’ sleep in twenty-four he found time to read in
the midst of his prodigious activities. Nowadays those of us who are
preparing to conquer the world are taught to strengthen ourselves for
the task by getting plenty of sleep. Napoleon’s devouring eyes read far
into the night; when he was in the field his secretaries forwarded a
stream of books to his headquarters; and if he was left without a new
volume to begin, some underling had to bear his imperial displeasure.
No wonder that his brain contained so many ideas that, as the
sharp-tongued poet, Heine, said, one of his lesser thoughts would keep
all the scholars and professors in Germany busy all their lives making
commentaries on it.
In Franklin’s “Autobiography” we have an unusually clear statement of
the debt of a man of affairs to literature: “From a child I was fond of
reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid
out in books. Pleased with the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ my first
collection was of John Bunyan’s works in separate little volumes.... My
father’s little library consisted chiefly of books on polemic divinity,
most of which I read, and have since often regretted that, at a time
when I had such a thirst for knowledge, more proper books had not
fallen in my way, since it was now resolved that I should not be a
clergyman. ‘Plutarch’s Lives’ there was in which I read abundantly, and
I still think that time spent to great advantage. There was also a book
of De Foe’s, called an ‘Essay on Projects,’ and another of Dr.
Mather’s, called ‘Essays to do Good,’ which perhaps gave me a turn of
thinking that had an influence on some of the principal future events
of my life.”
It is not surprising to find that the most versatile of versatile
Americans read De Foe’s “Essay on Projects,” which contains practical
suggestions on a score of subjects, from banking and insurance to
national academics. In Cotton Mather’s “Essays to do Good” is the germ
perhaps of the sensible morality of Franklin’s “Poor Richard.” The
story of how Franklin gave his nights to the study of Addison and by
imitating the Spectator papers taught himself to write, is the
best of lessons in self-cultivation in English. The “Autobiography” is
proof of how well he learned, not Addison’s style, which was suited to
Joseph Addison and not to Benjamin Franklin, but a clear, firm manner
of writing. In Franklin’s case we can see not only what he owed to
books, but how one side of his fine, responsive mind was starved
because, as he put it, more proper books did not fall in his way. The
blind side of Franklin’s great intellect was his lack of religious
imagination. This defect may be accounted for by the forbidding nature
of the religious books in his father’s library. Repelled by the dull
discourses, the young man missed the religious exaltation and poetic
mysticism which the New England divines concealed in their polemic
argument. Franklin’s liking for Bunyan and his confession that his
father’s discouragement kept him from being a poet--“most probably,” he
says, “a very bad one”--show that he would have responded to the right
kind of religious literature, and not have remained all his life such a
complacent rationalist.
If it is clear that the purpose of reading is to put ourselves in
communication with the best minds of our race, we need go no farther
for a definition of “good reading.” Whatever human beings have said
well is literature, whether it be the Declaration of Independence or a
love story. Reading consists in nothing more than in taking one of the
volumes in which somebody has said something well, opening it on one’s
knee, and beginning.
We take it for granted, then, that we know why we read. We may ask one
further question: How shall we read? One answer is that we should read
with as much of ourselves as a book warrants, with the part of
ourselves that a book demands. Mrs. Browning says:
We get no good
By being ungenerous, even to a book,
And calculating profits--so much help
By so much reading. It is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge
Soul-forward, headlong, into a book’s profound,
Impassioned for its beauty, and salt of truth--
’Tis then we get the right good from a book.
We sometimes know exactly what we wish to get from a book, especially
if it is a volume of information on a definite subject. But the great
book is full of treasures that one does not deliberately seek, and
which indeed one may miss altogether on the first journey through. It
is almost nonsensical to say: Read Macaulay for clearness, Carlyle for
power, Thackeray for ease. Literary excellence is not separated and
bottled up in any such drug-shop array. If Macaulay is a master of
clearness it is because he is much else besides. Unless we read a man
for all there is in him, we get very little; we meet, not a living
human being, not a vital book, but something dead, dismembered,
disorganized. We do not read Thackeray for ease; we read him for
Thackeray and enjoy his ease by the way.
We must read a book for all there is in it or we shall get little or
nothing. To be masters of books we must have learned to let books
master us. This is true of books that we are required to read, such as
text-books, and of those we read voluntarily and at leisure. The law of
reading is to give a book its due and a little more. The art of reading
is to know how to apply this law. For there is an art of reading, for
each of us to learn for himself, a private way of making the
acquaintance of books.
Macaulay, whose mind was never hurried or confused, learned to read
very rapidly, to absorb a page at a glance. A distinguished professor,
who has spent his life in the most minutely technical scholarship,
surprised us one day by commending to his classes the fine art
of “skipping.” Many good books, including some most meritorious
“three-decker” novels, have their profitless pages, and it is useful
to know by a kind of practised instinct where to pause and reread
and where to run lightly and rapidly over the page. It is a useful
accomplishment not only in the reading of fiction, but in the business
of life, to the man of affairs who must get the gist of a mass of
written matter, and to the student of any special subject.
Usually, of course, a book that is worth reading at all is worth
reading carefully. Thoroughness of reading is the first thing to preach
and to practise, and it is perhaps dangerous to suggest to a beginner
that any book should be skimmed. The suggestion will serve its purpose
if it indicates that there are ways to read, that practice in reading
is like practice in anything else; the more one does, and the more
intelligently one does it, the farther and more easily one can go. In
the best reading--that is, the most thoughtful reading of the most
thoughtful books--attention is necessary. It is even necessary that we
should read some works, some passages, so often and with such close
application that we commit them to memory. It is said that the habit of
learning pieces by heart is not so prevalent as it used to be. I hope
that this is not so. What! have you no poems by heart, no great songs,
no verses from the Bible, no speeches from Shakespeare? Then you have
not begun to read, you have not learned how to read.
We have said enough, perhaps, of the theories of reading. The one
lesson that seems most obvious is that we must come close to
literature.
HOW TO GET THE BEST OUT
OF BOOKS