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.”