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.