There are more ways to derive instruction from books than the direct and
chief one of applying the attention to what they contain. Things
connected with them, by natural or casual association, will sometimes
suggest themselves to a reflective and imaginative reader, and divert
him into secondary trains of ideas. In these, the mind may, indeed,
float along in perfect indolence and acquire no good; but a serious
disposition might regulate them to a profitable result....
Even in the most cursory notice of them, when the attention is engaged
by no one in particular, ideas may be started of a tendency not wholly
foreign to instruction. A reflective person, in his library, in some
hour of intermittent application, when the mind is surrendered to
vagrant musing, may glance along the ranges of volumes with a slight
recognition of the authors, in long miscellaneous array of ancients and
moderns. And that musing may become shaped into ideas like these:--What
a number of our busy race have deemed themselves capable of informing
and directing the rest of mankind! What a vast amount is collected here
of the results of the most strenuous and protracted exertions of so many
minds! What were in each of these claimants that the world should think
as they did, the most prevailing motives? How many of them sincerely
loved truth, honestly sought it, and faithfully, to the best of their
knowledge, declared it? What might be the circumstances and influences
which determined in the case of that one author, and the next, and the
next again, their own modes of opinion?
And how much have they actually done for truth and righteousness in the
world? Do not the contents of these accumulated volumes constitute a
chaos of all discordant and contradictory principles, theories,
representations of facts, and figurings of imaginations? Could I not
instantly place beside each other the works of two noted authors, who
maintain for truth directly opposite doctrines, or systems of doctrine;
and then add a third book which explodes them both? I can take some one
book in which the prime spirits of the world, through all time, are
brought together, announcing the speculations which they, respectively,
proclaimed to be the essence of all wisdom, protesting, with solemn
censure or sneering contempt, against the dogmas and theories of one
another, and conflicting in a huge Babel of all imaginable opinions and
vagaries....
Thus far the instructive reflections which even the mere exterior of an
accumulation of books may suggest are supposed to occur in the way of
thinking of the _authors_. But the same books may also excite some
interesting ideas through their less obvious but not altogether fanciful
association with the persons who may have been their _readers_ or
_possessors_. The mind of a thoughtful looker over a range of volumes of
many dates, and a considerable portion of them old, will sometimes be
led into a train of conjectural questions:--Who were they that, in
various times and places, have had these in their possession? Perhaps
many hands have turned over the leaves, many eyes have passed along the
lines. With what measure of intelligence, and of approval or dissent,
did those persons respectively follow the train of thoughts? How many of
them were honestly intent on becoming wise by what they read? How many
sincere prayers were addressed by them to the Eternal Wisdom during the
perusal? How many have been determined, in their judgement or their
actions, by these books? What emotions, temptations, or painful
occurrences, may have interrupted the reading of this book, or of
that?--J. FOSTER. _Introductory Essay to Doddridge's Rise and Progress
of Religion in the Soul._