SELECTION IN READING.
Go to the Library of one of our Colleges; survey its five, or ten thousand volumes. You are astonished, that human thought or human industry could have produced such an accumulation of quarto upon folio, of duodecimo upon octavo—of Science, Literature—of History, Fiction—of Prose, and Poetry. But look into other collections northward of us, and in each, of several, you find more than forty thousand volumes! When you have wondered sufficiently at these, turn your 'mind's eye' to Europe; and behold, libraries containing each one hundred, or even one hundred and fifty thousand books! Look around you, then, and see how many hundreds every week is adding to the mass of tomes already in existence. Glance at the book-sellers' catalogues—at their notices in the gazette—at the monthly and quarterly "Lists of New Publications," in Magazines and Reviews—at the countless host of Reviews and Magazines themselves, and of newspapers, tracts, pamphlets, speeches, addresses—effusions of ten thousand various forms and merits—craving your attention and bewildering your choice! Go forth into society: in one circle, politics—in another, canalling, or railroad lore—in a third, some point touching the Campaigns of Bonaparte, the Wars of the League, the American Revolution, or the Conquests of Tamerlane—in a fourth, the beauties of Greek and Roman literature—in a fifth, some topic in Chemistry or Geology—in a sixth, Byron, Campbell, Moore and Wordsworth—in a seventh, the fifty last novels—are discussed by their respective coteries, each, as if that subject alone threw all others into the shade. And if you are not so torpid as to be incapable of excitement by sympathy with others, and by themes inherently interesting, or so self-possessed as to curb and regulate discreetly, the curiosity and proneness to imitation which will on such occasions be kindled in any but a blockhead—you cannot, for your life, help wishing to be familiar with each theme. You go home; and plunge headlong into a dozen different studies. Your acquisitions are huddled chaotically into your knowledge-box, so that you have a full, distinct idea, of no one subject: you can never get hold of what you want, at the moment when you need it; but must rummage over an immense pile of trumpery, with a bare hope, after all, of finding the useful article you want. You are a shallow smatterer.
If you would be otherwise, DARE to be ignorant of all books, and all things, which you are not sure will repay your trouble in reading them, or which are not parts of a pre-arranged course, laid down for you by yourself, or by some judicious friend. DARE to disavow an acquaintance with a fashionable novel, or even with a fashionable science, if it fall not within your plan. Always reflect, when the claims of a new book are pressed upon your notice,—that, if you have forty years to employ in reading, and can read fifty pages a day, you will be able, in those forty years, to accomplish only about SIXTEEN HUNDRED VOLUMES, of 500 pages each. Yes—out of the millions of tomes that litter the world, you can read, in twice the time that most, even of the studious, employ in reading—only sixteen hundred volumes! Surely, the motto of every one who reads for improvement, ought to be "SELECT WELL!"
"It is a great, nay the greatest part of wisdom," says an old philosopher, "to rest content with not knowing some things."1
1 ——"magna, immo, maxima, pars sapientiæ est, quædam æquo animo nescire velle."
Dugald Stewart justly observes, that by confining our ambition to pursue the truth with modesty and candor, and learning to value our acquisitions only so far as they contribute to make us wiser and happier, we may perhaps be obliged to sacrifice the temporary admiration of the common dispensers of literary fame; but, we may rest assured, it is thus only we can hope to make real progress in knowledge, or to enrich the world with useful inventions.
"'It requires courage indeed' (as Helvetius has remarked,) 'to remain ignorant of those useless subjects which are generally valued:' but it is a courage necessary to men who either love the truth, or aspire to establish a permanent reputation."2
2 Philosophy of the Human Mind, Vol. I.