Living the Radiant Life: A Personal Narrative

by George Wharton James

2. Absorption through Reading.

It must not be understood that because I am constantly urging my readers to rely upon their own observations of Nature that I do not fully appreciate the benefit books may be to them. Books form a large place in my own life, and I would regret to be separated from them. They bring into my life the inner life of all the observers, thinkers, orators, seers, poets, and prophets of the ages, and yet what are books but the records of men's observations and their thoughts upon those observations? All books are not good. There are books and books. And just as some associates are injurious, so are many books. Do not waste your time on the cheap, the trashy, the useless, and injurious. Select only those books from which you are sure you can absorb those things that will be helpful and beneficial.

Some people say they read simply for entertainment. There are times when it is well to read with this object in view. If one is weary in mind or body, the brain has been overtaxed, trouble distresses one, then it is well to seek entertainment. For entertainment and the forgetting of one's cares, troubles, and weariness will mean rest and recuperation. It is well to be able to absorb such from a book that takes away thoughts from one's self. But even at such times, choose the best books from which you may absorb those things that will enable you the better to take up the battle of life with renewed energy and courage.

Do you try to keep up with all the latest books? Why? Do you read simply to say that you have read, to be able to give expression to the usual fashionable gabble on so-called "current literature"? It is not the amount you read, but the amount of good, ennobling, and uplifting influences that you gain from your reading that makes reading worth while. No person that lives can read book after book in rapid succession and absorb therefrom anything worth while. As well sit down and eat from six o'clock in the morning until twelve o'clock at night and expect the body to be healthful as to read continually and expect the mind to be healthful. It is not eating but assimilation that builds up the body. Just so, it is not reading but mental absorption that informs the mind and strengthens the soul. One book a year, thoroughly mastered, out of which you have absorbed helpful, stimulating, invigorating, health-giving, power-producing thought and action is worth more than a thousand books swallowed whole without thought or digestion.

Joaquin Miller says that "Books are for people who do not think." Very often this is a correct statement. While it is a good thing to desire the knowledge we can gain from books, it becomes an evil thing when we gain all of our knowledge of the world around us in this fashion. If the only thoughts we have are the thoughts we get from books, books are an injury instead of a blessing; a crutch instead of an invigoration.

In his early life, Edwin Markham, the poet, had but three books, the Bible, Shakspere, and Bunyan. Yet from these three books and the contemporaneous study of the mountains, valleys, canyons, plains, orchards, gardens, ocean, sea-beach, and valleys by which he was surrounded, he absorbed thoughts and saw things that enabled him to write poems that have thrilled and benefited the world.

Sir John Lubbock a few years ago chose from all the millions of books that have been published one hundred which he claims comprises all the best literature of all the ages, and more recently still, President Eliot of Harvard compressed upon a five-foot shelf all the books that he deems necessary for the really thoughtful man to possess.

I am not prepared to accept these or any other limitations as to the books I shall possess and read, and yet I do want to urge the principle involved in them upon my readers. Learn to do your own thinking rather than take your thoughts at second hand from what some one else has written. At the same time I would urge upon you the reading of the writings of our great poets that you may absorb from them their love of Nature. In this way it may be that you will be won to the love and appreciation of that which you have never before known or enjoyed. Just as the artist on his canvas sets forth for us a beautiful scene out of the great world that surrounds us and thus focalizes our attention upon it, and teaches us to see the beauty which hitherto we had passed unobserved, so does the poet focalize our attention upon that which hitherto we had passed by and neglected.

Let us read, therefore, by all means, but not as an end in itself. Let us read that thereby we may be stimulated to go out into Nature to see, feel, and absorb for ourselves. Many of the books that are "worth while" were written by men and women who have been close observers of Nature.

It is by observation that we absorb the facts and lessons of Nature. Some of the most helpful and beautiful books have been written as the result of the exercise of this faculty combined with the reflection that always comes to the truly thoughtful. The sciences are based upon observation, and as soon as one becomes interested in any particular line of study it is amazing how many fascinating things begin to crowd upon his attention. The great scientist, Agassiz, said that he could find enough to thoroughly and completely fill the whole of a life of eighty years in as much as he could cover with his one hand. I have spent night after night with astronomers whose whole vocation was to study the heavens and learn the wonderful lessons revealed thereby. One of the happiest epochs of my life was to spend two months in the High Sierras of California with Joseph Le Conte, the great geologist, and his keen and trained eyes revealed to me things in Nature that I had never seen before, and life has ever since been richer and fuller because of the experience.