II
On Being Lonely with a Book
The P. G. S. of M. said that as far as he could make out, judging from the way I talked, my main ambition in the world seemed to be to write a book that would throw all publishers and libraries out of employment. “And what will your book amount to, when you get it done?” he said. “If it’s convincing—the way it ought to be—it will merely convince people they oughtn’t to have read it.”
“And that’s been done before,” I said. “Almost any book could do it.” I ventured to add that I thought people grew intelligent enough in one of my books—even in the first two or three chapters, not to read the rest of it. I said all I hoped to accomplish was to get people to treat other men’s books in the same way that they treated mine—treat everything that way—take things for granted, get the spirit of a thing, then go out and gloat on it, do something with it, live with it—anything but this going on page after page using the spirit of a thing all up, reading with it.
“Reading down through in a book seems a great deal more important to me than merely reading the book through.”
I expected that The P. G. S. of M. would ask me what I meant by reading down through, but he didn’t. He was still at large, worrying about the world. “I have no patience with it—your idea,” he broke out. “It’s all in the air. It’s impractical enough, anyway, just as an idea, and it’s all the more impractical when it’s carried out. So far as I can see, at the rate you’re carrying on,” said The P. G. S. of M., “what with improving the world and all with your book, there isn’t going to be anything but You and your Book left.”
“Might be worse,” I said. “What one wants in a book after the first three or four chapters, or in a world either, it seems to me, is not its facts merely, nor its principles, but one’s self—one’s real relation of one’s real self, I mean, to some real fact. If worst came to worst and I had to be left all alone, I’d rather be alone with myself, I think, than with anybody. It’s a deal better than being lonely the way we all are nowadays—with such a lot of other people crowding round, that one has to be lonely with, and books and newspapers and things besides. One has to be lonely so much in civilisation, there are so many things and persons that insist on one’s coming over and being lonely with them, that being lonely in a perfectly plain way, all by one’s self—the very thought of it seems to me, comparatively speaking, a relief. It’s not what it ought to be, but it’s something.”
I feel the same way about being lonely with a book. I find that the only way to keep from being lonely in a book—that is, to keep from being crowded on to the outside of it, after the first three or four chapters—is to read the first three or four chapters all over again—read them down through. I have to get hold of my principles in them, and then I have to work over my personal relation to them. When I make sure of that, when I make sure of my personal relation to the author, and to his ideas, and there is a fairly acquainted feeling with both of us, then I can go on reading for all I am worth—or all he is worth anyway, whichever breaks down first—and no more said about it. Everything means something to everybody when one reads down through. The only way an author and reader can keep from wasting each other’s time, it seems to me, at least from having spells of wasting it, is to begin by reading down through.
III
Keeping Other Minds Off
What I really mean by reading down through in a book, I suppose, is reading down through in it to myself. I dare say this does not seem worthy. It is quite possible, too, that there is no real defence for it—I mean for my being so much interested in myself in the middle of other people’s books. My theory about it is that the most important thing in this world for a man’s life is his being original in it. Being original consists, I take it, not in being different, but in being honest—really having something in one’s own inner experience which one has anyway, and which one knows one has, and which one has all for one’s own, whether any one else has ever had it or not. Being original consists in making over everything one sees and reads, into one’s self.
Making over what one reads into one’s self may be said to be the only way to have a really safe place for knowledge. If a man takes his knowledge and works it all over into what he is, sense and spirit, it may cost more at first, but it is more economical in the long run, because none of it can possibly be lost. And it can all be used on the place.