CHAPTER V.
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.