To have a general idea of what is worth reading and to know where to turn for the books which are of vital importance to one’s development must be the foundation of any plan for culture. It is one of the most useful results of a liberal education that it gives a broad view of the whole range of human thought, and shows what to consider and what to reject; it teaches to distinguish as Lowell says between literature and printed matter.
Follow the bent of your inclination but make a clear distinction between the reading that you do with a purpose and that which you do for pleasure, “what we read with inclination makes a strong impression. What we read as a task is of little use,” said Doctor Johnson, and he added “if we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention, so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.”
Much energy is wasted by conscientious readers over classic books that are beyond their capacity. Plato and Aristotle are among the greatest thinkers that the world has produced but their works are not within the comprehension of every mind. Indeed Emerson says that, “There are not in the world at any one time more than a dozen persons who read and understand Plato.”
Do not think that because a statement is in print it is necessarily true. You will often find conflicting statements in different books on the same subject. “Some books are lies frae end to end,” said Burns. Fortunately this can be said of few books but many contain inaccuracies, mis-statements and exaggerations. Weigh and consider all you read in the light of your own experience. Books like life of which they are expressions and authors who produce them are of all kinds, good and bad, uplifting and degrading, true and false. We must value them for what they are, not for what they pretend to be, and, setting aside our own preconceptions and prejudices, lay our minds open to those who seriously and sincerely hold other views than ours.
The author tries to make us feel what he feels and see what he sees. Some can do this without effort on our part and others like cuttle fish cover themselves with clouds of their own obscurity. We soon learn from the way a writer expresses himself whether he is accurate or not and we depend upon those whom we find careful in making their statements.
We get to love and trust authors as we get to know our friends by long and familiar converse. The writers we should know best, with whose lives and complete works we should make ourselves familiar are those who have beauty of character added to grace of expression. Some men like Burns and Goldsmith endear themselves to us in spite of pronounced weaknesses.
Books give pleasure not only by what they contain but also by the manner in which it is expressed. Beauty of language as well as of thought make the works of Cardinal Newman and Matthew Arnold attractive whether we agree with their conclusions or not and whether the subjects of which they treat are of interest to us or not.
Milton tells us that we should have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves. There is in some ways more danger from evil books than from evil companions. Bad companions cannot be with us always and bad books may be. Schopenhauer calls “bad books, those exuberant weeds of literature that choke the true corn,” and even the gentle Charles Lamb speaks with contempt of “things in books’ clothing.” The only use of poor books is to teach us by comparison the value of good ones. Rousseau thought that “the abuse of reading is destructive to knowledge. Imagining ourselves to know everything we read, we conceive it unnecessary to learn it by other means.”
“Literature is not shut up in books nor art in galleries: both are taken in by unconscious absorption through the finer pores of mind and character in the atmosphere of society,” said Lowell; and Emerson wrote, “books are for the scholar’s idle times: when he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings. But when the intervals of darkness come, as come they must,—when the sun is hid and the stars withdraw their shining,—we repair to the lamps which were kindled by their ray, to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn is.”
“No man should consider so highly of himself as to think he can receive but little light from books, nor so meanly as to believe he can discover nothing but what is to be learned from them.” wrote Doctor Johnson, and Professor Blackie says, “all knowledge which comes from books comes indirectly, by reflection, and by echo; true knowledge grows from a living root in the thinking soul; and whatever it may appropriate from without, it takes by living assimilation into a living organism, not by mere borrowing.”