He who desires to grow wise should bring his reason to bear habitually upon what he sees and hears not less than upon what he reads; for thus he soon comes to understand that whatever he thinks or feels, says or does, whatever happens within the sphere of his conscious life, may be made the means of self-improvement. "He is not born for glory," says Vauvenargues, "who knows not the worth of time." The educational value of books lies in their power to set the intellectual atmosphere in vibration, thereby rousing the mind to self-activity; and those which have not this power lack vitality.
If in a whole volume we find one passage in which truth is expressed in a noble and striking manner, we have not read in vain. To read with profit, we should read as a serious student reads, with the mind all alive and held to the subject; for reading is thinking, and it is valuable in proportion to the stimulus it gives to the exercise of faculty. The conversation of high and ingenuous minds is doubtless as instructive as it is delightful, but it is seldom in our power to call around us those with whom we should wish to hold discourse; and hence we go back to the emancipated spirits, who having transcended the bounds of time and space, are wherever they are desired and are always ready to entertain whoever seeks their company. Genius neither can nor will discover its secret. Why his thought has such a mould and such a tinge he no more knows than why the flowers have such a tint and such a perfume; and if he knew he would not care to tell. Nothing is wholly manifest. In the most trivial object, as in the simplest word, there lies a world of meaning which does not reveal itself to a passing glance. If therefore thou wouldst come to right understanding, consider all things with an awakened and interested curiosity.
When the mind at last finds itself rightly at home in its world, it is as delighted as children making escape from restraining walls, as full of spirit as colts newly turned upon the greensward.
In the realm of truth each one is king, and what he knows is as much his own as though he were its first discoverer. However firmly thou holdest to thy opinions, if truth appears on the opposite side, throw down thy arms at once. A book has the power almost of a human being to inspire admiration or disgust, love or hatred. To be useful is a noble thing, to be necessary is not desirable. The youth has not enough ambition unless he has too much. It is difficult to give lessons in the art of pleasing without teaching that of lying. The discouraged are already vanquished. In judging the deed let not the character of the doer influence thy opinion, for good is good, evil evil, by whomsoever done. When the author is rightly inspired his words need not interpretation. They are as natural and as beautiful as the faces of children or as new-blown flowers, and their meaning is plain. The spirit and love of dogmatism is characteristic of the imperfectly educated. As there is a communion of saints, there is a communion of noble minds, living and dead. To speak of love which is not felt, of piety which is not a living sentiment within us, is to weaken both in ourselves and in those who hear us the power of faith and affection. The best that has been known and experienced by minds and hearts lies asleep in books, ready to awaken for whoever holds the magician's wand. Books which at their first appearance create a breeze of excitement, are forgotten when the wind falls.
A human soul rightly uttering itself, in whatever age or country, ceases to belong to any age or country, and becomes part of the universal life of man. A sprightly wit may serve only to lead us astray, and to enmesh us more hopelessly in error. Deeper knowledge is the remedy for the foolishness of sciolism: like cures like. In the books in which men worth knowing have put some of the vital quality which makes them worth knowing, there is perennial inspiration. They are the form and substance of an immortal spirit which, in creating them, became itself. "I have not made my book," says Montaigne, "more than my book has made me."
Were one to ask an acquaintance who knows men to point out the individuals whom he should make his friends, his request would probably receive an unsatisfactory reply: for how, except by trial, is it possible to say who will suit whom? Those whose friendship would be valuable might, for whatever cause, be disagreeable to him, as the greatest and noblest may be unpleasant companions. Many a one whom we admire as he stands forth in history, whose words and deeds thrill and uplift us, we should detest had we known him in life; and others to whom we might have been drawn would have cared nothing for us. Between men and books there is doubtless a wide difference, though a good book contains the best of the life of some true man. But when we are asked to point out the books one should learn to love, we are confronted with much the same difficulty as had we been asked to name the persons whom he should make his friends. A book can have worth for us only when we have learned to love it; and since a real book, like a real man, has its proper character, it is not easy to determine whom it will please or displease. Once it has taken a safe place in literature, it will, of course, be praised by everybody; but this, like the praise of men, is often meaningless. All who read know something about the great books, but their knowledge, unless it leads them to intimate acquaintance with some one or several of these books, has little worth. Books are, indeed, a world which each one must discover for himself. Another may tell us about them, but the truth and beauty there is in them for each one, each one must find. The value of a book, like that of a man, lies not in its freedom from fault, but in its qualities, in the good it contains. Words which inspire the love of spiritual beauty and noble action cannot be false: the consent of the wise places them in the canon. The imperishable goods are truth, freedom, love, and beauty. Valuable alone is that which enriches and ennobles life. There are natures for whom the lack of knowledge is as painful as the lack of food. They are ahungered and athirst for it, and their suffering impels them to ceaseless meditation and study, as the only means of relief.
The self-educator's first and simplest aim should be to learn to know and do well whatever he knows and does; and to this end let him often observe and consider how rare are they who know anything thoroughly or do well any of the hundred things which are part of daily life: who talk well, or write well, or behave well. Herbert Spencer affirms that it is better to learn the meanings of things than the meanings of words; but he loses sight of the fact that the meanings of things become plain only when things are clothed in words, which, in truth, are things, being nothing else than the very form and body of nature as it reveals itself within the mind of man. The world is chiefly a mental fact. From mind it receives the forms of time and space, the principle of causality, color, warmth, and beauty. Were there no mind, there would be no world. The end of man is the pursuit of perfection, through communion with God, his fellows, and nature, by means of knowledge and conduct, of faith, hope, admiration, and love. It is easy to praise work overmuch. Like money, it is a means, not an end, and it is good or evil as it is made to help or harm the worker, for man is an end, not a means. The work which millions are still forced to do is a curse,—the trail of the serpent is over it all, and no people has the right to call itself civilized, while work which dehumanizes is not merely permitted, but encouraged.
Let us not teach the young to believe they are born into a world of delights and pleasures, but let us strive to enable them to realize that, upon this earth, only the wise and good and strong can make themselves really at home; that for the wicked and the weak its very delights and pleasures turn to sorrow and suffering. We pity the hard-driven beast of burden. How then is it possible to look with complacency on a world in which multitudes of human beings are condemned to the work of the ox and the ass? For the healthy man, wealth and happiness would seem to be identical, if his desires are confined to the things of which money is the equivalent. But this is a delusion, for the plenary possession of these things has never satisfied a human being. Man needs virtue, knowledge, love, and to take the obvious view, he needs the power to enjoy the things money buys; and of this money deprives him.
When we consider the many unworthy means men take to gain wealth and office, we are forced to believe that to reach their ends they are ready to profess to hold opinions and beliefs about which they care nothing or which they really do not accept at all. By this following of time-servers and place-hunters every noble cause is weakened and the purest faith is corrupted.
To labor for those we love, to sit in the hours of rest, with wife and children about us, smiling in the blaze of the fire we have lighted, sheltered by the roof we have built, secure in the sense of protection our presence inspires, is to feel that life is good. But is it not a higher thing to turn away, in disrespect of all this peace and comfort, and to strive alone, by thought and deed, to find the way which leads to God and to be a pioneer therein for those who wander helpless and astray? The more we dwell with truth and love, the more conscious we become that they are the best, and are everlasting; and thus our immortality is revealed to us. Visibly we float on the boundless stream and disappear; but inasmuch as we are truth-loving and love-cherishing, we dwell in an abiding city, and may behold our bodies carried forth by the flood, as a man sees his house swept away, while he himself remains. Our thoughtlessness and indifference, our indolence and frivolousness, blind us to the infinite worth and significance of life; and they who call themselves religious often take it as lightly as worldlings and unbelievers.