CHAPTER IV-READING

I. The Value of Books

1. In teaching science everyone now recognizes that the pupil must have something more than the textbook from which to learn. In chemistry or physics, for example, the teacher must demonstrate his subject by experiments, and the pupil himself must handle the materials and obtain results of his own in the laboratory. In other words, we learn primarily through seeing with our own eyes; the function of the textbook is to explain and supplement. These statements hold for all knowledge. Neither a work of history nor a novel, for example, can be read intelligently by anyone except him who knows at first hand, through his own experience, something of the major motives and the more important points of view of those persons about whom he is reading, and through his own observations something about the forms of human nature which are described upon the page. Furthermore in so far as the literary descriptions refer to natural objects, they are meaningless unless the objects referred to have been seen or otherwise observed by the reader. In order to get the most out of reading, therefore, we must come to the book with a mind well stocked with materials obtained through experience and observation.

2. The novel, the drama, and the narrative poem, are forms of imitative art as truly as painting or sculpture. Their subject-matter is human life, human beings in their manifold relations to each other. To be interesting they must represent real persons, engaged in possible actions, actions, that is, which are in keeping with their characters. But they must not merely represent real human beings, they must also represent clearly the laws of life, i. e., the consequences of actions, near and remote, precisely as they would occur in the real world. The only difference is that

they will bring out the tendencies, i. e., the usual results, more clearly, with less modifications from the mere play of chance, than we sometimes see in life itself. This is because literature which knows how to be effective, portrays not merely what is possible but what is typical. In the latter part of our essay Emerson writes: "I remember when some peering eyes of boys discovered that the oranges hanging on the boughs of an orange-tree in a gay piazza were tied to the twigs by thread. I fear 'tis so with the novelist's prosperities." Such art is very bad art, and the only readers such novels interest are those who do not discover the trick.

Realistic literature is sometimes defined as that which represents life as it is, idealistic as that which represents life as we should like to have it. But, as we have just seen, no one is interested in oranges tied to the branches of trees. In great literature as in life the tree may be known by its fruits. Accordingly, idealistic literature that is really good art takes us into a better world not by running away from the laws of this world, but rather by the principle upon which the characters and facts are selected out of the material which the world affords. It chooses to portray habitually the more interesting, and, in large part (though never exclusively), the more admirable types of men or actions; while realism selects its subject-matter from the more commonplace or even the most insignificant or even disgusting. Shakespeare, the great idealist, is at the same time the greatest realist. On the one hand, his leading characters, even the immoral ones, are often striking personalities; they are placed in situations which are significant-the crises of human life. On the other hand their words, their actions, their failures to act, follow strictly, in every instance, from their inner nature when taken in relation to the circumstances in which they are placed; the workings of their minds follow laws which the psychology of to-day is (in many cases) just beginning to formulate. The fiction which is of the highest class, and a great deal of modern fiction which does not reach that eminence, is therefore the great repository of knowledge of human nature and the laws of human life.

3. Wisdom may be defined as the knowing how to live. It consists in a knowledge of the relative values of the different ends which it is possible for us to aim at in life, how far the attainment of one thing would interfere with the attainment of others, and, in a broad way, the manner of life needed for the attainment of the best ones. It involves a profound self-knowledge as well as a knowledge of our human and material environment. No one, for example, can tell what he ought to aim at till he knows what lies within the range of his powers. And of many of our powers, particularly perhaps our capacities for enjoyment, we are, as has been already asserted, often partially or totally unaware. However, wisdom is not in itself mere knowledge either of self or our environment. It is a genuine acquaintance with the resources of life in their relation to our deepest and most permanent needs. This kind of knowledge, if it is to be first hand, cannot be obtained by mere keenness of intellect. It involves the ability to appreciate things at their true worth. But appreciation involves feeling as well as "seeing." To appreciate is to love. Wisdom then may be hampered in its development or destroyed not merely or even chiefly by stupidity or intellectual laziness, but also by habits of life which stunt or kill certain of our tastes, and unduly force others.

4.

Literature, as we have seen, makes us acquainted with human nature in its numberless varieties, and with the laws of human life. The latter include the laws of the development and atrophy of intellect, tastes, and character. It introduces us to modes of living alien from our own, and sometimes reveals to us ideas and types of experience of which we had hitherto only vaguely dreamed. It is thus the emancipator from the tyranny of fashion, custom, and

provincialism in all their forms.

unthought-of possibilities of life. of wisdom.

It is a revelation to us of

It is the great school

Contributing as it does to the understanding not merely of self but of others also, it may aid us at every turn in our dealings with and our attitude towards our fellow-men. For example, a realizing sense of the possibilities of good locked up in practically every member of our race, dwarfed though they may be by an unfriendly climate and a sterile soil, such possibilities as we witness the development of in the story of Silas Marner-a realizing sense of these things tends to make us charitable, patient, even-tempered, serene, and hopeful for the future of humanity.

5. (a) Through the perfection of their form or diction. (b) By awakening in us certain moods, whether joyful or sorrowful, which have a high aesthetic value. (c) By presenting us pictures of things which are in themselves beautiful, as descriptions of nature or of works of art. Also through the description of human beings who possess qualities that arouse our admiration. (d) By spreading before us satisfying pictures of life. They may represent either a better society or human relationship of whatever kind, or happier or nobler lives than we are surrounded with.

6. It means that books may arouse our desire to be better persons and to lead a cleaner, nobler, and more useful life. This "sympathetic activity of the moral powers" is awakened by the sight of other people leading the higher life. We see that such a life has been lived by others, realize that it is being lived by others to-day, and this makes us emulous to do what they do and to be what they The biography of a man like Lincoln reveals to us possibilities of not merely intellectual ability, but also of character, which can never leave us at quite so low a level as that on which we had been living before. It "will not let us sleep."

are.

7. We here set down several out of many. (a) Not merely "fiction" but also history and biography educate the imagination, that is, the power to call up in our own minds the desires and aversions, the joys and sorrows, the hopes and fears of others. But this is nothing else but the power to put ourselves in the place of other people. Now selfishness, which is of the very essence of wrongdoing, is due very largely to blindness, to incapacity to realize what the thing which we snatch from our fellow with greedy hands would mean to him or his. Therefore whatever educates our imagination tends at least to make us better men and women.

(b) The developed imagination also means increased charity of judgment, for it enables us to see an act from the point of view of the agent and not merely our own.

(c) Fiction, history, and biography, all display our ideals and also the types which we hate, in the concrete, and thus make our ideals, which may have hitherto been rather vague, more definite. This strengthens their hold upon us, and sometimes even shows us by what kind of actions they may best be realized.

(d) The habit of tracing consequences which a careful reading of great works of fiction, history, and biography creates, tends to eradicate the thoughtlessness as to consequences which was characteristic of us all as children, and which many people never outgrow. And of the vast mass of suffering in this world an appalling amount is due to thoughtlessness.

8. A great book cannot be fully understood unless we think as we read. A very simple illustration will show how this holds for one of the many problems a book can present to us, namely, the interpretation of character.

Many people seem to suppose that Macbeth was by nature a good though weak man who was pushed into the crime of murder by his more determined and unscrupulous wife. They presumably get this idea from Lady Macbeth's char