These, however, are not the only reasons. Practically all literature dealing with human life requires for its understanding and certainly for its enjoyment the exercise of the imagination. One must be able to put himself in the place of the various actors in the scene, to realize what it all means to each one of them. But selfishness, as has been already pointed out, is due very largely to the incapacity to do precisely this. If we were able to feel our neighbor's suffering as we can our own, we could no more injure him than we could deliberately gash our arm or cut it off. Selfishness is blindness, whereas the ability to enjoy literature requires the ability to see. A great source of pleasure in literature is that which we derive from the admiration of noble characters. Indeed the function of so-called idealistic literature is to present and thus to preserve, just as portrait painting preserves the beautiful face, the strong or otherwise attractive and beautiful characters. But the bad man, from the nature of the case, is either insensitive to these attractions, or else, as has already been said, they accuse his way of living and he accordingly thrusts them out of his sight. 19. It is the function primarily of the English department to answer this question. But the problem is too important to be passed without any discussion whatever. A person may read carelessly, for mere relaxation or the amusement of the passing moment. There is no harm in this, neither is there anything of permanent good. For it is only as our mental powers are awakened to activity that literature is capable of bestowing upon us its largest gifts whether of profit or pleasure. The key to these privileges is familiarity. Read the book you would learn to appreciate, until you know it, and think about it as you read it and after you have read it. Then read others of the same kind. Is it a play or a novel? Then put to yourself such questions as these: Do the actions flow naturally and necessarily from the personality of the characters? Are the ef fects, whether upon others or the agent himself, such as we should find under similar circumstances in the world about us? Are the experiences represented as valuable, in reality what they are made to appear? Do hope and depression, fear and indignation, and the other emotions occur under the conditions described and in persons of the type described? Are the workings of the intellectual processes in reality such as they are here represented to be? (Lear's ravings follow the laws of association as perfectly as any modern rsychologist could demand.) Then there are also the problems of craftsmanship to study, as the construction of plot, the use of language. These to a nation and age where most people are either lazy or overworked, may sound formidable. In reality, however, when once the chains of idle or slipshod habits of thought have been broken, it is nothing of the sort. "The mind may be trained to meditate on great themes," writes Hamilton W. Mabie, "instead of giving itself up to idle reverie; when it is released from work it may concern itself with the highest things as readily as with those which are insignificant and paltry. Whoever can command his meditations in the streets, along the country roads, on the train, in the hours of relaxation, can enrich himself for all time without effort or fatigue; for it is as easy and restful to think about great things as about small ones. A certain lover of books made this discovery years ago, and has turned it to account with great profit to himself. He thought he discovered in the faces of certain great writers a meditative quality full of repose and suggestive of a constant companionship with the highest themes. It seemed to him that these thinkers, who had done so much to liberate his own thought, must have dwelt habitually with noble ideas; that in every leisure hour they must have turned instinctively to those deep things which concern most closely the life of men. The vast majority of men are so absorbed in dealing with material that they appear to be untouched by the general questions of life; but these gen * * * eral questions are the habitual concern of the men who think. In such men the mind, released from specific tasks, turns at once and by preference to these great themes, and by quiet meditation feeds and enriches the very soul of the thinker. Following this hint, this lover of books persistently trained himself, in his leisure hours, to think over the books he was reading; to meditate on particular passages, and, in the case of dramas and novels, to look at characters from different sides. It was not easy at first, and it was distinctively work; but it became instinctive at last, and consequently it became play. The stream of thought once set in a given direction, flows now of its own gravitation; and reverie, instead of being idle and meaningless, has become rich and fruitful." (Books and Culture, p. 43.) This procedure may be regarded as impracticable for the average person because it is the experience of a literary critic possessed of special aptitudes and tastes. From certain observations, however, I have come to believe that a taste for great literature is, in undeveloped form, far more common than is supposed. There are a number of cases which have come under my personal notice from which I select one related to me by the person himself. A certain young man went through college, interested chiefly in the work of the crew, of which, in his last year, he was captain. After graduating and entering business he became impressed by the fact that there were people who seemed to be deriving enjoyment and inspiration from books which bore famous titles but which were to him nothing. He determined their experience should be his also. So he took up the classical English authors and went at the study of them with the same spirit with which he had trained as an oarsman. "I assure you that at first I was terribly bored," he told me, "but I kept at it until I found what I was in search of." Now the reading of the best literature has become his great passion-an occupation to which he devotes every available moment outside of business hours. Learning to read is precisely like learning to play tennis or cast for trout. At first it involves, at least for some persons, a great deal of labor. Muscles are brought into action that have seldom been called upon to work; and they protest with pain. But after a while the exercise becomes pure delight, a source not merely of pleasure, but of refreshment when weary, of enthusiasm and life when the call comes to act. From this world he shuts himself out who merely lounges through the popular novels of the day, the magazines, and the newspapers. 20. See the chapter on habit for Darwin's account of the atrophy of his love of literature. Only those feelings which are fed can live. On the other hand the growth of the love of reading through reading is probably not due to the principle of habit, any more than in the parallel case of work. It is due rather to the education, through exercise, of the perceptive powers. But the increase in freedom and ease with which the perceptive processes proceed upon repetition is beyond doubt the product of habit. Furthermore the principle holds that our perceptive powers gradually lose their flexibility as the tide of youth ebbs away. The high school and the university years are the period in which to acquire a taste for literature. If you "do it now" you may be able when you become a "tired business man" to find refreshment and satisfaction where genuine and lasting refreshment and satisfaction are really to be found. III. The Choice of Books 21. 22. While some great works occasionally fall into neglect this happens so infrequently that the chances can be disregarded. The popularity of a book at the time of its publication may mean nothing more than that it is sensational, or fits into some passing superficial, popular fancy. 23. The most obvious reason is of course, that life is short and the time for reading still shorter. Since, therefore, one can read only a small portion of what has been written why not read the best? But there are other reasons. Literature is a portrayal of life. The greatest literature is not merely greatest in its kind, but, often, is of a different kind from the less great. It deals with the supreme experiences and the essential characteristics of the race; lesser literature often with that which is superficial or ephemeral. Again, its point of view, its mode of procedure, is different. For example, the conception of cause and effect is seldom found applied to life outside of the greatest literature; for it requires great minds to see it, or at all events, to portray it. Then, it is, in the main, only the highest endowment that is capable of seeing things as they are, and thus of bringing back to us who stay at home a true report. The majority of novels, for example, present so false a picture of human nature and human society that they shed distinctly more darkness than light. But one more reason must not fail of mention. It is urged by Lowell, in the address already referred to, in the following words: "A man is known, say the proverbs, by the company he keeps, and not only so, but made by it." He is speaking, of course, of company in the way of books. Every great book we read understandingly increases our powers of perception and consequently our power of enjoying the best. Every inferior book dulls our perceptive powers and tempts us into indolent habits of reading, and, as a result of both, dulls our tastes, and lowers our capacity both for enjoyment and for obtaining help and strength in time of need. 24. Except for those who have an extraordinary memory, desultory reading leaves, for the most part, pitifully few traces behind it. Worse than that it renders the reader in the end incapable of sustained attention, of correlating facts with relation to a few central principles (generalizing), and in general of reflecting upon what is read; it creates an appetite for novelty, and destroys the power of finding the only kinds of novelty that do not pall upon the taste in the end, novel exemplifications of long familiar principles, or |