James Freeman Clarke - Self-Culture by Reading and Books

7/27/2019 James Freeman Clarke - Self-Culture by Reading and Books

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SELF-CULTUREPHYSICAL, INTELLECTUAL, MORALAND SPIRITUAL

% Course of Hectare*

JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE" Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment uncertain and judgment

difficult." First Words of the Aphorisms of Hippocrates.

BOSTON AND NEW YORKHOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY(STbe Ritocrjsi&e $xz$$


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XIV.CULTURE BY READING AND BOOKS.

THE subject of this chapter is " Beading as aMeans of Culture."The " Publisher's Circular " gives the statistics of

the books issued each year from the press in Eng-land. The annual number of titles, one year withanother, is about five thousand. About two-thirdsof these are new books; the others are reprints.Last year there were 737 theological books, 529educational works, 522 juvenile books, and 854works of fiction. I have not at hand the statisticsof books for the United States, but it must comparefavorably with that of England, as a larger propor-tion of our population are able to read than in thatcountry. The number of copies of newspapersprinted and circulated every year in the UnitedStates is enormous, I was about to say frightful.The annual circulation is fifteen hundred millionsof copies, which would give about forty copies every"year to every man, woman, and child in the UnitedStates.


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308 SELF-CULTURE.These statistics show how much time is occupied

by the people in reading. And it is a valuableeducation, so far as it goes. Poor as much is thatis printed, it is better than the common talk. Theaverage newspaper is higher than the average con-versation. The newspaper does not swear, does notuse coarse and gross language ; it is often weak, butdoes not talk pure nonsense. It is trying to saysomething, and it has to seem to be aiming at some-thing honest, true, and generous. The newspapersgive a vast amount of information in regard to theaffairs of mankind. The nation which reads news-papers is able to sympathize with the people ofother countries ; men's hearts are enlarged, and theyare helped to love their fellow-men. Without news-papers, we should never have felt sympathy withGreece in her revolution, with Poland in its misfor-tunes, with Italy in its independence and unity,with France in her great disasters and subsequentrecovery. Without the newspapers, we should nothave sent food to starving Ireland in its years offamine, for we should, as a people, have knownnothing about it. The newspapers create a commonfeeling and a common opinion through the wholeland, and a sympathy with the people of otherlands. So they help the cause of humanity and ofsocial progress.But with all this good done by reading news-

papers, there is one particular evil. It produces 'that state of mind which the Book of Acts ascribed


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CULTURE BY READING AND BOOKS. 309to the Athenians : " The Athenians and strangers atAthens passed all their time," so we are told in theActs, " in seeing and hearing some new thing." Butthis desire to know something new did not enablethem to receive Christianity, though Christianity wasthen the newest thing in the world, and somethingwhich would make the whole world new. Whatthey wanted was not the new, but the novel. Theywished for novel sensations, perpetual change. Thislove for intellectual excitement weakened the graspof their mind so much that at last they lost thepower of perceiving truth. They could not tellthe difference between a new gospel and a newquackery. And so it happened that in Athensalmost alone, of all places where Paul preached,in Athens, the eye of Greece, the literary emporiumof the earth, in Athens there were no converts toChristianity, and no Christian church. We nowhereread or hear of the church at Athens, and we havein the New Testament no epistle to the Athenians.

Because, therefore, the people of Athens were sofond of new tilings, they could not see nor know thenew thing when it was before their eyes. WhatPaul said to them was a slight excitement, gavethem a half-hour's entertainment, about as much aswould have been occasioned by a new statue byPraxiteles, or a new oration by Lysias, or the arrivalof ambassadors from .the great king, or a fleet oftriremes sailing up the Gulf of Salamis, or the cele-bration of the mysteries at Eleusis. "There is a


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310 SELF-CUL TURE.Jew come to the city preaching a new doctrine;will you go and hear him, O Cleon ? He speaks tothe people on the Areopagus." " Certainly, providedhe gets through in season for the tragedy of ' (EdipusTyrannus,' which is to be acted to-day in the Theatreof Bacchus." And so they hear Paul, and thenlisten to the rhythmic strain of Sophocles ; and bythe time they have reached the catastrophe, thewoes of (Edipus have made them quite forget thestory of Christ's death and resurrection.

So Paul departed from among them. There wasno depth in that soil.The newspaper creates and feeds the appetite for

news. When we read it, it is not to find what 'istrue, what is important, what we must consider andreflect upon, what we must carry away and remem-ber, but what is new. When any very curious orimportant event occurs, the newspaper, in narratingit, often gives, as its only comment and reflection,this phrase, " What next ? " That is often themotto of the newspaper and the newspaper reader,"What next?" The only reflection and moralderived from learning a great fact is simply this,"Now let us hear of another." The whole worldrushes to the newspaper every morning to find outwhat has happened since yesterday ; and the momentit finds what has happened, it cares no more aboutit. We think no more of yesterday's newspaperthan of yesterday's dinner. We forget both as soonas possible. This is a mental dissipation which


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CULTURE BY READING AND BOOKS. 311takes away mental earnestness, and destroys allhearty interest in truth. It also weakens thememory. The memory, like all other powers, isstrengthened by exercise. We cultivate our memoryby remembering. But if we read, not intending toremember what we read, but expecting to forget it,then we cultivate the habit of forgetting. I thinkthat the effect of reading newspapers, in the waywe read them, must be to weaken steadily andpermanently, the memory of the nation. Everygeneration will be born with a worse memory thanthat which preceded it. The proper way to curethis evil would be to select every day from thenewspaper certain important facts to be carried inthe mind, considered and thought about. Thesewould be fixed in the memory. They should bemade the subject of conversation with friends or inthe family, and this would improve the memory,instead of destroying it.In short, in reading, and in all that we read, our mind

should be active, and not passive. Milton says :" Who reads

Incessantly, and to his reading brings notA spirit and genius equal or superior,Uncertain and unsettled still remains,Deep versed in books and shallow in himself."

And Lord Bacon tells us that "reading makes afull man, conference (or conversation) a ready man,and writing an exact man ; " and that we should read,not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and


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312 SELF-CULTURE.take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, butto weigh and consider. Montaigne, who had a pas-sion for books, who never travelled without them,and called them the best viaticum for this journeyof life, said that the principal use of reading, to him,was, that it roused his reason. It employed hisjudgment, not his memory. "Bead much, not manythings," is good advice. There was an old saying," He is a man of one book." If one reads but onebook, he may read that one book so well as to be avery hard man to encounter. But he is a happyperson who enjoys his books, and to whom the daydoes not seem long enough for reading. For booksare friends who never quarrel, never complain, arenever false ; who come from far ages and old landsto talk with us when we wish to hear them, and aresilent when we are weary. Good books take usaway from our small troubles and petty vexationsinto a serene atmosphere of thought, nobleness, truth.They are solace in sorrow, and companions in joy.Knowledge of books, and a habit of careful read-

ing, is a most important means of intellectual de-velopment. It gives mental breadth, poise, andauthority. The man of great practical abilities, butunacquainted with the history or theory of a sub-ject, is liable to make serious mistakes. He cannotbe trusted. If he is conscious himself of his igno-rance, he is timid ; if not conscious, he is rash. Itwould be impossible for our members of Congress tocommit so many blunders if they should pass an


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CULTURE BY READING AND BOOKS. 313examination in political economy before taking theirseats. To read two or three good books on any sub-ject is equivalent to hearing it discussed by anassembly of wise, able, and impartial experts, whotell you all that can be known about it. You seethe whole field, understand all that can be said onone side or the other, know what has been the re-sult in practice of either course. The experience ofthe whole world, and of all past history, comes toyour aid.

The moral influence also of good books is verygreat. They purify the taste, elevate the character,make low pleasures unattractive, and carry the soulup into a region of noble aims and generous pur-poses. All first-class books are eminently moral ;and all immoral books are, so far, poor books.Homer, Shakspeare, Plato, Dante, are pure in theirspirit, and elevate the character. No one canmake a thorough study of such books as these with-out being a better man. Milton says, and saystruly, that " our sage and serious poet, Spenser, is, Idare be known to think, a better teacher of temper-ance than Scotus or Aquinas." Who can read thebiography of Dr. Franklin without learning to ad'mire such a life of perpetual study, unfailing indus-try, large patriotism, temperance, good-humor, andgeneral good-will ? When we read the story ofWashington we become sure that disinterested pub-lic service is a real thing. The charming allegoryof the " Pilgrim's Progress " teaches, in pictures too


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314 SELF-CULTURE.vivid to be ever forgotten, of the temptations anddangers we must encounter in any serious effort tosave our soul.

Eeligious books are usually considered dull anduninteresting ; but that they need not be so appearsfrom the example of this book of Bunyan's, and fromthe popularity of religious books far inferior in theirquality. In fact, religious books stand at the sum-mit of literature. First come the Bibles of the race, the books of books, and, before all others, theChristian and Hebrew Bible, which constitutes thechief reading of millions of the most civilized racesof men. Then come the Bibles of the Hindoos, thePersians, the Chinese, the Buddhists, also circulatedby millions of copies during numerous centuries.Next come religious books of the second class, asthe works of Homer, Hesiod, Eschylus, Pindar; thegreat poems of Dante and Milton ; and, after these,the lives of saints, the liturgies and hymns of theages, the manuals of devotion, "The Imitation ofChrist," " Taylor's Holy Living," the works ofAquinas, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Swedenborg,Channing. The vast circulation of such works tes-tifies that there is nothing so interesting to thehuman heart as religion.

But " let him that readeth understand." It usedto be thought a great credit to a boy to " love hisbook," to be fond of reading. But all depends onwhat we read and how we read. One may have amorbid love of reading. The habit of reading may


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CULTURE BY READING AND BOOKS. 315become an evil. I have known persons who hadacquired such a love for novel-reading that it was areal disease. They swallowed novel after novel as arum-drinker swallows his glass of spirits. Theylived on that excitement. They were passive re-cipients of these stories, and the more they read theweaker grew their minds. The result of this sortof reading is mental imbecility. Better, instead ofit, to walk in the fields, to dig potatoes, or to talkwith the first man you meet.

I do not mean to say that novel-reading is neces-sarily bad. It was formerly thought wrong to readnovels at all ; or, at least, wrong to read anythingbut the regular moral romance : the writings of MissEdgeworth, Miss Burney, and the like. But novelsin which the moral is too prominent are usually notso influential as those in which it comes, as in life,out of the incidents themselves. "The Vicar ofWakefield " has not any moral which compels yourattention. " Don Quixote " has no obtrusive moral.But who can read the first and not sympathize withthe good man, who, with all his ignorance of theworld and its ways, commands our respect by hishonorable purposes and his loyalty to truth andright. So, while we read " Don Quixote," we smileat the folly of the good knight with the surface ofour mind, and love and honor him in the depths ofour heart, for the magnanimity and nobleness of hischaracter. We smile at him, but respect him.Such books make us feel how much better is in*


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316 SELF-CULTURE.ward purity and uprightness than any mere knowl-edge of the world or outward success. That is theirmoral, and it is a great one. But it is nowherestated in so many words.The great merit of Walter Scott's novels is their

generous and pure sentiment. There is a strain ofgenerosity, manliness, truth, which runs throughthem all. They nowhere take for granted mean-ness; they always take for granted justice andhonor. Now this is the real, though subtle, influ-ence which comes from novels, poems, plays. Thisindirect influence, this taking for granted, is themost influential of all. Some books take for grantedthat man is selfish and mean. Others take forgranted that he is noble and true. Some assumethat all men are led by selfishness, and all womenby vanity. Such books are deeply immoral, nomatter what good maxims are tacked to them. Forour standard of right and wrong is usually that ofthe public opinion just around us, and the books weread create a part of that public opinion. Suchworks as those of Dickens have gone into publicopinion, and have been the guides of the public con-science. They have made us all feel the duty ofcaring for such poor orphans as Smike ; they havemade us love the lowly; they have infused anaroma of generous feeling into the public mind.Catholics have their confessors, and those priestswhom they call their directors, to whom they go totell them what they ought to do. Such writers as


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CULTURE BY READING AND BOOKS. 317Scott and Dickens are the directors of the publicconscience. Well when they direct it aright.Novels are good or bad, like other books. To

ask whether we ought to read novels is like askingwhether we ought to go into society. Choose yourassociates ; choose your books. Do not read any-thing and everything because it is printed. Mean-ness, cynicism, cruelty, falsehood, get themselvesprinted. Protestant countries have no index ofprohibited books, no restraint on unlimited print-ing. It is all the more necessary that each oneshould examine for himself the character of whathe reads, and find what effect it has on him.

Let him that readeth understand. " Weigh andconsider."

I return to the maxim to which I referred above,non multa, sed multum. Eead much, but do not readmany things. Select the great teachers of the race,the great masters, and read them. Eead Bacon,Milton, Shakspeare, Dante, Homer, Herodotus,Thucydides, Schiller, Goethe, Lessing. Do notread about these authors in magazines, but readthe authors themselves. He who has once care-fully read Bacon's "Advancement of Learning," orMilton's " Areopagitica," or the " Phcedo " of Plato,has taken a step forward in thought and life. Weread many criticisms on books ; it were better toread the books themselves. Who, in visiting Ni-agara, instead of looking at the majestic cataractitself, would wish to see it reflected in a mirror in


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318 SELF-CUL TURE.a camera obscura ? Drink at the fountain, not fromthe stream. Eead Pope, rather than Dr. Johnson'saccount of him. Eead Milton before you read Ma-caulay's article on Milton. Eead Goethe, and thenCarlyle's essay on Goethe. Literature tends toomuch to diluted and second-hand reading. Insteadof great books, we read the reviews of books, thenarticles on the reviews, then criticisms on thosearticles, then essays on those criticisms.

It is an epoch in one's life to read a great bookfor the first time. It is like going to Mont Blancor to Niagara without the journey or the expense.When I was a boy I lived in the country, and hadconstructed for myself a reading-room amid the mas-sive limbs of an old chestnut-tree. There I retired,and spent long mornings in reading the plays ofShakspeare, the " Paradise Lost," the songs of Burns,the poems of Wordsworth or of Walter Scott. Iimmersed myself in them. The hours passed by,the sun sank lower toward his setting, the shadowsmoved on ; entranced in my book, I read and no-ticed nothing. To read a good book thus is anevent in one's life.

I once spent a long day in reading the Book ofJob in the translation of Noyes. I had never readit before from the beginning to the end. It was aday much to be remembered. I beg of you to takesuch books as these when you have time enough,and read them through ; else you cannot know howgreat they are. Such books are not meant to be


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CULTURE BY READING AND BOOKS. 319read as serials, or to be issued in monthly numbers.To read Milton's " Paradise Lost," take a long sum-mer's day. Go into the country, and sit in the woodsalone. Read on and on, and give the whole day toit. Only so can you realize the majesty of thatmuse,

" Sailing with supreme dominionThrough the azure depths of air,"

the genius which paints in turn the sublime hor-rors of hell, the tender beauty of paradise,

" The spirits and Intelligences fairAnd angels waiting on the Almighty's chair."

In reading a book, you will notice that besidesthe thoughts, besides the visible moral, it has a soul,a leaven of character. The words of a book may bevery moral, but the tone immoral. The words maybe religious, but the tone sceptical. For the religionmay be a mere smooth, cold crust over a deep run-ning tendency to doubt ; the morality may be ex-hortation to correct conduct coming out of a spiritwhich does not believe in right or wrong. Thatbook, to me, is not moral which is stuffed withmoral maxims, or in which good people end bygetting rich and prosperous ; but that which makesgoodness seem both beautiful and possible ; whichmakes it seem worth while to live, that we may livegenerously and nobly. That book to me is religious,not which exhorts us solemnly to become pious un-der penalty of going to hell if we are not, but in


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320 SELF-CULTURE.which love to God and man seem natural, easy, andbeautiful.A book may be religious without being Christian.The religious feeling which pours itself out in ex-pressions of awe, reverence, fear, remorse, trust, isnearly the same in all lands, all times, and all relig-ions. Something of it is to be found in Buddhism,in Mohammedanism, among the Hindoos and theChinese. But Christianity adds the element of faithin God as a living friend, close to us, who cares forus all, loves all his children, and whose true serviceis not solemn ceremonies or tremendous sacraments,but doing good to the poor, the lonely, the down-trodden, the oppressed. The spirit of Christianityis the spirit of Jesus. When a book has not thespirit of Christ, it is none of his, though it may befull of religious notions, and may be popular enoughto reach a hundred editions. The book which hasin it the spirit of Christ is an apostle of Christian-ity, though it be a novel by Dickens, or a poem byTennyson.

Biography, history, and travels give us more in-formation than any other kind of works. Theyshould be read together. One illustrates the other.And I think these are the books to read in classes.The best way of learning history is to have a class,in which a certain period of history shall be thesubject of the lesson, and each member of the classread in a different book about that period. Then,when they come together, each has something to tell


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CULTURE BY READING AND BOOKS. 321to the others, and something to learn from them.And, in like manner, it is well to form classes toread other works and pursue other studies, for sothe stimulus of society and co-operation aids thesolitary study which accompanies it.

I will close these remarks with a few rules toassist in reading to advantage.

1. One rule is, to read what interests you. In-teresting books are those which do us good. Unlessa book interests us, we cannot fix our attention to it.Unless we attend to it, we do not understand it, ortake it in. Then, we are wasting our time on amerely mechanical process, and are deceiving our-selves with a show devoid of substance.The best books are the most interesting. Those

which are clearest, most intelligible, best expressed,the logic of which is the most convincing ; whichare deepest, broadest, loftiest. Therefore, read thebooks on subjects which interest you, by the bestwriters on those subjects.

The two finest prose essays in the English lan-guage are Lord Bacon's "Essay on the Advance-ment of Learning," and Milton's tract on "TheFreedom of the Press." And these are also inter-esting to that degree that, having once read them,you will never forget them.

The most interesting books, as regards their sub-jects, are well-written biographies and well-writtenbooks of travels. The one shows us human nature,the other the world and life. Therefore the undying

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322 SELF-CULTURE.charm of such works as " Plutarch's Lives," Xeno-phon's " Memorabilia of Socrates," Johnson's " Livesof the Poets," the biographical essays by Macaulayand Carlyle, and the like.

This rule of reading what is interesting is so im-portant, that it is a good appendix to the rule tostop reading when we find we cannot fix our atten-tion and are reading mechanically. Por to readwithout attention is to form a habit of inattention.To read without interest, will tend to a loss of in-terest in all reading. To go through the mechanicalform of reading when our mind is not in it, weakensthe mental powers, and does not strengthen them.

Therefore, select the best and most interestingbooks to read.

2. The check on this rule, which will prevent itsabuse, is another ; namely, " Eead actively, not pas-sively."A person may be deeply interested in a sensa-tional story, but it is often a purely passive interest.He does not think about what he is reading. Theresult is a momentary excitement, and after it isover he has received injury rather than good fromit. He is less fit to think or to act than he wasbefore.We should always, in reading, exercise memory,judgment, and the faculties of comparison and rea-son. We should repeat in our own words the sub-stance of what we read, take notes of it, converseabout it, fix it in our memory, discuss it with others,


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CULTURE BY READING AND BOOKS. 323and compare it with other books on the same sub-jects. This takes time ; but it is far better to reada few books carefully and thoroughly, than manybooks superficially. Good books should be readagain and again, and thought about, talked about,considered and re-considered. So, at last, what weread becomes our own.

3. Therefore, there should be a third rule ; namely,to read with some system and method. Arrangecircumstances so as to keep yourself up to yourwork. One method is for two persons to read thesame book, and to meet together to talk about it.I read a large part of Goethe and Schiller and someother writers in this way, in company with Mar-garet Fuller, spending two or three evenings everyweek at her house, talking with her about what wehad been reading. An extension of this method isto form a class to read on certain subjects ; for ex-ample, a new book, a period of history, a countryand people, a system of philosophy, a science, andthen to meet and discuss together this common sub-ject. Such a class might be formed in connectionwith every book-club. Where this cannot be done,a person might, at least, have a note-book, andwrite down the heads of what he reads, and his ownthoughts about it. To these notes he would after-ward refer with pleasure and advantage.

If a person, in the course of some yearn, shouldread in this way such writers as Shakspeare, Milton,Bacon, Locke, Gibbon, Wordsworth, and our best


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324 SELF-CUL TURE.American writers, "he would, by this method alone,acquire a good education and a large intellectual de-velopment. Any one important book read in thisway would enlarge amazingly the sphere of one'sknowledge. I knew a gentleman who read thus" Carlyle's History of the French Eevolution;" look-ing up every event, person, and place referred to,and taking notes of all, and thus he became thor-oughly versed in the whole history of modern Eu-rope.

Let us be thankful for books. I sympathize withCharles Lamb, who said that he wished to ask a" grace before reading " more than a " grace beforedinner." What a consolation to the self-denyinglife of that good son and good brother were hisbooks !

Let us thank God for books. When I considerwhat some books have done for the world, and whatthey are doing, how they keep up our hope, awakennew courage and faith, soothe pain, give an ideal lifeto those whose homes are cold and hard, bind to-gether distant ages and foreign lands, create newworlds of beauty, bring down truth from heaven, Igive eternal blessings for this gift, and pray that wemay all use it aright, and abuse it never.Thank God for books,

" Those stately arks, that from the deepGarner the life for worlds to be ;And, with their glorious burden, sweepAdown dark Time's untravelled sea."

James Freeman Clarke - Self-Culture by Reading and Books

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