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Page 15
To my thinking some of the attempts made to force certain books on
young folk are shocking and deplorable; for it must be remembered that
in literature, as in the case of bodily nutriment, different foods are
required at different times of life. I have known boys and girls who
were forced to read "Rasselas." Now that allegorical production came
from the mind of a mature, powerful, most melancholy man, and it is
intended to show the barren vanity of human wishes. What an absurd
thing to put in the hands of a buoyant youth! The parents however had
heard that "Rasselas" was a great and moral book, whereupon the
children must be subjected to unavailing torture. It maybe said,
"Would not your hints tend to make people frivolous?" Certainly not,
if my hints are wisely used. Let it be observed that I merely wish to
do away with hypocritical conventions whereby timid men like my
correspondent are subjected to extreme misery and a vast waste of
intellectual power is inflicted on the world. Suppose that some
ridiculous guardian had taken up the modern notions about scientific
culture, and had forced Macaulay to read science alone; should we not
have lost the Essays and the History?
That one consideration alone vividly illustrates my correspondent's
quaint and pregnant inquiry. Macaulay was "colour-blind" to science,
and the most painful times in his happy life were the hours devoted at
Cambridge to mathematical and mechanical formul�. The genuinely
cultured person is the one who thinks nothing of fashion and yields to
his natural bent as directed by his unerring instinct. A certain
modern celebrity has told us how his early days were wasted; he was
first of all forced to learn Latin and Greek, though his powers fitted
him to be a scientific student, and he was next forced to impart his
own fatal facility to others. Thus his fame came to him late, and the
most precious years of his life were thrown away. He was colour-blind
to certain departments of literature which have gained a mighty
reputation, yet he was obliged by sacred use and wont to act as though
he relished things which he really abhorred. In a minor degree the
same process of lavish waste is going on all around us. The most
utterly incompetent persons of both sexes are those who, in obedience
to convention, have tried to read everything that was sufficiently
bepraised instead of choosing for themselves; in conversation they are
objectionable bores, and it would puzzle the best of thinkers to
discover their precise use in life. Take it once and for all for
granted that no human creature attains fruitful culture unless he
learns his own powers and then resolves to apply them only in the
directions where they tell best; without so much of self-knowledge he
is no more a complete man than he would be were he deficient in
self-reverence and self-control. He must dare to think for himself, or
he will assuredly become a mediocrity, and probably more or less
offensive. All his possible influence on his fellow-creatures must
depart unless he thinks for himself; and he cannot think for himself
unless he is released from insincerity--the insincerity imposed by
usage.
V.
THE SURFEIT OF BOOKS.
Sir John Lubbock once spoke to a company of working-men, and gave them
some advice on the subject of reading. Sir John is the very type of
the modern cultured man; he has managed to learn something of
everything. Finance is of course his strong point; but he stands in
the first rank of scientific workers; he is a profound political
student; and his knowledge of literature would suffice to make a great
reputation for any one who chose to stand before the world as a mere
literary specialist alone. This consummate all-round scholar picked
out one hundred books which he thought might be read with profit, and,
after reciting his appalling list, he cheerfully remarked that any
reader who got through the whole set might consider himself a
well-read man. I most fervently agree with this opinion. If any
student in the known world contrived to read, mark, learn, and
inwardly digest Sir John's hundred works, he would be equipped at all
points; but the trouble is that so few of us have time in the course
of our brief pilgrimage to master even a dozen of the greatest books
that the mind of man has put forth. Moreover, if we could swallow the
whole hundred prescribed by our gracious philosopher, we should really
be very little the better after performing the feat. A sort of
literary indigestion would ensue, and the mind of the learned sufferer
would rest under a perpetual nightmare until charitable oblivion
dulled the memory of the enormous mass of talk. Sir John thinks we
should read Confucius, the Hindoo religious poetry, some Persian
poetry, Thucydides, Tacitus, Cicero, Homer, Virgil, a little--a very
little--Voltaire, Moli�re, Sheridan, Locke, Berkeley, George Lewes,
Hume, Shakspere, Bunyan, Spenser, Pope, Fielding, Macaulay,
Marivaux--Alas, is there any need to pursue the catalogue to the
bitter end? Need I mention Gibbon, or Froude, or Lingard, or Freeman,
or the novelists? To my mind the terrific task shadowed forth by the
genial orator was enough to scare the last remnant of resolution from
the souls of his toil-worn audience. A man of leisure might skim the
series of books recommended; but what about the striving citizens
whose scanty leisure leaves hardly enough time for the bare recreation
of the body? Is it not a little cruel to tell them that such and such
books are necessary to perfect culture, when we know all the while
that, even if they went without sleep, they could hardly cover such an
immense range of study? Many men and women yearn after the higher
mental life and are eager for guidance; but their yearnings are apt to
be frozen into the stupor of despair if we raise before them a
standard which is hopelessly unattainable by them. I should not dream
of approving the saying of Lord Beaconsfield: "Books are fatal; they
are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are
nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense."
Lord Beaconsfield did not believe in the slap-dash words which he put
into the mouth of Mr. Phoebus, nor did he believe that the greatness
of the English aristocracy arises from the facts that "they don't read
books, and they live in the open air." The great scoffer once read for
twelve hours every day during an entire year, and his general
knowledge of useful literature was quite remarkable. But, while
rejecting epigrammatic fireworks, I am bound to say that the habit of
reading has become harmful in many cases; it is a sort of intellectual
dram-drinking, and it enervates the mind as alcohol enervates the
body. If a man's function in life is to learn, then by all means let
him be learned. When Macaulay took the trouble to master thousands of
rubbishy pamphlets, poems, plays, and fictions, in order that he might
steep his mind in the atmosphere of a particular period in history, he
was quite justified. The results of his research were boiled down into
a few vivid emphatic pages, and we had the benefit of his labour. When
Carlyle spent thirteen mortal years in grubbing among musty German
histories that nearly drove him mad with their dulness, the world
reaped the fruit of his dreary toil, and we rejoiced in the witty,
incomparable life of Frederick II. When poor Emanuel Deutsch gave up
his brilliant life to the study of the obscurest chapters in the
Talmud, he did good service to the human race, for he placed before us
in the most lucid way a summary of the entire learning of a wondrous
people. It was good that these men should fulfil their function; it
was right on their part to read widely, because reading was their
trade. But there must be division of labour in the vast society of
human beings, and any man who endeavours to neglect this principle,
and who tries to fill two places in the social economy, does so at his
peril.
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