HOW AND WHAT TO READ.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIII, Issue XVIII, 3 November 1894, Page 413

HOW AND WHAT TO READ.

Clearly it is not a multitude of books a man has devoured which makes him * a full man in fact,

I have come to the conclusion that reading is of no use whatever without a certain habit; it is not method because it operates unconsciously—a trick of the mind, which sifts the matter taken in at once and distributes it into the pigeon holes of the brain. It proceeds with the uttermost disregard of the author’s meaning and intention, it wrenches postulate from predicate, fact from conclusion. The author’s reasoning may be just and profound, but it does not interest me. The conclusion is c mveyed in a epigramniatical sentence ; I stow that away in the pigeon-hole for style. In fact, profitable reading, as it appears to me, is not an accumulation of knowledge en Woe, book *piled upon book like a pyramid ; it is rather a process which reduces books to a state of solution, and re-deposits the sediment, forming a sort of alluvium, where all thegood,interesting things one has ever read are mixed up, while all that appears useless or uninter esting has teen allowed to float away into the ocean of oblivion.