Reading and the Choice of Books

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXV, Issue 12, 23 September 1905, Page 17

Reading and the Choice of Books

A Lecture Delivered at the Leys Institute by J. P. Grossmann, M.A., August 11 th, 1905

PART IV.

(C'«n<-I All tbi< and much »t«re is liistory; but i«itg as I have tlwolt up on it I have not detained you too long, if I have produced upon you any impression of the immense importance of this type of study, and the intense interest that attaches to it. if you undertake it in a sympathetic and appreciative spirit. Study of Science. Hut 1 have left myself very little time in which to speak of other types of books ami readings. I have already warned you that for- purposes of exact information and formal study when you go beyond the initial steps, you must be prepared to specialise; and this iwans that you must constantly appeal to teachers or other recognised authorities for direction. Therefore. I have no excuse for saying anything now about the methods of general reading as applied to any blanch of science. As you know, scientists generally—and with good reason—rather resent the idea that their subjects can be popularized: and indeed tlie value of the vague general knowledge that can be obtained from reading no-called popular and non technical books on scientific subjects is very small. Hut every- intelligent man naturally takes an interest in the more important scientific theories of the day, the wide and sweeping inductions derived bv scientists from the material they exjH-riuient upon, and the inferences they draw from their observations. N« one need now to be told, for instance, how important a part is played in modern thought and modern literature by the theory of evolution; and it is well to understand something about it. even if one’s "only notion of it is derived from cheap books like Laing's -Modern Science and Modern Thought/’ But- at the same time it is well to' remember that the true significance of even a .scientific term —and even more of a scientific theory—can never be understood apart from ths history of the subject, and the evidence or the. record of the experiments and observations on which the theory is based. Now all this is largely technical, and therefore a matter of special study rather than of general reading; and so for the time it is outside my scope. Mental Science. There is. however, one form of system atic study, which, without being what 1 may call "popular" in shape presents in certain aspects a great ileal of attraction to th? general reader. I speak of Mr-ntal Science—that is to say. the study of the human mind and its product human thought. The topics clas-ed under the head of Mental Science are briefly Logie. Psychology. Kthics. Metaphysics. Of these Logie is an exact science, and so to a eonnsiderabie extent is Psychology; and they both demand regular methods of study before one lias gone far in them. But Ethics, or the study of Moral Principles and Metaphysics of the tlw-ory of Existence, involve so many problems of intense interest io every thoughtful man that though they are highly technical, any standard works dealing with them are always worth an effort to master. Unfortunately for the average reader, they deal mostly with pure abstractions. and it is no more easy to follow metaphysical or philosophical argument al first than it would be to breathe under the receiver of an air-pump. But a capacity for abstract, thought is cxc.-edingly valuable; mid you liaie to consider that without It, you can never learn how men think or believe, or what is more iiupor-

taut, how they have come to think, or Iwlieve as they do. Moreover, as in the case of History, the treatment of the subject makes a vast difference to the nature of the book; and a writer with a keen literary instinct will be able to inspire into even the most unpromising material that element of human Interest which, as 1 have said, is the chief source of the fascination in all the most attractive books that we r.?ad. To illustrate my meaning here is a passage from “The Foundations of Belief,” a work on general philosophical principles by the present Premier of England. Mr. A. J. Balfour. The passage is, in brief, an attempt to describe the point of view of the naturalistic or materialistic philosophy, which Mr. Balfour criticises and condemns. “For what is man looked at from this point of view? Time was when his tribe ami its fortunes were enough to exliaust th? energies and to bound the imagination of the primitive sage. The gods’ peculiar care, the central object of an attendant universe, tlmt for which the sun shone and the dew fell, io which the stars in their cours.es ministered. it drew its origin in the past from divine ancestors, and might by divine favour be destined to an indefinite existence of success and triumph in the future. These id»?as represent no early or rudimentary stage in the human thought; yet have we left them far behind. The family, the tribe, the nation, are no longer enough to absorb our interests. Man —past, present, and future—days claim to our devotion. What, then, can we say of him? Man, so far as natural science by itself is able to teach us, is no longer the final cause of the universe the Heaven-descended heir of all the ages. His very existence is an accident, his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets. Of the combination of causes which first converted a dead organic compound into the living progenitors of humanity, science, indeed as yet knows nothing. It is enough that from such beginnings, famine, disease, and mutual slaughter fit nurses of the future lords of creation have gradually evolved, after infinite travail, a race with conscience enough to fc«?l that it is vile, and intelligence enough to know that it is insignificant. We survey the past, and see that its history is of blood ami tears, of helpless blundering, of wild revolt, of stupid acquiescence, of empty aspirations. We sound the future, and learn that after a period. long compared with the individual life, but short indeed compared with the divisions of time open to our investigation, the energies of our system will decay, tin? glory of the sun will be dimmed, ami the earth tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. Tht-i uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure collier has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. ‘lmperishable Monuments’ and ‘immortal deeds.’ death itself. and love stronger than death will he as though they had never l«»cn. Nor will anything that is be better or Im* worse for all that the labour, genius, devotion, ami suffering of man have striven through countless generations to effect.” I have, of courPi?, nothing to say as to the value of Mr. Balfour's opinons; but merely to illustrate my argument that metaphysics and philosophy can be cast in very attractive and even imaginative form I will quote a few lines from Tennyson, dealing with the same question—the aspect of Life as it appears in the light of the doctrine usually known as materialism. Raving politics, never al rest as tliH poor earth’* pale IHalory ruw What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleaiu •£ a lUillhdi million bt yuua?

Stately purposes, valour in battle, glorious annals <»f army ami fleet, lh*ath for the right causa*. death for the wronj cause. trumpets of victory, groans of defeat; Love for the maiden, crown'd with marriage. no regrets for a tight that has Iteeti, Household happiness. gracious children, debt less competence, golden mean; What is it all. if we all of us end but in being <mr own corpse coflins at last. Swallow d in vastness, lost in silence, p’ .'t’ 1,1 I* l ' deeps of a meaningless What but a murmur.of gnats in the gloom, or a moment's anger of bees in their hive? Peace, let It be! r,„- 1 loved him, s ,mt love him lor ever; the dead are not dead, but alive. Poetry. Perhaps this last quotation affords me a reasonable excuse, in spile of the length to which my remarks have run, of saying something about Poetry. 1 have already expressed my views as to the value of poetry and the quite illimitable amount of enjoyment to be derived from reading it. The secret of its charm, I suppose, is that its chief ingredient is Imagination, and it is Imagination tlmt lies at the foundation of our conceptions of Beauty. But, whatever la- the exact source of its at tractiveness, the fact remains that when rhyme or rhythm is employed to reproduce imaginative ideas the result is far more expressive and delightful than anything attained by mere prose. Most people have in a vague wax an instinctive liking for poetry,and 1 have already said that, merely as a factor in education or a form of culture, the reading of ]«>etry is a duty that, unlike very many other duties, is at the same time’a very elevated form of pleasure. As to the poets who ought to be read, what 1 have said alx>ut the standards of taste in matters of art here applies with all possible force. The "books that have stood the test of time.” "the acknowledged masters of the art,” of whom 1 spoke before, are the standards by which you should test the poetry you read. Aiid to apply such standards—or. more correctly, io develop sound taste and good judgment based upon them — means tlmt we ought to saturate ourselves with the greatest works of the greatest poets before we read much of the inferior books by the inferior men. Foreign Tongues. I will not repeat what I have said on this score already; but an interesting and important side issue may lie briefly touched upon. Many of the greatest imaginative works ever

produced are in foreign huguigrs Latin and Greek, Italiaa. French and German. i( naturally occur*' to us to ask. Does it make mA<4» difference to us if we do not read Homer and Aeschylus, Dante and Moliere and Goethe iu the <»riginal? This is a wide question; and 1 must be content to answer it briefly. My opinion is that it docs make a great deal of difference. You can always get translations of these great authors, and they are, of course, infiiiitelv belter than nothings But our own language is so different in its fonu< of expression from nearly all others, and <»ur own age is so distinct in its forms of thought and modes of feeling from past times, that it is excessively difficult, if not impossible, to reproduce th? precise meaning of classical or foreign speech in it and what is worse, it is impossible to produce in, and by means of FSnglish. the tone or sentiment, the lit erary atmosphere, which constitutes the most important distinctiou between a book in one language and a work on the same subject in another. At tins same time, it would bp absurd to suggest that everybody who wants to read Homer must learn Greek, or that every bods who wants to knou anything about Dante must learn Italian. All I mean is that th? knowledge of foreign languages is an immense educational advantage, because it opens up hug® areas of thought and feeling, vast stretches of mental and (‘motional exjxerience to which, without the knowledge of the language itself, we must remain almost litter strangers. But in this busy world few people have leisure for the study of foreign literature simply as an enjoyment: ami so we must most of us lx* |M*rforce content with translations. I hope that no shortsighted belief in national siqM*riority will ever prevent you from reading what you can find of the best foreign literature. I could not easily fell you how much you would miss. Here, for example, is the judgment of an English K-ritic on .Moliere: “Justice has been done to the inimitable genius of Moliere. It may he doubted if justice has yet been done to his power as philosopher, moralist, and teacher. As profound a master of human nature on its brighter side as Shakespeare himself, he gives us an even more complete and systematic analysis of modern society, and a still Luger gallery of its familiar types. In exhaustible good nature, impert u t ha hl? good sense, iust *uiclivr aversion to folly, affectation, meanness, ami untruth ever mark Moliere; he is always humane, courteous, sound of heart: he is never savage, morose, cynical, or <il»s-e:ic: he has neither the mad ribaldry of A list o ]»hon?s, nor the mad rage of Swift : he

never ceases to be a man. wise, tender, an dgootl in every fibre, even whilst we feel the darker mood of pensive perplexity that human frivolity perpetually awakens; in his soul.’’ Only by some means or other, if w« read poetry at all, vve should gain some knowledge of the great masterpieces of the art which have entered so completely into the literatures of all ages and all tongues. The Classic*. As an illustration of this aspect of the gieat poems of tin* world, let me quote to j on a passage written by a modern classical scholar dealing with the Roman port \ irgil: “W hat varied memories are stirred by one line after another as we "read! What associations of all dates, from Virgil’s own lifetime down to the political debates of to-day! On this line the port’s own voice faltered as he read. At this Augustus and Octavia melted into passionate weeping. Here is the verse which Augustine quotes as typical in its majestic rhythm of all the pathos and the glory of Pagan art, from which the Christian was bound to flee. This is the couplet which Fenvlon could never lead without admiring tears. These are the words which, like a, trumpet call, roused Savonarola to seek the things that are above. .And this line Dante heard on the lips of the Church Triumphant, at the opening of the Paradise of God. Heir, too, are the long roll of prophecies, sought tremblingly in the monk's secret sell, or echoing in the ears, of emperors from Apollo’s shrine, which have answered the appeal made by so many an eager heart to the A’irgilian Lots that strange invocation which has been addressed. I believe, to Homer, Virgil, and the’Bible alone: the offspring of men's passionate desire to bring to hear on their ow n lives, the wisdom and 1 he beauty which they revered in the past, to make their prophets in such wise as they might: , . “Speak from those lips of immemorial speech, , If hut one word foe each.*’ ‘,‘Siich references .might be multiplied indefinitely. But there is not at any nite need to prove the estimation in whic h A irgil had been held in the past. The force* of that tradition would only -be weakened by specification. ‘The. mhastest poet,' in Baron’s words, ‘and inyalest. A’irgiliiis Maro. that to the memory ‘of man is known,” has lacked in m> age until our own the concord? apt ...testimony of the civilised world. No-poet has lain so close to so many hearts; no words so often as his have sprung to men's lips in moments of excitement am] self-revelation, from the one fierce line retained ami chanted by the untanieable boy who was to be Emperor of Rome, to tin* impassioned prophecy of the great English statesman as he pleaded till morning’s light for the freedom of a continent of slaves. Am! those who have followed by more secret ways t he influence which these utterances have exercised on mankind know well, perhaps themselves have shared, the mass of emotion which has slowly gathered round certain lines of Virgil’s as it has round certain texts of tin* Bible, till t hey come to us charged with more than an individual passion and with a meaning wider than their own—with the cry of the despair of all generation*, with the yearning of all loves unappeased, with the anguish of all partings, •beneath the pressure of separata* eternities.’ Fiction and Criticism. There remains for comment tin* great subject of Fiction, but at this hour I can say no more than what has alleady hern suggested in my remarks on standards of art and criticism. I he only way to discover what are the best, novels to read is first to reml those that the universal testimony of the wm Id’s best has approved. And here I may say just a word as to Hie importance of a ( lass of literature genrially described with contemptuous bie\ it y as ‘’hooks about hooks.’’ I cannot understand why it should be. thought waste of lime to road books by eminent writers criticising the work of others. It seems to me ■ 1 hat. it-is only by seeing how the best judges of literal me or of art apply their standards of criticism, that we can ever learn to shape our own judgments in clear and articulate form. I admit that there i« a serious danger involved in the temptation to quote other people’s opinion a* one's own, or to criticise books that one has not rend, by drawing on the pages of a review. This it -eems to me is morally disbou-

vst, ami from the point of view of true literature or true education of course utterly futile. But it seems to me absurd to suggest that the opinions of eminent men about important book* are not of the greatest value to long as we read the books for ourselves to see how their opinions are formed and how their judgments apply. The Best Novels. All this is of course true, with respect to novels as to poetry; and if the average reader would take the trouble to iiecome acquainted with the opinions of distinguished scholars or literary men about the great writers of fiction, the last new novel would not be in such frequent and urgent demand in our circulating libraries. A generation that has voted Scott “slow’” might, for instance, listen, and with some profit, to the words of Frederic Harrison: “Of Walter Scott one need as little speak as of Shakespeare. He belongs to mankind, to every age a ml race, and hr certainly must be counted as in the first line of the great creative minds of the world. His unique glory is to have definitely succeeded in the ideal reproduction of historical types, so as to preserve at once beauty, life and truth, a task which ne’ther Ariosto and Tasso, nor (‘orneill and Racine.nor Altieri,nor Goethe and Schiller —no! nor even Shakespeare himself entirely achieved. It is true that their instrument was the more exacting one of verse, whilst Scott’s was prose. But in brilliancy of conception, in wealth of character, in dramatic art, in glow and harmony of colour, Scott put forth all the powers of a mas-, ter poet. His too early death, like that of Shakespeare, leaves in us a cruel sense of the inexhaustible quality of his imagination. Prodigious excess in work destroyed in full* maturity that splendid brain, ami to the last he had magnificent bursts of his old power. But for this the imagination of Scott might have continued to range over the boundless field of human history. AVliat we have is mainly of the Middle Ages, the genius of chivalry in all its colour and moral beauty; but he had no exclusive spirit and no crude doctrines. And as Cervantes is ever reminding us how..much of the mediaeval chivalry was doomed, so Scott, whilst singing the same plaintive death-chant, is for ever reminding us how much of it is destined to endure.” Of course there are people who piefer Victoria Cross and Charles Garvice or Bertha Clay to Scott and Thackeray and Dickens ami George Eliot and George Meredith; and you cannot, argue with them. The only thing that can be done is to impress on everybody inclined to take reading seriously the necessity for believing that in imaginative literature, as in books of mere information, there are certain authorities that should be followed and certain standards that must be accepted; and that if we do not understand or appreciate these at first the fault is ours, and our first duty is to “live ii}) to them” as rapidly as we can. The Meaning of Books. T must now draw these disjoined and very inadequate remarks to a close. It is extremely difficult to summarise one's views on such a subject; but it appears to me that perhaps the most interesting and important effect of book-reading is that after a certain point in intellectual progress has been passed, it produces in us a sense of power, a capacity for handling facts, and. so to speak, organising our knowledge, to which we were strangers before. This, it seems to me. is the meaning of the famous aphorism that we get from a hook what we bring io it. What a book.means to us depends not so much on the information contained in it as in the view we take of it. the impression it leaves on us after we have closed it; and this, of course in itself depends chiefly on the opinions we have already formed ami tin* power of judgment that we have already developed. Every book that we read thoughtfully and correctly trains our faculties and enriches our memories and strengthens our minds for the performance of further tasks, and so aids the great work of intellectual progress for us and for those around us, whom, consciously or unconsciously. for good or for evil, we must inevitably influence. I trust that in the remarks I have made I have not seemed to speak dogmatically; but I fear that to some I may have seemed to take a too serious, even a repellent, view of reading. Possibly I have insisted too much upon it as a duty; but then, as I have before suggested, there are duties, am! reading is one of them, which coincide witL the highest forms of happiness. 1 must owu

that I take books seriously; but 1 do not believe more seriously than the importance of the subject would justify. “Our stately Milton,’ writes' Fredeiic Harrison, “said in a passage which is one of the watchwords of the English race, As good almost kill a man as kill a good Imok.’ But has he not also said that he would ‘have a vigilant eye how Bookes drineane themselves, aS well as men: and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors?’ Yes, they do kill the good book who -deliver up their few and precious hours of reading to the trivial book; they make it dead for them; they do what lies in them to destroy ‘the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalm'd and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life'; they ‘spill that season'd life of man preserv'd and stor’d up in Bookes.’ For in the wilderness of books most men. certainly all busy men, must strictly choose. If they saturate their ’minds with the idler books, the 'good book,’ which Milton calls ‘an immortality rather than a life,’ is dead to them; it is a book sealed up and buried.’ ’ The Value of Books. Yet certainly even the sternest view of the reverence that should be attached to good hooks, and our duty toward them, cannot conflict with the sense of of happiness conferred upon us by reading them. It is needless for me to enlarge upon the value of books and the joys of reading. They have been celebrated by th.* most eloquent of orators, by the gravest of philosophers, by the most imaginative of poets, till the whole vocabulary of panegyrics has almost been exhausted upon them. “Are wo not,” asks Carlyle, “driven to the conclusion that of the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful and worthy are the things we call Books. ... In books lies the soul of the whole past time: the articulate, audible voice of the past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been—-it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books. They are the chosen possession of men.” “How dear,” writes Washington Irving, “these silent, yet eloquent, companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity. When all that is W’orldly turns to dross around us, these only retain their steady value. AA hen friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid rivility and commonjdace, these . only continue, the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope nor deserted sorrow.” “1 have seen many })hases of society,” said Cobden; “1 have had many excited means of occupation and of gratification; but I t<*ll you honestly and conscientiously that if I want Io look back to that which has given me the purest satisfaction of mind, it is in those pursuits which are accessible to every member of the Athenaeum. I have not found the greatest enjoyment in the exciting plaudits of a public meeting: I have not found the greatest pleasure or interest in intercourse, sometimes with men of elevated ’ sphere abroad, where others would think probably that you were privileged to meet such men. 1 come back to you conscien-. tiously to declare that the purest pleasures 1 have ever known are those accessible to you all; it is in the calm intercourse with intelligent minds and in the communion with the departed great, through books by my own fireside.” I might multiply these eulogies indefinitely, but I hardly need to accumulate for you further proofs of the infinite value of Literature to us all, and the ineafindable benefits to be derived from its study. And if I have been able however feebly and inefficiently, to impress these great truths more clearly upon your minds than before, I am more than grateful for the opportunity that has been afforded me of addressing von