READING.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 912, 3 September 1910, Page 9

READING.

;) Whentho last English^mail;left,,the. National- Homo Beading Union, founded in. 1889, was celebrating-its' coming, of age.: In a History of the home read-, ;ing"; movement which has been /written, for. the, occasion;; there' is quo'ted;'the following passage from an ' address by' Mr,: James Bryce oh reading as a men,-' tal process: . . , ..'•; .; ■• '■ ■'. : ' : \ ■■'.>'- ./■"Now you will recollect there is a remarkable' passage-., in .Plato 1 where he suggests in his haif-serious way, put-, ting the remark into the'mouth of anEgyptian .sage,.:that 'perhaps it- was :a misfortune for- the human mind that the;use of writing was ever .discovered, and., that the human ■ mind would have, been more .powerful, with a: greater capacity'for reflection, .a greater power of going to .the, bottom of. things, a greater capacity.. of : ideas, and, ,-."■ he might' perhaps have :) added,, a greater perfection ..'of literary form,, if. it . had never to this /agent'; and help which. :'the ! use . of. writing gives.' ; One imay again.remeniber how much of 1 , the, • best.'literature' of .the times wheii books' -were. known was produced by; people: who read very few books. If you think how small the ; library of Dante ■ or Shakespeare, was and compare it .witli ours, you: will .see .how very .small a part the quantity.of,books bears.to the stimulation of intellectual, faculty, and •tothe production of .'literature of thq' highest excellence.; ..Well; of course,' it is .true that -the use of. printed words is ,of ; 'importance; to:; literature, for -we have/an; accumulation'•'; which /carries enormous benefits with it; it enables us to preserve the ideas which would otherwise have been, lost/'and it gives us the command of an infinitely wider range of facts. All I-desire to call your attention to is that' there.:is a certain amount, of loss involved-in the use 6t the written word' as'comparal-with, the spoken word; in other words;-thoro is less reaction of the mind; -and,": therefore',-- reading, when we look at it from this point of view, is; perceived to. be not, ■ a mechanical operation, but An reality tho. appropriation by the reader of .that which is conveyed to him by the writer; it is tho attempt to make the writer's thought your thought, to'tako it iuto your own mind,' to make it a part of yourself, to let it produce upon you the same kind of' reaction that .would have been produced if the writer find been standing in front of you and speaking the.words he addresses to you through the printed page." '•,. Mr. Bryce (the ''Manchester Guardian" points out) is here working on an idea which lias attracted'other men be■s'ides Plato—'an-'-idea'.' which is at the basis of both .the great systems on 'which the work of our universities is carried on, in which personal instruction, whether by lectures or tuition, is I the mode followed. . Reading ought not to bo. the mere accumulation of facts, or even,-though that is better, of points of view; ils aim is not learning' but j knowledge, its object is to stimulate the reader not to tin; exercise of inemorI ising, but to the exercise of thinking

for himself. It is realisation of this danger in the mere acquisition of information that has led many of tho greatest thinkers and writers to belittle the habit of reading beyond a just temperance. The philosopher Hobbes, for ; instance, is recorded to have answered a friend who marvelled that so learned a man as he should have so fow books, that "if he had read as much as other learned men ho would have been as ignorant as they." As it happens, Hobbes must havo read as much in his youth as any man of his time. It is easy to affect despite of other people's assiduity and enthusiasm when one.has all the'reading one wants over, and done with. A more astonishing case, is Milton, whose youth was that of II Penseroso, an assiduous and unceasing toil through the writers. ; of every age and nation—the preparation for that poetic style-which made Mark Pattis'on call "Paradise Lost" the last reward of. fino scholarship, so full is it of echoes and; references which only a man with reading comparablo to Milten's own could understand aiid ap.preciate. Yet Milton in "Paradise. Regained" .went out of his way to deliver, a .censure on reading, and-for added emphasis put it into the mouth of the chief .character in. the poem:—"Who reads,"! he says, Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A.spirit aiul judgment equal or superior (And what ..he-brings, what needs he else- .: where seek?), '.'" . . Uncertain and unsettled, still remains; , Deep verst in books and shallow in hini- ■ . self; . .'"■"'" '.'.■.■ ■.■'-■,'■• Crude or, intoxicate, collecting toys,' ' And'trifles for:choice matters, worth a -■ sponge;.. ■ . ""•',. . . As . children . gathering pebbles on the .shore. •: • ■ . : . "■''. That' is to say, the reader confronting an author "receives" (as Coleridge said of man confronting nature), "but what he-gives.": Only his equals need ; read Shaltespeare, . ajid. in parenthesis they are. told that,it is not . worth their while.-. This is a doctrine which' car-, ried.to its logical conclusion , would close! our. libraries, dissolve our reading : circles,;and: leave the intellectual ■ lifo of man in a kind,of perpetual status quo which could never be broken. There are' some creeds which can never, be 'put into ,; :practice;, the; wise reader, though he; will, believe that there is more, in his, author than he sees, .will • know that the'iiiore v he reads, the more his mind will'be capable of receiving. We are; not- going: te close bur reading circles because.the aristocrats of letters have become .faint-hearted in their day.. Milton,, blind and dependent on the secondh'and.lielp of .his'graceless daughters for all the reading he could do, may have' consoled;- himself .for what ho .lost ; by, dispraising .its. .value; .Hobbes 'was! 'a ■poseur.:,' The readers have the majority on. their, side, and they, have: their-own pleasure in; their hearts to ..tell! them ■they.are.right. ■'..■■•■. '• • ■;/: ' .•■."'.