THE CREATIVE READER.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1384, 9 March 1912, Page 9

THE CREATIVE READER.

In his address to tho graduating class of Public School 100, a day or two ago, Mayor Gaynor offered two reasons lor forming the habit of reading. In the evening, when 0110 does not know what to do with himself, lie who is accustomed to making uso of books has only to turn to his shelves. And, in Hie race of life, tho reader of serious books will conic out ahead'of all his competitors. Wo shall not attempt to say which of these reasons is tho weightier, or whether it is better to be entertained by books or to be elevated by thorn into positions of honour and trust. The thrifty American boys and girls who heard the Mayor doubtless ruailo up their minds at once that Hkt would mid for both purposes. It is to'them iiiul ll»"ir ciders that a wrili-r in "Jilack and "While-" ;:oumls n warning. Wlmt is needed just now, lit* declares, is ideas, and those ordinary reading can never give. Such mental activity, in Schopenhauer's phrase, is but thinking with other people's brains; Heading that amounts to anything must be not so much for (he sake of discoverin.!; the thought of the writer ns learning the meaning of unr.-elves. Hooks should bo not i-cithiß-iilacns for nnv minds, but starling points, juiMpinfr-nlr , plates for llin iut-jllect and (lie imagination. The contributor to "Black and White" is bothered, however, by Hie lack of convenient, access to hooks and parts of books that poFsesa IliiH power of suggestion. Even tho best books may have poor pages over which it were it pity to spend time. ITc retails with j-uM.t." M.lward FilzGorald's habit of ''nulling tho books ho road and binding u|i Iho-e. pages or chnplers which lie biniM'lf thought good." If such ii pi'.'H.'l iw M.cins (0 verge upon presumption Imvm'i! lln> mighty creators of literature, it ii In l"> nndcrstootl that, our Kiil-INIi criliii i.i speaking of intellectual rather Iliiui nr:tlietic product inns, lln |iiopow.>i, therefore, a literature of tiplioi ■i-mi", I'Vw writers, he holds, have old ml i.mr- limn half a dozen original idea 1 μ-iirlh n ninment's thought; every '•■■•■iiy, if nu| mi-iv volume, contains »ntni;w!i"r«\ in i< s=im'!i' thoiighf, the whole of Ilif Imnl:, All we need is U, fiml that on* IlinPiifl.l, A ml 'as tho project develops licfuro hi- Inmijliiation, he sees the thought of tho outlri

world boiled down into a book that would slip into the vest pockot. One sometimes suspects Hint Mr. Gaynor has done something liko this with his favourite philosophers. They ore apparently unable to speak except in. aphorisms, and they havo an utterance ready for every contingency. If such a volume, concentrating "in a form of intellectual iicmmican the thought stuff of the wholo world," is to be issued, and, what would naturally follow, 1)0 prescribed as a text-book iii all up-io-dato schools, its preface should contain a distinct disclaimer of pretending to cover more th.m the narrowest field of ideas. For the reader who is hit by Schopenhauer's characterisation, anthologies may bo well enough, but for the creative reader, who is tho object of the solicitude of tho writer in "Jilack and White," thcy are, in most realms, a fiiaro and a delusion. How much would the best anthology have done t" awaken tho creative instinct in James Feniinoro Cooper? It was just because the English novel which provoked bis scorn and cansed him to try to demonstrate how poor it was by writing a better one himself, was too poor to get into any collection, that it did tho work for which, unconsciously to its author, it was designed. Boiling it clown into a novelette would have been as fatal. The only way of insuring its being a jumpiiis-olf place for Cooper's imagination was to let him read it in all its unrelieved mediocrity. The same difficulty confronts the peininieauiser who endeavours to provide for tho needs of a Keats. How would one know beforehand that such a phrase as "sea-shonldcrins whales" would stir him to the depths? I lie words that make Keats laugh with thoroughness of appreciation might have made the judicious anthologv-maker grieve, with the result of denying them a place in his pages. And even in tho 0110 field specified, we can have no assurance that tho vestpecket volume would do. Creative persons are notoriously unaccountable. If a Stevenson revelled in yellow-back melodramas, who shall assume to select from tho world's accumulated wisdom the bits that would be as Hint to a gifted mind's steel? In such n volume there would bo no room for the commonplace, but in how many instances has the commonplace, the platitude, the half-truth, tho falacy, been the inspiration, or at least the provocation of sound reasoning? Who will undertake to say whether it. was not tho error of his tinie, rather than ancient truth, that impelled John Stuart Mill to write the library that became for millions the Bible of economics and social philosophy? Aud what is true of tho talented creative reader holds for tho Test. Books, as Milton so vigorously contended, are very much liko people, and while one is proud of his gifted friends, it. is by no means always they who call him out and make him summon up his powers. Not only nendin* the publication of the vest-pocket volume of aphorisms, but afterwards as well, wo shall have to get a ong, like our forefathers, without a royal road to inspiration—New York "Nation.