CHAPTER IV

THE LACK OF A SCIENCE OF READING

I

THE position we take up in reference to the manner in which reading affects originality may be expressed thus:

(a) That we read to excess, thereby preventing the creative powers from attaining that range of activity of which they are capable.

(b) That reading has not yet been reduced to a science.

Roughly, these complaints mean that our reading is lacking in proportion and in direction; it is unregulated and left almost entirely to chance. Milton's saying, "Deep learned in books, but shallow in himself," brings home to us very forcibly the manner in which a plenitude of books may be hostile to individuality in thought. The question as to how far the world's leaders in thought and action were great readers is not quite an easy one to answer, partly because the sources of information are sometimes scanty, and partly because books themselves have been few in number. If we could prove that since the days of Caxton the world's total of original thought declined in proportion to the increase of published works we should stand on firm ground, and might give orders for a holocaust such as that which Hawthorne once imagined. But no such proof is either possible or probable. We can only be impressed by the fact that the finest intellectual epoch of history was marked by a comparative absence of the MSS. which were books to the Greeks,1

1 Ferrero, after pointing out that the Greeks had little chance of reading, and few books," says: "And to-day !—a wolfish insatiable hunger for printed paper and reading matter is the scourge of civilisation." An extreme view. Are there no other-and worse-scourges ?

and if a further analysis of the lives of men of light and leading in all ages should show that their devotion to the books of the period was slight, it will only accentuate the suspicion that even to-day we are still minus the right perspective between the printed volume and the thinking mind. Buddha, Christ, St Paul, Mohammed-these are names of men who changed the course of history. But do they suggest vast scholarship, or a profound acquaintance with books in any sense whatever? They were great originators, even though they built on other men's foundations, but their originality was not inspired by libraries. Can we imagine Mohammed poring over ancient MSS. in order to obtain the required knowledge and impetus for his new religion? With Buddha was it not 1 per cent. papyrus roll and 99 per cent. meditation? When St Paul was struck down on the way to Damascus he did not repair to the nearest Jewish seminary to read up prophecy. He says: "I went into Arabia." The desert solitude was the only place in which to find a rationale of his new experience. And was it not in a similar life of solitude that Jesus-Essene-like came to self-realisation. Deane's Pseudepigrapha: Books that Influenced our Lord and His Apostles, does not suggest that the Messiah obtained his ideas from the literature of the Rabbis, much less from Greek or other sources, indeed the New Testament suggests that in the earliest years he showed a genius for divine things.

II

It will be urged that to restrict this inquiry to great names in religion would be unfair because such leaders are confessedly independent of literature; indeed they are often the creators of it. True; but that fact alone is suggestive. If great literature can come from meditation alone, are we not compelled to ask: "Where shall wisdom be found and where is the place of understanding?" Is enlightenment to be found only in the printed wisdom of the past? We know it is not, but we also know it is useless to set one source of truth over against another as if they were enemies. The soul has its place and so has the book; but need it be said that the

soul has done more wonderful things than the book? Language is merely the symbol; the soul is the reality.

But let us take other names with different associations e.g. Plato, Charlemagne, Cæsar, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Bismarck. Can it be said of any one of these that he owed one-third of his distinction to what he learned from MSS. or books? We do know indeed that Bismarck was a wide reader, but it was on the selective principle as a student of history and affairs. His library grew under the influence of the controlling purpose of his life-i.e. the unification of Germany, so that there was no vague distribution of energy. Of Shakespeare's reading we know less, but there is no evidence that he was a collector of books or that he was a student after the manner of the men of letters of his day. The best way to estimate him as a reader is to judge him by the references in his plays, and these do not show an acquaintance with literature so extensive as it is intensive. The impression he made on Ben Jonson, an all-round scholar, was not one of learning-quite otherwise. The qualities that impressed the author of Timber, or Discoveries upon Men and Matter, were Shakespeare's "open and free nature," his "excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped." And, true to himself, Ben Jonson immediately adds: "Sufflaminandus erat, as Augustus said of Haterius." Shakespeare, when in the company of kindred spirits, showed precisely the kind of talk we should expect-not Latin and Greek or French and Italian quotations, not a commentary on books past or present, but a stream of conversation marked by brilliant fancy, startling comparison, unique contrast and searching pathos, wherein life, not literature, was the chief subject.

III

We will now bring the inquiry down to the level of the average man, and ask how far his reading is a help or a

1 Timber, by Ben Jonson (Schelling's edition), p. 23. See also the section on "Shakespeare's Books "in Prof. Lane Cooper's Methods and Aims in the Study of Literature, p. 164.

hindrance to originality. By the average man we do not mean the man who reads nothing, and takes no steps to develop his mind; we mean the man who, at least, has some intellectual curiosity-enough to induce him to read the newspapers, a magazine occasionally, and a book now and again; indeed we might even bracket him with the individual who is described as "a general reader," or "a bit of a student." The question then is this: What are the characteristics of these people, so far as the evolving of new ideas is concerned? The reply is not difficult; the great majority of what are known as reading people employ their leisure in becoming familiar with facts and ideas already revealed. They see cheap classics all around them; fiction is superabundant; travel books, books on economic and social subjects are numerous; every taste is catered for, and reading has become a sort of daily function; we have food for the mind just as we have breakfast and dinner for the body. That the average man swallows everything he sees in print is far from being true; but it is true that in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand there is no keen desire to arrive at new conclusions; reading is too much of a recreation for that. Life, to the average man, with domestic and civic responsibilities, does not allow much scope for sustained reflection; in his out-ofduty hours he is generally a tired man, and reads a book in order to obtain change and rest. But even where daily duties are not exhausting, and where, a little after four-thirty P.M., he finds himself free for the rest of the day, there is usually the same receptive attitude of mind; the author of the book is not met with a vigorous challenge, the arguments are not logically analysed, and there is no determined effort on the part of the reader to think out the subject for himself and form his own conclusions.

Ask him, at the year's end, to show you the list of books he has read, then to give you an account of his reflections; it will be found, most probably, that his memory will be more exercised than his judgment-it will be more in the nature of a résumé of what others have said than a statement of his own thoughts.

Thus reading, at the present moment, is a pastime when it is not a dissipation. It is too extensive-too little intensive. Attention in many instances is distributed too widely in the effort to know a great deal; or else it is wasted in perusing fiction that is forgotten the day afterwards. The general reader of the middle classes, who aims at being up to date, feels it a disgrace not to have read the novel of the moment, or the last volume of Bergson or Croce, or the latest whim of some paradox writer with initials. He has the reputation of being "a great reader," and he must live up to it. He is a gourmand of print. He seldom gives himself the pleasure and stimulus of a creative mood; habit has confirmed him in a receptiveness that is now almost absolute; and his store of knowledge grows apace.

The real working man, on the other hand, has far more individuality, mainly because he reads less and is much given to debate. A better read man may argue more scientifically, and with a greater fulness of knowledge, but the "worker has a directness all his own. He is often mistaken, but even in his mistakes he carries that atmosphere of individual conviction which is frequently lacking in the more academical methods of the other man. It was St Beuve who said: "All peasants have style." One can predicate almost as much of the working man. In the etymological sense there is more wit in his contentions, as well as in his manner of expressing them; the habit of consulting and using authorities has not robbed his mind of the "native hue of resolution." We must admit, however, that his uninstructed and untrained mind is not a model to be imitated; indeed its value, from a psychological standpoint, is mainly negative; it shows us how we suffer from the pressure of print in carrying out our educational policies; how books become an end in themselves, instead of a means to an end; and how individuality is crushed beneath the burden of mastering other men's opinions.

IV

To the objection that we do not expect originality from the average man we cannot but demur. In the broad sense