HOW TO READ*

"Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for."-Socrates.

THE first rule which we prescribe is: read with attention. This is the rule that takes precedence of all others. It stands instead of a score of minor directions. Indeed it comprehends them all, and is the golden rule. To gain the power and habit of attention is the great difficulty to be overcome by young readers when they begin. The one reason why reading is so dull to multitudes of active, eager minds is that they have not acquired the habit of attending to books. The eye may be fastened upon the page, and the mind may follow the lines, and yet the mind not be half awake to the thoughts of the author, or the best half of its energies may be abroad on some wandering errand. The one evil that comes from omnivorous and indiscriminate reading is that the attention is wearied and overborne by the multi

*From "Books and Reading," by Noah Porter. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1870.

tude of the objects that pass before it; that the miserable habit is formed and strengthened of seeming to follow the author when he is half comprehended, of vacantly gazing upon the page that serves just to occupy and excite the fancy without leaving distinct and lasting impressions.

It was said of Edmund Burke, who was a great reader and a great thinker also, that he read every book as if he were never to see it a second time, and thus made it his own, a possession for life. Were his example imitated, much time would be saved that is spent in recalling things half remembered, and in taking up the stitches of lost thoughts. A greater. loss than that of time would be avoided: the loss of the dignity and power which are possessed by him who keeps his mind tense, active, and wakeful. It is very common to give the rule thus, "Whatever is worth reading at all is worth reading well." If by "well" is intended with the utmost stretch of attention, it is not literally true, for there are books which serve for pastime and amusement, books which can be run through when we are more or less fagged or ill, and cannot and ought not to put forth our utmost energies of body and mind. Then there are books which we may look through, as a merchant runs over the advertisements in a newspaper-taking up the thoughts

that interest and concern us especially, as the magnet takes and holds the iron filings that are scattered through a handful of sand. But if every part of a book be equally worth our regard, as the writings of Arnold, Grote, Merivale, Gibbon, Burke, Webster, Milton, Shakespeare, or Scott, then should the entire energy of attention be aroused during the time of reading. The page should be read as if it were never to be seen a second time; the mental eye should be fixed as if there were no other object to think of; the memory should grasp the facts i. e., the dates, incidents, etc., like a vise; the impressions should be distinctly and sharply received; the feelings should glow intensely at all that is worthy and burn with indignation at everything which is bad. For the want of this habit, thoroughly matured and made permanent, time is wasted, negligent habits are formed, the powers of the mind are systematically weakened by the very exercise which should give them strength, and reading which ought to arouse and strengthen the intellect, produces, with many, no deeper and more abiding impression than the shifting pictures of a magic lantern, or the fantastic groupings of the kaleidoscope -first a bewildering show, then confusion and vacancy.

There is nowadays a special danger from this inattention. So many books are written,

which are good enough in their way, and yet are the food for easy, i. e., lazy reading, and they are so cheap withal; so much excitement prevails in respect to them that an active mind is in danger of knowing many things superficially and nothing well, of being driven through one volume after another with such breathless haste as to receive few clear impressions and no lasting influences.

Passive reading is the evil habit against which most readers need to be guarded, and to overcome which, when formed, requires the most manful and persevering efforts. The habit is the natural result of a profusion of books and the indolence of our natures and our times which desires to receive thoughts-or more exactly pictures, many of which are thin, hazy, evanescent-rather than vigorously to react against them by an effort that thinks them over and makes them one's own. It is the intellectual dyspepsia which is induced by a plethora of intellectual diet, if that may be called intellectual which is the weak dilution of thought. Almost better not read at all than to read in such a way. Certainly it is better to be forced to steal a half-hour from sleep, after a day of bodily toil, or to depend for your reading on an hour at a mid-day nooning when your fellowlaborers are asleep, if you but fix your whole mind on what you read, than to dawdle away