James Baldwin

“ And Goethe, the greatest name in German literature, makes still a different classification: some readers, he tells us, enjoy without judgment; others judge without enjoyment; and some there are who judge while they enjoy, and enjoy while they judge.
In these days, when, so far as reading-matter is concerned, we are overburdened with an embarrassment of riches, we cannot afford to read, even in the books which we have chosen as ours, those things which have no relationship to our studies, which do not concern us, and which are sure to be forgotten as soon as read. ”

“ Fifty per cent of the readers who patronize our great public libraries have weak literary stomachs; they cannot digest anything stronger than that insipid solution, the last society novel, or anything purer than the muddy decoctions poured out by the periodical press. When, of all the reading done in a public library, eighty per cent is of books in the different departments of fiction, I doubt whether, after all, that library is a public benefit. ”

“ But the shunning of bad books is only one of the problems presented to us in the choice of our reading. In the great multitude of really good and valuable books, how shall we choose those which are of the most vital importance to us to know? The universal habit of desultory reading—reading simply to be entertained—is a habit not to be indulged in, nor encouraged, by scholars or by those who aspire to the station of teachers. There are perhaps a score of books which should be read and studied by every one who claims the title of reader ”

“ We are few of us put to such trial, and more the pity: for, indeed, a precious thing is all the more precious to us if it has been won by work or economy; and if public libraries were half as costly as public dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what bracelets do, even foolish men and women might sometimes suspect there was good in reading, as well as in munching and sparkling; whereas the very cheapness of literature is making even wise people forget that if a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. ”

“ We know that much in the myriad-peopled world of books—very much in all kinds—is trivial, enervating, inane, even35 noxious. And thus, where we have infinite opportunities of wasting our effort to no end, of fatiguing our minds without enriching them, of clogging the spirit without satisfying it, there, I cannot but think, the very infinity of opportunities is robbing us of the actual power of using them.... To know anything that turns up is, in the infinity of knowledge, to know nothing. To read the first book we come across, in the wilderness of books, is to learn nothing. ”

“ And Henry Ward Beecher emphasizes the same thing, remarking that, among the early ambitions to be excited in clerks, workmen, journeymen, and indeed among all that are struggling up in life from nothing to something, the most important is that of forming and continually adding to a library of good books. “A little library, growing larger every year, is an honorable part of a man’s history. It is a man’s duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of life.” ”

“ The works of the grandest masters of literature may now be procured at prices that place them within the reach almost of the very poorest, and we may all put Parnassian singing-birds into our chambers to cheer us with the sweetness of their songs. And when we have got our little library we may look proudly at Shakspeare and Bacon and Bunyan, as they stand in our bookcase with other noble spirits, and one or two of whom the world knows nothing, but whose worth we have often tested. ”

“ Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age. We owe to books those general benefits which come from high intellectual action. ”

“ What is a great love of books? It is something like a personal introduction to the great and good men of all past times. Books, it is true, are silent as you see them on their shelves; but, silent as they are, when I enter a library I feel as if almost the dead were present, and I know if I put questions to these books they will answer me with all the faithfulness and fulness which has been left in them by the great men who have left the books with us. ”

“ What sort of reading are our schools planting an appetite for? Are they really doing anything to instruct and form the mental taste, so that the pupils on leaving them may be safely left to choose their reading for themselves? It is clear in evidence that they are far from educating the young to take pleasure in what is intellectually noble and sweet. The statistics of our public libraries show that some cause is working mightily to prepare them only for delight in what is both morally and intellectually mean and foul. ”

“ Except a living man, there is nothing more wonderful than a book!—a message to us from the dead,—from human souls whom we never saw, who lived perhaps thousands of22 miles away; and yet these, on those little sheets of paper, speak to us, amuse us, vivify us, teach us, comfort us, open their hearts to us as brothers. We ought to reverence books, to look at them as useful and mighty things. ”

“ They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am; no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling; if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof,—if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise; and Shakspeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart ”

“ The art of skipping is, in a word, the art of noting and shunning that which is bad, or frivolous, or misleading, or unsuitable for one’s individual needs. If you are convinced that the book or the chapter is bad, you cannot drop it too quickly. If it is simply idle and foolish, put it away on that account,—unless you are properly seeking amusement from idleness and frivolity. If it is something deceitful and disingenuous, your task is not so easy ”

“ There would be fewer bad books in the world if readers were properly informed and warned of their character; and we may believe that the really vicious books would soon cease to exist if their makers and publishers were popularly regarded with the same detestation as other corrupters of the public morals. “He who has published an injurious book,” says Robert South, “sins, as it were in his very grave; corrupts others while he is rotting himself.” ”

“ It is not every harmless book, nor indeed every good book, that will make your mind the richer for the reading of it. Never, perhaps, has the right choice of books been more difficult than at present; and never did it behoove more strongly both teachers and scholars to look well to the character of that which they read.
First, then, let us consider what books we are to avoid. All will agree that those which are really and absolutely bad should be shunned as we shun a pestilence. In these last years of the nineteenth century there is no more prolific cause of evil than bad books. ”

“ This is that noble Science of Politics, which is equally removed from the barren theories of the utilitarian sophists, and from the petty craft, so often mistaken for statesmanship by minds grown narrow in habits of intrigue, jobbing, and official etiquette,—which of all sciences is the most important to the welfare of nations,—which of all sciences most tends to expand and invigorate the mind,—which draws nutriment and ornament from every part of philosophy and literature, and dispenses in return nutriment and ornament to all.—Macaulay. ”

“ The reading of such books is like the training of a gymnast; it will lead to the healthy development of the parts most skillfully exercised, but the strength of him who exercises should never be too severely tested. Would you prefer a lighter course of reading, but one which will probably lead you into pleasanter paths of contemplation and reflection, and finally open up to your view a prospect equally boundless and grand? ”

“ You have simply followed the order of nature and of human development, and you have gradually—almost imperceptibly even to yourself—brought him out of the world of child-wonder and fairy-land, through the middle ground of chivalric romance, to the very borders of the domains of history. ”

“ It is not intended to embrace professional works, nor works suited merely for students of specialties. The books named are such as will grace the library of any scholar, no matter what his profession or his preferences; they are books which every teacher ought to know; they are 70 books of which no one can ever feel ashamed. “The first thing naturally, when one enters a scholar’s study or library,” says Holmes, “is to look at his books. One gets a notion very speedily of his tastes and the range of his pursuits by a glance round his book-shelves.” ”

“ If their minds have not been dwarfed and stunted by indulgence in what has been aptly termed “pen-poison,” their tastes have been perverted and the growth of their reasoning powers checked by being fed upon the milk-and-water stuff recommended as harmless literature. They are inveterate devourers of stories, and novels, and the worthless material which is recommended as good reading, but which, in reality, is nothing but a “discipline of debasement.” Better that children should not read at all, than read much of that which passes current now-a-days for entertaining reading. ”

“ And John Ruskin offers the following pertinent advice to beginners: “It is of the greatest importance to you, not only for art’s sake, but for all kinds of sake, in these days of book deluge, to keep out of the salt swamps of literature, and live on a little rocky island of your own, with a spring and a lake in it, pure and good. ”

“ Would you know whether the tendency of a book is good or evil, examine in what state of mind you lay it down. Has it induced you to suspect that what you have been accustomed to think unlawful may after all be innocent, and that may be harmless which you have hitherto been taught to think dangerous? ”

“ The library, therefore, of wisdom is more precious than all riches; and nothing that can be wished for is worthy to be compared with it. Whosoever acknowledges himself to be a zealous follower of truth, of happiness, of wisdom, of science, or even of the faith, must of necessity make himself a Lover of Books. ”