212 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



KEADING AS AN INTELLECTUAL PEOCESS. 



By E. 0. VAILE. 



LANGUAGE possesses a double imperfection. It is incomplete as 

 an expression, as a product, as a symbol ; it is imperfect, also, 

 as a cause, as an excitant. It is inadequate both to perfect expression 

 and to perfect impression. It fails to receive fully all that the mind 

 would put upon it, neither does it faithfully deliver all which it fairly 

 received. The soul, struggle as it will, cannot embody itself in form. 

 Expression cannot equal conception. Language suffers this imper- 

 fection in common with every plastic art. To the great master how 

 feeble must have seemed his glorious " Ninth Symphony " as an ex- 

 pression of that heavenly harmony which must have filled his soul ! 

 What forms and colors, beyond the powers of matter to present, must 

 have possessed the spirit which produced " The Last Judgment ! " 

 So with the great masters of literature. To how little of what 

 they must have felt and thought have they been able to give a " local 

 habitation and a name ! " And then, even at our best, what a feeble 

 hold do we lay upon what they have bequeathed ! 



Now, this full interpretation and appreciation of an author, the 

 pei-fect work of the apparatus which should take the impression, con- 

 stitute reading of the highest order. In such reading perception be- 

 comes intuition, divination. It is not bafiledby the inherent weakness 

 of language, but feels that "more is meant than meets the ear." 



Of course, reading of this kind assumes, to a large extent, equality 

 of mental stature in author and reader. Indeed, it is quite true that, 

 from a book, as from any work of ax't, we receive that only which is a 

 reflex of ourselves, the counterpart of what we are. Words and sen- 

 tences do not receive their interpretation from the writer alone. The 

 reader himself becomes an unconscious author, loading the vehicle 

 according to his own calibre and character. It is even a question to 

 what extent great authors " have built better than they knew," so in- 

 genious and profound have been their commentators. Lowell says; 

 "Goethe wrote his 'Faust' in its earliest form without a thought of the 

 deeper meaning which the exposition of an age of criticism was to find 

 in it ; without foremeaning it he had impersonated in Mephistopheles 

 the genius of his century." Some one has said : " No man is the wiser 

 for his books until he is above them." Milton expresses the same in 

 "Paradise Regained," b. iv., line 322 : 



"... Who reads 

 Incessantly, and to his reading brings not 

 A spirit and judgment equal or superior, 

 (And what he brings what need he elsewhere seek?) 

 Uncertain and unsettled still remains, 



