EDUCATION THROUGH READING 145 



Macaulay and Montaigne are nearly forgotten. Interest in tins class 

 of literature should be revived. 



Barely has a busy man or woman the time to peruse the whole of 

 an author, however famous. It would rarely be of use to read wholes, 

 even with amplest leisure. It is the mark of a great writer to have 

 uttered a good deal of trash ; and it is almost a sure proof of a reader's 

 pedantry if he has read all which a given author has published, unless 

 he has done so to hunt up errors or peculiarities. It shows that he has 

 read not con amore, but merely that he might boast. Too many read 

 just to be able to say they have read. The desire of reputation for 

 attainments often outruns the desire for attainments. One young lady 

 who said she had read Shakespeare was asked if she was familiar with 

 Borneo and Juliet. She replied that she had often read Borneo, but that 

 Juliet was somehow always out of the library when she called for it. 



As already said, we can not read all even of the best; which remark 

 naturally forces a search for some principle or principles by which to 

 make selection. Two principles suggest themselves, one objective, the 

 other subjective. The objective one is that the very greatest classics in 

 the world's literature, Homer, Plato, Dante, Shakespeare ana Goethe, 

 should be more or less familiar to all. The subjective principle is: 

 Consulting your occupation or your bent, select some specialty in letters 

 and do your main reading with reference to that. 



If you are a member of a profession your stock and standard read- 

 ing ought to be related to that profession, not narrowly, of course, but 

 generally, in a way to give life, breadth and atmosphere to your daily 

 toil, relieving the tedium of homely tasks and spreading a hue of intel- 

 ligence over business which but for this might seem leaden. Every 

 great branch of mental work by which men earn bread has, besides the 

 technical volumes which set forth its laws, a side literature, little tech- 

 nical, which connects it by a seamless web with polite letters. This is 

 the library where a professional man should do his main reading. 



A teacher, for instance, who has to teach literature or history 

 should, for general reading, cultivate literature or history at large. 

 The course to pursue in these cases is obvious. But how if chemistry 

 or physics, or biology is your department? In such a case read the 

 history of the science and of science in general, the biographies of great 

 scientific discoverers and the excellent fiction and verse to which scien- 

 tific men and scientific interest have given birth. Thus a physiographer 

 would read, among other things, Shelley's " Cloud " ; perhaps also his 

 " Ode to the West "Wind." There is no more interesting and there is 

 no more valuable reading than well-written biographies of scientific 

 men. The history of scientific discovery widens into the history of 

 discoveries in general and this into the history of civilization. 



If you have no profession, being only a person of leisure, let your 



