HOW TO READ A BOOK

by Mortimer J Adler

  Such duplicity of purpose and such inversions of primary and secondary character leave the main point unchanged. Whatever you do in the way of reading, whichever purpose you put first or second, you must know what you are doing and obey the rules for doing that sort of thing. There is no error in reading a poem as if it were philosophy, or science as if it were poetry, so long as you know which you are doing at a given time and how to do it well. You will not suppose, then, that you are doing something else, or that it makes no difference how you do whatever you are doing.

  There are, however, two errors which must be avoided. One of them I will call

  "purism." This is the error of supposing that a given book can be read in only one way.

  It is an error because books are not pure in character, and that in turn is due to the fact that the human mind, which writes or reads them, is rooted in the senses and imagination and moves or is moved by emotions and sentiment.

  The second error I call "obscurantism." This is the error of supposing that all books can be read in only one way. Thus, there is the extreme of estheticism, which regards all books as if they were poetry, refusing to distinguish other types of literature and other modes of reading. The other extreme is that of intellectualism, which treats all books as if they were instructive, as if nothing could be found in a book except knowledge. Both errors are epitomized in a single line by Keats—"Beauty is truth, truth beauty"—which may contribute to the effect of his ode, but which is false as a principle of criticism or as a guide to reading books.

  You have been sufficiently warned now what to expect, and what not, from the rules which the following chapters will discuss in detail. You will not be able to misuse them very much, because you will find that they do not work outside their proper and limited field of applicability. The man who sells you a frying pan seldom tells you that you will not find it useful as a refrigerator. He knows you can be trusted to find that out for yourself.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Catching on From the Title

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  just by their titles, you might not be able to tell in the case of Main Street and Middletown which was social science and which was fiction. Even after you had read them both you might still hesitate. There is so much social science in some contemporary novels, and so much fiction in most of sociology, that it is hard to keep them apart. (It was recently announced, for instance, that The Grapes of Wrath had been made required reading in the social-science courses of several colleges.) As I have already said, books can be read in several ways. One can understand why some literary critics review a novel by dos Passes or Steinbeck as if they were considering a scientific research or a piece of political oratory; or why some are tempted to read Freud's latest book, on Moses, as a romance. In many cases, the fault is with the book and author.

  Authors sometimes have mixed motives. Like other human beings, they are subject to the failing of wanting to do too many things at once. If they are confused in their intentions, the reader cannot be blamed for not knowing which pair of reading glasses to put on. The best rules of reading will not work on bad books—except, perhaps, to help you find out that they are bad.

  Let us put aside that large group of contemporary books which confuse science and fiction, or fiction and oratory. There are enough books—the great books of the past and many good contemporary books—which are perfectly deal in their intention and which, therefore, deserve a discriminating reading from us. The first rule of reading requires us to be discriminating. I should say the first rule of the first reading. It can be expressed as follows: you must know what kind of book you are reading, and you should know this as early in the process as possible, preferably before you begin to read.

  You must know, for instance, whether you are reading fiction—a novel, a play, an epic, or a lyric—or whether it is an expository work of some sort—a book which conveys knowledge primarily. Picture the confusion of a person who plodded through a novel, all the while supposing it to be a philosophical discourse; or of one who meditated on a scientific treatise as if it were a lyric. You cannot, because I have asked you to imagine what is almost impossible. For the most part, people know the kind of book they are reading before they start. They picked it out to read because it was of that kind. This is certainly true of the main distinction in types of books. People know whether they want amusement or instruction, and seldom go to the wrong counter for what they want.

  Unfortunately, there are other distinctions which are not so simple and so commonly recognized. Since we have temporarily excluded imaginative literature from consideration, our problem here has to do with subordinate distinctions within the field of expository books. It is not merely a question of knowing which books are primarily instructive, but which are instructive in a particular way. The kinds of information or enlightenment which a history and a philosophical book afford are not the same. The problems dealt with by a book on physics and one on morals are not the same, nor are the methods that the writers employ in solving such different problems.

  You cannot read books that differ thus, in the same way. I do not mean that the rules of reading are as radically different here as in the case of the basic distinction between poetry and science. All these books have much in common. They deal in knowledge.

  But they are also different, and to read them well we must read them in a manner appropriate to their differences.

  I must confess that at this point I feel like a salesman who, having just persuaded the customer that the price is not too high, cannot avoid mentioning the sales tax which is additional. The customer's ardor begins to wilt. The salesman overcomes this obstacle by some more smooth talk, and then is forced to say that he cannot make delivery for several weeks. If the buyer does not walk out on him at that point, he is lucky. Well, I have no sooner finished persuading you that certain distinctions are worth observing, than I have to add: "But there are still more." I hope you will not walk out on me. I promise you that there is an end to the making of distinctions in types of reading. The end is in this chapter.

  Let me repeat the rule again: you must know what kind of (expository) book you are reading, and you should know this as early in the process as possible, preferably before you begin to read. Everything is clear here except the last clause. How, you may ask, can the reader be expected to know what sort of book he is reading before he begins to read?

  May I remind you that a book always has a title and, more than that, it usually has a subtitle, a table of contents, a preface or introduction by the author? I shall neglect the publisher's blurb. After all, you may have to read a book which has lost its jacket.

  What is conventionally called the "front matter" is usually sufficient for the purpose of classification, anyway. The front matter consists of the title, subtitle, table of contents, and preface. These are the signals the author flies in your face to let you know which way the wind is blowing. It is not his fault if you will not stop, look, and listen.

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  The number of readers who pay no attention to the signals is larger than you might suspect, unless you happen to be one of those who are honest enough to admit it. I have had this experience again and again with students. I have asked them what a book was about. I have asked them to tell me, in the most general terms, what sort of book it was.

  This, I have found, is a good way, almost an indispensable way, to begin a discussion.

  Many students are unable to answer this first and simplest question about the book.

  Sometimes they apologize by saying that they haven't finished reading it yet, and therefore do not know. That's no excuse, I point out. Did you look at the title? Did you study the table of contents? Did you read the preface or introduction? No, they did not.

  The front matter of a book seems to be like the ticking of a clock— something you notice only when it is not there.

  One reason why titles and prefaces are ignored by so many readers is that they do not think it important to classify the book th
ey are reading. They do not follow this first rule. If they tried to follow it, they would be grateful to the author for helping them.

  Obviously, the author thinks it is important for the reader to know the kind o£ book he is being given. That is why he goes to the trouble of making it plain in the preface, and usually tries to make his title more or less descriptive. Thus, Einstein and Infeld, in their preface to The Evolution of Physics, tell the reader that they expect him to know "that a scientific book, even though popular, must not be read in the same way as a novel."

  They also construct, as many authors do, an analytical table of contents to advise the reader in advance of the details of their treatment. In any case, the chapter headings listed in the front serve the purpose of amplifying the significance of the main title.

  The reader who ignores all these things has only himself to blame if he is puzzled by the question: What kind of book is this? He is going to get more perplexed. If he cannot answer that question, and if he never asks it of himself, he is going to be unable to ask or answer a lot of other questions about the book.

  Recently Mr. Hutchins and I were reading two books together with a class of students.

  One was by Machiavelli, the other by Thomas Aquinas. In the opening discussion, Mr.

  Hutchins asked whether the two books were of the same kind. He happened to pick on a student who had not finished his reading of them. The student used that as an excuse to avoid answering. "But," said Mr. Hutchins, "how about their titles?" The student had failed to observe that Machiavelli had written about The Prince, and St. Thomas about The Governance of Princes. When the word "prince" was put on the board and underlined, the student was willing to guess that both books were about the same problem.

  ''But what sort of problem is it?" Mr. Hutchins persisted.

  "What kind of books are these?" The student now thought he saw a lead, and reported that he had read the two prefaces. "How does that help?" Mr. Hutchins asked. "Well,"

  said the student, "Machiavelli wrote his little guidebook on how to be a dictator and get away with it for Lorenzo de' Medici, and St. Thomas wrote his for the King of Cyprus."

  We did not stop at that point to correct the error in this statement. St. Thomas was not trying to help tyrants get away with it. The student had used one word, however, which almost answered the question. When asked which word it was, he did not know. When told that it was "guidebook," he did not realize the significance of what he had said. I asked him if he knew in general what sort of book a guidebook was? Was a cookbook a guidebook? Was a moral treatise a guidebook? Was a book on the art of writing poetry a guidebook? He answered all these questions affirmatively.

  We reminded him of a distinction that had been made in class before between theoretical and practical books. "Oh," he said, with a burst of light, "these are both practical books, books which tell you what should be done rather than what is the case."

  At the end of another halt-hour, with other students drawn into the discussion, we finally managed to get the two books classified as practical works in politics. The rest of the period was spent in trying to find out whether the two authors understood politics in the same way, and whether their books were equally practical or practical in the same way.

  I report this story not merely to corroborate my statement about the general neglect of titles, but to make a further point. The clearest titles in the world, the most explicit front matter, will not help you classify a book, even if you pay attention to these signs, unless you have the broad lines of classification already in mind.

  You will not know the sense in which Euclid's Elements of Geometry and William James's Principles of Psychology are books of the same sort if you do not know that psychology and geometry are both theoretic sciences; nor will you further be able to distinguish them as different unless you know that there are different kinds of science.

  Similarly, in the case of Aristotle's Politics and Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, you can tell how these books are alike and different only if you know what a practical problem is, and what different kinds of practical problems are.

  Titles sometimes make the grouping of books easy. Anyone would know that Euclid's Elements, Descartes' Geometry, and IIilbert's Foundations of Geometry were three mathematical books, more or less closely related in subject matter. This is not always the case. It might not be so easy to tell from the titles that St. Augustine's City of God, Hobbes' Leviathan, and Rousseau's Social Contract were political treatises, although a careful perusal of their chapter headings would reveal the problem common to these three books.

  To group books as being of the same kind is not enough, however. To follow this first rule of reading you must know what that kind is. The title will not tell you, nor all the rest of the front matter, nor even the whole book itselt sometimes, unless you have some categories you can apply to classify books intelligently. In other words, this rule has to be made a little more intelligible for you if you are to follow it intelligently. This can be done only by a brief discussion of the main kinds of expository books.

  Perhaps you read the weekly literary supplements. They classify the books received that week under a series of headings, such as: fiction and poetry, or belles-lettres; history and biography; philosophy and religion; science and psychology; economics and social science; and there is usually a long listing under "miscellaneous." These categories are all right as rough approximations, but they fail to make some basic distinctions and they associate some books which should be separated.

  They are not as bad as a sign I have seen in certain bookstores, which indicates the shelves where there are books on "philosophy, theosophy, and new thought." They are not as good as the standard library scheme of classification, which is more detailed, but even that is not quite right for our purposes. We need a scheme of classification which groups books with an eye to the problems of reading, and not for the purpose of selling them or putting them on shelves.

  I am going to propose, first, one major distinction, and then, several further distinctions subordinate to the major one. I will not bother you with distinctions which do not matter so far as your skill in reading is concerned.

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  The major distinction is between theoretical and practical boN^s. Everyone uses the words "theoretical" and "practical," but few know what they mean, least of all the hard headed practical man who distrusts all theorists, especially it they are in the government. For many, "theoretical" means visionary or even mystical, and "practical"

  means something that works, something that has an immediate cash return. There is an element of truth in this. The practical has to do with what works in some way, at once or in the long run. The theoretical concerns something to be seen or understood. If we polish the rough truth that is here grasped, we come to the distinction between knowledge and action as the two ends a writer may have in mind.

  But, you may say, are we not dealing here with books which convey knowledge? How can action come in? You forget that intelligent action depends on knowledge.

  Knowledge can be used in many ways, not only for controlling nature and inventing useful machines but also for directing human conduct and regulating man's operations in various fields of skill. What I have in mind here is exemplified by the distinction between pure and applied science, or, as it is sometimes inaccurately phrased, science and technology.

  Some books and some teachers are interested only in the knowledge itself which they have to communicate. This does not mean that they deny its utility, or that they insist knowledge is good only for its own sake. They simply limit themselves to one kind of teaching, and leave the othel kind to other men. These others have an interest beyond knowledge for its own sake. They are concerned with the problems of human life which knowledge can be used to solve. They communicate knowledge, too, but always with an emphasis upon its application.

  To make knowledge practical we must convert it into rules of operation. We must pass from knowing what is the cas
e to knowing what to do about it if we wish to get somewhere. I can summarize this by reminding you of a distinction you have already met in this book, between knowing that and knowing how. Theoretic books teach you that something is the case. Practical books teach you how to do something which you think you should.

  This book is practical, not theoretic. Any "guidebook," to use the student's phrase, is a practical book. Any book which tells you either what you should do or how to do it is practical. Thus you see that the class of practical books includes all expositions of arts to be learned, all manuals of practice in any field, such as engineering or medicine or cooking, and treatises which are conventionally classified as morals, such as books on economic, ethical, or political problems.

  One other instance of practical writing should be mentioned. An oration—a political speech or a moral exhortation—certainly tries to tell you what you should do or how you should feel about something. Anyone who writes practically about anything not only tries to advise you but also tries to get you to follow his advice. Hence there is an element of oratory in every moral treatise. It is also present in books which try to teach an art, such as this one. I, for example, have tried to persuade you to make the effort to learn to read.

  Although every practical book is somewhat oratorical—or perhaps, as we would say today, goes in for propaganda—it does not follow that oratory is coextensive with the practical. You know the difference between a political harangue and a treatise on politics, or economic propaganda and an analysis of economic problems. The Communist Manifesto is a piece of oratory, but Das Kapital is much more than that.