HOW TO READ A BOOK

by Mortimer J Adler

  Terrifying? I can see why it might be. All this to do, you say, and on what is only the first reading of a book. It woulc take a lifetime to read a book that way. If you feel this way, I can also see that all my warnings have done no good. When put down this way in a cold and exacting formula, the rule looks as if it required an impossible amount of work from you. But you have forgotten that the good reader does this sort of thing habitually, and hence easily and naturally. He may not write it all out. He may not even at the time of reading have made it all verbally explicit. But if he were called upon to give an account of the structure of a book, he would do something that approximated the formula I have suggested.

  The word "approximation" should relieve your anxiety.' A good rule always describes the ideal performance. But a man can be skilled in an art without being the ideal artist.

  He can be a good practitioner it he merely approximates the rule. I have stated the rule here for the ideal case. I would be satisfied, and so should you be with yourself, if you made a very rough approximation to what is required. Even when you become more skilled, you will not wish to read every book with the same degree of effort. You will not find it profitable to expend all your skill on some books.

  I have tried to make a close approximation to the requirements of this rule in the case of relatively few books. In other instances, which means for the most part, I am satisfied if I have a fairly rough notion of the book's structure. You will find, as I have, that the degree of approximation you wish to make varies with the character of the book and your purpose in reading it. Regardless of this variability, the rule remains the same. You must know how to follow it, whether you follow it closely and strictly or only in a rough fashion.

  The forbidding aspect of the formula for setting forth the order and relation of the parts may be somewhat lessened by a few illustrations of the rule in operation. Unfortunately, it is more difficult to illustrate this rule than the other one about stating the unity. A unity, after all, can be stated in a sentence or two, at most a short paragraph. But in the case of any large and complex book, a careful and adequate recital of the parts, and their parts, and their parts down to the least structural units, would take a great many pages to write out.

  Some of the greatest medieval commentaries on the works of Aristotle are longer than the originals. They include, of course, more than a structural analysis, for they undertake to interpret the author sentence by sentence. The same is true of certain modern commentaries, such as the great ones on Kant's The Critique of Pure Reason. I suggest that you look into a commentary of this sort if you want to see this rule followed to perfection. Aquinas, for instance, begins each section of his commentary with a beautiful outline of the points that Aristotle has made in that part of his work; and he always says explicitly how that part fits into the structure of the whole, especially in relation to the parts that come before and after.

  On second thought, perhaps you had better not look at masterly commentaries. A beginner in reading might be depressed by their perfection. He might feel as the beginner in climbing feels at the bottom of the Jungfrau. A poor and slight sample of analysis by me might be more encouraging, though certainly less uplifting. It is all right to hitch your wagon to a star, but you had better be sure it is well lubricated before you take the reins.

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  There is one other difficulty about illustrating this rule. I must choose something that I can be relatively sure most of you have read. Otherwise you will not be able to profit very much from the sample analysis as a guide. As a starter, therefore, let me take again the first six chapters of this book. I must warn you at once that this is not a very good book. Its author is not what I should call a great mind. The book has a very loose structure. Its chapter divisions do not correspond to basic divisions of the whole treatment. And within the chapters the progression of points is often disorderly and interrupted by rambling digressions. You may have thought it was an easy book to read, but analysis will show that it is really not very readable.

  Here is an analysis of the first six chapters, comprising Part I, treated as a whole: 1. This book ( i.e.. Part I) is divided into three major parts: A. The first treats of the nature and kinds of reading, and the place of reading in education.

  B. The second treats of the failure of contemporary education with respect to reading.

  C. The third attempts to show how the contemporary educational situation can be remedied.

  2. The first part (A) is divided into the following sections: a. A first dealing with the varieties and degrees of reading ability; b. A second dealing with the major distinctions between reading for amusement and reading for instruction;

  c. A third dealing with the distinction, in reading for instruction, between information and understanding;

  d. A fourth dealing with the relation of this last distinction to one between active and passive reading; .

  e. A fifth which defines the sort of reading to be discussed as the reception of communications conveying knowledge;

  f. A sixth which relates reading to learning, by distinguishing between learning by discovery and learning by instruction;

  g. A seventh which treats of the relation of books and teachers, distinguishing them as dead and alive, and shows that reading is learning from dead teachers; h. An eighth which distinguishes between primary and secondary teachers, living or dead, and defines the great books as original communications, and hence primary teachers.

  The second part (B) is divided into the following sections: a. A first in which various evidences are recited, giving the writer's personal experiences with the inability of students to read;

  b. A second in which the relation of reading to such other skills as writing and speaking are discussed with respect to current educational defects; c. A third in which the results of scientific educa. tional measurements are reported to show the lack of these skills in the graduates of our schools; d. A fourth in which other evidences, especially from book publishers, are offered as corroborating these findings;

  e. A fifth in which an attempt is made to explain why the schools have failed.

  The third part (C) is divided into the following sections: a. A first in which it is shown that any art or skill can be acquired by those who will practice according to rules;

  b. A second in which it is indicated how the art of reading might be acquired by those who did not learn how in school;

  c. A third in which it is suggested that, by learning how to read, people can compensate for the defects of their education;

  d. A fourth in which it is hoped that if people generally understood what an education should be, through having learned to read and having read, they would take serious steps to reform the failing school system.

  3. In the first section of the first part, the following points are made: (1) That the readers of this book must be able to read in one sense, though perhaps not in another;

  (2) That individuals differ in their abilities to read, both according to their natural endowments and their educational benefits;

  (3) That most people do not know what is involved in the art of reading. . . .

  And so forth and so on.

  I stop here because you see how many pages it might take if I proceeded to do the job in detail. I would have to enumerate the points made in each of the sections of each of the major parts. You will notice that I have numbered tlie three main steps of analysis here to correspond to the tin ce parts of the formula I gave you some pages back. The first is the statement of the major parts; the second is their division into sections; the third is the enumeration of points in each section. I completed the first two stages of the analysis, but not the third.

  You will notice, furthermore, if you glance back over the six chapters I have thus analyzed, that they are not as well structured, not as orderly and clear, as I have made them out to be. Some of the points occur out of order. Some of the chapters overlap in their consideration of the same point or their treatment o
f the same theme. Such defects in organization are what I meant by saying this is not a very good book. If you try to complete the analysis I have started, you will find that out for yourself.

  I may be able to give you a few more examples of applying this rule if I do not try to carry the process out in all its details. Take the Constitution of the United States. That is an interesting, practical document, and a very well-organized piece of writing, indeed.

  You should have no difficulty in finding its major parts. They are pretty clearly indicated, though you have to do some analysis to make the main divisions. I suggest the following:

  First: The preamble, setting forth the purpose of the Constitution;

  Second: The first article, dealing with the legislative department of the government;

  Third: The second article, dealing with the executive department of the government;

  Fourth: The third article, dealing with the judicial department of the government;

  Fifth: The fourth article, dealing with the relationship between state and Federal governments;

  Sixth: The fifth, sixth, and seventh articles, dealing with the amendment of the Constitution, its status as the supreme law of the land, and provisions for its ratification;

  Seventh: The first ten amendments, constituting the Bill of Rights;

  Eighth: The remaining amendments up to the present day.

  This is only one way of doing the job. There are many others. The first three articles could be grouped together in one division, for instance; or instead of two divisions with respect to the amendments, more divisions could be introduced, grouping the amendments according to the problems they dealt with. I suggest that you try your hand at making your own division of the Constitution into its main parts. Go further than I did, and try to state the parts of the parts as well. You may have read the Constitution many times before this, but if you exercise this rule on it for another reading, you will find a lot there you never saw before.

  I am going to attempt one more example, with great brevity. I have already stated the unity of Aristotle's Ethics. Now let me give you a first approximation of its structure.

  The whole is divided into the following main parts: a first, treating of happiness as the end of life, and discussing it in relation to all other practicable goods; a second, treating of the nature of voluntary action, and its relation to the formation of virtuous and vicious habits; a third, discussing the various virtues and vices, both moral and intellectual; a fourth, dealing with moral states which are neither virtuous nor vicious; a fifth, treating of friendship, and a sixth and last, discussing pleasure, and completing the account of human happiness begun in the first.

  These divisions obviously do not correspond to the ten books of the Ethics. Thus, the first part is accomplished in the first book; the second part runs through book two and the first half of book three; the third part extends from the rest of book three to the end of the sixth book; the discussion of pleasure occurs at the end of book seven and again at the beginning of book ten.

  I mention all this to show you that you need not follow the apparent structure of a book as indicated by its chapter divisions. It may, of course, be better than the blueprint you develop, but it may also be worse; in any case, the point is to make your own blueprint.

  The author made his in order to write a good book. You must make yours in order to read it well. If he were a perfect writer and you a perfect reader, it would naturally follow that the two would be the same. In proportion as either of you or both fall away from perfection, all sorts of discrepancies will inevitably result.

  I do not mean that you should totally ignore chapter headings and sectional divisions made by the author. They are intended to help you, just as titles and prefaces are. But you must use them as guides for your own activity, and not rely on them passively.

  There are few authors who execute their plan perfectly, but there is often more plan in a great book than meets the eye at first. The surface can be deceiving. You must look beneath to discover the real structure.

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  In general, these two rules of reading which we have been discussing look as if they were rules of writing also. Of course, they are. Writing and reading are reciprocal, as are teaching and being taught. If authors or teachers did not organize their communications, if they failed to unify them and order their parts, there would be no point in directing readers or listeners to search for the unity and uncover the structure of the whole.

  Though there are reciprocal rules in the two cases, they are not followed in the same way. The reader tries to uncover the skeleton the book conceals. The author starts with it and tries to cover it up. His aim is to conceal the skeleton artistically or, in other words, to put flesh on the bare bones. If he is a good writer, he does not bury a puny skeleton under a mass of fat. The joints should not show through where the flesh is thin, but if flabbiness is avoided, the joints will be detectible and the motion of the parts will revea) the ai ticulation.

  I made a mistake several years ago which was instructive on this point. I wrote a book in outline form. I was so obsessed with the importance of structure that I confused the arts of writing and reading. I outlined the structure of a book, and published it.

  Naturally, it was repulsive to most self-respecting readers who thought that they could do their job, if I did mine. I learned from their reactions that I had given them a reading of a book I had not written. Writers should write books and leave commentaries to readers.

  Let me summarize all this by reminding you of the old-fashioned maxim that a piece of writing should have unity, clarity, and coherence. That is a basic maxim of good writing. The two rules we have been discussing in this chapter respond to writing which follows that maxim. If the writing has unity, we must find it. If the writing has clarity and coherence, we must appreciate it by finding the distinction and the order of the parts. What is clear is so by the distinctness of its outlines. What is coherent hangs together in an orderly disposition of parts.

  These two rules, I might add, can be used in reading any substantial part of an expository book, as well as the whole. If the part chosen is itself a relatively independent, complex unity, its unity and complexity must be discerned for it to be well read. Here there is a significant difference between books conveying knowledge and poetical works, plays, and novels. The parts of the former can be much more autonomous than the parts of the latter. The student who is supposed to have read a novel and who says he has "read enough to get the idea" does not know what he is talking about. If the novel is any good at all, the idea is in the whole, and cannot be found short of reading the whole. But you can get the idea of Aristotle's Ethics or Darwin's The Origin of Species by reading some parts of it carefully.

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  So long ago that you may have forgotten it, I mentioned fourth a rule to complete the first way of reading a book. It can be stated briefly. It needs little explanation and no illustration. It really repeats in another form what you have already done if you have applied the second and third rules. But it is a useful repetition because it throws the whole and its parts into another light.

  This fourth rule requires you to find out what the author's problems were. This rule is most pertinent, of course, to the great books. If you remember that they are original communications, you will realize that the man who wrote them started out with problems and ended by writing what the solutions were. A problem is a question. The book ostensibly contains one or more answers to it.

  The writer may or may not tell you what the questions were as well as give you the answers which are the fruits of his work. Whether he does or does not, and especially if he does not, it is your task as a reader to formulate the problem as precisely as you can.

  You should be able to state the main problem or problems which the book tries to answer, and you should be able to state the subordinate problems if the main questions are complex and have many parts. You should not only have a fairly adequate grasp of all
the questions involved, but you should be able to put the questions in an intelligible order. Which are primary and v/hicb secondary? Which questions must be answered first, if others are/to be answered later?

  You see how this fourth rule duplicates, in a sense, work you have already done in stating the unity and finding its parts. It may, however, actually help you to do that work. In other words, following the fourth rule is a useful procedure in conjunction with obeying the other two.

  If you know the kinds of questions anyone can ask about anything, you will become adept in detecting an author's problems. They can be briefly formulated. Does something exist? What kind of thing is it? What caused it to exist, or under what conditions can it exist, or why does it exist? What purpose does it serve? What are the consequences of its existence? What are its characteristic properties, its typical traits?

  What are its relations to other things of a similar sort, or of a different sort? How does it behave? The foregoing are all theoretical questions. The following are practical. What ends should be sought? What means should be chosen to a given end? What things must one do to gain a certain objective, and in what order? Under these conditions, what is the right thing to do, or the better rather than the worse? Under what conditions would it be better to do this rather than that?

  This list of questions is far from being exhaustive or analytically refined, but it does represent the types of most frequently asked questions in the pursuit of theoretic or practical knowledge. It may help you to discover the problems a book has tried to solve.

  When you have followed the tour rules stated in this chapter and the previous one, you can put down the book you have in hand for a moment. You can sigh and say: "Here endeth the first reading."