Unless what you have read is true in some sense, you need go no further. But if it is, you must face the last question. You cannot read for information intelligently without determining what significance is, or should be, attached to the facts presented. Facts seldom come to us without some interpretation, explicit or implied. This is especially true if you are reading digests of information that necessarily select the facts according to some evaluation of their significance, some principle of interpretation. And if you are reading for enlightenp. 166ment, there is really no end to the inquiry that, at every stage of learning, is renewed by the question, What of it?
These four questions, as we have already pointed out, summarize all the obligations of a reader. The first three, moreover, correspond to something in the very nature of human discourse. If communications were not complex, structural outlining would be unnecessary. If language were a perfect medium instead of a relatively opaque one, there would be no need for interpretation. If error and ignorance did not circumscribe truth and knowledge, we should not have to be critical. The fourth question turns on the distinction between information and understanding. When the material you have read is itself primarily informational, you are challenged to go further and seek enlightenment. Even when you have been somewhat enlightened by what you have read, you are called upon to continue the search for significance.
Before proceeding to Part Three, perhaps we should stress, once again, that these rules of analytical reading describe an ideal performance. Few people have ever read any book in this ideal manner, and those who have, probably read very few books this way. The ideal remains, however, the measure of achievement. You are a good reader to the degree in which you approximate it.
When we speak of someone as “well-read,” we should have this ideal in mind. Too often, we use that phrase to mean the quantity rather than the quality of reading. A person who has read widely but not well deserves to be pitied rather than praised. As Thomas Hobbes said, “If I read as many books as most men do, I would be as dull-witted as they are.”
The great writers have always been great readers, but that does not mean that they read all the books that, in their day, were listed as the indispensable ones. In many cases, they read fewer books than are now required in most of our colleges, but what they did read, they read well. Because they had mastered these books, they became peers with their p. 167 authors. They were entitled to become authorities in their own right. In the natural course of events, a good student frequently becomes a teacher, and so, too, a good reader becomes an author.
Our intention here is not to lead you from reading to writing. It is rather to remind you that one approaches the ideal of good reading by applying the rules we have described in the reading of a single book, and not by trying to become superficially acquainted with a larger number. There are, of course, many books worth reading well. There is a much larger number that should be only inspected. To become well-read, in every sense of the word, one must know how to use whatever skill one possesses with discrimination—by reading every book according to its merits.
Chapter 12 – Aids To Reading
p. 168 Any aid to reading that lies outside the book being read we may speak of as extrinsic. By “intrinsic reading” we mean reading a book in itself, quite apart from all other books. By “extrinsic reading” we mean reading a book in the light of other books. So far we have intentionally avoided mentioning any extrinsic aids to reading. The rules of reading we have set forth are rules of intrinsic reading—they do not include going outside the book to discover what it means. There are good reasons for our having insisted up to now on your primary task as a reader—taking the book into your study and working on it by yourself, with the power of your own mind, and with no other aids. But it would be wrong to continue insisting on this. Extrinsic aids can help. And sometimes they are necessary for full understanding.
One reason why we have said nothing about extrinsic reading up to now is that intrinsic and extrinsic reading tend to fuse in the actual process of understanding and criticizing a book. We really cannot help bringing our experience to bear on the tasks of interpretation and criticism and even outlining. We must have read other books before this one; no one starts his reading career by reading analytically. We may not bring to bear our experience both of other books and of life as systematically as we should, but we nevertheless measure the p. 169 statements and conclusions of a writer against other things that we know, from many different sources. Thus it is common sense to say that no book should be, because no book can be, read entirely and completely in isolation.
But the main reason for avoiding extrinsic aids up to this point is that many readers depend on them too slavishly, and we wanted you to realize that this is unnecessary. Reading a book with a dictionary in the other hand is a bad idea, although this does not mean you should never go to a dictionary for the meanings of words that are strange to you. And seeking the meaning of a book that puzzles you in a commentary is often ill-advised. On the whole, it is best to do all that you can by yourself before seeking outside help; for if you act consistently on this principle, you will find that you need less and less outside help.
The extrinsic aids to reading fall into four categories. In the order in which we will discuss them in this chapter, they are: first, relevant experiences; second, other books; third, commentaries and abstracts; fourth, reference books.
How and when to use any of these types of extrinsic aids cannot be stated for every particular case. Some general suggestions can be made, however. It is a common-sense maxim of reading that outside help should be sought whenever a book remains unintelligible to you, either in whole or part, after you have done your best to read it according to the rules of intrinsic reading.
The Role of Relevant Experience
There are two types of relevant experience that may be referred to for help in understanding difficult books. We have already mentioned the distinction involved, when we spoke in Chapter 6 of the difference between common experience and special experience. Common experience is available to all men p. 170 and women just because they are alive. Special experience must be actively sought and is available only to those who go to the trouble of acquiring it. The best example of special experience is an experiment in a laboratory, but a laboratory is not always required. An anthropologist may acquire special experience by traveling to the Amazon basin, for example, to study the aboriginal inhabitants of a region that has not yet been explored. He thereby gains experience that is not ordinarily available to others, and that will never be available to many; for if large numbers of scientists invade the region, it will cease to be unique. Similarly, the experience of the astronauts on the moon is highly special, although the moon is not a laboratory in the ordinary sense of the term. Most men do not have the opportunity of knowing what it is like to live on an airless planet, and it will be centuries before this becomes a common experience, if it ever does. Jupiter, too, with its enormously greater gravity, will remain a “laboratory” in this sense for a long time to come, and may always be such.
Common experience does not have to be shared by everyone in order to be common. Common is not the same as universal. The experience of being a child of parents, for example, is not shared by every human being, for some are orphans from birth. However, family life is nevertheless common experience, because most men and women, in the ordinary course of their lives, share it. Nor is sexual love a universal experience, although it is common, in the sense we are giving the word common. Some men and women never experience it, but the experience is shared by such a high proportion of humans that it cannot be called special. (This does not mean that sexual activity cannot be studied in the laboratory, as in fact it has been.) The experience of being taught is not universal, either, for some men and women never go to school. But it, too, is common.
The two kinds of experience are mainly relevant to different kinds of books. Common experience is most relevant to the reading of fiction, on the one
hand, and to the reading of p. 171 philosophy, on the other. Judgments concerning the verisimilitude of a novel are almost wholly based on common experience; the book, we say, is either true or not true to our experience of life as it is led by most people, ourselves included. The philosopher, like the poet, appeals to the common experience of mankind. He does no work in laboratories or research in the field. Hence to understand and test a philosopher’s leading principles you do not need the extrinsic aid of special experience. He refers you to your own common sense and your daily observation of the world in which you live.
Special experience is mainly relevant to the reading of scientific works. To understand and judge the inductive arguments in a scientific book, you must be able to follow the evidence that the scientist reports as their basis. Sometimes the scientist’s description of an experiment is so vivid and clear that you have no trouble. Sometimes illustrations and diagrams help to acquaint you with the phenomena described.
Both common and special experience are relevant to the reading of history books. This is because history partakes both of the fictional and the scientific. On the one hand, a narrative history is a story, having a plot and characters, episodes, complications of action, a climax, an aftermath. The common experience that is relevant to reading novels and plays is relevant here, too. But history is also like science, in the sense that at least some of the experience on which the historian bases his work is quite special. He may have read a document or many documents that the reader could not manage to see without great trouble. He may have done extensive research, either into the remains of past civilizations or in the form of interviews with living persons in faraway places.
How do you know whether you are making proper use of your experience to help you understand a book? The surest test is one we have already recommended as a test of understanding: ask yourself whether you can give a concrete example of a point that you feel you understand. We have many times asked students to do this, only to find that they could p. 172 not. The students appeared to have understood the point, but they were completely at a loss when called upon to supply an example. Obviously, they had not really understood the book. Test yourself in this way when you are not quite sure whether you have grasped a book. Take Aristotle’s discussion of virtue in the Ethics, for example. He says over and over that virtue is a mean between the extremes of defect and excess. He gives some concrete examples; can you supply others? If so, you have understood his general point. If not, you should go back and read his discussion again.
Other Books as Extrinsic Aids to Reading
We will have more to say later about syntopical reading, where more than one book is read on a single subject. For the moment, we want to say a few things about the desirability of reading other books as extrinsic aids to the reading of a particular work.
Our advice applies particularly to the reading of so-called great books. The enthusiasm with which people embark on a course of reading great books often gives way, fairly soon, to a feeling of hopeless inadequacy. One reason, of course, is that many readers do not know how to read a single book very well. But that is not all. There is another reason: namely, that they think they should be able to understand the first book they pick up, without having read the others to which it is closely related. They may try to read The Federalist Papers without having first read the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. Or they may try all these without having read Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws, Rousseau’s The Social Contract, and Locke’s second treatise Of Civil Government.
Not only are many of the great books related, but also they were written in a certain order that should not be ignored. A later writer has been influenced by an earlier one. If you p. 173 read the earlier writer first, he may help you to understand the later one. Reading related books in relation to one another and in an order that renders the later ones more intelligible is a basic common-sense maxim of extrinsic reading.
The utility of this kind of extrinsic reading is simply an extension of the value of context in reading a book by itself. We have seen how the context must be used to interpret words and sentences to find terms and propositions. Just as the whole book is the context for any of its parts, so related books provide an even larger context that helps you interpret the book you are reading.
It has often been observed that the great books are involved in a prolonged conversation. The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read. As readers, they carried on a conversation with other authors, just as each of us carries on a conversation with the books we read, though we may not write other books.
To join this conversation, we must read the great books in relation to one another, and in an order that somehow respects chronology. The conversation of the books takes place in time. Time is of the essence here and should not be disregarded. The books can be read from the present into the past or from the past into the present. Though the order from past to present has certain advantages through being more natural, the fact of chronology can be observed in either way.
It should be noted, incidentally, that the need to read books in relation to one another applies more to history and philosophy than to science and fiction. It is most important in the case of philosophy, because philosophers are great readers of each other. It is probably least important in the case of novels or plays, which, if they are really good, can be read in isolation, although of course the literary critic will not want to confine himself to doing so.
How to Use Commentaries and Abstracts
p. 174 A third category of extrinsic aids to reading includes commentaries and abstracts. The thing to emphasize here is that such works should be used wisely, which is to say sparingly. There are two reasons for this.
The first is that commentators are not always right in their comments on a book. Sometimes, of course, their works are enormously useful, but this is true less often than one could wish. The handbooks and manuals that are widely available in college bookstores and in stores frequented by high school students are often particularly misleading. These works purport to tell the student everything he has to know about a book that has been assigned by one of his teachers, but they are sometimes woefully wrong in their interpretations, and besides, as a practical matter, they irritate some teachers and professors.
In defense of handbooks, it must be conceded that they are often invaluable for passing examinations. Furthermore, to balance the fact that some teachers are irritated by the errors of handbooks, other teachers use them themselves in their teaching.
The second reason for using commentaries sparingly is that, even if they are right, they may not be exhaustive. That is, you may be able to discover important meanings in a book that the author of a commentary about it has not discovered. Reading a commentary, particularly one that seems very self-assured, thus tends to limit your understanding of a book, even if your understanding, as far as it goes, is correct.
Hence, there is one piece of advice that we want to give you about using commentaries. Indeed, this comes close to being a basic maxim of extrinsic reading. Whereas it is one of the rules of intrinsic reading that you should read an author’s preface and introduction before reading his book, the rule in the case of extrinsic reading is that you should not read a p. 175 commentary by someone else until after you have read the book. This applies particularly to scholarly and critical introductions. They are properly used only if you do your best to read the book first, and then and only then apply to them for answers to questions that still puzzle you. If you read them first they are likely to distort your reading of the book. You will tend to see only the points made by the scholar or critic, and fail to see other points that may be just as important.
There is considerable pleasure associated with the reading of such introductions when it is done in this way. You have read the book and understood it. The writer of the introduction has also read it, perhaps many times, and has his own understanding of it. You approach hi
m, therefore, on essentially equal terms. If you read his introduction before reading the book, however, you are at his mercy.
Heeding this rule, that commentaries should be read after you have read the book that they expound and not before, applies also to handbooks. Such works cannot hurt you if you have already read the book and know where the handbook is wrong, if it is. But if you depend wholly on the handbook, and never read the original book, you may be in bad trouble.
And there is this further point. If you get into the habit of depending on commentaries and handbooks, you will be totally lost if you cannot find one. You may be able to understand a particular book with the help of a commentary, but in general you will be a worse reader.
The rule of extrinsic reading given here applies also to abstracts and plot digests. They are useful in two connections, but in those two only. First, they can help to jog your memory of a book’s contents, if you have already read it. Ideally, you made such an abstract yourself, in reading the book analytically, but if you have not done so, an abstract or digest can be an important aid. Second, abstracts are useful when you are engaged in syntopical reading, and wish to know whether a certain work is likely to be germane to your project. An abstract can never replace the reading of a book, but it can p. 176 sometimes tell you whether you want or need to read the book or not.
How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading Page 18
