How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

by Mortimer J. Adler

  CANTO XIX: The voice of the Eagle. It speaks of the mysteries of Divine justice; of the necessity of Faith for salvation; of the sins of certain kings.

  CANTO XX: The song of the Just. Princes who have loved righteousness, in the eye of the Eagle. Spirits, once Pagans, in bliss. Faith and Salvation. Predestination.

  CANTO XXI: Ascent to the Heaven of Saturn. Spirits of those who had given themselves to devout contemplation. The Golden Stairway. St. Peter Damian. Predestination. The luxury of modern Prelates. Dante alarmed by a cry of the spirits.

  p. 389 CANTO XXII: Beatrice reassures Dante. St. Benedict appears. He tells of the founding of his Order, and of the falling away of its brethren. Beatrice and Dante ascend to the Starry Heaven. The constellation of the Twins. Sight of the Earth.

  CANTO XXIII: The Triumph of Christ.

  CANTO XXIV: St. Peter examines Dante concerning Faith, and approves his answer.

  CANTO XXV: St. James examines Dante concerning Hope. St. John appears, with a brightness so dazzling as to deprive Dante, for the time, of sight.

  CANTO XXVI: St. John examines Dante concerning Love. Dante’s sight restored. Adam appears, and answers questions put to him by Dante.

  CANTO XXVII: Denunciation by St. Peter of his degenerate successors. Dante gazes upon the Earth. Ascent of Beatrice and Dante to the Crystalline Heaven. Its nature. Beatrice rebukes the covetousness of mortals.

  CANTO XXVIII: The Heavenly Hierarchy.

  CANTO XXIX: Discourse of Beatrice concerning the creation and nature of the Angels. She reproves the presumption and foolishness of preachers.

  CANTO XXX: Ascent to the Empyrean. The River of Light. The celestial Rose. The seat of Henry VII. The last words of Beatrice.

  CANTO XXXI: The Rose of Paradise. St. Bernard. Prayer to Beatrice. The glory of the Blessed Virgin.

  CANTO XXXII: St. Bernard describes the order of the Rose, and points out many of the Saints. The children in Paradise. The angelic festival. The patricians of the Court of Heaven.

  CANTO XXXIII: Prayer to the Virgin. The Beatific Vision. The Ultimate Salvation.

  Test C:

  First series of questions about the Divine Comedy of Dante

  1. Dante divides his work into (a) three (b) four (c) six major parts.

  2. The major parts are titled (a) Earth, Moon, Heaven, Angelic Circles (b) Hell, Purgatory, Paradise (c) Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradise

  p. 390 3. The major parts are subdivided into (a) cantos (b) chapters (c) sections.

  4. The number of subdivisions in each of the major parts (a) are approximately equal (b) are either 33 or 34 (c) range between 23 and 44.

  5. The total number of subdivisions in the work is (a) 99 (b) 100 (c) 101.

  6. The main division of Hell seems to be into (a) circles (b) ledges (c) pouches.

  7. The main division of Purgatory seems to be into (a) circles (b) ledges (c) pouches.

  8. The main division of Paradise seems to be according to (a) the order of the virtues and vices (b) the order of the angelic hierarchy (c) the order of the planets of the solar system.

  9. In Hell, the movement is (a) downwards (b) upwards. In Purgatory the movement is (a) downwards (b) upwards.

  10. The Earthly Paradise is found by Dante (a) in the part of the poem titled Purgatory (b) in the part of the poem titled Paradise.

  Turn to p. 414 for the answers to Test C.

  Now, having skimmed the table of contents of the Divine Comedy and answered this first series of questions, take twenty minutes to read the table of contents superficially.

  Test D:

  Further questions about Dante’s Divine Comedy

  1. Dante is guided through Hell by (a) Beatrice (b) Virgil (c) Lucifer.

  2. Virgil is sent to help Dante by (a) Beatrice (b) God (c) St. Bernard.

  3. Dante’s main concern is to describe (a) life after death (b) the kinds of lives men live on earth.

  p. 391 4. The Divine Comedy is (a) essentially a comic poem (b) a poetic treatment of selected theses in moral theology (c) an imaginative construct of the entire universe.

  5. On which of the following ideologies and teachings does the poem seem to be most dependent? (a) Humanistic (b) Greek and Latin (c) Christian.

  6. The Slothful are punished on the Fourth Ledge of Purgatory. Is it significant that before leaving this ledge Dante falls asleep? (Yes or No?)

  7. In Canto 34 of Hell Dante and Virgil reach the center of the universe. Why?

  8. In Canto 9 of Purgatory seven P’s are inscribed on Dante’s forehead, and one of these P’s is removed as Dante passes upward past each of the ledges of the Mountain of Purgatory. What is the significance of the P’s?

  9. Virgil accompanies Dante to the Earthly Paradise (Cantos 28-33 of Purgatory) but departs in Canto 30 and does not go with Dante to Paradise. Why?

  10. In Cantos 11 and 12 of Paradise St. Thomas Aquinas narrates the life of St. Francis and St. Bonaventura narrates the life of St. Dominic. What is the significance of this?

  The last five questions in Test D, which deal mainly with the symbolism of Dante’s Divine Comedy, may be difficult or even impossible to answer on the basis of reading the table of contents alone. For that reason, if for no other, we have provided quite full answers to these questions. The justification for asking such questions is twofold. First, we are not certain that they cannot be answered from the table of contents alone. Second, and more important, they are designed to suggest one of the major characteristics of Dante’s great work: that is, that it is symbolic through and through. Almost every statement Dante makes, and almost every person and event he describes, has at least two meanings, and often three or four. We think that fact is probably clear from reading the table of contents alone, even if the details are not all spelled out. Hence it might be interesting to try to answer Questions 6-10 in this test withp. 392out any outside help whatever even if you have never read Dante before or read about him. In other words, if you have to guess, how close are your guesses?

  Turn to p. 414 for the answers to Test D.

  The biography of Charles Darwin and the table of contents of his The Origin of Species that appear on the following pages are taken from Volume 49 of Great Books of the Western World. Besides The Origin of Species, that volume also contains The Descent of Man, in which Darwin applied his general theory, as expounded in the Origin, to the puzzling question of the evolution of the human species.

  As in the case of Dante, read the biography of Darwin quickly—in five or six minutes—and then skim or pre-read the table of contents of The Origin of Species, devoting no more than ten minutes to the task.

  Charles Darwin

  1809-1882

  In evaluating the qualities that accounted for his “success as a man of science,” Charles Darwin in his modest autobiography, written “because it might possibly interest my children,” traces from his early youth “the strongest desire to understand and explain” whatever he observed. His childhood fantasies were concerned with fabulous discoveries in natural history; to his schoolmates he boasted that he could produce variously colored flowers of the same plant by watering them with certain colored fluids.

  His father, a highly successful physician, was somewhat puzzled by the singular interest of his second son as well as by his undistinguished career in the classical curriculum of Dr. Butler’s day school; he accordingly decided to send him to Edinburgh to study medicine. At Edinburgh Darwin collected animals in tidal pools, trawled for oysters with Newhaven fishermen to obtain specimens, and made two small discoveries which he incorporated in papers read before the Plinian Society. He put forth no very “strenuous effort” to learn medicine.

  p. 393 With some asperity, Dr. Darwin proposed the vocation of clergyman as an alternative. The life of a country clergyman appealed to young Darwin, and, after quieting his doubts concerning his belief in “all the dogmas of the Church,” he began this new career at Cambridge. He proved unable, however, to repress his scientific interests a
nd developed into an ardent entomologist, particularly devoted to collecting beetles; he had the satisfaction of seeing one of his rare specimens published in Stephen’s Illustrations of British Insects. As at Edinburgh, he enjoyed many stimulating associations with men of science. It was a professor of botany at Cambridge, J. S. Henslow, who arranged for his appointment as naturalist on the government ship, H. M. S. Beagle.

  From 1831 to 1836 the Beagle voyaged in Southern waters. Lyell’s researches into the changes wrought by natural processes, set forth in Principles of Geology, gave direction to Darwin’s own observations of the geological structure of the Cape Verde Islands. He also made extensive examinations of coral reefs and noted the relations of animals on the mainland to those of the adjacent islands, as well as the relation of living animals to the fossil remains of the same species.

  Darwin described the voyage of the Beagle as “by far the most important event in my life.” Besides making him one of the best qualified naturalists of his day, it developed in him the “habit of energetic industry and of concentrated attention.” This new purposefulness on the part of his son was succinctly noted by Dr. Darwin, who remarked upon first seeing him after the voyage: “Why, the shape of his head is quite altered.”

  After his return, Darwin settled in London and began the task of organizing and recording his observations. He became a close friend of Lyell, the leading English geologist, and later of Hooker, an outstanding botanist. In 1839 he married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, and toward the end of 1842, because of Darwin’s chronic ill-health, the family moved to Down, where he lived in seclusion for the rest of his days. During the six years in London, he prepared his Journal from the notes of the voyage and published his carefully documented study of Coral Reefs.

  The next eight years were spent in the laborious classification of barnacles for his four-volume work on that subject. “I have been struck,” he wrote to Hooker, “with the variability of every part in some slight degree of every species.” After this period of p. 394 detailed work with a single species, Darwin felt prepared to attack the problem of the modification of species which he had been pondering for many years.

  A number of facts had come to light during the voyage of the Beagle that Darwin felt “could only be explained on the supposition that species gradually become modified.” Later, after his return to England, he had collected all the material he could find which “bore in any way on the variation of plants and animals under domestication.” He soon perceived “that selection was the keystone of man’s success. But how selection could be applied to organisms living in a state of nature remained for some time a mystery.” One day, while reading Malthus on Population, it suddenly occurred to him how, in the struggle for existence, which he had everywhere observed, “favorable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of a new species. Here then I had at last a theory by which to work.”

  He confided this theory to Hooker and Lyell, who urged him to write out his views for publication. But Darwin worked deliberately; he was only half through his projected book, when in the summer of 1858, he received an essay from A. R. Wallace at Ternate in the Moluccas, containing exactly the same theory as his own. Darwin submitted his dilemma to Hooker and Lyell, to whom he wrote: “Your words have come true with a vengeance—that I should be forestalled.” It was their decision to publish an abstract of his theory from a letter of the previous year together with Wallace’s essay, the joint work being entitled: On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection.

  A year later, on November 24, 1859, The Origin of Species appeared. The entire first edition of 1,250 copies was sold on the day of publication. A storm of controversy arose over the book, reaching its height at a meeting of the British Association at Oxford, where the celebrated verbal duel between T. H. Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce took place. Darwin, who could not sleep when he answered an antagonist harshly, took Lyell’s advice and saved both “time and temper” by avoiding the fray.

  In his work, however, he stayed close to his thesis. He expanded the material of the first chapter of the Origin into a book, Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication (1868). In The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), Darp. 395win fulfilled his statement in the Origin that “light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history.” The Expression of the Emotions (1872) offered a natural explanation of phenomena which appeared to be a difficulty in the way of acceptance of evolution. His last works were concerned with the form, movement, and fertilization of plants.

  Darwin’s existence at Down was peculiarly adapted to preserve his energy and give direct order to his activity. Because of his continual ill-health, his wife took pains “to shield him from every avoidable annoyance.” He observed the same routine for nearly forty years, his days being carefully parcelled into intervals of exercise and light reading in such proportions that he could utilize to his fullest capacity the four hours he devoted to work. His scientific reading and experimentation, as well, were organized with the most rigorous economy. Even the phases of his intellectual life non-essential to his work became, as he put it, “atrophied,” a fact which he regretted as “a loss of happiness.” Such non-scientific reading as he did was purely for relaxation, and he thought that “a law ought to be passed” against unhappy endings to novels.

  With his wife and seven children his manner was so unusually “affectionate and delightful” that his son, Francis, marvelled that he could preserve it “with such an undemonstrative race as we are.” When he died on April 19, 1882, his family wanted him to be buried at Down; public feeling decreed that he should be interred in Westminster Abbey, where he was laid beside Sir Isaac Newton.

  Table of Contents of The Origin of Species

  AN HISTORICAL SKETCH

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER I. VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION

  Causes of variability. Effects of habit and the use or disuse of parts. Correlated variation. Inheritance. Character of domestic varieties. Difficulty of distinguishing between varieties and species. Origin of domestic varieties from one or more species. Domestic pigeons, their differences and origin. Principles of selection, anciently followed, their effects. Methodical and unconscious selection. Unknown origin of our domesic productions. Circumstances favourable to man’s power of selection.

  CHAPTER II. VARIATION UNDER NATURE

  p. 396 Variability. Individual differences. Doubtful species. Wide ranging, much diffused, and common species vary most. Species of the larger genera in each country vary more frequently than the species of the smaller genera. Many of the species of the larger genera resemble varieties in being very closely, but unequally, related to each other, and in having restricted ranges.

  CHAPTER III. STRUGGLE FOR Existence

  Its bearing on natural selection. The term used in a wide sense. Geometrical ratio of increase. Rapid increase of naturalized animals and plants. Nature of the checks to increase. Competition universal. Effects of climate. Protection from the number of individuals. Complex relations of all animals and plants throughout nature. Struggle for life most severe between individuals and varieties of the same species: often severe between species of the same genus. The relation of organism to organism the most important of all relations.

  CHAPTER IV. NATURAL SELECTION;

  OR THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

  Natural selection. Its power compared with man’s selection. Its power on characters of trifling importance. Its power at all ages and on both sexes. Sexual selection. On the generality of intercrosses between individuals of the same species. Circumstances favourable and unfavourable to the results of Natural Selection, namely, intercrossing, isolation, number of individuals. Slow action. Extinction caused by natural selection. Divergence of character, related to the diversity of inhabitants of any small area, and to naturalisation. Action of natural selection, throug
h divergence of character and extinction, on the descendants from a common parent. Explains the grouping of all organic beings. Advance in organisation. Low forms preserved. Convergence of character. Indefinite multiplication of species. Summary.

  CHAPTER V. LAWS OF VARIATION

  Effects of changed conditions. Use and disuse, combined with natural selection; organs of flight and of vision. Acclimatisation. Correlated variation. Compensation and economy of growth. False correlations. Multiple, rudimentary, and lowly organised structures variable. Parts developed in an unusual manner are highly variable; specific characters more variable than generic: secondary sexual characters variable. Species of the same genus vary in an analogous manner. Reversions to long-lost characters. Summary.

  CHAPTER VI. DIFFICULTIES OF THE THEORY

  p. 397 Difficulties of the theory of descent with modification. Absence or rarity of transitional varieties. Transitions in habits of life. Diversified habits in the same species. Species with habits widely different from those of their allies. Organs of extreme perfection. Modes of transition. Cases of difficulty. Natura non facit saltum. Organs of small importance. Organs not in all cases absolutely perfect. The law of unity of type and of the conditions of existence embraced by the theory of natural selection.

  CHAPTER VII. MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION

  Longevity. Modifications not necessarily simultaneous. Modifications apparently of no direct service. Progressive development. Characters of small functional importance, the most constant. Supposed incompetence of natural selection to account for the incipient stages of useful structures. Causes which interfere with the acquisition through natural selection of useful structures. Graduations of structure with changed functions. Widely different organs in members of the same class, developed from one and the same source. Reasons for disbelieving in great and abrupt modifications.