On Being Human

I

“The rarest sort of a book,” says Mr. Bagehot, slyly, is “abook to read”; and “the knack in style is to write like a humanbeing.” It is painfully evident, upon experiment, that not many of thebooks which come teeming from our presses every year are meant to be read. Theyare meant, it may be, to be pondered; it is hoped, no doubt, they may instruct,or inform, or startle, or arouse, or reform, or provoke, or amuse us; but weread, if we have the true reader’s zest and plate, not to grow moreknowing, but to be less pent up and bound within a little circle,—asthose who take their pleasure, and not as those who laboriously seekinstruction,—as a means of seeing and enjoying the world of men andaffairs. We wish companionship and renewal of spirit, enrichment of thought andthe full adventure of the mind; and we desire fair company, and a larger worldin which to find them.

No one who loves the masters who may be communed with and read but must see,therefore, and resent the error of making the text of any one of them a sourceto draw grammar from, forcing the parts of speech to stand out stark and coldfrom the warm text; or a store of samples whence to draw rhetorical instances,setting up figures of speech singly and without support of any neighbor phrase,to be stared at curiously and with intent to copy or dissect! Here is grammardone without deliberation: the phrases carry their meaning simply and by a sortof limpid reflection; the thought is a living thing, not an image ingeniouslycontrived and wrought. Pray leave the text whole: it has no meaning piecemeal;at any rate, not that best, wholesome meaning, as of a frank and genial friendwho talks, not for himself or for his phrase, but for you. It is questionablemorals to dismember a living frame to seek for its obscure fountains of life!

When you say that a book was meant to be read, you mean, for one thing, ofcourse, that it was not meant to be studied. You do not study a good story, ora haunting poem, or a battle song, or a love ballad, or any moving narrative,whether it be out of history or out of fiction—nor any argument, even,that moves vital in the field of action. You do not have to study these things;they reveal themselves, you do not stay to see how. They remain with you, andwill not be forgotten or laid by. They cling like a personal experience, andbecome the mind’s intimates. You devour a book meant to be read, notbecause you would fill yourself or have an anxious care to be nourished, butbecause it contains such stuff as it makes the mind hungry to look upon.Neither do you read it to kill time, but to lengthen time, rather, adding toits natural usury by living the more abundantly while it lasts, joininganother’s life and thought to your own.

There are a few children in every generation, as Mr. Bagehot reminds us, whothink the natural thing to do with any book is to

BU KİTABI OKUMAK İÇİN ÜYE OLUN VEYA GİRİŞ YAPIN!

Sitemize Üyelik ÜCRETSİZDİR!