(Over 60 diverse thinkers on how to get more from books)
Helps was an English writer and political appointee.
He was concerned with the degree to which our reading and study came down to chance, “as regards their origin, their conduct and their end” (Helps, 260). He described the intellectual development of most adults as proceeding in this way: on returning from work a man “takes up whatever book may happen to be the reading of his wife, mother, or daughters: and they…are probably contented with what the cirulating library affords, and read according to the merest rumour and fashion of the present hour” (pp. 261–2). To make “light literature” our mental staple in this way is extremely frivolous and unworthy, but Helps realises the difficulties in selecting contemporary books of merit, even for “highly-cultivated persons” (ibid.). People are often aware of “how indifferently they are spending their time”, so Helps suggests that they (pp. 262–3):
adopt some definite purpose in their reading—should take something for the main stem and trunk of their culture, whence branches might grow out in all directions seeking light and air for the parent tree which, it is hoped, might end in becoming something useful and ornamental, and which, at any rate, all along will have had life and growth in it
This purpose must be applied to a “subject”, a notion which encompasses finding “what the twenty or thirty great poets have said”, surveying “the greatest writers in morals and history”, reading a “hundred great authors”, pursuing a “branch of science”, or investigating a particular question in history (pp. 266–7). If we care about our being as a whole, we should develop our faculties which are not required by our occupations or for which we are not naturally disposed—studying a subject anterior to our everyday lives (p. 270). So, an employee whose job “is always exercising the logical faculty”, would do well to read fiction and poetry at home (ibid.).
If we know one subject well then we have also learned about other areas because “all things are so connected together” (pp. 265–6). In working upon a particular branch of study we observe how every idea we encounter seems “to work in with, and assimilate itself to” our original subject (p. 266). It can seem as if our subject is independent of us, “always on the watch, and claiming its share in whatever is going on” (ibid.). Helps suggests that consciously pursuing just one area of study helps produce something that holds “together what is gained, but has vitality in itself, is always growing” (ibid.). This implies that pursuing few, specific courses of study needn’t “lead to pedantry and narrowness of mind” (p. 255).
All of the reasons people read—“amusement, instruction, a wish to appear well in society, and a desire to pass away time”—are bolstered by our employing a method (p. 264). When reading becomes a keen intellectual pursuit, even minor gains are enriched in significance, and dull details can yield interesting insight (ibid.). With questions in mind and a clear purpose, our reading becomes richer.
Pursuing study methodically can also improve our character in action because like any worthwhile endeavour, the moments of delight will be accompanied with vexation and vacillation which will test and strengthen our mettle (p. 269). In making these sacrifices we improve the culture of our mind (ibid.).
We should also “lay up in our minds a store of godly thoughts in well-wrought words” (pp. 267–8). If in our reading we make an effort to memorise a “living treasure of knowledge”, it will be with us when we most need to draw on it for “comfort, guidance, and sympathy” (ibid.). This doesn’t apply only to sacred writings: “In any work that it worth carefully reading, there is generally something that is worth remembering accurately” (p. 268).
Helps sees folly in prescribing a universal method of study, so instead suggests useful traits for a student to develop: a “just fear of desultory pursuits, and a wish for mental cultivation” (pp. 263–4). On this basis the student can hope to eventually discern what approach works best for them, but even if they don’t, pursing anything in this manner will be rewarding (p. 264). In order to avoid unprofitable reading, then, we must avoid taking up books at random, vacillating in our studies, or only looking to them for ease or distraction (p. 272).