(Over 60 diverse thinkers on how to get more from books)
Lowell was an American Romantic poet and critic.
Being able to read allows “us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time…it annihilates time and space for us” (Lowell 1887, 115). We gain admittance for the asking to a “select society of all the centuries”: a world of thought, fancy, and imagination (pp. 115–6).
Our visible world is at best the “husk and symbol” of the spiritual world which the society of books seeks to express ideally (p. 110). Similarly, the world in which we truly live is so small when represented by our senses, as opposed to our mental world of memory and imagination (p. 111). Our minds are peopled with the historical and the fictional, but why are the former considered more real than the latter (ibid.)? “Do not serious and earnest men discuss Hamlet as they would Cromwell or Lincoln?” (ibid.). The society of books is a real world for Lowell (p. 110).
He rejects the notion that Shakespeare left us a less useful legacy than James Watt (p. 129). The love and study of imaginative literature helps us maintain a healthy balance of our character and faculties; a bulwark against materialism (pp. 128–9). The world of imagination isn’t one of “abstraction and nonentity”; it’s “formed out of chaos by a sense of the beauty…the realm of Might-be, our haven of refuge from the shortcomings and disillusions of life” (p. 128).
In our material world only “the earth and what is immovably attached to it” is real property (pp. 109–110). However, we can be stripped of those, whereas the “riches of scholarship, the benignities of literature…are beyond the reach of thief or moth or rust” (p. 110). These riches aren’t heritable, so we can share and distribute them, yet never be alienated (ibid.).
Few people learn the highest use of books (p. 118). The most important part of our education is that which we give ourselves, and the first lesson is that reading well requires us to discriminate between literature and merely printed material (p. 116). Books either beckon us upward, or drag us down, giving their own nature to our mind (p. 118). We should choose, therefore, books which make our minds think, not relax, which requires that we judge them (ibid.).
Ignoring this injunction results in “desultory reading” (ibid.). This may constitute a profitable waste of a time when pursued as a pastime, but will not result in a full person (pp. 118, 122). Especially when done unconsciously it “hebetates the brain and slackens the bow-string of Will”, communicating to us “as little intelligence as the messages that run along the telegraph wire to the birds that perch on it” (p. 118).
We spend as much time reading as scholars of many centuries past, but often marvel at their scholarship and “certain dignity of phrase” (p. 119). Lowell suggests that they were scholars because they read fewer books than us, but the books that they did read were the best (pp. 119–120). They communed with the choice thoughts of great authors, unconsciously acquiring the manner of this grand society, whereas we “diligently inform ourselves…of such inspiring facts as that a horse belonging to Mr. Smith ran away on Wednesday” (p. 120). In attending to trivial news rather than great works we risk becoming “mere sponges saturated from the stagnant goosepond of village gossip” (ibid.).
Works of genius can’t be adequately translated (pp. 125–6). Reading by translation is more hasty and superficial, but, properly used, translations reduce the time and effort of acquiring knowledge so “add as many years to our lives as they subtract from the processes of our education” (p. 126). Practising translation ourselves is useful for studying languages, especially in how it improves our style and expression in our native language (pp. 126–7). Forcing us to deliberate over the best foreign word to express one with which we’re familiar teaches us greater precision of language, therefore greater precision of thought. Lowell suggests that if we enjoy reading a translated work, we should consider learning the language in which it was first written in order to appreciate the original text (ibid.). Translations, then, are expedient but also encouragements to language learning.
We should read either the great books in whatever literature we’re interested in, or become thoroughly familiar with one great author (p. 121). To understand this reading we become “gradually and pleasantly persuaded to excursions and explorations of which you little dreamed when you began” (ibid.). Because all roads lead both to and away from Rome, this journey also teaches us how to weigh vital books (ibid.). We almost accidentally become scholars, which is far superior to tedious “scholarship for the mere sake of scholarship” (ibid.). That is, we should develop a definite aim for our study organically rather than adhering to a formal course (ibid.). This better focuses our attention, improving our memory, such that the knowledge we acquire “groups and arranges itself in an order that is lucid, because everywhere and always it is in intelligent relation to a central object of constant and growing interest” (pp. 121–2). It forcefully impresses upon us “the necessity of thinking”, so helps achieve the true end of learning: to quicken our intelligence and widen “our intellectual sympathies”—“knowledge” (p. 122).