Practical Essays, Alexander Bain [reading e books .txt] 📗

of surpassing merits, as against all subsequent writers, his case is quite clear. In the nature of things, this must be rare: if there be an example, it is Euclid; yet his position is held only through the mutual jealousy of his modern rivals.

The only motive for commencing a study upon a very old writer is a desire to work out a subject historically; which, in some instances may be allowed, but not very often. In Politics, Ethics, and Rhetoric, the plan might have its advantages; but, with this imperative condition, that we shall follow out the development in the modern works. In proportion as a subject assumes a scientific shape, it must carefully define its terms, marshal its propositions in proper dependence, and offer strict proof of all matters of fact; now, in these respects, every known branch of knowledge has improved with the lapse of ages; so that the more recent works are necessarily the best for entering upon the study. A historical sequence may be proper to be observed; but that should be backward and not forward. The earlier stages of some subjects are absolutely worthless; as, for example, Physics, Chemistry, and most of Biology, in other subjects, as Politics and Ethics, the tentatives of such men as Plato and Aristotle have an undying value; nevertheless, the student should not begin, but end, with them.

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There is an extreme form of putting our present doctrine that runs it into paradox: namely, the one-book-and-no-more maxim. Scarcely any book in existence is so all-sufficient for its purpose that a student is better occupied in re-reading it for the tenth time, than in reading some others once. Even the merits of the one book are not fully known unless we compare it with others; nor have we grasped any subject unless we are able to see it stated in various forms, without being distracted or confused. It is not a high knowledge of horsemanship that can be gained by the most thorough acquaintance with one horse.

[NO WORK ENTIRELY SELF-SUFFICIENT.]

Any truth that there is in the paradox of excluding all books but one from perusal, belongs to it as a form of the maxim we have now been considering. There is not in existence a work corresponding to the notion of absolute self-sufficiency. Suppose we were to go over the _chef-d'oeuvres_ of human genius, we should not find one in the position of entire independence of all others. Take, for example, the poems of Homer; the Republic and a few other of Plato's pre-eminent Dialogues; the great speeches of Demosthenes; the Ethics and Politics of Aristotle; the poems of Dante; Shakespeare, as a whole; Bacon's Novum Organum; Newton's Principia; Locke on the Understanding; the _Mechanique Celeste_ of Laplace. No one of all these could produce its effect on the mind without referring to other works, previous, contemporary, or following. The remark is not confined to works of elucidation and comment merely--as the contemporary history of Greece, or the speeches of Demosthenes--but extends to other compositions, of the very same tenor, by different, although inferior, writers. Shakespeare himself is made much more profitable by a perusal of the other Elizabethans, and by a comparison with dramatic models before and after him.

The nearest approach to a perfectly all-sufficing book is seen in scientific compilations by a conjunction of highly accomplished editors. A new edition of Quain's Anatomy, revised and brought up to date by the best anatomists, would, for the moment, probably be fully adequate to the wants of the student, and dispense with all other references whatsoever. Not that even then, it would be desirable to abstain from ever opening a different compendium; although undoubtedly there would be the very minimum of necessity for doing so. Nevertheless, literature presents few analogous instances. One of the great works of an original genius, like Aristotle, might, by profuse annotation, be made nearly sufficing; but this is another way of reading by quotation a plurality of writers; and it would be better still to peruse some of these in full, there being no need for studying them with the degree of intensity bestowed on a main work.

[LOCKE'S TREATMENT OF THE BIBLE.]

The example, by pre-eminence, of one self-sufficing work is the Bible. Being the sole and ultimate authority of Christian doctrine, it holds a position entirely apart; and, among Protestants at least, there is a becoming jealousy of allowing any extraneous writing to overbear its contents. Yet we are not to infer, as many have done practically, that no other work needs to be read in company with it. Granting that its genuine doctrines have been overlaid by subsequent accretions, the way to get clear of these is not to neglect the entire body of fathers, commentators, and theologians, and to give the whole attention to the scriptural text. Locke himself set an example of this attempt. He proposed, in his "Reasonableness of Christianity," to ascertain the exact meaning of the New Testament, by casting aside all the glosses of commentators and divines, and applying his own unassisted judgment to spell out its teachings. He did not disdain to use the lights of extraneous history, and the traditions of the heathen world; he only refused to be bound by any of the artificial creeds and systems devised in later ages to embody the doctrines supposed to be found in the Bible. The fallacy of his position obviously was, that he could not strip himself of his education and acquired notions, the result of the teaching of the orthodox church. He seemed unconscious of the necessity of trying to make allowance for his unavoidable prepossessions. In consequence, he simply fell into an old groove of received doctrines; and these he handled under the set purpose of simplifying the fundamentals of Christianity to the utmost. Such purpose was not the result of his Bible study, but of his wish to overcome the political difficulties of the time. He found, by keeping close to the Gospels and by making proper selections from the Epistles, that the belief in Christ as the Messiah could be shown to be the central fact of the Christian faith; that the other main doctrines followed out of this by a process of reasoning; and that, as all minds might not perform the process alike, these doctrines could not be essential to the acceptance of Christianity. He got out of the difficulty of framing a creed, as many others have done, by simply using Scripture language, without subjecting it to any very strict definition; certainly without the operation of stripping the meaning of its words, to see what it amounted to. That his short and easy method was not very successful, the history of the Deistical controversy sufficiently proves. The end in view would, in our time, be sought by an opposite course. Instead of disregarding commentators, and the successions of creed embodiments, a scholar of the present day would ascend through these to the original, and find out its meaning, after making allowance for all the tendencies that operated to give a bias to that meaning. As to putting us in the position of listening to the Bible authors at first hand, we should trust more to the erudition of a Pusey or an Ewald, than to the unassisted judgment of a Locke.

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II. "What constitutes the study of a book?" Mere perusal at the average reading pace is not the way to imbibe the contents of any work of importance, especially if the subject is new and difficult.

There are various methods in use among authoritative guides. To revert to the Demosthenic traditions: we find two modes indicated--namely, repeated copying, and committing to memory _verbatim_. A third is, making abstracts in writing. A fourth may be designated the Lockian method. Let us consider the respective merits of the four.

[STUDY BY LITERAL COPYING.]

1. Of copying a book literally through, there is this to be said, that it engages the attention upon every word, until the act of writing serves to impress the memory. But there are very important qualifications to be assigned in judging of the worth of the exercise. Observe what is the main design of the copyist. It is to produce a _replica_ of an original upon paper. He cannot do this without a certain amount of attention to the original; enough at least to enable him to put down the exact words in the copy; and, by such attention, he is so far impressed with the matter, that a certain portion may remain in the memory. If, however, instead of the paper, he could write directly on the brain, he would be aiming straight at his object. Now, experience shows that the making of a copy of any document is compatible with a very small amount of attention to the purport. The extreme case is the copying clerk. He can literally reproduce an original, with entire forgetfulness of what it is about. If his eye takes a faithful note of the sequence of words, he may entirely neglect the meaning. In point of fact, he constantly does so. He remembers nobody's secrets; and he cannot be counted on to check blunders that make nonsense of his text. Probably no one could go on copying for eight hours a day unless the strain of attention to the originals were at a minimum. I conceive, therefore, that copying habits arising from a certain amount of experience at the vocation, would be utterly fatal to the employment of the exercise as a means of study. It may be valuable to such as have seldom used their pen except in original composition. Very probably, in school lessons, to write an exercise two or three times may be a help to the usual routine of saying off the book. I have heard experienced teachers testify to the good effects of the practice. Yet very little would turn the attention the wrong way. Even the requirement of neatness on the part of the master, or the pupil's own liking for it, would abate the desired impression. The multiplied copying set as punishment might stamp a thing on the memory through disgust; it might also engender the mechanical routine of the copyist. In short, to sit down and copy a long work is about the last thing that I should dream of, as a means of study. To copy Thucydides eight times, as the tradition respecting Demosthenes goes, would be about the same as copying Gibbon three times: and who would undertake that?

[COMMITTING TO MEMORY WORD FOR WORD.]

2. Committing to memory _verbatim_, or nearly so. This too belongs to the same tradition regarding Demosthenes, and is probably as inaccurate as the other. Certainly the eight copyings would not suffice for having the whole by heart. Excepting a professional rhapsodist, or some one gifted with extraordinary powers of memory that would hardly be compatible with a great understanding, nobody would think of committing Thucydides to memory. That Demosthenes should be a perfect master both of the narrated facts, and of the sagacious theorisings of Thucydides in those facts, we may take for granted. And, farther, the orations delivered by opposing speakers in the great critical debates, might very well have been committed _verbatim_ by a young orator; many of them are masterpieces of oratory in every point of view. But the reason for getting them by heart does not apply