Words from the Wise and Otherwise, Part Eleven
Dear Reader,
This series has the most varied reader response. That is, I often get appreciative remarks on it, but the pieces themselves receive the least overall engagement. I don’t quite know what to make of such a curious mixture of responses.
Today’s first two thoughts on reading are from the same author—a rather famous one—five years apart. They are not about reading in the narrow sense. And yet, given their common exploration of “the diffusion of knowledge,” I cannot help but think that they are very much on the subject of reading. How else might such knowledge be spread so widely in the nineteenth century?
We do not, indeed, expect all men to be philosophers or statesmen; but we confidently trust, and our expectation of the duration of our system of government rests on that trust, that, by the diffusion of general knowledge and good and virtuous sentiments, the political fabric may be secure, as well against open violence and over throw as against the slow, but sure, undermining of licentiousness.
Daniel Webster. “The First Settlement of New England.” 1820.
And
Mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered; and the diffusion of knowledge, so astonishing in the last half-century, has rendered innumerable minds, variously gifted by nature, competent to be competitors or fellow-workers on the theatre of intellectual operation.
Daniel Webster. “The Bunker Hill Monument.” 1825.
A bit inspiring, eh? Also a bit different from our age’s technocratic cutoff of “the theatre of intellectual operation” from the masses. The diffusion is in some senses even greater in our day, but the desire for competent “fellow-workers” sometimes seems more of a stated desire than a genuine one.
This next quote might ruffle some feathers. It’s certainly ruffled mine.
Every book that we take up without a purpose is an opportunity lost of taking up a book with a purpose—every bit of stray information which we cram into our heads without any sense of its importance, is for the most part a bit of the most useful information driven out of our heads and choked off from our minds.
Frederic Harrison. "The Choice of Books." 1891.
I just… whew.
I want to disagree with it (and I can easily provide context in which to rationally do so), but that would be to deny its force upon me. As many quibbles might be raised, the conclusion has something to it. It is fortunate that purposes abound (my own for reading are substantial), but outside such abundance, my readings are inspired otherwise. Which means that as much as I enjoy the whimsy of “Why not this?,” Harrison might be on to something. And I don’t like it.
Turning from the niggling of Harrison, I thought it might be fun to enter into the humanities wars. And by that, I mean giving this definition from William James a whirl:
The sifting of human creations!—nothing less than this is what we ought to mean by the humanities. Essentially this means biography; what our colleges should teach is, therefore, biographical history, not that of politics merely, but of anything and everything so far as human efforts and conquests are factors that have played their part. Studying in this way, we learn what types of activity have stood the test of time; we acquire standards of the excellent: and durable.
William James. Memories and Studies. 1911.
Perhaps.
To fellow-workers,
Kreigh