Chapter 41 reading - 3

I think, after we can read, we should read the best things in literary works, don’t repeat a-b-ab and monophonic characters forever, don’t repeat grades every year in fourth grade and fifth grade, and don’t sit in front of the lowest grade classroom in elementary school for life Row.Many are content to be able to read, or to hear that they are read, perhaps only to appreciate the wisdom of a good book, the Bible, and so they read only light things, and let their senses pass through debauchery or monotony. the rest of my life.In our Circulating Library there is a work in several volumes called "Little Readings," which, I think, is the name of a town I have not been to.There are people, like the gluttonous teal and ostrich, who can digest everything, even after a heavy meal of meat and vegetables, because they do not like to waste.If other people are machines that feed this food, they are reading machines that gobble it up.They read nine thousand stories about Zebulon and Sephronia, how they loved each other as no one had ever loved, and their love was uneven,—in short, how they loved, how How to get up again, how to fall in love again!How some poor unfortunate man climbed the steeple, who had better not climb the bell-tower; and since he had needlessly reached the steeple, the merry novelist struck the bell, and let all the world Run over and listen to him say, oh my god!How he came down again!In my opinion, they might as well have transfigured all the ascending heroes of the common fictional world into weathercocks, as they often place heroes in constellations, and let the weathercocks spin around until Until they rust, don't let them come down to the ground to mess with the good people.The next time the novelist rings the bell again, even if the public meeting place burns to the ground, I won't even think of me moving it. "The Tenda of De-Tuk-Luck, a medieval romance by the famous author of Tittle-Tor-Dan; serialized monthly; crowded every day, hurry up." They used Pan-sized eyes, unwavering primal curiosity, a superb stomach, to read these things, the folds of the stomach don't even need to be tempered, just like those four-year-old children who sit in chairs all day and watch "Cinderella" with a gold-plated cover that sells for two cents -- as far as I can see, after reading it, they don't even make any progress in pronunciation, stress, and strengthening the tone, not to mention their understanding of the topic and the technique of applying the topic up.The result is a diminution of sight, a stagnation of all life, a general desolation, and a complete shedding of the intellectual faculties like a skin.Ginger bread of this kind, which is baked every day from nearly every bread oven, is more attractive and more widely marketed than bread made of pure flour or of rye flour and Indian corn meal.

Even the so-called "good readers" don't read the best books.What is our Concord culture?In this city, with very few exceptions, the best books, even some very good ones in English literature, are tasteless to everyone, although everyone can read and spell English.Even here and there a man of university education, or what is called a free education, knows little or nothing of the English classics; who wants to read the ancient works and the Bible, which record human thought? If they are, it is easy to get these books, but only a very few people are willing to take the effort to get in touch with them.I know a middle-aged woodcutter who subscribes to a French newspaper, he says it's not for the news, he's above that, he's to "keep his studies" because he's a Canadian by birth I asked him what he thinks is the best thing he can do in the world, and he replied that besides this, he still needs to work hard to improve his English.The average college graduate does or wants to do no more than that, and subscribes to an English-language newspaper for that purpose.Suppose a man has just finished reading perhaps the best book in the English language. How many people do you think he can talk about it with?Suppose again that a man has just read the classics in Greek or Latin, and even an illiterate would know how to extol them; but he will find no one to talk to.He can only be silent.There is hardly any professor in our college who, having mastered a difficult language, can master in equal proportion the profound wit and poetry of a Greek poet, and impart with sympathy to those who are sensitive and capable. To the heroic reader; and as for the sacred scriptures, the Bibles of mankind, who here can tell me their names?Most people don't know that only the Hebrew nation has a classic.Any man has labored to pick a piece of silver, but here are the words of gold, uttered by the wisest sages of antiquity, whose worth has been assured us by wise men of all ages;—yet we read What we read are nothing more than literacy books, primers and textbooks, and after leaving school, only "little books" and story books for children and beginners; so, our reading, our conversation and our thinking, are extremely low. , only worthy of Lilliputians and gnomes.

I wished to know men wiser than those born in Concord, whose names are scarcely heard here.Shall I hear Plato's name and not read his book?As if Plato were my fellow countryman and I had never seen him—as if my near neighbor and I had never heard him speak, or hear the language of his wisdom.But isn't that the case?His Dialogues, containing his immortal insights, lie on a nearby shelf, and I have not yet read them.We are ignorant, uneducated illiterates; and in this respect, I would say, there is no difference between those who are completely illiterate citizens, and those who are literate, but only Children's books and books for the extremely mentally retarded.We should be as good as the sages of old, but let us know their goodness first.We are little people, and in our mental leaps, poorly, we soar only a little higher than the newspaper news.