In "Reading"" Thoreau Compares the Words Printed in Great, or Classical, Books to What?

Reading

I accept to admit that this is the chapter I like least in Walden. In fact, I well-nigh wish that Thoreau had not written it. At that place are some ameliorate things he could accept washed. Thoreau read quite a bit; in fact, he received special permission to check books out of the library at his college after he had left. His comments on the books that he had plant well-nigh helpful and his explanation of why he found them helpful would accept been a powerful improver to his text. Thoreau was also an excellent teacher with ideas that were ahead of his fourth dimension. Whatever special comments or hints on the subject of educational activity would exist most valuable. And finally, Thoreau developed a powerful writing style. If not too far afield, his comments on what makes writing effective would be some other great addition. He makes some insightful comments about writing and why some books are effective in A Week, 1 of the topics on which that book has a ameliorate discussion than Walden. A Week, unfortunately, is badly damaged by long digressions on obscure ancient literature.

I nstead, Thoreau spends much of the chapter supporting a common prejudice found in our universities today: the idea that material which is very difficult to understand or which is written in an aboriginal language is far superior to simple, straightforward language, accessable to all. I'one thousand not denying that some subjects are difficult and complicated by their very nature, only it's likewise truthful that professors deliberately make their papers convoluted and otherwise difficult to read so that others will be thereby impressed. I'm not denying that ancient wisdom has value even today; nevertheless, to discover a jewel of wisdom, the reader must spend years learning a dead language then must wade through piles of ancient rubbish, and fifty-fifty then he is yet dependent on his modern insight as to what is good or bad inside the material.

I 'grand afraid that the Illiad owes its high reputation to the fact that it is very old, not due to its way, which we do not notice enjoyable or meaningful today. And why should the Illiad, which is old fiction, be something one should devote hours to reading while modern novels must be avoided as debasing? Are the modern characters less moral than those in the Illiad or do nosotros learn less from them? Didn't Thoreau say, "Better a living dog than a dead lion?" Of course, nosotros must recognize that the novel was withal in its infancy at the time Thoreau wrote, but fifty-fifty by his time some corking novels had been written.

I really have no complaint with the fact that Thoreau enjoyed studying the Illiad and other ancient texts, and I enjoy reading scholarly investigations into the Bible. I'm certainly glad that many are willing to devote long hours to such studies. I also find this chapter interesting because it gives insight into Thoreau'south view of the world, a view partially shaped past the years he spent studying Greek and Latin.

One thousand y trouble with Thoreau's advice is that he wishes it on everyone, not recognizing that people are different in their reading abilities. When I was yet a child in schoolhouse, I recognized that the greatest problem with the reading cloth that we were given was that information technology was boring and offered nothing of interest to those having to read it. The way to brand better readers out of people is non through offering them materials that are difficult to read, over their heads, and unrelated to their lives but through offering them materials that are at their electric current reading levels and that are (quoting Thoreau over again) "addressed to [their] current condition exactly." When people notice books more relevant, they will want to read more. But fifty-fifty in an ideal world, I doubt that most people would want to spend their time reading Greek fables.

A ll this said, I recognize that the full general point that Thoreau is making is valid, especially the statements made in his last paragraph. I wouldn't want everyone to try to be a scholar, but I would like to meet more people reading and thinking about what they read. Nosotros withal undervalue reading and books today, and the salaries we pay reverberate that underevaluation, as those involved in teaching and writing are paid much less than their educations seems to warrant. Nigh of the people I have known did not learn how to utilise books to their advantage in school and accept failed to continue to read and study subsequently finishing school. Those that watch the science and history channels on Television receiver do proceed to gain some agreement, just information technology is form school fabric by and large and often simplified to the point that information technology is inaccurate. And although at that place are many excellent novels, the majority offer footling more than but amusement. Certainly, there is nonetheless much room for improving our attitudes towards reading and literature.

I t is most important to understand that this chapter does non prepare the tone for the rest of Walden.

Comments | SECTIONS: | The New World | Writing | Thoreau | Home | Cycle Pages | Thoreau's Text in This Column My Comments in This Column Due west ith a little more than deliberation in the option of their pursuits, all men would maybe go substantially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike. In accumulating belongings for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fright no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a celebrity as he did, since information technology was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that at present reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed. That time which we actually improve, or which is improvable, is neither past, present, nor future. It's a puzzle that near do not set the pursuit of cognition equally a primary goal. It's man nature to excel, and knowledge provides tremendous advantages. The pursuit of wisdom should be even more bones, equally wisdom allows us to profit from success. Finally, obtaining a carefully examined moral code provides a sense of integrity and self-worth. Yet our civilization more often than not devalues these pursuits, and the eternal truths are seen as infinitely boring. M y residence was more than favorable, not only to thought, but to serious reading, than a university; and though I was beyond the range of the ordinary circulating library, I had more ever come within the influence of those books which broadcast round the world, whose sentences were start written on bawl, and are now only copied from fourth dimension to time on to linen paper. Says the poet Mir Camar Uddîn Mast, "Beingness seated, to run through the region of the spiritual world; I have had this reward in books. To be intoxicated past a single glass of vino; I have experienced this pleasure when I have drunk the liquor of the esoteric doctrines." I kept Homer's Iliad on my table through the summer, though I looked at his page only now and and so. Incessant labor with my hands, at beginning, for I had my house to cease and my beans to hoe at the aforementioned fourth dimension, made more than study incommunicable. Nevertheless I sustained myself by the prospect of such reading in future. I read 1 or two shallow books of travel in the intervals of my work, till that employment made me ashamed of myself, and I asked where it was then that I lived. To exist able to read, think, and write well, it helps to get away from noise, confusion, distractions, and the demands of others. In addition, Thoreau was closer to Nature, the source of much poetry and art.

Thoreau never read fiction and fifty-fifty felt embarrassed virtually reading travel stories.

T he educatee may read Homer or Aeschylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that he in some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages. The heroic books, even if printed in the grapheme of our female parent tongue, volition always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common utilize permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we accept. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has washed fiddling to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, equally e'er. It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn merely some words of an aboriginal linguistic communication, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. Information technology is non in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard. Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make mode for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will e'er study classics, in whatsoever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of human? They are the but oracles which are not decayed, and at that place are such answers to the most modernistic research in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. Nosotros might equally well omit to study Nature considering she is quondam. To read well, that is, to read truthful books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and 1 that will task the reader more than any do which the customs of the twenty-four hour period esteem. It requires a preparation such equally the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly equally they were written. It is non plenty even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the linguistic communication heard and the language read. The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, most brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. The other is the maturity and experience of that; if that is our mother natural language, this is our father tongue, a reserved and select expression, as well pregnant to be heard past the ear, which we must exist born again in society to speak. The crowds of men who only spoke the Greek and Latin tongues in the Middle Ages were non entitled by the accident of birth to read the works of genius written in those languages; for these were not written in that Greek or Latin which they knew, only in the select language of literature. They had not learned the nobler dialects of Greece and Rome, but the very materials on which they were written were waste paper to them, and they prized instead a cheap contemporary literature. But when the several nations of Europe had caused distinct though rude written languages of their ain, sufficient for the purposes of their ascension literatures, then first learning revived, and scholars were enabled to discern from that remoteness the treasures of antiquity. What the Roman and Grecian multitude could not hear, after the lapse of ages a few scholars read, and a few scholars only are even so reading it. The start sentence in this paragraph seems to have errors, but Thoreau is using the nowadays subjunctive. We find in these lines Thoreau's very loftier regard (or perhaps "reverence" is the better term) for the ancient written word. Thoreau points out that the reading of aboriginal texts is difficult and requires much self-subject. The reader, in reading these words, at least imagines himself in the place of the heroes, and he must give some of his time to their studies. Note the strong words "emulate" and "consecrate" used here, making the reading a religious act. Note besides that Thoreau admits to using his imagination to make the material meliorate than it is. I detect that movies based on books that I take read are much less colorful and imaginative than the pictures I made in my mind while reading the book. He considers the reading of a book to require a great bargain of effort and concentration.

Thoreau considers the spoken language less important and essential than the written language, while linguists generally believe that the spoken language is more important. Certainly, it is easier to learn and remember a linguistic communication past emphasizing speaking. Nonetheless, it has remained common for school classes which teach language to emphasize the written language or even literature over the spoken word.

Thoreau correctly points out that most of the literature of Hellenic republic and Rome was unavailable to the citizens because the spoken linguistic communication had become too different from the classical language in which the literature was written, only as many people can't sympathise Shakespeare's language and and very few can understand Chaucer's.

H owever much we may admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language equally the empyrean with its stars is behind the clouds. At that place are the stars, and they who can may read them. The astronomers forever comment on and notice them. They are not exhalations like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. What is chosen eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who tin can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the oversupply which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and health of mankind, to all in whatsoever age who can understand him. Thoreau is saying that even the very best voice communication is non equally good equally the best writing because the speaker is always trying to appeal to those around him while the author, who doesn't take "the effect and the crowd" to distract him, is appealing to readers of all ages and thus speaks immortal truths. Due north o wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. Information technology is something at one time more intimate with united states and more universal than any other piece of work of fine art. It is the work of fine art nearest to life itself. Information technology may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;- not exist represented on canvas or in marble just, but be carved out of the jiff of life itself. The symbol of an aboriginal man'due south thought becomes a mod man's spoken communication. Ii thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer gilded and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time. Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand up naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They accept no cause of their own to plead, merely while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on flesh. When the illiterate and perhaps scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles of wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at final to those still college just yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only of the imperfection of his civilization and the vanity and insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good sense by the pains which exist takes to secure for his children that intellectual civilisation whose desire he so keenly feels; and thus it is that he becomes the founder of a family. Considering a book is written for all times, Thoreau finds it understandable that Alexander would treat the Iliad equally a relic. He feels books are protected from harm because they contain the data within them to recreate their groundwork. Considering books educate, even uneducated people value them and piece of work to ensure that their children will read them. T hose who have not learned to read the aboriginal classics in the language in which they were written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race; for it is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been made into any mod tongue, unless our civilization itself may exist regarded as such a transcript. Homer has never all the same been printed in English, nor Aeschylus, nor Virgil even -- works as refined, as solidly done, and as beautiful nigh equally the morning itself; for subsequently writers, say what we will of their genius, have rarely, if ever, equalled the elaborate beauty and finish and the lifelong and heroic literary labors of the ancients. They only talk of forgetting them who never knew them. It will be soon enough to forget them when nosotros take the learning and the genius which volition enable us to attend to and appreciate them. That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still farther accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum of the earth. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at concluding.

Thoreau feels it is necessary to be able to read the classics in their original language in order to understand human history properly considering no correct translation has always been made. Only people who take never read them in the original language would consider them unimportant. He likewise feels that these ancient works are nigh as cute as the morning itself, Thoreau'due south strongest praise. Finally, he suggests that books are so valuable that they can assist the states achieve heaven, an unsaid comparison to the Tower of Babel. Past proverb that the Vaticans will be filled with all of these books, he is suggesting that someday all religions will accept all these books (bibles from all religions, classical writings, and the greatest modern writings) every bit sources of wisdom.

T he works of the swell poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only cracking poets can read them. They have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at about astrologically, not astronomically. Near men have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience, every bit they take learned to naught in society to go along accounts and not be cheated in trade; but of reading every bit a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; still this only is reading, in a high sense, not that which lulls us equally a luxury and suffers the nobler faculties to sleep the while, but what we have to stand up on tip-toe to read and devote our near alarm and wakeful hours to. At present, in add-on to the power to read a dead language, Thoreau wants the reader to be a poet as well. He feels the reader must read with insight and understanding and not equally would be washed for practical purposes. He goes on to explain the necessity of reading carefully and alertly. I retrieve that having learned our letters we should read the best that is in literature, and not be forever repeating our a b abs, and words of i syllable, in the quaternary or fifth classes, sitting on the lowest and foremost form all our lives. Most men are satisfied if they read or hear read, and perchance have been convicted past the wisdom of i good book, the Bible, and for the rest of their lives vegetate and misemploy their faculties in what is called easy reading. There is a work in several volumes in our Circulating Library entitled "Piffling Reading," which I thought referred to a boondocks of that name which I had not been to. There are those who, like cormorants and ostriches, can digest all sorts of this, even subsequently the fullest dinner of meats and vegetables, for they suffer nil to be wasted. If others are the machines to provide this provender, they are the machines to read information technology. They read the ix thousandth tale about Zebulon and Sophronia, and how they loved every bit none had ever loved before, and neither did the class of their true beloved run smooth, -- at any rate, how it did run and stumble, and become up again and go on! how some poor unfortunate got up on to a steeple, who had better never have gone up as far as the belfry; and then, having needlessly got him upwards there, the happy novelist rings the bell for all the earth to come together and hear, O dear! how he did go down once again! For my part, I think that they had better metamorphose all such aspiring heroes of universal noveldom into man conditions-cocks, as they used to put heroes among the constellations, and let them swing circular there till they are rusty, and non come down at all to carp honest men with their pranks. The next time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-business firm burn down. "The Skip of the Tip-Toe-Hop, a Romance of the Eye Ages, by the celebrated author of 'Tittle-Tol-Tan,' to appear in monthly parts; a great rush; don't all come together." All this they read with saucer eyes, and erect and primitive marvel, and with unwearied gizzard, whose corrugations even yet need no sharpening, merely as some little four-year-old bencher his ii-cent gilt-covered edition of Cinderella, -- without any improvement, that I can come across, in the pronunciation, or accent, or emphasis, or any more skill in extracting or inserting the moral. The result is dulness of sight, a stagnation of the vital circulations, and a general deliquium and sloughing off of all the intellectual faculties. This sort of gingerbread is baked daily and more than sedulously than pure wheat or rye-and-Indian in almost every oven, and finds a surer marketplace. Thoreau suggests that people should learn to read meliorate literature and should not stick to very basic reading. In that location is a great deal that is written in simple, easy, and uncomplicated linguistic communication that does non require thought or reflection, and Thoreau sees little value in this kind of reading.

Thoreau spends the latter half of this paragraph making fun of some of the books that he has encountered.

He suggests that poor reading materials create wearisome people. I'm not sure this is true; however, I think the opposite can exist truthful. Once when I became tired of my father'southward misinformation about astronomy, I gave him some contempo books on the subject area, and I was greatly pleased to hear his statements improve. Merely as it does piddling adept to read outdated books on scientific topics, it makes lilliputian sense to read novels with stereotypical content.

T he all-time books are not read fifty-fifty by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? In that location is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no sense of taste for the best or for very good books even in English language literature, whose words all can read and spell. Even the college-bred and then-called liberally educated men here and elsewhere have actually petty or no acquaintance with the English classics; and as for the recorded wisdom of mankind, the ancient classics and Bibles, which are attainable to all who volition know of them, there are the feeblest efforts anywhere made to become acquainted with them. I know a woodchopper, of middle historic period, who takes a French newspaper, not for news as he says, for he is above that, but to "proceed himself in exercise," he being a Canadian by nascency; and when I inquire him what he considers the best thing he tin practise in this world, he says, beside this, to keep up and add to his English. This is most equally much as the college-bred generally do or aspire to do, and they take an English newspaper for the purpose. 1 who has merely come up from reading peradventure ane of the best English books will find how many with whom he can antipodal about it? Or suppose he comes from reading a Greek or Latin classic in the original, whose praises are familiar even to the then-chosen illiterate; he will find nobody at all to speak to, but must continue silence well-nigh information technology. Indeed, there is hardly the professor in our colleges, who, if he has mastered the difficulties of the linguistic communication, has proportionally mastered the difficulties of the wit and verse of a Greek poet, and has whatever sympathy to impart to the alert and heroic reader; and equally for the sacred Scriptures, or Bibles of mankind, who in this town can tell me even their titles? Most men do non know that any nation only the Hebrews have had a scripture. A human, any homo, volition become considerably out of his manner to choice up a silver dollar; but hither are golden words, which the wisest men of artifact have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding historic period have assured us of; -- and yet nosotros learn to read only every bit far as Easy Reading, the primers and form-books, and when we leave school, the "Little Reading," and story-books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our chat and thinking, are all on a very depression level, worthy merely of pygmies and manikins. The comments Thoreau makes here are truthful. My mother, for instance, was an English teacher and taught literature, yet she never opened a book except to set a lesson. To some extent, the lessons in school tin exist designed to have the place of the students reading for themselves, and oft when the students are supposed to read, they study Cliff Notes instead. When students would read books and write reports on them, my female parent would consult Chief Plots, rather than having assigned books she was acquainted with. When I was in college studying literature, I could find no one to talk over it with, fifty-fifty amongst my fellow English students. If nothing else, discussing the consignment would have been excellent preparation for the test.

Once more, Thoreau is right in saying that few people know anything about the bibles of other religions. Here, the trouble might be more that they don't desire to know about the other religions.

Today as well, I discover very few people who can engage in an intellectual chat or who want to. Even more rare is the person who has reached his own opinions.

I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this our Concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly known here. Or shall I hear the name of Plato and never read his book? As if Plato were my townsman and I never saw him, -- my adjacent neighbor and I never heard him speak or attended to the wisdom of his words. But how actually is information technology? His Dialogues, which contain what was immortal in him, lie on the side by side shelf, and yet I never read them. We are underbred and depression-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do non make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. We should be every bit good every bit the worthies of antiquity, only partly by first knowing how good they were. We are a race of tit-men, and soar but little college in our intellectual flights than the columns of the daily newspaper. Plato's accounts of Socrates and his educational activity translate into English well and make interesting stories, but how many people have ever read them or heard them read?

In calling people "tit-men," Thoreau is thinking of the titmouse, a bird that stays close to the ground rather than flying high in the sky.

I t is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if nosotros could really bear and sympathise, would be more than salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for the states. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a volume! The volume exists for us, perchance, which will explicate our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound the states accept in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not ane has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life. Moreover, with wisdom nosotros shall learn liberality. The solitary hired human being on a farm in the outskirts of Concur, who has had his 2nd nascence and peculiar religious experience, and is driven as he believes into the silent gravity and exclusiveness by his faith, may think it is not truthful; just Zoroaster, thousands of years ago, travelled the same road and had the same feel; just he, beingness wise, knew it to be universal, and treated his neighbors accordingly, and is even said to take invented and established worship among men. Let him humbly district with Zoroaster then, and through the liberalizing influence of all the worthies, with Jesus Christ himself, and let "our church building" get by the board. Thoreau makes the suggestion that if we read we can find books that help united states of america out of difficulties or that open up new opportunities for the states. I know that there are a number of books that have been extremely influential in my life, Walden being one of them. On more i occasion, a few words from a book have done me much more good than annihilation anyone could have said.

Thoreau uses the instance of a farm hand to suggest that reading more than widely can take a liberalizing influence on a person. Of course, his proposition of the man abandoning the church would not have been well-received in some quarters. Still, Emerson wrote in "Brahmin," "Find me and turn thy back on heaven."

Due west e avowal that nosotros belong to the Nineteenth Century and are making the most rapid strides of whatever nation. Simply consider how petty this hamlet does for its own culture. I practice not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered past them, for that will not advance either of us. We need to be provoked, -- goaded similar oxen, as nosotros are, into a trot. We have a comparatively decent system of common schools, schools for infants simply; but excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the winter, and latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested past the State, no school for ourselves. We spend more on almost whatsoever article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental disquiet. It is time that nosotros had uncommon schools, that nosotros did non get out off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisure -- if they are, indeed, and so well off -- to pursue liberal studies the residual of their lives. Shall the world be confined to one Paris or one Oxford forever? Cannot students be boarded here and go a liberal teaching under the skies of Concord? Can we not rent some Abelard to lecture to us? Alas! what with foddering the cattle and tending the store, nosotros are kept from school too long, and our education is sadly neglected. In this country, the village should in some respects accept the identify of the nobleman of Europe. It should exist the patron of the fine arts. It is rich enough. It wants only the magnanimity and refinement. Information technology tin spend money enough on such things every bit farmers and traders value, merely it is thought Utopian to propose spending money for things which more intelligent men know to be of far more worth. This boondocks has spent seventeen thousand dollars on a boondocks-firm, thank fortune or politics, only probably it volition not spend then much on living wit, the truthful meat to put into that shell, in a hundred years. The ane hundred and twenty-five dollars annually subscribed for a Lyceum in the winter is improve spent than whatever other equal sum raised in the town. If nosotros live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life exist in any respect provincial? If we will read newspapers, why non skip the gossip of Boston and take the best newspaper in the world at once? -- not be sucking the pap of "neutral family" papers, or browsing "Olive Branches" here in New England. Let the reports of all the learned societies come to us, and we will see if they know anything. Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading? As the nobleman of cultivated taste surrounds himself with whatsoever conduces to his culture, -- genius -- learning -- wit -- books -- paintings -- statuary -- music -- philosophical instruments, and the like; so let the village practice, -- not stop short at a pedagogue, a parson, a sexton, a parish library, and three selectmen, because our Pilgrim forefathers got through a cold wintertime in one case on a bleak rock with these. To deed collectively is co-ordinate to the spirit of our institutions; and I am confident that, as our circumstances are more flourishing, our means are greater than the nobleman'south. New England can hire all the wise men in the world to come and teach her, and board them round the while, and non be provincial at all. That is the uncommon school nosotros want. Instead of noblemen, let u.s. have noble villages of men. If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, become round a little in that location, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds the states. I find Thoreau's conclusion to be very sensible. I see no reason why people should abandon the learning process after a sure number of years in school when learning further tin make them more than free and independent.

The fact that most people exercise little reading makes them useful machines for industry, working all 24-hour interval long, coming dwelling house to be mesmerized past the tv set, and using the weekend to do chores and go to church. All the same, if people spent more time learning, they would know how to solve more than of their ain problems.

Of form, Thoreau is thinking here more than of learning for intellectual growth than learning for practical reasons, but I think the 2 are more alike than nearly would acknowledge. In acquiring the power to analyze poesy, for instance, ane is acquiring the power to analyze life situations. In arguing history, ane is besides learning methods of evaluating i'southward own life.

Information technology's very ironic that our modern gild puts and so much stress on teaching now, but every bit individuals we give it so picayune attention.

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