How to Read/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
WHAT'S THE USE?
I
We have now completed the first portion of our inquiry. We have found out what reading really is. We have found out how we do it. And from this knowledge we have drawn our preliminary conclusions as to the true nature of "learning to read" and as to the first steps necessary for setting about this endlessly interesting self-enhancement.
We have satisfied ourselves that this learning is not a dull, two-year task in a primary school, as usually assumed. We know, indeed, that it is no once-for-all acquirement (like learning the Greek alphabet or learning to extract cube roots) in any educational curriculum. We see, on the contrary, that it is a till-death-us-do-part sort of learning. For we see that it consists in a lifelong, year-by-year, progressive learning to put the constantly accumulating store of our own personal experience into fuller and fuller order, by using it for the "producing," on the stage of our own consciousness, of the reported actions, the suggested emotions, and the outlined thoughts of others.
And from the vantage-point of this knowledge we begin to see, opening out at the feet of our clarified understanding, a deepening perspective of possibilities. We begin, in fact, to realize that learning to read is an adventure.
II
And of course the first result of this realization is a thrill.
We feel the romance, the allure, of the undertaking. The vitally personal nature of it appeals to us. The very fact that we must set out upon it, like pioneers, dependent upon our own original equipment and upon the subsequent, day-by-day results of our own resourcefulness, stimulates us. The realization that we shall be setting out for an individual exploring of two mysterious, little-known, and infinitely exciting worlds—the world outside us and the world within—fires our imagination.
At first blush we are all enthusiasm for the start.
III
But, on further thought, there is sure to come a reaction.
We are going, in this very chapter, to see that two alternating impulses—the impulse to do, and the impulse to shrink from doing—lie at the very heart of all our living; are, as it were, the beating of that heart. And the strong impulse-to-action that is born of our realization of the fine, adventurous possibilities of thus learning to read is sure to be succeeded by a counter-impulse—an impulse-to-inaction.
We see that this adventure will be very long, and very slow, and very likely arduous; and so we ask ourselves why we should bother.
We see that, properly prosecuted, it would inevitably call for other, less easy, things than mere enthusiasm: for patience and pertinacity; for the honesty of humbleness; for the courage of self-reliance; for grace as well as grit; and we pause and ask ourselves if the game is worth the candle.
"This world," we say to ourselves, "is a busy place. We are not specialists, we are 'general practitioners' in life. Is not the pursuit of special knowledge, the attainment of special skill, even in so useful and universal & thing as reading, the concern of the specialist?"
And so we shrug our shoulders and ask ourselves, "What's the use?"
IV
Very good. This is a legitimate question, although, as we shall see in a moment, it probes very deep. For, since reading is a form of living, this question, applied to it, is but a form of saying, "What's the use—ever?" Perhaps, however, in answering the reading form of this question we shall find that we have answered the general form also.
This much at least is evident to start with: we cannot hope to answer this reading-question reasonably until we have uncovered for ourselves our real reasons for reading. And thus we are led directly to the second item of our projected investigation—the inquiry into why we read.
Suppose, like good gardeners, we now dig straight down to the real root of this matter.
V
We are seldom conscious of these reasons, yet we are always, when we read, actuated by one or other of them. It makes no difference who we are or what we are; these reasons and no others hold good for us. They hold good for Hapsburgs and for hoboes. They are all the philosopher has, and Fluffy Ruffles has them.
Nor does the nature of the thing read make any difference.
This may be a sky-sign on Broadway, or a signpost at a country crossroads. It may be the account of a murder trial in the morning paper, or a bargain-sale notice delivered in the afternoon mail. It may be a love scene in "Hearts Aflutter" (sixty thousand sold before publication), or the chapter on the Categorical Imperative in Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" (copyright expired). It makes no difference.
Consciously or unconsciously, wittingly or unwittingly, we all read everything that we do read (not according to its nature, but according to our need) either
or,
VI
Yes, I know. You are nodding your head (meaning "aye, aye, sir") over the first of these statements. And, deep down inside, you are thinking that I am talking highbrow in making the second.
But you are wrong.
The significance of these expressions is equally simple, and the experiences to which they relate are equally common to us all.
Wanting to "get away from one's self" merely expresses the recurrent need, experienced by each one of us, of forgetting for a while the tangle of contradictory impulses, mixed motives, cross-purposes, and conflicting emotions that is one's self; and which, when too intimately realized, or too continuously envisaged, becomes unbearable.
Wanting to "find one's self" merely expresses the equally recurrent craving, equally experienced by us all, actively to achieve some measure of order, no matter how fleeting or how restricted, in the ever-flexing meshes of this same internal tangle.
However, this is a stuffy subject. Let us get out into the open air.
VII
Let us suppose a desperate morning: a morning when the milkman has n't come (or the blue-ribbon chef has given notice); when the baby cannot somehow seem to cut its tooth (or the limousine to use its carburettor); when Himself has gotten out of bed on the wrong side; when the people next door keep playing the victrola; when, in short, the cosmic Doll is just generally leaking sawdust at every joint.
Let us suppose that on such a morning a woman—yourself or another—flees to this strip of park and sits down on one of its green benches: on a bench that looks across a stretch of level lawn; past a rosily budding oak; past a white signboard nailed to a driven stake; out to the restful river, where the big ships lie at anchor and the little shallops come and go.
For a time, her need—the need of escaping from herself—is ministered to by the sheer sensed beauty of the scene. She lies back on its loveliness. She loses herself in it. She floats on it like a grateful swimmer in a summer sea.
But not, alas, for long.
Little meddlesome messages from home— like Marconigrams in mid-Atlantic—begin to reach her.
The river view blurs.
The butcher's bill reasserts itself.
With a little shudder of impatience she turns away and looks for a new, a nearer, a more insistent interest.
She watches the nursemaid on the next bench who is industriously upturning a baby in the vain hope of emptying it of yells.
She follows with a speculative eye a wistful couple that come strolling past with finger tips surreptitiously touching.
She notes the growing glory of the budding oak and for a moment fills her mind with that.
And each of these things in turn serves her need for a time, and then loses its efficacy.
Finally, her glance lights on the white signboard; but at first she only takes it in as a noticeable spot—a white rectangle against a green background. As that she toys with it. She moves it (in her mind) to the right and left; fits it in, picture-puzzle fashion, at the foot of the oak—plays an idle, esthetic game with it.
At last, she tires of this in its turn. She sees that it is a notice board. She realizes that there is printing on it. She gets desperately up. She walks slowly over to it. She reads it.
VIII
And what, you ask, does it say?
What, I answer, does it matter?
Perhaps it says, "keep off the grass."
Perhaps it says, "to 96th street and the gate."
What does matter, here, is her reason for reading it. For here, in its simplest form, absolutely unadulterated, "chemically pure," we have the first of our two impulses toward reading. This woman read the signboard to get away from herself.
IX
But she need not have.
Suppose that by ever so little we change our supposition.
Suppose that the sudden peace, the far view, the spring air, the muted sounds of busy life rising from the river, prove healing to this woman's hurt.
Suppose that in consequence, and without her conscious knowledge, the tide of her courage and energy that had, like the tide in the river, been running out, turns and begins to "make."
Suppose, in further consequence, that the victrola and the milkman, the baby's tooth and the family grouches, the little puzzles and big problems in the stream of her life, begin, like the anchored barges and battleships on the river, to swing at their moorings and to face the other way. So that when, at last, the Marconigrams begin to come through, they are no longer S.O.S's of desperation, but urgings to action.
"Good Heavens!" she says, suddenly, "I never dreamed that it was that late!"
She draws a long, invigorated breath. She straightens her shoulders and looks about her. She wonders which is her nearest way out of the park; sees the signboard; gets alertly up; goes over to it; reads it.
X
And what, you ask, does it say?
What, I repeat, does it matter?
Perhaps it says, "to 96th street and the gate."
Perhaps it says, "no dogs allowed at large."
What matters, here, is again her reason for reading it. For here, in its simplest form, isolated, unadulterated, "chemically pure," we have the second of our impulses toward reading. This time the woman read the sign to find herself.
XI
And this woman in the park is typical of us all. Just so—not according to its nature, but according to our need; impelled, first by one and then by the other of these two promptings—it is possible for us to read anything; from the "help wanted, female" column—which we may read (1) because we have read everything else in the paper and still wish to "keep from thinking," or (2) because we want a job—to Fox's "Book of Martyrs," which we may read (1) to kill time or (2) to prepare for eternity.
Nor does it cover the ground to say that in either one of these two modes we may read anything. It is necessary to add that in alternation between these two moods we must read everything.
Are you inclined to doubt this last?
Let us glance, for a moment, beyond the scope of our immediate inquiry.
Not alone our reading, but our lives, alternate between these two moods; are conducted in these two modes; are governed by these two appetites, urges,—call them what you will,—this desire to do, and this desire to shrink from doing; this recurrent keenness personally to master reality, and this recurrent craving personally to escape from the consciousness of its tyranny; this longing to "find ourselves," and this longing to "get away from ourselves."
If you doubt this, look into your own heart. You will see (as your eyes get used to the dusk) that it is multiformly true. These two urges are, so to say, the legs of our inner being. We move, from day to day, from hour to hour, sometimes from moment to moment, by advancing first one and then the other of them.
For we are built that way. We are spiritual bipeds.
XII
But, as I have already said, we are seldom conscious of these reasons.
No one, unless he be an unconscionable prig, thinks, say, of the looking-up of a subject in an encyclopedia, as an effort to "find himself"; nor, unless he is very low in his mind, of the reading, say, of a detective story on a journey as an effort to "get away from himself."
Let us therefore briefly bridge the gap between what analysis has shown us to be the fundamental character of our reading impulses and the more familiar forms in which these impulses habitually manifest themselves to us in daily life.
What are the simplest terms of everyday speech in which we can adequately summarize our conscious impulses toward reading?
Let us put it that all these conscious impulses fall under one or other of the following heads:—
Some form of wanting to play.
Some form of wanting to forget.
Here, however, instead of two divisions, we have three. And while the first and last of these are obvious translations of the two expressions we have been using, the relation that the second bears to these expressions is not so clear. "Some form of wanting to play" describes a class of reading-impulses familiar to us all. But how does it fit into our recent analysis, if, indeed, it does fit into it?
Let us examine the play-impulse a bit more closely.
XIII
Our old friend the New Standard Dictionary defines "play" as "action without special aim, or for amusement; opposed to work or earnest." And from time immemorial poets, puritans, and push-aheads—looking on, from their respective temperamental angles, at the apparent frivolities of kids, kittens, cubs, and young children—have been at one in accepting this definition at its surface value.
But a new spirit of wanting to know—the spirit of redding things up by a more intelligent reading of the book of Nature, the scientific spirit—has recently come into the world. And all kinds of men, singly and in groups, have been looking with freshly focused minds at all sorts of supposedly unimportant happenings; even at the gambols of kittens and at the games of children. And (since science, like charity, begins at home) one of the first things that these latter observers discovered was the fact that no kitten ever plays at anything except at being a cat, and that no puppy ever plays at anything except at being a dog.
At first this seemed interesting, but not especially important. But, as the observations were extended, it developed that the lower one goes in the scale of life, the more meager and short-lived become the play-impulses of the young; while the higher one goes in the scale, the more complex and long-continued they are. And when the facts had been sufficiently studied and compared, it became clear that the play of young animals, far from being a mere meaningless spending of surplus energy, is really in the nature of a preparation—a dramatization of their developing instincts. And when, gradually, a great many men and groups of men, working along separate lines and ultimately comparing notes and sharing discoveries, had built up the sciences of biology and comparative psychology, it became evident at last that the same is true of children.
Of course, at first, it did n't look (to take a crude example) as though the small son of highly civilized parents was "playing at being a man" when he used the first stick he got hold of to beat the cat with. But no sooner had biology discovered that the life of every creature, from conception to maturity, is a condensed recapitulation of the evolution of its race, than the matter became clear. The three-year-old club-wielder is not yet playing at being a civilized man like his father, but is still playing at being a club-wielding wild man like his prehistoric forbears. He is, in fact, dramatizing the instincts of that phase of development through which he is then passing.
Later on he and his fellows will dramatize the instincts of savage tribesmen by forming "gangs" and by the building (quite without "special aim," as the dictionary would say) of bonfires at the same period developing the savage's thoughtless cruelty and the fire-defended nomad's fear of the dark.
Nor, while all this is going on, is the child neglecting to dramatize that other instinct—the instinct of imitativeness. He does this by playing at driving tandem, playing at keeping store, playing at keeping house. And he constantly mixes the two. As when he dramatizes the ancestral instinct of pugnacity in elaborate snowball fights, and organizes the defenses and the attacks on the supposed ground-plan of Verdun.
XIV
In short, play, in the young, is a form of practice; an embodying in action of developing instincts.
And the same thing, with a slight difference, is true of grown-ups.
Even grown-up animals play.
The wise old dog, chasing the chicken that he takes very good care not to catch, is playing; and is dramatizing an instinct that life, as he is living it, forbids him to indulge in earnest.
And the grown-up man, with a thousand instincts suppressed by life as he is living it, and by the need of concentration on the individual tasks that this life imposes, takes his recreation by playing; and plays by dramatizing one or more of these otherwise inoperative urges.
He may do this quite simply and directly—dramatize his instinct for the chase by going after big game, or by shooting squirrels, or by firing at clay pipes at the county fair. Or he may do it vicariously—dramatize his fighting instinct by watching a boxing-match. Or he may do it obliquely—dramatize his acquisitive instinct by collecting postage stamps. Or he may do it symbolically—dramatize his your-money-or-your-life instinct by pointing four aces at an opponent's head and relieving him of his "pile" at pennyante.
XV
But there is another form of play; another method of dramatizing suppressed instincts—the most universally applicable, indeed, and most minutely adjustable of all methods to all needs.
A man may dramatize any instinct that he has by taking the right book down from the right shelf and by then identifying himself in imagination with the instinct's pictured fulfillment.
And this is precisely what we are seeking to do when we read from any impulse recognizable as "some form of wanting to play."
We are seeking relaxation by dramatizing some side of ourselves that is not usually free to function. We are, indeed, trying for refreshment by "finding ourselves" afresh.
XVI
Let us get back to our muttons.
These being our reasons for reading, what is the use of taking more than ordinary trouble in learning to read?
The answer goes into a nutshell.
We live, as it happens, in a world where all mental highways are partly paved with ink. We live in a world where the avenues of approach to "ourselves" and many of the most direct avenues of escape from "ourselves"—the alternating roads of our constant needs—are, at least in part and by inescapable necessity, roads of reading.
How effectively—and how far—we are able to go along these roads depends upon our means of locomotion.
"Learning to read," in the common-school fashion, is but "learning to walk" in the nursery sense. The rest is up to us.
We live, as it were, alone, in the country.
We can, if we choose, keep no horse in the stable except "shank's mare." We can confine ourselves to the meager utilitarianism of "hoofing it," and to the modest relaxation of "walks."
Or we can ride a bike.
Or own a Ford.
Or drive an eight-cylinder car.
XVII
This is the answer.
Of course, as you may perhaps be moved to point out to me, it is not an ultimate answer.
But there are no ultimate answers.
And for this particular answer this much at least may be said: The question—"What's the use?"—is a query that, like a recurrent decimal, may go on repeating itself forever. And this answer is a recurrent answer.
Pose this question from any angle you choose, couch your reply in any terms you elect,—theological or biological, metaphysical or physical,—mystical or plain practical, and this answer can be shown to be the gist of your reply.
It is, indeed, the ultimate essence of the only answer there is.
XVIII
And now, in closing this chapter, and while we have our reasons for reading thus recognizably before us, I want to say a further word about them in connection with the special purposes of our inquiry—the acquirement, namely, of a more intelligent use of reading for our own ends.
We have seen that our reasons for reading may be summed up as follows:—
Some urge toward wanting to know, and some urge toward wanting to play; both being forms of the desire to "find ourselves"; and some urge to- ward wanting to forget, the same being an impulse to escape from the consciousness of a side of ourselves that is weary, or baffled, or discouraged.
Please note, then, that the last of these reasons can justify itself by fulfillment only through the development, in us, of one or other of the other two urges.
We cannot forget, through reading, except by becoming interested in what we read. And we cannot become interested in what we read except by beginning to "want to know" or by beginning to "play."
We cannot, in short, escape from one side of ourselves except by beginning to formulate another.
We are like a man, standing. If he wearies of standing on one foot, he can stand on the other. And if he wearies of standing on that, he can shift back. Only, mentally, we are centipedes. We have a hundred shifts.
We are many-sided. And there are three ways of ministering to, and of being served by,—each of them through reading. "Wanting to know" is an active side of us, reaching out for its own. "Wanting to play" is a smothered side of us, asking to be allowed to breathe. "Wanting to forget" is a wearied side of us, asking to be relieved from duty. An intelligent use of reading for our own ends, therefore, involves an intelligent selection of what we will elect to know, of how we will elect to play, and of what forms of these activities we will elect to employ for purposes of relief and relaxation.
Later on, in the chapter on "A Sense of Direction," we shall return to this matter of intelligent choice. But before doing this it is necessary for us to gain, at first-hand, a more vivid realization and a more intimate understanding of the many-sidedness that we have above referred to. We must find out exactly what we mean by calling reading an exploration of two worlds—the world outside us and the world within.