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    Contents

    INTRODUCTION SYNTOPICAL GUIDE VOLUME 1

    IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE VOLUME 2

    IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE VOLUME 3

    IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE VOLUME 4

    CRITICAL ESSAYS VOLUME 5

    HUMANITY AND SOCIETY VOLUME 6

    HUMANITY AND SOCIETY VOLUME 7

    NATURAL SCIENCE VOLUME 8

    MATHEMATICS VOLUME 9

    PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS VOLUME 10

    Gateway to the Great BooksGATEWAY

    TO THE

    GREAT BOOKS

    ROBERT M. HUTCHINS, MORTIMER J. ADLER

    Editors in Chief

    CLIFTON FADIMAN

    Associate Editor

    1

    INTRODUCTION

    SYNTOPICAL GUIDE

    JACOB E. SAFRA

    Chairman, Board of Directors

    JORGE AGUILAR-CAUZ, President

    ENCYCLOP?DIA BRITANNICA, INC.

    CHICAGO

    LONDON NEW DELHI PARIS SEOUL

    SYDNEY TAIPEI TOKYO? 1990, 1963 Encyclop?dia Britannica, Inc.

    All rights reserved

    International Standard Book Number: 978-1-59339-221-5

    No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by

    any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in

    writing from the publisher.

    Note on Texts and Text Illustrations

    The spelling and punctuation of certain texts in this set have

    been changed in accordance with modern British and American usage.

    Translations and transliterations added by the editors

    are enclosed in brackets.

    Text illustrations in Volumes 8 and 9 have been revised

    and adapted to show modern equipment.

    Portraits of authors in Volumes 2 through 10

    are by Fred Steffen of Chicagoiii

    Contents

    of Volume 1

    INTRODUCTION

    I The Ways—and Whys—of Reading 1

    II Human Imagination 20

    III Human Society 37

    IV Science and Mathematics 58

    V Philosophy 72

    VI The Endless Journey 89

    SYNTOPICAL GUIDE 92

    APPENDIX

    A Plan of Graded Reading 3091

    Introduction

    I

    The Ways—and Whys—of Reading

    Great Books and the Gateway to Them

    The works in this set are outstanding creations of the human

    mind, but they are not of the same order as the works included in

    Great Books of the Western World. They consist of short stories, plays,essays, scientific papers, speeches, or letters; and in some cases they

    are relatively short selections from much larger works. In contrast,Great Books of the Western World generally contains whole books or

    extensive collections of books.

    The works in that set not only have a certain magnitude, but they

    also occupy a unique place in the formation and development of

    Western culture. Each of them represents a primary, original, and

    fundamental contribution to our understanding of the universe and

    of ourselves. It has been said of them that they are books which never

    have to be written again, that they are inexhaustibly rereadable, that

    they are always contemporary, and that they are at once the most

    intelligible books (because so lucidly written) and the most

    rewarding to understand (because they deal with the most important

    and profound subjects). It has also been said of them that they are

    the repository and reservoir of the relatively small number of great

    ideas which we have forged in our efforts to understand the world

    and our place in it; and that they are over everyone’s head all ofGateway to the Great Books 2

    the time, which gives them the inexhaustible power to elevate all of

    us who will make the effort to lift our minds by reaching up to the

    ideas they contain.

    The works included in Gateway to the Great Books have some of

    the special attributes which distinguish the great books. Some of the

    things which have been said of the great books can also be said of

    them. The works in this set are, each of them, masterpieces of the

    imagination or intellect. Many of them are modern, even recent;

    some were written in ages past; but they are all forever

    contemporary. In whatever time or place we live, they speak to us

    of our own condition. Like the great books, they are readable again

    and again, with renewed pleasure and added profit. And like the

    great books, they throw light on as well as draw light from the great

    ideas. They, too, have the power to lift our minds up to new levels

    of enjoyment, new levels of insight, new levels of understanding.

    They have that power by virtue of holding out more to understand

    than most of us can manage to understand in a first reading. And if

    we make the effort to understand more in subsequent readings, they

    sustain such effort by the intellectual excitement they afford us—the

    excitement and the challenge of coming to closer grips with the great

    mysteries of nature and human nature, the order of the universe

    and the course of human history.

    Like the great books in these respects, the selections included in

    this set are entitled to be regarded as proper companions to the

    greatest works of the human mind. That, however, does not fully

    describe the function they are intended to perform. They are more

    than just companion pieces. We have another and what seems to us

    a more important reason for associating the contents of these volumes

    with the contents of Great Books of the Western World.

    Because this set consists of much shorter works and, on the whole,of things somewhat easier to read, we think that the reading of the

    selections here included will effectively serve as an introduction to

    the reading of the great books. That is why we have called this set

    a gateway to the great books. Readers who open their minds to all,or even to some, of the works in this set, have opened the gates for

    themselves and are on the high road to the world of ideas and the

    lifetime of learning which the great books make accessible.

    More than half of the contents of this set consists of stories and

    plays, essays, speeches, and letters. Good writing of this kind almost

    has to be about things and experiences and feelings which are famil-THE WAYS (AND WHYS) OF READING 3

    iar to every human being; and when the writing is of a high order of

    excellence, as it is in the case of all the selections here included, it

    deals with the familiar aspects of life in a way that is at once lively

    and illuminating. Readers are quickly entertained and, to the extent

    that they are entertained (which means that their attention is held

    with delight), they read—and learn.

    While the political, scientific, and philosophical readings in

    Gateway to the Great Books must be read with more conscious effort

    to attend to what they try to teach us, they nevertheless remain

    easier than the basic political, scientific, and philosophical treatises

    in Great Books of the Western World. In part, this is due to their brevity;

    in part, it must be also said that what they try to teach us is more

    readily grasped.

    All the works included in this set are comprehensible to any reader

    who will give them the measure of attention which they require.

    That requirement is easy to fulfill, and can be fulfilled with pleasure,precisely because all these works have the quality of entertainment.

    Entertaining books invite and sustain our attention, delighting us at

    the same time that they profit us. The pleasure and profit that readers

    derive from this set of books should—and, the editors think, will—

    help them to develop the habits and improve the skills which should

    make the great books easier for them to read, some at the same

    time, some later.

    Kinds of Reading Matter

    Different kinds of reading matter call for different kinds of

    reading. Readers must, first of all, decide what type of reading

    matter they have at hand; and they must then read it accordingly.

    Every piece of reading matter that comes before our eyes is not

    equally worth reading; nor do all make equal claims on our

    attention. All do not deserve from us the same devotion to the task

    of considering what the writer has in mind—what he is trying to

    teach us or to make us feel.

    A telephone book, an airline timetable, or a manual for operating

    a washing machine may be useful or even indispensable reading,requiring attention to certain details; but these certainly do not

    deserve sustained study or devoted consideration. Most periodicals

    that come our way do not deserve more than passing attention. And

    what is called “light reading” is no different from most televisionGateway to the Great Books 4

    programs or motion pictures, which succeed only if they give us the

    relaxation that we seek from them. Whatever use or value these

    things may have for us, they are seldom worth reading twice, and

    none of them is worth reading over and over again.

    The great books, and the smaller masterpieces that constitute a

    gateway to them, exert a whole series of claims upon us that other

    kinds of reading seldom make. They have treasures to yield, and

    they will not yield their treasures without our digging. They will

    not give something to us unless we give something to them. Such

    works command our interest, our humility, and our fidelity. They

    have much to teach us—if we want to learn.

    These are the works which are most worth reading for the first

    time, precisely because we will find, on that first reading, that they

    deserve to be read over and over again. It might almost be said that

    a book which is not worth rereading one or more times is not really

    worth reading carefully in the first place. Like the great books, the

    works in this set are not idle-hour affairs, mere time passers like

    picture magazines. None of them is a sedative compounded of paper

    and ink. Every one of them calls for and deserves active, as

    contrasted with merely passive, reading on our part.

    Young people—and older ones—who in ages past had access to

    only a few books in a lifetime knew how to read them without being

    told. We all know to what good use young Abraham Lincoln, by the

    light of the log fire, put the Bible, Euclid, Blackstone, Bunyan, and a

    few other books. He, and others like him, read not only with eyes

    wide open but also with a mind fully awake—awake because it was

    intensely active in an effort to get, by reading, everything that the

    writer had to offer.

    We need to remind ourselves of this bygone situation in which

    a book was a lifelong treasure, to be read again and again. Deluged

    as we are with a welter of printed words, we tend to devaluate all

    writing, to look at every book on the shelf as the counterpart of

    every other, and to weigh volumes instead of words. The

    proliferation of printing, on the one hand a blessing, has had, on

    the other, a tendency to debase (or, in any case, homogenize) our

    attitude toward reading.

    What was true centuries ago is still true: there are great books and

    masterpieces of writing which can entertain us while they enlighten

    us; there are merely useful books or printed materials which we go

    to only for specific facts or instruction; there are trivial books which,THE WAYS (AND WHYS) OF READING 5

    like the average detective story, amuse us briefly or help us pass the

    time, and then disappear forever from mind and memory; and there

    is trash, like many magazine, paperback, or even hardcover romances

    which actually dull our taste for better things. Of these, only the first

    constitute the readables which deserve our effort to keep as wide

    awake as possible while reading. We can do that only by reading as

    actively as possible.

    How does one do that? The answer is easier to give than to apply,but readers who want to get the most out of the works that are most

    worth reading can do what is required, if they apply their wills to

    the task. And the more they are willing to do what is required, the

    easier they will find it to do.

    What is required of readers who wish to be wakeful and active

    in the process of reading is simply the asking of questions. They

    must ask questions while they read—questions which they themselves

    must try to answer in the course of reading. The art of reading a

    book or piece of writing consists in asking the right questions in the

    right order. They are as follows: (1) What is this piece of writing

    about? What is its leading theme or main point? What is it trying to

    say? (2) How does it say what it is trying to say? How does the

    writer get his central point across? How does he tell his story or

    argue for his conclusion to produce the effect in us that he is aiming

    at? (3) Is it true—factually or poetically—in whole or part? Has the

    writer won our assent or sympathy? And if not, what reasons do

    we have for disagreeing with or rejecting his view of things? (4) What

    of it? What meaning does it have for us in the shape of opinions or

    attitudes that we are led to form for ourselves as the result of reading

    this piece?

    These four questions underlie and motivate all the specific things

    that we have to do in order to read well what is worth reading well.

    We shall state these more specific recommendations presently; but

    first it is necessary to observe the difference between fiction and

    nonfiction as objects of our active attention in reading; and, among

    nonfiction works, the difference between writings in the field of

    history and politics, writings in the sphere of natural science and

    mathematics, and writings in the realm of philosophy.Gateway to the Great Books 6

    The Four Colors

    In the binding of Gateway to the Great Books, four different colors,based on traditional academic insignia for the various arts and

    sciences, are used to signify four types of subject matter to be found

    in this set. Yellow in the binding signifies works of the imagination—

    epic and dramatic poetry, novels, and essays. Blue in the binding

    signifies biographies and histories, treatises in politics, economics,and jurisprudence. Green in the binding signifies major contributions

    to the fields of mathematics and the natural sciences. Red in the

    binding signifies the great works in philosophy and theology.

    Gateway to the Great Books is divided into these four kinds of writing

    for good and sufficient reason. We have but to consider the subject

    matter of the various courses that we take in high school and college—

    no matter what their titles—to realize that most of those of importance

    fall into one or another of these four categories. Nor is there any

    mystery about it: all writing may be thus partitioned because the

    resulting parts represent four aspects of ourselves as we use words

    to communicate what we know, think, feel, or intend.

    First, we are all storytellers, listeners to stories, and critics of the

    stories we hear. Imaginative literature, represented by Volumes 2–5

    of this set, is native to the life of every human being.

    Second, as free people and citizens, we have always had the

    responsibility, now heavier than ever before, to deal with the social

    and political problems which are considered in Volumes 6 and 7. We

    are called upon to examine ourselves in the light of our past and

    future. These are illuminated by the historical and biographical

    writings contained in Volumes 6 and 7.

    Third, the most distinctive characteristics of our modern world

    are the product of inventions and technology which are, in turn, the

    product of scientific discovery and mathematical theory, the two

    inseparable subjects dealt with in Volumes 8 and 9. Some

    understanding of these fields is essential if we wish to feel at home

    in the rapidly changing environment of the twentieth century.

    Finally, every man and woman who has ever lived has asked,from childhood and youth on, What am I? How should I think?

    What is the meaning of life? How should I live? These are some of

    the philosophical questions which persons of wisdom, in every age,have considered and tried to answer. Such considerations appear in

    Volume 10 of Gateway to the Great Books.THE WAYS (AND WHYS) OF READING 7

    To say that these are four different kinds of writing—writings about

    four different kinds of subjects—is not enough. They represent four

    different kinds of thinking, too. And they reflect four different aspects

    of our one human nature. They are four in one, at once different

    and the same. Since these four kinds of writings all spring from the

    human mind, and since that is a unity, so in the end all thought is

    unified.

    The mind is not four separate compartments. No single thought

    is unrelated to any other. Our ideas, beliefs, sentiments, and fancies

    do not exist in isolation, to be collected artificially and arbitrarily.

    Neither is a set of volumes representing all the major aspects of

    human thought and feeling an aggregation of snippets. For all its

    diversification of content, Gateway to the Great Books has an underlying

    unity—the unity of the human mind itself.

    Most of the writers in this set, though they lived at different times

    and had special interests and abilities, are talking to each other across

    the centuries. Like the authors of the great books, they are engaged

    in a continuing conversation. They are talking to each other through

    the walls that seem to separate the physicist from the novelist, the

    philosopher from the historian; for all are involved in a common

    adventure—the unending exploration of the human condition, of the

    mind and imagination, of our earth-home, and of the illimitable

    cosmos of which we are, though a small part, by far the most

    interesting members. Those who read and reread all the selections

    in this whole set—and that may take a long time—will in the end gain

    a vision of this common adventure and sense the unity which

    underlies the whole.

    But in the beginning, as readers thread their way among the many

    different strands here woven together, they would be well advised

    to observe the differences in the four kinds of writing included in

    this set. They have to be read differently. Each of them has to be

    approached with a special attitude, a particular frame of mind.

    Confusion and bewilderment would result from our addressing a

    poet as if he were a mathematician, a philosopher as if he were a

    historian, or a historian as if he were a scientist. So, too, we would

    tend to confuse and bewilder ourselves if we failed to distinguish

    between fiction and nonfiction, or between philosophy and science,history and mathematics, and read them as if they were all the same.

    These different kinds of writing require different kinds of reading

    on our part, because to read them well—with an active mind—weGateway to the Great Books 8

    must ask different sorts of questions as we read. Unless we know

    what to look for (and how to look for it) in each kind of reading that

    we do, we shall demand of fiction knowledge it cannot give us,ascribe to history values it does not have, ask science for opinions

    that lie wholly outside its scope, and expect philosophy to produce

    a mode of proof that is impossible for it to achieve.

    Some Rules of Reading

    So basic are the differences among various kinds of writing that

    it is almost impossible to formulate rules of reading which are general

    enough to apply to every kind of writing in the same way. But there

    is one rule which takes account of this very fact; for it recommends

    that we pay attention, first of all, to the character of the writing

    before us. Is it fiction or nonfiction? And if the latter, what sort of

    expository writing is it—criticism, history, political theory, social

    commentary, mathematics, science, or philosophy?

    There is one other rule which applies to every piece of writing,insofar as it has the excellence that is common to all pieces of writing

    that are works of art, whether they are imaginative or expository

    writing. A work of art has unity. Readers must apprehend this unity.

    It may be the unity of a story or of a play, or the unity of a historical

    narrative, a scientific theory, a mathematical analysis, a philosophical

    argument. But whatever it is, it can be stated simply as a kind of

    summary of what the whole work or piece of writing is about.

    Readers should make the effort to say what the whole is about in a

    few sentences. When they have done this, they have answered for

    themselves the first of the four questions which should be asked

    about anything worth reading actively and with a mind fully awake.

    1

    Since a work of art is a complex unity, a whole consisting of parts,readers should also try to say what the major parts of the work are,and how they are ordered to one another and to the whole.

    The rules to which we now turn apply most readily to nonfiction

    (expository writing of all sorts), though, as we shall presently see,corresponding rules can be stated for guidance in the reading of

    imaginative literature.

    The writer of an expository work is usually engaged in solving a

    problem or a set of problems. Hence the reader, in dealing with such

    1

    See p. 5 above for an enumeration of the four questions.THE WAYS (AND WHYS) OF READING 9

    works as wholes, should try to summarize the problems which the

    author posed and tried to solve. What are they? How are they related

    to one another? Knowing the author’s problems is necessary to any

    understanding of the answers he tries to give and to the judgment we

    make of his success or failure in giving them.

    Examining a piece of writing as a whole and as an orderly

    arrangement of parts is only one approach to it. It constitutes one

    way of reading a book or anything less than a book which has artistic

    unity. A second approach involves attention to the language of the

    author, with concern not only for his use of words and the manner

    in which he expresses his meaning, but also for the verbal

    formulation of his opinions and the reasons that he has for holding

    them. Here readers should do a number of things, in successive

    steps, each a way of trying to get at the thought of the writer by

    penetrating through his language to his mind.

    Readers should, first of all, try to come to terms with the author,that is, try to discover the basic terms which express the author’s

    central notions or ideas. This can be done only by noting the words

    carefully and discovering the five or ten (rarely more than twenty)

    which constitute the author’s special vocabulary. Finding such words

    or phrases will lead readers to the writer’s basic terms. Thus, for

    example, a careful reader of Calhoun’s “The Concurrent Majority”

    from A Disquisition on Government (Volume 7) can come to terms with

    Calhoun only by discovering what he means by such words or

    phrases as “constitution,” “numerical majority,” “concurrent

    majority,” “interposition,” “nullification,” and “veto.”

    A term is a word used unambiguously. It is a word tied down to a

    special meaning which does not change within the context of a

    particular piece of writing. We come to terms with an author by noting

    the one or more meanings with which he uses the words in his own

    special vocabulary. Good writers are usually helpful, indicating

    explicitly by verbal qualifications—such as quotation marks,underlining, or parenthetical explanations—that a word is now being

    used in one sense and now in another; but even the best writers

    frequently depend upon the context to provide such qualifications.

    This requires the reader to do the work of interpretation which is

    involved in coming to terms.

    Language is a difficult and imperfect medium. For the transmission

    of thought or knowledge, there must be communication, which

    can occur only when writer and reader have a common understand-Gateway to the Great Books 10

    ing of the words which pass from one to the other. Terms made by

    the one and discovered by the other produce communication.

    Coming to terms underlies all the subsequent acts of interpretation

    on the part of the reader. Terms are the building blocks of

    propositions, and propositions are put together in arguments. The

    next two steps in the process of interpretation concern the author’s

    propositions and arguments—represented on the printed page by

    sentences and paragraphs, just as terms are represented there by

    words and phrases.

    Readers should try to find out what the author is affirming and

    denying—what his bedrock assertions are. To do this, they must

    spot the crucial sentences in the text, the sentences in which the

    author expresses the opinions which are central in his mind. Most

    of the sentences in a piece of writing are not crucial. Only a few set

    forth the propositions which the author is undertaking to defend.

    Spotting these is not enough. We must know what they mean.

    There are two simple ways in which we can test our understanding

    of the crucial sentences in an author’s work. First, can we say

    precisely in our own words what the author is saying in his; that is,can we extract the author’s meaning from his words by translating

    it into another form of speech? Second, can we think of examples

    that clearly illustrate the author’s meaning or apply it to concrete

    experiences?

    The third step of interpretative reading requires us to look for

    and find the key paragraphs which express the writer’s basic

    arguments in support of the opinions that he wishes to persuade us

    to accept. An argument is a sequence of propositions, having a

    beginning in principles and an end in conclusions. It may be simple,or it may be complex, having simpler arguments as parts. Sometimes

    the writer will put his whole argument down in one place in the

    form of a summary paragraph; but more frequently the reader must

    piece together the parts of the argument by connecting sentences, or

    parts of paragraphs, which are on different pages.

    The first of the suggested approaches to reading a book or piece

    of writing is analytical: it dissects a whole work into its parts and

    relates the parts. The second is interpretative: it attempts to construe

    what a writer means from what he says. There is a third approach,which should follow and complement the other two. It is critical.

    Here the task is to judge a piece of writing in terms of the truth

    and falsity of its basic propositions, both its principles and itsTHE WAYS (AND WHYS) OF READING 11

    conclusions, in terms of the cogency or soundness of its arguments,and in terms of the adequacy or completeness of its analysis. It is at

    this stage or in this phase of reading that readers must decide whether

    they agree or disagree with the writer, or determine the extent of

    this agreement or disagreement. In doing this, they should be

    governed by a number of rules or maxims.

    The first is that readers should neither agree nor disagree with

    an author until they are sure that they understand what the author

    is saying. To agree with what you do not understand is inane; to

    disagree in the absence of understanding is impertinent. Many readers

    start to disagree with what they are reading almost at once—before

    they have performed the tasks of analysis and interpretation which

    should always precede that of criticism. In effect, they are saying to

    an author: “I don’t know what you are talking about, but I think

    you are wrong.” It would be just as silly for them to say “right” as it

    is for them to say “wrong.” In either case, they are expressing

    prejudices rather than undertaking genuine criticism, which must

    be based on understanding.

    This rule calls for patience and humility on the reader’s part. If

    we are reading anything worth reading—anything which has the

    power to instruct us and elevate our minds—we should be loath to

    judge it too soon, for it would be rash to presume that we have so

    quickly attained an adequate understanding of it. If we suspect that

    we have fallen short in our understanding, we should always blame

    ourselves rather than the author. Not only is that the proper attitude

    if the author is worth reading at all; but, in addition, such an attitude

    may keep our mind on the task of interpretation. There is always

    time for criticism after that is well done.

    A second maxim by which we should be guided can be stated

    thus: there is no point in winning an argument if we know, or even

    suspect, that we are wrong. This is an important rule of intellectual

    behavior in face-to-face discussions—one, unfortunately, which is

    frequently violated. It is even more important in the very special

    one-way conversation that a good reader carries on with an author.

    The author is not there to defend himself. Disagreement with an

    author demands the utmost in intellectual decency on the part of the

    reader.

    A third closely related maxim recommends to readers that they

    should not undertake criticism unless they are as willing to agree as

    to disagree—unless they are prepared to agree intelligently as wellGateway to the Great Books 12

    as to disagree intelligently. In either case, critical readers should be

    able to give reasons for the position that they take.

    The reasons for disagreement can be roughly grouped under four

    headings. We may disagree (1) because we think that the author is

    uninformed on some essential point that is relevant to his conclusions;

    or (2) because we think that he is uninformed about some equally

    essential consideration, which would alter the course of his argument

    if he were aware of it; or (3) because we think that he has committed

    some fallacy or error in reasoning; or (4) because we think that his

    analysis, however sound in its bases and its reasoning, is incomplete.

    In every one of these instances, we are under an obligation to be

    able to prove the charge that we are making. Authors and their

    works are finite and fallible, every last one; but a writer of eminence

    is ordinarily more competent in his field than the reader, upon whom,therefore, the heavy burden of proof is imposed.

    The foregoing rules, as already pointed out, apply primarily to

    expository writing rather than to imaginative literature—fiction in

    the form of novels, short stories, or plays. Nevertheless, they do

    suggest analogous recommendations for the reader to follow in

    reading fiction. As terms, propositions, and arguments are the

    elements involved in the interpretative approach to expository

    writing, so the cast of characters, their actions and passions, their

    thought and speech, the sequence of events, and the plot together

    with its subplots are the things with which readers must concern

    themselves in interpreting a work of fiction. As factual truth and

    logical cogency are central considerations in the criticism of

    expository writing, so a narrative’s verisimilitude or credibility (its

    poetic truth) and its unity, clarity, and coherence (its artistic beauty)

    are important objects of criticism in the case of fiction.

    It is possible to offer a few other recommendations that are

    especially appropriate to imaginative literature, and applicable to

    the varied assortment of stories and plays in Volumes 2, 3, and 4.

    In every piece of fiction to be found there, the subject matter of

    the writer is men and women. But this subject matter is approached

    in a way that is quite different from that employed by the historian,the psychologist, or the moral philosopher, all of whom are

    concerned with human character and conduct, too. The imaginative

    writer approaches this subject matter indirectly and, in a sense,subjectively.

    Writers of fiction see men and women partially, in terms of theirTHE WAYS (AND WHYS) OF READING 13

    own limited temperaments, their own overriding passions, and also

    in terms of the willingness of the characters, as it were, to subject

    themselves to the particular pattern or frame that the author has in

    mind. Dickens, in The Pickwick Papers, and Mark Twain, in The Man

    that Corrupted Hadleyburg, are placed side by side in Volume 2. But

    in other ways they are far apart. To sense the distance separating

    them, readers need only ask this simple question after they have

    read these two stories: Which seems to like mankind more? Readers

    will then become aware that these two storytellers hold different

    views of mankind—each has a personal, partial view with its own

    partial truth.

    To read fiction with pleasure, readers must abandon themselves

    for the moment to the writer’s partial vision. As we read more and

    more imaginative literature, we will begin, almost unconsciously,to obtain new insights from each of the authors.

    Finally, it may be helpful to point out a few differences between

    imaginative and expository literature, from the point of view of

    what is involved in reading them carefully and well.

    A story must be apprehended as a whole, whereas an expository

    treatise can be read in parts. One cannot read enough of a story,short of the whole, “to get the idea”; but one can read a portion of a

    scientific or philosophical work and yet learn something of what

    the author is driving at.

    An expository work may require us to read other works by the

    same or different authors in order to understand it fully, but a story

    requires the reading of nothing outside itself. It stands entirely by

    itself. It presents a whole world—for us to experience and enjoy.

    The ultimate unity of an expository work, especially in the fields

    of political theory, natural science, mathematics, and philosophy,lies in a problem or a set of related problems to be solved. The

    unity of a narrative lies in its plot.

    There is a fundamental difference in the use of language by

    imaginative and expository writers. In exposition, the aim of a good

    writer is to avoid ambiguity by a literal or precise use of words.

    Imaginative writers often seek to utilize ambiguity, and they do this

    by recourse to metaphor and simile and other figures of speech.

    The use of language moves in one direction when its ultimate aim is

    to accord with fact, and in another when its ultimate aim is to give

    wings to fancy.

    And, lastly, the difference between imaginative literature and ex-Gateway to the Great Books 14

    pository writing calls for different types of criticism on the reader’s

    part. Aristotle pointed out that “the standard of correctness is not

    the same in poetry and politics,” which we can generalize by saying

    that the soundness of a fictional narrative is not to be judged in the

    same way as the soundness of a scientific or philosophical exposition.

    In the latter, the standard is objective truth; in the former, internal

    plausibility. To be true in its own way, fiction need not portray the

    world as it actually is. Its truth is not that of simple factual realism

    or representation. Its truth depends upon an internal necessity and

    probability. Characters and action must fit together to make the

    narrative a likely story. However fanciful the story may be, it has

    the ring of truth if it is believable as we read it—if we can feel at

    home in the world that the imaginative writer has created for us.

    The differences that we have pointed out between imaginative

    and expository writing should not be allowed to obscure the fact

    that there are mixed works—works which somehow participate in

    the qualities of both types. One example of this will suffice. Historical

    narratives are, in a way, mixtures of poetic and scientific or

    philosophical writing. They offer us knowledge or information about

    the past, gained by methodical investigation or research, but that

    knowledge or information comes to us in the form of a story, with a

    sequence of events, a cast of characters, and a plot. Hence histories

    must be read in both ways. They must be judged by the standard of

    objective truth—truth of fact—and also by the standard of internal

    plausibility—truth of fiction.

    Some Further Suggestions to the Reader

    One way of putting into practice the rules of reading outlined in

    the preceding pages is to read with a pencil in hand—to mark the

    pages being read, without scruples about damaging the volume.

    Marking a book is not an act of mutilation, but one of love. Of

    course, no one should mark a book that one does not own. But the

    books that we buy, we are at liberty to mark or write in as we read.

    Buying a book is only a prelude to owning it. To own a book

    involves more than paying for it and putting it on the shelf in one’s

    home. Full ownership comes only to those who have made the books

    they have bought part of themselves—by absorbing and digesting

    them. The well-marked pages of a much-handled volume constitute

    one of the surest indications that this has taken place.THE WAYS (AND WHYS) OF READING 15

    Too many persons make the mistake of substituting economic

    possession or physical proprietorship for intellectual ownership. They

    substitute a sense of power over the physical book for a genuine

    grasp of its contents. Having a fine library does not prove that its

    legal owner has a mind enriched by books. It proves only that he was

    rich enough to buy them. If someone has a handsome collection of

    volumes—unread, untouched—we know that this person regards books

    as part of the home furnishings. But if the books, many or few, are

    dog-eared and dilapidated, shaken and loosened by continual use,marked and scribbled in from cover to cover, then we know that the

    owner has come into the full ownership of the books.

    Why is marking a book so important a part of reading it? It helps

    to keep you awake while reading—not merely conscious, but

    mentally alert. And since reading, if it is an active process, involves

    thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in words, spoken or

    written, writing in the book enables readers to express their thoughts

    while reading. Marking a book thus turns the reader into a writer,engaged, as it were, in a conversation with the author.

    There are many ways of marking a book intelligently and

    fruitfully. As one discovers the terms, propositions, and arguments

    in an expository work, one can mark them by underlining or by

    asterisks, vertical lines, or arrows in the margin. Key words or

    phrases can be circled; the successive steps of an argument can be

    numbered in the margin. Imaginative works can be similarly treated:

    underlining or marginal notations can be used to mark significant

    developments in character, crucial turns in plot, or revelations of

    insight by the author himself. In addition, one should not hesitate to

    use the margin, or the top or bottom of the page, to record questions

    that the text arouses in one’s mind, or to jot down one’s own

    comments about the significance of what is being read.

    The margins of a book, or the space between its lines, may not

    afford enough room to record the thoughts of intensive readers. In

    that case, they should read with a scratch pad in hand. The sheets

    of paper on which the notations have been made can then be inserted

    into the book at appropriate places.

    The person who marks a book cannot read it as quickly as one

    who reads it passively or merely flips its pages inattentively. Far

    from being an objection to marking books, this fact constitutes one

    of the strongest recommendations for doing it. It is a widely

    prevalent fallacy that speed of reading is a measure of intelligence.Gateway to the Great Books 16

    There is no right speed for intelligent reading. Some things should

    be read quickly and effortlessly, some should be read slowly and

    even laboriously. The sign of intelligence in reading is the ability to

    read different things differently according to their worth. With

    regard to the great books, or with regard to the selections in this

    set, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through,but rather to see how many can get through you—how many you

    can make your own.

    Most things worth reading carefully are likely to present some

    difficulties to the reader on a first reading. These difficulties tend to

    slow us up. But we should never allow them to stop us in our tracks.

    Readers who bog down completely because they cannot fully

    understand some statement or reference in the course of their reading

    fail to recognize that no one can be expected to achieve complete

    understanding of a significant work on the first go at it. A first reading

    is bound to be a relatively superficial one, as compared with the

    reading in greater and greater depth that can be done when one

    rereads the same work later.

    Readers who realize this should adopt the following rule in reading

    worthwhile materials for the first time. The rule is simply to read the

    work through without stopping to puzzle out the things one does not

    fully understand on that first reading. Failure to clear all the hurdles

    should not lead one to give up the race. The things which may be

    stumbling blocks on the first reading can be surmounted on later

    readings, but only if they are not allowed to become insuperable

    obstacles that prevent the first reading from being completed.

    Readers should pay attention to what they can understand, and

    not be stopped by what they do not immediately grasp. Go right on

    reading past the point where you have difficulties in understanding,and you will soon come again to paragraphs and pages that you

    readily understand. Read the work through, undeterred by

    paragraphs, arguments, names, references, and allusions that escape

    you. If you let yourself get tripped up by any of these stumbling

    blocks, if you get stalled by them, you are lost. In most cases, it is

    not possible to puzzle the thing out by sticking to it. You will have a

    much better chance of understanding it on a second reading, but

    that requires you to have read the work through at least once.

    Reading it through the first time, however superficially, breaks

    the crust of the book or work in hand. It enables readers to get the

    feel or general sense of what they are reading, and some grasp,THE WAYS (AND WHYS) OF READING 17

    however incomplete, of what it is all about. It is necessary to get

    some grasp of the whole before we can see the parts in their true

    perspective—or, sometimes, in any perspective at all.

    Most of us were taught in school to pay attention to the things we

    did not understand. We were told to go to a dictionary when we met

    with an unfamiliar word. We were told to go to an encyclopedia or

    some other reference work when we were confronted with allusions

    or statements we did not understand. We were told to consult

    footnotes, scholarly commentaries, or other secondary sources in

    order to get help. Unfortunately, we never received worse advice.

    The tremendous pleasure that comes from reading Shakespeare

    was spoiled for generations of high school students who were forced

    to go through Julius Caesar or Macbeth scene by scene, to look up all

    the words new to them in a glossary, and to study all the scholarly

    footnotes. As a result, they never read a play of Shakespeare’s. By

    the time they got to the end of it, they had forgotten the beginning

    and lost sight of the whole. Instead of being forced to take this

    pedantic approach, they should have been encouraged to read the

    play through at one sitting and discuss what they got out of that first

    quick reading. Only then, if at all, would they have been ready to

    study the play carefully, and closely, because they would have

    understood enough of it to be able to learn more.

    What is true of reading a play by Shakespeare applies with equal

    force to all the works included in this set, both the fiction and the

    nonfiction. What first readers of these works will understand by

    reading each of them through—even if it is only 50 percent or less—

    will help them to make the additional effort later to go back to the

    difficult places which they wisely passed over on the first reading.

    Even if they do not go back, understanding 50 percent of something

    really worth reading is much better than not understanding it at all,which will certainly be the case if they allow themselves to be

    stopped by the first difficult passage they come to.

    There are some technical books—usually written by professors

    for professors, and in the jargon of the trade—which are not only

    difficult for first readers, but impossible for the nonprofessional to

    understand by any means. Such books are difficult because they are

    written in a way that is not intended for the person of ordinary

    background and training. In contrast, the great books, and to a lesser

    extent the masterpieces included in this set, are difficult for a quite

    different reason.Gateway to the Great Books 18

    It is not because the author has not tried to be clear to the ordinary

    reader. It is not because the author is not a good writer. The difficulty,where it exists, lies in the subject matters being treated and in the

    ideas being conveyed. Precisely because the authors of Great Books

    of the Western World and the writers represented in Gateway to the

    Great Books have a mastery of these difficult subject matters or ideas,do they have the power to deal with them as simply and clearly as

    possible. Hence they make such material as easy as it can be made

    for the reader.

    No major subject of human interest, nor any basic idea, need be

    a closed book to the ordinary person. On every one of them, there

    exist great books or masterpieces of writing which afford

    enlightenment to anyone who will make the effort to read them.

    However difficult the subject matter being treated or the idea being

    expounded, these writings help ordinary and inexpert readers to

    make some headway in understanding if they will only follow the

    rule of cracking a tough nut by applying pressure at the softest spot.

    That, in other words, is the rule of paying maximum attention to

    what you do understand, and not being deterred by what you fail to

    understand, on the first reading of these works.

    A Word About What Follows

    The succeeding sections of this introductory essay will attempt to

    acquaint the reader with the four types of subject matter which are

    represented in Gateway to the Great Books. Section II will discuss the

    works of the imagination that are included in Volumes 2–5; Section

    III, the writings about man and society that are included in Volumes

    6 and 7; Section IV, the works in natural science and in mathematics

    that are included in Volumes 8 and 9; and Section V, the philosophical

    writings that are included in Volume 10.

    Each of these sections will try to provide a general framework in

    which the writings indicated above can be read. Illustrative

    materials from Great Books of the Western World, as well as references

    to particular selections in Gateway to the Great Books, will be utilized

    to bring readers face to face with the ideas and themes appropriate

    to each kind of writing, and to fill them in on the basic background

    in each field. In addition, reference will be made from time to time

    to the Syntopicon, the index to the great ideas, which comprises

    Volumes 1 and 2 in Great Books of the Western World. The quotationsTHE WAYS (AND WHYS) OF READING 19

    from the Syntopicon are drawn from the introductions which open its

    chapters, 102 in all, one on each of the great ideas.

    2

    A word should be said about the style of the references that will

    appear in parentheses in the pages to follow.

    Where the reference is to a passage in Great Books of the Western

    World, it is indicated by the letters GBWW, followed by the number

    of the volume in that set. Where references are made to authors or

    works included in this set, they will be accompanied simply by a

    parenthetical citation of the number of the appropriate volume in

    Gateway to the Great Books. And where reference is made to the

    Syntopicon, the reference will be to either Volume 1 or Volume 2 in

    GBWW.

    2

    The reader who wishes to become acquainted with the 102 great ideas will find them listed on

    the rear endpapers of the volumes of the Syntopicon in Great Books of the Western World. The list of

    authors included in that set appears in the front endpapers of those volumes.20

    II

    Human Imagination

    What Is Imagination?

    Tell me a story,” says the child, and the storyteller begins. In an

    instant, the world of common reality is left behind, and a new reality—

    more captivating, more intense, more real—catches up the listener

    on the wings of imagination.

    We never, as long as we live, stop saying, “Tell me a story.” Our

    hunger is never satisfied; the more we read, the more we want to

    read; and the richer the feast, the hungrier we grow. For the master

    of creative imagination evokes the creativity in all of us, makes us all

    shareholders in the treasure that literature brings to life. The story—

    in prose or poetry, in art or music—is the magic of everyone’s life. By

    comparison, the most staggering achievements of science and industry

    and statesmanship seem to some people bodiless and cold.

    Charles Darwin writes in The Descent of Man that, while reason

    is the greatest of all human faculties, “The Imagination is one of the

    highest prerogatives of man. By this faculty he unites former

    images and ideas . . and thus creates brilliant and novel results. . .

    The value of the products of our imagination depends . . to a

    certain extent on our power of voluntarily combining them. As

    dogs, cats, horses, and probably all the higher animals, even

    birds have vivid dreams . . we must admit that they possess

    some power of imagination. There must be something special,which causes dogs to howl in the night, and especially during

    moonlight, in that remarkable and melancholy manner called

    baying” (GBWW, Vol. 49).

    What is the imagination, which produces both the howling of a

    dog and Mozart’s Magic Flute, the dream of a cat and Dante’s Divine

    Comedy? Psychologists ancient and modern agree with Darwin that

    it is common to man and to some other animals, and that it is

    peculiarly linked with memory. In Chapter 56 of the Syntopicon onHUMAN IMAGINATION 21

    MEMORY AND IMAGINATION (GBWW, Vol. 2), we learn that the two

    powers “depend upon sense perception or upon previous

    experience. Except for illusions of memory, we do not remember

    objects we have never perceived or events in our own life, such as

    emotions or desires, that we have not experienced. The

    imagination is not limited in the same way by prior experience, for

    we can imagine things we have never perceived and may never be

    able to.”

    How is this possible, when our imagination depends upon sense

    perception or upon previous experience? We do not know, except

    that we have both the involuntary instinct (as in dreams) and the

    voluntary power of combining. “Even when imagination outruns

    perception,” the Syntopicon continues, “it draws upon experience for

    the materials it uses in its constructions. It is possible to imagine a

    golden mountain or a purple cow, though no such object has ever

    presented itself to perception. But, as Hume suggests, the possibility

    of combining a familiar color and a familiar shape depends upon

    the availability of the separate images to be combined.”

    The Syntopicon quotes Hume—some of whose shorter works we

    read in Volumes 5 and 7 of this set—as saying, “When we think of a

    golden mountain, we only join two consistent ideas, gold and mountain,with which we were formerly acquainted. . All this creative power

    of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding,transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us

    by the senses and experience.” Congenitally colorblind persons who

    lived entirely in a world of grays would not be able to imagine a

    golden mountain or a purple cow, though they might be able to

    imagine other things as unreal as these.

    The object imagined, then, need not be located in the past like

    the object remembered, though the former depends upon the memory

    of the objects combined to produce it. But the imagined object need

    not have any definite location in time and space. It need have no

    actual existence. It may be a mere possibility, unlike the kind of

    object which cannot be known without being known to exist; it is a

    figment or construction. Having seen horses, we do not imagine a

    horse; we remember it. Having seen both horses and birds, we

    cannot remember a winged horse, but we can all imagine one.

    Memory preserves those things which are no longer present or no

    longer exist. Imagination evokes those things which have never

    existed, and, maybe, never will.Gateway to the Great Books 22

    “. . in which he dwells delighted.”

    Consider for a moment what memory and imagination mean to

    our human experience and our civilization. Without them, says the

    Syntopicon, “man would live in a confined and narrow present, lacking

    past and future, restricted to what happens to be actual out of the

    almost infinite possibilities of being.” But what imagination means

    to the life of each of us is perhaps best stated by a master of the art.

    In The Lantern-Bearers (Vol. 7), Robert Louis Stevenson asserts that,“Justice is not done to the versatility and the unplumbed childishness

    of man’s imagination. . His life from without may seem but a

    rude mound of mud; there will be some golden chamber at the heart

    of it, in which he dwells delighted. . .”

    To the poet Shelley the imagination is the key to all goodness:

    “The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our own nature,and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in

    thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good,must imagine intensely and comprehensively: he must put himself in

    the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of

    his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral

    good is the imagination . . We want the creative faculty to imagine

    that which we know; we want the generous impulse to act that which

    we imagine; we want the poetry of life . . .” (A Defence of Poetry, Vol. 5).

    Let us recall the shipwrecked sailor in Stephen Crane’s The Open

    Boat (Vol. 3). Doomed, as he thought, in a tiny lifeboat which could

    not make land, he suddenly remembered a poem of his childhood

    that began, “A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,” and only

    now, for the first time, understood it; for the first time he felt sorry

    for that soldier now that he himself “lay dying.” His own mortal

    experience brought that soldier before him. What Shelley insists

    upon is that all men, so few of whom have such an experience, use

    their imaginations to put themselves “in the place of another and of

    many others.”

    This is what poetry—the traditional term for what we call

    “fiction”—does for us. The poet’s imagination takes us into the heart

    of another, of a person, a place, an event, and in doing so moves

    and lifts us. Volumes 2, 3, and 4 of Gateway to the Great Books are a

    collection of masterpieces of the imagination, Volume 5 a collection

    of the great critical and imaginative essays which enlighten our

    appreciation and enjoyment of what we read.HUMAN IMAGINATION 23

    We emphasize appreciation and enjoyment, in addition to

    understanding, because the test of an imaginative work is its beauty.

    The French expression for such works, both stories and essays, is

    belles-lettres; literally untranslatable, it would have to be rendered

    something like “beautiful knowledge.” But the test of knowledge is

    truth, not beauty; does this mean that poetry is false? And—if it is—

    how can it possibly serve us? We say that a person has “let his

    imagination run away with him” when we don’t believe him. What

    then, if fiction or poetry be untrue, can it profit us?

    The apparent contradiction has never been more clearly resolved

    than in Aristotle’s little treatise On Poetics (GBWW, Vol. 8). “The

    poet’s function,” he says, “is to describe, not the thing that has

    happened, but a kind of thing that might happen, i.e., what is possible.

    . . The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one

    writing prose and the other verse—you might put the work of

    Herodotus into verse, and it would still be a species of history; it

    consists really in this, that the one describes the thing that has been,and the other a kind of thing that might be. Hence poetry is something

    more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its

    statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of

    history are singulars. By a universal statement I mean one as to

    what such or such a kind of man will probably or necessarily say or

    do—which is the aim of poetry, though it affixes proper names to the

    characters; by a singular statement, one as to what, say, Alcibiades

    did or had done to him” (ibid.).

    “. . a kind of thing that might happen”—this is poetry, fiction, the

    work of the imagination. Not the actual here and now, or yesterday, or

    in 1776, nor this man, John Smith of 1332 State Street, Philadelphia;

    but the possible, today, tomorrow, yesterday, here or anywhere, as it

    might happen to such and such a kind of person. And insofar as we see

    ourselves as such a kind of person, and those we know as this or that

    kind, we are moved emotionally, to sympathy, to pity, forgiveness,love, noble deeds and impulses (and, conversely, to fear and hate and

    cruelty and ignoble deeds and impulses). But what moves us—through

    its beauty—is the universal truth of the tale; in it we recognize ourselves

    or others. It is the possible, and the possible cannot be false.

    Thomas De Quincey calls imaginative works “the literature of

    power” as opposed to the literature of knowledge. The function of

    the latter is to teach us, of the former to move us. In his Literature of

    Knowledge and Literature of Power (Vol. 5), he asks, “What do youGateway to the Great Books 24

    learn from Paradise Lost? Nothing at all. What do you learn from a

    cookery-book? Something new.” What we owe the immortal author

    of the first, he goes on, is power—the materialization of our own

    latent capacity to move and be moved. “Were it not that human

    sensibilities are ventilated and continually called out into exercise

    by the great phenomena . . of literature . . it is certain that, like

    any animal power or muscular energy falling into disuse, all such

    sensibilities would gradually droop and dwindle. It is in relation to

    these great moral capacities of man that the literature of power, as

    contradistinguished from that of knowledge, lives and has its field

    of action.” He points out that the Psalmist asks the Lord to give him

    not understanding, but an “understanding heart.”

    After attending a theater for the first time as a child, Charles

    Lamb tells us that he “knew nothing, understood nothing,discriminated nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered all—Was nourished,I could not tell how” (My First Play, Vol. 5). What had happened to

    him?—The play had brought his heart into contact with those peculiar

    sources of joy which, in the cultivation of the intellect alone, tend,according to psychologist William James, to dry up and leave us

    “stone-blind . . to life’s more elementary . . goods” (On a Certain

    Blindness in Human Beings, Vol. 7). Literature, says Stevenson in The

    Lantern-Bearers, moves us with “something like the emotions of life . . .

    Not only love, and the fields, and the bright face of danger but sacrifice

    and death and unmerited suffering humbly supported touch in us

    the vein of the poetic. We love to think of them, we long to try

    them, we are humbly hopeful that we may prove heroes also.”

    This is what the great works of the imagination do to us, and

    their effect is not without its dangers. The human heart is at once

    the best and worst of our blessings. So readily and so mysteriously

    moved, and in turn moving us to the great actions of life, its power

    may carry us to beatitude or perdition—depending on the goal to

    which it is moved and the means we choose to reach the goal.

    This is where criticism comes in. The critic or essayist is part

    “poet” and part “historian,” who comprehends the imagination and

    analyzes its output. The critic may deal (as De Quincey and others

    do in Vol. 5) with specific works or forms of literature, or (like

    Francis Bacon) with mankind itself. In either case, the writer

    examines and instructs or admonishes. Like preachers, critics want

    to direct and deepen our view of beauty; like scientists, they inquire

    into the truth of that view.HUMAN IMAGINATION 25

    What Makes a Book Good?

    The great issue here is the existence or nonexistence of standards

    of criticism. Can we say of a literary work that it is “good” or “bad,”

    or “true or false,” as we can of a pot or a pan—or a mathematical

    formula? And, if we can, with what degree of certainty? Can we say

    that it is “good” or “bad” only here and now, for our time or for

    our place; or can we criticize it in universal terms of time and place?

    And, if we can, what are the standards by which we do it, and how

    are they arrived at? What—or who—is the ultimate authority?

    In Volume 5 of Gateway to the Great Books Sainte-Beuve looks at

    the history of criticism and reminds us that “the greatest names to

    be seen at the beginning of literatures are those which disturb and

    run counter to certain fixed ideas of what is beautiful and appropriate

    in poetry. For example, is Shakespeare a classic? Yes, now, for

    England and the world; but in the time of Pope he was not considered

    so. Pope and his friends were the only pre-eminent classics; directly

    after their death they seemed so forever. At the present time they

    are still classics, as they deserve to be, but they are only of the

    second order, and are forever subordinated and relegated to their

    rightful place ......