The Lost Art of Reading. Gerald Stanley Lee

heedless, morally-hurried persons, rushing about the world turning people (as they think) right side up everywhere, without really noticing them much, but I do think that a great deliberate corporate body like The American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions ought to be more optimistic about the Church—wait and work for it a little more, expect a little more of it.

      It seems to me that it ought to be far less pessimistic than it is, also, about what we can do in the way of schools and social life in civilisation and about civilisation’s way of doing business. Is our little knack of Christianity (I find myself wondering) quite worthy of all this attention it is getting from The American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions? Why should it approve of civilisation with a rush? Does any one really suppose that it is really time to pat it on the back—yet?—to spend a million dollars a year—patting it on the back?

      I merely throw out the question.

      VIII

       More Literary Rush

      We had been talking along, in our Club, as usual, for some time, on the general subject of the world—fixing the blame for things. We had come to the point where it was nearly all fixed (most of it on other people) when I thought I might as well put forward my little theory that nearly everything that was the matter, could be traced to the people who “belong to Society.”

      Then The P. G. S. of M. (who is always shoving a dictionary around in front of him when he talks) spoke up and said:

      “But who belongs to Society?”

      “All persons who read what they are told to and who call where they can’t help it. What this world needs just now,” I went on, looking The P. G. S. of M. as much in the eye as I could, “is emancipation. It needs a prophet—a man who can gather about him a few brave-hearted, intelligently ignorant men, who shall go about with their beautiful feet on the mountains, telling the good tidings of how many things there are we do not need to know. The prejudice against being ignorant is largely because people have not learned how to do it. The wrong people have taken hold of it.”

      I cannot remember the exact words of what was said after this, but I said that it seemed to me that most people were afraid not to know everything. Not knowing too much is a natural gift, and unless a man can make his ignorance contagious—inspire people with the books he dares not read—of course the only thing he can do is to give up and read everything, and belong to Society. He certainly cannot belong to himself unless he protects himself with well-selected, carefully guarded, daring ignorance. Think of the books—the books that are dictated to us—the books that will not let a man go—and behind every book a hundred intelligent men and women—one’s friends, too—one’s own kin——

      P. G. S. of M.: “But the cultured man must——”

      The cultured man is the man who can tell me what he does not know, with such grace that I feel ashamed of knowing it.

      Now there’s M——, for example. Other people seem to read to talk, but I never see him across a drawing-room without an impulse of barbarism, and I always get him off into a corner as soon as I can, if only to rest myself—to feel that I have a right not to read everything. He always proves to me something that I can get along without. He is full of the most choice and picturesque bits of ignorance. He is creatively ignorant. He displaces a book every time I see him—which is a deal better in these days than writing one. A man should be measured by his book-displacement. He goes about with his thinking face, and a kind of nimbus over him, of never needing to read at all. He has nothing whatever to give but himself, but I had rather have one of his questions about a book I had read, than all the other opinions and subtle distinctions in the room—or the book itself.

      P. G. S. of M. “But the cultured man must——”

      NOT. It is the very essence of a cultured man that when he hears the word “must” it is on his own lips. It is the very essence of his culture that he says it to himself. His culture is his belonging to himself, and his belonging to himself is the first condition of his being worth giving to other people. One longs for Elia. People know too much, and there doesn’t seem to be a man living who can charm them from the error of their way. Knowledge takes the place of everything else, and all one can do in this present day as he reads the reviews and goes to his club, is to look forward with a tired heart to the prophecy of Scripture, “Knowledge shall pass away.”

      Where do we see the old and sweet content of loving a thing for itself? Now, there are the flowers. The only way to delight in a flower at your feet in these days is to watch with it all alone, or keep still about it. The moment you speak of it, it becomes botany. It’s a rare man who will not tell you all he knows about it. Love isn’t worth anything without a classic name. It’s a wonder we have any flowers left. Half the charm of a flower to me is that it looks demure and talks perfume and keeps its name so gently to itself. The man who always enjoys views by picking out the places he knows, is a symbol of all our reading habits and of our national relation to books. One can glory in a great cliff down in the depths of his heart, but if you mention it, it is geology, and an argument. Even the birds sing zoölogically, and as for the sky, it has become a mere blue-and-gold science, and all the wonder seems to be confined to one’s not knowing the names of the planets. I was brought up wistfully on

      Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

      How I wonder what you are.

      But now it is become:

      Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

      Teacher’s told me what you are.

      Even babies won’t wonder very soon. That is to say, they won’t wonder out loud. Nobody does. Another of my poems was:

      Where did you come from, baby dear?

      Out of the everywhere into here.

      I thought of it the other day when I stepped into the library with the list of books I had to have an opinion about before Mrs. W——‘s Thursday Afternoon, I felt like a literary infant.

      Where did you come from, baby fair?

      Out of the here into everywhere.

      And the bookcases stared at me.

      It is a serious question whether the average American youth is ever given a chance to thirst for knowledge. He thirsts for ignorance instead. From the very first he is hemmed in by knowledge. The kindergarten with its suave relentlessness, its perfunctory cheerfulness, closes in upon the life of every child with himself. The dear old-fashioned breathing spell he used to have after getting here—whither has it gone? The rough, strong, ruthless, unseemly, grown-up world crowds to the very edge of every beginning life. It has no patience with trailing clouds of glory. Flocks of infants every year—new-comers to this planet—who can but watch them sadly, huddled closer and closer to the little strip of wonder that is left near the land from which they came? No lingering away from us. No infinite holiday. Childhood walks a precipice crowded to the brink of birth. We tabulate its moods. We register its learning inch by inch. We draw its poor little premature soul out of its body breath by breath. Infants are well informed now. The suckling has nerves. A few days more he will be like all the rest of us. It will be:

      Poem: “When I Was Weaned.”

      “My First Tooth: A Study.”

      The Presiding Genius of the State of Massachusetts, with his dazed, kind look, looked up and said: “I fear, my dear fellow, there is no place for you in the world.”

      Thanks. One of the delights of going fishing or hunting is, that one learns how small “a place in the world” is—comes across so many accidentally preserved characters—preserved by not having a place in the world—persons that are interesting to be with—persons you can tell things.

      The real object—it seems to me—in meeting another human being is complement—fitting into each other’s ignorances. Sometimes it seems as if it were only where there is something to be caught or shot, or where there is plenty of room, that