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The special quality that a syntopical analysis tries to achieve can, indeed, be summarized in the two words "dialectical objectivity."

The syntopical reader, in short, tries to look at aU sides and to take no sides. Of course, he will fail in this exacting ideal. Absolute objectivity is not humanly possible. He may succeed in taking no sides, presenting the issues without prejudice to any partisan point of view, and treating opposing views impartially. But it is easier to take no sides than to look at all sides. In this latter respect, the syntopical reader will undoubtedly fail. All possible sides of an issue cannot be exhaustively enumerated. Nevertheless, he must try.

Taking no sides is easier than looking at all sides, we say, but it remains difficult even so. The syntopical reader must resist certain temptations and know his own mind. Perfect dialectical objectivity is not guaranteed by avoiding explicit judgments on the truth of conflicting opinions. Partiality can intrude in a variety of subtle ways-by the manner in which The Fourth level of Reading: Syntopical Reading 325

arguments are summarized, by shades of emphasis and neglect, by the tone of a question or the color of a passing remark, and by the order in which the various different answers to key questions are presented.

In order to avoid some of these dangers, the conscientious syntopical reader may resort to one obvious device and use it as much as possible. That is, he must constantly refer back to the actual text of his authors, reading the relevant passages over and over; and, in presenting the results of his work to a wider audience, he must quote the opinion or argument of an author in the writer's own language. Although it may appear to do so, this does not contradict what we said earlier about the necessity of finding a neutral terminology in which to analyze the problem. That necessity remains, and when summaries of an author's argument are presented, they must be presented in that language and not the author's. But the author's own words, carefully quoted so as not to wrench them out of context, must accompany the summary, so that the reader can judge for himself whether the interpretation of the author is correct.

Only the syntopical reader's firm intention to avoid them can be relied on to prevent other sorts of departure from dialectical objectivity. That ideal demands a deliberate effort to balance question against question, to forgo any comment that might be prejudicial, to check any tendency toward overemphasis or underemphasis. In the last analysis, although a reader may be the judge of the effectiveness of a written report of a dialectical exposition, only the writer of it-only the syntopical reader himself-can know whether he has satisfied these requirements.

An Example of an Exercise in Syntopical Read ing : The Idea of Progress

An example may be helpful to explain how syntopical reading works. Let us consider the idea of progress. We do not 326 HOW TO READ A BOOK

take this subject at random. We have done extensive research on it. 0 The example would not be so useful to you if that were not so.

The investigation of this important historical and philosophical idea occupied several years. The first task was to produce a list of works to be examined for relevant passages-to amass a bibliography ( it finally ran to more than 450 items ) .

This task was accomplished by a series of inspectional readings of several times that many books, articles, and other pieces. It is important to point out that in the case of the idea of progress, as would be true in the case of most other important ideas, many of the items finally judged to be relevant were found more or less by accident, or at least with the help of educated guesses. There were obvious places to start; many recent books contain the word "progress" in their titles. But others do not, and most of the older books, although relevant to the subject, do not even employ the term.

A few fictional and poetical works were read, but on the whole it was decided to