How To Read A Book- A Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren [159]
4. Define the issues, both major and minor ones, by ranging the opposing answers of authors to the various questions on one side of an issue or another. You should remember that an issue does not always exist explicitly between or among authors, but that it sometimes has to be constructed by interpretation of the authors' views on matters that may not have been their primary concern.
5. Analyze the discussion by ordering the questions and issues in such a way as to throw maximum light on the subject.
More general issues should precede less general ones, and relations among issues should be clearly indicated.
Note: Dialectical detachment or objectivity should, ideally, be maintained throughout. One way to insure this is always to accompany an interpretation of an author's views on an issue with an actual quotation from his text.
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READ I NG AN D
THE GROWTH OF TH E M I N D
We have now completed the task that lay before us at the beging of this book. We have shown that activity is the essence of good reading, and that the more active reading is, the better it is.
We have defined active reading as the asking of questions, and we have indicated what questions must be asked of any book, and how those questions must be answered in different ways for diferent kinds of books.
We have identified and discussed the four levels of reading, and shown how these are cumulative, earlier or lower levels being contained in later or higher ones. Consequent upon our stated intention, we have laid more stress upon the later and higher levels of reading than upon the earlier and lower ones, and we have therefore emphasized analytical and syntopical reading. Since analytical reading is probably the most unfamiliar kind for most readers, we have discussed it at greater length than any of the other levels, giving its rules and explaining them in the order in which they must be applied. But almost everything that was said of analytical reading also applies, with certain adaptations that were mentioned in the last chapter, to syntopical reading as well.
We have completed our task, but you may not have completed yours. We do not need to remind you that this is a 337
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practical book, nor that the reader of a practical book has a special obligation with respect to it. If, we said, the reader of a practical book accepts the ends it proposes and agrees that the means recommended are appropriate and effective, then he must act in the way proposed. You may not accept the primary aim we have endorsed-namely, that you should be able to read as well as possible-nor the means we have proposed to reach it-namely, the rules of inspectional, analytical, and syntopical reading. ( In that case, however, you are not likely to be reading this page. ) But if you do accept that aim and agree that the means are appropriate, then you must make the effort to read as you probably have never read before.
That is your task and your obligation. Can we help you in it in any way?
We think we can. The task falls mainly on you-it is you who, henceforth, must do all the work ( and obtain all the benefits ) . But there are several things that remain to be said, about the end and the means. Let us discuss the latter first.
What Good Books Can Do for Us
"Means" can be interpreted in two ways. In the previous paragraph, we interpreted the term as referring to the rules of reading, that is, the method by which you become a better reader. But "means" can also be interpreted as referring to the things you read. Having a method without materials to which it can be applied is as useless as having the materials with no method to apply to them.
In the latter sense of the term, the means that will serve you in the further improvement of your reading are the books you will read. We have said that the method applies to anything you read, and that is true, if you understand by the statement any kind of