How To Read A Book- A Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren [162]
missed, your obligation as an analytical reader would take you back to the book immediately to seek it out. In fact, you cannot put your finger on it, but you know it is there. You find that you cannot forget the book, that you keep thinking about it and your reaction to it. Finally, you return to it. And then a very remarkable thing happens.
If the book belongs to the second class of books to which we referred before, you find, on returning to it, that there was less there than you remembered. The reason, of course, is that you yourself have grown in the meantime. Your mind is fuller, your understanding greater. The book has not changed, but you have. Such a return is inevitably disappointing.
But if the book belongs to the highest class-the very small number of inexhaustible books-you discover on returning that the book seems to have grown with you. You see new things in it-whole sets of new things-that you did not see before. Your previous understanding of the book is not invalidated ( assuming that you read it well the first time ) ; it is just as true as it ever was, and in the same ways that it was true before. But now it is true in still other ways, too.
How can a book grow as you grow? It is impossible, of course; a book, once it is written and published, does not change. But what you only now begin to realize is that the book was so far above you to begin wjth that it has remained above you, and probably always will remain so. Since it is a really good book-a great book, as we might say-it is accessible at different levels. Your impression of increased understanding on your previous reading was not false. The book truly lifted you then. But now, even though you have become wiser and more knowledgeable, it can lift you again. And it will go on doing this until you die.
There are obviously not many books that can do this for any of us. Our estimate was that the number is considerably less than a hundred. But the number is even less than that for any given reader. Human beings differ in many ways other than in the power of their minds. They have different tastes; 344 HOW TO READ A BOOK
different things appeal more to one person than to another.
You may never feel about Newton the way you feel about Shakespeare, either because you may be able to read Newton so well that you do not have to read him again, or because mathematical systems of the world just do not have all that appeal to you. Or, if they do-Charles Darwin is an example of such a person-then Newton may be one of the handful of books that are great for you, and not Shakespeare.
We do not want to state authoritatively that any particular book or group of books must be great for you, in this sense, although in our first Appendix we do list those books that experience has shown are capable of having this kind of value for many readers. Our point, instead, is that you should seek out the few books that can have this value for you. They are the books that will teach you the most, both about reading and about life. They are the books to which you will want to return over and over. They are the books that will help you to grow.
The Life and Growth of the Mind
There is an old test-it was quite popular a generation ago
-that was designed to tell you which books are the ones that can do this for you. Suppose, the test went, that you know in advance that you will be marooned on a desert island for the rest of your life, or at least for a long period. Suppose, too, that you have time to prepare for the experience. There are certain practical and useful articles that you would be sure to take with you. You will also be allowed ten books. Which ones would you select?
Trying to decide on a list is instructive, and not only because