How To Read A Book- A Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren [190]
First, syntopical reading is extraordinarily hard to describe and explain without having the texts of various authors in front of one. Fortunately, we will have the opportunity in the last part of this Appendix, which follows, of presenting an actual exercise in syntopical reading. But even there we will be confined to two short texts by only two authors. A full-scale exercise would involve many texts from many authors, and the examination of many complex questions. Space limitations prohibit that here.
Second, it is almost impossible to describe the intellectual Appendix B 405
excitement and satisfaction that come from syntopical reading without actually sharing the experience of doing it. Nor is the understanding that one finally arrives at attained in a day. Often, it takes months or years to unwind the twisted thread of the discussion of an important point, a thread that may have been in the process of becoming twisted over centuries. Many false starts are made, and many tentative analyses and organizations of the discussions must be proposed, before any real light is thrown on the subject. We have suffered through many of these problems, and we know how disheartening the business can be at times. As a result, however, we also know how wonderful it can be when one finally wins one's way through to a solution.
Are there other respects in which our analysis is incomplete? We can think of a few possibilities. For example, does the book fail to diHerentiate sufficiently between what might be called first-intentional reading ( that is, reading a text ) and second-intentional reading ( that is, reading a commentary on that text )? Is enough said about reading heretical in contradistinction to canonical texts; or enough about the reading of texts that stand detached, above so-called canonical and heretical texts? Is enough attention paid to the problems raised by special vocabularies, especially in science and mathematics?
(This aspect of the general problem of reading is mentioned in the chapter on reading social science. ) Perhaps not enough space is devoted to the reading of lyric poetry. Beyond that, we are not sure that we know of anything that deserves criticism on this last count. But we would not be surprised to discover that some defects or failures that are not at all obvious to us are perfectly obvious to you.
IV. Exercises and Tests at the Fourth Level of Reading: Syntopical Reading
Two texts are used for the exercises in this fourth and last part of the Appendix. One consists of selected passages 406 HOW TO READ A BOOK
from the first two chapters of Book I of Aristotle's Politics.
The other consists of selected passages from Book I of Rousseau's The Social Contract-a sentence from the Introduction to the book, and passages from Chapters 1, 2, 4, and 6.
Aristotle's Politics appears in Volume 9 of Great Books of the W estem World. Volumes 8 and 9 of the set are devoted to the complete works of Aristotle; besides the Politics, Volume 9 includes the Ethics, the Rhetoric, and the Poetics, as well as a number of biological treatises. Rousseau's Social Contract appears in Volume 38 of the set, a volume that includes other works by Rousseau as well-the essay On the Origin of Inequality, and On Political Economy-together with another important eighteenth-century French political book, Montesquieu's The Spirit of Laws.
You will recall that there are two stages of syntopical reading. One is a preparatory step, the other is syntopical reading proper. For the purposes of this exercise we assume that the first or preparatory step has already been taken-that is, that we have decided on the subject we wish to consider and have also decided on the texts we want to read. The subject in this case may be defined as "The Nature and Origin of the State" -a subject of importance about which a great deal has been thought and said. The texts are as described