How To Read A Book- A Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren [59]
Another clue to the important sentences is found in the words that compose them. If you have already marked the important words, they should lead you to the sentences that deserve further attention. Thus the first step in interpretive reading prepares for the second. But the reverse may also be the case. It may be that you will mark certain words only after you have become puzzled by the meaning of a sentence. The fact that we have stated these rules in a fixed order does not mean that you have to follow them in that order. Terms constitute propositions. Propositions contain terms. If you know the terms the words express, you have caught the proposition in the sentence. If you understand the proposition conveyed by a sentence, you have arrived at the terms also.
This suggests one further clue to the location of the principal propositions. They must belong to the main argument of the book. They must be either premises or conclusions.
Hence, if you can detect those sentences that seem to form a sequence, a sequence in which there is a beginning and an end, you probably have put your finger on the sentences that are important.
We said a sequence in which there is a beginning and an end. Every argument that men can express in words takes time to state. You may speak a sentence in one breath, but there are pauses in an argument. You have to say one thing first, then another, and then another. An argument begins somewhere, 1 24 HOW TO READ A BOOK
goes somewhere, gets somewhere. It is a movement of thought.
It m�y begin with what is really the conclusion and then proceed to give the reasons for it. Or it may start with the evidence and the reasons and bring you to the conclusion that follows therefrom.
Of course, here as elsewhere, the clue will not work unless you know how to use it. You have to recognize an argument when you see one. Despite some disappointing experiences, however, we persist in our opinion that the human mind is as naturally sensitive to arguments as the eye is to colors. ( There may be some people who are argument-blind! ) But the eye will not see if it is not kept open, and the mind will not follow an argument if it is not awake.
Many persons believe that they know how to read because they read at different speeds. But they pause and go slow over the wrong sentences. They pause over the sentences that interest them rather than the ones that puzzle them. Indeed, this is one of the greatest obstacles to reading a book that is not completely contemporary. Any old book contains facts that are somewhat surprising because they are different from what we know. But when you are reading for understanding it is not that kind of novelty that you are seeking. Your interest in the author himself, or in his language, or in the world in which he wrote, is one thing; your concern to understand his ideas is quite another. It is this concern that the rules we are discussing here can help you to satisfy, not your curiosity about other matters.
Finding the Propositions
Let us suppose that you have located the leading sentences. Another step is required by Rule 6. You must discover the proposition or propositions that each of these sentences contains. This is just another way of saying that you must know what the sentence means. You discover terms by discov-Determining an Author's Message 1 25
ering what a word means in a given usage. You discover propositions similarly by interpreting all the words that make up the sentence, and especially its principal words.
Once more, you cannot do this very well unless you know a little grammar. You must know the role that adjectives and