How To Read A Book- A Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren [93]
The ends and means are likely to be less obvious. Yet answering them in either case is necessary for the understanding and criticism of a practical book.
It also reminds you of one aspect of practical writing that we noted earlier. There is an admixture of oratory or propaganda in every practical book. We have never read a book of political philosophy-however theoretical it may have appeared, however "abstract" the principles with which it dealt
-that did not try to persuade the reader about "the best form of government." Similarly, moral treatises try to persuade the reader about "the good life" as well as recommend ways of leading it. And we have tried continuously to persuade you to read books in a certain way, for the sake of the understanding that you may attain.
You can see why the practical author must always be something of an orator or propagandist. Since your ultimate judgment of his work is going to tum on your acceptance of 1 98 HOW TO READ A BOOK
the goal for which he is proposing means, it is up to him to win you to his ends. To do this, he has to argue in a way that appeals to your heart as well as your mind. He may have to play on your emotions and gain direction of your will.
There is nothing wrong or vicious about this. It is of the very nature of practical affairs that men have to be persuaded to think and act in a certain way. Neither practical thinking nor action is an affair of the mind alone. The emotions cannot be left out. No one makes serious practical judgments or engages in action without being moved somehow from below the neck. The world might be a better place if we did, but it would certainly be a different world. The writer of practical books who does not realize this will be ineffective. The reader of them who does not is likely to be sold a bill of goods without his knowing it.
The best protection against propaganda of any sort is the recognition of it for what it is. Only hidden and undetected oratory is really insidious. What reaches the heart without going through the mind is likely to bounce back and put the mind out of business. Propaganda taken in that way is like a drug you do not know you are swallowing. The effect is mysterious; you do not know afterwards why you feel or think the way you do.
The person who reads a practical book intelligently, who knows its basic terms, propositions, and arguments, will always be able to detect its oratory. He will spot the passages that make an "emotive use of words." Aware that he must be subject to persuasion, he can do something about weighing the appeals. He has sales resistance; but this need not be one hundred percent. Sales resistance is good when it prevents you from buying hastily and thoughtlessly. But the reader who supposes he should be totally deaf to all appeals might just as well not read practical books.
There is a further point here. Because of the nature of practical problems and because of the admixture of oratory in all practical writing, the "personality" of the author is more How to Read Practical Books 1 99
important in the case of practical books than theoretical. You need know nothing whatever about the author of a mathematical treatise; his reasoning is either good or not, and it makes no difference what kind of man he is. But in order to understand and judge a moral treatise, a political tract, or an economic discussion, you should know something about the character of the writer, something about his life and times. In reading: Aristotle's Politics, for example, it is highly relevant to know that Greek society was based on slavery. Similarly, much light is thrown on The Prince by knowing the Italian political situation at the time of Machiavelli, and his relation to the Medicis;