译文：
读书
要是所有人在选择自己的职业时，稍稍多考虑一点，也许大都会成为研究员或观察员，因为，可以肯定，人们的天性和命运惊人的相似。为自己或后代积累财富，组建家庭，或创建国家，甚至获取名利，我们皆为凡人；但我们在探索真理时，却是不朽的，无需担心变故也无需担心意外。最古老的埃及或印度哲学家给神像携起一角衣袍；那宽大的长袍至今还在往上撩着，我凝视着其一如继往的光辉，因为，那时候它身上有我的影子，非常勇敢，现在回想，却是我身上有它的影子。衣袍上一尘不染；自神灵显示以来，时间就没有流逝过。我们真正进步的时代，或可进步的时代，不是过去，不是现在，也不是未来。
我的住所跟一所大学比起来，不仅更适宜思考，而且更适宜认真读书，虽然我读的书在一般流通图书馆以外，但我受到世界范围内流通的图书的影响，比以往任何时候更多，那些书最早是写在树皮上的，如今只是时不时地在纸上复印一下。诗人米尔·卡玛·乌丁·马斯特说：“静心打坐，任凭神思在心灵世界里驰骋；我从书上得到的这一好处。一杯美酒足以使人陶醉；我在品读深奥的学说，如饮美酒，其乐无穷。”整个夏天，我都把荷马的《伊利亚特》放在桌子上，只是偶尔翻开读几页。我手上有忙不完的活，起床，我要把房子造好的同时还要为豆子锄草，这让我不可能读更多的书。而我靠明天就可以读很多书的希望供养着自己。我趁劳作的间隙时间读过一两本浅谈旅行的书籍，直至那时，我才自感羞愧，不禁自问：我到底在哪里。
学生可以读希腊文版的《荷马》或埃斯库罗的原著，不存在放荡的风险，也不存在奢侈的风险，因为这意味着学生某种程度上会效仿书中的英雄人物，而且他们会把清晨时光用来读书。这些关于英雄的书籍——即使用我们的母语印出来——也将永远是一种死气沉沉老掉牙的语言。因此，我们吭吭哧哧摸索每个单词、每句话的意思，以我们固有的智慧、胆识和大气，推敲其意外之意。现代廉价而多产的印刷业——还有各种译本——却没能让我们更加接近古代那些豪迈的作家。那些作家看上去还是那么孤独，其作品中的文字印刷出来还跟原来一样古怪而晦涩。如果你年轻时花去珍贵的时光学习古文，哪怕只学到几个词语，也是值得的，因为这些语言是从大街小巷的锁碎生活中提炼出来的，具有恒久的暗示性与挑战性。农民把听到几个拉丁词记下来，并反复练习，这并不是徒劳。人们有时候认为，似乎古典文学的研究最终会让位于更具现代化的实用研究；不过，具有开拓精神的学生将永远研究古典文学，无论这些古典作品用什么语言写的，也不管这些作品有多古老。古典文学除了记录最高贵的人类思想，还能有什么？这些著作是唯一不朽的巨著，它们对大多数现代提问给予的解答，就连特尔斐和多多那也答不上来。我们不妨研究一下《自然》，因为它很古老。读好书，即，读真正有意义的书，是一种高雅的锻炼。这种锻炼给读者的考验比任何日常锻炼更大。这需要一种类似于运动员们所经历的训练，要以坚定的意志，毕生修炼。读书要像写书那样，一丝不苟，暗下功夫才行。甚至是会讲原著所用的语言还不够，因为在口语与书面语（即听到的语言与读到的语言）之间存在明显的差异。口语通常很短暂，是一种声音，只是一种方言，还有点粗野，我们像个粗人似的，无意识地从母亲那里学到了这种口语。而书面语则是一种成熟而精炼的语言；如果说口语是母亲的语言，那么书面语是父亲的语言——即一种含蓄而精炼的表达，其含义光靠耳朵是听不出来的，为此，我们要重获新生，方能学会这种表达。在中世纪时期，老百姓只会说希腊语和拉丁语，由于出生的偶然性，他们读不懂天才作家用这两种语言完成的作品；因为书中的语言并不是百姓们口中所讲的那种希腊语或拉丁语，而是精炼的文学语言。他们还没有学会更高雅的希腊方言和罗马方言，因此，对他们来说，用高雅的语言写出来的作品不过一堆废纸而已。而他们却看重廉价的当代文学作品。不过，几个欧洲国家拥有它们自己的书面语言——虽然粗俗，但很鲜明，足以达到兴起其自己文学的目的，初始学问随之复苏，学者们有了研究珍贵的古典文学的能力。希腊和古罗马百姓听不懂的文学，经过几个世纪之后，能够读懂的学者寥寥，且至今仍在阅读古典的学者依然寥寥。不管我们有多欣赏演说家偶尔迸发出的雄辩才能，而最高雅的书面语言，通常就像躲在云层之上的星空一样，躲在转瞬即逝的口头语言之后，或者凌架于口头语言之上。星星就在那里，为可以看懂它们的人而存在。天文学家们一直在对星星进行观测和讲解。这类著作不像我们日常对话那样唾沫横飞。通常，人们发现公众集会上的所谓雄辩用的正是文学中的修辞。灵感乍现的演说家对着他面前的民众——那些能听懂他讲话的人——口若悬河泄水，滔滔不绝；而作家，需要的只是较为平静的生活，集会场合以及鼓舞演说家的民众会扰乱他的心神，作家是与人类的本源对话，与能理解他的一切人类对话。
难怪亚历山大在远征时，还要在他的宝盒里带上《伊利亚特》。书面文字是最宝贵的财富。同时，它比其他艺术品与我们更亲密，也更具普遍性。也是最接近生活本身的艺术品。也可能翻译成了其他语言，这种文字不仅仅是一种读物，实际上，而且成了全人类脱口而出的语言；——书面语不仅出现在油画上，或刻在了大理石上，而且从生活本身的话语中流露出来。古人的思想表达成了现代人的语言。两千个盛夏授于古希腊文学的丰碑，就像携刻在大理石上的文字一样，透着更加成熟，金光灿灿的秋色，因为，这些文字将其静谧而圣洁的氛围撒向世界各地，以保护自身不受时间的侵蚀。书籍是世界的珍宝，是各个国家可以世代相传的重要遗产。书籍——即最古典的极品书籍——理应出现在每户人家的书架上。它们从不辩解，只是启迪读者，给读者以力量，通晓常理的人就不会将其拒之门外。这些书籍的作者无论在哪个社会阶层，都是天生的贵族，魅力四射，它们对人类产生的影响并不只有国王或皇帝。大字不识一个，或许还有点瞧不起别人的商人，通过打拼事业，获得了他垂涎已久的闲暇与独立，进入到富人圈和时尚圈，最后，难免会转入更高级却难以企及的精英圈，这时他才明白自己的文化底蕴多么凄凄惨惨戚戚，他所有的财富不过显示着虚荣和寻寻觅觅。他经过一番苦痛争扎，进一步证明自己还算头脑清醒，让自己的孩子们获取他渴望的文化知识；就这样，他成了一个家庭的始祖。
读不懂古典原著的人，必定对人类历史知识不能完全了解；显然，这些古典文学当中，还没有印刷出一本现代译本，除非把我们的文明本身视作此类译本。《荷马》至今都印出过英文版，《库斯库罗斯》也没有过，甚至《维吉尔》也没有——这些作品写得那么凝练、那么严谨，犹如清晨一般唯美；后来的作家们，无论我们如何赞美其天才，也鲜有能与古代那些绝妙、完整、不朽的文学作品相媲美，而那些从来不了解古典文学的人，对其避而不谈。在我们增长了学问和智商，能够阅读和欣赏这类作品时，却变得很健忘了。在我们积累了很多我们称之为古典的遗产，也积累了许许多多比古典更古老、更古典，却鲜为人知的各国经典著作之时，梵蒂冈教廷里堆满了《吠陀经》、《阿维斯陀古经》和《圣经》，还有荷马、但丁和莎士比亚的著作，在未来会不断地储藏古人的成就，供世人讨论，到了那个时代，才真叫富有。有了这么一大堆精品，我们就有望展翅翱翔。
迄今为止，人们还没有读懂伟大诗人的作品，因为只有伟大的诗人才能读懂。他们读诗，就像百姓观察星宿，最多是从星象学的角度，而非从天文学的角度来观测。大多数人读书，只是为了获取一丁点方便而已，正如他们学会阿拉伯数字，只是为了算清帐目，在买卖往来中不会受骗；但他们几乎不知道读书是一种高贵的智慧修炼；而从崇高的意义上来说，这种读书只不过是在呆看，即让我们的惰性官能一直打盹，并不是作为一种享受，让我们平静的阅读，不过真正的经典作品，被束之高阁，我们不仅得踮起脚尖才能读得到，还要把最机敏、最清醒的时光用在阅读这类作品上。
我想，我们认识字母以后，就应该读最好的文学作品，而不是一直在重复ab-ab，以及单音节的单词，像个四五年级的小学生似的，一辈子坐在低年级最前排的坐位上。大数多人觉得自己能够阅读或者能够听懂别人阅读，就心满意足了，或许会为一本好书《圣经》所折服，往后余生便在所谓的轻松阅读中打发时光，浪费自己的才能。在我们流通图书馆里有一部多卷作品，名为“小读物”，我以为是一个我还没光顾的小镇的名字。有那么一些人，就像鸬鹚和鸵鸟，能消化各种食物，甚至在吃饱了大肉大菜之后照样全收，因为他们不浪费任何东西。如果别人是提供这类“食物”的机器，他们就是“消化”这类食物的机器。这些人读到第九千个关于西布伦和塞弗罗尼亚的传说故事，了解到双方如何相爱，之前从没人那么相爱过，以及二人真正相爱的过程也不顺畅——反正，故事情节跌宕起伏！某个可怜的倒霉鬼如何爬上了塔尖；他不要爬到钟楼的顶端就好了，那么，没必要让他爬到那儿，兴奋的小说家敲起钟来，让全世界的人赶来听，噢，天哪！看那小子如何下来！我个人认为，这些人应该把所有小说世界里有抱负的英雄人物转变为人类的风向标，正如他们过去常把英雄人物放入星座中一样，让它们在凤心鸡那里不停地旋围，直到转不动为止，不要下来胡闹，以免打扰到老实人。小说家下次敲响警钟时，就算礼拜堂给烧掉了，我也毫不动摇。“《踮起脚尖跳》——一部中世纪时期的爱情故事，作者是写《铁特尔—托尔—谭》的著名作家，故事内容按月连载；欲购从速；名额有限。”人们眼睛瞪得铜铃似的，像原始人一般，好奇地读着这些文字，而且胃口大得很，甚至胃壁没受到一丁点损伤，宛如一个四岁的小孩坐在长凳上津津有味地读两美分一本的烫金封面的《灰姑娘》——在我看来，他们在发音上、语气上、重音上、都没什么长进，也没有提升什么对文章的增删技巧。读得视力下降了，身体循环也变差了，而且智力都有所下降了。这类“姜汁面包”每天都有烘焙，要比“纯面粉或黑麦加粗玉米粉做的面包”要更卖力，而且更有市场。
最好的书籍，即使是所谓的好读者，也不阅读。那我们的康科德文化又是什么？英国文学中的那些最佳作品或特别棒书，其中的词语既可阅读、可拼写，可是这个小镇上除了很少例外，人们对这些书毫无兴趣。甚至在这里或在别处，那些在大学里受过文科教育的人对英国经典都不甚了解；至于记录人类智慧的书籍，以及古典文学和《圣经》，对于想要了解其内容的人来说，都是唾手可得的，在这上面下的功夫却是最少的。我认识一位伐木工，是个中年人，他订阅了一份法国报纸，他说不是为了看新闻，因为新闻满足不了他，而是为了让自己不断地练习法语，因为他出生在加拿大；我问他，在这个世界上，他认为自己能做得最好的事情是什么，他回答说，除了法语讲得好之外，继续把英语巩固好。这与大学生的通常的做法或想要的实现的愿望如出一辙，他们订阅英语报就是出于这样一种目的。一个人刚读完一本书，或许是一个最好的英语书，会发现几个能与之探讨其内容的人？假设他刚读完一本希腊文的古典原著或拉丁语的古典原著——甚至是所谓的文盲都会对其赞美的书籍；他会发现找不到一个可以与之聊聊的人，不过一定会将其铭记于心底。如果大学里的一位教授精通这种棘手的语言，那他就能读懂一位希腊诗人智慧和诗中的奥秘，并将产生的共鸣传达给聪慧而有志气的读者，可惜，几乎没有一位这样的教授；至于神圣的经文，或人类的《圣经》，这个小镇上有谁能告诉上面的标题吗？大多数人不知道，只有希伯来人拥有一部《圣典》。任何人挣到一枚银元特别费劲；这些金句——最聪明的古人说出的句金——是每位历代的智者向我们证实过的；——而我们只局限于轻松阅读——一些启蒙读物和学校的课本，在我们离开学校时，读的就是“小读物”和故事书——适合小孩子和初学者的书；而我们读的书，我们的谈吐和思想，皆处于极低的水平，无异于小矮人了。
我渴望结识这样一些人——这些人要比康科德本土出生的人更有智慧，而且这些人的名字在这儿几乎无人知晓。那我听到柏拉图的名字后而不读他的书好吗？仿佛柏拉图是我的同乡，而我却从来没见过他——我和我的隔壁邻居都没听他说过什么格言警句。但实际情况如何呢？柏拉图的《对话集》，包含着他不朽的思想，就搁在后面的架子上，我却未曾读过。我们是缺乏修养而生活低俗的文盲；我们镇上的文盲有两种：一种是没有阅读能力的人，另一种只读过儿童读物或低智力读物的人，我承认，自己区分不出这两种文盲有什么区别。我们应该像古代圣人那样优秀，不过，我们首先要知道他们是如何变优秀的。我们是小矮人一族，在智力的飞跃中只比日报专栏高出一点儿。
并不是所有的书籍都像其读者那样愚钝。或许有些文字准确地描述了我们的境况，如果我们真切地听到了并有所感悟，那么这些文字对我们的生活就比清晨或春天更有益处。可能向我们展示出事物的新面貌。何等多的人从阅读一本书而开启了自己人生的新纪元啊！书籍为我们而存在，也许，书籍既能解说奥秘，又能揭示新的奥秘。可能我们目前难以理解的事物，在别处已经说明的。这些困扰我们的问题，那些聪明的人也碰到过；一个问题都没漏掉，每个人都根据自己的能力，用自己的话和自己的生活阅历对这些问题一一解答。此外，有了智慧，我们学会了包容。康科德郊外有一位孤独的雇工，曾有过重生和独特的宗教经历，他认为，通过自己的信仰，进入了沉默庄严和遗世独立的境界，他可能会认为这不真实；然而，在数千年前，琐罗亚斯德走过同样的路，也有过同样的体验；不过，他很聪明，知道这是普遍现象，会相应接待其邻居们，据说还在人间开创了礼拜活动。那就让这位雇工恭敬地与琐罗亚斯德交流吧，并在所有圣人的影响下，跟着耶稣本尊解脱吧，让我们的教堂倒塌吧。
我们夸耀道，自己属于十九世纪，正在迈着最快的步伐前进。但是想一想，这个村庄为其自身的文化所做的事情微乎其微。我不愿意奉承我的同乡们，也不愿意让他们奉承，因为，这样一来，我们双方都不会有长进。我们要像公牛那样，需要刺激，因为我们受到挑衅，才会跑起来。我们有一个相对像样的公立学校体系，学校只为婴儿而开设；不过，有冬天处于半饥饿状态的吕克昂学府，近来，政府建议开办一个小型图书馆，除此之外，我们没有自己的学校。我们花在肉体粮食或小病上的钱多于花在精神粮食上的钱。我们是时候开办优质的学校了，我们作为一个人，也是时候接受教育了。是时候让一个个村庄成为大学了，是时候让村里的老年人成为大学生了，利用其闲暇时间——如果他们确实足够富裕——就在余生追求卓越，研究文学吧。难道就让世界永远局限在一个巴黎或一个牛津里吗？难道学生们就不能寄宿在此，在康科德的蓝天下接受文学教育吗？我们就不能雇用某个阿伯拉尔来给我们讲学吗？天哪！我们净忙着喂牛、开店了，我们太久没有上学读书了，很遗憾，我们忽视了教育。在我们国家，这个村庄应当在某些层面取代欧洲的贵族地位。它应该是最佳艺术品的老主顾。因为它有的是钱。缺的只是包容与优雅。它可以在农民们和商人们看重的此类物件上花很多钱，不过，人们认为，要在知识分子们认为更有价值的事物上花钱，那简直是乌托邦的空想。这个小镇在建造镇府大楼上花了一万七千美元，不知是太有钱了还是政治原因，不过，它不可能在生活智慧上花那么一大笔，净做了些表面功夫,就算再过一百年也是如此。为了冬天开办吕克昂学府，每年募集一百二十五美元，这比小镇上任何同样数目的筹款都要有意义。如果我们生活在十九世纪，为什么就不享用十九世纪所给予的好处呢？我们的生活为什么要在每个方面都迂腐狭隘呢？如果我们看报纸，为什么不跳过波士顿的闲谈，马上订阅世界上最好的报纸呢？——不要吸取“中立派”报纸的废话，也不要浏览新英格兰这儿的“橄榄枝”。让各种学术团体都来我们这儿报道吧。我们看看是否他们什么都知道。我们为什么要让哈珀兄弟图书公司和雷丁出版公司代替我们选择读物呢？趣味高雅的贵族周围的一切都有利于其文化修养——天才——学问——智慧——书籍——绘画——雕塑——音乐——哲学等；让村庄如此这般——不要只雇一位教师、一位牧师、一个司事，也不要只办一个教区图书馆，不要只选三名市政委员，因为我们的清教徒前辈就仰仗这些，在冰冷的岩石上挨过了寒冷的冬季。集体行动赋予我们制度以活力；我坚信，随着我们的经济状况日益发达，我们的财富会比贵族们的更雄厚。新英格兰有能力雇用世界上所有博学之人来教育自己，期间让他们膳宿在这里，我们就不再迂腐狭隘了。这就是我们想要的优秀学校。我们要的是优等村民，而非贵族。如有必要，我们宁可河上少一座桥梁，多绕一点路，起码要在我们周围那幽暗的无知深渊上，搭起一座拱桥。
原文：
Reading
With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike. In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed. That time which we really improve, or which is improvable, is neither past, present, nor future.
My residence was more favorable, not only to thought, but to serious reading, than a university; and though I was beyond the range of the ordinary circulating library, I had more than ever come within the influence of those books which circulate round the world, whose sentences were first written on bark, and are now merely copied from time to time on to linen paper. Says the poet Mr Udd, "Being seated, to run through the region of the spiritual world; I have had this advantage in books. To be intoxicated by a single glass of wine; I have experienced this pleasure when I have drunk the liquor of the esoteric doctrines." I kept Homer's Iliad on my table through the summer, though I looked at his page only now and then. Incessant labor with my hands, at first, for I had my house to finish and my beans to hoe at the same time, made more study impossible. Yet I sustained myself by the prospect of such reading in future. I read one or two shallow books of travel in the intervals of my work, till that employment made me ashamed of myself, and I asked where it was then that I lived.
The student may read Homer or AEschylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that he in some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages. The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever. It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard. Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. It is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the language read. The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. The other is the maturity and experience of that; if that is our mother tongue, this is our father tongue, a reserved and select expression, too significant to be heard by the ear, which we must be born again in order to speak. The crowds of men who merely spoke the Greek and Latin tongues in the Middle Ages were not entitled by the accident of birth to read the works of genius written in those languages; for these were not written in that Greek or Latin which they knew, but in the select language of literature. They had not learned the nobler dialects of Greece and Rome, but the very materials on which they were written were waste paper to them, and they prized instead a cheap contemporary literature. But when the several nations of Europe had acquired distinct though rude written languages of their own, sufficient for the purposes of their rising literatures, then first learning revived, and scholars were enabled to discern from that remoteness the treasures of antiquity. What the Roman and Grecian multitude could not hear, after the lapse of ages a few scholars read, and a few scholars only are still reading it.
However much we may admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds. There are the stars, and they who can may read them. The astronomers forever comment on and observe them. They are not exhalations like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and health of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.
No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man's thought becomes a modern man's speech. Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time. Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind. When the illiterate and perhaps scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles of wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still higher but yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only of the imperfection of his culture and the vanity and insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good sense by the pains which be takes to secure for his children that intellectual culture whose want he so keenly feels; and thus it is that he becomes the founder of a family.
Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in which they were written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race; for it is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been made into any modern tongue, unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such a transcript. Homer has never yet been printed in English, nor AEschylus, nor Virgil even -- works as refined, as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as the morning itself; for later writers, say what we will of their genius, have rarely, if ever, equalled the elaborate beauty and finish and the lifelong and heroic literary labors of the ancients. They only talk of forgetting them who never knew them. It will be soon enough to forget them when we have the learning and the genius which will enable us to attend to and appreciate them. That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last.
The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. They have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at most astrologically, not astronomically. Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and not be cheated in trade; but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet this only is reading, in a high sense, not that which lulls us as a luxury and suffers the nobler faculties to sleep the while, but what we have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our most alert and wakeful hours to.
I think that having learned our letters we should read the best that is in literature, and not be forever repeating our a-b-abs, and words of one syllable, in the fourth or fifth classes, sitting on the lowest and foremost form all our lives. Most men are satisfied if they read or hear read, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy reading. There is a work in several volumes in our Circulating Library entitled "Little Reading," which I thought referred to a town of that name which I had not been to. There are those who, like cormorants and ostriches, can digest all sorts of this, even after the fullest dinner of meats and vegetables, for they suffer nothing to be wasted. If others are the machines to provide this provender, they are the machines to read it. They read the nine thousandth tale about Zebulon and Sophronia, and how they loved as none had ever loved before, and neither did the course of their true love run smooth — at any rate, how it did run and stumble, and get up again and go on! how some poor unfortunate got up on to a steeple, who had better never have gone up as far as the belfry; and then, having needlessly got him up there, the happy novelist rings the bell for all the world to come together and hear, O dear! how he did get down again! For my part, I think that they had better metamorphose all such aspiring heroes of universal noveldom into man weather-cocks, as they used to put heroes among the constellations, and let them swing round there till they are rusty, and not come down at all to bother honest men with their pranks. The next time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burn down. "The Skip of the Tip-Toe-Hop, a Romance of the Middle Ages, by the celebrated author of `Tittle-Tol-Tan,' to appear in monthly parts; a great rush; don't all come together." All this they read with saucer eyes, and erect and primitive curiosity, and with unwearied gizzard, whose corrugations even yet need no sharpening, just as some little four-year-old bencher his two-cent gilt-covered edition of Cinderella -- without any improvement, that I can see, in the pronunciation, or accent, or emphasis, or any more skill in extracting or inserting the moral. The result is dulness of sight, a stagnation of the vital circulations, and a general deliquium and sloughing off of all the intellectual faculties. This sort of gingerbread is baked daily and more sedulously than pure wheat or rye-and-Indian in almost every oven, and finds a surer market.
The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in English literature, whose words all can read and spell. Even the college-bred and so-called liberally educated men here and elsewhere have really little or no acquaintance with the English classics; and as for the recorded wisdom of mankind, the ancient classics and Bibles, which are accessible to all who will know of them, there are the feeblest efforts anywhere made to become acquainted with them. I know a woodchopper, of middle age, who takes a French paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that, but to "keep himself in practice," he being a Canadian by birth; and when I ask him what he considers the best thing he can do in this world, he says, beside this, to keep up and add to his English. This is about as much as the college-bred generally do or aspire to do, and they take an English paper for the purpose. One who has just come from reading perhaps one of the best English books will find how many with whom he can converse about it? Or suppose he comes from reading a Greek or Latin classic in the original, whose praises are familiar even to the so-called illiterate; he will find nobody at all to speak to, but must keep silence about it. Indeed, there is hardly the professor in our colleges, who, if he has mastered the difficulties of the language, has proportionally mastered the difficulties of the wit and poetry of a Greek poet, and has any sympathy to impart to the alert and heroic reader; and as for the sacred Scriptures, or Bibles of mankind, who in this town can tell me even their titles? Most men do not know that any nation but the Hebrews have had a scripture. A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of; -- and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and class-books, and when we leave school, the "Little Reading," and story-books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins.
I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this our Concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly known here. Or shall I hear the name of Plato and never read his book? As if Plato were my townsman and I never saw him -- my next neighbor and I never heard him speak or attended to the wisdom of his words. But how actually is it? His Dialogues, which contain what was immortal in him, lie on the next shelf, and yet I never read them. We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. We should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly by first knowing how good they were. We are a race of tit-men, and soar but little higher in our intellectual flights than the columns of the daily paper.
It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life. Moreover, with wisdom we shall learn liberality. The solitary hired man on a farm in the outskirts of Concord, who has had his second birth and peculiar religious experience, and is driven as he believes into the silent gravity and exclusiveness by his faith, may think it is not true; but Zoroaster, thousands of years ago, travelled the same road and had the same experience; but he, being wise, knew it to be universal, and treated his neighbors accordingly, and is even said to have invented and established worship among men. Let him humbly commune with Zoroaster then, and through the liberalizing influence of all the worthies, with Jesus Christ himself, and let "our church" go by the board.
We boast that we belong to the Nineteenth Century and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. But consider how little this village does for its own culture. I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for that will not advance either of us. We need to be provoked -- goaded like oxen, as we are, into a trot. We have a comparatively decent system of common schools, schools for infants only; but excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the winter, and latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested by the State, no school for ourselves. We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment. It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisure -- if they are, indeed, so well off -- to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives. Shall the world be confined to one Paris or one Oxford forever? Cannot students be boarded here and get a liberal education under the skies of Concord? Can we not hire some Abelard to lecture to us? Alas! what with foddering the cattle and tending the store, we are kept from school too long, and our education is sadly neglected. In this country, the village should in some respects take the place of the nobleman of Europe. It should be the patron of the fine arts. It is rich enough. It wants only the magnanimity and refinement. It can spend money enough on such things as farmers and traders value, but it is thought Utopian to propose spending money for things which more intelligent men know to be of far more worth. This town has spent seventeen thousand dollars on a town-house, thank fortune or politics, but probably it will not spend so much on living wit, the true meat to put into that shell, in a hundred years. The one hundred and twenty-five dollars annually subscribed for a Lyceum in the winter is better spent than any other equal sum raised in the town. If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial? If we will read newspapers, why not skip the gossip of Boston and take the best newspaper in the world at once? -- not be sucking the pap of "neutral family" papers, or browsing "Olive Branches" here in New England. Let the reports of all the learned societies come to us, and we will see if they know anything. Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading? As the nobleman of cultivated taste surrounds himself with whatever conduces to his culture -- genius -- learning -- wit -- books -- paintings -- statuary -- music -- philosophical instruments, and the like; so let the village do -- not stop short at a pedagogue, a parson, a sexton, a parish library, and three selectmen, because our Pilgrim forefathers got through a cold winter once on a bleak rock with these. To act collectively is according to the spirit of our institutions; and I am confident that, as our circumstances are more flourishing, our means are greater than the nobleman's. New England can hire all the wise men in the world to come and teach her, and board them round the while, and not be provincial at all. That is the uncommon school we want. Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men. If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.
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