Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 July 1886 — The Modern Reader. [ARTICLE]

The Modern Reader.

The partv leasf'undetadood In these days is not the ancient or modern author, but the modern reader, the map to whom the ancient author looked for. posthnihous fame, and on whom tho modern author fastens as .one claims hreowßi Sir Jbhn Lubbock -selects his 100 writers, old and new. whom everybody ought to read, while Air. Baskin and other eminent litterateurs comment upon his choice and express their personal preferences. But for a company of modern readers, whose nnme is legion, these lists of famous lxxiks, without reading which no one’s education is said to be completed, are quite beside the mark. If the literary doctrinaires who tell us what to read; in order to be cultivated, are to lie followed, one miist spend a good proportion of his time in reading books that the world has left high and dry on the shelves of libraries. If lie is to read the worlcfs great classics with appreciation, he must study them with reference to what preceded them and what followed them in history, to fully grasp their meaning, and this is only possible to persons of extensive education and leisure. It is possible for you to go through them in a hurried way, but you will largely miss their “sweetness and light, ” if you treat them as you treat a novel of the day. This is the only way the people can read the world's classics at all. The opportunity is hardly better for those in professional life. Its exactions, its special literature exhaust your time, and you find that you are only able to read the papers and the books of the hour. In other words, the actual circumstances of life for those who are earning their own living practically render null and void a good part of the suggestions which Sir John Lubbock, Mr, Buskin, and Frederic Harrison give the general public. They write for people who have nothing else to do, and their suggestions avail little for the practical necessities of modern education. Yet it is important that the modern reader shall be provided for, and that he shall be a man of his time. Modern culture consists of a knowledge of modern life, of the assimilation to one’s self of what is best in the spirit of the age, of a close following of the trend of events of the slowly acquired power to think and speak correctly. It is the quick and apt training that fits one for the work lie has to do, and it is claimed that this training gives the essence of culture to the modern man and woman. If you go back to the ancient writers whose fame has survived, you find that it was the clarified and large conception of present life, th& result of the best use of their faculties, that give them pre-eminence in the world. It is just this use of one’s faculties to-day, the full acquaintance with the activities of the world, that makes tho fully equipped modern man and woman. It is only book-worms and dry-as-dusts who devote themselves.to Homer and Aristotle and Lord Bacon, and the habit of quoting them passes as pedantry. The reading of these writers is reserved for the learned few, and the insistence that one must read them to possess a truly cultivated mind is sheer nonsense. Nobody believes it possible but a dozen or two of our literary doctrinaires, and they carry no weight among the people. Mr Goschen, who is a fine specimen of the clear-headed modern Englishman, holds to no such views in what he has spoken on this subject. The modern reader must be educated, for the most part, through the newspaper, the magazine, the sermon, the lecture, the daily discussion, the new novel, the contact with social and political problems, and the ©heap editions of the world’s classics* and in familiarity with these sources of culture qualifies himself to become a citizen of the world. It is time that this sort of training, which is the outcome of the public school, had the praise which it deserves. It makes the keen, alert, quick, - clear-minded man of affairs, and no less it produces the thinkers and writers who are to deal successfully with important issues in society and State and church. It is well enough to give your days and nights to the ancients, if you have nothing else to do, but it is no more necessary, in order to secure the best kind of culture, than it is to clothe yourself in the garments of your ancestors in order to be well-dressed. The best thought of the ancient world is incarnated in the life of to-day. Its spirit, its movement, are in modern education and in modern books, and the reader who uses bis opportunities to become properly acquainted with modern tilings has the essence of the finest culture of the world constantly within his easy reach. The wise use of modern books will give any reader of to-day the insight and The strength which constitute the best modern education.—Boston Hei'ahl.