He may hold dogmas; he may hold them passionately;
and he may know that others hold them but coldly, or hold
them differently, or hold them not at all. Well, if he has
the gift of reading, these others will be full of meat for
him. They will see the other side of propositions and the
other side of virtues. He need not change his dogma for
that, but he may change his reading of that dogma, and he
must supplement and correct his deductions from it. A human
truth, which is always very much a lie, hides as much of life
as it displays. It is men who hold another truth, or, as it
seems to us, perhaps, a dangerous lie, who can extend our
restricted field of knowledge, and rouse our drowsy
consciences. Something that seems quite new, or that seems
insolently false or very dangerous, is the test of a reader.
If he tries to see what it means, what truth excuses it, he
has the gift, and let him read. If he is merely hurt, or
offended, or exclaims upon his author's folly, he had better
take to the daily papers; he will never be a reader.
And here, with the aptest illustrative force, after I have
laid down my part-truth, I must step in with its opposite.
For, after all, we are vessels of a very limited content.
Not all men can read all books; it is only in a chosen few
that any man will find his appointed food; and the fittest
lessons are the most palatable, and make themselves welcome
to the mind. A writer learns this early, and it is his chief
support; he goes on unafraid, laying down the law; and he is
sure at heart that most of what he says is demonstrably
false, and much of a mingled strain, and some hurtful, and
very little good for service; but he is sure besides that
when his words fall into the hands of any genuine reader,
they will be weighed and winnowed, and only that which suits
will be assimilated; and when they fall into the hands of one
who cannot intelligently read, they come there quite silent
and inarticulate, falling upon deaf ears, and his secret is
kept as if he had not written.
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