Ignorance will only make you look foolish in front of wealth. The poor suffer from poverty and want. For them, work replaces knowledge and occupies all their spirits. In contrast, people who are rich but ignorant just live in sensory pleasure, no different from animals, but this is a common situation. In addition, the ignorance of the rich is to blame that wealth and leisure are not fully utilized in their hands and are not invested in the work that makes them steep and of great value.
When reading, other people's thinking replaces our own thinking, because we just repeat the author's thinking process. This situation is like a primary school student learning to write-he imitates the fonts written by the teacher one by one with a quill. Therefore, when reading, most of the thinking work is done by others. This is why when we turn from focusing on our own thoughts to reading, we will obviously feel a little relaxed. But when reading, our brain becomes a playground for other people's thoughts. When all these things are finally evacuated, what is left? In this way, if a person reads a lot almost all day and only does a little mindless recreation in his spare time, he will gradually lose his ability to think independently in the long run, just as a person who always rides on horseback will eventually lose his ability to walk. Many pedants encounter this situation: they actually read themselves silly. This is because continuous reading, which we resume as soon as we have free time, is even more destructive to the spirit and thoughts than continuous manual work, because after all, we can immerse ourselves in our own thoughts when we are engaged in manual work. Just as a spring will eventually lose its elasticity under constant pressure, our hearts will lose their elasticity because of the constant invasion and pressure of other people's thoughts. Just as too much food will spoil our stomachs and damage our whole body, so too much spiritual food will fill and suffocate our minds. This is because the more we read, the less spiritual traces we leave behind by what we read-because our mind at this time is like a blackboard full of overlapping things. In this way, we have no time to review and recall. Only after reviewing and recalling can we absorb what we have read, just as food cannot provide us with nutrition when swallowed, only after digestion. If we keep reading and then don't think much about what we read, then these things won't take root in our minds and most of them will be forgotten. Generally speaking, there is no difference between mental nutrition and physical nutrition: less than one-fiftieth of what we swallow is really absorbed by us, and the rest is consumed by evaporation and breathing.
In addition, the thoughts written on paper are generally nothing more than the footprints left by people walking on the beach. Yes, we saw the road he walked, but to know what this man saw along the way, we must use our own eyes.
We can't grasp these literary qualities by reading literary works-for example, these qualities include rich images, vivid metaphors and eloquent persuasion; Bold, straightforward or ironic language, concise, lively or elegant expression; In addition, there are puns, striking antithesis, concise writing, unpretentious style, and so on. However, observing this kind of writing can trigger these' potential' qualities that we already have, and make ourselves aware of our inherent qualities; At the same time, I also know how far these qualities can be brought into play. In this way, I will face my tendency more calmly and even boldly exert these talents. From other people's examples, we can identify the effects of using these talents and learn the skills of using them correctly. Only in this way can we' actually' have these talents. Therefore, this is the only place where reading can cultivate our writing style, because reading has taught us ways and means to develop and use our natural abilities-provided, of course, that we already have these talents. But if you lack these qualities, no matter how you read them, it won't help-except to barely learn some rigid posturing; In this way, we are just imitators on the surface.
Just as the rock formations of the earth have preserved the biological bodies of previous generations, so do the wrong views and statements of the previous generations arranged in chronological order on the library shelves-these things used to be alive and kicking, and like the previous generations, they did cause a certain sensation. But now they have become fossils and are motionless on the shelves, and only people who study ancient books can read them.
According to Herodotus, when King Zexar I of Persia saw his endless army, he couldn't help but burst into tears, because he thought that after one hundred years, none of them were still alive. Looking at the thick catalogue of publications, and considering that all these books will end their lives in less than ten years, who can not shed tears in the face of this situation?
Written works are no different from life: in life, we will meet hopeless vulgar people at random, who are everywhere-just like those flies that pollute everything in summer; Similarly, a large number of bad books and inferior books are constantly emerging-weeds in these works take away nutrients from wheat seedlings and suffocate them. In other words, these bad books take away readers' time, money and attention, which should be invested in excellent books and their noble goals. Many people write just to make money or find a job. So this writing is not only useless, but also absolutely harmful. Nine-tenths of our written works today have no other purpose except to deceive readers and dig out a few copper coins from their pockets. For this purpose, authors, publishers and critics are absolutely in cahoots.
A trick successfully used by prolific writers and people who write for bread is quite cunning and low-level, but its effect is remarkable, and the good taste of the times and real cultural accomplishment are hard to reach. That is to say, like playing with puppets, they are pulling leisure people with certain interests, training them to develop the reading habit synchronized with publications, so that they can all read the same thing, that is, the latest published thing, in order to get talk in their own circles after dinner. Those writers who once enjoyed a certain literary title, such as Spendler, Bauer, Su, etc., wrote inferior novels and articles of similar nature for the same purpose. Since readers of literature and art always take it as their duty to read the latest works-these shoddy things are made by extremely mediocre minds to make money, and it is for this reason that such works are a dime a dozen-and in terms of cost, these readers only know the names of excellent and rare ideological works that have been made in various countries in history, so is there a more tragic fate? ! Literary magazines and daily newspapers, in particular, have taken away the time of readers who love aesthetics with ulterior motives-and these time should have been invested in truly beautiful works to cultivate themselves, rather than spent on the poor works that ordinary people put on every day.
Because people always read the "latest", rather than the best works of all times, writers are confined to the narrow circle of fashion and popular concepts, and this era is increasingly mired in its own quagmire. Therefore, when choosing reading materials, it is very important to master the art of identifying which "no" should be read. This art lies in not touching books that only attract the most readers' attention at any time-precisely because most people are reading, whether it is pamphlets promoting politics and literature or novels and poems. These things are a sensation, even in the first and last years of their lives, they can be printed many times. Moreover, we must remember this: those things written for fools can always find a large group of readers; However, we should use our limited reading time to read great works written by various countries and nationalities in history-these works were written by outstanding people, and their reputation in later generations has illustrated this point. Only the works of these people can enlighten us. There are too many bad things and too few good works. Bad books are poison that damages our spiritual thoughts. One of the prerequisites for reading good books is not to read bad books, because life is short and time and energy are extremely limited.
People write articles and books to comment on this or that great thinker in ancient times, and readers follow them, not the works of that thinker. The reason is that the public only wants to see the latest printed things, "birds of a feather are gathered together." In this way, for readers, the boring and nagging nonsense written by a boring and superficial mind today is more intimate and attractive than the thoughts of great thinkers. I thank myself for my good luck, because when I was young, I was lucky enough to see this beautiful motto of schlegel-since then, this motto has become my motto:
Read the works of the real ancients carefully, and modern people's comments are of little significance.
Ah, how monotonous the minds of ordinary people are! Their ideas are simply the same! On the same occasion, they only have the same idea! In addition, there are their humble and insignificant goals and plans. No matter what nonsense these little people nag, as long as they are freshly printed and published, silly readers will pursue them, while great thinkers' masterpieces lie quietly on the bookshelf, and no one cares.
The stupidity and abnormality of readers are unbelievable, because they put aside all kinds of noble and rare ideological works preserved by various times and nationalities and concentrate on picking up the fabrications that emerge every day from mediocre minds, just because these words are printed today and the ink has not dried yet. From the first day of the birth of these works, we will despise and ignore them, and after a few years, these poor works will always attract others to treat them equally. They just provide jokes and topics for people to ridicule those absurd years that have passed away.
At any time, there are two parallel but unrelated written works: one is the original, and the other is just a superficial article. The former gradually became an "eternal work". People who work hard in this field are people born for science or literature and art; They are persistent and serious, not publicity, but slowly walking on their own road. In Europe, there are not more than a dozen such works in a century, but these works can be "immortal". The followers of another kind of literary works are "making a living by science or literature and art"; They jumped forward and waved their whips, accompanied by the noise and shouting of stakeholders. Every year, they send thousands of works to the market. But in a few years, people will ask: where are these works now? Where is the reputation that those people now enjoy as precocious and sensational? Therefore, we can describe this kind of literary works as flowing water that will never return, while the former kind of literature is static and permanent.
If only I could buy time to read these books at the same time! However, people often mistakenly equate buying books with absorbing and mastering the contents of these books.
To expect a reader to remember everything he has read is to expect his stomach to remember all the food he has eaten. Food and books are what the reader depends on physically and mentally, which also makes him look like at the moment. However, just as a person's body only absorbs the same food as his body, everyone only "remembers" what makes him feel "interested", that is, what is consistent with his overall thought or interest goal. Of course, everyone will have their own interests, but few people will have something similar to the general idea. So people will have no objective interest in things, and what they read will have no result. The reason is this: Because what they read can't be kept.
"Review is the mother of learning." Every important book must be read twice in a row. One of the reasons is that when we read this book for the second time, we will better understand the overall relevance of the contents in the book, and only when we know the end of the book will we understand the beginning of the book; The second reason is that when we read for the second time, our mood and emotions are different from those when we read for the first time. In this way, we will get different impressions. This situation is like looking at the same object in different light. A person's works are the essence of his thoughts. Therefore, although a person has a strong ideological ability, reading this person's works will always get more content than interacting with this person. As far as the most important aspect is concerned, reading these works can indeed replace or even far exceed the close contact with this person. Even the words written by ordinary people are enlightening, entertaining and worth reading-because these things are the essence of his thoughts and the result of all his thinking, research and learning; And the interaction with this person is not necessarily satisfactory. So the association with some people can't give us pleasure, but their works are worth reading. Therefore, a high degree of ideological cultivation will gradually make us look for recreation and entertainment only from books, not specific individuals.
Nothing is more refreshing than reading ancient classics. As long as you pick up any such classic works casually and read it for even half an hour, the whole person will immediately feel refreshed, relaxed and comfortable, and the spirit will be purified, sublimated and strengthened. It feels like taking a sip of a rock spring. Is this because of the ancient language and its perfect characteristics, or because the great ideas preserved by these classic writers in their works have remained intact for thousands of years? Maybe there are two reasons. However, this is certain: once people give up learning ancient languages-there is such a threat now-new written works will be filled with superficial, rude and worthless graffiti as never before, especially German, a language with many excellent characteristics of ancient languages, which is now being destroyed and destroyed step by step by the poor literati of "contemporary today"; In this way, the increasingly poor and distorted German will gradually become poor dialects and rude words.
We have two kinds of history: political history and writing art history. The former is a history of desire, while the latter is a history of intelligence. Therefore, political history is worrying and even thrilling to read from beginning to end. Without exception, the whole history is full of fear, hardship, deception and massacres. However, the history of writing and art is pleasant to read, even though it records the detours people have taken. The main branch of this history of thought is the history of philosophy: it is the basic bass of the history of thought, and its ringtone even affects other history, which also fundamentally dominates the views and opinions in other history. Therefore, correctly understood, philosophy is also a very powerful material force, although its action process is quite slow.
For world history, half a century is always a long period, because its materials are endless and things are always happening. In contrast, half a century will not bring much to the history of writing, because nothing has happened-the stupidity of violinists has nothing to do with this history. So, 50 years later, we are still marking time.
In order to make this situation clear, we can compare the progress of human knowledge to the trajectory of a planet, and after every significant progress, human beings usually take a detour soon-we can express it by Ptolemy turnover line. After every turn of this rotation line, human beings return to the starting point of this rotation line. But those great thinkers did not enter these rotating lines-they did lead mankind along the orbit of the planet. This can explain why gaining the reputation of future generations often comes at the expense of losing the praise of contemporaries, and vice versa.
The fact related to this development process of things is that every 30 years or so, we can see that the zeitgeist of science, literature or art goes bankrupt. In other words, during this period, all kinds of fallacies intensified until they were finally overwhelmed by their own absurdities, and the opinions opposite to these fallacies increased their momentum at the same time. In this way, the situation has changed, but the latter fallacy is often in the opposite direction to the former fallacy. These facts just provide practical materials for the history of literature to show the periodic repetition in the development of things. However, the history of literature has no intention of this material.
Consistent with the trajectory of human progress I described is the History of Writing: most of its contents are nothing more than showing and recording many writing freaks who died prematurely. However, there is no need to look for those works from birth to growth, because these works are always energetic and young, and we can meet these immortal works wherever we are. Only these works constitute the only "real" written works I discussed above; And the history of recording these contains not many characters. We learned this history from the mouth of people with ideological and cultural literacy, not from the outline and outline of textbooks first. But I hope that one day someone will write a "History of Tragedy Literature"-this will record how countries that proudly show off their great writers and artists treated them when they were alive. Such a tragic history must attract people's attention: all real and excellent works have to fight endlessly with the absurd and clumsy things that always prevail, no matter when and where; Almost all real human enlighteners and almost all masters in various academic and artistic fields are martyrs; With a few exceptions, these extraordinary figures have spent their whole lives in poverty and misery, with no recognition and sympathy, and no students and disciples. However, fame, honor and wealth belong to those who don't deserve these things in this discipline, just like what happened to Esau: the eldest son Esau hunted wild animals for his father, but his twin brother Jacob put on Esau's clothes at home to defraud his father's blessing; However, despite this, the great people's love for their cause supported them until the struggle of these human educators finally ended-the immortal laurel wreath waved to them at this time, and such a moment finally sounded:
Heavy armor turned into feathers of wings,
What is short-lived is pain, and what is permanent is joy.
-Miss Schiller in Orleans
Source | Youth Digest Philosophy