How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

by Mortimer J. Adler

  The trouble with most readers is that they simply do not pay enough attention to words to locate their difficulties. They fail to distinguish the words that they do not understand suffip. 106ciently from those they do. All the things we have suggested to help you find the important words in a book will be of no avail unless you make a deliberate effort to note the words you must work on to find the terms they convey. The reader who fails to ponder, or at least to mark, the words he does not understand is headed for disaster.

  If you are reading a book that can increase your understanding, it stands to reason that not all of its words will be completely intelligible to you. If you proceed as if they were all ordinary words, all on the same level of general intelligibility as the words of a newspaper article, you will make no headway toward interpretation of the book. You might just as well be reading a newspaper, for the book cannot enlighten you if you do not try to understand it.

  Most of us are addicted to non-active reading. The outstanding fault of the non-active or undemanding reader is his inattention to words, and his consequent failure to come to terms with the author.

  Finding the Meanings

  Spotting the important words is only the beginning of the task. It merely locates the places in the text where you have to go to work. There is another part of this fifth rule of reading. Let us turn to that now. Let us suppose you have marked the words that trouble you. What next?

  There are two main possibilities. Either the author is using these words in a single sense throughout or he is using them in two or more senses, shifting his meaning from place to place. In the first alternative, the word stands for a single term. A good example of the use of important words so that they are restricted to a single meaning is found in Euclid. In the second alternative, the word stands for several terms.

  In the light of these alternatives, your procedure should be as follows. First, try to determine whether the word has p. 107 one or many meanings. If it has many, try to see how they are related. Finally, note the places where the word is used in one sense or another, and see if the context gives you any clue to the reason for the shift in meaning. This last will enable you to follow the word in its change of meanings with the same flexibility that characterizes the author’s usage.

  But, you may complain, everything is clear except the main thing. How does one find out what the meanings are? The answer, though simple, may appear unsatisfactory. But patience and practice will show you otherwise. The answer is that you have to discover the meaning of a word you do not understand by using the meanings of all the other words in the context that you do understand. This must be the way, no matter how merry-go-roundish it may seem at first.

  The easiest way to illustrate this is to consider a definition. A definition is stated in words. If you do not understand any of the words used in the definition, you obviously cannot understand the meaning of the word that names the thing defined. The word “point” is a basic word in geometry. You may think you know what it means (in geometry), but Euclid wants to be sure you use it in only one way. He tells you what he means by first defining the thing he is later going to use the word to name. He says: “A point is that which has no part.”

  How does that help to bring you to terms with him? You know, he assumes, what every other word in the sentence means with sufficient precision. You know that whatever has parts is a complex whole. You know that the opposite of complex is simple. To be simple is the same as to lack parts. You know that the use of the words “is” and “that which” means that the thing referred to must be an entity of some sort. Incidentally, it follows from all this that, if there are no physical things without parts, a point, as Euclid speaks of it, cannot be physical.

  This illustration is typical of the process by which you acquire meanings. You operate with meanings you already possess. If every word that was used in a definition had itself p. 108 to be defined, nothing could ever be defined. If every word in a book you were reading was entirely strange to you, as in the case of a book in a totally foreign language, you could make no progress at all.

  That is what people mean when they say of a book that it is all Greek to them. They simply have not tried to understand it, which would be justifiable if it were really in Greek. But most of the words in any English book are familiar words. These words surround the strange words, the technical words, the words that may cause the reader some trouble. The surrounding words are the context for the words to be interpreted. The reader has all the materials he needs to do the job.

  We are not pretending the job is an easy one. We are only insisting that it is not an impossible one. If it were, no one could read a book to gain in understanding. The fact that a book can give you new insights or enlighten you indicates that it probably contains words you may not readily understand. If you could not come to understand those words by your own efforts, then the kind of reading we are talking about would be impossible. It would be impossible to pass from understanding less to understanding more by your own operations on a book.

  There is no rule of thumb for doing this. The process is something like the trial-and-error method of putting a jigsaw puzzle together. The more parts you put together, the easier it is to find places for the remaining parts, if only because there are fewer of them. A book comes to you with a large number of words already in place. A word in place is a term. It is definitely located by the meaning that you and the author share in using it. The remaining words must be put in place. You do this by trying to make them fit this way or that. The better you understand the picture that the words so far in place already partially reveal, the easier it is to complete the picture by making terms of the remaining words. Each word put into place makes the next adjustment easier.

  You will make errors, of course, in the process. You will p. 109 think you have managed to find where a word belongs and how it fits, only to discover later that the placement of another word requires you to make a whole series of readjustments. The errors will get corrected because, so long as they are not found out, the picture cannot be completed. Once you have had any experience at all in this work of coming to terms, you will soon be able to check yourself. You will know whether you have succeeded or not. You will not blithely think you understand when you do not.

  In comparing a book to a jigsaw puzzle, we have made one assumption that is not true. A good puzzle is, of course, one all of whose parts fit. The picture can be perfectly completed. The same is true of the ideally good book, but there is no such book. In proportion as books are good, their terms will be so well made and put together by the author that the reader can do the work of interpretation fruitfully. Here, as in the case of every other rule of reading, bad books are less readable than good ones. The rules do not work on them, except to show you how bad they are. If the author uses words ambiguously you cannot find out what he is trying to say. You can only find out that he has not been precise.

  But, you may ask, does not an author who uses a word in more than a single sense use it ambiguously? And is it not the usual practice for authors to use words in several senses, especially their most important words?

  The answer to the first question is No; to the second, Yes. To use a word ambiguously is to use it in several senses without distinguishing or relating their meanings. (For example, we have probably used the word “important” ambiguously in this chapter, for we were not always clear as to whether we meant important for the author or important for you.) The author who does that has not made terms that the reader can come to. But the author who distinguishes the several senses in which he is using a critical word and enables the reader to make a responsive discrimination is offering terms.

  You should not forget that one word can represent several p. 110 terms. One way to remember this is to distinguish between the author’s vocabulary and his terminology. If you make a list in one column of the important words, and in another of their important meanings, you will see the relation between the vocabulary and the terminology.
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br />   There are several further complications. In the first place, a word that has several distinct meanings can be used either in a single sense or in a combination of senses. Let us take the word “reading” again as an example. In some places, we have used it to stand for reading any kind of book. In others, we have used it to stand for reading books that instruct rather than entertain. In still others, we have used it to stand for reading that enlightens rather than informs.

  Now if we symbolize here, as we did before, these three distinct meanings of “reading” by Xa, Xb, and Xc, then the first usage just mentioned is Xabc, the second is Xbc, and the third Xc. In other words, if several meanings are related, one can use a word to stand for all of them, for some of them, or for only one of them at a time. So long as each usage is definite, the word so used is a term.

  In the second place, there is the problem of synonyms. The repetition of a single word over and over is awkward and boring, except in mathematical writing, and so good authors often substitute different words having the same or very similar meanings for important words in their text. This is just the opposite of the situation where one word can stand for several terms; here, one and the same term is represented by two or more words used synonymously.

  We can express this symbolically as follows. Let X and Y be two different words, such as “enlightenment” and “insight.” Let the letter a stand for the same meaning that each can express, namely, a gain in understanding. Then Xa and Ya represent the same term, though they are distinct as words. When we speak of reading “for insight” and reading “for “enlightenment,” we are referring to the same kind of reading, because the two phrases are being used with the same meanp. 111ing. The words are different, but there is only one term for you as a reader to grasp.

  This is important, of course. If you supposed that every time an author changed his words, he was shifting his terms, you would make as great an error as to suppose that every time he used the same words, the terms remained the same. Keep this in mind when you list the author’s vocabulary and terminology in separate columns. You will find two relationships. On the one hand, a single word may be related to several terms. On the other hand, a single term may be related to several words.

  In the third place, and finally, there is the matter of phrases. If a phrase is a unit, that is, if it is a whole that can be the subject or predicate of a sentence, it is like a single word. Like a single word, it can refer to something being talked about in some way.

  It follows, therefore, that a term can be expressed by a phrase as well as by a word. And all the relations that exist between words and terms hold also between terms and phrases. Two phrases may express the same term, and one phrase may express several terms, according to the way its constituent words are used.

  In general, a phrase is less likely to be ambiguous than a word. Because it is a group of words, each of which is in the context of the others, the single words are more likely to have restricted meanings. That is why a writer is likely to substitute a fairly elaborate phrase for a single word if he wants to be sure that you get his meaning.

  One illustration should suffice. To be sure that you come to terms with us about reading, we substitute phrases like “reading for enlightenment” for the single word “reading.” To make doubly sure, we may substitute a more elaborate phrase, such as “the process of passing from understanding less to understanding more by the operation of your mind upon a book.” There is only one term here, a term referring to the kind of reading that this book is mostly about. But that one p. 112 term has been expressed by a single word, a short phrase, and a longer one.

  This has been a hard chapter to write, and probably a hard one to read. The reason is clear. The rule of reading we have been discussing cannot be made fully intelligible without going into all sorts of grammatical and logical explanations about words and terms.

  In fact, we have actually done very little explaining. To give an adequate account of these matters would take many chapters. We have merely touched upon the most essential points. We hope we have said enough to make the rule a useful guide in practice. The more you put it into practice, the more you will appreciate the intricacies of the problem. You will want to know something about the literal and metaphorical use of words. You will want to know about the distinction between abstract and concrete words, and between proper and common names. You will become interested in the whole business of definition: the difference between defining words and defining things; why some words are indefinable, and yet have definite meanings, and so forth. You will seek light on what is called “the emotive use of words,” that is, the use of words to arouse emotions, to move men to action or change their minds, as distinct from the communication of knowledge. And you may even become interested in the relation between ordinary “rational” speech and “bizarre” or “crazy” talk—the speech of the mentally disturbed, where almost every word carries weird and unexpected but nevertheless identifiable connotations.

  If the practice of analytical reading elicits these further interests, you will be in a position to satisfy them by reading books on these special subjects. And you will profit more from reading such books, because you will go to them with questions born of your own experience in reading. The study of grammar and logic, the sciences that underlie these rules, is practical only to the extent you can relate it to practice.

  You may never wish to go further. But even if you do not, p. 113 you will find that your comprehension of any book will be enormously increased if you only go to the trouble of finding its important words, identifying their shifting meanings, and coming to terms. Seldom does such a small change in a habit have such a large effect.

  Chapter 9 – Determining An Author’s Message

  p. 114 Not only coming to terms but also making propositions occurs among traders as well as in the world of books. What a buyer or seller means by a proposition is some sort of proposal, some sort of offer or acceptance. In honest dealings, the person who makes a proposition in this sense is declaring his intention to act in a certain way. More than honesty is required for successful negotiations. The proposition should be clear and, of course, attractive. Then the traders can come to terms.

  A proposition in a book is also a declaration. It is an expression of the author’s judgment about something. He affirms something he thinks to be true, or denies something he judges to be false. He asserts this or that to be a fact. A proposition of this sort is a declaration of knowledge, not intentions. The author may tell us his intentions at the beginning in a preface. In an expository book, he usually promises to instruct us about something. To find out whether he keeps those promises, we must look for his propositions.

  Generally, the order of reading reverses the order of business. Businessmen usually come to terms after they find out what the proposition is. But the reader must usually come to terms with an author first, before he can find out what the author is proposing, what judgment he is declaring. That is why the fifth rule of analytical reading concerns words and p. 115 terms, and the sixth, which we are about to discuss, concerns sentences and propositions.

  There is a seventh rule that is closely related to the sixth. The author may be honest in declaring himself on matters of fact or knowledge. We usually proceed in that trust. But unless we are exclusively interested in the author’s personality, we should not be satisfied with knowing what his opinions are. His propositions are nothing but expressions of personal opinion unless they are supported by reasons. If it is the book and the subject with which it deals that we are interested in, and not just the author, we want to know not merely what his propositions are, but also why he thinks we should be persuaded to accept them.

  The seventh rule, therefore, deals with arguments of all sorts. There are many kinds of reasoning, many ways of supporting what one says. Sometimes it is possible to argue that something is true; sometimes no more than a probability can be defended. But every sort of argument consists of a number of statements related
in a certain way. This is said because of that. The word “because” here signifies a reason being given.

  The presence of arguments is indicated by other words that relate statements, such as: if this is so, then that; or, since this, therefore that; or, it follows from this, that that is the case. In the course of earlier chapters in this book, such sequences occurred. For those of us who are no longer in school, we observed, it is necessary, if we want to go on learning and discovering, to know how to make books teach us well. In that situation, if we want to go on learning, then we must know how to learn from books, which are absent teachers.

  An argument is always a set or series of statements of which some provide the grounds or reasons for what is to be concluded. A paragraph, therefore, or at least a collection of sentences, is required to express an argument. The premises or principles of an argument may not always be stated first, but they are the source of the conclusion, nevertheless. If the argument is valid, the conclusion follows from the premises. p. 116 That does not necessarily mean that the conclusion is true, since one or all of the premises that support it may be false.

  There is a grammatical as well as a logical aspect to the order of these rules of interpretation. We go from terms to propositions to arguments, by going from words (and phrases) to sentences to collections of sentences (or paragraphs). We are building up from simpler to more complex units. The smallest significant element in a book is, of course, a single word. It would be true but not adequate to say that a book consists of words. It also consists of groups of words, taken as units, and similarly of groups of sentences, taken as units. The active reader is attentive not only to the words but also to the sentences and paragraphs. There is no other way of discovering the author’s terms, propositions, and arguments.