How We Think
Democracy and Education
Experience and Nature
Logic, the Theory of Inquiry
125. **Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)
An Introduction to Mathematics
Science and the Modern World
The Aims of Education and Other Essays
Adventures of Ideas
126. ** George Santayana (1863–1952)
The Life of Reason
Skepticism and Animal Faith
Persons and Places
127. Nikolai Lenin (1870–1924)
The State and Revolution
128. Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
Remembrance of Things Past
129. ** Bertrand Russell (1872–1970)
The Problems of Philosophy
The Analysis of Mind
An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth
Human Knowledge; Its Scope and Limits
130. **Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
The Magic Mountain
Joseph and His Brothers
131. **Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
The Meaning of Relativity
On the Method of Theoretical Physics
The Evolution of Physics (with L. Infeld)
132. **James Joyce (1882–1941)
“The Dead” in Dubliners
p. 362 Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Ulysses
133. Jacques Maritain (1882–1973 )
Art and Scholasticism
The Degrees of Knowledge
The Rights of Man and Natural Law
True Humanism
134. Franz Kafka (1883–1924)
The Trial
The Castle
135. Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975 )
A Study of History
Civilization on Trial
136. Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980 )
Nausea
No Exit
Being and Nothingness
137. Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (1918– )
The First Circle
Cancer Ward
Appendix B – Exercises and Tests
at the Four Levels of Reading
Introductory
p. 363 This Appendix offers a highly abbreviated sample of what Reading Exercises for independent study or group study are like. Obviously the sample cannot provide a thorough or exhaustive set of exercises, such as one would expect to find in a manual or workbook. However, it can perhaps go a certain way toward suggesting what such exercises would be, and how to get the most out of them.
The Appendix contains brief exercises and test questions at each of the four levels of reading:
At the First Level of Reading—Elementary Reading—the texts used are biographical notes about two of the authors included in Great Books of the Western World, John Stuart Mill and Sir Isaac Newton.
At the Second Level of Reading—Inspectional Reading—the texts used are the tables of contents of two works included in Great Books of the Western World, Dante’s Divine Comedy and Darwin’s The Origin of Species.
At the Third Level of Reading—Analytical Reading—the text used is How to Read a Book itself.
At the Fourth Level of Reading—Syntopical Reading—the texts used are selected passages reprinted from two other p. 364 works included in Great Books of the Western World, Aristotle’s Politics and Rousseau’s The Social Contract.
The reader will probably find that the sample exercises at the first two levels of reading are more familiar and conventional than those at the last two levels. This Appendix, unlike a more elaborate manual, can do little more than reinforce and clarify the distinctions between the various levels of reading and the differences between the various kinds of books. It cannot attempt to provide a really comprehensive and intensive exercise workbook.
It has become commonplace to criticize reading exercises and test questions on the grounds that they are not scientifically standardized, that they are culturally discriminatory, that by themselves they are not reliably predictive of success in schooling or in subsequent career progress, that questions often permit of more than one appropriate or “correct” answer, and that for all these reasons, grading by tests is to a certain extent arbitrary.
Much of this and similar criticism of the tests is valid, particularly if major decisions about school standing or placement, or about employment opportunities, are based exclusively on results drawn from these tests. However, many of the tests do effectively distinguish or identify degrees of competence, and they will continue to be widely employed in making academic and career judgments about individuals. Even if there were no other reasons, this reason by itself makes it desirable that the reader have some familiarity with the mechanics of these exercises and test questions.
It is particularly to be noted that the texts used in most such reading exercises are selected primarily for the sake of the test questions that are based on them. Hence the texts themselves are for the most part unrelated; frequently they are fragments—bits and pieces of technical pedantry or mere trivia.
In this Appendix, merely exemplary though it be, the emphasis is quite otherwise. The texts used for practice and to provide material for testing are themselves worth reading. Indeed, they are indispensable reading for anyone who wishes p. 365 to advance beyond the first levels of reading. The texts are selected and the questions based on them are designed as tools for learning how to read what is worth reading.
A word about the form of the questions used in the tests that appear in the following pages. It is customary in such tests to employ a number of different kinds of questions. There are essay questions and multiple-choice questions. An essay question, of course, requires the person being tested to respond to something he has read in an extended statement. Multiple-choice questions are in turn of many kinds; usually they are presented in homogeneous groups. Sometimes a series of statements follows the reading exercise, and the person being tested is asked to indicate which statement best expresses the main idea or ideas of the passage read. In other cases the reader may be offered a choice of statements about a detail in the text, only one of which is a valid interpretation of the text, or at least is more apt than the others; or it may be the other way around; one is an incorrect choice, and the others are correct. Or a verbatim quotation may be given from the text to discover whether the reader has taken note of it and remembered it. Sometimes, in a statement either quoted directly or simply drawn from the text the reader will find a blank indicating that one or more words that will make sense of the statement have been omitted. Then follows a list of choices, lettered or numbered, among which the person being tested is asked to choose the phrase that, when inserted in the blank, best completes the statement.
Most questions may be answered directly from the passage read. But some questions require the reader to go outside the text for material that it is assumed he knows, material required to answer the question correctly. Still other questions are inferential: that is, they draw certain inferences from the text. The person taking the test is asked to select from a group of possibilities the inferences that can reasonably be drawn from the text; or he may be expected to recognize and discard inferences that are spurious and have no foundation in the text.
If one is faced with the task of creating a standardized p. 366 test to be used widely in critical academic and career situations, then the choice of the kinds of questions and the framing of the questions themselves become critical as well. Fortunately, we do not face that kind of task in this Appendix. Instead, we are merely suggesting some approaches that may be tried in a course of independent study aimed at improving one’s own reading skills. We will employ in what follows most of the kinds of questions just described—not segregating the types in groups as is usually done—and some other kinds as well. Some are quite easy, others are very difficult; the difficult questions may be the most fun to try to answer.
Because some of the questions are very difficult, and because we
have framed them with the intention as much of causing you to reflect on what you have read as to test you on what you have read, we have in many cases given more than the customary short and cryptic answers to the questions. This is particularly so in the case of the questions in the last part of this Appendix, the section dealing with syntopical reading. There, we have taken the liberty of leading the reader by the hand, as it were, framing the questions in such a way as to suggest an overall interpretation of the texts read, and answering the questions as much as possible as though we were present in person.
I. Exercises and Tests at the First Level of Reading:
Elementary Reading
Two short biographical sketches appear in this section of the Appendix. One outlines the life of John Stuart Mill, the other that of Sir Isaac Newton. The Mill sketch appears first, although of course Newton predates Mill by nearly two centuries.
This biographical sketch of Mill is reprinted from Volume 43 of Great Books of the Western World. Besides the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Constitution, and the Federalist Papers of Hamilton, Madison and Jay—the founding documents of America—that p. 367 volume contains three complete works by Mill: On Liberty, Representative Government and Utilitarianism. These are three of Mill’s greatest works, but they by no means exhaust his writings. The Subjection of Women, for example, is of great contemporary interest, not only because Mill was one of the first thinkers in Western history to advocate complete equality for women, but also because of the book’s trenchant style and the many insights it expresses about the relations of men and women at any time and place.
At the first level of reading, speed is not of the essence. The sketch of Mill’s life that follows is about 1,200 words long. We suggest that it be read at a comfortable speed—in perhaps six to ten minutes. We also suggest that you mark phrases and sentences in the text that especially interest you and perhaps also make a few notes. Then try to answer the questions we have appended.
John Stuart Mill
1806-1873
Mill, in his Autobiography, declared that his intellectual development was due primarily to the influence of two people: his father, James Mill, and his wife.
James Mill elaborated for his son a comprehensive educational program, modelled upon the theories of Helvétius and Bentham. It was encyclopedic in scope and equipped Mill by the time he was thirteen with the equivalent of a thorough university education. The father acted as the boy’s tutor and constant companion, allowing Mill to work in the same room with him and even to interrupt him as he was writing his History of India or his articles for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Mill later described the result as one that “made me appear as a ‘made’ or manufactured man, having had a certain impress of opinion stamped upon me which I could only reproduce.”
The education began with Greek and arithmetic at the age of three. By the time he was eight Mill had read through the whole of Herodotus, six dialogues of Plato and considerable history. Before he was twelve he had studied Euclid and algebra, the Greek and Latin poets, and some English poetry. His interest in history p. 368 continued, and he even attempted writing an account of Roman government. At twelve he was introduced to logic in Aristotle’s Organon and the Latin scholastic manuals on the subject. The last year under his father’s direct supervision, his thirteenth, was devoted to political economy; the son’s notes later served the elder Mill in his Elements of Political Economy. He furthered his education by a period of studies with his father’s friends, reading law with Austin and economics with Ricardo, and completed it by himself with Bentham’s treatise on legislation, which he felt gave him “a creed, a doctrine, a philosophy . . . a religion” and made a “different being of him.”
Although Mill never actually severed relations with his father, he experienced, at the age of twenty, a “crisis” in his mental history. It occurred to him to pose the question: “Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?” He reported that “an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, ‘No,’ ” and he was overcome by a depression which lasted for several years. The first break in his “gloom” came while reading Marmontel’s Mémoires: “I . . . came to the passage which relates his father’s death, the distressed position of the family, and the sudden inspiration by which he, then a mere boy, felt and made them feel that he would be everything to them—would supply the place of all that they had lost.” He was moved to tears by the scene, and from this moment his “burden grew lighter.”
From the time he was seventeen, Mill supported himself by working for the East India Company, where his father was an official. Although he began nominally as a clerk, he was soon promoted to assistant-examiner, and for twenty years, from his father’s death in 1836, until the Company’s activities were taken over by the British Government, he had charge of the relations with the Indian states, which gave him wide practical experience in the problems of government. In addition to his regular employment, he took part in many activities tending to prepare public opinion for legislative reform. He, his father, and their friends formed the group known as “philosophical radicals,” which made a major contribution to the debates leading to the Reform Bill of 1832. Mill was active in exposing what he considered departures from sound p. 369 principle in parliament and the courts of justice. He wrote often for the newspapers friendly to the “radical” cause, helped to found and edit the Westminster Review as a “radical” organ, and participated in several reading and debating societies, devoted to the discussion of the contemporary intellectual and social problems.
These activities did not prevent him from pursuing his own intellectual interests. He edited Bentham’s Rationale of Judicial Evidence. He studied logic and science with the aim of reconciling syllogistic logic with the methods of inductive science, and published his System of Logic (1843). At the same time he pushed his inquiries in the field of economics. These first took the form of Essays on Some Unsettled Questions in Political Economy and were later given systematic treatment in the Principles of Political Economy (1848).
The development and productivity of these years he attributed to his relationship with Mrs. Harriet Taylor, who became his wife in 1851. Mill had known her for twenty years, since shortly after his “crisis,” and he could never praise too highly her influence upon his work. Although he published less during the seven years of his married life than at any other period of his career, he thought out and partly wrote many of his important works, including the essay On Liberty (1859), the Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform, which later led to the Representative Government (1861), and Utilitarianism (1863). He attributed to her especially his understanding of the human side of the abstract reforms he advocated. After her death he stated: “Her memory is to me a religion, and her approbation the standard by which, summing up as it does all worthiness, I endeavour to regulate my life.”
Mill devoted a large part of his last years directly to political activity. In addition to his writings, he was one of the founders of the first women’s suffrage society and, in 1865, consented to become a member of Parliament. Voting with the radical wing of the Liberal Party, he took an active part in the debates on Disraeli’s Reform Bill and promoted the measures which he had long advocated, such as the representation of women, the reform of London government, and the alteration of land tenure in Ireland. Largely because of his support of unpopular measures, he was defeated for re-election. He retired to his cottage in Avignon, which had been built so that he might be close to the grave of his wife, and died there May 8, 1873.
p. 370 Note that the questions in these tests are not all of the same type: there are several kinds of multiple-choice questions and some essay questions as well. Some questions call for information not included in the passage you have read—the background information a capable reade
r brings to whatever he reads. Select all the answers which seem to you to be valid, whether they are stated or implied in the text, or simply seem to you true on the basis of logic or your background information.
Test A:
Questions about the biographical sketch of John Stuart Mill
1. During the latter part of Mill’s life, England was ruled by (a) George IV (b) William IV (c) Victoria (d) Edward VII.
2. Mill’s early education was largely designed by (a) Jeremy Bentham (b) his father, James Mill (c) the Encyclopaedia Britannica for which his father wrote articles (d) Marmontel’s Mémoires.
3. By the time he was eight years old, Mill had read (a) Herodotus (b) six dialogues of Plato (c) Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
4. Mill went to work for the East India Company to support himself at the age of (a) 14 (b) 17 (c) 21 (d) 25.
5. At the age of twenty, Mill experienced a (a) quarrel with his father (b) crisis in his mental history (c) “crisis” in his mental history (d) love affair with a married woman.
6. Mill, his father, and their friends called themselves “philosophical radicals” because they believed (a) in the overthrow of the government by violence (b) that reforms should be made in Parliamentary representation (c) that the study of philosophy should be dropped from college curriculums.
7. Among the authors whom Mill read as a young man, and who probably influenced his thinking, were (a) Aristotle (b) Dewey (c) Ricardo (d) Bentham.
p. 371 8. Which of these well known works of Mill is not mentioned in the text? (a) On Liberty (b) Representative Government (c) Utilitarianism (d) The Subjection of Women.
9. Were he alive today, is it likely or not likely that Mill would be
Likely
Not Likely
(a)
a supporter of the women’s liberation movement
____
____
(b)
in favor of universal education
How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading Page 37