The Intellectual Life: Read Intelligently

It’s break week here, and for me that usually means some reading goals. Sometimes it’s something fun, sometimes a pre-read or “teacher training” (educational philosophy) book, sometimes both. This week my priorities are reading/listening to The Winter’s Tale by Shakespeare (so I can catch up on the Literary Life podcast episodes and actually read it while it’s still winter 😉 ) and finishing The Intellectual Life by A. G. Sertillanges, O.P. I’ve been reading the latter on and off since the summer – I got through the Four Kinds of Reading section in time for the Schole Sisters episode Who’s Your Daddy? back in November, but haven’t read much since. I don’t agree with everything Sertillanges says as I’m not Catholic; also he seems to only address men, and when he does mention women it’s not always flattering. But I have about 16 pages of quotes in my commonplace book so far, so it’s definitely a worthwhile read if you can take the principles he’s expounding and apply them to your life, even if you’re not his ideal of an “intellectual”. Yesterday I was copying quotes I’d marked into my commonplace book in order to reorient myself and remember at least some of what I’d read. I was thinking about doing a Book Notes post, but couldn’t pick just one quote, so I decided to do a mini series on my blog this week to share a few with you.

Speaking of reading, this passage warranted an exclamation mark in the margin; and if your reading habits are like mine, it might make you a bit uncomfortable:

The passion for reading which many pride themselves on as a precious intellectual quality, is in reality a defect; it differs in no wise from the other passions that monopolize the soul, keep it in a state of disturbance, set up in it uncertain currents and cross-currents, and exhaust its powers.

We must read intelligently, not passionately. We must go to books as a housekeeper goes to market when she has settled her menus for the day according to the laws of hygiene and wise spending. The mind of the housekeeper at the market is not the mind she will have in the evening at the cinema. She is not now thinking of enjoyment and dazzled wonderment, but of running her house and seeing to its well-being.

The mind is dulled, not fed, by inordinate reading, it is made gradually incapable of reflection and concentration, and therefore of production; it grows inwardly extroverted, if one can so express oneself, becomes the slave of its mental images, of the ebb and flow of ideas on which it has eagerly fastened its attention. This uncontrolled delight is an escape from self; it ousts the intelligence from its function and allows it merely to follow point for point the thoughts of others, to be carried along in the stream of words, developments, chapters, volumes. (pg. 146-147)

I don’t think Sertillanges means to banish joy from reading and learning, as we’ll see later this week, and I do think there’s a time for reading just for entertainment. But a steady diet of that sort of reading is not healthy, and even when it comes to more serious reading, more is not necessarily better. Charlotte Mason told us to “spread the feast” of ideas, but that does not mean we or our children should gorge ourselves. We need time to digest and assimilate the ideas we are taking in, and that means not scheduling (or in my case, starting) too many books and making sure there is time to ponder and apply what we’ve learned rather than just moving on to the next book, podcast, or other form of intellectual input.

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