How Do We Know

READ GOOD BOOKS FOR IMPROVED THINKING

To use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own; and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.

—JOHN RUSKIN

This English critic, essayist and social reformer (1819-1900), in one of his books, gave posterity this council: “A speaker should inform his audience, at the very outset, where he stands.”

I have heeded this admonition in several hundred lectures delivered during the past 24 years. I explain that I like all kinds of weather—hot or cold, rain, sleet, snow, hail, fog, or whatever. This is my way of expressing appreciation that God, not the government, is in charge. My audiences know, at the very outset, that I espouse the freedom way of life and dislike politicians trying to run our lives. The reading of a good book improved my thinking!

Here is an outstanding example having to do with the value of good books. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was, according to The Columbia Encyclopedia, a “Russian philosopher and novelist, one of the world’s greatest writers.” In his book, The Law of Love and The Law of Violence, he wrote: “From the day when the first members of councils placed exterior authority higher than interior, that is to say, recognized the decisions of men united in councils as more important and more sacred than reason and conscience: on that day began lies that caused the loss of millions of human beings and which continue their unhappy work to the present day.” At the very moment I began this essay, a university professor from Wisconsin came to my desk and asked where he could find this example of Tolstoy’s wisdom. Having used this truth many times in my own books, I pointed to it in The Free Man’s Almanac. A good book of the last century was one source of a book of mine in 1974. I suspect that the professor, a great writer and freedom devotee, might include this in his next book. Observe how those of us looking for moral and politico-economic help go to books, hoping they are good. The good ones capture the wisdom of sages—present and past.

By the way, a chapter in my book, Awake for Freedom’s Sake, is entitled “War and Peace,” the title of a two-volume creation of Tolstoy’s. He and yours truly see eye-to-eye on this subject.

Let us not be misled that the mere reading of books will improve our thinking. Many are bad and intellectually demoralizing. Wrote the English author, John Murray (1851-1928): “A dose of poison can do its work only once, but a bad book can go on poisoning people’s minds for any length of time.”

As to length of time, Plato, the Greek philosopher of about 24 centuries ago, advanced the philosopher-king idea. Abbreviated, he said that everyone—no exception—“. . . should get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals . . . only if he has been told to do so. In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit, never to dream of acting independently and to become utterly incapable of it.”

The same idea is to be found in a book published in 1935, Man the Unknown, by the distinguished scientist, Dr. Alexis Carrel. Most of the book is devoted to skillful and critical analysis of our decline into the planned economy and the welfare state—socialism. After enumerating ever so many advanced specializations, he observes that no one possesses all knowledge. Of course no one does, but Dr. Carrel believes a few could and should possess it all. Reflect on his solution:

In about twenty-five years of uninterrupted study, one could learn these sciences. At the age of fifty, those who have submitted themselves to this discipline could effectively direct the construction of the human being and of a civilization. . . .

We have to intervene in the fundamental organic and mental processes. These processes are man himself. But man has no independent existence. He is bound to his environment. In order to remake him, we have to transform his world. . . .

A group, although very small, is capable of eluding the harmful influence of the society of its epoch by imposing upon its members rules of conduct modeled on military or monastic discipline. . . .

Such a minority would be in a position to impose by persuasion or perhaps by force, other ways of life upon the majority. . . .

We must single out the children who are endowed with high potentialities, and develop them as completely as possible. . . .

Who are “we”? It’s a million-to-one bet that “we” would never have singled out that 12-year-old newsboy in Michigan, Thomas Alva Edison.

This is precisely the kind of moral politico-economic nonsense that is bedeviling our society today. The lesson this has to teach? Wisely choose the books we read!

The English essayist, Joseph Addison (1672-1719) had an excellent thought about good books: “Books create legacies that genius leaves mankind, to be delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to those that are yet unborn.”

Great books bring to us and our progeny the wisdom, the enlightenment, and the common sense of the profoundest thinkers of all time. A late friend of mind, Dr. Thomas Nixon Carver, Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University, gave me his judgment that “The two most important books ever written were Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and the Holy Bible.” What a boon to mankind they have been, especially in the formation of our own nation.

Let me conclude with a brilliant observation by the American divine, Henry Giles (1809-82): “The silent influence of books, is a mighty power in the world; and there is a joy in reading them with desire and enthusiasm—Silent, passive and noiseless though they may be, they yet set in action countless multitudes, and change the order of nations.”

And change the order of nations? How about the U.S.A.? Wealth of Nations had an enormous influence on our Founding Fathers. And the Holy Bible? It was responsible for overthrowing government as the endower of men’s rights and placing the Creator there! Result? For at least twelve decades, the freest nation that ever existed: Liberty for one and all!