“All that is done under heaven… is an unhappy business that God has given the children of man to be busy with,” reads one ancient Hebrew verse. Indeed, it seems the allotted fate of mankind to be burdened by the mundane, of all that is done under heaven. Man is no longer master over his daily task, but often becomes the task itself. People are not fulfilled by the mundane, so they seek escape from their lives through other means. Some are captivated by pleasure, others seek the games of mankind, while another digs himself further into work.
That same Hebrew source, however, tells us that God “has put eternity into man’s heart.” Man was not made to be simply a political observer, an athlete, or a teacher bound by time and circumstance. For there is a part of man which cannot be filled by such mortal things. Rather, he was made for something transcendent. Yet, how does one transcend the human condition? One way is to read books as sacred texts, as places of possible interaction with divine truth and wisdom.
Man was not made for reading but reading for man. Yet few read, and fewer read anything worthwhile. Most men, as Henry Thoreau writes, “have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience.” While the few who do read books are often content if “for the rest of their lives [they] vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy reading.”
How does one transcend the human condition? One way is to read books as sacred texts, as places of possible interaction with divine truth and wisdom.
Transcendence through reading requires engaging with ideas and truths that have stood against time. For Thoreau tells us that “in dealing with truth, we are immortal, and need fear no change or accident.” For “the oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did.” Whether they carry the title ancient, great, or classic books does not matter. It matters only that the books attempt to uncover and understand universal truths.
Though a laborious task, it is one that provides far more than it cost. However, one must humble himself in order to receive something he does not understand. The ends of reading cannot be pursued in advance. It is the activity itself which is good. To gaze upon that fresh statue of divinity requires reading books that are confusing, hard, and often unattractive. A vulnerable approach to reading invites revelation.
While not every single idea encountered is entirely true, it is the readers’ responsibility and gift to wrestle with the ideas presented. For in this wrestling, despite the frustration, one is led closer to wisdom. A spark is lit within us, a chance to peak behind the veil, with every great book we read.
This spark is not merely for a select few. While a notion persist that reading is only for the educated, Thoreau contends that “[e]ven the college-bred and so-called liberally educated men have really little or no acquaintance with” the English classics, far less anything beyond. One group does not hold claim to reading good books. It seems all groups alike tend to neglect nor desire to sacrifice time and attention for reading.
It is a failure to suppose that reading is only for the few and stops beyond the walls of a school or university. The goal is not to be a scholar removed from the world in solitude. Nor is it about the number of books one consumes. A few pages a day, even a couple lines here and there can suffice. For example, Socrates’ short declaration that it is not divinely “sanctioned that a better man be harmed by a worse” does more than enough to edify the mind for some time.
Every man can be a student who hears the richest thoughts ever spoken. Every man can transcend the unhappy business of everyday and glimpse at eternity.
The pursuit of something higher is not an activity confined by walls or a set day of the week. It is lifelong and daily. “It is,” Thoreau says, “time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women.” Each individual must take it upon himself to create a university within his mind. The burden does not rest on the university to do for us what each individual must do for himself.
Transcendence through reading offers a natural cultivation of the individual, a responsibility that rests far higher than the modern obsessions pervading the culture. “A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of.” The modern man does not treasure these golden words. He’d rather gather and collect and be left unsatisfied. Too many people believe, unconsciously or not, that there is nothing to transcend from.
Perhaps if the sages of the past were consulted, the human condition would appear clearer. “There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us.” The ideas that have been considered for centuries are not old and dead but alive and breathing. Reading offers one the ability to transcend his time and speak with the greatest philosophers, kings, and statesmen that have ever lived. Every man can be a student who hears the richest thoughts ever spoken. Every man can transcend the unhappy business of everyday and glimpse at eternity.
The ends of reading cannot be pursued in advance. It is the activity itself which is good.
Moreover, mankind does not have to rely on itself for the seemingly unanswerable challenges of today. “These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.” Man has at his fingertips many lives which he can live and many worlds he can transverse. Though man’s daily toil wastes him away, for a moment, time does not overcome him.
By reading with attention and wonder we may commune with timeless wisdom. For we may do what we were made to do, become who we were made to be.
