I have not given a formal list of books worth reading, nor do I intend
to; one of the reasons being that the work has been done so well by
others. Ever since Sir John Lubbock published his list of one hundred
best books, the number of selections has been legion. Charles Eliot’s
selection for his _Five Foot Shelf_ is to be commended, and a little
volume by Frank Parsons _The World’s Best Books_. Of course our purpose
is special:—to find the best books for making thinkers; but the remarks
already made should aid the reader sufficiently in making his own
selection from these lists. As previously pointed out, if the reader
is studying a specialty he can usually find a fairly well selected
bibliography at the end of the article on that specialty in any
standard encyclopedia.
* * * * *
The reader probably sees clearly by now that it is impossible to do
his own thinking in every case; that if he is to have sound knowledge
on important questions he must have the courage to be ignorant of
many things. How much trouble to go to in any particular case it is
difficult to say.
We can lay it down as a general principle that questions of the
highest importance, such as those of which I have given a suggestive
list—questions which deal with facts known or easily ascertainable,
and which depend for their right solution more on thinking than on
anything else—a man should solve for himself, and should take the
greatest caution in so doing. On the other hand, questions of the
highest importance which depend for their solution mainly on full and
detailed knowledge of highly technical facts which lie outside of one’s
specialty, should be dealt with by consulting authorities and taking
their word for it.
There still remains the great mass of questions which are relatively
unimportant, but continually coming up in our daily life, the answers
to which greatly influence our conduct. Time forbids us not only
from thinking these out for ourselves, but even from consulting an
authority—for the selection of an authority often involves almost as
much intellectual responsibility as self-thinking. The only thing we
can do is to accept the verdict of popular opinion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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