The Best Books

It was Carlyle who said that “books are like men’s souls.” This could mean that the kind of man a writer is suggests the kind of book he will write. And it could mean also that the kind of people we are suggests the kind of books we will choose to read. This brings to mind a most remarkable statement by Sir Walter Scott: “I have been perhaps the most voluminous author of my day,” he said, “and it is a comfort to me to think that I have tried to unsettle no man’s faith, to corrupt no man’s principles, and that I have written nothing which on my deathbed I should wish blotted out.” What a marvelous statement to be able to make⎯and what contrast to much that is currently offered, when so much that is cheap and filthy is put into print⎯the unclean, the immoral, the indecent, the salacious and shoddy, put out for unconscionable profit, with every inducement to undermine morals and young minds. More than a thousand books, we are told, are added to the Library of Congress each day⎯added to the millions that are already there⎯from the profound to the trivial, from the uplifting to the debasing, from the reliable to the misleading, from the enduringly true to the manifestly false. And since we can’t read everything⎯since there is so much of it⎯and since life is so short⎯we ought to select only the best of all that is offered, for entertainment or information. Read only the best books” significantly has been said. We should be discriminating in our reading, in our looking, in our listening, remembering that what is stored in memory is part of the man. Would that everyone could say as did Sir Walter Scott: “I have tried to unsettle no man’s faith, to corrupt no man’s principles, and… have written nothing which on my deathbed I should wish blotted out.”⎯for “books are like men’s souls.”