The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time

Since we wish to have orderly minds, and to avoid the chaos of desultory reading, we shall want to begin at the beginning—even with the distant stars and the antique earth, and these beginnings will be the worst obstructions in our path. Initium dimidium facti, said the Romans—“the start is half the deed.” Let us gird up our loins and screw our courage to the sticking point for these initial hills, and the rest will be level road, with knowledge and wisdom at every milestone, and pleasant reaches of beauty everywhere.We want here not entertainment only, but education, and we want it in such order that the knowledge we win may fall into logical sequence in our memories, and give us at last that full perspective which is the source and summit of understanding.

Therefore the first books on our list—the necessary introduction to the rest—are the most terrifying of all. A thousand barbs of wit will be invited by placing The Outline of Science first: alas! are we to be fed on predigested food, in the fashion of an American breakfast? Worse still, The Outline of History, bugbear of all proper historians, is fifth on our list—this is unforgivable. Let the critic control himself; he will soon see how far these books are used as substitutes, and how far as preparation, for the best. At the cost of a little unpleasantness we must make ourselves acquainted with the current scientific description of the world in which man has grown: we must have a little astronomical and biological background to give some modesty to our conception of the human race; we must learn the latest gossip about electrons and chromosomes, and look on for a moment while physics and chemistry transform the world.

And then, still as introductory, we pass to ourselves. It will not do to leave for the last some knowledge of the art of health; what if, after four years, we are learned and dyspeptic, philosophers in imagination, and ruins in the flesh? Let two great physicians offer us their rival theories of how to live: Dr. Clendening will tell us, with wit scandalous in a scientist, that most of the things we eat, drink, smoke, or do are well and good, and Dr. Kellogg, with no other charm than seventy years of experience and his own ruddy health, will tell us that these ancient ways are all wrong. I believe that Dr. Kellogg is usually right; but it is conceivable that both of us are usually wrong.

We have minds as well as bodies, and perhaps we should try in some measure to understand ourselves before we ponder the history of mankind. Go, then, to William James; it is true that he wrote more than a generation ago, but his Principles of Psychology is still the masterpiece in its field. Avoid the abbreviated edition in one volume; the longer form is easier to read. Until you have surrounded James you need not bother with such transitory psychological fashions as psychoanalysis and behaviorism, and when you have absorbed James you will be immune to these epidemics. Read actively, not passively: consider at every step whether what you read accords with your own experience, and how far it may be applied to the guidance of your own life. But if you disagree with an author, or are shocked by his heresies, read on nevertheless; toleration of differences is one mark of a gentleman. Make notes of all passages that offer help toward the reconstruction of your character (not someone else’s character) or the achievement of your aims, and classify these notes in such a way that they may at any moment, and for any purpose, be ready to your hand.

Take your time with these introductory books, for you must expect a long siege before you capture these obscure and lofty outworks of wisdom’s citadel. If they burden your digestion spice them with easier morsels from the list: Plutarch, for example, or Omar, or George Moore, or Rabelais, or Poe (numbers 16, 31, 32, 45, and 91); indeed, most of the books in Groups X and XI will serve as hors d’oeuvres or relief when other volumes oppress you with their heaviness.

Even Wells will prove a little dull at the outset; we grow a trifle weary of his reptiles and fishes, his Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal men. But we must climb up these geological periods, and wade through these paleontological remains and anthropological origins: we sharpen our teeth on these forbidding words, we take these difficulties by the bit, and harden ourselves for anything. If we are prosperous as well as brave, we shall buy a handy dictionary, such as Webster’s Collegiate (avoid vast dictionaries whose size discourage their use), and we shall adorn a wall with some spacious map of the world, so that new words and old places shall have some meaning for us. Once those Wellsian chapters are finished, Sumner’s Folkways will be enticing dessert; no one had dreamed that a professor could make sociology so fascinating.