Hence, in regard to our subject, the art of not reading is highly important.  This consists in not taking a book into one’s hand merely because it is interesting the great public at the time—­such as political or religious pamphlets, novels, poetry, and the like, which make a noise and reach perhaps several editions in their first and last years of existence.  Remember rather that the man who writes for fools always finds a large public:  and only read for a limited and definite time exclusively the works of great minds, those who surpass other men of all times and countries, and whom the voice of fame points to as such.  These alone really educate and instruct.

One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books:  bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.

In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.

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Books are written sometimes about this, sometimes about that great thinker of former times, and the public reads these books, but not the works of the man himself.  This is because it wants to read only what has just been printed, and because similis simili gaudet, and it finds the shallow, insipid gossip of some stupid head of to-day more homogeneous and agreeable than the thoughts of great minds.  I have to thank fate, however, that a fine epigram of A.B.  Schlegel, which has since been my guiding star, came before my notice as a youth: 

  “Leset fleizig die Alten, die wahren eigentlich Alten
  Was die Neuen davon sagen bedeutet nicht viel.”

Oh, how like one commonplace mind is to another!  How they are all fashioned in one form!  How they all think alike under similar circumstances, and never differ!  This is why their views are so personal and petty.  And a stupid public reads the worthless trash written by these fellows for no other reason than that it has been printed to-day, while it leaves the works of great thinkers undisturbed on the bookshelves.

Incredible are the folly and perversity of a public that will leave unread writings of the noblest and rarest of minds, of all times and all countries, for the sake of reading the writings of commonplace persons which appear daily, and breed every year in countless numbers like flies; merely because these writings have been printed to-day and are still wet from the press.  It would be better if they were thrown on one side and rejected the day they appeared, as they must be after the lapse of a few years.  They will then afford material for laughter as illustrating the follies of a former time.

It is because people will only read what is the newest instead of what is the best of all ages, that writers remain in the narrow circle of prevailing ideas, and that the age sinks deeper and deeper in its own mire.

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