The Truth Sets You Free

Truth is found in good books, freedom also.

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

MAN progresses. He was a poor, shivering creature on this earth a hundred thousand years ago, afraid of wind that roared through his cave, calling it a devil; afraid of lightning that flashed in the sky, imagining that a supreme God was trying to hit his poor little carcass. That same lightning, the electric spark man uses inside the engine of the flying machine that carries him through clouds where lightning flashes. He knows scientific truth and that makes him free of superstition and free to ride through the air.

Many readers say "Tell us what to read, since you so often speak of good books."

First you want to know what and where this earth is on which you live. Read a good, simple book on astronomy. Flammarion's Astronomy is good. So is Ball's "Story of the Heavens."

It is a good idea to have on hand and read several books at once, each book opens up a new part of the mind.

While you are reading your astronomy read a good, simple up-to-date book on geology; get one recently written. Your librarian or book dealer will recommend one. This geology will tell you what has happened to the earth during the hundreds of millions of years that it has been spinning around the sun.

Then read a book on evolution, about the development of animal life on the earth, how you have gradually risen to an erect position, and learned to study the stars instead of studying ways to kill and eat your neighbor. Wallace's book on Darwinism is good.

After you understand something about the universe in which your earth is a little traveler, something about geology and evolution, read a good book on psychology and learn something about yourself, how it becomes possible for your brain to see and understand the world around you and the distant suns. Professor James has written an admirable text book on psychology. Get it.

Then get a history of philosophy, which means the history of human thought and abstract speculation.

Philosophy represents the effort of man to explain things to himself, as religion represents man's effort to believe, and thus get along without any scientific explanation.

The history of philosophy written by George Lewes, husband of George Eliot, is easy and pleasant to read, and sufficiently, although not perfectly, accurate.

While reading all other books, make it a point to read Shakespeare for at least fifteen minutes every day. Other books feed different parts of the mind. Shakespeare feeds the entire brain.

Read, a little at a time and changing from one book to another, the following books:

Bacon's Essays. He was one of the world's three

greatest thinkers. He died in disgrace, which shows that intellect is sometimes apart from character.

Read the essays of Montaigne and the maxims of La Rochefoucauld. At the same time, although some readers find it rather hard, read slowly Montesquieu's "Spirit of Laws." Keep the last three books by you and read them intermittently in the course of a year. You will find in Montesquieu the history of man's struggle to attain justice. In Montaigne you will admire solid wisdom and keen satire. The brilliant Duke of La Rochefoucauld will show you how to use language and wit most brilliantly.

If you want to know something about education for your children's sake, read Herbert Spencer's book on "Education," and Rousseau's "Emile." Add to these, if you are industrious, works on education by Froebel and Pestalozzi. But Spencer and Rousseau are enough for the average parent.

To make you think, enable you to judge events of today and think intelligently about the future in the light of the past, read these admirable books:

Buckle's "History of Civilization in England," Lecky's "History of European Morals" and Guizot's "History of Civilization." You will find it difficult to buy the last named, but can get it at a public library.

Such books as these should be read with an encyclopedia at hand and frequently consulted. Never read and pass on without understanding what you have read or knowing about the important characters mentioned. To read books without knowing what you read is like

swallowing food whole, it does no good and causes indigestion.

To learn how to write, try this short course: "The fables of La Fontaine'-for clear expression of simple thought.

Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," the best English prose.

Homer's "Odyssey." It will cure you of any admiration for fancy writing.

Read Dante's "Inferno" and his "Paradise" for magnificent writing, which is different from fancy writing. More power of a certain kind is in Dante than in any of the other writers-except Shakespeare, who possesses more of everything than all the others put together.

Read "Don Quixote," by the wonderful Spaniard, Cervantes. There is the marvel of wit and satire.

Read "Gulliver's Travels," not a peptonized edition rewritten for children, but Swift's own original, and read Goethe's "Faust," the first part at least. Read also Heine's "Reisebilder," although no translation carries all of Heine's genius.

To know something about yourself and your own kind, read the lives of a few, say a dozen or twenty, of the world's important men; for instance, Socrates, Alexander the Great, Aristotle, Caesar, Napoleon, Voltaire, Michael Angelo, Leonardo Da Vinci. Read the lives of all the authors mentioned above. Look them up in a first-class encyclopedia, if you have no time to do more.

Above all read Shakespeare regularly. If you read for forty years there are forty Shakespeares waiting for you. The more you know, the more you find in him. His Falstaff is for every age that appreciates wit. His King Lear, written in his late years of bitterness and disappointment, is for the old and the serious. Hamlet is the puzzle and the mental food of every age. His sonnets are the best that the world possesses, as his comedies and tragedies are the best.

There is in Shakespeare mental food for a lifetime. Do not neglect him, whatever else you may neglect. The best brief story of this man who has taught the whole world, and about whom the world knows so little, was written by a Danish Jew, Brandes. Read his "William Shakespeare, a Critical Study."

In books worth reading, which no man can exhaust in one lifetime, you will find happiness, suggestions for the use of power and wealth, if you possess them, consolation in poverty, and strength under all conditions.

To be ignorant is not to be alive, except as the animals live.

And for ignorance there is no necessity, and no excuse except mental dulness.

A college education is not necessary, nothing is necessary except ability to read intelligently and desire to know.

And age makes no difference, except that the untrained mind past forty retains facts with difficulty. But love of knowledge makes up for that.

Among the really learned men of the world the