On the Art of Reading

Lecture I

Introductory

Wednesday, October 25, 1916

I

In the third book of the Ethics, and in the second chapter, Aristotle, dealing with certain actions which, though bad in themselves, admit of pity and forgiveness because they were committed involuntarily, through ignorance, instances “the man who did not know a subject was forbidden, like Aeschylus with the Mysteries,” and “the man who only meant to show how it worked, like the fellow who let off the catapult” (ἢ δειξαι βουλόμενος ἀφειναι, ὡς ὀ τὸν καταπέλτην).

I feel comfortably sure, Gentlemen, that in a previous course of lectures On the Art of Writing, unlike Aeschylus, I divulged no mysteries: but I am troubled with speculations over that man and the catapult, because I really was trying to tell you how the thing worked; and Aristotle, with a reticence which (as Horace afterwards noted) may lend itself to obscurity, tells us neither what happened to that exponent of ballistics, nor to the engine itself, nor to the other person. My discharge, such as it was, at any rate provoked another professor (emeritus, learned, sagacious, venerable) to retort that the true business of a Chair such as this is to instruct young men how to read rather than how to write. Well, be it so. I accept the challenge.