On Being Human

On Being Human

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Wilson #2 in our series by Woodrow Wilson
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Title: On Being Human
Author: Woodrow Wilson
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On Being Human
Woodrow Wilson Ph.D., Litt.D., LL.D. President of the United States
1897 From the Atlantic Monthly
On Being Human
I
"The rarest sort of a book," says Mr. Bagehot, slyly, is "a book to read";
and "the knack in style is to write like a human being." It is painfully
evident, upon experiment, that not many of the books which come
teeming from our presses every year are meant to be read. They are
meant, it may be, to be pondered; it is hoped, no doubt, they may
instruct, or inform, or startle, or arouse, or reform, or provoke, or
amuse us; but we read, if we have the true reader's zest and plate, not to
grow more knowing, but to be less pent up and bound within a little
circle,--as those who take their pleasure, and not as those who
laboriously seek instruction,--as a means of seeing and enjoying the
world of men and affairs. We wish companionship and renewal of spirit,
enrichment of thought and the full adventure of the mind; and we desire
fair company, and a larger world in which to find them.
No one who loves the masters who may be communed with and read
but must see, therefore, and resent the error of making the text of any
one of them a source to draw grammar from, forcing the parts of speech
to stand out stark and cold from the warm text; or a store of samples
whence to draw rhetorical instances, setting up figures of speech singly
and without support of any neighbor phrase, to be stared at curiously
and with intent to copy or dissect! Here is grammar done without
deliberation: the phrases carry their meaning simply and by a sort of

limpid reflection; the thought is a living thing, not an image
ingeniously contrived and wrought. Pray leave the text whole: it has no
meaning piecemeal; at any rate, not that best, wholesome meaning, as
of a frank and genial friend who talks, not for himself or for his phrase,
but for you. It is questionable morals to dismember a living frame to
seek for its obscure fountains of life!
When you say that a book was meant to be read, you mean, for one
thing, of course, that it was not meant to be studied. You do not study a
good story, or a haunting poem, or a battle song, or a love ballad, or
any moving narrative, whether it be out of history or out of fiction--nor
any argument, even, that moves vital in the field of action. You do not
have to study these things; they reveal themselves, you do not stay to
see how. They remain with you, and will not be forgotten or laid by.
They cling like a personal experience, and become the mind's intimates.
You devour a book meant to be read, not because you would fill
yourself or have an anxious care to be nourished, but because it
contains such stuff as it makes the mind hungry to look upon. Neither
do you read it to kill time, but to lengthen time, rather, adding to its
natural usury by living the more abundantly while it lasts, joining
another's life and thought to your own.
There are a few children in every generation, as Mr. Bagehot reminds
us, who think the natural thing to do with any book is to read it. "There
is an argument from design