On the Choice of Books

Summary

On the Choice of Books is the title a later London publisher (Chatto & Windus, in the edition transcribed as Project Gutenberg #13435) gave to a small volume built around the address Thomas Carlyle spoke to the students of Edinburgh University on 2 April 1866, after they had elected him Lord Rector. The volume wraps the speech in a long biographical introduction signed by Richard Herne Shepherd (Chelsea, June 1881), a newspaper account of the day, and three short documents: Carlyle's 1868 letter backing James Hutchison Stirling for the Moral Philosophy chair, his December 1868 farewell letter to the students, and the opening of the deed bequeathing his wife's farm of Craigenputtoch to found bursaries. The address itself is an old man's talk to young men in the Music Hall on George Street. Carlyle tells them he threw away his written draft and will speak 'what comes uppermost', and the report preserves the laughter and cheers. Its single 'advice' is diligence, which he defines chiefly as honesty: keep a hard line between what you truly know and what you merely repeat, and despise cramming for examinations. From there he turns to reading. The university's chief gift, he says, was teaching him to read in several languages so that he could go into a great library alone; books divide like souls into 'sheep and goats'; and a student should follow a real appetite for a book as a patient follows a healthy appetite for food, avoiding the false one. He recommends Greek and Roman history, finds deep religion in both peoples, and spends a long stretch on Knox, Cromwell, the Barebones Parliament's attack on Chancery, and the old peerage as a reward for merit. The second half attacks 'wind and tongue'. Carlyle praises Phocion over Demosthenes, urges silence and speech that ends in action, and retells Goethe's 'Pedagogic Province' from Wilhelm Meister's Travels, with its three reverences: for what is above us, around us, and beneath us. He closes with counsel on health, playing on the kinship of 'holy', 'heilig', 'hale' and 'whole', warns against a sour piety, commends Knox's humour, and ends with his own translation of Goethe's lodge-poem, 'Work, and despair not', and a farewell: 'we bid you be of hope.' The speech is loose by design, and its historical claims (about Norman peers, Machiavelli on dictators, or the English and American 'wind') are Carlyle's convictions rather than settled history. Its lasting value for a school is the picture of reading as moral discipline: honesty about what one knows, selection among books, reverence, work, and health of body and mind held together. Within three weeks his wife Jane died suddenly in London while he was still in Scotland, which gives the farewell letter of 1868 its weight.

Top Lessons

• Diligence begins with honesty about what you know

  Carlyle's one 'advice' is diligence, but he defines it as intellectual honesty: keep an 'accurate separation' between what is stamped on your mind and what you only repeat. Cramming is condemned not because it is lazy but because it pretends to knowledge. This is a usable rule for study habits and for examination ethics.

• True and false appetite in reading

  Carlyle borrows a doctor's distinction between real and false appetite and applies it to books. A genuine curiosity about a book is the best guide to choosing it, yet some books feed only a craving for the 'toothsome'. He also insists, against the common view, that reading a bad book is not better than reading nothing.

• Speech that ends in action

  The address is itself a speech mocking eloquence. Carlyle sets Phocion against Demosthenes and says a fine speaker who does not tell the truth invites everyone 'that wants to be persuaded of the thing that is not true'. Students in a rhetoric programme should face this charge squarely, and also notice that Carlyle says he values Demosthenes and wants him studied.

• The three reverences

  Through Goethe's Pedagogic Province Carlyle names the one thing no child brings into the world: reverence, for what is above, around, and beneath us. The third, finding blessing in pain and sorrow, Goethe calls the soul of Christianity. Teachers can discuss how far this matches Christian teaching on humility and the cross and where a Goethean account of religion differs from a creedal one.

• Holy, healthy, whole

  Carlyle ends with health as 'the very highest of all temporal things', plays on heilig, hale and whole, and warns against a sour, ascetic piety. He admits that serious writing has made him ill and asks students to return to equilibrium after hard work. The passage gives a balanced picture of study, body and joy, from a man famous for dyspepsia and gloom.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The address closes with an extended passage on health that is useful for the history of Victorian ideas about study, overwork and wholeness. Carlyle borrows medical language twice: a doctor's distinction between true and false appetite to describe choosing books, and the claim that 'work is the grand cure' of human maladies. He also admits that intense intellectual work made him ill. These are a lay moralist's remarks, not clinical observations; they show how closely health and holiness were linked in his religious vocabulary.

• Address, section on choosing books (after the remarks on universities and libraries)

  Carlyle compares choosing books to a patient learning to tell real appetite from false appetite that craves spicy food, citing what doctors say about physical health.

• Address, closing counsel on health

  Health is called the highest of temporal goods; the French financier's lament that sleep cannot be bought; the etymology linking heilig, hale, whole and holy; and mens sana in corpore sano.

• Address, closing counsel on health (the 'geometric mirror' passage)

  Carlyle describes the ideal clear intellect, then admits that writing a book always made him ill and urges a quick return to equilibrium after such work.