Читать книгу The Art of Thinking - Ernest Dimnet - Страница 3

PREFACE

What writer would dare to appropriate Voltaire’s verse in Le Pauvre Diable, and would dare to say of his reader:

Il me choisit pour l’aider à penser?

Yet, it is a fact that millions of men and women are anxious to take lessons in the Art of Thinking and that some other men and women have to take the risk of seeming presumptuous in offering those lessons.

Anybody who does it need not be a genius. Genius has never been supposed to be a particularly good teacher of any art. It is better that the teacher of the Art of Thinking should not be a person who knows no difficulty in thinking, or produces such brilliant thoughts that they will be disheartening to the tyro. A delicate physician does not give the example of health—any woodsman can do that—he only gives the example of a small capital of health intelligently increased: yet, we know he can be more useful from his comprehension of indifferent health and from his appreciation of hygiene, and we often prefer him. The author of this book is certainly not prepared to say that he has acted, or even is now acting, up to his own principles; still he is not bragging in saying that he has probably felt their value more than many people nearer to genius than he is. Is not this enough? And is not a keen desire to be of use a sufficient claim to give modest advice?

The reader will soon find that this book, whatever its shortcomings, has been written for him. Its effort at being lucid and brief, its aversion to philosophical jargon, its antipathy for a discouraging and generally useless bibliographical display, all come from a wish to help instead of dazzle. Most books are composed with the more or less avowed object of being works of art, that is to say of being an end in themselves and ultimately rousing admiration. Egotism, in writing of any art, especially of an Art of Thinking, would be criminal, and it can be honestly said it has had as little a share as possible in the preparation of this work.

It will be enough if the reader is conscious of sympathy to which he has a right, and of a continuous striving to help him in his effort to think his best and live his noblest.