Seneca, On Peace of Mind 9.4

What is the use of possessing numberless books and libraries, whose titles their owner can hardly read through in a lifetime? A student is overwhelmed by such a mass, not instructed, and it is much better to devote yourself to a few writers than to skim through many.

Forty thousand books were burned at Alexandria: some would have praised this library as a most noble memorial of royal wealth, like Titus Livius, who says that it was "a splendid result of the taste and attentive care of the kings."

It had nothing to do with taste or care, but was a piece of learned luxury, no, not even learned, since they amassed it, not for the sake of learning, but to make a show, like many men who know less about letters than a slave is expected to know, and who uses his books not to help him in his studies but to ornament his dining room.

Many people are under the impression that the academic world is a profound and lofty place, inspired by the noble love of truth and a selfless commitment to service. This is sadly not the case. You will indeed find some truly decent folks in what they call higher learning, just as you will also find decent folks most anywhere else, but in the end, it is shamefully reduced to a business like all the others.

The driving force is still profit, and while it isn’t merely a matter of getting rich, there is much squabbling, scheming, and backstabbing going on in order to win the greatest status and fame. In this sense, “scholars” must become masters of promoting an image if they wish to survive in their field.

What matters most is not what you know, but having the confidence and the cleverness to give the appearance that you know. One forges alliances of convenience in order to be considered an authority and pays out favors in order to be revered as an expert. The most effective tool is ultimately to denigrate others, politely and dryly in public, viciously and passionately in private. Through it all, a refined smugness is an absolute requirement.

They really don’t like it when you point this out, just like politicians get deeply offended when you question their honesty.

I can only blame myself for having fallen for this, lock, stock, and barrel. I was especially taken with the idea of being “well read”, of presenting the illusion that I was fluent in all the most important works of philosophy and literature, hoping that I could drop the most insightful quotes and relevant references with barely an effort.

I still cringe when I think of that ever-growing list I had throughout high school and college, of all the books I was sure others expected me to be familiar with. I was convinced I had it made when my peers looked on in envy, while my professors pretended to be impressed. What a waste, what a foolish game, what a pack of lies. The issue was never about learning at all, but about making a show of learning, of turning it into a circus act.

As with all things shallow and vain, there was a great love of breadth at the expense of depth, of believing that more was better. I read very little, but glanced over very much, such that I saw it as a weakness instead of a strength to admit that I didn’t know something. Piles and piles of books, strategically strewn across shelves and desks, became like substitutes for actual understanding.

My alma mater would brag about the scope of their library, while still being quite jealous that the Ivy League school down the street had four times as many volumes. One fiery professor, who was never afraid to speak his mind, and so never received tenure, described it quite well: “What does it matter how many books we have? When was the last time you saw any of our students actually reading them, except to extract a reference for a bibliography?”

I learned the hard way that if I even felt the need to tell people that I had read it, I probably hadn’t read it at all, or at least not for any of the right reasons.

I have no doubt that many great books were lost when the library at Alexandria fell into ruin; I have often dreamed about reading some of those texts that never survived into the modern era, like Aristotle’s dialogues, or the writings of the early Stoics and Cynics, and I wonder if they might still be here if history had unfolded just a little bit differently.

Yet Seneca is quite right. It was never the gathering together of books, at any time or in any place, that made anyone decent. A commitment needs to be made, one soul at a time, to the act of living well, with eyes wide open.

I once met a fellow, with virtually no formal schooling, who had built a system of life values around a worn and tattered copy of the Handbook by Epictetus, given to him by his mother. He knew nothing about who wrote it, or when it was written, or why it mattered in the grand scale of intellectual history.

When I spoke to him of Stoicism, or of other authors, he simply shrugged. All he knew was that his mother read it, and because he loved her, he read it too. There was a man who was far better than I could ever be.

The world doesn’t become a better place because we stockpile knowledge; the world becomes a better place when individual people choose to live with wisdom, however humble its scale. A single book read with love is far more important than many books displayed out of pride.

Written in 10/2011