The tendency to assume that an idea or practice represents progress just because it's more recent, and a reading person's remedy:
It’s a good rule after reading a new book never to
allow yourself another new one till you have read an
old one in between. If that is too much for you, you
should at least read one old one to three new ones....
Every age has its own outlook. It is especially good
at seeing certain truths and especially liable to make
certain mistakes. We all therefore need the books that
will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own
period.... None of us can fully escape this blindness,
but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our
guard against it, if we read only modern books....The
only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the
centuries blowing through our minds and this can
only be done by reading old books."
Check out the C.S. Lewis Institute, a new addition to Really Smart Guys, for lots of good stuff.
3 comments:
Are you sure that you and Linda don't read Touchstone? I swear you guys are on the same wavelength with that magazine. They just had an article about that not too long ago. Well, if you haven't read it, you might like it!
Holly,
I will check it out.
Incidentally, Mrs. D reminded me that I probably need to embrace the discipline of reading a new book once in a while...she was kind enough to not post that...but she's right!
Touchstone runs a pretty interesting blog site too. http://merecomments.typepad.com/
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