e lapse of ages; so that
the more recent works are necessarily the best for entering upon the
study. A historical sequence may be proper to be observed; but that
should be backward and not forward. The earlier stages of some subjects
are absolutely worthless; as, for example, Physics, Chemistry, and most
of Biology, in other subjects, as Politics and Ethics, the tentatives of
such men as Plato and Aristotle have an undying value; nevertheless, the
student should not begin, but end, with them.

* * * * *

There is an extreme form of putting our present doctrine that runs it
into paradox: namely, the one-book-and-no-more maxim. Scarcely any book
in existence is so all-sufficient for its purpose that a student is
better occupied in re-reading it for the tenth time, than in reading
some others once. Even the merits of the one book are not fully known
unless we compare it with others; nor have we grasped any subject unless
we are able to see it stated in various forms, without being distracted
or confused. It is not a high knowledge of horsemanship that can be
gained by the most thorough acquaintance with one horse.

[NO WORK ENTIRELY SELF-SUFFICIENT.]

Any truth that there is in the paradox of excluding all books but one
from perusal, belongs to it as a form of the maxim we have now been
considering. There is not in existence a work corresponding to the
notion of absolute self-sufficiency. Suppose we were to go over the
_chef-d'oeuvres_ of human genius, we should not find one in the position
of entire independence of all others. Take, for example, the poems of
Homer; the Republic and a few other of Plato's pre-eminent Dialogues;
the great speeches of Demosthenes; the Ethics and Politics of Aristotle;
the poems of Dante; Shakespeare, as a whole; Bacon's Novum Organum;
Newton's Principia; Locke on the Understanding; the _Mechanique Celeste_
of Laplace. No one of all these could produce its effect on the mind
without referring to other works, previous, contemporary, or following.
The remark is not confined to works of elucidation and comment
merely--as the contemporary history of Greece, or the speeches of
Demosthenes--but extends to other compositions, of the very same tenor,
by different, although inferior, writers. Shakespeare himself is made
much more profitable by a perusal of the other Elizabethans, and by a
comparison with dramatic models before and after him.

The nearest approach to