Joaquin Miller says that "Books are for people who do not think." Very often this is a correct statement. While it is a good thing to desire the knowledge we can gain from books, it becomes an evil thing when we gain all of our knowledge of the world around us in this fashion. If the only thoughts we have are the thoughts we get from books, books are an injury instead of a blessing; a crutch instead of an invigoration.
In his early life, Edwin Markham, the poet, had but three books, the Bible, Shakspere, and Bunyan. Yet from these three books and the contemporaneous study of the mountains, valleys, canyons, plains, orchards, gardens, ocean, sea-beach, and valleys by which he was surrounded, he absorbed thoughts and saw things that enabled him to write poems that have thrilled and benefited the world.
Sir John Lubbock a few years ago chose from all the millions of books that have been published one hundred which he claims comprises all the best literature of all the ages, and more recently still, President Eliot of Harvard compressed upon a five-foot shelf all the books that he deems necessary for the really thoughtful man to possess.
I am not prepared to accept these or any other limitations as to the books I shall possess and read, and yet I do want to urge the principle involved in them upon my readers. Learn to do your own thinking rather than take your thoughts at second hand from what some one else has written. At the same time I would urge upon you the reading of the writings of our great poets that you may absorb from them their love of Nature. In this way it may be that you will be won to the love and appreciation of that which you have never before known or enjoyed. Just as the artist on his canvas sets forth for us a beautiful scene out of the great world that surrounds us and thus focalizes our attention upon it, and teaches us to see the beauty which hitherto we had passed unobserved, so does the poet focalize our attention upon that which hitherto we had passed by and neglected.
Let us read, therefore, by all means, but not as an end in itself. Let us read that thereby we may be stimulated to go out into Nature to see, feel, and absorb for ourselves. Many of the books that are "worth while" were written by men and women who have been close observers of Nature.