behave? The foregoing are all theoretical questions. The following are practical.

What
ends should be sought? What means should be chosen to a given end? What things must
one do to gain a certain objective, and in what order? Under these conditions, what is
the right thing to do, or the better rather than the worse? Under what conditions would it
be better to do this rather than that?
This list of questions is far from being exhaustive or analytically refined, but it does
represent the types of most frequently asked questions in the pursuit of theoretic or
practical knowledge. It may help you to discover the problems a book has tried to solve.
When you have followed the tour rules stated in this chapter and the previous one, you
can put down the book you have in hand for a moment. You can sigh and say: "Here
endeth the first reading."
CHAPTER TEN

Coming to Terms
-1where are we?
We have seen that any good book deserves three readings. They have to be done
separately and consciously when we are learning to read, though they can be done
together and unconsciously when we are expert. We have discovered that there are four
rules for the first, or analytical, reading. They are: (i) classify the book according to kind
and subject matter; (2) state what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity; (3)
define its major parts in their order and relation, and analyze these parts as you have
analyzed the whole; (4) define the problem or problems the authors trying to solve.
You are now prepared to go on with the second reading, and its four rules. You are
already somewhat acquainted with the first of these rules. It was stated in the second
chap ter of this book: spot the important words an author uses and figure out how he
uses them. We then put this rule into operation by running down the various meanings
of such words as "reading" and "learning." When in any context you knew precisely
what I meant when I used these words, you had come to terms with me.
Coming to terms is nearly the last stage in any successful business negotiation. All that
remains is to sign on the dotted line. But in the reading of a book, coming to terms is the
first stage of interpretation. Unless the reader comes to terms with the author, the
communication of knowledge from one to the other does not take place. A term, as you
will see shortly, is the basic element of communicable knowledge.
But you can see at once that a term is not a wordat least, not just a word without any
further qualifications. If a term and a word were exactly the same, you would only have
to find the important words in a book and you would know its basic terms immediately.
But a word can have many meanings, especially an important word. If the author uses a
word in one meaning, and the reader reads it in another, words have passed between
them, but they have not come to terms. Where there is unresolved ambiguity in
communication, there is no communication, or at best it must be incomplete.
Just look at the word "communication" for a moment. Its root is related to the word
"common." We speak of a community when people have something in common.
Communication is an effort on the part of one man to share something with another: his

knowledge, his decisions, his sentiments. It succeeds only when it results in a common
something, as an item of knowledge which two men have in common.
Now when there is ambiguity in communication, all that is in common are the words
which one man speaks or writes and another hears or reads. So long as ambiguity
remains, there are no meanings in common between writer and reader. For the
communication to be successfully completed, therefore, it is necessary for the two
parties to use the same words with the same meanings. When that happens,
communication happens, the miracle of two minds with but a single thought.
A term can be defined as an unambiguous word. That is not quite accurate, for strictly
there are no unambiguous words. What I should have said is that a term is a word used
unambiguously. The dictionary is full of words. They are almost all ambiguous in the
sense that they have many meanings. Look up any word and find this out for yourself, if
you think there are many exceptions to this generalization. But a word which has
several meanings can be used in one sense at a time. When you and I together, as writer
and reader, somehow manage for a time to use a given word with one meaning, then,
during that time of unambiguous usage, we have come to terms. I think we did manage
to come to terms in the matter of reading and learning, for instance.
You cannot find terms in dictionaries, though the materials for making them are there.
Terms occur only in the process of communication. They occur when a writer tries to
avoid ambiguity and a reader helps him by trying to follow his use of words. There are,
of course, many degrees of success in this business. Coming to terms is the ideal limit
toward which writer and reader should strive. Since this is one of the. primary
achievements of the art of writing and reading, we can think of terms as an artistic use
of words, a skilled use of words for the sake of communicating knowledge.
Let me restate the rule for you. As I phrased it originally, it was: spot the important
words and figure out how the author is using them. Now I can make that a little more
precise and elegant: find the important words and through them come to terms with the
author. Note that the rule has two parts. The first step is to locate the words which make
a difference. The second is to determine their meanings, as used, with precision.
This is the first rule for the second way of reading, the interpretative reading. The other
rules, to be discussed in the next chapter, are like this first one in an important respect.
They, also, require you to take two steps: a step dealing with the language as such, and a
step beyond the language to the thought which lies behind it.
If language were a pure and perfect medium for thought, these steps would not be
separate. If every word had only one meaning, if words could not be used ambiguously,
if, in short, each word was an ideal term, language would be a diaphanous medium. The
reader would see straight through the writer's words to the content of his mind. If that
were the case, there would be no need at all for this second way of reading.
Interpretation would be unnecessary.
But you know that that is far from being the case. There is no use in crying about it, no
use in faking up impossible schemes for an ideal language, as the philosopher Leibnitz
and some of his followers have tried to do. The only thing to do is to make the best of
language as it is, and the only way to do that is to use language as skillfully as possible.
Because language is imperfect as a medium, it also functions as an obstacle to
communication. The rules of interpretative reading are directed to overcoming that
obstacle. We can expect a good writer to do his best to reach us through the barrier

language inevitably sets up, but we cannot expect him to do it all. In fact, we must meet
him halfway. We, as readers, must try to tunnel through from our side. The chance of a
meeting of minds through language depends on the willingness of both reader and
writer to work toward each other. Just as teaching will not avail unless there is a
reciprocal activity o being taught, so no author, regardless of his skill in writing, can
achieve communication without a reciprocal skill on the part of readers. The reciprocity
here is founded on the fact that the rules of good reading and writing are ultimately the
same in principle. If that were not so, the diverse skills of writing and reading would not
bring minds together, however much effort was expended, any more than the men who
tunnel through from opposite sides of a mountain would ever meet unless they made
their calculations according to the same principles of engineering.
You have noted that each of the rules of interpretative reading involves two steps. Let
me shift from the engineering analogy to explain how they are related. They can be
likened to the two steps a detective takes in pursuing the murderer. Of all the things
which lie around the scene of the crime, he must pick~out those he thinks are likely to
be clues. He must then use these clues in running down the culprit. Interpreting a book
is a kind of detective work. Finding the important words is locating the clues. Coming
to terms through them is running down the author's thought.
If I were to get technical for a moment, I should say that ihese rules have a grammatical
and a logical aspect. The grammatical step is the one which deals with words. The
logical step deals with their meanings or, more precisely, with terms. So far as
communication is concerned, both steps are indispensable. If language is used without
thought, nothing is being communicated. And thought or knowledge cannot be
communicated without language. As arts, grammar and logic are concerned with
language in relation to thought and thought in relation to language. That is why I said
earlier that skill in reading and writing is gained through these liberal arts, especially
grammar and logic.
This business of language and thoughtespecially the distinction between words and
termsis so important that I am going to risk being repetitious to be sure you
understand the main point. The main point is that one word can be the vehicle for many
terms. Let me illustrate this schematically in the following manner. The word "reading"
has been used in many senses in the course of our discussion. Let us take three of the
meanings: (i) reading in the sense of getting amusement; (2) reading in the sense of
getting information, and (3) reading in the sense of gaining insight.
Now let us symbolize the word "reading" by the letter X, and the three meanings by the
letters a, b, and c. What is symbolized, then by Xa, Xb, and Xc, are not three words, for
X remains the same throughout. But they are three terms, on the condition, of course,
that you and I know when X is being used in one definite sense, and not another. If I
write Xa in a given place, and you read Xb, we are writing and reading the same word,
but not in the same way. The ambiguity prevents communication. Only when you think
the word as I think it do we have one thought between us. Our minds cannot meet in X,
but only in Xa or Xb or Xc. Thus we come to terms.

-2You are prepared now, I hope, to consider the rule which requires a reader to come to
terms. How does he go about taking the first step? How does he find the important
worda in a book?