Non Multa Sed Multum

In a previous post (Memento mori) I mentioned how little time we have. The Latin phrase Non multa sed multum teaches us how not to waste this time.

It is a saying attributed to Pliny the Younger (61-113 A.D.).

Literally, it means, not many things but much or not many things but many times.

In other words, the quality with which something is done – the “muchness” of it – is more important than the number of tasks a person completes. The quality of the books with which one becomes familiar is more important than the number of mediocre books one reads.

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), featured here, habitué of bordellos, anti-natalist (against bringing children into the world), one of the creators of the realist school in fiction, searcher for the “right word,” creator of Emma Bovary, said, Imagine how learned a person would be if he became thoroughly familiar with five or six books. Unfortunately, he didn’t say which books these were. Maybe it doesn’t matter, as long as they are books written by great minds?

If physically we are what we eat, then mentally we are what we read, listen to, and watch.

We pay more attention to what we put in our stomach than what we put into our head.

In the domain of the mind, less is more.

A tsunami of words in books, images in the visual media, and a cacophony of sounds on various devices are overwhelming our senses, bewildering us and drowning us in an ocean of trivia.

There are hardly any places today where one can escape from noise, word, and image pollution and reflect in quiet on the human predicament and on the meaning of life. Maybe on Mars?

The solutions proposed, such as speed reading and multitasking, do not solve anything. They follow the trend and actually make things worse by adding to the confusion.

Think of your mind as a mansion with many rooms. As we grow, these rooms become filled with content, ideas, thoughts, beliefs, stories, myths, and memories. This “furniture of the mind” in later life serves us well or ill when we are left to commune with ourselves. The person with excellent furniture feels at home in the comfortable rooms of his mind, whereas the person whose mansion is poorly furnished will not feel at home there. When he is alone, he will feel ill at ease, nervous, and bored. He will have the urge to get out of his cluttered and untidy home and seek the company of his kind in the neighborhood tavern. The two enemies of happiness are pain and boredom. which like a bird of prey is waiting to fall upon any life that is free from want. Boredom attacks the ill-furnished mind as soon trivial amusements (sports, video games) cease to excite.

Non multa sed multum can apply to many fields of life. For example, it is better to be a master of one trade than a jack of all trades.

Our maxim has particular application to books and reading and self-education. The person who reads one trivial book after another is like the owner of a house who lets anyone pass through. These visitors leave behind debris of all kinds. After they have left, there is a feeling of emptiness, viz. boredom.

How different the matter stands with great authors, who when invited into our home become true friends who will never let us down and are always ready to give their best. Goethe said, Man wants a lot, but needs little. How little it takes to make us happy.

The Prime Minister of China said that he has read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius one hundred times. Bill Clinton said that he reads that book once every year.

There are many other authors that we can invite to take up residence in our mind. These include Plato, Epictetus, St. Augustine, Shakespeare, Dante, Montaigne, Nietzsche, many others, and the great Pascal, whose Thoughts are a source of constant inspiration.

Benjamin Franklin, whose formal education ended at the age of ten, in his Autobiography remarks how his love of books was kindled by Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and how he learned to be a good English stylist by modeling himself on The Spectator.

Eric Hoffer (author of The True Believer), the longshoreman turned philosopher, tells how in a bookshop he picked out a thick book to read, which turned out to be Montaigne’s Essays and which laid the foundations of his self-education.

After you have chosen your six to ten great authors/books, you can divide your reading time between them and lighter fare, in a proportion, let’s say, two-thirds to one-third. With this rule in mind, we are kept on course and prevented from wasting too much time.

Reading a great author expands the mind by taking you into delightful side paths that you can explore at your leisure. For example, James Russell Lowell told his students in answer to the question as to the best course of reading to be followed: If I may be allowed a personal illustration, it was my own profound admiration for the Divina Commedia of Dante that lured me into what little learning I possess.

Should you take notes? Although we are reading for pleasure, It would be advisable to jot down some of our reactions to what we read, thereby engaging in a dialogue of sorts with the author.

These examples of non multa sed multum should inspire us to do some mental house cleaning and invite worthy writers to enter and take up residence in our mind. They are waiting for us. After we have come to know them better, we will be impatient to return to their company.

Lao Tzu said, Return to the state of the uncarved block. That means, simplify your life.

Imagine the sense of liberation that you will feel when you realize that you don’t have to be au courant on everything. As Mother Teresa put it, We cannot do great things on this earth, we can only do little things with great love.