Reread the quote. Erasmus isn’t just talking about reading. There are multiple relations:
Knowledge is useless sitting there untouched you have to actively make use of it.
to truly understand something you have to make that knowledge your own, write down things, make annotations, work through examples, read and reread the book. You can’t just absorb the knowledge by skimming through.
There are lost purposes here. How many people have books just to look cultured, or read books just to say they have read them. Think of all the famous unread books or Gatsby’s famous library.
Reread the quote. Erasmus isn’t just talking about reading. There are multiple relations:
Knowledge is useless sitting there untouched you have to actively make use of it.
to truly understand something you have to make that knowledge your own, write down things, make annotations, work through examples, read and reread the book. You can’t just absorb the knowledge by skimming through.
There are lost purposes here. How many people have books just to look cultured, or read books just to say they have read them. Think of all the famous unread books or Gatsby’s famous library.
I agree with each of your bullet points, and they do help clarify the Erasmus quotation’s relationship to rationality. Thanks.