Miguel de Unamuno: “The less one reads, the more harm what one reads can do”

“The less one reads, the more harm what one reads can do.” Miguel de Unamuno wrote that line in his essay Almas de jóvenes while reflecting on education, culture and the danger of treating books as mere objects of erudition.

The sentence is not an argument against reading. Before making the observation, Unamuno recommends reading a great deal. His target is the person who knows only a few ideas and therefore risks clinging to them too tightly.

For Unamuno, a limited store of ideas could make someone a “slave” to those ideas. Wider reading introduces different positions, contradictions and shades of meaning that can be tested against one another. A single reading may look like absolute truth when no alternative exists. Several perspectives force readers to examine arguments and reconsider certainties.

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The less one reads, the more harm what one reads can do.

He extended the idea of culture beyond books. Conversations, newspapers, lectures and observation of life could all contribute to learning. In the Spain of his time, however, he believed those sources were often insufficient, leaving many people to make up the gap through self-education.

Born in Bilbao in 1864 and deceased in Salamanca in 1936, Unamuno was a philosopher, novelist, poet, essayist and playwright. He became one of the central figures of the Generation of ’98 and was closely linked to the University of Salamanca, where he became rector in 1900. His conflicts with Miguel Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship led to his exile to Fuerteventura in 1924. His best-known works include Niebla, The Tragic Sense of Life, and San Manuel Bueno, mártir.

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read a great deal