Four Levels of Literature to Form a Healthy Worldview

Ideas bloom like plants. Good plants begin with good soil.

Photo by Olga Dudareva on Unsplash

Intellectual impulses are sublogical.

We might believe we’re thinking logically and just grasping facts, but we rarely are. Our ideas more often reflect our moods or wishes than objective calculations based on the facts.[1]

In his Grammar of Ascent, John Henry Newman explored the unconscious process of the mind. He coined the term “illative sense” to describe the memory and creation, sense impressions and abstractions, little facts accumulated over the years, proofs we’ve deduced since childhood, an army of illustrations and inferences . . . all coming together somehow to give us an implicit worldview that is sublogical.

I can’t explain it any more than I can explain how my vermicompost makes my zinnias bloom like mad.

I am here, however, to suggest how your reading can help frame your illative sense in a good way, to give it a sense of norms that makes your sublogical soil healthy, so then maybe you can lead a healthier life and, if you’re lucky, contribute healthy ideas and art to those around you.

And if you’re a parent, I’m here to suggest the kind of reading you might want to give your children.

Four Levels of Literature