No one who reads has the right to abandon the reading of a text because it is difficult, because he or she does not understand the meaning for example, of a word such as epistemology.
Just as bricklayers require a collection of tools and instruments, without which they cannot build up a wall, student-readers also require fundamental instruments, without which they cannot read or write effectively. They require dictionaries, including etymological dictionaries, dictionaries focusing on verbs and those looking at nouns and adjectives, philosophical dictionaries, thesauruses, and encyclopedias. They need comparative readings of texts, readings by different authors who deal with the same topics but with varying degrees of language complexity.
Using these tools is not, as many may think, a waste of time. The time one spends when one reads or writes, or writes and reads, on the use of dictionaries or encyclopedias, on the reading of chapters or fragments of texts that may help a more critical analysis of a topic, is a fundamental component of one’s pleasurable task of reading or writing.
When we read, we do not have the right to expect, let alone demand, that writers will perform their task, that of writing, and also ours, that of comprehending the text, by explaining every step of the way through footnotes, what they meant by this or that statement. Their duty as writers is to simply and lightly write, making it easier for the reader to attain understanding but without doing the reader’s job.
A reader does not suddenly comprehend what is being read or stud9ed, in a snap, miraculously. Comprehension needs to be worked, forged, by those who read and study; as subjects of the action, they must seek to employ appropriate instruments in order to carry out the task. For this very reason, reading and studying form a challenging task, one requiring patience and perseverance. It is not a task for those who, excessively hurried or lacking humbleness, transfer their weaknesses to the author, whom they then blame for being impossible to study.
It is important to make clear, also, that there is necessarily a relationship between the level of content in a book and the reader’s actual level of development. These levels depend on the intellectual experience of both reader and author. The comprehension of what is read is tied to this relationship. When those levels are too far apart, when one has nothing to do with the other, all efforts toward comprehension are fruitless. In such cases, there is no consonance between the author’s view of the necessary treatment of the topic and the reader’s ability to apprehend the language required for that treatment of the topic. That is why studying is a preparation for knowing; it is a patient and impatient exercise on the part of someone whose intent is not to know it all at once but to struggle to meet the timing of knowledge.