One of see. S. Louis's endeavors as a teacher was to persuade young people that first-hand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring then second-hand knowledge, but it is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire. And so, Lewis wrote, a student would do better to read Plato then to "read some dreary modern book 10 times as long, all about 'isms' and influences and only once in 12 pages telling him what Plato actually said.