在上一节的内容中，Virginia Woolf 强调读书的第一原则就是要具备自由精神，只有拥有这种宏观精神，我们才会考虑读书的方法，不至于被别人牵着鼻子走。在读书时，除了要具备“自由精神”这一抽象的原则，还需要具备哪些基本原则呢？在这一节的内容中，Virginia Woolf 将给出更为具体的原则，即我们在阅读一本书时，也要学会跟作者站在同一立场，进入作者的视角思考问题。
Do not dictate to your author; try to become him. Be his fellow-worker and accomplice. If you hang back, and reserve and criticize at first, you are preventing yourself from getting the fullest possible value from what you read. But if you open your mind as widely as possible, the signs and hints of almost imperceptible fineness, from the twist and turn of the first sentences, will bring you into the presence of a human being unlike any other. Steep yourself in this, acquaint yourself with this, and soon you will find that your author is giving you, or attempting to give you, something far more definite. The thirty-two chapters of a novel—if we consider how to read a novel first--are an attempt to make something as formed and controlled as a building: but words are more impalpable than bricks; reading is a longer and more complicated process than seeing. Perhaps the quickest way to understand the elements of what a novelist is doing is not to read, but to write; to make your own experiment with the dangers and difficulties of words. Recall, then, some event that has left a distinct impression on you. When you attempt to reconstruct it in words, you will find that it breaks into a thousand conflicting impressions. Then turn from your blurred and littered pages to the opening pages of some great novelist—Defoe, Jane Austen, or Hardy. Now you will be better able to appreciate their mastery.
▍生词好句
dictate: vi. 对……发号施令
accomplice: n. 同伴
hang back: 退缩；畏缩不前
imperceptible: adj. 极细微的；感觉不到的
steep oneself in: 使……浸泡在（某种环境）
acquaint oneself with: 使……熟悉
definite: adj. 一定的；确切的
impalpable: adj. 感触不到的；难理解的
reconstruct: vt. 重建；重现
mastery: n. 掌握；精通（本节可理解为“高超的写作技巧”）
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