People imagine that the place,
which the Bible holds in the world, it owes to miracles. It owes it
simply to the fact that it came out of a profounder depth of thought
than any other book, and the effect must be precisely proportionate.
Gibbon fancied that it was combinations of circumstances that gave
Christianity its place in history. But in nature it takes an ounce
to balance an ounce.
All just criticism will not only behold in literature the
action of necessary laws, but must also oversee literature itself.
The erect mind disparages all books. What are books? it saith: they
can have no permanent value. How obviously initial they are to their
authors. The books of the nations, the universal books, are long ago
forgotten by those who wrote them, and one day we shall forget this
primer learning. Literature is made up of a few ideas and a few
fables. It is a heap of nouns and verbs enclosing an intuition or
two. We must learn to judge books by absolute standards. When we
are aroused to a life in ourselves, these traditional splendors of
letters grow very pale and cold.
Pages:
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49