LITERATURE AS A GOOD OF LIFE.

The Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle is founded, at least in

part, upon the idea that literature is a true good of life. Is it? That

is the question which I raise for discussion to-day.

A strange time of day, I hear some of you exclaim, for that question

to be raised. Are we not nearing the end of the nineteenth century of

the Christian era? May we not take a few things for settled, and is not

the worth of literature one of those few? But there is a French saying

that it is the unexpected which happens. So it is the out-of-season that

is opportune—sometimes. And this seemingly out-of-season topic, this

anachronism, the question of the value of literature, is perhaps exactly

the thing that will prove timely to-day.

For, incredible as it should seem, the real value of literature, the

validity of the claim of literature to be regarded as a substantial human

good, has of late been brought seriously into question. It is the men

of science—not all of them, but some of them—that begin to challenge to

literature its hitherto conceded title to be considered one of the great

interests of mankind. These men say literature has had its day. A long

day it has been, too long in fact, but the day is done now and literature

must disappear. The future—such is their language—the future belongs to

science. Science is the true great good of the human race. Science, they

go on to represent, science can do for us what we really need to have

done. Literature, on the other hand, can supply no real want of mankind.

The great vogue that literature has enjoyed in the past, is due to an

illusion—an illusion that with the broadening light of science, a light

brightening and broadening every moment, dissolves and vanishes. More

and more we are having done with the traditional and conventional. And

anything more entirely traditional and conventional than the claim of

literature on the attention and reverence of men does not exist. What we

really need, and what we are going henceforth to insist on having, is

substance, not shadow. Literature is shadow. It affords no satisfaction

except to the sentiment. It makes nobody stronger, healthier, richer,

more comfortable. It does not help us travel faster or travel more

safely. It does not carry messages for us. It does not build our houses,

or ventilate them, or warm them. It does not plant, or cultivate, or

reap. It does not bind, or thresh, or grind, or cook. It does not invent

any of the conveniences of life. We do not owe the sewing machine to

literature, or the telegraph, or the telephone, or even the printing

press itself, which so serves literature. Literature is a drone and an

idler. Science works and produces. Science has done for us all the things

enumerated, with many things beside, too many for enumeration, in which

literature has had no useful part at all. Literature is a fine gentleman,

a fine lady, sitting by with folded hands, hands folded and too delicate,

far too delicate, for any productive employment. We can get along without

this ornament to our civilization—the delight, the luxury of a few, a

burden which the many must drudge to support. Science, on the contrary,

is the servant equally of all. Her hands are not afraid of soil and toil.

She loves to work. Give her henceforward the chance that literature had,

abundantly had, and neglected. Endow schools for science, encourage her,

cheer her; in short, let science have the place that literature has

enjoyed too long.

Such, I say, is the bold language in disparagement of literature, and

in comparative exaltation of science, that we find some scientists, or

perhaps I ought to say some literary men, self-constituted spokesmen for

scientists, holding in these days concerning the just claim of literature

to be regarded as one of the true goods of human life.

Now I propose that we entertain candidly the question thus raised. Let us

not treat it as a question to which the answer is foregone. Let us put

aside prepossession, and ask ourselves freshly and freely and frankly,

quite as if our conclusion were doubtful, what are the rational grounds

on which we may rest the title of literature to share with science, at

least equally, the attention and the cultivation of mankind.

Share with science, I say, and at least equally share. More than this I

do not claim. Certainly I should not claim more than this in presence

of the C. L. S. C. You are a circle or society of literature indeed.

But no less you are a society of science. You embrace both ideas, both

interests, with impartial regard. You would not listen favorably to me

were I to decry science. But I have no such disposition. I love science,

honor her, applaud her, bid her God-speed. I wish I knew more of what

science could teach me. I wish I could do more to help science on. But at

least, with all good heart, I say, God make her prosper! And this breadth

of sympathy, in my mind and my heart, I owe largely to literature.

Literature, as I understand her spirit, is catholic and generous. If I

have myself any capacity of liberal love for human progress in whatever

sphere, I have derived that capacity in no small degree from the

inspiration of literature. I should wrong my own client, I should grieve

her, I should earn rejection at her hands, if I stood here, or elsewhere,

in the name of literature, to say aught, as if on her behalf, against a

sister that she loves. For literature loves science, and will contentedly

hear nothing to her harm.

What, then, I ask, are the sound and substantial reasons, the reasons

valid in the court of common sense, why we should stand by literature as

one of our great goods of life?

The reasons that I find are of two sorts: First, those that respect the

number of the persons benefited; and, second, those that respect the

degree to which these are benefited—in other words, first those that

respect the quantity, and second those that respect the quality of the

benefit bestowed.

First, then, as regards the breadth, the diffusiveness, of the blessing

that literature ministers to mankind.

But since the present comparison is naturally between literature and

science, it may be well, at this point, that we pause to take our

bearings. What is literature? And what is science? Let us clearly

understand the terms and ideas with which we deal. Literature then may be

defined as the record of what men have thought, felt, fancied, done, in

the world. Science is reasoned and classified knowledge respecting the

facts and laws of nature or the physical universe. Our question is not,

Which is the greater good, literature or science? Our question is, Is not

literature, as compared with science, at least an equal good?

Now we, that is, men and women in general, who ask this question,

may have either one or the other of two quite different relations to

literature or to science. These two different relations we may name and

distinguish. In the first place, you—any man or any woman, I mean—may

be either, on the one hand a producer of literature, or a promoter of

science; or, on the other hand, you may be simply one to enjoy literature

or to reap the fruits of science. Since, however, those who make

literature also enjoy literature, and those who advance science also reap

the fruits of science, we may as well disregard entirely the productive

relation which belongs in either case to the few, and consider only the

fruitional relation, which belongs in both cases to the many—in fact, to

all.

Just here, however, I am met with a warning. I am bidden take heed. I am

told that exactly because literature is not to all a good, but a good

only to the select and favored few, because literature is aristocratic,

not democratic; because it is a luxury, not a necessity; because it

concerns not the average man, but the picked man, one in a thousand, not

the thousand—exactly because of this, I am told, it is that literature

has got to give way and let science, which is a universal interest, take

its too long usurped place. Well, I stop to answer this challenge. I

admit at once that, if such be the fact, if literature be a monopoly, and

not a common good, then I lose my case. And I say more, then I ought to

lose my case, and I am glad to lose my case. For I avow myself a democrat

in this matter. I go with the people. I belong with the majority. I stand

up for the benefit of the most. But is it true that literature is an

exclusive, a seclusive thing? Is it true that the many can not enjoy it,

do not enjoy it? Is not literature a general, a diffusive good? If not,

then however great a good it may be to a few, I am not here to defend its

cause. We are a popular association, this C. L. S. C., or we are nothing.

If I did not believe literature to be a thing for everybody, I, as one

among the Counselors of this organization, should favor a dismissal of

literature from our plan and plead for the substitution of something else

in its place that should be a thing for everybody. What is the fact?

Why, the fact is that literature is the very atmosphere, the intellectual

atmosphere, in which we all, not some of us, but all of us, live and

breathe and have our being. We drew in this air as soon as we began to

think. Long before we could read for ourselves, before even we could

listen understandingly to the reading of others, we felt unconsciously,

but most really, and most profoundly, the effect, the beneficial effect

of literature. The home in which you were reared, the character and the

spirit of the mother that gave you birth, that nurtured and tended your

infancy—these were different, and they were better, because literature

had done something to make them and mold them. And were they not

literature, those lullabies that quieted us in our cradle, the fairy

tales that fed the fancy of our wondering childhood, the stories from the

Bible that expanded our infant minds to embrace the idea of a God, of a

Savior, of a future life, of heaven, and of hell? Those men seem not to

know what their words mean; those men who talk of expunging literature,

and bringing up the new generations of mankind on science. Really to do

what they say, but what surely they never could intelligently mean, would

be to destroy for the whole civilized race of mankind the very grace and

glory of life.

I know very well that comparatively few out of any human generation ever

become widely or deeply conversant with literature. It is but the one

person out of ten, or a hundred, or out of a thousand it may be, that

reads books. This I freely acknowledge. Nay, this I loudly proclaim. It

is because this is so that the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle

exists—because this is so, and because it ought not to be so, and because

there are at least a few of us that do not mean to have it continue to be

so. Such, however, is undeniably at present the fact. Readers of books,

take the civilized world at large, are few and far between. But no matter

for that. What I have maintained is nevertheless true. Literature is a

universal good. How many of you spend time in gazing heavenward at the

sun? But you see by the light of the sun none the less. The sun lights

the world in thousands and ten thousands of places where he does not

directly shine. And literature is a sun. It blazes high in the heavens

and spreads its beneficent illumination everywhere abroad among the

haunts of civilized mankind. There are coverts, it is true, into which

its rays can not immediately pierce. But even into such coverts its rays

enter. There is such a thing as diffusion of light by refraction and

reflection and transmission. In this way literature becomes a light that

lighteth every man that cometh into the world. _A_ light, I say—for I

use those sacred words with reverence. ONE is _the_ light that lighteth

every man. And, by the way, let us remember that it is greatly through

literature, that is, through a book, _the_ book, the Bible, that Jesus

himself shines hither, across seas and continents of space and across

centuries of time, to light us here as in a city in the wilderness to-day.

Of the hundreds of thousands of Englishmen of the present generation

that have from time to time listened to the noble eloquence of that

great orator, John Bright, perhaps not one in a hundred has ever read,

for example, the “Paradise Lost” of Milton. But does it therefore follow

that to these of the overwhelming majority the “Paradise Lost” of Milton

is nothing? Far from it. John Bright has acknowledged his vast debt

to the poetry of Milton for the enrichment of his own gift of speech;

and through John Bright, Milton’s poetry has thus become a real, an

appreciable good to all the hundreds of thousands of men that have fed on

John Bright’s eloquence, though they may never have read for themselves a

line of Milton’s magnificent and inspiring verse.

This is but a single, and it is of course a very inadequate illustration.

Every sermon you hear, every lecture, every speech, every newspaper you

read, owes something, and something that it could by no means spare,

to the beneficence of literature. Take away the light of literature

from the world of mind—why, it would be like putting out the sun in the

heavens. The very men who talk of such a vandalism, such an unspeakable,

such an anachronistic vandalism, these very men would grope as in

Cimmerian darkness. I will tell you what the effect would be like. It

would be like suddenly annihilating all the civilized inhabitants of

the world and endowing the unreclaimed savages of waste and wild with

the powers and appliances that centuries of science have accumulated

for the service of mankind. Imagine, if you can, the Hottentots and

Caffirs and Ojibways remaining uncivilized in character, but equipped

with the material apparatus of civilization. Would you like to live

among them? What sort of use, think you, would they be likely to make of

their magnificent acquisitions? But a thought like this is associated

rather with the second than with the first of our reasons for regarding

literature as a true good of human life. To this second reason we

presently make our transition; first, however, let us fix it firmly in

our thought that literature is no narrow, no exclusive interest, but an

interest as broad and as expansive as is civilization itself. The fact

that literature is in character such, is capable of being made clear by

additional illustration. The city of New York is supplied with water from

the Croton river. Every inhabitant of the city enjoys the benefit of

this water supply. There is a system of aqueducts ramifying from Croton

river to every street, to every dwelling, to almost every room, in the

great metropolis. You have but to apply your hand, and instantly at that

silent sign, Croton river flows to meet your demand. For it is not water

simply, it is Croton river that is brought thus within the reach of every

one that will have of it. So it is with the distribution of effect from

literature. The conduits of literature run everywhere. The current flows

to every mind within the bounds of civilization. Men may not know this,

but they share the blessing all the same without knowing it. There are,

I suppose, plenty of people in New York, who, when they turn the faucet

to their water-pipe, not once dream that the fountain which they see

springing as if by magic under their touch, is a true river brought from

forty miles away. But true river it is nevertheless. Certainly not one in

a hundred thousand of New Yorkers has ever tasted of Croton river where

it flows in its natural bed. But they taste Croton river for all that,

every time they drink water in New York. And thus it is that, however

little men think of it, they still do share the benefits of literature

with almost every breath of larger intellectual life that they draw. To

the original sources of literature, the great books, ancient or modern,

they may never have directly resorted, never even have seen them from

afar, nay, never so much as heard of them; but they drink from them all

the same, every time they take in a thought or a fancy, however brought

within their reach, that once sprang up first in some great human brain,

and was then immortalized in a tale, an essay, a history, a poem.

Thus much for the extent or quantity of the influence for good to

men exerted by literature. It certainly is not too much to claim for

literature that it is an interest broad enough in its range and reach of

power to be called a general, if not a universal interest of civilized

mankind.

We have next and last to consider the kind or quality of this expansive

influence. As I have said, it is not to most men a material good. Only

to those who live by literature, to those who make books, to our men

and women of letters distinctively so-called, is literature a material

interest. To the vast majority of us all, literature is chiefly a

spiritual, an intellectual, a sentimental good. This I fully admit.

But I am far from admitting that because this is so, therefore literature

is less a real good than anything else whatever, no matter what, the most

solidly material interest of mankind that you can name. For what is our

life? It is no doubt partly animal. We need, first of all, to subsist

somehow, and then, if possible, to subsist comfortably. Beyond these

two ends, subsistence and comfort, our animal nature has little or no

craving. Give us a chance to go on living, and living with comfort, and

we as animals ask nothing more. Science greatly helps us to accomplish

these ends, and for so much we owe to science a large debt. But beyond

this limit what does science do for us, for us, I mean, the generality

of mankind? I wish to be perfectly candid and to concede to the claim

of science everything that is justly hers. But what, I ask, beyond

helping us live, and helping us live comfortably, does science even aim

or aspire to do for the majority of the human race? For the scientists

themselves, I acknowledge, for that comparatively small number of men

who engage in the pursuits of science as a business of their life,

science does much more. For these men science affords a means to vast

enlargement and ennoblement of mind. The brilliant hypotheses, the bold

speculations, the broad generalizations, the stimulating guesses, the

expansive conceptions, with which science deals—what can be thought of

more fitted to feed the imagination and reason of man and advance him

to the strength and stature of angels than is such occupation of mind

as these afford? And then no doubt also, mere patient observation for

the collection of facts is a work more humble, indeed, yet worthy to be

reckoned a true discipline and reflection of the intellectual nature. But

then we are to remember that these relations to science are for the few

and not for the many. The many simply enjoy the material fruit without

enjoying the glorious intellectual quest that finds the fruit, do you

say? Yes, but the many may enjoy the ennobling effect upon the intellect

of those large conclusions to which science leads the scientific man.

This, I concede, is to some extent true, but it is not true to any very

considerable extent. And to the extent to which it is true, literature is

largely the means through which the effect is produced. The great results

of science, satisfying, inspiring as they are to those who first come

at them, and to those others who really appreciate them as literature,

by eminence, presenting them in her own admirable ways, is able to make

them appreciated—these great results, I say, of science, tend when taught

as lessons in the text-books of the schools, to become mere lifeless

commonplaces of knowledge and of thought—mainly barren of force to

quicken and fructify the mind. It has been said, and truly said, that the

average American school-boy of to-day knows at twelve more true science

than the wisest philosopher of Greek or Roman antiquity could ever by

possibility have learned. But, as has been replied, and truly replied, it

by no means thence follows that such a school-boy is wiser than was Plato

or Aristotle. It is not what you know, it is what you are, that chiefly

signifies. And what you are, in that which is most central and most

important, literature does more, far more, to make you than lies within

the utmost reach of science; that is, if you are an average man, if you

are one of the majority, and not one of the elect few who follow science

as the vocation of a life. This is what I claim for literature, and this

my claim for literature I acknowledge myself under obligation to make

good by something beyond mere confident assertion of the fact.

I do not undervalue comfort. I like to be comfortable. I like to see

people comfortable. But there are two sorts of comfort—one is comfort

of the body, and one is comfort of the mind. These two kinds of comfort

react mutually on each other. That is, bodily comfort tends to create

comfort for the mind, as also does comfort of mind to create bodily

comfort. But of the two kinds of comfort one is a great deal closer to

us, and a great deal more durable than the other. If I had to choose

between them I should not hesitate a moment. I should say, give me a

mind at ease. The mind is master after all. Who has not seen men and

women stretched helpless and hopeless on the rack of bodily pain, but

triumphing nevertheless into peace and joy? That was the victory of mind.

It makes far more difference to us, for our comfort, for our happiness,

what is the course of our thoughts, our fancies, our affections, than

what is the course of our bodily sensations. A sweet thought, a sovereign

affection, a ravishing vision of fancy may make a man forget hunger,

thirst, fatigue, pain. But no amount of physical comfort can ease you of

anguish fastened upon your mind. That clings and stings in spite of all,

and poisons all.

Science can do much for me to promote my comfort of body. True, however

much she does, I am so constituted that immediately I want a little

more. Comfort might perhaps be well enough defined as perfect balance

between desire and supply. Only there never is in bodily concerns any

such balance. We always want something more than we have. This sense

of need constantly surpassing supply is the very spring of progress

in civilization. Civilization has been wittily said to consist in

the multiplication of artificial wants together with a corresponding

multiplication of artificial supplies for those wants. But in view of the

fact that want forever outruns supply, a change might not inaptly be made

in this French definition of civilization. We might say that civilization

is an endless process of multiplying wants and of then multiplying

appliances that never will satisfy these wants.

Now, I am in favor of material progress. I am not one of those who think

that the simplicity of savagery is better than the artificiality of

civilization. No, I say, let us be as civilized as possible. Let us make

all the progress we can. Let us go endlessly on in finding out God’s

great universe, and so realizing that mastery once divinely bestowed on

man over the powers and capacities of nature. Let us do all this with

heart and hope, but let us at the same time recognize the fact that never

so shall we obtain immortality, never so obtain exemption from ill. Our

world will still be a world of human infirmity and human suffering,

however much the physical framework of things is put by science under our

control. In truth, it may well be doubted whether of real comfort, the

sum is greater to men now, over and above all deduction, than it was a

century or centuries ago. The appliances and means of comfort are more

now, perhaps a hundred fold. But so too are the needs that must be met.

And the difference of real comfort in favor of these times would not be

found great. I repeat that I am not a reactionist. I want no retrograde

movement, but, on the contrary, only advance, and ever advance. Still,

whatever the advance, there will be, proceeding from that advance, no

corresponding advance in solid human comfort and happiness.

The reason is that human comfort and happiness depend in the main on

conditions that science can not supply. They depend on the state of

the mind within. They depend on the habitual or prevalent course of

thought and feeling in the soul. What we chiefly need is not easier and

more comfortable subsistence—though this too is good and desirable—but

a released and victorious mind. We shall never escape our physical

conditions, and these will always be more or less unsatisfactory. We

shall rub against the bars, we shall press against the pricks of our

material environment and suffer. This is inevitable. But there is for

us something better than escape from physical limitation would be, were

such escape possible. We can live a life of the mind that shall be, to a

great degree, independent of the life of the body, and ascendent over it.

Even let our hands be filled with mean and sordid tasks, we may, as Mrs.

Browning puts it in her verse, keep our souls “singing at a work apart.”

The mind is its own place—and its own environment. In this fact lies our

hope. And here is the great chance of literature.

Literature comes to us in our prison, and brings deliverance that is more

than deliverance. It brings large thoughts to us, solvent affections,

free fancies. We forget our bondage and our pain. We live a life of the

mind that soars, as the bird soars, above the ground where else we should

crouch and grovel. And I say that this is a real, a solid, a substantial

good. Sentimental it is—yes, but our most true life is sentiment. Morton

did for us, I suppose, a valuable service when he discovered the use of

ether as an anæsthetic. That discovery has mitigated many a physical

pang. But it is to me certain that Longfellow’s poetry, for example, has

done not less to bring comfort to men. Pasteur, the great French savant,

has, it is said, found a specific by inoculation for hydrophobia. That is

a vast boon to our kind. The same great scientist explored the disease

that was destroying the silk worm in France, and applied an effective

remedy. He performed a similar service in the rescue of the cattle from

a widespread and destructive malady. Pasteur, by such achievements as

these, has added untold millions on millions of dollars to the material

wealth of the world. I glory and joy in these beneficent results of

science. Human existence is blessed thereby. But blessed not less is

human existence by the great literary gift of such a body of poetry as

Tennyson’s. You can not count in millions of dollars the wealth of the

world received from Tennyson, but God can count it in heart-throbs, and

in stirrings of the brain, too costly and too precious for countless

millions of dollars to buy.

Blessed, I have said, is human existence in the beneficent results of

science. But how blessed? What are we rich for? Why is it a good that

we should possess a surplus beyond the necessities of subsistence,

of subsistence in material comfort? That we need not work so hard to

live, that we may have some privilege of leisure? But how is leisure a

blessing to our race? By giving us a chance to be idle, to be lazy? I

trow not. Leisure is a good to us when we use it well, not otherwise. It

is not using leisure well to spend the time and the strength saved to

us through science from the sordid demands of mere subsistence—getting,

in accumulating appliances of pleasure. We may indeed accumulate the

appliances so, but we shall never so accumulate the pleasure. God has

planned it for us otherwise. Comfort turned into luxury ceases to be

comfort. What then shall we do with our leisure when, at the gift of

wealth through science, we have gained our leisure? We must not squander

it in luxurious ease. Wealth so used would be not a blessing, but a curse.

No, wealth is a blessing to us only when we say within ourselves, now

that we need not work all the time to keep soul and body together, now

that our body is sufficiently well served, go to, let us see what we can

do for our soul. I am not preaching to-day, and I utter not a word about

religion for the soul. But, apart from religion, what is there that you

can do for your soul, that is, for your self, better worth doing than to

feed it with thought, with reason, with emotion, with imagination? What

does your release from drudgery signify to you, if it does not signify

opportunity to live freely a life higher than the life of a brute? The

good that science accomplishes for us is in itself an imperfect good. It

is merely means to an end. We are defeated if we stop with the means. We

must go on by the means to the end. Science is chiefly good as science

makes way for literature. Let literature come in through the door that

science opens.

Make free and wide your mind to the expanding and ennobling influence of

literature. Every time you read a great book, you grow. And growth is

life, and life is power, and power is joy. Literary culture is a process

of intellectual annexation. You read, and you annex province after

province of thought and of experience to the realm that was yours before.

There is no limit to this expansion of empire. It is not simply during

the intervals while you are reading that you establish new currents

of intellectual life within you. What you read remains a permanent

possession. Do not say, No, my memory is poor, I can not retain what I

read. But you do retain it—in effect. It has gone into the substance

of your mind. Your mind is now of a different texture. Your horizon is

extended. Before, you dwelt low in a valley shut in by narrowing hills.

You saw only what was immediately around you. You have a higher point of

outlook now. Your landscape is wider, more various. But there are yet

higher heights to be won. Go on and up. What an inspiring thing it is to

stand in the Alps, where there is nothing visible to overtop you but the

sky itself! Toward such an experience, in the realm of mind, literature

invites you.

There is no exclusiveness, no monopoly here. You are all invited. Homer,

Virgil, Dante, Milton—these are not for one, or for a few, but for all.

Socrates will talk with you, and Plato and Aristotle. Demosthenes will

repeat his peerless eloquence for you, and Cicero, and Chatham, and

Webster. It is a glorious fellowship. Here are Æschylus and Sophocles and

Euripides, here are Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon, here are Horace

and Juvenal, Livy and Tacitus. All ages and all races are yours. You may

be wise with the wisdom of time. Who would be content to live his own

individual life alone, when, to each one of us all it is open to live, as

it were, the whole life of mankind? And this is the gift of literature.

Let us be thankful that it is impossible for them to take away from

us the “Iliad,” the “Æneid,” the “Divina Commedia,” the “Pilgrim’s

Progress,” the “Paradise Lost.” These great works and their fellows are

ours forever. And there are more and ever more such works to be created

and enjoyed. Literature is indestructible. They may depress it, but they

can not destroy it. Always, however much we may enjoy knowing nature, we

shall at least as much enjoy knowing man. And it is in literature that

man speaks to man. And never will come a time when there shall not be

souls that must speak, and souls, too, in still greater number, that can

not but listen.

Literature, then, is a true good of human life, both because, first or

last, it addresses all, and because it speaks to that in all which is

highest, most permanent, most controlling. Did I say I would claim for

literature nothing more than equality of place with science? Let me unsay

that. Science is knowledge, literature is wisdom. As wisdom is better

than knowledge, so greater than science is literature.