_What Does, What Knows, What Is...._
I have happily left myself no time to-day to speak of _What Is_:
happily, because I would not have you even approach it
towards the end of an hour when your attention must be languishing.
But I leave you with two promises, and with two sayings from which
as this lecture took its start its successors will proceed.
The first promise is, that _What Is,_ being the spiritual element
in man, is the highest object of his study.
The second promise is that, nine-tenths of what is worthy to be
called Literature being concerned with this spiritual element,
for that it should be studied, from firstly up to ninthly, before
anything else.
And my two quotations are for you to ponder:
(1) This, first:
That all spirit is mutually attractive, as all matter is
mutually attractive, is an ultimate fact beyond which we cannot
go.... Spirit to spirit--as in water face answereth to face, so
the heart of man to man.
(2) And this other, from the writings of an obscure Welsh
clergyman of the 17th century:
You will never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself
floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens
and crowned with the stars.
[Footnote 1: The reader will kindly turn back to p.1, and observe
the date at the head of this lecture. At that time I was engaged
against a system of English teaching which I believed to be
thoroughly bad. That system has since given place to another,
which I am prepared to defend as a better.]