Literature is but one of the forms of art through which man’s
aspiration, his ideals, are revealed. The soul of man takes the
hues of that which environs it. It is literature which inspires;
not linguistics, rhetoric, and grammar, valuable as these may
be for other purposes. Witness the tributes of Darwin and Mill
to the power of imaginative literature; these men mourned the
fact that other things deprived them of that great power of
culture of the feelings which the love of literature brought.
Barrie has said that a young man may be better employed than
in going to college; but when there, he is unfortunate if he
does not meet some one who sends his life off at a new angle.
“One such professor,” says he, “is the most any university may
hope for in a single generation.” He says, “When you looked
into my mother’s eyes, you knew why it was that God sent her
into the world; it was to open the eyes of all who looked
to beautiful thoughts, and that is the beginning and end of
literature.” After having opened the eyes of people to beautiful
thoughts, we must be willing to wait, for moral results do not
come immediately.--A. J. GEORGE, “Proceedings of the
Religious Education Association.”
(1862)