Books, we are told, propose to _instruct_ or to _amuse_. Indeed!
However, not to spend any words upon it, I suppose you will admit that
this wretched antithesis will be of no service to us.... For this
miserable alternative being once admitted, observe what follows. In
which class of books does the _Paradise Lost_ stand? Among those which
instruct or those which amuse? Now, if a man answers, among those which
instruct,--he lies: for there is no instruction in it, nor could be in
any great poem, according to the meaning which the word must bear in
this distinction, unless it is meant that it should involve its own
antithesis. But if he says, 'No--amongst those which amuse,'--then what
a beast must he be to degrade, and in this way, what has done the most
of any human work to raise and dignify human nature. But the truth is,
you see, that the idiot does not wish to degrade it; on the contrary, he
would willingly tell a lie in its favour, if that would be admitted; but
such is the miserable state of slavery to which he has reduced himself
by his own puny distinction; for, as soon as he hops out of one of his
little cells he is under a necessity of hopping into the other. The true
antithesis to knowledge in this case is not _pleasure_, but power. All,
that is literature, seeks to communicate power; all, that is not
literature, to communicate knowledge.--T. DE QUINCEY. _Letters to a
Young Man._