Retrospect.
The books of four great writers have been used almost exclusively by
way of illustration throughout this discussion of the relation of
books to culture. This limited selection may have seemed at times too
narrow and rigid; it may have conveyed an impression of insensibility
to the vast range and the great variety of literary forms and
products, and of indifference to contemporary writing. It needs to be
said, therefore, that the constant reference to Homer, Dante,
Shakespeare, and Goethe has been made for the sake of clearness and
force of illustration, and not, in any sense, as applying an exclusive
principle of selection. The books of life are to be found in every
language, and are the product of almost every age; and no one attains
genuine culture who does not, through them, make himself familiar with
the life of each successive generation. To be ignorant of the thought
and art of one's time involves a narrowness of intelligence which is
inconsistent with the maturity of taste and ripeness of nature which
have been emphasised in these chapters as the highest and finest
fruits of culture. The more generous a man's culture becomes, the more
catholic becomes his taste and the keener his insight. The man of
highest intelligence will be the first to recognise the fresh touch,
the new point of view, the broader thought. He will bring to the books
of his own time not only a trained instinct for sound work, but a deep
sympathy with the latest effort of the human spirit to express itself
in new forms. So deep and real will be his feeling for life that he
will be eager to understand and possess every fresh manifestation of
that life. However novel and unconventional the new form may be, it
will not make its appeal to him in vain.
It remains true, however, that literature is a universal art,
expressive and interpretative of the spirit of humanity, and that no
man can make full acquaintance with that spirit who fails to make
companionship with its greatest masters and interpreters. The appeal
of contemporary books is so constant and urgent that it stands in
small need of emphasis; but the claims of the rich and splendid
literature of the past are often slighted or ignored. The supreme
masters of an art ought to be the objects of constant study and
thought; there is more of life, truth, and beauty in them than in
their fellow-artists of narrower range of experience and artistic
achievement. For this reason these greatest interpreters of the human
spirit are in no sense exclusively of the past; they are of the
present and the future. To know them is not only to know the
particular periods in which they wrote, but to know our own period in
the deepest sense. No man can better prepare himself to enter into the
formative life of his time than by thoroughly familiarising himself
with the greatest books of the past; for in these are revealed, not
the secrets of past forms of life, but the secrets of that spirit
whose historic life is one unbroken revelation of its nature and
destiny. It is, therefore, no disparagement of the great company of
writers who have been the secretaries of the race in all ages to
fasten attention upon the claims of the four men of genius whom the
world has accepted as the supreme masters of the art of literature,
and to point out again the immense importance of their works in the
educational life of the individual and of society.
It cannot be said too often that literature is the product of the
continuous spiritual activity of the race; that it cannot be
arbitrarily divided into periods save for mere convenience of
arrangement; and that it is impossible to understand and value its
latest products unless one is able to find their place and discern
their value in the order of a spiritual development. To secure an
adequate impression of this highest expression of the human spirit one
must keep in view the work of the past quite as definitely as the work
of the present; in such a broad survey there is a constant deliverance
from the rashness of contemporary judgments, and from that narrowness
of feeling which limits one's vital contact with the life of the race
to the products of a single brief period.
In any attempt to indicate the fundamental significance of the art of
literature in the educational development of the individual and of
society there must also be a certain repetition of idea and of
illustration. This limitation, if it be a limitation, is inherent in
the very nature of the undertaking. Literature is, for purposes of
comment and exposition, practically inexhaustible; its themes are as
varied and as numerous as the objects upon which the mind can fasten
and about which the imagination can play. But while its forms and
products are almost without number, this magnificent growth has, in
the last analysis, a single root, and in these brief chapters the
endeavour has been made, very inadequately, to bring the mind to this
deep and hidden unity of life and art. Information, instruction,
delight, flow in a thousand rivulets from as many books, but there is
a spring of life which feeds all these separate streams. From that
unseen source flows the vitality which has given power and freshness
to a host of noble works; from that source vitality also flows into
every mind open to its incoming. A rich intellectual life is
characterised not so much by profusion of ideas as by the application
of a few formative ideas to life; not so much by multiplicity of
detached thoughts as by the habit of thinking. The genius of Carlyle
is evidenced not by prodigal growth of ideas, but by an impressive
interpretation of life through the application to all its phenomena of
a few ideas of great depth and range. And this is true of all the
great writers who have given us fresh views of life from some central
and commanding height rather than a succession of glimpses or outlooks
from a great number of points. The closer the approach to the central
force behind any course of development, the fewer in number are the
elements involved. The rootage of literature in the spiritual nature
and experience of the race is the fundamental fact not only in the
history of this rich and splendid art, but in its relation to culture.
From this rootage flows the vitality which imparts immortality to its
noblest products, and which supplies an educational element unrivalled
in its enriching and enlarging quality.
End of Project Gutenberg's Books and Culture, by Hamilton Wright Mabie