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