knowledge that it becomes a part of ourselves. It is no longer
something added by the memory; it is something possessed by the soul.
A pedant is formed by his memory; a man of culture is formed by the
habit of meditation, and by the constant use of the imagination. An
alert and curious man goes through the world taking note of all that
passes under his eyes, and collects a great mass of information, which
is in no sense incorporated into his own mind, but remains a definite
territory outside his own nature, which he has annexed. A man of
receptive mind and heart, on the other hand, meditating on what he
sees, and getting at its meaning by the divining-rod of the
imagination, discovers the law behind the phenomena, the truth behind
the fact, the vital force which flows through all things, and gives
them their significance. The first man gains information; the second
gains culture. The pedant pours out an endless succession of facts
with a monotonous uniformity of emphasis, and exhausts while he
instructs; the man of culture gives us a few facts, luminous in their
relation to one another, and freshens and stimulates by bringing us
into contact with ideas and with life.

To get at the heart of books we must live with and in them; we must
make them our constant companions; we must turn them over and over in
thought, slowly penetrating their innermost meaning; and when we
possess their thought we must work it into our own thought. The
reading of a real book ought to be an event in one's history; it ought
to enlarge the vision, deepen the base of conviction, and add to the
reader whatever knowledge, insight, beauty, and power it contains. It
is possible to spend years of study on what may be called the
externals of the "Divine Comedy," and remain unaffected in nature by
this contact with one of the masterpieces of the spirit of man as well
as of the art of literature. It is also possible to so absorb Dante's