exposition of his own experience; in both cases there is an attempt to
embody and put in concrete form an immense section of universal
experience. Neither poem could have been written if there had not been
a long antecedent history, rich in every kind and quality of human
contact with the world, and of the working out of the forces which are
in every human soul. These two forms of activity represent in a
general way what men have learned about themselves and their
surroundings; and, taken together, they constitute the material out of
which interpretations and explanations of human life have been made.
These explanations vary according to the genius, the environment, and
the history of races but in every case they represent the very soul of
race life, for they are the spiritual forms in which that life has
expressed itself. Other forms of race activity, however valuable or
beautiful, are lost in the passage of time, or are taken up and
absorbed, and so part with their separate and individual existence;
but the quintessence of experience and thought expressed in great
works of art is gathered up and preserved, as Milton said, for "a life
beyond life."

Now, it is upon this imperishable food which the past has stored up
through the genius of great artists that later generations feed and
nourish themselves. It is through intimate contact with these
fundamental conceptions, worked out with such infinite pain and
patience, that the individual experience is broadened to include the
experience of the race. This contact is the mystery as it is the
source of culture. No one can explain the transmission of power from a
book to a reader; but all history bears witness to the fact that such
transmissions are made. Sometimes, as during what is called the
Revival of Learning, the transmission is so general and so genuine
that the life of an entire society is visibly quickened and enlarged;