fundamental conception of life as the Greeks looked at it; their view
of reverence, worship, law, obligation, subordination, personality. No
one can be said to have read these poems in any real sense until he
has made these ideas clear to himself; and these ideas carry with them
a definite enlargement of thought. When a man has gotten a clear view
of the ideas about life held by a great race, he has gone a long way
towards self-education,--so rich and illuminative are these central
conceptions around which the life of each race has been organised. To
multiply these ideas by broad contact with the books of life is to
expand one's thought so as to compass the essential thought of the
entire race. And this is precisely what the man of broad culture
accomplishes; he emancipates himself from whatever is local,
provincial, and temporal, by gaining the power of taking the race
point of view. He is liberated by ideas, not only from his own
ignorance and the limitations of his own nature, but from the partial
knowledge and the prejudices of his time; and liberation by ideas, and
expansion through ideas, constitute one of the great services of the
books of life to those who read them with an open mind.




Chapter XI.

The Logic of Free Life.


The ideas which form the substance or substratum of the greatest books
are not primarily the products of pure thought; they have a far deeper
origin, and their immense power of enlightenment and enrichment lies