intelligence the hour is never detached from the day, nor the day from
the year; and the year is always held in its place in the century.

Now, the man of culture has pre-eminently the gift of living deeply in
his own age, and at the same time of seeing it in relation to all
ages. It has no illusion for him; it cannot deceive him with its
passionate acceptance or its equally passionate rejection. He sees the
crown shining above the cross; he hears the long thunders of applause
breaking in upon execrations which they will finally silence; he
foresees the harvest in the seed that lies barely covered on the
surface; and, afar off, his ear notes the final crash of that which at
the moment seems to carry with it the assurance of eternal duration.
Such a man secures the vitality of his time, but he escapes its
limitation of vision by seeing it clearly and seeing it whole; he
corrects the teaching of the time spirit by constant reference to the
teaching of the Eternal Spirit imparted in the long training and the
wide revelation of history. The day is beautiful and significant, or
ominous and tragic, to him as it discloses its relation to the good or
the evil of the years that are gone. And these vital associations,
these deep historic connections, are brought to light with peculiar
clearness in literature. Beyond all other means of enfranchisement,
the book liberates a man from imprisonment within the narrow limits of
his own time; it makes him free of all times. He lives in all periods,
under all forms of government, in all social conditions; the mind of
antiquity, of mediævalism, of the Renaissance, is as open to him as
the mind of his own day, and so he is able to look upon human life in
its entirety.