There
have been famous scholars who have remained crude, unripe,
inharmonious in their intellectual life, and there have been men of
small scholarship who have found all the fruits of culture. The man of
culture is he who has so absorbed what he knows that it is part of
himself. His knowledge has not only enriched specific faculties, it
has enriched him; his entire nature has come to ripe and sound
maturity.
This personal enrichment is the very highest and finest result of
intimacy with books; compared with it the instruction, information,
refreshment, and entertainment which books afford are of secondary
importance. The great service they render us--the greatest service
that can be rendered us--is the enlargement, enrichment, and unfolding
of ourselves; they nourish and develop that mysterious personality
which lies behind all thought, feeling, and action; that central force
within us which feeds the specific activities through which we give
out ourselves to the world, and, in giving, find and recover
ourselves.
Chapter II.
Time and Place.
To get at the heart of Shakespeare's plays, and to secure for
ourselves the material and the development of culture which are
contained in them, is not the work of a day or of a year; it is the
work and the joy of a lifetime.
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