A
certain lover of books made this discovery years ago, and has turned
it to account with great profit to himself. He thought he discovered
in the faces of certain great writers a meditative quality full of
repose and suggestive of a constant companionship with the highest
themes. It seemed to him that these thinkers, who had done so much to
liberate his own thought, must have dwelt habitually with noble ideas;
that in every leisure hour they must have turned instinctively to
those deep things which concern most closely the life of men. The vast
majority of men are so absorbed in dealing with material that they
appear to be untouched by the general questions of life; but these
general questions are the habitual concern of the men who think. In
such men the mind, released from specific tasks, turns at once and by
preference to these great themes, and by quiet meditation feeds and
enriches the very soul of the thinker. And the quality of this
meditation determines whether the nature shall be productive or
sterile; whether a man shall be merely a logician, or a creative force
in the world.
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