For this reason art is absolutely essential for culture; it
has the power of enriching and expanding the natures which come in
contact with it by transmitting to them the highest results of the
life of the past, by sharing with them the ripeness and maturity of
the human spirit in its universal experience.
Chapter VI.
The Books of Life.
The books of power, as distinguished from the books of knowledge,
include the original, creative, first-hand books in all literatures,
and constitute, in the last analysis, a comparatively small group,
with which any student can thoroughly familiarise himself. The
literary impulse of the race has expressed itself in a great variety
of works, of varying charm and power; but the books which are
fountain-heads of vitality, ideas, and beauty, are few in number.
These original and dominant creations may be called the books of life,
if one may venture to modify De Quincey's well-worn phrase. For that
which is deepest in this group of masterpieces is not power, but
something greater and more inclusive, of which power is but a single
form of expression,--life; that quintessence of the unbroken
experience and activity of the race which includes not only thought,
power, beauty, and every kind of skill, but, below all these, the
living soul of the living man.
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