There are, for
instance, few men of a certain age who have read widely or deeply who
do not recall with perennial enthusiasm the days when Carlyle and
Emerson fell into their hands. They may have reacted radically from
the didactic teaching of both writers, but they have not lost the
impulse, nor have they parted with the enlargement of thought received
in those first rapturous hours of discovery. There was wrought in them
then changes of view, expansions of nature, a liberation of life which
can never be lost. This experience is repeated so long as the man
retains the power of growth and so long as he keeps in contact with
the great writers. Every such contact marks a new stage in the process
of culture. This means not merely the deep satisfaction and delight
which are involved in every fresh contact with a genuine work of art;
it means the permanent enrichment of the reader. He has gained
something more lasting than pleasure and more valuable than
information: he has gained a new view of life; he has looked again
into the heart of humanity; he has felt afresh the supreme interest
which always attaches to any real contact with the life of the race.
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