It is
at this point that it is differentiated from philosophy; it is from
this point that its immense spiritual significance becomes clear. In
the great books fundamental ideas are set forth not in a systematic
way, nor as the results of methodical teaching, but as they rise over
the vast territory of actual living, and are clarified by the
long-continued and many-sided experience of the race. Every book of
the first order in literature of the creative kind is a final
generalisation from a vast experience. It is, to use Mr. La Farge's
phrase, the co-ordination of innumerable memories,--memories shared by
an innumerable company of persons, and becoming, at length and after
long clarification, a kind of race memory; and this memory is so
inclusive and tenacious that it holds intact the long and varied play
of soil, sky, scenery, climate, faith, myth, suffering, action,
historic process, through which the race has passed and by which it
has been largely formed.
The ideas which underlie the great books bring with them, therefore,
when we really receive them into our minds, the entire background of
the life out of which they took their rise.
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