For the
imagination, playing upon fact and experience, divines their meaning
and puts us in possession of the truth and life that are in them. To
possess this magical power is to live the whole of life and to enter
into the heritage of history.
Chapter XIII.
Breadth of Life.
One of the prime characteristics of the man of culture is freedom from
provincialism, complete deliverance from rigidity of temper,
narrowness of interest, uncertainty of taste, and general unripeness.
The villager, or pagan in the old sense, is always a provincial; his
horizon is narrow, his outlook upon the world restricted, his
knowledge of life limited. He may know a few things thoroughly; he
cannot know them in true relation to one another or to the larger
order of which they are part. He may know a few persons intimately; he
cannot know the representative persons of his time or of his race. The
essence of provincialism is the substitution of a part for the whole;
the acceptance of the local experience, knowledge, and standards as
possessing the authority of the universal experience, knowledge, and
standards.
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