Men really live only as they freely express themselves through
thought, emotion, and action. They get at the deepest truth and enter
into the deepest relationships only as they act. Inaction involves
something more than the disease and decay of certain faculties; it
involves the deformity of arrested development, and failure to enter
into that larger world of truth which is open to those races alone
which live a whole life. It is for this reason that the drama must
always hold the first place among those forms which the art of
literature has perfected; it is for this reason that Homer, Dante,
Shakespeare, and Goethe, consciously or unconsciously, chose those
forms of expression which are specially adapted to represent and
illustrate life in action; it is for this reason, among others, that
these writers must always play so great a part in the work of
educating the race. Culture is, above all things, real and vital;
knowledge may deal with abstractions and unrelated bits of fact, but
culture must always fasten upon those things which are significant in
a spiritual order.
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