Barbarous
societies show only the germs of literary life. But advancing
civilisation, bringing with it increased conquest over material
agencies, disengages the mind from the pressure of immediate wants, and
the loosened energy finds in leisure both the demand and the means of a
new activity: the demand, because long unoccupied hours have to be
rescued from the weariness of inaction; the means, because this call
upon the energies nourishes a greater ambition and furnishes a wider
arena.
Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social progress. It
deepens our natural sensibilities, and strengthens by exercise our
intellectual capacities. It stores up the accumulated experience of the
race, connecting Past and Present into a conscious unity; and with this
store it feeds successive generations, to be fed in turn by them. As
its importance emerges into more general recognition, it necessarily
draws after it a larger crowd of servitors, filling noble minds with a
noble ambition.
There is no need in our day to be dithyrambic on the glory of
Literature.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25