The Gentle Reader Part 20

"Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon, The World was all before them where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide."

Adam, when the old sheltered life is over, and the possibilities of the new life of struggle were revealed,--

"Replete with joy and wonder thus replied.

O goodness infinite, goodness immense!

That all this good of evil shall produce, And evil turn to good; more wonderful Than that which by creation first brought forth Light out of darkness! full of doubt I stand, Whether I should repent me now of sin By me done and occasioned or rejoice Much more that much more good thereof shall spring."

That Adam should treat the loss of Eden in such a casual manner, and that he should express a doubt as to whether the estate into which his fall plunged the race was not better than one in which no moral struggle was necessary, was not characteristic of seventeenth-century theology,--but it was just like Milton.

There is no knowledge so intimate as that possessed by the reader of one book. It is an esoteric joy. The wisdom of the ages concentrated into one personality and then graciously communicated to the disciple has a flavor of which the mult.i.tudes of mere scholars know nothing. To them Wisdom is a public character.

"Doth not Wisdom cry, And understanding put forth her voice?

In the top of high places Where the paths meet she standeth."

But the disciple is not content with such publicity. He shuns the crowded highways, and delights to hear wisdom speaking in confidential tones.

In a little settlement in the far West I once met a somewhat depressed-looking man who remained silent till a chance remark brought a glow of enthusiasm to his eyes.

"Oh," he cried, "you have been reading the Ruins."

My remark had been of a kind that needed no special reading to account for it. It merely expressed one of those obvious truths which are likely to occur to the majority of persons. But to him it seemed so reasonable that it could only come from the one source of wise thought with which he was acquainted.

"The Ruins" proved to be a translation of Volney's "Ruins of Empire." I fear that I must have given the impression of greater familiarity with that work than was warranted by the facts, for my new-found friend received me as a member of the true brotherhood. His tongue was unloosed, and his intellectual pa.s.sions, so long pent up, were freed.

Had we not both read "The Ruins"! It was to him more than a book; it was a symbol of the unutterable things of the mind. It was a pa.s.sionate protest against the narrow opinions of his neighbors. It stood for all that was lifted above the petty gossip of the little community, and for all that united him to an intellectual world of which he dreamed.

As we talked I marveled at the amount of sound philosophy this lonely reader had extracted from "The Ruins." Or had it been that he had brought the wisdom from his own meditation and deposited it at this shrine? One can never be sure whether a text has suggested the thought or the thought has illuminated the text.

When it happens that the man of one book has chosen a work of intrinsic value, the result is a kind of knowledge which is of inestimable worth.

It is deeply interfused with the whole imaginative life, it is involved in every personal experience.

The supreme example of such intimate knowledge was that which generations of English speaking men had of the Bible. Apart from any religious theory, this familiarity was a wonderful fact in the history of culture. It meant that the ordinary man was not simply in his youth but throughout his life brought into direct contact with great poetry, sublime philosophy, vivid history. These were not reserved for state occasions; they were the daily food of the mind. Into the plain fabric of western thought was woven a thread of Oriental sentiment. Children were as familiar with the names and incidents of remote ages and lands as with their own neighborhood.

The important things about this culture of the common people was that it came through mere reading. The Bible was printed "without note or comment." The lack of critical apparatus and of preliminary training was the cause of many incidental mistakes; but it prevented the greatest mistake of all,--that of obscuring the text by the commentary.

In these days there has been a great advance in critical scholars.h.i.+p.

Much more is known about the Bible, at least by those who have made it the object of special study; but there is a suspicion that fewer persons know the Bible than in the days when there were no "study cla.s.ses," but only the habit of daily reading.

The Protestant insistence upon publis.h.i.+ng the Scriptures without note or comment was an effort to do away with the middle-men who stood between the Book and its readers. Private judgment, it was declared, was a sufficient interpreter even of the profoundest utterances. This is a doctrine that needs to be revived and extended till it takes in all great literature.

To come to a book as to a friend, to allow it to speak for itself, without the intrusion of a third person, this is the substance of the whole matter. There must be no hard and fast rules, no preconceived opinions. Because the author has a reputation as a humorist, let him not be received with an expectant smile. Nothing can be more disconcerting to his sensitive spirit; and besides, how can you know that he has not a very serious message to communicate? Because he is said to be capable of sublimity, do not await him with overstrained sensibilities. Perhaps you may find him much less sublime and much more entertaining than you had antic.i.p.ated. If the sublime vision does come, you will appreciate it all the more if it comes upon you unawares.

"As cloud on cloud, as snow on snow, as the bird on the air, and the planet on s.p.a.ce in its flight, so do nations of men and their inst.i.tutions rest on thoughts."

If this be so, can there be any knowledge more important than the knowledge of what a man actually thinks. "A penny for your thoughts," we say lightly, knowing well that this hidden treasure cannot be bought.

The world may be described in formal fas.h.i.+on as if it were an unchanging reality; but how the world appears to each inhabitant of it he alone can declare. Or perhaps he cannot declare it, for most of us find it impossible to tell what we really think or feel. In attempting to do it we fall into conventionality, and succeed only in telling what we think other people would like to have us think. Only now and then is one born with the gift of true self-expression. In his speech we recognize a real person, and not the confused murmur of a mult.i.tude. Inst.i.tutions and traditions do not account for him; this thought is the more fundamental fact. Here is a unique bit of knowledge. There is no other way of getting at it than that of the Gentle Reader,--to shut out the rest of the world and listen to the man himself.

The Riverside Press _Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

Cambridge, Ma.s.s., U. S. A._