Others had to be wakened up. And they
were! It is quite possible--I am not quite sure--that your faithful
friend the very next day, or the next month, looked at some other
girl, and suddenly saw that she, too, was miraculous! The influence of
literature!
The makers of literature are those who have seen and felt the
miraculous interestingness of the universe. And the greatest makers
of literature are those whose vision has been the widest, and whose
feeling has been the most intense. Your own fragment of insight was
accidental, and perhaps temporary. _Their_ lives are one long ecstasy
of denying that the world is a dull place. Is it nothing to you to
learn to understand that the world is not a dull place? Is it nothing
to you to be led out of the tunnel on to the hillside, to have all
your senses quickened, to be invigorated by the true savour of life,
to feel your heart beating under that correct necktie of yours? These
makers of literature render you their equals.
The aim of literary study is not to amuse the hours of leisure; it is
to awake oneself, it is to be alive, to intensify one's capacity for
pleasure, for sympathy, and for comprehension. It is not to affect one
hour, but twenty-four hours. It is to change utterly one's relations
with the world.
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