But you are capable of being seriously unhappy when your suburban
train selects a tunnel for its repose!
And the A.V. of the Bible, which you now read, not as your forefathers
read it, but with an aesthetic delight, especially in the Apocrypha!
You remember:
Whatsoever is brought upon thee, take cheerfully, and be
patient when thou art changed to a low estate. For gold
is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of
adversity.
And yet you are ready to lie down and die because a woman has scorned
you! Go to!
You think some of my instances approach the ludicrous? They do. They
are meant to do so. But they are no more ludicrous than life itself.
And they illustrate in the most workaday fashion how you can test
whether your literature fulfils its function of informing and
transforming your existence.
I say that if daily events and scenes do not constantly recall and
utilise the ideas and emotions contained in the books which you have
read or are reading; if the memory of these books does not quicken the
perception of beauty, wherever you happen to be, does not help you to
correlate the particular trifle with the universal, does not smooth
out irritation and give dignity to sorrow--then you are, consciously
or not, unworthy of your high vocation as a bookman.
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