But if they would, what brilliant stocktakings
there might be in a few years! Why, if they would only read such
detached essays as that on "Manners and Fashion," or "The Genesis of
Science" (in a sixpenny volume of Spencer's _Essays_, published
by Watts and Co.), the magic illumination, the necessary power of
"synthetising" things, might be vouch-safed to them. In any case,
the lack of some such disciplinary, co-ordinating measure will amply
explain many disastrous stocktakings. The manner in which one single
ray of light, one single precious hint, will clarify and energise the
whole mental life of him who receives it, is among the most wonderful
and heavenly of intellectual phenomena. Some men search for that light
and never find it. But most men never search for it.
The superlative cause of disastrous stocktakings remains, and it
is much more simple than the one with which I have just dealt. It
consists in the absence of meditation. People read, and read, and
read, blandly unconscious of their effrontery in assuming that they
can assimilate without any further effort the vital essence which the
author has breathed into them. They cannot. And the proof that they do
not is shown all the time in their lives.
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