Chapter 40 reading - 2

However much we may admire the eloquence with which an orator sometimes bursts out, the sublime words are usually hidden behind, or transcended, the fleeting utterance of the spoken word, like the starry sky behind the clouds.There are stars there, and whoever can see them can read them.Astronomers are forever interpreting them, observing them.They are not like our everyday speech and hissing breath.The so-called eloquence on the podium is generally the so-called rhetoric in academia.The speaker indulges his eloquence in a flash of inspiration, speaking to the crowd before him, to those who come to listen to him; but writers, more balanced lives are their business, and those who inspire the orator The social activities and crowds of audiences only distract their minds. They speak to the intellect and heart of mankind, and to all who can understand them in any age.

No wonder Alexander carried one in a treasure chest when he marched.Words are the most precious of holy things.It is both more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art.This is the closest art to life.It can be translated into every language, and not only read, but breathed from human lips; not only expressed on canvas, or marble, but carved in the breath of life itself.The symbol of an ancient man's thought can become the mantra of a modern man.Two thousand summers have left on the monumental Greek literature, as on Greek marble, more mature golden and autumnal tints, for they have brought their own magnificent celestial atmosphere to the All over the world, protect their rabbits from the erosion of time.Books are the treasures of the world, the best heritage of generations and lands.Books, the oldest and best books, are a natural fit for the shelves of every house.They have nothing personal to say, but, while they enlighten and sustain the reader, his common sense prevents him from rejecting them.Their authors are naturally and irresistibly the nobles of any society, and their influence on mankind is greater than that of kings and emperors.When the illiterate, perhaps haughty businessman, by labor and industry, has earned leisure and independence, and is placed in the world of wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those higher, yet lofty Unattainable realms of intellect and genius, and will only find himself ignorant, and find that all his wealth is vanity and cannot be complacent, and thus further proves that he is clear-headed, that he has taken pains to give him The child of a young man is endowed with the intellectual culture which he keenly feels lacking; and thus he becomes the patriarch of a family.

People who have not learned to read the classics in their original languages ​​have only a very incomplete knowledge of human history, and it is astonishing that they do not have a translation into a modern language, unless our culture itself can serve as such a text.Homer had never been printed in English, nor Aeschylus nor Virgil,--the works so graceful, so solid, as beautiful as the dawn; There are very few works of literature and art that can match the exquisiteness, completeness, immortality, and heroism of these ancient writers.People who never knew them just told people to forget them.But when we have the knowledge, endowment, and start to study them and appreciate them, we immediately forget what those people said.When the holy things we call the classics, and the scriptures of nations that are older than the classics, and therefore less known, accumulate more, , filled with the works of Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare, and that generation will be richer when successive centuries continue to lay their trophies in the commons of mankind.With such a mass of works, we can have the hope of finally climbing to heaven.

Mankind has never read the works of great poets, because only great poets can read them.They are read by the masses as the masses read the stars, at most astrologically rather than astronomically.Many have learned to read, for their poor convenience, as if they had learned arithmetic to keep accounts, and to carry on business so that they would not be deceived; but that alone is reading in the higher sense, and not that which attracts us like a luxury, which hypnotizes us and puts our sublime faculties to sleep. For reading, we must stand on tiptoe and dedicate our most sensitive and awake moments to reading.