eatest truth and the
deepest beauty is that which appeals at all times to all men. It appeals
to the universal human heart and mind, and thus it is inconceivable that
the human race should ever tire of Shakespere, or Dante, or the Bible.
Such books, whatever personal opinions or beliefs we may attach to them,
are universally acceptable to all men, because they appeal to common
human experience and apply the principles of irresistible human logic.
They are the books of the world.

The world itself is an organism corresponding to that of the individual
man, and the particular individual whose heart and mind lives and thinks
most nearly in harmony with the best life and thought of the world is
its truest citizen. On the other hand, the individual whose motives and
interests in life are confined to the narrowest circle of experience
represents the extreme type of provincialism. The difference between
these two extremes is not a matter of long, varied, or conventional
experience, but of experience in those elements of human nature which
are at its root and not at its surface. The statesman, the capitalist,
the experienced traveller, although they may have intercourse with men
in large classes and masses, may be essentially petty in the foundations
of their character. These, then, are not men of the world in the true
sense; for, if they were, we should have to mean by "the world"
numerical or mechanical conceptions of men, purely intellectual
conceptions of their thoughts, or geographical ideas regarding the
inhabitants of the earth's surface. None of these things has any
universal quality, unless it is united to the power of human character
and passion, which carries weight with all men at all times and in all
places. The inhabitant of a country village may be, according to his
quality, either a man of the village or a man of the world. It depends
upon his breadth of mind, his largeness of heart, and the depth to which
his character will absorb the best results of his experience. Whatever
is purely local, without being rooted in a general human need,--whatever
is purely personal, without being founded on a universal human
principle,--whatever is purely sectarian or national, or pertaining to
a class or particular clique of persons, without being rooted in the
same general human interests and laws, must, to that extent, be petty,
provincial, trivial, and comparatively useless. Character is, and always
has been, the motive pow