n which the author has so completely lost himself
in his subject. If the author of Johnson's life had written his book
with the inspiration of not being laughed at (which is the inspiration
that nine out of ten who love to laugh are likely to write with), James
Boswell would never have been heard of, and the burly figure of Samuel
Johnson would be a blur behind a dictionary.

It may be set down as one of the necessary principles of the reading
habit that no true and vital reading is possible except as the reader
possesses and employs the gift of letting himself go. It is a gift that
William Shakespeare and James Boswell and Elijah and Charles Lamb and a
great many other happy but unimportant people have had in common. No man
of genius--a man who puts his best and his most unconscious self into
his utterance--can be read or listened to or interpreted for one moment
without it. Except from those who bring to him the greeting of their own
unconscious selves, he hides himself. He gives himself only to those
with whom unconsciousness is a daily habit, with whom the joy of letting
one's self go is one of the great resources of life. This joy is back of
every great act and every deep appreciation in the world, and it is the
charm and delight of the smaller ones. On its higher levels, it is
called genius and inspiration. In religion it is called faith. It is the
primal energy both of art and religion.

Probably only the man who has very little would be able to tell what
faith is, as a basis of art or religion, but we have learned some things
that it is not. We know that faith is not a dead-lift of the brain, a
supreme effort either for God or for ourselves. It is the soul giving
itself up, finding itself, feeling itself drawn to its own, into
infinite space, face to face with strength. It is the supreme
swinging-free of the spirit, the becoming a part of the running-gear of
things. Faith is not an act of the imagination--to the man who knows it.
It is infinite fact, the infinite crowding of facts, the drawing of the
man-self upward and outward, where he is surrounded with the infinite
man-self. Perhaps a man can make himself not believe. He can not make
himself believe. He can only believe by letting himself go, by trusting
the force of gravity and the law of space around him. Faith is the
universe flowing silently, implacably, through his soul. He has given
himself up to it. In the tiniest, noisiest noon his spirit is flooded