ff, and
having been duly set down for life in one or the other of these four
divisions of human nature they take sides from beginning to end with one
or the other of these four men. It is the distinction of the scholar of
the highest class in every period, that he declines to do this. In so
far as he finds each of the four men taking sides against each other, he
takes sides against each of them in behalf of all. He insists on being
able to absorb knowledge, to read and write in all four ways. If he is a
man of genius as well as a scholar, he insists on being able to read and
write, as a rule, in all four ways at once; if his genius is of the
lesser kind, in two or three ways at once. The eternal books are those
that stand this four-sided test. They are written from all of these
points of view. They have absorbed into themselves the four moods of
creation morning. It is thus that they bring the morning back to us.

The most important question in regard to books that our schools and
institutions of learning are obliged to face at present is, "How shall
we produce conditions that will enable the ordinary man to keep the
proportions that belong to a man, to absorb knowledge, to do his reading
and writing in all four ways at once?" In other words, How shall we
enable him to be a natural man, a man of genius as far as he goes?

A masterpiece is a book that can only be read by a man who is a master
in some degree of the things the book is master of. The man who has
mastered things the most is the man who can make those things. The man
who makes things is the artist. He has bowed down and worshipped and he
has arisen and stood before God and created before Him, and the spirit
of the Creator is in him. To take the artist's point of view, is to take
the point of view that absorbs and sums up the others. The supremacy and
comprehensiveness of this point of view is a matter of fact rather than
argument. The artist is the man who makes the things that Science and
Practical Affairs and Philosophy are merely about. The artist of the
higher order is more scientific than the scientist, more practical than
the man of affairs, and more philosophic than the philosopher, because
he combines what these men do about things, and what these men say about
things, into the things themselves, and makes the things live.

To combine these four moods at once in one's attitude toward an idea is
to take the artist's--that is, the creative--point of vi