s deepest and most significant in him, and
expresses it in a final rather than a provisional form. The secret of
the reality and power of art lies in the fact that it is the
culmination and summing up of a process of observation, experience,
and feeling; it is the deposit of whatever is richest and most
enduring in the life of a man or a race. It is a finality both of
experience and of thought; it contains the ultimate and the widest
conception of man's nature and life, or of the meaning and reality of
Nature, which an age or a race reaches. It is the supreme flowering of
the genius of a race or an age. It has, therefore, the highest
educational value. For the very highest products of man's life in this
world are his ideas and ideals; they grow out of his highest nature;
they react on his character; they are the precious deposit of all that
he has thought, felt, suffered, and done in word and work, in feeling
and action. The richest educational material upon which modern men are
nourished are these ultimate conclusions and convictions of the
Hebrew, the Greek, and the Roman. These ultimate inferences, these
final interpretations of their own natures and of the world about
them, contain not only the thought of these races, but their life as
well. They have, therefore, a vital quality which not only assures
their own immortality, but has the power of transmission to others.
These ultimate results of experience are embodied in art, and
especially in literature; and that which makes them art is this very
vitality. For this reason art is absolutely essential for culture; it
has the power of enriching and expanding the natures which come in
contact with it by transmitting to them the highest results of the
life of the past, by sharing with them the ripeness and maturity of
the human spirit in its universal experience.

Chapter VI.

The Books of Life.

The books of power, as distinguished from the books of knowledge,
include the original, creative, first-hand books in all literatures,
and constitute, in the last analysis, a comparatively small group,
with which any student can thoroughly familiarise himself. The
literary impulse of the race has expressed itself in a great variety
of works, of varying charm and power; but the books which are
fountain-heads of vitality, ideas, and beauty, are few in number.
These original and dominant creations may be called the books of life,
if one may venture to modify De Quincey'