he subject of it,
the scholar's relation to the world, was the passion of his life. The
body of his belief is to be found in this address, and in any adequate
account of him the whole address ought to be given.

"Thus far," he said, "our holiday has been simply a friendly sign of the
survival of the love of letters amongst a people too busy to give to
letters any more. As such it is precious as the sign of an
indestructible instinct. Perhaps the time is already come when it ought
to be, and will be, something else; when the sluggard intellect of this
continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the postponed
expectation of the world with something better than the exertions of
mechanical skill.... The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the
first age received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave it
the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into
him life; it went out from him truth.... Yet hence arises a grave
mischief. The sacredness which attaches to the act of creation, the act
of thought, is transferred to the record. The poet chanting was felt to
be a divine man: henceforth the chant is divine, also. The writer was a
just and wise spirit: henceforward it is settled the book is perfect; as
love of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly the book
becomes noxious: the guide is a tyrant.... Books are the best of things,
well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the
one end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to
inspire.... The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.
This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him,
although in almost all men obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul
active sees absolute truth and utters truth, or creates. In this action
it is genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the
sound estate of every man.... Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of
genius by over-influence. The literature of every nation bears me
witness. The English dramatic poets have Shakspearized now for two
hundred years.... These being his functions, it becomes him to feel all
confidence in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. He, and he
only, knows the world. The world of any moment is the merest appearance.
Some great decorum, some fetish of a government, some ephemeral trade,
or war, or man, is cried up by half mankind and cried down by the other
half,