s said
that though one rose from the dead they would not believe,--Plato, being
dead, yet speaks, Shakspere treads our boards, and (why should I
hesitate?) Tennyson yet breathes among us though already immortal. That
which convinced the master minds of antiquity and many in later ages is
still convincing, if it be attended to; the old tradition is yet
unbroken; therefore, because I was bred in this faith, I will try to set
forth anew in the phrases of our time the eternal ground of reason on
which idealism rests.

The specific question concerns literature and its method, but its import
is not mainly literary. Life is the matter of literature; and thence it
comes that all leading inquiries to which literature gives rise probe
for their premises to the roots of our being and expand in their issues
to the unknown limits of human fate. It is an error to think of idealism
as a thing remote, fantastic, and unsubstantial. It enters intimately
into the lives of all men, however humble and unlearned, if they live at
all except in their bodies. What is here proposed is neither
speculative, technical, nor abstruse; it is practical in matter,
universal in interest, and touches upon those things which men most
should heed. I fear rather to incur the reproach of uttering truisms
than paradoxes. But he does ill who is scornful of the trite. To be
learned in commonplaces is no mean education. They make up the great
body of the people's knowledge. They are the living words upon the lips
of men from generation to generation; the real winged words; the matter
of the unceasing reiteration of families, schools, pulpits, libraries;
the tradition of mankind. Proverb, text, homily,--happy the youth whose
purse is stored with these broad pieces, current, in every country and
for every good, like fairy gifts of which the occasion only when it
arises shows the use. It is with truth as with beauty,--familiarity
endears and makes it more precious. What is common is for that very
reason in danger of neglect, and from it often flashes that divine
surprise which most enkindles the soul. Why must Prometheus bring fire
from heaven to savage man? Did it not sleep in the flint at his feet?
How often, at the master stroke of life, has some text of Holy
Scripture, which lay in the mind from childhood almost like the debris
of memory, illuminated the remorseful darkness of the mind, or
interpreted the sweetness of God's sunshine in the happy heart! Common
a