y seeing that these things are selected instead of letting the
imagination select its own things--the essence of having an imagination.

Third. By requiring of the student a rigorous and ceaselessly
unimaginative habit. The paralysis of the learned is forced upon him. He
finds little escape from the constant reading of books that have all the
imagination left out of them.

Fourth. By forcing the imagination to work so hard in its capacity of
pack-horse and memory that it has no power left to go anywhere of
itself.

Fifth. By overawing individual initiative, undermining personality in
the pupil, crowding great classics into him instead of attracting little
ones out of him. Attracting little classics out of a man is a thing that
great classics are always intended to do--the thing that they always
succeed in doing when left to themselves.

Sixth. The teacher of literature so-called, having succeeded in
destroying the personality of the pupil, puts himself in front of the
personality of the author.

Seventh. A teacher who destroys personality in a pupil is the wrong
personality to put in front of an author. If he were the right one, if
he had the spirit of the author, his being in front, now and then at
least, would be interpretation and inspiration. Not having the spirit of
the author, he is intimidated by him, or has all he can do not to be. A
classic cannot reveal itself to a groveller or to a critic. It is a book
that was written standing up and it can only be studied and taught by
those who stand up without knowing it. The decorous and beautiful
despising of one's self that the study of the classics has come to be as
conducted under unclassic teachers, is a fact that speaks for itself.

Eighth. Even if the personality of the teacher of literature is so
fortunate as not to be the wrong one, there is not enough of it. There
is hardly a course of literature that can be found in a college
catalogue at the present time that does not base itself on the dictum
that a great book can somehow--by some mysterious process--be taught by
a small person. The axiom that necessarily undermines all such courses
is obvious enough. A great book cannot be taught except by a teacher who
is literally living in a great spirit, the spirit the great book lived
in before it became a book,--a teacher who has the great book in
him--not over him,--who, if he took time for it, might be capable of
writing, in some sense at least, a great book h