the vitality and warmth of the
first, and the breadth and range of the second.

This liberation from provincialism is not only one of the signs of
culture, but it is also one of its finest results; it registers a high
degree of advancement. For the man who has passed beyond the
prejudices, misconceptions, and narrowness of provincialism has gone
far on the road to self-education. He has made as marked an advance on
the position of the great mass of his contemporaries as that position
is an advance on the earlier stages of barbarism. The barbarian lives
only in his tribe; the civilised man, in the exact degree in which he
is civilised, lives with humanity. Books are among the richest
resources against narrowing local influences; they are the ripest
expositions of the world-spirit. To know the typical books of the race
is to be in touch with those elements of thought and experience which
are shared by men of all countries. Without a knowledge of these books
a man never really gets at the life of localities which are foreign to
him; never really sees those historic places about which the
traditions of civilisation have gathered. Travel is robbed of half its
educational value unless one carries with him a knowledge of that
which he looks at for the first time with his own eyes. No American
sees England unless he carries England in his memory and imagination.
Westminster Abbey is devoid of spiritual significance to the man who
is ignorant of the life out of which it grew, and of the history which
is written in its architecture and its memorials. The emancipation
from the limitations of locality is greatly aided by travel, but it is
accomplished only by intimate knowledge of the greater books.

Chapter XVIII.

The Unconscious Element.

While it is true that the greatest books betray the most intimate
acquaintance with the time in which they are written, and disclose the
impress of that time in thought, structure, and style, it is also true
that such books are so essentially independent of contemporary forms
and moods that they largely escape the vicissitudes which attend those
forms and moods. The element of enduring interest in them outweighs
the accidents of local speech or provincial knowledge, as the force
and genius of Caesar survive the armor he wore and the language he
spoke. A great book is a possession for all time, because a writer of
the first rank is the contemporary of every generation; he is never