he desired
quality which makes it literature. A biography may contain all the facts
in regard to a man and his character, arranged in an orderly and
comprehensible manner, and yet not be literature; but it may be so
written, like Plutarch's Lives or Defoe's account of Robinson Crusoe,
that it is literature, and of imperishable value as a picture of human
life, as a satisfaction to the want of the human mind which is higher
than the want of knowledge. And this contribution, which I desire to be
understood to mean when I speak of literature, is precisely the thing of
most value in the lives of the majority of men, whether they are aware of
it or not. It may be weighty and profound; it may be light, as light as
the fall of a leaf or a bird's song on the shore; it may be the thought
of Plato when he discourses of the character necessary in a perfect
state, or of Socrates, who, out of the theorem of an absolute beauty,
goodness, greatness, and the like, deduces the immortality of the soul;
or it may be the lovesong of a Scotch plowman: but it has this one
quality of answering to a need in human nature higher than a need for
facts, for knowledge, for wealth.

In noticing the remoteness in the popular conception of the relation of
literature to life, we must not neglect to take into account what may be
called the arrogance of culture, an arrogance that has been emphasized,
in these days of reaction from the old attitude of literary
obsequiousness, by harsh distinctions and hard words, which are paid back
by equally emphasized contempt. The apostles of light regard the rest of
mankind as barbarians and Philistines, and the world retorts that these
self-constituted apostles are idle word-mongers, without any sympathy
with humanity, critics and jeerers who do nothing to make the conditions
of life easier. It is natural that every man should magnify the circle of
the world in which he is active and imagine that all outside of it is
comparatively unimportant. Everybody who is not a drone has his
sufficient world. To the lawyer it is his cases and the body of law, it
is the legal relation of men that is of supreme importance; to the
merchant and manufacturer all the world consists in buying and selling,
in the production and exchange of products; to the physician all the
world is diseased and in need of remedies; to the clergyman speculation
and the discussion of dogmas and historical theology assume immense
importance; the politici