_know thyself--which is the most difficult_
_knowledge that can be conceived._

But to know oneself is to know that which alone can know _What
Is._ So the hierarchy runs up.

XI

_What Does, What Knows, What Is...._
I have happily left myself no time to-day to speak of _What Is_:
happily, because I would not have you even approach it
towards the end of an hour when your attention must be languishing.
But I leave you with two promises, and with two sayings from which
as this lecture took its start its successors will proceed.

The first promise is, that _What Is,_ being the spiritual element
in man, is the highest object of his study.

The second promise is that, nine-tenths of what is worthy to be
called Literature being concerned with this spiritual element,
for that it should be studied, from firstly up to ninthly, before
anything else.

And my two quotations are for you to ponder:

(1) This, first:

That all spirit is mutually attractive, as all matter is
mutually attractive, is an ultimate fact beyond which we cannot
go.... Spirit to spirit--as in water face answereth to face, so
the heart of man to man.

(2) And this other, from the writings of an obscure Welsh
clergyman of the 17th century:

You will never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself
floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens
and crowned with the stars.

[Footnote 1: The reader will kindly turn back to p.1, and observe
the date at the head of this lecture. At that time I was engaged
against a system of English teaching which I believed to be
thoroughly bad. That system has since given place to another,
which I am prepared to defend as a better.]

LECTURE II

APPREHENSION VERSUS COMPREHENSION

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1916

I

Let us attempt to-day, Gentlemen, picking up the scent where we
left at the conclusion of my first lecture, to hunt the Art of
Reading (as I shall call it), a little further on the line of
common-sense; then to cast back and chase on a line somewhat more
philosophical. If these lines run wide and refuse to unite, we
shall have made a false cast: if they converge and meet, we shall
have caught our hare and may proceed, in subsequent lectures, to
cook him.

Well, the line of common-sense has brought us to this point--
that, man and this planet being such as they are, for a man to
read all the books existent on it is impossible; and, if
possible, would be in