In the collected body of writing we call literature, there may be distinguished two separate groupings, capable of blending, but also fitted for reciprocal repulsion. There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly the literature of power. The function of the first is to teach; the function of the second is to move. The first is a rudder, the second an oar or sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately to the higher
understanding or reason, but always through the affections of pleasure and sympathy. Whenever we talk in ordinary language of seeking information or gaining knowledge, we understand the words as connected with absolute novelty. But it is the grandeur of all truth which can occupy a very high place in human intereats, although it may not be absolutely novel even to the meanest of minds.
What do we leant from Paradise Lost? Nothing at all. What do we learn from a cookbook? Something new, something we did not know before, in every paragraph. But would we therefore put the wretched cookbook on a higher level of estimation than the divine poem? What we owe to Milton is not any knowledge, of which a million separate items are still but a million advancing steps on the same earthly level; what we owe is power, that is, exercise and expansion of your own latent capacity of sympathy with the infinite, where every pulse and each separate influx is a step upwards-- a step ascending as upon Jacob's ladder from earth to mysterious altitudes above the earth. All the steps of knowledge, from first to last, carry us farther on the same plane, but could never raise us one foot above your ancient level on earth; whereas, the very first step of power is flight-- an ascending into another element where earth is forgotten. |
