Since nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music. Portia. That light we see is burning in my hall. How far that little candle throws his beams! THE WORLD'S BEST COMPANY JOHN RUSKIN The good book of the hour, then,-I do not speak of the bad ones,-is simply the useful or pleasant talk of some person whom you cannot otherwise converse with, printed for you. Very useful often, telling you what you need to know; very pleasant often, as a sensible friend's present talk would be. These bright accounts of travels; good-humored and witty discussions of question; lively or pathetic story-telling in the form of novel; firm fact telling, by the real agents concerned in the events of passing history, all these books of the hour, multiplying among us as education becomes more general, are a peculiar possession of the present age. We ought to be entirely thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of them. But we make the worst possible use if we allow them to usurp the place of true books; for, strictly speaking, they are not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in good print. - Our friend's letter may be delightful or necessary to-day, whether worth keeping or not, is to be considered. The newspaper may be entirely proper at breakfast-time, but assuredly it is not reading for all day; so, though bound up in a volume, the long letter which gives you so pleasant an account of the inns and roads and weather last year at such a place, or which tells you that amusing story, or gives you the real circumstances of such and such events, however valuable for occasional reference, may not be in the real sense of the word, a "book" at all, nor, in the real sense, to be "read." A book is essentially not a talked thing, but a written thing, and written not with a view of mere communication, but of permanence. The book of talk is printed only because its author cannot speak to thousands of people at once; if he could he would, the volume is mere multiplication of his voice. You cannot talk to your friend in India; if you could, you would. You write instead; that is mere conveyance of voice. But a book is written, not to multiply the voice merely, not to carry it merely, but to perpetuate it. The author has something to say which he perceives to be true and useful, or helpfully beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has yet said it; so far as he knows, no one else can say it. He is bound to say it clearly and melodiously if he may; clearly, at all events. In the sum of his life he finds this to be the thing or group of things manifest to him,-this, the piece of true knowledge or sight which his share of sunshine and earth has permitted him to seize. He would fain set it down forever, engrave it on rock if he could, saying, "This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate and drank and slept, loved and hated, like another. My life was as the vapor, and is not; but this I saw and knew, this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory." This is his "writing' it is in his small human way, and with whatever degree of true inspiration is in him, his inscription or scripture. That is a "Book." Perhaps you think no books were ever so written? But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in honesty or at all in kindness, or do you think there is never any honesty or benevolence in wise people? None of us, I hope, are so unhappy as to think that. Well, whatever bit of a wise man's work is honestly and benevolently done, that bit is his book, or his piece of art. It is mixed always with evil fragments,―ill done, redundant, affected work. But if you read rightly, you will easily discover the true bits, and those are the book. Now, books of this kind have been written in all ages by their greatest men,-by great readers, great statesmen, and great thinkers. These are all at your choice; and Life is short. You have heard as much before; yet have you measured and mapped out this short life and its possibilities? Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot read that; that what you lose to-day you cannot gain to-morrow? Will you go and Will you go and gossip with your housemaid or your stable-boy, when you may talk with queens and kings; or flatter yourselves that it is with any worthy consciousness of your own claims to respect that you jostle with the hungry and common crowd for entrée here, and audience there, when all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its society, wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen and the mighty of every place and time? Into that you may enter always; in that you may take fellowship and rank according to your wish; from that, once entered into it, you can never be an outcast but by your own fault; by your aristocracy of companionship there, your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and the motives with which you strive to take high place in the society of the living, measured, as to all the truth and sincerity that are in them, by the place you desire to take in this company of the dead. HOW TO BEGIN THE DAY MARCUS AURELIUS Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet this day with the busybody, the ungrateful, the arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil. But I who have seen the nature of the good, that it is beautiful, and of the bad that it is ugly, can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my neighbor, nor hate him. We are made for co-operation. To act against one another, then, is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one another to be vexed and turn away. |