Instead Of Other Sacrifice, We Might Offer
Up Our Perfect () Thoughts To The Gods Daily, In Hymns Or
Psalms.
For we should be at the helm at least once a day.
The
whole of the day should not be daytime; there should be one hour,
if no more, which the day did not bring forth. Scholars are wont
to sell their birthright for a mess of learning. But is it
necessary to know what the speculator prints, or the thoughtless
study, or the idle read, the literature of the Russians and the
Chinese, or even French philosophy and much of German criticism.
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read
them at all. "There are the worshippers with offerings, and the
worshippers with mortifications; and again the worshippers with
enthusiastic devotion; so there are those the wisdom of whose
reading is their worship, men of subdued passions and severe
manners; - This world is not for him who doth not worship; and
where, O Arjoon, is there another?" Certainly, we do not need to
be soothed and entertained always like children. He who resorts
to the easy novel, because he is languid, does no better than if
he took a nap. The front aspect of great thoughts can only be
enjoyed by those who stand on the side whence they arrive.
Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which
each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot
read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even
make us dangerous to existing institutions, - such call I good
books.
All that are printed and bound are not books; they do not
necessarily belong to letters, but are oftener to be ranked with
the other luxuries and appendages of civilized life. Base wares
are palmed off under a thousand disguises. "The way to trade,"
as a pedler once told me, "is to _put it right through_," no
matter what it is, anything that is agreed on.
"You grov'ling worldlings, you whose wisdom trades
Where light ne'er shot his golden ray."
By dint of able writing and pen-craft, books are cunningly
compiled, and have their run and success even among the learned,
as if they were the result of a new man's thinking, and their
birth were attended with some natural throes. But in a little
while their covers fall off, for no binding will avail, and it
appears that they are not Books or Bibles at all. There are new
and patented inventions in this shape, purporting to be for the
elevation of the race, which many a pure scholar and genius who
has learned to read is for a moment deceived by, and finds
himself reading a horse-rake, or spinning-jenny, or wooden
nutmeg, or oak-leaf cigar, or steam-power press, or kitchen
range, perchance, when he was seeking serene and biblical truths.
"Merchants, arise,
And mingle conscience with your merchandise."
Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase one book before
they write another.
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