DEAD BOOKS

Evening Star, Issue 18714, 16 August 1924, Page 2

DEAD BOOKS

Death is an . arresting fact. Even mere tilings that, once wore active and alive have a. pathos about them when life is over. A withered flower, c.g., or a fallen tree, or the seraph caps in the backyards of factories, with their litter of disused iron and wood, broken waggons, cracked wheels, old-fashioned cycles, antiquated steam boilers or motors—there they lie in pathetic confusion: yet once, and not so long ago cither, they were admired, oven beloved, by their owners, and crowds flocked to town to see them- on tiicir first appearance. Yes, even dead things have an appealing interest. But how much more thoughts! Next to the thinkers themselves, their thoughts which they embodied in books, and from which the glow of life has vanished—of all dead things a dead book is perhaps the most pitiful. “The exploded system of logic, the superseded treatise on mathematics, the volume of verse which has no music left, the volume of speculation in a dead jargon of a forgotten terminology, the volume of history eclipsed by another which has struck its predecessor dead by its fatal charm or fatal completeness, the volume of sermons between whoso arid divisions no man secs the blue of heaven, or in whose falsetto pathos no soul catches a look of the infinite pity of Jesus ” what hosts of all these there are! One looks at them on his ' bookshelves. He thinks of this one and that which were once vital, the theme of endless reviews, the texts of sermons, the talk of the town, and now the dust is over them. They look down at you somewhat reproachfully from the upper shelves, like aged dogs wondering pathetically why no one takes them for a walk. But they have ceased to count. Their day is over. They have joined the groat stream of things moving to oblivion. * * «■ What axe the books that die? Now and again we get a list of the hundred best books or thereabouts. Lord Rosebery onoe said that he wanted a committee that would frame an index of superseded books which people might clear away from their shelves to make room for better ones. And he went on to refer to tile everincreasing multitude of books issuing annually from the press. They were superimposed layer upon layer, and were hiding “ the forms of great writers of old, who gradually disappeared under the superincumbent —he would not say rubbish, for he was an author himself—but under the superincumbent matter just as Pompeii was shrouded by the ashes and Java of Vesuvius.” Well, if one is not asked to specify individual volumes, it is not so very difficult to suggest certain classes of books that have the imprint of death upon them, even from their birth. There are, first of all, scientific books. The rapid advance of knowledge in every department of science soon .makes antiquated the text books ot yesterday. The late Professor Simpson, of Edinburgh University, was once asked by the librarian to go to the library and pick out. tho books on his subject, that were no longer needed. His reply was: “Take every text book that is more than ten years old and put it down in the cellar.” A few years ago Sir James Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform, was a great authority, and people came from everywhere to consult him. Now “almost the whole teaching of that time is consigned by tho science of to-day to oblivion.” And in every other branch it is the same. So also with enoycloptedias. It is a waste of money for anybody to buy them. Their place is in a public library, where they can be consulted if necessary. But they are like, last year’s railway guides. You can’t depend on them for any length of time. “Whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away.” Every sphere of science is the verification of that, » U if © So hi’ it is all plain sailing. But when we come to ask what books live and why the problem grows more difficult. We may reach a working hypothesis along some such lino as this: The raw material of all books, boded down, consists of two things—thought and the expression of the thought. Thought may have three dimensions or three subjects with which it may deal. These have been adequately and admirably dimmed up by Browning in his ‘A Death in the Desert.’ He is giving an imaginary outline of what St. John was wont to teach. There is a trinity in unity of souls in man. Ono of these, the first, is what does, has the use of earth, and ends the man downwards but tending upward for advice. The second is seated in tho brain:

Useth the first with its collected use, rind feelelh, thinketh, willctli is wuat KNOWS, Which, only tending upward in its turn, Grows into, and again is grown into By the last soul which uses both tho first, Subsisting whether they assist or no, And constituting Man’s self, is what 13, And leans upon tho former, makes it play As that played off tho first, and, tending up, Holds, is upheld by God. What Does, What Knows, What Is. This is a very complete suggestion of the three dimensions or direction of thought. And there is no mistaking the hierarchy in which Browning ranks them. We have tho books that deal with tho first with What Does, with output and activity. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, professor of English literature at Cambridge, is not far wrong when he says that wo havo inverted Browning’s order and seem to be putting tho main emphasis on the What Does class of literature—that even “knowledge is mainly counted important, as it helps us to feed guns, perfect explosives, invent what is commercially serviceable in besting your neighbor, or gassing him, or slaughtering him in the most effective way.” Now, as wo have already indicated, all books of this sort arc temporary and transitory. They belong to that doing and knowing which is bound to pass away. It is bound to pass away because it is relative only to that part of human nature which is accidental and not essential, which is only a phase in his evolution, and not related to tho normal man l —-to man as man. * # « # And so along this lino we arrive at the class of books that do not die. They are those that in one form or another deal with What Is—with the soul that uses 'both What Does and What Is, and. leans back upon the Divine. To this class belong philosophy and. biography. The philosophy may be in systematic treatises or in the form of fiction or poetry. The latter will be the more effective and enduring, as it will get down to the man in the street. Biography has its limitations, for very few can express the What Is of tho subject of it. The soul, the personality, the real life of the man cannot be distilled into a biography. Hence of this class it is autobiographies that have a promise of permanenoa A great bookman is on record as saying that all that endures in literature is autobiography. But the autobiography must he honest in the expression of its thoughts and feci.

ins;?, its aims and efforts. It is the personality, tlie real What Is that has an enduring interest for everybody. The autobiography, however, may take an imaginary form. It may not express the mere historic personage; it may express the. ideal or dream life that was the real and actual one. In this connection reference has been made to Charlotte Bronte. Wo have a. biography of her. It tells us the facts of her life as she and they were known to others. She lived a life of stern, humble duty. But her real life is written out in her novels. It belonged to the world of love. There was expressed her inner being, the life she would have lived had the limitations of the actual permitted it. So Ilia dream life may, after all, be the real one,- though it he not expressed in actuality. “In all tho immortal books there are what someone calls touches of blood and the old night, revelations of the inner secrets and the last experience of the soul.” But, in addition to touches of blood and the old night, there must he the leaning back upon the Divine, tho fusion in a more or loss degree of the human and the superhuman. Take the books that humanity Ims stamped with permanence, and this is manifest. Wo suppose that tho three deathless books in our literature are Shakespeare, Banyan’s immortal allegory, and tho Bible. Tim enduring parts of all these are autobiographical in one or oilier of the forms we have indicated. They deal with What Is. And tending up , Hold, are upheld by, God, and ends the man Upward in that dread point of intercourse,

Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him. It is because these books do this that they have survived tho wreck of matter and the crush of worlds. They appeal to the whole of man. There arc boobs that

appeal only to a part of him—to his emotions, or his reason, or his humor, or his senses. Being thus limited, they share the fate of all limited things. They are transitory, ephemeral. But Banyan, the Bible, Shakespeare get down to tho normal man, to the man as ho is in himself, to the man a? man; and so they are not the fashion of an epoch—they are the contemporaries of the ages. But still something more Is needed. There are books that may do ail this, and yet they are dead as a door nail. Thought lias to clothe itself in form. It is the form that gives it v/ings and keeps it afloat through the centuries. “ Nothing to that writer except his style,” you saj. “ Bless your life! that’s all there is or over was to any writer, preacher, musician—man.” That is perhaps too absolute. But it is not far wrong either. The style may express itself either in prose or poetry. Tho latter is the more enduring. There are many books that havo made What Is their theme, but'they are dead Their stylo killed them. Other things being equal, it is the poetic form that finally secures immortality for a hook. And especially it is tho poetic form that expresses itself in metro and music. This latter has, at least, _two advantages—it packs up thought in the briefest compass, and it puts it in musical expression that sings itself into the mind and heart. A book without style, however excellent otherwise, is doomed. The ages arc strewn thick with volumes full of abiding truth, but It is wrapt up in a repellent or impossible style, and so is futile for good David Hume, the philosopher, gives this counsel in one of his books: “If wo take in hand any volume of divinity or metaphysics, let ns ask: Docs it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any superior mental reasoning regarding, matter-of-fact existence? No. Then commit it to the flames, for it can contain nothing but sophistry and delusion.” And Hume’s great biographer, Professor Huxley, says: “'Permit me to enforce this most wise advice ” Well, whether wise or foolish, it is pretty evident the world does not believe it. The books that it takes to its heart have few or none of the characteristics that Hume suggests and Huxley countersigns. Dr Martincau gets at tho real truth of the matter when ho writes: “ Never do we more completely deceive ourselves than when we fancy the work of the understanding is durable while that of tho imagination is evanescent, that the achievements of physical science aro tho fixed products of time while the visions of poetry are hut the adornments of a passing age. How plainly does experience contradict this estimate. Of no period within the limits of known and transmitted civilisation docs tho most advanced science remain true for us, while of none lias the genuine poetry perished. Thales and Archimedes have been dead for centuries, but old Homer is as fresh as ever, and delights the modern sdhoolboy to-day not less than be did the Greek hero. The acuteness of tho Athenian intellect has left ns no account of any law of Nature which the greatest master of ancient knowledge deciphers as we do now, but the strains of Job and tho wrapt songs <jl Isaiah will never he worn out w'hilc a human soul is on the earth or a divine heaven above 5X.”