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 you cannot read that-that what you lose to-day you cannot gain to-morrow? 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 entree1 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 your1 Entree: A French word meaning entrance; the right to come in.
aristocracy of companionship there, your own inherent1 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.
"The place you desire," and the place you fit yourself for, I must also say; because, observe, this court of the past differs from all living aristocracy in this:-it is open to labor and to merit, but to nothing else. No wealth will bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive the guardian of those Elysian2 gates. In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar person ever enters there. There is but brief question:- " Do you deserve to enter? Pass. Do you ask to be the companion of nobles? Make yourself noble, and you shall be. Do you long for the conversation of the wise? Learn to understand it, and you shall hear it. But on other terms?-no. If you will not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you. The living lord may assume courtesy, the living philosopher explain his thought to you with considerate pain; but here we neither feign3 nor interpret; you must rise to the level of our thoughts if you would be gladdened by them, and share our feelings if you would recognize our presence."This, then, is what you have to do, and I admit that it is much. You must, in a word, love these people, if you are to be among them. No ambition is of any use. They scorn your1Inherent: natural; inborn.
2Elysian: pertaining to Elysium, the land of the blest. 3 Feign: pretend.
ambition. You must love them, and show your love by a true desire to be taught by them, and to enter into their thoughts. To enter into theirs, observe; not to find your own expressed by them. If the person who wrote the book is not wiser than you, you need not read it; if he be, he will think differently from you in many respects.
Very ready we are to say of a book, "How good this is, -that"s exactly what I think!" But the right feeling is, "How strange that is! I never thought of that before, and yet I see it is true; or if I do not now, I hope I shall some day." But whether thus submissively or not, at least be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours. Judge it afterward if you think yourself qualified to do so; but ascertain1 it first. And be sure also, if the author is worth anything, that you will not get at his meaning all at once;- nay, that at his whole meaning you will not for a long time arrive in any wise. The wise men make themselves sure that you deserve their deeper thought before they allow you to reach it. It is the same with the physical type of wisdom, gold. There seems to you and me no reason why the electric forces of the earth should not carry whatever there is of gold within it at once to the mountain tops, so that kings and people might know that all the gold they could get was there; and without any trouble of digging or anxiety or chance or waste of time, cut it away and coin as much as they needed. But nature does not manage it so. She puts it in little fissures in the earth, nobody knows where; you may dig long and find none;1 Ascertain: find out; make certain.
you must dig painfully to find any.
And it is just the same with men"s best wisdom. When you come to a good book you must ask yourself: "Am I inclined to work as an Australian miner would? Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and my breath good, and my temper?"And keeping the figure1 a little longer, even at the cost oftiresomeness, for it is a thoroughly useful one, the metal you are in search of being the author"s mind or meaning, his words are as the rock which you have to crush and smelt in order to get at it. And your pickaxes are your own care, wit, and learning; your smelting furnace is your own thoughtful soul.
Do not hope to get at any good author"s meaning without those tools and that fire; often you will need sharpest, finest chiseling and patientest fusing, before you can gather one grain of the metal.
(FROM "SESAME AND LILIES)
1 Figure: a mode of expressing ideas by words which suggest pictures.