Twenty-seven
The brain is a servant, exterior to the central force of the Ego. If it is out of control, the reason is not that it is uncontrollable but merely that its discipline has been neglected.
Twenty-eight
I have been told by one of our greatest novelists that he constantly reads the dictionary, and that in his youth he read the dictionary through several times. I may recount the anecdote of Buckle, the historian of civilisation, who, when a certain dictionary was mentioned in terms of praise, said: “Yes, it is one of the few dictionaries I have read through with pleasure.”
Twenty-nine
The public may, and generally does, admire a great artist. But it begins (and sometimes ends) by admiring him for the wrong things. Shakespeare is more highly regarded for his philosophy than for his poetry, as the applause at any performance of “Hamlet” will prove. Balzac conquers by that untamed exuberance and those crude effects of melodrama which are the least valuable parts of him.
Thirty
You cannot divide literature into two elements and say: This is matter and that style. Further, the significance and the worth of literature are to be comprehended and assessed in the same way as the significance and the worth of any other phenomenon: by the exercise of common-sense. Common-sense will tell you that nobody, not even a genius, can be simultaneously vulgar and distinguished, or beautiful and ugly, or precise and vague, or tender and harsh. And common-sense will therefore tell you that to try to set up vital contradictions between matter and style is absurd. If you refer literature to the standards of life, common-sense will at once decide which quality should count heaviest in your esteem.
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