The next book, in order of time, to influence me, was the New
Testament, and in particular the Gospel according to St.
Matthew. I believe it would startle and move any one if they
could make a certain effort of imagination and read it
freshly like a book, not droningly and dully like a portion
of the Bible. Any one would then be able to see in it those
truths which we are all courteously supposed to know and all
modestly refrain from applying. But upon this subject it is
perhaps better to be silent.
I come next to Whitman's LEAVES OF GRASS, a book of singular
service, a book which tumbled the world upside down for me,
blew into space a thousand cobwebs of genteel and ethical
illusion, and, having thus shaken my tabernacle of lies, set
me back again upon a strong foundation of all the original
and manly virtues. But it is, once more, only a book for
those who have the gift of reading. I will be very frank - I
believe it is so with all good books except, perhaps,
fiction. The average man lives, and must live, so wholly in
convention, that gunpowder charges of the truth are more apt
to discompose than to invigorate his creed. Either he cries
out upon blasphemy and indecency, and crouches the closer
round that little idol of part-truths and part-conveniences
which is the contemporary deity, or he is convinced by what
is new, forgets what is old, and becomes truly blasphemous
and indecent himself. New truth is only useful to supplement
the old; rough truth is only wanted to expand, not to
destroy, our civil and often elegant conventions.
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