Special Method in the Reading of Complete English Classics: In the Grades of the Common SchoolMcMurry, Charles A. (Charles Alexander)
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Special Method in the Reading of Complete English Classics: In the Grades of the Common School
McMurry, Charles A. (Charles Alexander)
American literature -- Study and teaching; English literature -- Study and teaching
"True poetry is for instruction as much as for pleasure, though it
inculcate no formal lessons. Right moral teaching is by example far more
than by precept; and the real poet teaches through the higher purpose he
arouses, by the stimulus he gives, and by the purer motive he awakens.
He gives no precept to recite, no homilies to con over, no rules for
formal repetition; but he gives the spirit of life and the impulse of
true activity. An infallible test of the great poet is that he inspires
us with a sense of the richness and grandeur of life."
Rooted in the genuine realism of social life, moral ideas are still more
strongly energized by feeling and even by passion. It is doubtful if
moral ideas have any roots that do not reach down into deep and genuine
feeling.
Ruskin, in "Sesame and Lilies," speaks to the point.
"Having then faithfully listened to the great teachers, that you may
enter into their Thoughts, you have yet this higher advance to
make,--you have to enter into their Hearts. As you go to them first for
clear sight, so you must stay with them that you may share at last their
just and mighty Passion. Passion, or "sensation." I am not afraid of the
word; still less of the thing. You have heard many outcries against
sensation lately; but, I can tell you, it is not less sensation we want,
but more. The ennobling difference between one man and another--between
one animal and another--is precisely in this, that one feels more than
another. If we were sponges, perhaps sensation might not be easily got
for us; if we were earthworms, liable at every instant to be cut in two
by the spade, perhaps too much sensation might not be good for us. But,
being human creatures, it is good for us; nay, we are only human in so
far as we are sensitive, and our honor is precisely in proportion to our
passion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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