It is not my idea that in actual practice a formal division is to be made, and still less that what I have called inspirational consideration of literature is ever to be discontinued. In the growth of a child's mind comes naturally a simple and unreflecting pleasure in literature, beginning, as has been said, with unsophisticated delight in the marked rhythms of Mother Goose or in the wholesome joy of the fairy-story. To this is gradually added an equally unreflecting absorption of certain ideas concerning life, which by slow degrees gives place to reflection conscious and deliberate. The delight and the unconscious yielding to the influence of the work of art remain, and to the end they are more effective than any deliberate and conscious ideas can be. Nothing that we teach our pupils about a poem can compare in influence with what they absorb without realizing what they are doing. One of the great dangers of this whole matter is that we shall hurry them from an instinctive to a cultivated attitude toward literature; that we shall replace natural and healthful pleasure by laborious and conscientious study. In dealing with any piece of real literature the wise method, it seems to me, is to take it up first for the absolute, straightforward emotional enjoyment.[110:1] It is of very little use to study any work which the children have not first come to care for. After they see why a piece is worth while from the point of view of pleasure, then study may go further and consider what is the core of the work intellectually and emotionally. In speaking of treating literature educationally I do not refer to that sort of instruction which so generally and unfortunately takes the place of the true study of masterpieces. The history of a poem or a drama, the biography of authors, and all work of this sort should in any case be kept subordinate and should generally, I believe, come after the student has at least a tolerable idea and a fair appreciation of the writings themselves. What is important and what I mean by the educational treatment of literature is the development of those general truths concerning human nature and human feeling which form the tangible thought of a play or poem. The line of distinction between this and the less tangible ideas which are conveyed by form, by melody, by suggestion,—the ideas, in short, which are the secret of the inspirational effect of a work,—cannot be sharply drawn. Many of the tangible ideas will have been obvious in the reading of which the recognized purpose has been mere delight and inspiration; and on the other hand the two classes of ideas are so closely interwoven that it is not possible, even were it advisable, to separate them entirely. It is possible, however, after the pupil has come to take pleasure in a work,—though it should never be attempted sooner,—to go on to the deliberate study of the intellectual content, and to take up broad and general truths.