In all this I do not wish to be understood as holding that we are always to read the classics, or that we are to read nothing else. To live up to the requirements of the society of Apollo continuously would be too fatiguing even for the Muses. We cannot be always in a state of exaltation; but we cannot in any high sense live at all without becoming familiar with what exalted living is. The study of the classics calls for conscious and often for strong endeavor. We do not put ourselves thoroughly into the mood of other times and of remote conditions without effort. Indeed, it requires effort to lift our less buoyant imaginations to the level of any great work. The sympathetic reading of any supremely imaginative author is like climbing a mountain,--it is not to be accomplished without strain, but it rewards one with the breath of an upper air and a breadth of view impossible in the valley. For him who prefers the outlook of the earth-worm to that of the eagle the classics have no message and no meaning. For him who is not content with any view save the widest, these are the mountain peaks which lift to the highest and noblest sight. XII CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE We speak of the classics, of ancient literature, and of contemporary literature, but in reality all literature is one. We divide it into sections for convenience of study, but it is a notable error to forget that it is consecutive from the dawn of civilization to the present. It is true that in applying the term to works of our own time it is both customary and necessary to employ the word with a meaning wider than that which it has elsewhere. It is often difficult to distinguish in contemporary productions that which is of genuine and lasting merit from that which is simply meretricious and momentary, and still harder to force others to recognize such distinction when made. It is therefore inevitable that the name literature should have a broader signification than when applied to work which has been tested and approved by time.