If our times are sterile in genius, we must cheer us with books of
rich and believing men who had atmosphere and amplitude about them.
Every good fable, every mythology, every biography out of a
religious age, every passage of love, and even philosophy and science,
when they proceed from an intellectual integrity, and are not
detached and critical, have the imaginative element. The Greek fables,
the Persian history, (Firdousi,) the "Younger Edda" of the
Scandinavians, the "Chronicle of the Cid," the poem of Dante, the
Sonnets of Michel Angelo, the English drama of Shakspeare, Beaumont
and Fletcher, and Ford, and even the prose of Bacon and Milton,--in
our time, the ode of Wordsworth, and the poems and the prose of
Goethe, have this richness, and leave room for hope and for generous
attempts.
There is no room left,--and yet I might as well not have begun as
to leave out a class of books which are the best: I mean the Bibles
of the world, or the sacred books of each nation, which express for
each the supreme result of their experience. After the Hebrew and
Greek Scriptures, which constitute the sacred books of Christendom,
these are, the Desatir of the Persians, and the Zoroastrian Oracles;
the Vedas and Laws of Menu; the Upanishads, the Vishnu Purana, the
Bhagvat Geeta, of the Hindoos; the books of the Buddhists; the
"Chinese Classic," of four books, containing the wisdom of Confucius
and Mencius.
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