Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst.  What is the right use?  What is the one end which all means go to effect?  They are for nothing but to inspire.[24] I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.  The one thing in the world of value is the active soul,—­the soul, free, sovereign, active.  This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although in almost all men obstructed, and as yet unborn.  The soul active sees absolute truth and utters truth, or creates.  In this action it is genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every man.[25] In its essence it is progressive.  The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius.  This is good, say they,—­let us hold by this.  They pin me down.[26] They look backward and not forward.  But genius always looks forward.  The eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead.  Man hopes.  Genius creates.  To create,—­to create,—­is the proof of a divine presence.  Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his;[27]—­cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame.  There are creative manners, there are creative actions, and creative words; manners, actions, words, that is, indicative of no custom or authority, but springing spontaneous from the mind’s own sense of good and fair.

On the other part, instead of being its own seer, let it receive always from another mind its truth, though it were in torrents of light, without periods of solitude, inquest, and self-recovery; and a fatal disservice[28] is done.  Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over-influence.[29] The literature of every nation bear me witness.  The English dramatic poets have Shakespearized now for two hundred years.[30]

Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so it be sternly subordinated.  Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments.  Books are for the scholar’s idle times.  When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of their readings.[31] But when the intervals of darkness come, as come they must,—­when the soul seeth not, when the sun is hid and the stars withdraw their shining,—­we repair to the lamps which were kindled by their ray, to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn is.[32] We hear, that we may speak.  The Arabian proverb says, “A fig-tree, looking on a fig-tree, becometh fruitful.”