| Show BISHOP KEANE ON LITERATTJRJE Literature at its best may be defined as the highest expression of the highest human thought but there is so much of literature that is base and sordid that tests are needed in order to determine its excellence or want of excellence Literature Litera-ture must be beautiful it must be true and it must be helpful to humanity By these three qualities we may establish three tests the tests of beauty truth and goodness But how are these tests to be applied Just as art aims after the ideal and philosophy reaches back to the first cause God so we must look above man for the qualities needed to apply the tests Philosophy and theology both teach us that God is the first cause and that therefore He is necessarily true beautiful beau-tiful and good and when God gives existence ex-istence to creation creation must mirror the perfections of the Creator Man is the culmination of the creation and hence in man there must be the true the beautiful and the good in such proportions propor-tions as mans finite nature will permit He should therefore be In harmony with these aualitles in nature and in this way is developed his sense of truth his sense of beauty and his sense of goodness These senses are the tests that he applies ap-plies to literature If we see anything that is eminently beautiful our nature should be thrilled by the sight That is the first element of the artists power The second element is the power to give expression to that which Is seen The same thing is true of music and literature The artist Is the man who not only feels beauty truth and goodness but is able to give expression expres-sion to what he feels Art and music are great gifts of expression but the gift of literature of speech transcends them both What art has given more delight than the poems of Homer or Milton What music more than the words of Virgil Pope or Tennyson Literature is a setting forth of the philosophy of life Every writer has his own philosophy and in his writings he Jives it to the world whether it be bad or good The man who reads is more or less under the influence of that philosophy phil-osophy whether it be bad or good The literature of the early part bf the century was tainted by the skepticism of Voltaire Vol-taire Skepticism leads to atheism and atheism to animalism The culmination of that tendency you will find in Zola author of Human Brutes which depicts de-picts human beings as on the level of animals The opposite tendency of reaching reach-ing after the ideal you will find attaining attain-ing Its most lofty form In Dante In conclusion I would remind you of the way in which readers are Influenced Influ-enced by what they read Remember too that y cannot read all books you cannot can-not even read all the good books therefore there-fore choose qnly that which is best and draw the good from that And if any of YOU become writers I charge you to write nothing but what will be T Cognized Cog-nized by mankind as good and beautiful and true |
