Among Famous Books

Among Famous Books

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Title: Among Famous Books
Author: John Kelman
Release Date: April 2, 2006 [EBook #18104]
Language: English
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AMONG FAMOUS BOOKS
BY
JOHN KELMAN, D.D.

HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON; NEW YORK; TORONTO
Printed in 1912

PREFACE
The object of the following lectures is twofold. They were delivered in
the first place for the purpose of directing the attention of readers to
books whose literary charm and spiritual value have made them
conspicuous in the vast literature of England. Such a task, however,
tends to be so discursive as to lose all unity, depending absolutely upon
the taste of the individual, and the chances of his experience in reading.
I have accordingly taken for the general theme of the book that constant
struggle between paganism and idealism which is the deepest fact in
the life of man, and whose story, told in one form or another, provides
the matter of all vital literature. This will serve as a thread to give
continuity of thought to the lectures, and it will keep them near to
central issues.
Having said so much, it is only necessary to add one word more by way
of explanation. In quest of the relations between the spiritual and the
material, or (to put it otherwise) of the battle between the flesh and the
spirit, we shall dip into three different periods of time: (1) Classical, (2)
Sixteenth Century, (3) Modern. Each of these has a character of its own,
and the glimpses which we shall have of them ought to be interesting in
their own right. But the similarity between the three is more striking
than the contrast, for human nature does not greatly change, and its
deepest struggles are the same in all generations.

CONTENTS
LECTURE I The Gods of Greece
LECTURE II Marius the Epicurean

LECTURE III The Two Fausts
LECTURE IV Celtic Revivals of Paganism
LECTURE V John Bunyan
LECTURE VI Pepys' Diary
LECTURE VII Sartor Resartus
LECTURE VIII Pagan Reactions
LECTURE IX Mr. G.K. Chesterton's Point of View
LECTURE X The Hound of Heaven

LECTURE I
THE GODS OF GREECE
It has become fashionable to divide the rival tendencies of modern
thought into the two classes of Hellenistic and Hebraistic. The division
is an arbitrary and somewhat misleading one, which has done less than
justice both to the Greek and to the Hebrew genius. It has associated
Greece with the idea of lawless and licentious paganism, and Israel
with that of a forbidding and joyless austerity. Paganism is an
interesting word, whose etymology reminds us of a time when
Christianity had won the towns, while the villages still worshipped
heathen gods. It is difficult to define the word without imparting into
our thought of it the idea of the contrast between Christian dogma and
all other religious thought and life. This, however, would be an
extremely unfair account of the matter, and, in the present volume, the
word will be used without reference either to nationality or to creed,
and it will stand for the materialistic and earthly tendency as against
spiritual idealism of any kind. Obviously such paganism as this, is not a
thing which has died out with the passing of heathen systems of
religion. It is terribly alive in the heart of modern England, whether

formally believing or unbelieving. Indeed there is the twofold life of
puritan and pagan within us all. A recent well-known theologian wrote
to his sister: "I am naturally a cannibal, and I find now my true
vocation to be in the South Sea Islands, not after your plan, to be
Arnold to a troop of savages, but to be one of them, where they are all
selfish, lazy, and brutal." It is this universality of paganism which gives
its main interest to such a study as the present. Paganism is a constant
and not a temporary or local phase of human life and thought, and it
has very little to do with the question of what particular dogmas a man
may believe or reject.
Thus, for example, although the Greek is popularly accepted as the type
of paganism and the Christian of idealism, yet the lines of that
distinction have often been reversed. Christianity has at times become
hard and cold and lifeless, and has