United States or Greenland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Wisdom of that old spiritual system has vanished from the world, only a degraded literalism left of its undecipherable language. The jewel has been lost, and the casket is filled with sand, sand, sand." How keenly her black eyes searched his own as she said it, and how oddly she made the little word resound. The syllable drew out almost into chanting.
The child's literalism, therefore, asserts itself, and the cup remains a cup and the water is still water, and while the teacher is drawing conclusions, the child is probably wondering whether her dress will get wet or how he can get a drink. The same principle obtains in regard to certain types of blackboard illustrations.
A marked literalism is also apparent, and instead of the delicately imaginative child of earlier years a matter of fact young person stands out with a desire for exact statement and, if need be, under such oath as, "Upon your word," or "Cross your heart and hope to die."
It is only where he fails to be truly realistic that he comes short of success. And, as already hinted, it is oftenest through sheer excess of LITERALISM that he ceases to be realistic, and departs from the spirit of his author instead of coming nearer to it. In the "Paradiso," Canto X. 1-6, his method leads him into awkwardness:
But the maker of pictures would step to another point of sight. He would so aim as to shoot over the hilltop. He would hit something which he cannot see. Suggestion is both technical and subjective. There is suggestion of detail, of act and of fact. In producing the effect, instead of the detail, of a bunch of grass or a mass of drapery, we substitute suggestion for literalism.
He claimed, in short, that in judging of his work, one should allow for the action in it of the constructive imagination, in the exercise of which all deeper poetry consists. The form of literalism, which showed itself in seeking historical authority for every character or incident which he employed by way of illustration, was especially irritating to him.
Elaborate local tomfooleries, such as that by which the Lord of the Manor of Work-sop is alone allowed to do something or other, these probably belong to the decay of the Middle Ages, when that great civilisation died out in grotesque literalism and entangled heraldry. But my purpose here is only to point out one particular thing.
Religion in the future will demand all the attention which our feeble intellect can offer it, and the conscious and willing co-operation of mankind in the realization of God's plans for a regenerated world. Whilst the Churches addicted to ritualism and literalism decline, the Brotherhood movement gains in force and influence. Men meet to give united expression to their religious impulses.
It is one of the ironies of history that the words of this Paul who strove so hard against literalism and legalism in his day have since come to be regarded as a sort of fixed and final authority for Christian thought. He would be the first to denounce it. To him the Spirit of Christ operating within the individual soul was the true guide in matters of faith.
Such was the interpretation given by the first Christians. Why should we try to measure this term day, in its first occurrences, by a chronometer which did not come into use until the fourth day? The notion that these days were twenty-four hours, sprang up in the middle ages, and is the child of the literalism and realism of those times.