[BURWASH] INAUGURAL INTRODUCTION TO SECTION II 9 
This is, of course, a more ambitious step than any hitherto taken and 
demands very careful consideration. Do our present achievements in 
literature justify such a step? 
We may reach the answer to our question by a study of the func- 
tion of literature in the process of education. 
The work of education has been carried on in all ages by bringing 
the young mind into contact with the best spiritual life of the past 
as that life has been preserved for us in various forms and can be 
reproduced by us. We have grouped that life under three heads: 
Science, philosophy and literature. In the beginnings of civilization 
these three things were united in the earliest form of literature the 
myth. Another early form of literature, the bard-song or folk story, 
covered the field of history. And still another, the proverb or word 
of wisdom, filled out the programme of early education. At this 
stage it might be said that literature held the entire field. But all 
evolution is differentiation, and in no field has this been more marked 
than in this department of our civilization. Science, philosophy and 
literature are now clearly distinguished though they can never be 
entirely separated. Even history, so long the common ground, is now 
divided into various branches according as it receives a scientific, a 
philosophical or a literary treatment. 
Thus, in our day literature appears as a distinct element in our 
educational programme, and we are led to enquire what is literature 
in this differentiated sense? and what is its special function in edu- 
cation ? 
It is now clearly recognized that only those writings can be ranked 
as literature which attain to a certain perfection of style, and that 
this should include all those qualities which make language the perfect 
expression of thought and emotion. Purity, clearness, force are, of 
course, requisite; the absence of these would be a positive fault, involv- 
ing unqualified rejection from the rank of literature. But in true 
literature something more is expected—a combination of dignity and 
strength, of fitness and beauty and of all with that chaste simplicity 
which is so filled and inspired by thought that mere rhetoric is for- 
gotten and turgid bombast is absolutely excluded; all this is demanded 
by the true literary critic of to-day. And from the very origin of 
literature the musical note was dominant and the sweet cadence of 
speech responded to the sounds of the lyre or the rythmical movements 
of the body. Our literature is no longer recited by bards, and only 
at times is it sung to the accompaniment of the harp, but still a funda- 
mental sensibility of our nature demands that it should be musical 
speech. Even Carlyle, like a great bass drum, has a music of his own. 
