Why read the Odyssey? Or The Rime of the Ancient Mariner? Or study theories of cosmology? These are some of the ways of gaining a love of the Great and the Whole. In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s words,
Should children be permitted to read romances, and relations of giants and magicians and genii? I know all that has been said against it; but I have formed my faith in the affirmative. I know no other way of giving the mind a love of the Great and the Whole. Those who have been led to the same truths step by step, through the constant testimony of their senses, seem to me to want a sense which I possess. They contemplate nothing but parts, and all parts are necessarily little. (Quoted in The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 192.)
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For a brief biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, click here .
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