Bourget would teach us to know
ourselves; that was it: he would reveal us to ourselves. That would be
an education. He would explain us to ourselves. Then we should
understand ourselves; and after that be able to go on more intelligently.
It seemed a doubtful scheme. He could explain us to himself--that would
be easy. That would be the same as the naturalist explaining the bug to
himself. But to explain the bug to the bug--that is quite a different
matter. The bug may not know himself perfectly, but he knows himself
better than the naturalist can know him, at any rate.
A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that
that is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its
interior--its soul, its life, its speech, its thought. I think that a
knowledge of these things is acquirable in only one way; not two or four
or six--absorption; years and years of unconscious absorption; years and
years of intercourse with the life concerned; of living it, indeed;
sharing personally in its shames and prides, its joys and griefs, its
loves and hates, its prosperities and reverses, its shows and
shabbinesses, its deep patriotisms, its whirlwinds of political passion,
its adorations--of flag, and heroic dead, and the glory of the national
name. Observation? Of what real value is it? One learns peoples
through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect.
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