The science of symbols : setting forth the true reason for symbolism and ritual, their relation to the teaching of Christ, and their necessary adoption by all forms of religious expression / Godfrey Blount.
- Godfrey Blount
- Date:
- 1905
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The science of symbols : setting forth the true reason for symbolism and ritual, their relation to the teaching of Christ, and their necessary adoption by all forms of religious expression / Godfrey Blount. Source: Wellcome Collection.
13/164 page 9
![or his training]has neglected. But even that does not sufficiently explain the injustice of the modern fashion. There is a belief, I trust no longer a growing one, that all our traditions, ideals, and enthusiasms can be classified and catalogued, and their proper uses as satisfactorily stated and learnt, as the bones of our bodies or the bits of our bicycles; and while this belief prevails^_it sterilises every attempt to approach this subject from a more natural, a more spontaneous, a more imaginative and less mechanical point of view. It has been the tendency of the modern analytical or mechanical mind to subordinate and sacrifice the inner and more powerful impulses of the heart, to the outer and more superficial claims of material and intellectual interests. How true this is may be easily seen by our modern literature. I am still young enough to yield an occasional half-hour to the alluring shelves of the retail bookseller’s shop, and the titles of the new volumes still fill me with a glow of anticipatory excitement. I am beginning to learn, however, that the practical value of the books, that is to say their suggestive value or power of incitement to idealism (which is surely the final value of all volumes) has, for me, at any rate, long been banished to their covers. I believe the people who write these books are well-meaning enough ; they have every recognised right to treat of the subjects they have chosen ; they are in a manner interested in them. They have equipped themselves with the best that has been written on the matter, but yet they are not interesting, they make no](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24886075_0013.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
