III

There is in fact, Gentlemen, no such thing as 'mere literature.' Pedants have coined that contemptuous term to express a figmentary concept of their own imagination or—to be more accurate, an hallucination of wrath—having about as much likeness to a vera causa as had the doll which (if you remember) Maggie Tulliver used to beat in the garret whenever, poor child, the world went wrong with her somehow. The thoughts, actions and passions of men became literature by the simple but difficult process of being recorded in memorable speech; but in that process neither the real thing recorded nor the author is evacuated. Belles lettres, Fine Art are odious terms, for which no clean-thinking man has any use. There is no such thing in the world as belles lettres; if there were, it would deserve the name. As for Fine Art, the late Professor Butcher bequeathed to us a translation of Aristotle's "Poetics" with some admirable appendixes—the whole entitled "Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art." Aristotle never in his life had a theory of Fine Art as distinct from other art: nor (I wager) can you find in his discovered works a word for any such thing. Now if Aristotle had a concept of `fine' art as distinguished from other art, he was man enough to find a name for it. His omission to do anything of the sort speaks for itself.

So you should beware of any teacher who would treat the Bible or any part of it as 'fine writing,' mere literature.