Will O' The Mill (Illustrated)
"Will o' the Mill," one of the most moving stories Robert Louis Stevenson ever wrote, is republished, with quaint drawings by Amy M. Sacker.
'The Mill,' to Stevenson, represented the apex of consistent idealism. It is a superb vantage point. The world is ever before it. It looks out over the world, understands the world, and yet is never of the world. That is its ideal position, its strong unpractical advantage. It sustains every hope but will risk no failures. Hence it is a place in which to grow worldly-wise without experience—an illuminating paradox, not an impossibility. It is not far different from our idea of the position of God in that spiritual wisdom toward which we strive to rise out of our terrible experience.
All life flows down past the Mill toward experience. Only a little rises to return. Life yearns for the plain. And the image of this for Will was the running water that went singing over the weir. The romance of the distant world, the lure of the open road, this feeling is for him, the foundation of knowledge and the explanation of history. "The running water carried his desires along with it as he dreamed over its fleeting surface."
But his wisdom lay in images. The fat philosopher who took him out under the stars had shown him that actual experience could at the most cover but the smallest fraction of a man's knowledge, and often proved only a dulling of the imagination at that. Why not, then, know all life ideally as we know the stars?
This one lesson taught Will more about the world than Imlac had been able to show Rasselas in their entire journey. So Will increased in wisdom till he was the teacher both of the many who were descending toward the plain and of those few who returned.
Will had already discovered that these men of action were not his opposites just because they went down into the plain. Indeed they were not his opposites at all. They were merely his complements. He could deduce them, as it were, from himself. His opposites he perhaps saw pictured in the fish in the stream. The stream flowed ever down into the plain; but the fish kept looking patiently in their own blind direction up-hill. And yet Will was like the fish in one respect. He never changed his theory; he never experimented. When he fell in love he perceived only that by patient waiting happiness had come to his door. He had not sought it out.
It was like an asset of contemplation, like a new hope, and then merely like an idea. So he realized that to possess it bodily would be directly against his whole philosophy. Even in regard to marriage, he therefore decided to remain a sheer romancer.
This was his highest accomplishment and also the height of his vanity. At first he could not see that he had make a mistake. But then the object of his romance married and then died, and he was left with his delicious fancies turned to stone upon his soul. He was not, however, disillusioned. Instead he made one of his wise sayings:
"When I was a boy," he said, "I was a bit puzzled and hardly knew whether it was myself or the world that was curious and worth looking into. Now, I know it is myself, and stick to that."
The idealist's refusal to act and to suffer results in a sort of cold wisdom that deadens the passions and leaves introspection to take the place of the greater romance of living.
In the end Will's lost experiences rise about him, like exhalations from the flowers of his garden which he had always refused to pluck, holding that his pleasure in them was greater where they were. He knows, as he welcomes death, that he has missed the fragrance of life.
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'The Mill,' to Stevenson, represented the apex of consistent idealism. It is a superb vantage point. The world is ever before it. It looks out over the world, understands the world, and yet is never of the world. That is its ideal position, its strong unpractical advantage. It sustains every hope but will risk no failures. Hence it is a place in which to grow worldly-wise without experience—an illuminating paradox, not an impossibility. It is not far different from our idea of the position of God in that spiritual wisdom toward which we strive to rise out of our terrible experience.
All life flows down past the Mill toward experience. Only a little rises to return. Life yearns for the plain. And the image of this for Will was the running water that went singing over the weir. The romance of the distant world, the lure of the open road, this feeling is for him, the foundation of knowledge and the explanation of history. "The running water carried his desires along with it as he dreamed over its fleeting surface."
But his wisdom lay in images. The fat philosopher who took him out under the stars had shown him that actual experience could at the most cover but the smallest fraction of a man's knowledge, and often proved only a dulling of the imagination at that. Why not, then, know all life ideally as we know the stars?
This one lesson taught Will more about the world than Imlac had been able to show Rasselas in their entire journey. So Will increased in wisdom till he was the teacher both of the many who were descending toward the plain and of those few who returned.
Will had already discovered that these men of action were not his opposites just because they went down into the plain. Indeed they were not his opposites at all. They were merely his complements. He could deduce them, as it were, from himself. His opposites he perhaps saw pictured in the fish in the stream. The stream flowed ever down into the plain; but the fish kept looking patiently in their own blind direction up-hill. And yet Will was like the fish in one respect. He never changed his theory; he never experimented. When he fell in love he perceived only that by patient waiting happiness had come to his door. He had not sought it out.
It was like an asset of contemplation, like a new hope, and then merely like an idea. So he realized that to possess it bodily would be directly against his whole philosophy. Even in regard to marriage, he therefore decided to remain a sheer romancer.
This was his highest accomplishment and also the height of his vanity. At first he could not see that he had make a mistake. But then the object of his romance married and then died, and he was left with his delicious fancies turned to stone upon his soul. He was not, however, disillusioned. Instead he made one of his wise sayings:
"When I was a boy," he said, "I was a bit puzzled and hardly knew whether it was myself or the world that was curious and worth looking into. Now, I know it is myself, and stick to that."
The idealist's refusal to act and to suffer results in a sort of cold wisdom that deadens the passions and leaves introspection to take the place of the greater romance of living.
In the end Will's lost experiences rise about him, like exhalations from the flowers of his garden which he had always refused to pluck, holding that his pleasure in them was greater where they were. He knows, as he welcomes death, that he has missed the fragrance of life.
Will O' The Mill (Illustrated)
"Will o' the Mill," one of the most moving stories Robert Louis Stevenson ever wrote, is republished, with quaint drawings by Amy M. Sacker.
'The Mill,' to Stevenson, represented the apex of consistent idealism. It is a superb vantage point. The world is ever before it. It looks out over the world, understands the world, and yet is never of the world. That is its ideal position, its strong unpractical advantage. It sustains every hope but will risk no failures. Hence it is a place in which to grow worldly-wise without experience—an illuminating paradox, not an impossibility. It is not far different from our idea of the position of God in that spiritual wisdom toward which we strive to rise out of our terrible experience.
All life flows down past the Mill toward experience. Only a little rises to return. Life yearns for the plain. And the image of this for Will was the running water that went singing over the weir. The romance of the distant world, the lure of the open road, this feeling is for him, the foundation of knowledge and the explanation of history. "The running water carried his desires along with it as he dreamed over its fleeting surface."
But his wisdom lay in images. The fat philosopher who took him out under the stars had shown him that actual experience could at the most cover but the smallest fraction of a man's knowledge, and often proved only a dulling of the imagination at that. Why not, then, know all life ideally as we know the stars?
This one lesson taught Will more about the world than Imlac had been able to show Rasselas in their entire journey. So Will increased in wisdom till he was the teacher both of the many who were descending toward the plain and of those few who returned.
Will had already discovered that these men of action were not his opposites just because they went down into the plain. Indeed they were not his opposites at all. They were merely his complements. He could deduce them, as it were, from himself. His opposites he perhaps saw pictured in the fish in the stream. The stream flowed ever down into the plain; but the fish kept looking patiently in their own blind direction up-hill. And yet Will was like the fish in one respect. He never changed his theory; he never experimented. When he fell in love he perceived only that by patient waiting happiness had come to his door. He had not sought it out.
It was like an asset of contemplation, like a new hope, and then merely like an idea. So he realized that to possess it bodily would be directly against his whole philosophy. Even in regard to marriage, he therefore decided to remain a sheer romancer.
This was his highest accomplishment and also the height of his vanity. At first he could not see that he had make a mistake. But then the object of his romance married and then died, and he was left with his delicious fancies turned to stone upon his soul. He was not, however, disillusioned. Instead he made one of his wise sayings:
"When I was a boy," he said, "I was a bit puzzled and hardly knew whether it was myself or the world that was curious and worth looking into. Now, I know it is myself, and stick to that."
The idealist's refusal to act and to suffer results in a sort of cold wisdom that deadens the passions and leaves introspection to take the place of the greater romance of living.
In the end Will's lost experiences rise about him, like exhalations from the flowers of his garden which he had always refused to pluck, holding that his pleasure in them was greater where they were. He knows, as he welcomes death, that he has missed the fragrance of life.
'The Mill,' to Stevenson, represented the apex of consistent idealism. It is a superb vantage point. The world is ever before it. It looks out over the world, understands the world, and yet is never of the world. That is its ideal position, its strong unpractical advantage. It sustains every hope but will risk no failures. Hence it is a place in which to grow worldly-wise without experience—an illuminating paradox, not an impossibility. It is not far different from our idea of the position of God in that spiritual wisdom toward which we strive to rise out of our terrible experience.
All life flows down past the Mill toward experience. Only a little rises to return. Life yearns for the plain. And the image of this for Will was the running water that went singing over the weir. The romance of the distant world, the lure of the open road, this feeling is for him, the foundation of knowledge and the explanation of history. "The running water carried his desires along with it as he dreamed over its fleeting surface."
But his wisdom lay in images. The fat philosopher who took him out under the stars had shown him that actual experience could at the most cover but the smallest fraction of a man's knowledge, and often proved only a dulling of the imagination at that. Why not, then, know all life ideally as we know the stars?
This one lesson taught Will more about the world than Imlac had been able to show Rasselas in their entire journey. So Will increased in wisdom till he was the teacher both of the many who were descending toward the plain and of those few who returned.
Will had already discovered that these men of action were not his opposites just because they went down into the plain. Indeed they were not his opposites at all. They were merely his complements. He could deduce them, as it were, from himself. His opposites he perhaps saw pictured in the fish in the stream. The stream flowed ever down into the plain; but the fish kept looking patiently in their own blind direction up-hill. And yet Will was like the fish in one respect. He never changed his theory; he never experimented. When he fell in love he perceived only that by patient waiting happiness had come to his door. He had not sought it out.
It was like an asset of contemplation, like a new hope, and then merely like an idea. So he realized that to possess it bodily would be directly against his whole philosophy. Even in regard to marriage, he therefore decided to remain a sheer romancer.
This was his highest accomplishment and also the height of his vanity. At first he could not see that he had make a mistake. But then the object of his romance married and then died, and he was left with his delicious fancies turned to stone upon his soul. He was not, however, disillusioned. Instead he made one of his wise sayings:
"When I was a boy," he said, "I was a bit puzzled and hardly knew whether it was myself or the world that was curious and worth looking into. Now, I know it is myself, and stick to that."
The idealist's refusal to act and to suffer results in a sort of cold wisdom that deadens the passions and leaves introspection to take the place of the greater romance of living.
In the end Will's lost experiences rise about him, like exhalations from the flowers of his garden which he had always refused to pluck, holding that his pleasure in them was greater where they were. He knows, as he welcomes death, that he has missed the fragrance of life.
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Will O' The Mill (Illustrated)
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Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940014419994 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | OGB |
| Publication date: | 05/12/2012 |
| Series: | Cosy Corner Series , #1 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 1 MB |
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