So Philosophy has almost all the say in this matter, until Poetry
interjects the fatal question, "I beg your pardon, Madam, but do you
happen to be the Almighty, or are you playing Egeria to his Numa? You
are constructing admirably comprehensive schemes and systems for _His_
guidance, if your hints will but be taken. But if you address yourself
to Man, you will find that his business is not at all to _comprehend_
the Universe; for this, if he could achieve it, would make him equal
with God. What he more humbly aspires to, is to _apprehend_; to pierce
by flashes of insight to some inch or so of the secret, to some star to
which he can hitch his waggon. Now there are," Poetry goes on, "certain
men, granted to dwell among us, of more delicate mental fibre than their
fellows; men whose minds have as it were exquisite filaments which they
throw out to intercept, _apprehend_ and conduct home to Man stray
messages between the outer mystery of the Universe and the inner mystery
of his soul; even as modern telegraphy has learnt to search out, snatch
and gather home messages wandering astray over waste waters of Ocean.
Such men are the poets, my servants."

"Moreover," Poetry will continue, "these men do not collect their
messages as your philosophers do, by vigorous striving and learning;
nor, as the priests of Baal did, by cutting themselves and crying; but
by schooling their souls to harmony and awaiting the moment of
apprehension with what one of them has called 'a wise passiveness.' For
it is not their method to wrestle with God, like Jacob, or to hold Him
up with a 'Stand and deliver.' It is enough for them to be receptacles
of His passing breath, as the harps abandoned and hung on willow-trees
by the waters of Babylon may have caught, at evening, and hummed the
wind whispering from Israel. And for this, while they hang and wait,
they will be despised by the commonalty for indolent fellows, as indeed
they are; as when the wind inspires and sets them hymning, they will be