sureness of reality sometimes crosses our will, and very often
leads us to disaster, just as the firmness of the earth
invariably hurts the falling child who is learning to walk.
Nevertheless it is the same firmness that hurts him which makes
his walking possible. Once, while passing under a bridge, the
mast of my boat got stuck in one of its girders. If only for a
moment the mast would have bent an inch or two, or the bridge
raised its back like a yawning cat, or the river given in, it
would have been all right with me. But they took no notice of my
helplessness. That is the very reason why I could make use of
the river, and sail upon it with the help of the mast, and that
is why, when its current was inconvenient, I could rely upon the
bridge. Things are what they are, and we have to know them if we
would deal with them, and knowledge of them is possible because
our wish is not their law. This knowledge is a joy to us, for
the knowledge is one of the channels of our relation with the
things outside us; it is making them our own, and thus widening
the limit of our self.

At every step we have to take into account others than ourselves.
For only in death are we alone. A poet is a true poet when he
can make his personal idea joyful to all men, which he could not
do if he had not a medium common to all his audience. This
common language has its own law which the poet must discover and
follow, by doing which he becomes true and attains poetical
immortality.

We see then that man's individuality is not his highest truth;
there is that in him which is universal. If he were made to live
in a world where his own self was the only factor to consider,