conception is that, if men have spiritual vision, they may apprehend
ideals directly, altogether apart from sense. On the contrary, the
impression given by the poet is that ideality constitutes the very
essence of the so-called physical world, and that this essence is
continually striving to express itself through refinement and remolding
of the outer crust of things. So, when the world of sense comes to
express perfectly the ideal, it will not be a mere representation of
reality. It will be reality. If he can prove this, we must acknowledge
that, not the rationalistic philosopher, but the poet, grasps reality
_in toto_.

However inconclusive his proof, the claims of the poet must fascinate
one with their implications. The two aspects of human life, the physical
and the ideal, focus in the poet, and the result is the harmony which is
art. The fact is of profound philosophical significance, surely, for
union of the apparent contradictions of the sensual and the spiritual
can only mean that idealism is of the essence of the universe. What is
the poetic metaphor but the revelation of an identical meaning in the
physical and spiritual world? The sympathetic reader of poetry cannot
but see the reflection of the spiritual in the sensual, and the sensual
in the spiritual, even as does the poet, and one, as the other, must be
by temperament an idealist.




INDEX


Addison, Joseph,