xpression may be combined with the highest
philosophic power. All that can safely be said is that a man's thoughts,
whether embodied in symbols or worked out in syllogisms, are more
valuable in proportion as they indicate greater philosophical insight;
and therefore that, _ceteris paribus_, that man is the greater poet
whose imagination is most transfused with reason; who has the deepest
truths to proclaim as well as the strongest feelings to utter.

Some theorists implicitly deny this principle by holding substantially
that the poet's function is simply the utterance of a particular mood,
and that, if he utters it forcibly and delicately, we have no more to
ask. Even so, we should not admit that the thoughts suggested to a wise
man by a prospect of death and eternity are of just equal value, if
equally well expressed, with the thoughts suggested to a fool by the
contemplation of a good dinner. But, in practice, the utterance of
emotions can hardly be dissociated from the assertion of principles.
Psychologists have shown, ever since the days of Berkeley, that when a
man describes (as he thinks) a mere sensation, and says, for example, 'I
see a house,' he is really recording the result of a complex logical
process. A great painter and the dullest observer may have the same
impressions of coloured blotches upon their retina. The great man infers
the true nature of the objects which produce his sensations, and can
therefore represent the objects accurately. The other sees only with his
eyes, and can therefore represent nothing. There is thus a logic implied
even in the simplest observation, and one which can be tested by
mathematical rules as distinctly as a proposition in geometry.

When we have to find a language for our emotions instead of our
sensations, we generally express the result of an incomparably more
complex set of intellectual operations. The poet, in uttering his joy or
sadness, often implies, in the very form of his language, a whole
philosophy of life or of the universe. The explanation is given at the
end of Shakespeare's familiar passage about the poet's eye:--

Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

The _ap_prehension of the passion, as Shakespeare logically says, is a
_com_prehension of its cause. The imagination reasons. The