ity. The very sternness of the philosopher's task is
due to his supreme dedication to truth. But if validity be the merit of
philosophy, it can well be supplemented by immediacy, which is the merit
of poetry. Presuppose in the poet conviction of a sound philosophy, and
we may say with Shelley, of his handiwork, that "it is the perfect and
consummate surface and bloom of all things; it is as the odor and the
color of the rose to the texture of the elements which compose it, as
the form and splendor of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy and
corruption." "Indeed," as he adds, "what were our consolations on this
side of the grave--and our aspirations beyond it--if poetry did not
ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the
owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar?"[51:10]

The unity in outlook, attended by differences of method and form, which
may exist between poet and philosopher, is signally illustrated by the
relation between Goethe and Spinoza. What Goethe saw and felt, Spinoza
proved and defined. The universal and eternal substance was to Spinoza,
as philosopher, a theorem, and to Goethe, as poet, a perception and an
emotion. Goethe writes to Jacobi that when philosophy "lays itself out
for division," he cannot get on with it, but when it "confirms our
original feeling as though we were one with nature," it is welcome to
him. In the same letter Goethe expresses his appreciation of Spinoza as
the complement of his own nature:

"His all-reconciling peace contrasted with my all-agitating
endeavor; his intellectual method was the opposite counterpart
of my poetic way of feeling and expressing myself; and even
the inflexible regularity of his logical procedure, which
might be considered ill-adapted to moral subjects, made me his
most passionate scholar and his devoted adherent. Mind and
heart, understanding and sense, were drawn together with an
inevitable elective affinity, and this at the same time
produced an intimate union between individuals of the most
different types."[51:11]

It appears, then, that some poets share with all philosophers that
point of view from which the horizon line is the boundary of all the
world. Poetry is not always or essentially philosophical, but may be so;
and when the poetic imagination restores philosophy to immediacy, human
experience reaches its most exalted state, excepting only religion
itsel