t
from the past or the present time; which enquiry resolves itself
fundamentally into the analysis of objects and incidents experienced
immediately by the senses, or acquired by mental education.

Here then we have to explore the specific difference between the
incidents and objects of to-day, as exposed to our daily observation,
and the incidents and objects of time past, as bequeathed to us by
history, poetry, or tradition.

In the first place, there is, no doubt, a considerable _real_
difference between the things of to-day and those of times past: but
as all former times, their incidents and objects differ amongst
themselves, this can hardly be the cause of the specific difference
sought for--a difference between our share of things past and things
present. This real, but not specific difference then, however
admitted, shall not be considered here.

It is obvious, in the meanwhile, that all which we have of the past
is stamped with an impress of mental assimilation: an impress it has
received from the mind of the author who has garnered it up, and
disposed it in that form and order which ensure it acceptance with
posterity. For let a writer of history be as matter of fact as he
will, the very order and classification of events will save us the
trouble of confusion, and render them graspable, and more capable of
assimilation, than is the raw material of every-day experience. In
fact the work of mind is begun, the key of intelligence is given, and
we have only to continue the process. Where the vehicle for the
transmission of things past is poetry, then we have them presented in
that succession, and with that modification of force, a resilient
plasticity, now advancing, now recoiling, insinuating and grappling,
that ere this material and mental warfare is over, we find the facts
thus transmitted are incorporated with our psychical existence. And
in tradition is it otherwise?--Every man tells the tale in his own
way; and the merits of the story itself, or the person who tells it,
or his way of telling, procures it a lodgment in the mind of the
hearer, whence it is ever ready to start up and claim kindred with
some external excitement.

Thus it is the luck of all things of the past to come down to us with
some poetry about them; while from those of diurnal experience we
must extract this poetry ourselves: and although all good men are,
more or less, poets, they are passive or recipient poets; while the
active or d