m set up their paltry individualities as the representation of
universal and complete feeling, and in the sweat of their brow pronounce
judgment on beauty.

We have just seen that the kind of recreation poetry ought to afford is
generally conceived in too restricted a manner, and only referred to a
simple sensuous want. Too much scope, however, is also given to the
other idea, the moral ennobling the poet should have in view, inasmuch as
too purely an ideal aim is assigned.

In fact, according to the pure ideal, the ennobling goes on to infinity,
because reason is not restricted to any sensuous limits, and only finds
rest in absolute perfection. Nothing can satisfy whilst a superior thing
can be conceived; it judges strictly and admits no excuses of infirmity
and finite nature. It only admits for limits those of thought, which
transcends time and space. Hence the poet could no more propose to
himself such an ideal of ennobling (traced for him by pure (didactic)
reason) any more than the coarse ideal of recreation of sensuous nature.
The aim is to free human nature from accidental hinderances, without
destroying the essential ideal of our humanity, or displacing its limits.
All beyond this is exaggeration, and a quicksand in which the poet too
easily suffers shipwreck if he mistakes the idea of nobleness. But,
unfortunately, he cannot rise to the true ideal of ennobled human nature
without going some steps beyond it. To rise so high he must abandon the
world of reality, for, like every ideal, it is only to be drawn from its
inner moral source. He does not find it in the turmoil of worldly life,
but only in his heart, and that only in calm meditation. But in this
separation from real life he is likely to lose sight of all the limits of
human nature, and seeking pure form he may easily lose himself in
arbitrary and baseless conceptions. Reason will abstract itself too much
from experience, and the practical man will not be able to carry out, in
the crush of real life, what the contemplative mind has discovered on the
peaceful path of thought. Thus, what makes a dreamy man is the very
thing that alone could have made him a sage; and the advantage for the
latter is not that he has never been a dreamer, but rather that he has
not remained one.

We must not, then, allow the workers to determine recreation according to
their wants, nor thinkers that of nobleness according to their
speculations, for fear of either a too low ph