gical understanding to the inspiration of poetry.

I have already indicated what seems to me to be the defective element in
the poet's philosophy of life. His theory of knowledge is in need of
revision; and what he asserts of human love, should be applied point by
point to human reason. As man is ideally united with the absolute on the
side of moral emotion (if the phrase may be pardoned), so he is ideally
united with the absolute on the side of the intellect. As there is no
difference of _nature_ between God's goodness and man's goodness, so
there is no difference of nature between God's truth and man's truth.
There are not two kinds of righteousness or mercy; there are not two
kinds of truth. Human nature is not "cut in two with a hatchet," as the
poet implies that it is. There is in man a lower and a higher element,
ever at war with each other; still he is not a mixture, or agglomerate,
of the finite and the infinite. A love perfect in nature cannot be
linked to an intelligence imperfect in nature; if it were, the love
would be either a blind impulse or an erring one. Both morality and
religion demand the presence in man of a perfect ideal, which is at war
with his imperfections; but an ideal is possible, only to a being
endowed with a capacity for knowing the truth. In degrading human
knowledge, the poet is disloyal to the fundamental principle of the
Christian faith which he professed--that God can and does manifest
himself in man.

On the other hand, we are not to take the unity of man with God, of
man's moral ideal with the All-perfect, as implying, on the moral side,
an absolute identification of the finite with the infinite; nor can we
do so on the side of knowledge. Man's moral life and rational activity
in knowledge are the process of the highest. But man is neither first,
nor last; he is not the original author of his love, any more than of
his reason; he is not the divine principle of the whole to which he
belongs, although he is potentially in harmony with it. Both sides of
his being are equally touched with imperfection--his love, no less than
his reason. Perfect love would imply perfect wisdom, as perfect wisdom,
perfect love. But absolute terms are not applicable to man, who is ever
_on the way_ to goodness and truth, progressively manifesting the power
of the ideal that dwells in him, and whose very life is conflict and
acquirement.

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a he