It is this same intangible soul, just within yet just beyond the touch of our finger-tips as we reach out farther and farther into the dim unknown, this same indefinable spirit of beauty, shining through the form that it inhabits, permeating it inscrutably, that somehow passes out of the poem into the heart of the admirer, then slips out of his heart into the poem again, and so on and on, again and again, ever lifting the admiring soul as the poem itself is lifted higher still and ever higher.
MISSION.
This practical age, “this nineteenth century with its knife and glass,” ever botanizing and anatomizing, analyzing and scrutinizing in every possible way, is constantly asking, “What is it good for?”; “Of what use is it?” And whatever the knife and glass cannot explain to the fact-loving intellect; whatever the age cannot thus analyze and convert into ready cash or daily bread, it is wont to relegate to the Lethean Limbo of Uselessness.—As if the mind of man were constituted of intellect, pocket, and stomach, and whatever did not go to the filling of these were useless.
It is well and just and right, indeed, that any age should thus inquire, especially as to material things, so long as it does not dwarf other faculties by giving all sustenance to one. To ask concerning poetry, “What is it good for?”, “Of what use is it?”, is simply to ask in a different form, “What is the soul good for?”; “Of what use is a God!” There is nothing in God’s universe that does not have utility.
But to examine specifically and logically, and thus to discover somewhat of the mission, the utility of poetry.
In order to do this, we must naturally refer to the human mind, since thence poetry is brought forth and there it is perceived.
There are three great divisions of the mind; namely, Intellect, Sensibilities, or Feelings, and Will.
The intellect is that power of the mind by which we think and know. The sensibilities, or feelings, constitute that power of the mind by which we feel. The will is that power of the mind by which we resolve to do or not to do. These explanations are sufficient for our present purpose.
Therefore, whatever furnishes food for the intellect, the knowing-power of the mind, must be of the nature of knowledge, didactic. Whatever ministers to the feelings must waken emotion. Whatever gives action to the will must rouse resolution.
All literature is for the mind. But since there are three departments of the mind, and since literature is produced by and for the mind, there must naturally be three divisions of literature that each mental power may receive sustenance. That is, there should be that literature for the intellect in which knowledge predominates. For the sensibilities, there should be that literature in which feeling, emotion, is the primary and essential element. For the will, there should be that literature that has for its chief end the rousing of resolution.