Perhaps it is meant to touch the Second Case too?
NORTH.
It may be meant to do so, but it does not. The word "culture" is dictated by or is proper to the First Case—for culture is deliberate and elective. But in him—the young Poet—the Edwin—in whom imagination is given in the measure assigned by the Muse to her children, the culture proceeds undeliberate and unwilled. Edwin, when he roves "beneath the precipice o'erhung with pine," or sitting to watch the "wide-weltering waves," or is seized from the hint of ballad or tale, or any chance word, with dreams and visions of the more illustrious Past—follows a delight and desire that have the nature and may have the name of a passion. All this is involuntary to the unforeseen result—but afterwards, when he has accepted his art for a vocation, he more than any man deliberately cultivates. Has the Philosopher, then, in mind only the third class, and do the dangers of "the culture of imagination" apply to them only—"the indolent fainéant dreamers of life?" If so, he not only forgets and loses his subject, as announced by himself, but wastes words on one altogether below it. "False conceptions of human life!" Here is an equivocation which must be set right. "Conceptions of human life" are here meant to apply to expectations of the honesty, gratitude, virtue of the persons in general with whom you or I shall come in contact in life. Good. The contemplation of human beings—men and women—ideally drawn by the Poet lifts me too high—tinges hope in me with enthusiasm, and prepares disappointment. So it has been often said, and said truly. This is conception prospective and personal; and more philosophically termed Expectation. But then "conception of human life"—from the lip of a philosopher should mean rather "intelligence of man's life." Now I repeat that only through the Poet have you true intelligence of man's life—either external or internal. In the Actual the Poet sees the Idea—just as a Painter does in respect of the visible man. In the man set before him He sees two men—the man that is and the man of whom at his nativity was given the possibility to be. He reads cause and effect; and sees what has hindered the possible from being. Who, excepting the Poet, does this? And excepting this, what intelligence of man is an intelligence?
SEWARD.
There are two world-Wisdoms. One, to know men, as for the most part they will show themselves—commonly called Knowledge of the World: one, to know them as God made them. I forget what it is called. Possibly it has no name.
NORTH.
Observe, my dear Seward, the precise error of that expectation. It is to believe the good more prevalent than it is. It is no misunderstanding as to the constitution of the good. The good is; and the important point of all is to know it, when you meet it. To be cheated, by not apprehending the ill of a man, is a wound to your purse, and when you at last apprehend, to your heart. To be cheated by not apprehending the good of man is—death, which you bear in yourself, and know it not.
SEWARD.
What is desired? Is it that we should go into the world with hope not a whit wider and higher than the dimensions of the reality that we are to encounter? I trow not.
NORTH.