But it is still a
grander condition when the intellect also rises, till it is strong
enough to assert its rule against, or together with, the utmost
efforts of the passions; and the whole man stands in an iron glow,
white hot, perhaps, but still strong, and in no wise evaporating; even
if he melts, losing none of his weight.
So, then, we have the three ranks: the man who perceives rightly,
because he does not feel, and to whom the primrose is very accurately
the primrose,[61] because he does not love it. Then, secondly, the man
who perceives wrongly, because he feels, and to whom the primrose is
anything else than a primrose: a star, or a sun, or a fairy's shield,
or a forsaken maiden. And then, lastly, there is the man who perceives
rightly in spite of his feelings, and to whom the primrose is for ever
nothing else than itself--a little flower apprehended in the very
plain and leafy fact of it, whatever and how many soever the
associations and passions may be that crowd around it. And, in
general, these three classes may be rated in comparative order, as the
men who are not poets at all, and the poets of the second order, and
the poets of the first; only however great a man may be, there are
always some subjects which _ought_ to throw him off his balance; some,
by which his poor human capacity of thought should be conquered, and
brought into the inaccurate and vague state of perception, so that the
language of the highest inspiration becomes broken, obscure, and wild
in metaphor, resembling that of the weaker man, overborne by weaker
things.
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