[Ichilli-users] world i

[Kum K. <ce...@pj...>]

 Shakespeare.] Sect. 10. The transition from Whitman to Shakespeare may
seem somewhat abrupt, but the very differences between these poets serve
to mark out an interesting affinity. Neither has put any unitary
construction upon human life and its environment. Neither, as poet, is
the witness of any world-view; which will mean for us that neither is a
philosopher-poet. As respects Shakespeare, this is a hard saying. We are
accustomed to the critical judgment that finds in the Shakespearian
dramas an apprehension of the universal in human life. But though this
judgment is true, it is by no means conclusive as respects Shakespeare's
relation to the philosophical type of thought. For there can be
universality without philosophy. Thus, to know the groups and the marks
of the vertebrates is to know a truth which possesses generality, in
contradistinction to the particularism of Whitman's poetic
consciousness. Even so to know well the groups and marks of human
character, vertebrate and invertebrate, is to know that of which the
average man, in his hand to hand struggle with life, is ignorant. Such a
wisdom Shakespeare possessed to a unique degre