The human mind could never,
except by the intervention of these excitements, have been awakened
to the invention of the grosser sciences, and that application of
analytical reasoning to the aberrations of society, which it is now
attempted to exalt over the direct expression of the inventive and
creative faculty itself.
We have more moral, political, and historical wisdom than we know how
to reduce into practice; we have more scientific and economical
knowledge than can be accommodated to the just distribution of the
produce which it multiplies. The poetry in these systems of thought
is concealed by the accumulation of facts and calculating processes.
There is no want of knowledge respecting what is wisest and best in
morals, government, and political economy, or, at least, what is wiser
and better than what men now practise and endure. But we let "_I dare
not_ wait upon _I would_, like the poor cat in the adage". We want the
creative faculty to imagine that which we know; we want the generous
impulse to act that which we imagine; we want the poetry of life: our
calculations have outrun conception; we have eaten more than we can
digest.
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