Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/545

Rh maker and upholder of the human mind, and repudiating the converse doctrine, which views knowledge as altogether subordinate to the mind; maintaining that man acquires his mind by means of knowledge, and not his knowledge by means of mind; we now return to the consideration of poetry, and we ask what view are we to take of that access of intellectual power which is termed poetical inspiration? of those ideas of beauty and sublimity which are the pillars of poetical art? It is obvious that, in harmony with the preceding remarks, we must regard this inspiration and these ideas as that which produces the poetical mind, as that which engenders the inspiration and the ideas. The ideas of the beautiful and the sublime, these are the prior elements. The poetical mind is a subsequent and derivative formation. The inspiration proceeds not from the man himself, it comes from a higher and more authoritative source. The man himself owes his existence as a poet unto it; it does not owe its existence unto him. We therefore reply, in answer to our original question, that it is poetry which makes the man, and not the man who makes poetry.

Should the critic here interfere, and tell us that this is an extravagant and untenable doctrine, we reply that at any rate we have Homer, the father of the epic, and Milton, his illustrious compeer, on our side of the question. If Homer regarded himself as the original source of his own poetry, what intelligible sense can be attached to his invocation,