ABSTRACT
MYTHOPOETRY'S SECOND SENSE REJECTION A great many religions, for some reasons that are really not obvious, have taught us that the world of the senses is misleading and at best a route to short-lived enticements and illusions upon which no rich and full or moral life should be constructed. And, while it is now clear that the co-ordination of the senses is precisely what has brought the conscious mind into some state that we may call being, much of philosophy and of science, because of its abstract nature, deliberately strives to leave the senses behind, although not in some moral fashion. Mathematics also leaves the senses behind, and leaps. That is its nature. And often the poets teach us similar caution lest we trust too deeply what we appear to see or to hear or to touch:
There are in our existence spots of time, Which with distinct pre-eminence retain A renovating Virtue, whence, depress'd By false opinion and contentious thought, Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight In trivial occupations, and the round Of ordinary intercourse, our minds Are nourish'd and invisibly repair'd, A virtue by which pleasure is enhanced That penetrates, enables us to mount When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen. This efficacious spirit chiefly lurks Among those passages of life in which We have had deepest feeling that the mind Is lord and master, and that outward sense
Is but the obedient servant of her will. Such moments, worthy of all gratitude, Are scatter'd everywhere, taking their date From our first childhood; in our childhood even Perhaps are most conspicuous.1
