Dante, Goethe, Tennyson, Browning, Lowell, were men
possessed in rare degree of culture of both kinds; but Shakespeare and
Burns were equally men of culture. They shared in the possession of
this faculty of making all they saw and knew a part of themselves.
Between culture of this quality and the creative power there is
something more than complete unity; there is almost identity, for they
seem to be two forms of activity of the same power rather than
distinct faculties. Culture enables us to receive the world into
ourselves, not in the reflection of a magic mirror, but in the depths
of a living soul; to receive that world in such a way that we possess
it; it ceases to be outside us and becomes part of our very nature.
The creative power enables us to refashion that world and to put it
forth again out of ourselves, as it was originally put forth out of
the life of the divine artist. The creative process is, therefore, a
double process, and culture and genius stand in indissoluble union.
The development of the imagination, upon the power of which both
absorption of knowledge and creative capacity depend, is, therefore, a
matter of supreme importance.
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