If Shakespeare had written
of those things only of which he had personal knowledge, of those
experiences in which he had personally shared, his contribution to
literature would be deeply interesting, but it would not possess that
quality of universality which makes it the property of the race. In
Shakespeare there was not only knowledge of man, but knowledge of men
as well. His greatness rests not only on his own commanding
personality, but on his magical power of laying other personalities
under tribute for the enlargement of his view of things and the
enrichment of his portraiture of humanity. A man learns much from his
own contacts with his time and his race, but one of the most important
gains he makes is the development of the faculty of appropriating the
results of the contacts of other men with other times and races; and
one of the finer qualities of rich experience is the quickening of the
imagination to divine that which is hidden in the experience of other
races and ages.
The man of culture must not only live deeply and intelligently in his
own experience, rationalising and utilising it as he passes through
it; he must also break away from its limitations and escape its
tendency to substitute a part of life, distinctly seen, for the whole
of life, vaguely discerned.
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