There are two world-Wisdoms. One, to know men, as for the most part they will show themselves--commonly called Knowledge of the World: one, to know them as God made them. I forget what it is called. Possibly it has no name.
Observe, my dear Seward, the precise error of that expectation. It is to believe the good more prevalent than it is. It is no misunderstanding as to the constitution of the good. The good is; and the important point of all is to know it, when you meet it. To be cheated, by not apprehending the ill of a man, is a wound to your purse, and when you at last apprehend, to your heart. To be cheated by not apprehending the good of man is--_death_, which you bear in yourself, and know it not.
What is desired? Is it that we should go into the world with hope not a whit wider and higher than the dimensions of the reality that we are to encounter? I trow not.
Your hope will elect your own destiny--will shape it--will be it. There are possibilities given of the nobler happinesses, as well as of the nobler services; and your hope, faithful to itself, will reach and grasp them. And only to such hope are they given. Moreover, in all men there is under the mask of evil which the world has shaped on them, the power inextinct which the Creator sowed there; and they may, if they dare to believe in it, and know to call to it, bring it out with a burst. But belief is the main ingredient of the spell, and hope is the mother of belief.
The Poet has glorious apprehensions of human existence--visions of men--visions of men's actions--visions of men's destinies. He pitches his theory of the human world above reality--and _that_ he shall, in due season or before it, learn--to his great loss and to his great gain. In the meanwhile do not speak of the temper in him, as if you would upbraid him with it. Do not lay to his charge the splendour of his powers and aspirations. Do not chide and rate him for his virtues.
"False conceptions!" a term essentially of depreciation and reproach. They are not false, they are true. For they are faithful to the vocation that lies upon the human beings; but they, the human beings, are false, and their lives are false; falling short of those true conceptions.