It is "the Universal" ([Greek: _tho chathholoy_]):
and as soon as we realise this we know ourselves to be on the same track
as Aristotle, after all. "Imitation," as he uses it, is not an apish or
a slavish imitation; it is no mere transcribing or copying of phenomena
as they pass (he even allows that the poet may "imitate" men as "better
than they are"): it is an expressing, in fiction and harmonious speech,
intelligible to his fellow-men, of what truth, order, harmony, and "law"
the poet's mind has apprehended in the outer Universe. No fair-minded
reader of the _Poetics_, as he lays down the treatise, will doubt that
this, or something like this, was Aristotle's meaning, nor is it
probable that he will find any essential difference (or any difference
that seriously disturbs agreement) between Aristotle's "Universal" and
the Platonic "Idea" or pattern of things "laid up somewhere in the
heavens."
* * * * *
Now the Poet's way of apprehending the Universal is (as I have
indicated) by keeping true to himself, attending to his soul's inner
harmony, and listening, waiting, brooding with a "wise passiveness"
until the moment when his and the larger harmony fall into tune
together.
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