[Footnote: _Plato and
Platonism._]
But it is only against this particular conception of philosophy, which
is based upon abstraction of the ideal from the sensual, that the poet
demurs. Beside the foregoing view of philosophy expressed by Pater, we
may place that of another poet, an adherent, indeed, of one of the most
purely sensuous schools of poetry. Arthur Symons states as his belief,
"The poet who is not also philosopher is like a flower without a root.
Both seek the same infinitude; the one apprehending the idea, the other
the image." [Footnote: _The Romantic Movement,_ p. 129.] That is,
to the poet, ideality is the hidden life of the sensual.
Wherever a dry as dust rationalizing theology is in vogue, it is true
that some poets, in their reaction, have gone to the extreme of
subscribing to a materialistic conception of the universe. Shelley is
the classic example. Everyone is aware of his revulsion from Paley's
theology, which his father sternly proposed to read aloud to him, and of
his noisy championing of the materialistic cause, in _Queen Mab_.
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