The explanation never comes to them—­he is a poet; therefore, a practical man.  The affinity of the two words, merely as words, is much nearer than many people suppose, for the matter of that.  There is one Greek word for “I do” from which we get the word practical, and another Greek word for “I do” from which we get the word poet.  I was doubtless once informed of a profound difference between the two, but I have forgotten it.  The two words practical and poetical may mean two subtly different things in that old and subtle language, but they mean the same in English and the same in the long run.  It is ridiculous to suppose that the man who can understand the inmost intricacies of a human being who has never existed at all cannot make a guess at the conduct of man who lives next door.  It is idle to say that a man who has himself felt the mad longing under the mad moon for a vagabond life cannot know why his son runs away to sea.  It is idle to say that a man who has himself felt the hunger for any kind of exhilaration, from angel or devil, cannot know why his butler takes to drink.  It is idle to say that a man who has been fascinated with the wild fastidiousness of destiny does not know why stockbrokers gamble, to say that a man who has been knocked into the middle of eternal life by a face in a crowd does not know why the poor marry young; that a man who found his path to all things kindly and pleasant blackened and barred suddenly by the body of a man does not know what it is to desire murder.  It is idle, in short, for a man who has created men to say that he does not understand them.  A man who is a poet may, of course, easily make mistakes in these personal and practical relations; such mistakes and similar ones have been made by poets; such mistakes and greater ones have been made by soldiers and statesmen and men of business.  But in so far as a poet is in these things less of a practical man he is also less of a poet.

If Shakespeare really married a bad wife when he had conceived the character of Beatrice he ought to have been ashamed of himself:  he had failed not only in his life, he had failed in his art.  If Balzac got into rows with his publishers he ought to be rebuked and not commiserated, having evolved so many consistent business men from his own inside.  The German Emperor is a poet, and therefore he succeeds, because poetry is so much nearer to reality than all the other human occupations.  He is a poet, and succeeds because the majority of men are poets.  It is true, if that matter is at all important, that the German Emperor is not a good poet.  The majority of men are poets, only they happen to be bad poets.  The German Emperor fails ridiculously, if that is all that is in question, in almost every one of the artistic occupations to which he addresses himself:  he is neither a first-rate critic, nor a first-rate musician, nor a first-rate painter, nor a first-rate poet.  He is a twelfth-rate poet, but because he is a poet at all he knocks to pieces all the first-rate politicians in the war of politics.