This is only to say that there is no escaping the fundamental aesthetic problem. Is the artist the imitator of the physical world, or the revealer of the spiritual world? He is both, inevitably, if he is a great poet. Hence there is a duality in his moral life. If one aspect of his genius causes him to be rapt away from earthly things, in contemplation of the heavenly vision, the other aspect no less demands that he live, with however pure a standard, in the turmoil of earthly passions. In the period which we have under discussion, it is easy to separate the two types and choose between them. Enthusiasts may, according to their tastes, laud the poet of Byronic worldliness or of Shelleyan otherworldliness. But, of course, this is only because this time boasts of no artist of first rank. When one considers the preeminent names in the history of poetry, it is not so easy to make the disjunction. If the gift of even so great a poet as Milton was compatible with his developing one side of his genius only, we yet feel that Milton is a great poet with limitations, and cannot quite concede to him equal rank with Shakespeare, or Dante, in whom the hybrid nature of the artist is manifest. CHAPTER VI THE POET'S RELIGION There was a time, if we may trust anthropologists, when the poet and the priest were identical, but the modern zeal for specialization has not tolerated this doubling of function. So utterly has the poet been robbed of his priestly character that he is notorious, nowadays, as possessing no religion at all. At least, representatives of the three strongest critical forces in society, philosophers, puritans and plain men, assert with equal vehemence that the poet has no religion that agrees with their interpretation of that word. As was the case in their attack upon the poet's morals, so in the refusal to recognize his religious beliefs, the poet's three enemies are in merely accidental agreement. The philosopher condemns the poet as incapable of forming rational theological tenets, because his temper is unspeculative, or at most, carries him no farther than a materialistic philosophy. The puritan condemns the poet as lacking reverence, that is, as having no "religious instinct." The plain man, of course, charges the poet, in this particular as in all others, with failure to conform. The poet shows no respect, he avers, for the orthodox beliefs of society.