It may be possible, after studying these three philosophical poets, to establish some comparison between them. By a comparison is not meant a discussion as to which of our poets is the best. Each is the best in his way, and none is the best in every way. To express a preference is not so much a criticism as a personal confession. If it were a question of the relative pleasure a man might get from each poet in turn, this pleasure would differ according to the man’s temperament, his period of life, the language he knew best, and the doctrine that was most familiar to him. By a comparison is meant a review of the analysis we have already made of the type of imagination and philosophy embodied in each of the poets, to see what they have in common, how they differ, or what order they will fall into from different points of view. Thus we have just seen that Goethe, in his _Faust_, presents experience in its immediacy, variety, and apparent groundlessness; and that he presents it as an episode, before and after which other episodes, differing from it more and more as you recede, may be conceived to come. There is no possible totality in this, for there is no known ground. Turn to Lucretius, and the difference is striking. Lucretius is the poet of substance. The ground is what he sees everywhere; and by seeing the ground, he sees also the possible products of it. Experience appears in Lucretius, not as each man comes upon it in his own person, but as the scientific observer views it from without. Experience for him is a natural, inevitable, monotonous round of feelings, involved in the operations of nature. The ground and the limits of experience have become evident together.