My _third_ proposition (perhaps more discutable) has been that,
the human soul's activities being separated, so far as we can
separate them, into _What Does, What Knows, What Is_--to _be_
such-and-such a man ranks higher than either _knowing_ or _doing_
this, that, or the other: that it transcends all man's activity
upon phenomena, even a Napoleon's: all his housed store of
knowledge, though it be a Casaubon's or a Mark Pattison's: that
only by learning to _be_ can we understand or reach, as we have
an instinct to reach, to our right place in the scheme of things:
and that, any way, all the greatest literature commands this
instinct. To be Hamlet--to feel yourself Hamlet--is more
important than killing a king or even knowing all there is to be
known about a text. Now most of us have been Hamlet, more or
less: while few of us, I trust, have ever murdered a monarch: and
still fewer, perhaps, can hope to know all that is to be known of
the text of the play. But for value, Gentlemen, let us not rank
these three achievements by order of their rarity.
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