Two things more important than being smart

Henry Tuckerman, a 19th century American critic, wrote a classic essay A Defense Of Enthusiasm. He takes on many interesting questions: Who's superior - the intellectual man or the man who feels deeply? What was the source of Shakespeare's genius? Discover these answers & more!👇

Human beings are the only animals who can doubt themselves. All the more reason we need the power of enthusiasm: “What, I ask, can counteract self-distrust, and sustain the higher efforts of our nature but enthusiasm?”

Feelings push us to turn abstract plans into action: “While the mere intellectual man speculates…the man of feeling acts, realizes, puts forth his complete energies. His earnest and strong heart will not let his mind rest; he is urged by an inward impulse to embody his thought.”

Stuffing your brain with information that invokes no emotion - and inspires no action - is to gain knowledge “at the expense of the soul.” You become a “pedant and logician” who’s dead inside.

What’s better than being smart? Having a sensitivity for beauty, and a bias for action: “That quickness of apprehension which New Englanders call smartness, is not so valuable as sensibility to the beautiful…and the world of action and feeling.”

A person is better known by what he finds tasteful, what he is affected by, and what he gets sentimental about - than what he can do or what he possesses. Tuckerman writes: “The tastes, affections, and sentiments, are more absolutely the man than his talent or acquirements.”

Religion knows that the mind is not central to man: “It is remarkable that in the New Testament allusions to the intellect are so rare, while the 'heart' and the 'spirit we are of' are ever appealed to.”

Shakespeare’s genius was due to his ability to feel deeply, not due to reading about feelings: “He might have conned whole libraries on the philosophy of the passions; and never have conceived of jealousy like Othello's, the remorse of Macbeth, or love like that of Juliet.”

When you become passionate, previously invisible facts now become visible: “When the native sentiments are once interested, new facts spring to light.” The “eye of mere curiosity” can’t see certain things, only “veneration” can.

Great art often happens as a consequence of the artist trying to preserve “the glow and freshness” of unexpected beauty.