Then I _could_ stay right in the midst of it?

THE MAN

Yes. And if you were thinking of writing poetry, it might even be better
to stay in the midst of it. Drama, you know ... and it's time for a new
drama.

THE BOY

It isn't that, with me. I can't write.... I had one splendid teacher. He
used to talk about things right in class. He said that most educated
people think that intellect is a matter of making fine distinctions--of
seeing as two separate points what the unintelligent would believe was one
point; but that this idea was _finicky_. He wanted us to see that
intelligence might also be a matter of seeing the connection between two
things so far apart that most people would think they were always
separate. I like that. It made education _mean_ something, because it made
it depend on imagination instead of grubbing. And then he told us about
the history of our subject--grammar. How it began as poetry, when every
word was an original creation; and then became philosophy, as people had
to arrange speech with thought; and then science, with more or less exact,
laws. I could _see_ it--the thing became alive. And he said all knowledge
passed through the same stages, and there isn't anything that can't
eventually be made scientific. That made me think a good deal. I wondered
if somebody couldn't work out a way of preventing anybody from being poor.
It seems so unnecessary, with so much work being done. That's what I want
to do. Thanks to you, I--