Poetic Knowledge - the rest of ch 2

I finally finished ch 2 of Poetic Knowledge, although I'm not sure I understood it fully, and I'm not sure I'm any better off for the few things I did understnd.

Taylor emphasizes the ability of "estimation," which is the innate ability of knowing what's normal and good, and being aware that something isn't right without actually going step by step through a rationlization process. It's talking with someone and sensing that the person isn't quite right. It's like a sixth sense. Maybe it includes social cues? Little Red Riding Hood's power of estimation failed her when she met the wolf who asked her where she was going, and she wasn't alarmed.

He gives a definition of "fear" as "the consciousness of ignorance in the face of some reality."

Poetic knowledge is like the power of estimation: it's the ability to recognize and discern from sensory input without going through a conscious thought process - like the guide Charlotte Mason wrote about who saw vultures circling overhead and knew there was a lion nearby.

There are two kinds of will. There's the passive kind that recognizes instinctively and appreciates when it comes across something good - as if there's something placed inside us that knows good/beauty from bad/vulgar. And there's the active will that chooses between one action and another - this is the will that CM spoke of. The two wills are different in that one is a will of being, and the other is a will of doing. The passive will recognizes good instinctively and loves it, and desires it, but not in a conscious, rational, deductive way.

And there's this concise definition of poetic knowledge: "poetic experience where all the knowing powers are functioning prerationally with reality."