Forty-five years ago in a college English class, the professor was talking about literary genius. To illustrate a point, he told us about the poet John Keats's notion of "negative capability," which Keats had described in a letter to his brothers George and Tom: "at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason …"
A student asked the professor for an example of the opposite of negative capability. The professor answered without hesitation: "Religious beliefs." He smiled. It was 1967, and we all knew that religion was fading away.
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