There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.

Bennett draws a distinction between mere intellectual assent and fully possessed understanding. A person may “know” something as a proposition—hold it in the mind as a fact—yet it remains external until it is integrated through feeling, experience, and inward response. The quote argues that emotion is not an obstacle to knowledge but a necessary component of it: truths become personally meaningful only when they are lived, suffered, desired, or otherwise felt. By pairing “cognition of the brain” with “experience of the soul,” Bennett frames knowledge as both rational and existential, suggesting that wisdom involves the whole person rather than the detached intellect alone.