est
and set going, to arouse unanswerable questions, and to brace you to meet
them; to bring the materials of poetry, if you will have it so, and leave
you to make the poem; to start trains of thought, and leave you to pursue
the flight alone. Not a thinker, several critics have urged; no, but the
cause of thought in others to an unwonted degree. "Whether you agree with
him or not," says an Australian essayist, "he will sting you into such an
anguish of thought as must in the end be beneficial." It matters little to
him whether or not you agree with him; what is important is, that you
should think the matter out for yourself. He purposely avoids hemming you
in by his conclusions; he would lead you in no direction but your own.
"Once more I charge you give play to your self. I charge you leave all
free, as I have left all free."

No thought, no philosophy, no music, no poetry, in his pages; no, it is
all character, impulse, emotion, suggestion. But the true reader of him
experiences all these things: he finds in his pages, if he knows how to
look for it, a profound metaphysic, a profound ethic, a profound aesthetic;
a theory of art and poetry which is never stated, but only hinted or
suggested, and which is much more robust and vital than what we are used
to; a theory of good and evil; a view of character and conduct; a theory
of the state and of politics, of the relation of the sexes, etc., to give
ample food for thought and speculation. The Hegelian philosophy is in the
"Leaves" as vital as the red corpuscles in the blood, so much is implied
that is not stated, but only suggested, as in Nature herself. The really
vast erudition of the work is adroitly concealed, hidden like its
philosophy, as a tree hides its roots. Readers should not need to be told
that, in the region of art as of religion, mentality is not first, but
spirituality, personality, imagination; and that we do not expect a poet's
thoughts to lie upon his pages like boulders in the field, but rather to
show their presence like elements in the soil.

"Love-buds, put before you and within you, whoever you are,
Buds to be unfolded on the old terms,
If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring
form, color, perfume to you,
If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits,
tall branches and trees."

The early records and sacred books of most peoples contain what is called
the materials