d
ideals. Poetry is without doubt a great deal more than this, and only
after a careful analysis of its peculiar language could one distinguish
it from kindred arts; but it will suffice for our purposes to
characterize and not differentiate. Starting from this most general
truth respecting poetry, we may now look for that aspect of it whereby
it may be a witness of philosophical truth.

[Sidenote: Sincerity in Poetry. Whitman.]

Sect. 9. For the answer to our question, we must turn to an examination
of the intellectual elements of poetry. In the first place, the common
demand that the poet shall be accurate in his representations is
suggestive of an indispensable intellectual factor in his genius. As we
have seen, he is not to reproduce nature, but the human appreciative
experience of nature. Nevertheless, he must even here be true to his
object. His art involves his ability to express genuinely and sincerely
what he himself experiences in the presence of nature, or what he can
catch of the inner lives of others by virtue of his intelligent
sympathy. No amount of emotion or even of imagination will profit a
poet, unless he can render a true account of them. To be sure, he need
not define, or even explain; for it is his function to transfer the
immediate qualities of experience: but he must be able to speak the
truth, and, in order to speak it, he must have known it. In all this,
however, we have made no demand that the poet should see more than one
thing at a time. Sincerity of expression does not require what is
distinctly another mode of intelligence, _comprehensiveness of view_. It
is easier, and accordingly more usual, to render an account of the
moments and casual units of experience, than of its totality. There are
poets, little and great, who possess the intellectual virtue of
sincerity, without the intellectual power of synthesis and
reconciliation. This distinction will enable us to separate the
intelligence exhibited in all poetry, from that distinct form of
intelligence exhibited in such poetry as is properly to be called
philosophical.

The "barbarian" in poetry has recently been defined as "the man who
regards his passions as their own excuse for being; who does not
domesticate them either by understanding their cause or by conceiving
their ideal goal."[28:1] One will readily appreciate the application of
this definition to Walt Whitman. What little unity there is in this
poet's world, is the compositio