lime or beautiful or good. Poetry involves, then, the discovery and presentation of human experiences that are satisfying and appealing. It is a language for human pleasures and 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. Poetry. Whitman. 89. For the answer to our question, we must turn to an examination of the intellectual elements Sincerity in 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." One will read 1 1 George Santayana, in his Poetry and Religion, p. 176. ily appreciate the application of this definition to Walt Whitman. What little unity there is in this poet's world, is the composition of a purely sensuous experience, "The earth expending right hand and left hand, The picture alive, every part in its best light, The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted." In many passages Whitman manifests a marvellous ability to discover and communicate a fresh gladness about the commonest experiences. We cannot but rejoice with him in all sights and sounds. But though we cannot deny him truth, his truth is honesty and not understanding. The experiences in which he discovers so much worth, are random and capricious, and do not constitute a universe. To the solution of ultimate questions he contributes a sense of mystery, and the conviction That you are here that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse." His world is justly described by the writer just quoted as "a phantasmagoria of continuous visions, vivid, impressive, but monotonous and hard to distinguish in memory, like the waves of the sea or the decorations of some barbarous temple, sublime only by the infinite aggregation of parts." As is Walt Whitman, so are many poets greater and less. Some who have seen the world-view, exhibit the same particularism in their lyric moods; although, generally speaking, a poet who once has comprehended the world, will see the parts of it in the light of that wisdom. But Walt Whitman is peculiarly representative of the poetry that can be true, without being wise in the manner that we shall come shortly to understand as the manner of philosophy. He is as desultory in his poet raptures as is the common man when he lives in his immediate experiences. The truth won by each is the clear vision of one thing, or of a limited collection of things, and not the broad inclusive vision of all things. 10. The transition from Whitman to Shakespeare may seem somewhat abrupt, but the very differences between these poets serve Knowledge in to mark out an interesting affinity. Constructive Poetry. Shakespeare. Neither has put any unitary construction upon human life and its environment. Neither, as poet, is the witness of any world-view; which will mean for us that neither is a philos 'Santayana: op. cit., p. 180. opher-poet. As respects Shakespeare, this is a hard saying. We are accustomed to the critical judgment that finds in the Shakespearian dramas an apprehension of the universal in human life. But though this judgment is true, it is by no means conclusive as respects Shakespeare's relation to the philosophical type of thought. For there can be universality without philosophy. Thus, to know the groups and the marks of the vertebrates is to know a truth which possesses generality, in contradistinction to the particularism of Whitman's poetic consciousness. Even so to know well the groups and marks of human character, vertebrate and invertebrate, is to know that of which the average man, in his hand to hand struggle with life, is ignorant. Such a wisdom Shakespeare possessed to a unique degree, and it enabled him to reconstruct human life. He did not merely perceive human states and motives, but he understood human nature so well that he could create consistent men and women. Moreover, Shakespeare's knowledge was not only thus universal in being a knowledge of general groups and laws, but also in respect of its extensity. His understanding was as rich as it was acute. It is true, then, that Shakespeare read human life as an open book, |