that they will draw all men sooner or later. For all
men live by truth and stand in need of expression. In
love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in
games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man
is only half himself, the other half is his expression.

Notwithstanding this necessity to be published,
adequate expression is rare. I know not how it is
that we need an interpreter, but the great majority
of men seem to be minors, who have not yet come into
possession of their own, or mutes, who cannot report
the conversation they have had with nature. There is
no man who does not anticipate a supersensual utility
in the sun and stars, earth and water. These stand
and wait to render him a peculiar service. But there
is some obstruction or some excess of phlegm in our
constitution, which does not suffer them to yield the
due effect. Too feeble fall the impressions of nature
on us to make us artists. Every touch should thrill.
Every man should be so much an artist that he could
report in conversation what had befallen him. Yet, in
our experience, the rays or appulses have sufficient
force to arrive at the senses, but not enough to reach
the quick and compel the reproduction of themselves in
speech. The poet is the person in whom these powers are
in balance, the man without impediment, who sees and
handles that which others dream of, traverses the whole
scale of experience, and is representative of man, in
virtue of being the largest power to receive and to
impart.