absence of the many which remain unexpressed; like a bright
window in a distant view, which dazzles and confuses our
sight of its surroundings. There are not words enough in all
Shakespeare to express the merest fraction of a man's
experience in an hour. The speed of the eyesight and the
hearing, and the continual industry of the mind, produce, in
ten minutes, what it would require a laborious volume to
shadow forth by comparisons and roundabout approaches. If
verbal logic were sufficient, life would be as plain sailing
as a piece of Euclid. But, as a matter of fact, we make a
travesty of the simplest process of thought when we put it
into words for the words are all coloured and forsworn, apply
inaccurately, and bring with them, from former uses ideas of
praise and blame that have nothing to do with the question in
hand. So we must always see to it nearly, that we judge by
the realities of life and not by the partial terms that
represent them in man's speech; and at times of choice, we
must leave words upon one side, and act upon those brute
convictions, unexpressed and perhaps inexpressible, which
cannot be flourished in an argument, but which are truly the
sum and fruit of our experience. Words are for
communication, not for judgment. This is what every
thoughtful man knows for himself, for only fools and silly
schoolmasters push definitions over far into the domain of
conduct; and the majority of women, not learned in these
scholastic refinements, live all-of-a-piece and
unconsciously, as a tree grows, without caring to put a name
upon their acts or motives. Hence, a new difficulty for
Whitman's scrupulous and argumentative poet; he must do more
than waken up the sleepers to his words; he must persuade