It is not, therefore, by flashing before a man's eyes the
weapons of dialectic; it is not by induction, deduction, or
construction; it is not by forcing him on from one stage of
reasoning to another, that the man will be effectually
renewed. He cannot be made to believe anything; but he can
be made to see that he has always believed it. And this is
the practical canon. It is when the reader cries, "Oh, I
know!" and is, perhaps, half irritated to see how nearly the
author has forestalled his own thoughts, that he is on the
way to what is called in theology a Saving Faith.

Here we have the key to Whitman's attitude. To give a
certain unity of ideal to the average population of America -
to gather their activities about some conception of humanity
that shall be central and normal, if only for the moment -
the poet must portray that population as it is. Like human
law, human poetry is simply declaratory. If any ideal is
possible, it must be already in the thoughts of the people;
and, by the same reason, in the thoughts of the poet, who is
one of them. And hence Whitman's own formula: "The poet is
individual - he is complete in himself: the others are as
good as he; only he sees it, and they do not." To show them
how good they are, the poet must study his fellow-countrymen
and himself somewhat like a traveller on the hunt for his
book of travels. There is a sense, of course, in which all
true books are books of travel; and all genuine poets must
run their risk of being charged with the traveller's
exaggeration; for to whom are such books more surprising than
to those whose own life is faithfully and smartly pictured?
But this danger is all upon one side; and you may judiciously