to it hitherto.  More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us.  Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry.  Science, I say, will appear incomplete without it.  For finely and truly does Wordsworth call poetry “the impassioned expression which is in a countenance of all science"[64] and what is a countenance without its expression?  Again, Wordsworth finely and truly calls poetry “the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge":[64] our religion, parading evidences such as those on which the popular mind relies now; our philosophy, pluming itself on its reasonings about causation and finite and infinite being; what are they but the shadows and dreams and false shows of knowledge?  The day will come when we shall wonder at ourselves for having trusted to them, for having taken them seriously; and the more we perceive their hollowness, the more we shall prize “the breath and finer spirit of knowledge” offered to us by poetry.

But if we conceive thus highly of the destinies of poetry, we must also set our standard for poetry high, since poetry, to be capable of fulfilling such high destinies, must be poetry of a high order of excellence.  We must accustom ourselves to a high standard and to a strict judgment.  Sainte-Beuve relates that Napoleon one day said, when somebody was spoken of in his presence as a charlatan:  “Charlatan as much as you please; but where is there not charlatanism?”—­“Yes,” answers Sainte-Beuve,[65] “in politics, in the art of governing mankind, that is perhaps true.  But in the order of thought, in art, the glory, the eternal honor is that charlatanism shall find no entrance; herein lies the inviolableness of that noble portion of man’s being.”  It is admirably said, and let us hold fast to it.  In poetry, which is thought and art in one, it is the glory, the eternal honor, that charlatanism shall find no entrance; that this noble sphere be kept inviolate and inviolable.  Charlatanism is for confusing or obliterating the distinctions between excellent and inferior, sound and unsound or only half-sound, true and untrue or only half-true.  It is charlatanism, conscious or unconscious, whenever we confuse or obliterate these.  And in poetry, more than anywhere else, it is unpermissible to confuse or obliterate them.  For in poetry the distinction between excellent and inferior, sound and unsound or only half-sound, true and untrue or only half-true, is of paramount importance.  It is of paramount importance because of the high destinies of poetry.  In poetry, as a criticism of life[66] under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty, the spirit of our race will find, we have said, as time goes on and as other helps fail, its consolation and stay.  But the consolation and stay will be of power in proportion to the power of the criticism of life.  And the criticism of life will be of power in proportion as the poetry conveying it is excellent rather than inferior, sound rather than unsound or half-sound, true rather than untrue or half-true.