# Interpret this Walt Whitman excerpt



## brockomundo (May 31, 2007)

Can someone please (translate) this from Whitman's _Song of Myself:_


"You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self."


Any help would be great. Thanks.


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## AlexanderCrane (May 31, 2007)

The memory contains information which is used to filter input brought in by the body/senses.  You build memories for yourself and learn things from others that your brain used to generate perspectives on the world.  You may orient yourself with a glass half empty filter or the other way around.  

The information that lays on the surface of your working memory is most urgently you or what you define as your personality.  But if your interests have the memories, desires, and intentions of other imposed over it then you are acting on behalf of their personality/past.

If you brain filters the world based on pre filtered information it isn't first hand account.  He is saying be fully invested in the moment, where understanding is a living entity, your self.


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## Jolly McJollyson (May 31, 2007)

brockomundo said:
			
		

> Can someone please (translate) this from Whitman's _Song of Myself:_
> 
> 
> "You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
> ...


It's about existence as perception, and intellectuality as introspective.


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## ProudestMonkey (Jun 2, 2007)

Funny: Google again answers a question more fully than ever imagined...

http://whitmanarchive.unl.edu/criticism/current/encyclopedia/entry_77


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## Patrick Beverley (Jul 11, 2007)

ProudestMonkey said:


> Funny: Google again answers a question more fully than ever imagined...
> 
> Song of Myself [1855]


That page doesn't mention the quoted extract anywhere.


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## WordWeaver (Jul 12, 2007)

In a nutshell: think for yourself.


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