Tests
All submit to them where they sit, inner secure,
unapproachable to analysis in the soul,
Not traditions, not the outer authorities are the judges,
They are the judges of outer authorities and of all traditions,
They corroborate as they go only whatever corroborates
themselves, and touches themselves;
For all that, they have it forever in themselves to corroborate
far and near without one exception.
by Walt Whitman
from Whitman Poetry and Prose;
Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1882