WHITMAN'S IDEAL DEMOCRACY 
 AND OTHER WRITINGS
 
 3^1)ttman's %t*t&l Betnocracp 
 
 AJsFD OTHER WRITINGS 
 BY HELENA BORN 
 
 f ' 
 
 WITH A BIOGRAPHY BY 
 THE EDITOR, HELEN TUFTS 
 
 BOSTON, MASS. 
 
 PRINTED AT THE EVERETT PRESS 
 MAY n,
 
 Edition limited to 500 copies, of which this copy 
 is No.../..
 
 Give all to love ; 
 
 Obey thy heart ; 
 
 Friends, kindred, days, 
 
 Estate, good-fame, 
 
 Plans, credit, and the Muse, 
 
 Nothing refuse. 
 
 " y T is a brave master ; 
 Let it have scope : 
 Follow it utterly, 
 Hope beyond hope : 
 High and more high 
 It dives into noon, 
 With wing unspent, 
 Untold intent : 
 But it is a god, 
 Knows its own path 
 And the outlets of the sky. 
 
 " It was never for the mean ; 
 It requireth courage stout. 
 Souls above doubt, 
 Valor unbending, 
 It will reward, 
 They shall return 
 More than they were, 
 And ever ascending." 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
 
 of Contents 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION . . J . . . xi 
 
 WELCOME . . . . . * . . . i 
 
 GREETING . . . . . ... . . 2 
 
 WHITMAN'S IDEAL DEMOCRACY ...... 3 
 
 THOREAU'S JOY IN NATURE ...... 20 
 
 PoETSv OF REVOLT : SHELLEY, WHITMAN, CARPENTER . 31 
 
 WHITMAN'S ALTRUISM . . . . . . . 55 
 
 INDIVIDUALISM VERSUS ORGANIZATION ..... 62 
 
 INGENUITIES OF ECONOMIC ARGUMENT .... 66 
 
 THE LAST STAND AGAINST DEMOCRACY IN SEX . . . 73 
 
 INEQUALITY IN DIVORCE ....... 78 
 
 MARRIAGE SAFEGUARDS ....... 84
 
 3]ntrolwctfon 
 
 HELENA BORN'S childhood was happy and uneventful. She was 
 born in a Devonshire village May 1 1, 1860. An only child, she 
 attended the day-school at Hatherleigh, receiving later the groundwork 
 of a sound education in an academy at Taunton. She excelled in her 
 studies, evinced a taste for mathematics, and looked longingly toward a 
 college training. Though this ambition was never realized, the wide 
 world became her university, wherein she was ever graduating from en- 
 deavor to achievement. 
 
 When her family moved to Bristol she advanced step by step into 
 the broader currents of thought, but found herself struggling for expres- 
 sion against a well-nigh insuperable diffidence that was never entirely 
 overcome, though in later years it became one of her sweetest and most 
 lovable qualities. In Bristol Helena naturally entered the coterie of men 
 and women who in the metropolis of the west of England eagerly fol- 
 lowed the intellectual and public interests of the day. She became an 
 active worker in the Bristol Women's Liberal Association, seeking free- 
 dom and equality for women through suffrage, civic reform, and polit- 
 ical education, and for several years was a member of the Executive 
 Committee of the Association. 
 
 A letter from an early friend affords a glimpse of Helena Born at this 
 period. She writes : 
 
 " When we first met, Helena had just recently lost her mother, who 
 had been like a sister to her. They had been perfect companions, and 
 she felt her mother's death terribly. Being now her father's house- 
 keeper, domestic duties took up a large part of her time. She often 
 came home with me from rehearsals, and sometimes engaged in earnest 
 conversation with my father on social and political topics. At that time 
 she certainly had ideas of her own, expressing them in a rapid, nervous
 
 Biographical ^Introduction 
 
 manner. After a vigorous argument with father she would become silent, 
 though not convinced by him, and would then end up with a laugh. 
 
 "Helena loved music, played the piano, and sang in the choir of 
 the Oakfield Road Unitarian Church in Bristol, of which Mr. Har- 
 greeves was pastor. She liked his preaching, which was of the broadest, 
 but admired even more that of Stopford Brooke, who occupied the pul- 
 pit there for a short time. 
 
 "We attended a debating society attached to the church, and she 
 would often force herself to rise and speak, if only a few words. Such 
 was her extreme diffidence that I alone knew what the effort cost her. 
 I remember how she enjoyed a whole day we spent together in the 
 country. We walked miles and miles, and ate our lunch sitting up on a 
 haymow. We sometimes went to dances together, and once went up 
 to London to visit the Exhibition. She had many interests outside her 
 home, devoting what time she could to them. Her people disapproved 
 of her course in taking up public questions, which was a great trial to 
 her, but did not affect her convictions or what she believed to be her 
 duty." 
 
 Her intellectual interests, as represented by her reading, embraced a 
 wide field. At sixteen she was already familiar with many popularly 
 written works of science, besides the standard English authors. In suc- 
 ceeding years her studies included the works of Darwin, Spencer, 
 Huxley, and Haeckel. Economics she pursued through Bastiat and 
 John Stuart Mill; while her theological tendencies are indicated by her 
 reading of Ingersoll's orations, the writings of Bradlaugh, Thomas 
 Paine, and Leslie Stephen. In literature her tastes led her to Brown- 
 ing, Lowell, George Eliot, Thackeray, Emerson, not to mention Swin- 
 burne, Shelley, Keats, and Lytton. Besides which she followed closely 
 the leading monthly magazines and quarterly reviews. It was not till 
 she was about twenty-eight years old that Whitman's "Leaves of 
 Grass" came into her hands and, like Thoreau's writings, which 
 through " Walden " she first knew a year afterwards, exerted a lasting
 
 Biographical 31ntroOuction X m 
 
 influence on her mind. About the same time she read the works of the 
 engraver-poet William Blake, of Walter Pater, and the dramas of Ibsen. 
 Edward Carpenter's "Towards Democracy" produced an unfading 
 impression and always remained an intimate companion. She also read 
 the social and economic writings of John Ruskin, besides most of the 
 current works on socialism and kindred subjects. 
 
 Among Helena's associates in the Liberal Association was a woman 
 about her own age, with whom an important period of her life became 
 identified. No account of Helena Born would be complete without 
 mention of Miriam Daniell. It was under her influence that Helena's 
 energies burst into that flame of social consciousness that burned bright 
 and pure to the end. To this beautiful, gifted woman she became 
 united in ties of closest sympathy and comradeship. 
 
 Miriam was an artist, a poet, and a socialist. Her studies in eco- 
 nomics, her intimate knowledge of the lives of the working people, and 
 her deep sympathy with them in their efforts to improve their lot led 
 naturally to her embracing the socialist gospel, then spreading amongst 
 the advanced guard of the labor movement. In the course of frequent 
 walks into the country in all weathers Miriam imparted to Helena her 
 own enthusiasm. They were kindred souls, both richly endowed with 
 the artistic temperament, and sought the natural beauties of field and 
 flower, rain and sunshine, and in them found joy and inspiration. 
 Thus could they comprehend the message of Thoreau and Whitman, 
 whom they now read together, dreaming of the ideal fellowship. 
 
 Not only was Miriam herself an artist of no mean ability, but she 
 had drawn within her circle gifted men and women, artists, musicians, 
 those who cherished ideals, and to this atmosphere she introduced her 
 dear friend. Like Miriam, Helena resided in Clifton, the fashionable 
 suburb of Bristol. But both women held lightly their position among 
 the privileged. Luxuries and all the fine things that wealth can secure 
 for those who seek only comfort and pleasure were to them as dross. 
 They held that social regeneration would come only through the sim-
 
 Biographical 3f]ntroDuctton 
 
 plification of life. The useless and often baneful luxuries enjoyed by 
 one class had their obverse in the want of even the simple necessaries 
 of healthy existence from which another class suffered. Simplicity in 
 dress, in house-furnishings, in tastes and habits, was therefore a cardinal 
 tenet of their faith. It was furthermore in harmony with their artistic 
 conceptions. As carried out by them there was beauty in simplicity, 
 and it was a sound doctrine also from the point of personal hygiene. 
 Applying it thus, they became vegetarians, for which course they ad- 
 duced other reasons, ethical and humanitarian; so it happened that dur- 
 ing all the years that followed both were earnest and consistent vege- 
 tarians. 
 
 But perhaps the chief consideration which led them to emphasize 
 simplicity of life and carry it out in every direction was, as has been 
 hinted, their socialistic view that a large part of the world's work was 
 useless. . 
 
 In ministering to artificial tastes, silly fashions, and unsocial customs, 
 the labor of a considerable portion of the producing classes was utterly 
 wasted; hence the producers themselves were exhausting their energies 
 to supply the multitudinous demands of the idle rich, while unable to 
 secure for themselves a sufficiency of wholesome sustenance. 
 
 It became the duty, therefore, of every one impressed with these views 
 to make personal and united effort toward better economic conditions. 
 It was not merely by theorizing, or by preaching, that these young 
 women endeavored to spread the gospel of simplicity and naturalness in 
 the daily life, but by personal example, the actual living of their ideal. 
 This is the key-note of the later development of Helena Bern's life. 
 
 Opportunity soon came to test their principles, as well as their fitness 
 for the work that lay before them. First of all, a flood had visited the 
 low-lying district of Bristol, where lived the very poor, and down among 
 these went Miriam and Helena as the water receded, and here, in their 
 endeavors to relieve the acute suffering, they learned how to gain the 
 confidence of the humbler population. Not in the guise of charity, but
 
 Biographical ^Introduction 
 
 as co-workers, anxious to be of service, they sought to win the hearts of 
 their less fortunate brothers and sisters. 
 
 Hard upon the flood came the awakening of the working people 
 throughout the land, first manifested in the great London-' Dock Strike 
 of 1889. The spirit of revolt was in the air, and penetrated to the re- 
 motest parts of England. Bristol soon became a center of agitation, and 
 here was formed a branch of the Gas Workers' and General Laborers' 
 Union, which was then uniting unskilled and hitherto unorganized labor 
 in all parts of the country. Of the Bristol branch Helena Born became 
 secretary and Miriam Daniell treasurer, both honorary offices. It was 
 characteristic of the new labor movement that it absorbed the most ear- 
 nest and energetic leaders in the socialist ranks. To the work of organi- 
 zation they brought a potent sense of the dignity no less than the solidarity 
 of labor. They infused the movement with an ethical ideal having the 
 compelling force of a religious conviction. 
 
 Under such influences the two friends entered upon the arduous task 
 of securing, through agitation and organization, shorter hours, higher 
 wages, and more equitable conditions for laborers of both sexes. Nor 
 were their efforts unavailing. It was a period of commercial prosperity, 
 and in several industries the demands of the wage-earners were granted. 
 But in many cases strikes appeared to be the only means to gain con- 
 cessions; and in every industrial center throughout Great Britain strikes 
 became the order of the day. Not that the revolt was due to the activity 
 of the agitators, who were themselves merely embodiments of the pre- 
 vailing spirit of unrest, but it arose spontaneously amongst the toilers 
 seeking a modicum of justice. 
 
 Miriam and Helena became active leaders in the movement in Bristol. 
 They seemed to be needed everywhere at once. Every class of labor 
 desiring to organize, every new strike, demanded their presence. As 
 officers of the central council they were called upon to address meetings, 
 lead parades, collect funds, distribute relief, encourage the timid, and 
 restrain the violent during a period of immense popular excitement.
 
 Biographical 31ntroDuction 
 
 Through their incessant efforts funds were gathered from all parts of the 
 country in aid of the strike of the Bristol cotton operatives. Night upon 
 night, after days of unremitting activity, into the small hours they sat, 
 counting the' pennies taken up at local meetings and strike parades, and 
 planning the judicious disbursement of the money among the needy 
 strikers. 
 
 Sometime before this our friends had gone forth from their drawing- 
 rooms and taken a small house in the heart of the working-class district. 
 Here, while gaining the confidence and respect of the people, they set 
 an example of practical simplicity in household matters, showing aesthetic 
 possibilities in color and ingenious and artistic adaptation which were a 
 revelation to their neighbors. With their own hands they tinted the 
 walls of their rooms and waxed the uncarpeted floors, while from the 
 most commonplace materials they improvised many articles of furniture 
 and decoration, combining both beauty and utility. They had already 
 joined the little socialist group of five or six enthusiasts who had under- 
 taken to convert to their ideas the whole of Bristol. One of the original 
 members, who then resided near the house occupied by Miriam and 
 Helena, writes, "There was never such an institution as the Bristol 
 Socialist Society. Whitman sings beautifully of loving comrades, but his 
 verses do not begin to touch upon the real delight of the actual bliss of 
 comradeship in practice." 
 
 Around the two devoted women in good sooth centered the spirit of 
 loving comrades. Their home became a sort of headquarters of the social- 
 ist and labor movements of the day. From a letter written by Helena in 
 the spring of 1890 to a cousin in rural Devon we catch a breath of the 
 atmosphere in which the comrades then lived: 
 
 9 LOUISA STREET, ST. PHILIP'S, BRISTOL, 
 
 SATURDAY, NOON. 
 
 Dearie : I have not heard from you since I last wrote, and my heart often 
 longs for you that I might hold your hand in mine and give myself to you as 
 I would give myself to all. Happiness only comes to us, dear, when we want
 
 UBiograpljical IfJntroDuctton 
 
 nothing for ourselves, and when our lives are in accord with the Great Spirit 
 of Love which animates the universe. I hope you will like the little book, 
 with its simple brown cover which pleases me much. The author [Edward 
 Carpenter] will be in Bristol to-day to lecture to-morrow and Monday, and 
 we expect he will be coming to visit us. I have made the floor of my room 
 shine with extra brightness this morning, in anticipation, with aid of a little 
 beeswax, "turps," and "elbow-grease." For the next few hours I shall be 
 discreetly inhospitable, in view of the muddy pavements outside. 
 
 Work keeps just as plenty as ever. We had three days at Christinas for 
 long country walks, which we much enjoyed, in spite of the ever-present mud; 
 and now we are busy organizing the tailoresses, and have two or three com- 
 mittees and other meetings each evening. The work is pretty hard and involves 
 considerable mental strain, but it has many compensations. It helps one 
 greatly to be associated with men who really love, who give themselves with 
 so much unselfishness to the cause which they believe in, and are true to their 
 principles in the face of every danger. We have many friends. One shoe- 
 maker, for instance, very poor, who has a sick wife and children, begged to 
 be allowed to make our boots for nothing. Of course we shall not avail our- 
 selves. Another man who has been out of work for some time on account of 
 the part he has taken in the movement sent us a fine hamper of vegetables for 
 Christmas. 
 
 WEDNESDAY, MIDNIGHT. This afternoon A. W., one of my Clifton 
 friends, came to tea with me, and we had a pleasant talk together. To- 
 morrow morning I shall be in the kitchen at White Ladies Road [her father's 
 home in Clifton] making the weekly pies and cakes. . . . 
 
 I think, dear child, I have written as much as you will care to read this 
 time. Yours ever, LENA 
 
 Amongst their conventional friends the attitude of Miriam and Helena 
 in allying themselves so unmistakably with the laboring folk brought 
 forth much criticism and remonstrance. By Helena this disapproval of 
 her course by old and respected friends was sorely felt, but she never 
 flinched from the path that duty marked out for her. The situation at 
 this period is elucidated in a forcible defence of her position written by 
 Helena to one of her friends of the Women's Liberal Association:
 
 ^ntroUuction 
 
 " I have had ample opportunity of observing the attitude of the social- 
 ist leaders in Bristol, and I have no hesitation in saying that their antag- 
 onism is not directed toward individuals of the capitalist or any other 
 class, but against the present competitive system. They are men who 
 sacrifice cheerfully and persistently for ideals which few would deny to 
 be noble. . . . 
 
 "Equality and freedom for women is one phase only of an ideal of 
 universal freedom and equality. I have not taken up a new position with- 
 out carefully thinking it out. If at any time I see beyond, I shall be pre- 
 pared to abandon it. 
 
 "The principles of socialism, as I understand them, seem to me 
 economically incontrovertible, and to comprise spiritual ideals of unity 
 and brotherhood which alone can transmute the materialism of our time. 
 And I feel that the only effectual way to convince others of the truth of 
 one's principles, and to bring about the new time, is by living them. . . . 
 
 "It is uphill work, but we cannot isolate ourselves from the mass. 
 Society may be regarded as an organism, pain or disease in any part of 
 which injures every individual member. The soul that allows its secret 
 impulses to be overruled and follows not its highest must inevitably be- 
 come perverted. I hold that no efforts made in the spirit of love can be 
 entirely unavailing, and that we may thus deliver the truth that is in us 
 without any afterthought of results. To the loyal there is a joy, as Whit- 
 man says, in * being tossed in the brave turmoil of these times.' 
 
 " Our union is one of the few unions initiated by men which accords 
 women full representation on its councils, and has included among its 
 objects the obtaining, wherever possible, the same wages for women 
 doing the same work as men. You know I am in favor of men and women 
 working hand in hand whenever practicable, instead of in separate organ- 
 izations, which tend to favor an unnatural antagonism." 
 
 Though favoring strikes only as a last resort, Helena and her com- 
 rades found themselves the active leaders of the Bristol cotton operatives, 
 whom they had organized, in a fight for better wages, which succeeded
 
 Biographical 3flntroDuctton 
 
 after a long and desperate struggle. Into these few months were crowded 
 so much strenuous effort and exhausting labor that Helena, sustained 
 throughout by an exalted enthusiasm, had neither time nor inclination to 
 keep a record of events, and could never in later years recall the details 
 of her life at this period, so as to furnish a consecutive story. After the 
 cotton workers' strike was won she conceived the idea of organizing the 
 ill-paid seamstresses who worked in their homes scattered over the country 
 around Bristol. These women were perhaps the most unfortunate victims 
 of commercialism to be found in the ranks of the workers. For a miser- 
 able pittance they slaved all day and far into the night. Their very pov- 
 erty and helplessness, while appealing with added urgency to Helena's 
 sympathies, rendered her task not only more difficult, but less likely to 
 prove a success. Week after week she labored hopefully in the good cause. 
 From house to house she passed, striving to arouse interest in the union. 
 It was no uncommon day's work for her to tramp thirty miles, scouring 
 the country on her self-imposed mission. An organization was effected, 
 but the nature of the membership, made up of women who carried home 
 their work, hence remaining always strangers to one another, proved an 
 obstacle so serious that little seems then to have been accomplished. It 
 was pioneer work, and the subsequent success of women's labor unions, 
 even in sweated industries, justified the effort. 
 
 If this phase of Helena's life was one of self-denial and arduous labor, 
 it was alsoja time of self-realization and much happiness. There was an 
 inspiration in the "real delight of comradeship" whose memory she 
 ever after cherished. Though class feeling then as now was dominant in 
 England, among the socialist comrades it had no place. The intimate 
 associates of Miriam and Helena were simple, earnest, and equally de- 
 voted laboring men and women. Small wonder that the enthusiasm gen- 
 erated in such an atmosphere should burn undimmed throughout a life- 
 time. Certain it is that after long years of separation the endearing per- 
 sonalities of these kindly spirits remained in Helena's mind fresh and vivid. 
 
 A change was now at hand, which meant the sundering of old relt-
 
 Biographical 3f]ntroDuction 
 
 tionships, leaving familiar associations, and taking a decisive plunge into 
 new and untried paths. After a year of activity in the labor movements 
 during which the two friends, both in their public work and their do- 
 mestic life, were inseparable companions, Miriam determined to leave 
 England. An unhappy marriage of many years before doubtless precip- 
 itated this decision. When Miriam asked her dearest friend to accom- 
 pany her to America Helena did not hesitate over her course. Both had 
 dreamed of a pilgrimage to the land of Emerson and Thoreau and Whit- 
 man. Their opportunity to realize the dream had come, and the two 
 women set forth in the autumn of 1890 for Boston. 
 
 Helena's devotion to her friend is aptly pictured by a comrade who 
 was closely associated with them during all that stormy period in Bristol: 
 
 " Helena was always the same quiet, thoughtful person, never display- 
 ing much outward enthusiasm, but never idle. Miriam was a fiery en- 
 thusiast, whose vital forces could not be suppressed. Though true as steel 
 to the cause, she had a tendency to drift off into new and untried projects. 
 She feared nothing. 
 
 " To such a spirit Helena, cool, balanced, self-controlled, proved an 
 invaluable companion. No less self-sacrificing than Miriam, her ideal, 
 were equally lofty, while her unobtrusive counsel and loving rebukes, dif- 
 fidently conveyed, as if in fun, were the modulating influence ever pres- 
 ent upon the high-strung, impetuous soul of her friend. 
 
 " The regard which Miriam excited in those who came in close con- 
 tact with her bordered upon reverence. Our Bristol socialists 'all felt that 
 kind of influence, and no amount of kicking over the conventional traces 
 seemed to affect our regard for her, except to increase it. As some said, 
 her heart was as big as her body, and that heart always aflame with irre- 
 sistible love. To Helena's regard for her there was an added devotion 
 which it was grand to know. If we ever meet Miriam in the spiritual 
 world she will have her arms around Helena's neck and declare that she 
 was the dearest friend, the most helpful companion, the one who under- 
 stood her best and Helena will not believe it."
 
 Long before they left Bristol the gulf between them and the circles 
 in which they once moved had grown so wide that no attempt was 
 made to bridge it. Though many of their former associates professed 
 an interest in social reform, the emancipation of women, and kindred 
 ideas, none of them stood ready to abandon the privileges of their com- 
 fortable security for the struggle which involved self-support no less 
 than the uplifting of the mass. Miriam and Helena were criticised, 
 censured, and condemned for adopting the extreme course to which 
 they were impelled by their convictions. While some of their whilom 
 friends mildly disapproved, others completely turned their backs on the 
 two brave women. "Slumming" as a novel diversion, it is true, occa- 
 sionally becomes the fashion; but to take up one's abode deliberately 
 amid ignorance and want, to fraternize with strikers, above all, by 
 socialistic agitation to set class against class is conduct manifestly out of 
 harmony with the conventional proprieties, and might well shock the 
 finer sensibilities of good society. 
 
 The musical, artistic, and literary circles, which the two comrades 
 so much enjoyed, knew them no more. Satisfied with their new friends 
 amongst the humble toilers, they yet yearned for the better time when 
 it would no longer be deemed a social crime to live in accordance with 
 one's highest aspirations. In leaving England, therefore, it was not 
 without mingled feelings of uncertainty, regret, and hope that they finally 
 broke with old ties and faced a new and unknown world of strangers. 
 
 They first took up their abode in Cambridge. The town of Concord 
 attracted them, rather for its literary than for its historic associations. 
 Many a time they walked together from Cambridge to Walden Pond, 
 seldom omitting a hasty plunge in its placid waters, lingering over land- 
 marks grown familiar to them through Thoreau. Among their earliest 
 sources of delight in the new land were the beautiful and gorgeous colors 
 of the autumn foliage. In England they had never seen such wealth of 
 arboreal color. But it was while still in England that the artist soul of 
 Miriam had awakened in Helena that appreciation of the aesthetic which
 
 Biographical ^Introduction 
 
 grew to be a passion. Color, to whose possibilities most of us are in- 
 different, was to them a veritable religion. They revelled in it. Har- 
 mony of color symbolized harmony of life. It became an expression of 
 personality. As Helena once expressed it: " It is to be out in the fields 
 and recognize your friend, no matter how far off, by the coloring of 
 dress which means that one alone." 
 
 There was, however, an unassthetic, practical side to life that even 
 such idealists as Helena and Miriam could not ignore. A fundamental 
 canon of their creed was that every individual should do some kind of 
 useful work. To live idly upon an unearned income, in their eyes, 
 meant living as social parasites upon others. A word from Helena at 
 this time and she would have been provided with sufficient means to 
 supply her needs; but she was determined no longer to avail herself of 
 her material advantages. Cast thus by choice upon her own resources, 
 she must straightway learn a trade to live by, this provision in the 
 scheme of her early education having been deemed superfluous. So 
 shortly after her arrival in America we find her at work in a Boston 
 printing-office. Here she served three months gratis in order to learn 
 typesetting. The probation was not wasted, for she next appears at the 
 case on a Waltham newspaper, where she remained several months, 
 earning seven or eight dollars a week, while daily going to and fro be- 
 tween Waltham and Cambridge. 
 
 In a letter to her cousin in Devonshire written during her apprentice- 
 ship, she says: 
 
 " I am studying hard now in order to make myself as useful a mem- 
 ber of society as I can. I have commenced to learn a trade so as to 
 have one thing that I know thoroughly to fall back upon. ... I start 
 from home at 7 A.M. daily, and arrive home at the same hour in the 
 evening. I have a three and one-half mile walk each way, passing over 
 the beautiful Charles River, and across the Common, by the lake; but 
 I take an electric car home three evenings during the week, in order to 
 be in time for the classes I am attending at the High School in Cam-
 
 ^Introduction 
 
 bridge. I am taking bookkeeping and advanced French, and find them 
 very pleasant. My cooking, sewing, scrubbing, correspondence, etc., 
 I get in when I can at odd times, and so I have, as you may suppose, 
 to cut my garments according to my cloth. . . . But if one is really to 
 accomplish anything in one's life-work the first lesson to be learnt is to 
 give up some pleasures and concentrate one's energies. I like my work 
 very well, and have got on well thus far. ... It docs not so much 
 matter what the work is as the spirit in which it is done. If done with 
 a view to helping others, and not from selfish ends merely, then will it 
 be blessed. We are well and comfortable in our quiet, restful home. 
 There is a great deal to see and to be learnt. Went to the pine woods 
 on our last holiday and enjoyed the sweet country and gorgeous autumn 
 leaves." 
 
 In another to the same friend a month later, she writes: 
 " I trust that you are having a happy life, dear child, happy in lov- 
 ing and helping others, without wanting anything for self, walking 
 through the world with calm, undisturbed soul, loving all, as Christ 
 loved, and excluding none. It is not thus that the world loves, hence 
 the feverish unrest, the desire to accumulate material wealth; but to 
 such the pure joys of the spirit, which may be ours if we will, come 
 not. Happiness depends on ourselves and the life within, not on ex- 
 ternal circumstances; and the first essential is to obtain complete self- 
 control. I am trying hard myself, and you can help me if you will by 
 being true to what seems to you highest." 
 
 Miriam, meanwhile, in her efforts to make the pot boil was confined 
 to decorative painting, which, with her inexperience in finding a market, 
 she found insuperably hard to transmute into coin. Besides she felt it 
 incumbent on her to remain at home to care for her child, Sunrise. 
 Save for the Walden pilgrimages afoot, numerous tramps into the woods 
 of Arlington, visits to the Boston Art Museum, and attendance at lec- 
 tures open to the public at Harvard, the first year of their life in Cam- 
 bridge was outwardly uneventful. After the turmoil, strife, and pub-
 
 Biographical Introduction 
 
 licity they had passed through in England they were singularly retiring 
 now and held aloof from all but a few whom kindred interests and a 
 warm appreciation of Miriam's intellectual brilliancy had brought 
 within their circle. 
 
 At her daily avocation Helena made steady progress, becoming so 
 skilful at the case that she gave up her first position on the Waltham 
 paper for a place in a Boston office, later obtaining a more desirable 
 situation near her home in Cambridge. Miriam utilized her spare mo- 
 ments to turn off a prodigious amount and variety of literary product, 
 poems, sketches, short stories, essays, most of which were dominated 
 by radical tendencies too decided to make acceptable copy for the 
 average editor. Many of these little gems, satirical, scathing, pathetic, 
 humorous, by turns, found their way during 189293 into such non- 
 commercial publications as Liberty and Twentieth Century. About the 
 beginning of 1892 Helena visited her friends in England, while Miriam 
 left Cambridge for New York, where, in the office of Liberty, she too 
 learned typesetting. 
 
 For Helena the vacation of nearly a year that she now enjoyed be- 
 came a fruitful season both in opportunities for intellectual growth and 
 the making of new and valiant friends. After spending some time with 
 her father in Bristol and renewing her associations with old comrades, 
 she went to Edinburgh in order to attend the noted Summer School 
 connected with the University. Here she became a close student of 
 Prof. Patrick Geddes's courses in biology and sociology, taking copious 
 notes of the twenty-three lectures devoted to each subject, the results 
 of which are still preserved in Helena's characteristic chirography in a 
 little book which is a monument of compactness as well as a mine of 
 instruction. But the study of sociology and its biological basis sufficed 
 not to satisfy her thirst for knowledge, for she at the same time took 
 the course in zoology under Prof. J. Arthur Thomson, besides another 
 in botany. 
 
 Professor Geddes's keen insight and human sympathy delighted her
 
 Biographical Introduction 
 
 no less than his erudition in dealing with the social and economic prob- 
 lems which to her were of more moment than all merely scientific and 
 intellectual interests. In a word, this summer sojourn in the beautiful 
 and historic Scottish capital, associated with congenial and earnest men 
 and women, formed a memorable and happy experience in her life. 
 
 When Helena rejoined Miriam in New York she found her in the 
 midst of the cholera scare, ready to rush back to Cambridge. So thither 
 they returned. It would perhaps be putting the situation too strongly to 
 say that Helena in all her plans was dominated by the forceful and mag- 
 netic personality of Miriam, but at least it is certain that her love for 
 Miriam and the child, Sunrise, was a tie that outweighed every other 
 consideration. Personal comfort and self-interest were sacrificed without 
 stint in their behalf. With Miriam's intense mother-love went a tend- 
 ency to conjure up imaginary dangers. Her mind was in constant ter- 
 ror lest some calamity should befall the child. It needed all Helena's 
 practical good sense to mollify Miriam's fears and restrain her ill-judged 
 impetuosity. It was the mother's custom to wash daily every garment 
 of the Jasgar woolenwear that Sunrise wore. She likewise insisted that 
 the floors of their rooms, which were uncarpeted, must be scrubbed on 
 hands and knees every morning. In compliance with this desire Helena 
 often performed the task before going to her daily work; and so exacting 
 was the toil which, in carrying out her domestic routine, occupied 
 Miriam, that Helena even found it necessary to prepare her own meals 
 after she returned in the evening. It is almost indubitable that many of 
 Miriam's idiosyncrasies and apparent unreasonableness during this trying 
 time were due largely to ill-health, the incipient symptoms of physical 
 collapse. But her stout heart and unconquerable spirit buoyed her up 
 even against death itself. 
 
 Amongst Miriam's long-treasured projects was one that contemplated 
 an Arcadian socialist colony. An Englishman of her acquaintance had 
 already acquired a ranch in California, some forty miles from Sacra- 
 mento, which was designed to form the nucleus of the future Utopia.
 
 Biographical 3f|ntroDuccion 
 
 Visiting the comrades in Cambridge on one occasion, his glowing pic- 
 ture of life in the Sierras, coupled with an invitation to hasten across 
 the continent and on the ranch begin the projected social experiment, so 
 effectively fired Miriam's imagination that the Western pilgrimage was 
 only a question of means and opportunity. To breathe the pure air of 
 freedom, removed from the squalor and materialism of commercial civi- 
 lization was not this the enchanting dream, the cherished ideal, of 
 Miriam's poetic soul? And it all seemed possible, almost within reach, 
 away on the lonely Sierras. 
 
 Pressed by the fatalities of her unhappy marriage, which had exiled 
 her from England, Miriam suddenly hurried off to California. Again 
 did Helena cast to the winds every consideration but that of faithful 
 friendship. Having worked her way in the printing-office to a responsible 
 executive position, she nevertheless gave up this desirable means of live- 
 lihood in response to the urgent appeal of her harassed friend, and 
 accompanied her to the West. Though both her inclination and judg- 
 ment were against this precipitate flight, yet Helena felt that the time 
 had come when all the comradeship and devotion of which she was capa- 
 ble must be freely given to Miriam. 
 
 In the late fall of 1893 they reached the foothills of the Sierras. 
 Arriving without warning to those already on the ranch, where no acces- 
 sions were expected before the following spring, it is not surprising that 
 the inevitable discomforts and hardships of pioneer life should have 
 sapped the enthusiasm of the dreamers. The ranch was beautifully lo- 
 cated in the hills, among tall pines, with the snow-capped peaks of the 
 Sierra Nevada range fringing the far-off horizon. A fork of the Amer- 
 ican River glided swiftly along, while within easy walking distance the 
 silent grandeur of a deep, chaotic canon allured the votaries of nature. 
 
 The nearest human habitation lay over a mile away. One day, while 
 out exploring the winding river, Miriam came upon three huts at the 
 head of the canon, in one of which lived a woman who had chosen this 
 lonely spot because she " loved nature and wanted to get away from so-
 
 ^Introduction 
 
 ciety, with its foolish requirements and insincerity." The hermit was 
 Miss Osborne, who, " living upon the fruits of the earth," and gowned 
 in sackcloth, deeply impressed the visitor by her unique way of attain- 
 ing spirituality. "When I turned to go," wrote Miriam, "I took her 
 worn hand and put it to my lips. I had no need to ask who the empty 
 huts were for. I knew that they were built and waiting for women of 
 magnetic spirit who had weighed modern life and found it wanting." 
 
 There was plenty of hard work during that winter on the ranch; yet 
 the aesthetic side of things was not forgotten. Inside, the cabin was 
 decorated in characteristic fashion. Paintings in oils and water-colors 
 adorned the walls, and gay china, and books on improvised shelves off- 
 set the scantiness of the furnishings. On the hills Helena found an 
 abundance of mushrooms, which proved a welcome addition to their 
 simple fare. She thus renewed her interest in edible fungi, cultivating 
 her knowledge to such purpose that she thereafter became an expert in 
 practical mycology. 
 
 Even before leaving Cambridge Miriam had premonitions of the end 
 that so relentlessly overtook her. Feeling that her life would soon be cut 
 short, she now began to set her affairs in order, laying plans for the edu- 
 cation and future of her child. At length her sufferings compelled her to 
 seek relief in San Francisco, where she entered a hospital. 
 
 This was the close of a full, intense, romantic life. Miriam Daniell 
 was born a dreamer. A beautiful, spirited creature, she wandered with 
 her head in the clouds, yet saw with acute vision into the reasons under- 
 lying much of human suffering. She was an idealist, extremely sensi- 
 tive, high-strung, and imperious. Living out her life in defiance of cus- 
 tom and her own upbringing, she ruptured all ties that were less than 
 those of perfect sympathy, and exulted in the hardships to which her 
 course fated her. Dominating the many, loved by the few, she moved 
 in isolation of spirit, fulfilling a destiny in which mingled the gray and 
 gold of tragedy and passionate enthusiasms. 
 
 Upon Miriam's departure, Helena had remained behind in the moun-
 
 JlntroDuction 
 
 tains, only to be a helpless witness of the destruction by fire of the cabin 
 and all its contents. Miriam, in a letter from San Francisco, describes 
 the occurrence: 
 
 " Since I last wrote you the ranch has vanished. Smoke was seen and 
 a few tongues of flame hungrily licking the outside of the roof. . . . 
 In a second the place was a whirlpool of flames. ... I lost all my books, 
 many of them authors' presentations and picked editions not to be meas- 
 ured by money standards in their worth to me, vases and pottery which 
 had belonged to my grandmother, and years of work in oil-paintings which 
 I may not hope to do again for my child. Truly it is well we do not 
 anchor to things. ... In fifteen minutes everything had gone, only, 
 smouldering, the lazy smoke blew down the canon and wreathed about 
 the hilltops quietly. It was over." 
 
 Helena's loss as well was total. A catastrophe of this kind cannot fail 
 to leave its impress on character. Helena would afterwards say, " One 
 needs such an experience, if only once in a lifetime, to teach self-depend- 
 ence and the futility of relying on material things for happiness." 
 
 Miriam's death followed almost immediately, April 19, 1894, and all 
 that had bound Helena to the West had vanished. 
 
 Her return to Cambridge marked the beginning of a new epoch, for 
 in the growth of that free spirit and unique individuality during the years 
 that followed lies the chief value of Helena Horn's life. Rudely torn from 
 the interests that had absorbed her, she faced the loneliness of her future 
 with a mind tuned to the achieving of a serene and hopeful self-poise. 
 This experience added to her personality a quality that irresistibly attracted 
 and inspirited. There are not a few who date a deeper insight into hu- 
 man striving, a happier facing of life's uncertainties, from a first meet- 
 ing with Helena Born in this period of her life. Her attitude toward 
 every vital question, toward every earnest man or woman who desired her 
 friendship, was frank, open, sincere. She sought after truth because it 
 meant life more complete, free, and on a higher plane for all; she strove 
 for beauty because it added to the fullness of life; she advocated social
 
 IBtograpljiral 3f|ntroDuction 
 
 and economic emancipation, including men no less than women, because 
 she deemed this the first and essential step. From this time on her life 
 moved in paths of her own hewing, and though outwardly uneventful, 
 was replete with fullest realization. 
 
 Quietly resuming her career of labor, in the late spring of 1894 she 
 rented a small room in Somerville and, living very simply and econom- 
 ically, was at length enabled to repair in some degree the disaster that 
 swept away her belongings in California. As, in all circumstances, Helena 
 gave tone and color to her environment, so this little room grew around 
 her, and to the friends who knew her, fitted her as the bark fits its twig. 
 
 Wood-carving was one of her sources of recreation during this time. 
 She made her own designs and stains, and no simplest tray or butter-box 
 but she laid her tools to it. She bound, too, many of her books, expend- 
 ing considerable ingenuity in embroidering the covers. Another pursuit 
 affording her especial delight was the study of mushrooms. The fungi 
 were peculiarly attractive to Helena on account of their beauty, their util- 
 ity, and the interest of their life-histories. Holidays found her far afield 
 for them, or she spied them out as she went to and from her daily work. 
 She classified them, drew them, and tested more than thirty varieties. 
 
 In 1894 a branch of the Walt Whitman Fellowship was formed in 
 Boston, and among its early members was Helena. Many of the essays 
 included in this volume were first read before this organization. The 
 Fellowship meant a great deal to her, and she had a considerable share 
 in determining the character of its meetings. She will be especially 
 associated with the open-air birthday commemorations in the minds of 
 this group, to whom Walt's enthusiasm for the open air took on new 
 meaning through her gladness in nature. She served on the International 
 Council of the Fellowship, for two years kept the records of the Boston 
 branch as secretary, and at the time of her death was president of the 
 branch. 
 
 " We look with hope and confidence to the future," she wrote to 
 the International Birthday Commemoration in Manhattan, 1898, "that
 
 Biographical ^Introduction 
 
 it shall be shaped by the ideals by which we are linked together. 
 Touched by the personal potency of < Leaves of Grass,' we may each 
 see something as Whitman saw; we may attain, as he did, to a con- 
 sciousness of the beauty, majesty, and completeness of life, and with 
 convincing presence proclaim the worth of freedom and individuality. 
 It is our joy to be the Great Companions of the few, equals indifferent 
 of lands, indifferent of times to gather together not as sectarians, but 
 in inclusive unity with the universal, honoring Whitman's memory not 
 as followers, but as pioneers." 
 
 As when in Edinburgh, in the rich coloring of her simple gar- 
 ments she had symbolized her inward joy and spiritual harmony with 
 her surroundings, so for Walt she always donned her best and gayest 
 garb. 
 
 She was a striking figure. Her expressive face glowing with the high 
 color she had brought from England, and furthermore, lighted by a pair 
 of large, bright, dark eyes; her alert movements; her dress always so dif- 
 ferent from that decreed by fashion; inevitably she arrested attention, 
 attracting by her loving enthusiasm and sincerity, or as strongly repelling 
 by her unconventionalities. 
 
 Inclusive as Whitman himself in love of her fellows, her ideals of 
 friendship were exacting. Friendship had value to her only as it was 
 spontaneous; never demanding friends, she took them simply, but nothing 
 gave her more joy than to find the stream of sympathy pure and lasting. 
 "Love is the main fact of life," she was wont to say, "and the full 
 measure that comes to me unsought compensates for much." 
 
 The spirit of an undertaking was always more to Helena than the name 
 it went by; and it is interesting to have her view of the various forms of 
 social effort appealing for her exclusive support: 
 
 " With me social effort is (somewhat as love is) its own fulfilment, 
 irrespective of success. ... In bringing about the new order, I am 
 willing to further any of the various plans that commend themselves to 
 diverse adherents of the several schools of thought, if they are born of
 
 Biographical ^Introduction 
 
 love of liberty, if I find myself in accord with the spirit in which they 
 are conceived, and if I can do so without being bound. No one plan is 
 necessary for the regeneration of society, and yet all are needed and may 
 share in the work." 
 
 To the end of her life Helena accepted the name of " socialist," 
 taking the term in its widest sense; but socialism, as it worked through 
 customary channels, had less and less of her sympathy. A disinclination 
 to sacrifice individuality to a system was confirmed by the invaluable ex- 
 perience of a practical life, and in after-years she grew into the princi- 
 ples of philosophical anarchism. 
 
 The following letter, written toward the close of 1897, while unim- 
 portant, is inserted because characteristic and one of the few that survive: 
 
 A good comrade in the North of England whom I have never seen writes 
 to me sometimes, not because he has anything particular to say, but because 
 he feels to know me well enough to express to me without restraint, and it 
 is a pleasure to meet on the ideal plane. Such sympathy widens one's out- 
 look and fortifies one to meet antagonism. 
 
 In like manner I avail myself of this idle hour to greet you, not because 
 I have aught of importance to make known, but rather as an excuse for let- 
 ting myself "go," and not denying my impulse. There is so little room 
 for spontaneity in life. . . . 
 
 There are disadvantages to unconventionality the conventional person 
 always remembers to say the polite thing (often insincerely enough !), while 
 the natural man is apt to be too absorbed in the joy of the moment to be 
 mindful of past obligations which were sincerely realized. . . . 
 
 I might have known I was not the original described to you by . Of 
 
 course at his age he would only notice young women. I always find so much 
 character in the faces of the old or mature to interest me that I forget the 
 standpoint of youth. . . . 
 
 I don't believe there is any danger of being "grabbed" unless you sug- 
 gest it to people hypothetically by being scared. Just be fearless and repel- 
 lent, as I am, and nothing will happen. . . . Just you keep on; there's 
 nothing like it.
 
 iographical ^Introduction 
 
 I am sending a little Schreiner bookie, with my love and cheery good- 
 will. . . . 
 
 I am up to my eyes in work just now, but I hope not to be perpetually. 
 I hope you will let me see as much of you as you can spare time for; that 
 is, if you can put up with my picnic-like arrangements after your own well- 
 ordered environment. 
 
 In the spring of 1898 an opportunity offered to try her hand at farm- 
 ing in New Hampshire. Inclining to an outdoor life, the free sun and 
 air, the dealing direct with nature, the joys of the fertile soil, strongly 
 appealed to her, and she heartily entered into the scheme of her landed 
 friend. 
 
 EPSOM, N. H., April 24, 1898. 
 
 Dear E : It was very pleasant and cheery to find your greeting 
 
 awaiting me on my arrival. The Emerson quotations were unfamiliar to 
 me; they are excellent and quite educational for P. O. officials, who of 
 course in a district of such dimensions avail themselves of every opportunity 
 for the improvement of their minds. 
 
 A stormy day but with the blazing wood crackling merrily on the new 
 andirons which grace our hearth, and a bouquet of" Mayflowers " exhaling 
 fragrance at my elbow, life is not without charm, and the whistling wind is 
 quite orchestral at times. Our house is a few yards below the summit of our 
 hill, which commands a magnificent prospect, and for a secluded country 
 retreat I would wish for nothing better. The air is delightfully invigorating, 
 and now I have mostly unpacked my freight I hope to revel in it to my 
 heart's content. . . . Thursday I dug the salsify and parsnips; one of the 
 latter weighed two pounds, five ounces. I hope mine will do as well. We 
 have plenty of work ahead, and I hope you will come along and encourage 
 us with your approval. Meanwhile I am a farmer first and a correspondent 
 
 a long way afterwards. ... I have introduced J to various invented 
 
 salads, and her admiration for my ingenuity is dependent upon her escape 
 from poisoning. . . . 
 
 By the way, if you know any one with an abundance of discarded gloves 
 you might invite them to contribute, and I will be glad to wear them out 
 instead of my hands. Men's are good, because they are roomy. Only don't
 
 iograptjical Introduction 
 
 tell H , as she believes in vegetarian gloves and will scorn my conces- 
 sion to the practical. But having already nearly cut off the top of one of 
 my fingers, I refrain, pro tern., from walking with my nose too high in the 
 air. . . . 
 
 Were you at the Fellowship meeting last Thursday? Tell me about it, 
 if you were. ... I have lots to think of I don't feel away from people 
 at all, being rich in love and sympathy. 
 
 Joyously and lovingly. 
 
 June 25, 1898. 
 
 Dear Friend: The spirit of the farmer has at length entered into mine, 
 and since my hoeing I survey my furrows with pride. I planted a bushel 
 and a half of potatoes and, as you may know, that covers quite a big patch. 
 I have been hoeing potatoes and hoeing potatoes. They have to be hoed 
 twice, and I have great pleasure in informing you that to-day I hoed the 
 last row the second time. Then, by way of recreation, I hoe beans, corn, 
 squash, melons, tomatoes, turnips, onions, artichokes, beets, parsnips, peas, 
 pumpkins, and other luscious edibles, which are doing fairly well. Radishes 
 have been crisp and abundant, and my garden has also furnished the table 
 with turnip-greens, lettuce, cress, spinach. I have been busy this week 
 transplanting cabbage-plants, Brussels sprouts, and tomatoes. The lentils 
 have just appeared above ground, and the peanuts have not emerged from 
 their privacy. The buckwheat-field is commencing to bloom, and weeds 
 have a merciless reception. . . . My hands become a little stiff at times, 
 and when my back doubles up I put myself flat on the grass for a few mo- 
 ments. I enjoy the outdoor work very much in the bracing mountain air, 
 and feel encouraged to experiment further on my own account in Massachu- 
 setts or some other convenient location sometime. . . . 
 
 It is unlikely that my mushroom bed will be a success, as I could not 
 give it proper attention. The sunflowers, nasturtiums, and sweet peas will 
 be gay later, and you ought to see the new stone wall. Nothing could be 
 more fitting in this rocky region, but the residents favor the modern wire 
 
 fence, alas! B would enjoy the barn, I am sure. The barn-chamber 
 
 is chiefly occupied by the swallows pretty, graceful fellows! We have a 
 gentle little cow, eleven hens, and a cock all quite companionable. 
 With loving thoughts of you all.
 
 315iograpl)ual Klntro&uctton 
 
 In her first conceived plan this experiment was to have been prelim- 
 inary to a settled residence in some country spot where her food might 
 come straight from her own tillage, her cottage the home of simple com- 
 radeships; but the summer she passed in Epsom witnessed Helena's final 
 attempt to materialize those visions of the ideal community life which she 
 had shared with Miriam. Any lingering illusion she may have entertained 
 regarding the feasibility of such a project was dispelled by this five- 
 months' hand-to-hand contest with nature, and in the fall she returned 
 once more to the life of the city. 
 
 During the next two years all that remained to her she lived in 
 Boston, finding little time to spare for recreation from her daily toil, yet 
 producing during this time her best literary work and living a life of 
 noble elevation and completeness. Suddenly and mysteriously attacked 
 by a fatal disease, the first pangs of parting subdued, calmly she bade 
 farewell to life and all the joy, present and to come, that it held for her. 
 " Death is good, too," she said. She passed away February 27, 1901. 
 A few days later her body was given to the flames, and her ashes lie 
 scattered on the shore of Walden Pond. 
 
 As the story of her achievements is one of unfolding and consistent 
 advance, as she rose higher and higher to meet the greater requirements 
 that always came, so in death she reached the culmination of life. To 
 the very end, in the things of the spirit she was rich and triumphant ; 
 flooding over her anguish of body came anew a sense of fellowship with 
 humanity ; an intense joy in love universal that filled and sustained her. 
 
 " Of her it must not be said," writes a friend, " that she was a prod- 
 uct of her environment and of circumstances, for she largely had a 
 hand in making both. She was an artist ; life in her hands was plastic 
 material, she shaped it lovingly and with a high purpose." What that 
 purpose was is clear in her writings. She believed that this world could 
 be made better, the lives of men fairer, sweeter, brighter, not alone by 
 sweeping social changes from without, but primarily by the conscious 
 effort of every individual to attain that development of character which
 
 Biographical UlntroDuctton X xxv 
 
 his opportunities permitted and his ideals demanded. " To be fluid, 
 free, receptive, ready to sacrifice personal gain and comfort for large 
 issues these are conditions of growth independent of externals," was 
 one of her sayings, as was a thought of Maeterlinck's which she was 
 wont to quote : " Our ideal will never be met with in life unless we 
 have first achieved it within us to the fullest extent in our power." 
 
 From a spontaneous tribute penned by one of Helena's friends we 
 quote : 
 
 "To love truth in the abstract is not such a rare quality; but to 
 love truth and to live it, even in the smallest details, shows a combi- 
 nation not easy to find. The truth-lover is often intolerant and some- 
 times fails to speak in a friendly manner of what he deems to be error 
 on the part of another. The warm-hearted, earnest, courageous, truth- 
 lover Helena Born showed that it was possible to follow in paths thorny 
 and devious what she deemed to be the truth and yet maintain a human 
 and kindly interest in those who travelled on other roads. 
 
 " With what vigor she lived and loved, with what faith and courage 
 she faced her ideals and disappointments! Such a spirit can never die; 
 its life influence is immortal. Wherever the longing for freedom, the 
 aspiration for truth, the courage of conviction, are found, there will be 
 felt the influence of the ideals for which Helena lived." 
 
 "She was a singularly complete personality," says another who 
 knew her well. "Rarely does one find a more harmonious development 
 of body, mind, and soul. No part of her nature seemed to be stunted, 
 starved, or undeveloped. It was as if she were continually reaching out 
 with invisible tentacles in all directions to draw to herself her own, 
 that which belonged to her by right of natural endowment. 
 
 " Her intellectual attainments were of a very high order, but she 
 never allowed her intellectual development to stand in the way of soul- 
 growth. She had an ardent love for the beautiful, especially for beauti- 
 ful color, and artistic expression was a natural necessity. But to her, art 
 was not something to be set apart from life, to be enjoyed only occasion-
 
 Biographical 3flimo&uction 
 
 ally, but it was a living reality always. She therefore gave her assthetic 
 nature its fling, and her home became a poem of artistic expression. 
 Objects of daily use were beautiful in form and rich in color, and her 
 personality partook of her individual tastes. 
 
 " But the greatest characteristic, the most admirable part of Helena 
 Born, was her fearless, independent spirit. She seems all her life to have 
 unwittingly followed Walt Whitman's injunction to inure one's self to 
 'pluck, reality, self-esteem, definiteness, elevatedness.' She knew too 
 well all the hollowness and sham of conventional society. She could 
 not be a part of it. And she lived her own life, naturally, without 
 straining for effect, and gave full expression to her individuality. She 
 did nothing for effect, nothing for notoriety; she never posed. Her 
 ideal of conduct was spontaneity. She had no choice but to live her 
 convictions, and she always strove to live her highest. Did this highest 
 conflict with conventional forms and customs, so much the worse for 
 conventionality. 
 
 "Hers was certainly the experimental life: there were no rut marks 
 on her. She always lived, never vegetated. Had her life been spared 
 she would never have grown old." 
 
 Cheery, inspiriting Helena Born cannot be translated to paper. 
 That, with the help of what may be read between the lines of her own 
 writings, an image may be outlined embodying something of that glow- 
 ing spirit and the steadfast aspiration which was the foundation of her 
 life, is the hope and wish of one whose privilege it was to know how 
 well she lived. 
 
 H. T. 
 
 Boston, April, 1902.
 
 Welcome 
 
 Comrades, Friends, Lovers, in unison vibrating, 
 Magnet-drawn hitherward 'cross land or sea, 
 Seen or invisible, silent or speechful, 
 Hand holding hand, happy with me ! 
 Fearless in spirit, true to high purpose, 
 Self-poised and steadfast, gods shall ye be !
 
 Greeting 
 
 Reverently enter soul to meet with soul, 
 
 With body unified, divinely free ; 
 
 Yourself, the real, above conventions hoist, 
 
 As nature's child, glad in simplicity. 
 
 If harmony you find, associations rich and symbols rare, 
 
 Attune yourself with love and sympathy. 
 
 In frankness ever greet and spontaneity ; 
 
 Let coldness and distrust for aye excluded be.
 
 WHITMAN was so much more than the mere exponent 
 of democracy that when he uses the words " America " 
 and " democracy " as convertible terms it is obvious that he 
 refers not to the existing condition of society in these States, 
 but to a more or less remote future. He is careful to state this, 
 so that the caution sometimes given not to accept as an equiv- 
 alent for democracy the present system of representative gov- 
 ernment should be entirely superfluous. " Democratic Vistas," 
 the title of his prose contribution to our theme, aptly enough 
 signalizes his attitude. Away, away into the distance, stretch 
 his vistas, and it is by reason of his far-sightedness that he re- 
 veals to us so much that is beyond our present attainments. 
 The prevailing delusion in regard to free political institutions 
 and material prosperity was apparent to him, and should be so to 
 all who accept his diagnosis of the social order. An unprece- 
 dented material success, which is national and purchased at the 
 cost of individuals, accords little with a philosophy based on a 
 fine conception of individuality. The majority of the workers 
 to-day are engaged in occupations that are irksome and hence 
 devoid of beauty, while the dependent classes those living on 
 others' labor, commonly called "independent" are leading 
 abnormal lives which force their productive energies into arti- 
 ficial channels. As Edward Carpenter points out, "the outer 
 life of society ... is animated first and foremost by fear," 
 at one extreme the dread of starvation, at the other the dread of 
 losing commercially acquired wealth.
 
 3|fceal 
 
 Thus, the social organism, while it grows to vaster and vaster 
 proportions, is deficient in that in which it should be supreme 
 deficient in soul. Whitman indeed, despite his joyous optimism 
 and passionate idealism, finds much to deplore in our times and 
 lands. The absence of moral conscience, hollowness of heart, dis- 
 belief, hypocrisy, business depravity, official corruption, greed, 
 these are among the blemishes revealed by the moral microscope 
 with which he examines American civilization. 
 
 " Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at 
 present, and here in the United States. Genuine belief seems to 
 have left us. The underlying principles of the States are not hon- 
 estly believed in (for all this hectic glow and these melodramatic 
 screamings), nor is humanity itself believed in. What penetrating 
 eye does not everywhere see through the mask ? The spectacle is 
 appalling. We live in an atmosphere of hypocrisy throughout. 
 The men believe not in the women, nor the women in the men. 
 . . . The depravity of the business classes of our country is not 
 less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater. The official 
 services of America, national, state, and municipal, in all their 
 branches and departments, except the judiciary, are saturated in 
 corruption, bribery, falsehood, maladministration ; and the judici- 
 ary is tainted. The great cities reek with respectable as much 
 as non-respectable robbery and scoundrelism ; in fashionable 
 life flippancy, tepid amours, weak infidelism, small aims, or no 
 aims at all, only to kill time. In business (this all-devouring 
 modern word, business), the one sole object is, by any means, 
 pecuniary gain. The magician's serpent in the fable ate up all 
 the other serpents, and money-making is our magician's serpent, 
 remaining to-day sole master of the field."
 
 s 
 
 Injustices in our industrial world do not escape him. He sees 
 
 "Many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for pay- 
 
 ment receiving, 
 A few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming." 
 
 I regret that we cannot dismiss his strictures as libellous. 
 They have at least enough foundation in fact to moderate our 
 self-complacent national pride and imperialistic inflation. Whit- 
 man's call to come forth from such mockery of freedom and per- 
 sonal dignity still resounds, the invitation to take our places 
 in the march with the great companions, eager, resolute, well- 
 armed," forth-sfeppers from the latent unrealized baby-days," 
 united in a revolt inspired by love, not hate. For democracy 
 is not a class war. Democracy is conceived in the interests of 
 all, and will not be best promoted by antagonism and aggression. 
 The poor are not enslaved by governmental tyranny and capital- 
 ism alone. Perhaps the real battle, as Whitman hints, is " be- 
 tween democracy's convictions, aspirations, and the people's 
 crudeness, vice, caprices." 
 
 I have as yet barely touched the fringe of my subject. I have 
 endeavored to introduce the ideal by showing how far we are 
 from its realization, and by showing that Whitman's pride in 
 and love for his country were not due to a belief in the finality 
 of its institutions. " Others take finish, but the Republic is ever 
 constructive and ever keeps vista." 
 
 The reformer who pins his faith to systems will find little in 
 Whitman to appeal to him. The deep suggestiveness of Whit- 
 man's work, however, has a formative value far beyond that of 
 crystallized doctrine. His momentous suggestions create an at- 
 mosphere in which they themselves can fructify and mature.
 
 6 ^ijttman's! 31&eal Democracy 
 
 They are seeds stored with vitality and untold possibilities. The 
 full-grown system when transplanted from the mind of its orig- 
 inator into that of another is too often a mere cumberer of the 
 ground, and its decay is preceded by inertia. Knowing the su- 
 perior value of self-acquired beliefs, Whitman insists on the 
 activity of his readers and refuses to minister to passivity or 
 mental comfort. The " new thought " which he projects is 
 designed, he tells us, " to cause changes, growths, removals, 
 greater than the longest and bloodiest war or the most stupen- 
 dous merely political, dynastic, or commercial overturn." 
 
 But whatever Whitman's conception and attitude toward ex- 
 isting institutions, we feel that one who was in love with all his 
 fellows upon the earth cannot be utterly wrong. His pages are 
 aglow with love, and unless we can approach his spirit his words 
 will bewilder, if not repel. He was convinced that the new prin- 
 ciple of democracy must not depend merely on " political means, 
 superficial suffrage, legislation, etc.," but it must go deeper and 
 get " at least as firm and as warm a hold in men's hearts, emotions, 
 and beliefs as, in their days, feudalism or ecclesiasticism." The 
 inconstant, easily diverted interest in vital problems, so prevalent 
 to-day, is an evidence of the impotence of the merely theoretical 
 attitude which leaves the religious nature untouched. No one 
 with keen social consciousness can doubt that, in order to make 
 possible an ideal democracy, grave political and economic changes 
 are imperative ; but I claim Whitman's support for my contention 
 that the impulse to bring about these changes will not result from 
 a purely intellectual appeal. The changes will be an emanation 
 from the right emotion, the right spirit. Many reformers, weary 
 of the apparent failure of ethical and religious teaching, are impa-
 
 3flueal Democracy 
 
 tient of utterances with any such implication. Whitman's inclu- 
 siveness should suggest to us that the remedy is not in a propa- 
 ganda at either pole, but in effort cognizant of the interaction of 
 man and his environment, and which neglects the evolution of 
 neither. 
 
 Having looked round about us now sufficiently to assure our- 
 selves of the bleakness and barrenness of much in our immediate 
 vicinity, let us walk cheerfully and trustfully hand in hand with 
 Whitman and allow him to lead us to a "knoll." In proceeding to 
 examine the magnificent structure of democracy before us, we will 
 begin at the base. There is no mystery or complexity in the con- 
 struction of this fair society which we behold "en masse," a 
 social whole, proportionate to nature, perfect in sanity and health, 
 it is built up of "grand individuals." " Produce great persons, 
 the rest follows." " One's self, a simple separate person," iden- 
 tity, personality. 
 
 " The quality of Being, in the object's self, according to its own 
 central idea and purpose, and of growing therefrom and thereto 
 not criticism by other standards and adjustments thereto is the. 
 lesson of Nature. . . . The idea of perfect individualism it is 
 indeed that deepest tinges and gives character to the idea of the 
 aggregate." 
 
 Emerson has a fine passage of analogous import : 
 
 " Is it not the chief disgrace in the world not to be an unit, 
 not to be reckoned one character, not to yield that peculiar fruit 
 which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the 
 gross, in the hundred or the thousand of the party, the section, to 
 which we belong, and our opinion predicted geographically, as the 
 North or the South ? Not so, brothers and friends please God,
 
 8 
 
 ours shall not be so. We will walk on our own feet, we will work 
 with our own hands, we will speak our own minds. . . . A nation 
 of men will for the first time exist because each believes himself 
 inspired by the Divine Soul, which also inspires all men." 
 
 This well-poised selfhood is the outcome of threefold devel- 
 opment. " In every young and old man after his kind, and in 
 every woman after hers, a true personality, developed, exercised 
 proportionately in body, mind, and spirit." 
 
 "I will not make poems with reference to parts, 
 I will make poems, songs, thoughts, with reference to ensemble." 
 
 Furnishing some crude basic models of personality, Whitman 
 emphasizes a sterling part, probably the least attended to in 
 modern times, " the simple, unsophisticated conscience, the pri- 
 mary moral element." The ripeness of Religion, he tells us, is 
 doubtless to be looked for in the field of individuality. It does not 
 depend at all upon churches, " but is a part of the identified soul, 
 which, when greatest, knows not bibles in the old way, but in new 
 ways the identified soul, which can really confront Religion 
 when it extricates itself entirely from churches, and not before." 
 To Whitman the universe itself is as a road, or as many roads 
 for travelling souls. 
 
 "All parts away for the progress of souls, 
 
 All religion, all solid things, arts, governments, all that was or is ap- 
 parent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners be- 
 fore the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe. 
 
 Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of 
 the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance." 
 
 It appears, then, that Whitman's ideal democracy is cotermi-
 
 nous with soul-progression, and for this the first essential is Lib- 
 erty. " Liberty is to be subserved whatever occurs." 
 
 "I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond 
 what waits intrinsically in yourself." 
 
 "Liberty, let others despair of you I never despair of you." 
 
 Whitman uses the words " liberty " and " freedom " in a very 
 wide sense. 
 
 "More precious than all worldly riches is Freedom free- 
 dom from the painful constipation and poor narrowness of eccle- 
 siasticism freedom in manners, habiliments, furniture, from the 
 silliness and tyranny of local fashion entire freedom from 
 party rings and mere conventions in politics and, better than 
 all, a general freedom of one's self from the tyrannic domina- 
 tion of vices, habits, appetites, under which nearly every man of 
 us (often the greatest brawler for freedom) is enslaved." 
 
 A second essential is Equality. The first essential, individual 
 liberty, born of self-respect ; the second essential, equality, born 
 of respect for others. " Of Equality as if it harm'd me, giv- 
 ing others the same chances and rights as myself as if it were 
 not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the 
 same." 
 
 It still needs to be specified that a belief in equality includes 
 the equality of the sexes, for there be many yet who can appar- 
 ently glory in an idea of equality restricted to one-half of the 
 race. Whitman never falls into such mental ineptitudes, and he 
 is careful to remind his readers at frequent intervals that his 
 hopes for humanity embrace the female equally with the male, 
 without any sort of reservation, for he sees how much the social
 
 io ^tjitman'flf 3l&eal Democracy 
 
 whole has suffered, and is still suffering, from sex-subordination 
 and excessive sex-differentiation. Whitman's ideal woman is 
 fearless and possessed of herself, and in his " great city " the 
 women cease to be predominatingly conscious of sex. They 
 " walk in public procession in the streets the same as the men," 
 and they " enter the public assembly and take places the same 
 as the men." 
 
 There is a beautiful sequence often in Whitman's thought. 
 Love, the next important element which he exalts, is closely re- 
 lated to equality, for as Thoreau shows, love is only possible be- 
 tween equals. Whitman's conception of love comprises two 
 divisions, the amative, the adhesive, and he ennobles both. 
 The belief in the divinity of the body and the illustriousness of 
 sex, by uprooting many false and unnatural standards which tend 
 to undermine character, will contribute much to the building of 
 " grand individuals." The bearing of comrade-love on democ- 
 racy Whitman describes so impressively that I quote his words 
 without comment : 
 
 " Intense and loving comradeship, the personal attachment of 
 man to man, which, hard to define, underlies the lessons and 
 ideals of the profound saviors of every land and age, and which 
 seems to promise, when thoroughly developed, cultivated, and 
 recognized in manners and literature, the most substantial hope 
 and safety of the future of these States, will then be fully 
 expressed. 
 
 " It is to the development, identification, and general preva- 
 lence of that fervid comradeship (the adhesive love, at least 
 rivaling the amative love hitherto possessing imaginative litera- 
 ture, if not going beyond it) that I look for the counterbalance
 
 '0 2f|Deal SPentocraci? 
 
 and offset of our materialistic and vulgar American democracy 
 and for the spiritualization thereof. Many will say it is a dream, 
 and will not follow my inferences ; but I confidently expect a 
 time when there will be seen, running like a half-hid warp 
 through all the myriad audible and visible worldly interests of 
 America, threads of manly friendship, fond and loving, pure and 
 sweet, strong and lifelong, carried to degrees hitherto unknown 
 not only giving tone to individual character, and making it 
 unprecedentedly emotional, muscular, heroic, and refined, but 
 having the deepest relation to general politics. I say democracy 
 infers such loving comradeship, without which it will be incom- 
 plete, in vain, and incapable of perpetuating itself." 
 
 He declares that " affection shall solve the problems of free- 
 dom," " those who love each other shall become invincible." 
 
 "The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers, 
 
 The continuance of Equality shall be comrades. ' ' 
 
 In order to deal with the question of democracy to practical 
 ends, it is necessary to discriminate between the principle of au- 
 thority and the principle of liberty between the compulsory and 
 the voluntary. We shall have no difficulty in deciding on which 
 side to place Whitman, if we bring him up to date and express 
 him in current terminology. 
 
 "I am for those that have never been master' d, 
 For men and women whose tempers have never been mastered, 
 For those whom laws, theories, conventions, can never master." 
 
 " To hold men together by paper and seal or by compulsion is no account, 
 That only holds men together which aggregates all in a living principle, as 
 the hold of the limbs of the body or the fibres of plants."
 
 As to political changes, Whitman's utterances are not without 
 inconsistencies, and he returns general rather than specific an- 
 swers. He advises young men to disengage themselves from 
 parties when they enter politics, but he favors the continuance of 
 authoritative tutelage until convinced that self-government will 
 not endanger the State. Concerning himself primarily with the 
 influence of literature in the promulgation of new standards, per- 
 haps he did not himself fully grasp the significance of self-sov- 
 ereignty in its political aspects. But his meaning is always defi- 
 nite and unmistakable as to the ultimate purpose of democ- 
 racy : 
 
 " The purpose of democracy supplanting old belief in the 
 necessary absoluteness of established dynastic rulership, temporal, 
 ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only security against 
 chaos, crime, and ignorance is, through many transmigrations 
 and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failures, to 
 illustrate, at all hazards, this doctrine or theory that man, properly 
 trained in sanest, highest freedom, may and must become a law, 
 and series of laws, unto himself, surrounding and providing for, 
 not only his own personal control, but all his relations to other 
 individuals and to the State/' 
 
 "I swear I begin to see the meaning of these things, 
 It is not the earth, it is not America who is so great, 
 It is I who am great or to be great, it is you up there, or anyone, 
 It is to walk rapidly through civilizations, governments, theories, 
 Through poems, pageants, shows, to form individuals. 
 Underneath all, individuals." 
 
 Hence, in Whitman's ideal city, there are men and women who 
 think lightly of the laws;" "outside authority enters always after 
 
 u
 
 2f|Deal Democracy 13 
 
 the precedence of inside authority," and " children are taught to 
 be laws to themselves and to depend on themselves." 
 
 Not the least valuable portion of Whitman's work are his ex- 
 hortations to rebellion : 
 
 " Let others promulge the laws, I will make no account of the laws, 
 Let others praise eminent men and hold up peace, I hold up agitation and 
 conflict." 
 
 Note, also, his exhortation to the " lands of America " : 
 
 " Thought you greatness was to ripen for you like a pear ? If 
 you would have greatness, know that you must conquer it through 
 ages, centuries must pay for it with a proportionate price. For 
 you, too, as for all lands, the straggler, the traitor, the wily per- 
 son in office, scrofulous wealth, the surfeit of prosperity, the de- 
 monism of greed, the hell of passion, the decay of faith, the long 
 postponement, the fossil-like lethargy, the ceaseless need of revo- 
 lutions, prophets, thunderstorms, deaths, births, new projections 
 and invigorations of ideas and men." 
 
 The existing vaunted American democracy, so-called, is in 
 some ways analogous to the self-contented Liberalism in England 
 of half a century ago. Nothing less than literary bombs will 
 arouse it to action. 
 
 Whitman beheld, however, in America a peculiarly favorable 
 field for the growth of true democracy. The underlying princi- 
 ple of the United States Constitution and of the Declaration of 
 Independence ; early colonial traditions, simple, not plutocratic, 
 in which equality of opportunity was more nearly realized than 
 it has been since ; the subsequent fusion of nationalities ; these 
 and other considerations fill him with highest hope for this land 
 of lands. " Here is not merely a nation, but a teeming nation of
 
 nations." Yet his love of country was never mere patriotism. 
 " O America, because you build for mankind, I build for you ! " 
 His love enfolds the world. The recent military achievements of 
 this country are a bitter satire on Whitman's cordial acknowledg- 
 ment of contemporary lands, his vision of the " continent indis- 
 soluble," and of " cities inseparable with their arms about each 
 other's necks." We have to turn over the pages for a passage 
 more applicable to the present. Here is one : 
 
 " I will make a song for the ears of the President, full of weapons with 
 
 menacing points, 
 And behind the weapons countless dissatisfied faces." 
 
 But 
 
 " Away with themes of war! away with war itself! 
 Hence from my shuddering sight to never more return that show of 
 
 blacken' d mutilated corpses ! 
 That hell unpent and raid of blood, fit for wild tigers or for lop-tongued 
 
 wolves, not reasoning men, 
 And in its stead speed industry's campaigns." 
 
 Whitman is in the main in line with modern socialism in re- 
 gard to the dignity of labor, and in line also with modern solu- 
 tions of sex problems in insisting on women's economic respon- 
 sibility : 
 
 "To you, ye reverent sane sisters, 
 
 I raise a voice for far superber themes for poets and for art, 
 To exalt the present and the real, 
 
 To teach the average man the glory of his daily walk and trade, 
 To sing in songs how exercise and chemical life are never to be baffled, 
 To manual work for each and all, to plough, hoe, dig, 
 To plant and tend the tree, the berry, vegetables, flowers, 
 For every man to see to it that he really do something, for every woman, 
 too."
 
 SDemocracp 15 
 
 It may be observed that Whitman's confident expectation for 
 the future of America is not devoid of anxious moments. He 
 sounds notes of warning : 
 
 "O lands, would you be freer than all that has ever been before ? 
 If you would be freer than all that has ever been before, come listen to 
 me. 
 
 ' 'Fear grace, elegance, civilization, delicatesse, 
 
 Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey-juice, 
 
 Beware the advancing mortal ripening of Nature, 
 
 Beware what precedes the ruggedness of states and men." 
 
 Whitman provides a place for worldly prosperity and material 
 comfort in his ideal democracy not the place they occupy to- 
 day, but a subordinate one. " I too," he says, " hail those 
 achievements with pride and joy ; then answer that the soul of 
 man will not with such only nay, not with such at all be 
 finally satisfied; but needs what (standing on these and on all 
 things, as the feet stand on the ground) is addressed to the lofti- 
 est, to itself alone." He is ill-pleased with what " the word of 
 the modern" the word "culture" has come to represent: 
 
 " As now taught, accepted and carried out, are not the proc- 
 esses of culture rapidly creating a class of supercilious infidels, 
 who believe in nothing ? Shall a man lose himself in countless 
 masses of adjustments, and be so shaped with reference to this, 
 that, and the other that the simply good and healthy and brave 
 parts of him are reduced and clipped away, like the bordering of 
 box in a garden ? . . . I should demand a programme of cul- 
 ture, drawn out, not for a single class alone, or for the parlors or 
 lecture rooms, but with an eye to practical life, the west, the 
 working men, the facts of farms and jack-planes and engineers,
 
 16 ^Ijitman's! 2fl&eal Democracy 
 
 and~of the broad range of the women also of the middle and 
 working strata, and with reference to the perfect equality of 
 women, and of a grand and powerful motherhood. I should de- 
 mand of this programme or theory a scope generous enough to 
 include the widest human area." 
 
 Whitman relies neither on the accumulation of wealth nor on 
 the accumulation of knowledge for the evolution of worthier 
 national types. He confides to us " the secret of the making of 
 the best persons" "it is to grow in the open air and to eat 
 and sleep with the earth." 
 
 " Democracy most of all affiliates with the open air, is sunny 
 and hardy and sane only with Nature just as much as Art is. 
 . . . American democracy, in its myriad personalities, its facto- 
 ries, workshops, stores, offices through the dense streets and 
 houses of cities, and all their manifold sophisticated life must 
 either be fibred, vitalized, by regular contact with outdoor light 
 and air and growths, farm-scenes, animals, fields, trees, birds, 
 sun~warmth and free skies, or it will certainly dwindle and pale. 
 We cannot have grand races of mechanics, work people, and 
 commonality (the only specific purpose of America) on any less 
 terms." 
 
 Our poet is the poet of egoism, but not of egoism alone 
 he is the poet of altruism equally. It is rarely that egoism and 
 altruism coexist in perfect equilibrium. There are individuals 
 whose best, most strenuous effort is only evoked by altruistic 
 demands, who are careless, apathetic in regard to the satis- 
 faction of their own personal needs. The altruistic extreme is 
 to be found in those who seek to advance the welfare of others 
 at the expense of their own soul. For such unbalanced types
 
 17 
 
 Whitman has no approval. He sees that self-interest is an in- 
 sufficient motive to heroic action j yet the complement to self- 
 interest is social-interest, and not to be confused with self-sacri- 
 fice. Many thinkers who rightly oppose asceticism overlook 
 this distinction. It is true that in the highest interpretation the 
 two interests coincide, but it makes all the difference whether 
 this truth is borne in mind or not in egoistic statements. 
 
 As we have just observed, Whitman's egoism is in no wise 
 identical with selfishness ; similarly, his liberty is never license. 
 
 " For there is to the highest that law as absolute as any 
 more absolute than any the Law of Liberty. The shallow, as 
 intimated, consider liberty a release from all law, from every con- 
 straint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the Potent Law of 
 Laws, namely, the fusion and combination of the conscious will, 
 or partial individual law, withthoseuniversal, eternal, unconscious 
 ones, which run through all time, pervade history, prove immor- 
 tality, give moral purpose to the entire world, and the last dignity 
 to human life." 
 
 It must never be overlooked in the consideration of such a sub- 
 ject as the foregoing that changes of letter are unavailing without 
 a corresponding change of spirit. Does not every radical number 
 one or more conservatives among his friends with whom he finds 
 himself in closer accord than with certain of his own intellectual 
 kin ? Solidarity implies much more than mere verbal congruity. 
 
 Can we find a niche large enough for the cosmically minded 
 Whitman ? Shall we who appreciate him label ourselves, or shall 
 we abandon the attempt to express him in modern phraseology ? 
 The orthodox believer claims him for a Christian, and the Free- 
 thinker appropriates his heresies ; the socialist reader of Whitman
 
 is ^Ijitman'tf 3fl&eal 
 
 links his arm in ours and enquires why we do not identify our- 
 selves with the propaganda of collectivism ; and the anarchist, 
 when we quote Whitman, points the finger of scorn and mutters, 
 " Aha ! What is that but anarchism ? Why do you not avow 
 yourselves anarchists ? " Are they and similar complainants right ? 
 I think not. We might ask such, " Are you not of some coterie ? 
 Some school or mere religion ? Are you done with reviews and 
 criticisms of life, animating now to life itself ? " Whitman's ideal 
 democracy is neither solely economic, nor political, nor religious, 
 nor philosophical, nor ethical, nor literary, nor scientific. For my- 
 self, I would prefer to unfurl the banner of Democracy trium- 
 phantly at the head of the procession, followed by the banners of 
 the various sections, Socialism, Individualism, Communism, 
 Anarchism, Egoism, Mysticism, Universal Brotherhood, Ideal- 
 ism, Sex Reform, Evolution, Revolution, etc., with space in the 
 rear for many other respected groups which as yet are disinclined 
 to claim kinship with us. A goodly pageant ! Each pioneer divi- 
 sion meeting human aspirations, and each furthering the general 
 plan in its own special way. In such wise may we draw nigh unto 
 the Brotherhood of Lovers. 
 
 We cannot linger to read all Whitman's directing posts; we 
 have necessarily omitted many. To me, they seem to point to the 
 supremacy of love in human relations, to a time characterized 
 by the full expression and reception of individuality, by copious- 
 ness of life facilitating soul progression, to a time when mutual 
 helpfulness will replace rivalry, when non-governmental organiza- 
 tion will spring up in place of coercive authority, and when nat- 
 ural leadership, based on innate fitness, will supersede officialism 
 founded on adventitious extrinsic conditions, a time when the
 
 floral SDemocrac? 19 
 
 social sympathies will be so developed that the regulation of pro- 
 duction will be free from monopolistic interference, and the cre- 
 ative ability of the individual, governed by the wisdom that is of 
 the soul, will find full scope and delight in spontaneous work 
 nicely adjusted to the needs of the community, the desire being 
 to contribute that which shall be a joy and benefit to all. With 
 economics based on an ethical and spiritual foundation, the stim- 
 uli which many have found only in the competitive struggle will 
 assuredly arise in the more intense social passion of which we now 
 and then see prophetic examples. Whitman conceives, he tells us, 
 " a community, to-day and here, in which, on a sufficient scale, 
 the perfect personalities, without noise, meet, ... a community 
 organized in running order, powers judiciously delegated farm- 
 ing, building, trade, courts, mails, schools, elections, all attended 
 to ; and then the rest of life, the main thing, freely branching and 
 blossoming in each individual, and bearing golden fruit." 
 
 By such conceptions are we fortified in our faith that the com- 
 bined incentive of individual differentiation and collective prog- 
 ress, in its spiritual as well as material aspect, is destined to out- 
 distance the present anti-social form of competition, abolish 
 privilege, and lead to the social harmony in which all discordant 
 notes eventually blend.
 
 in 
 
 THE more sympathetic and fraternal relationship of human- 
 ity to nature in primitive stages of development has so far 
 dwindled with the advance of civilization that the attempt to 
 fully understand the predilections of such a man as Thoreau is 
 one of surpassing difficulty. In this highly civilized republic, in 
 this center of culture, how shall we induce in ourselves the sim- 
 ple attitude of mind which attunes the human consciousness to 
 the sub-human ? 
 
 In a general way our endeavor has been to get as far from 
 nature as possible, and modern discoveries and conventions have 
 been instrumental in widening the gulf. If this were all, and if, 
 as it sometimes seems, the hopes of mankind were universally 
 bent on escape to the artificial and unnatural, the subject might 
 be dismissed in a few words. But the march is no longer stead- 
 fastly directed to this goal. There are frequent halts, and some 
 of the most stalwart have set their faces once more toward the 
 wild. The discovery has been made in various quarters that, as 
 Elbert Hubbard remarks, we have been " intent on securing 
 things not worth the having." We have been content with 
 husks. 
 
 Among thinkers alive to these facts Henry David Thoreau is 
 preeminent, and more than most men he had the courage of his 
 convictions. His imagination, aided by his cosmic love, painted 
 the world beautiful. Said he, " Men cannot conceive of a state 
 of things so fair that it cannot be realized. . . . What can be 
 expressed in words can be expressed in life." He himself
 
 in Jiature 2 i 
 
 expressed the higher possibilities of existence so convincingly 
 that, for him " that hath an ear to hear," the arrogance of lux- 
 ury and the greed of possession are henceforth discredited. But 
 he did not expect the multitude, blinded by the conventions of 
 civilization, straightway to arise to greet the dawn which met 
 his eyes. " Only that day dawns to which we are awake." To 
 him the sun was " but a morning star." 
 
 Thoreau resembles Whitman in his identification of himself 
 with the universe. In his essay on " Walking" he announces 
 his desire to " speak a word for nature, for absolute freedom and 
 wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil 
 to regard man as an inhabitant or a part and parcel of nature, 
 rather than as a member of society." His demand is for litera- 
 ture which gives expression to nature, and he finds none. Whit- 
 man, perhaps, supplies this want more than any other poet, and 
 Thoreau rejoiced greatly in him. The second edition of" Leaves 
 of Grass," given him by Whitman, he said had done him more 
 good than any reading for a long time. It may be that his expe- 
 rience of human relationships was too restricted to enable him 
 fully to comprehend Whitman's drift, but his comments reveal 
 the keenness of his insight and appreciation. 
 
 These men who had so much in common were graduates from 
 the same school. It would be easy to draw parallels. Each had 
 responded to the same " resistless call," each had done with " in- 
 door complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms," and taken to 
 the "open road." Their joy in themselves and others was not 
 confined to physiognomy. " Every man is the builder of a tem- 
 ple called his body, to the God he worships, after a style purely 
 his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead." " I
 
 would have every man so much like a wild antelope, so much a 
 part and parcel of nature, that his very person should thus sweetly 
 advertise our senses of his presence and remind us of those parts 
 of nature which he most haunts," which is almost as charm- 
 ing a suggestion of personality as Whitman's " To a Pupil." 
 
 Thoreau found himself growing " savager and savager every 
 day." In his thought wildness and freedom are ever closely asso- 
 ciated. He needed space to develop his individuality, and was 
 oppressed by luxury and the needless complexity of modern life. 
 He found it necessary to get " back to that glorious society 
 called solitude." In one of his letters he refers to Emerson in 
 this connection the latter finding his life "so unprofitable and 
 shabby for the most part that he is driven to all sorts of resources, 
 and, among the rest, to men. I tell him," writes Thoreau, 
 " that we only differ in our resources. Mine is to get away from 
 men." His withdrawal, however, was not to solitude, but to 
 companionship with nature. Such souls are never more alone 
 than when surrounded by conventions and the humanity that has 
 adapted itself so admirably thereto. Whitman loved to " inhale 
 great draughts of space," and had wondrous revelations from 
 silent communion with nature, but his freedom was apparently 
 less disturbed by human proximity. 
 
 The love of simplicity and distaste for the artificialities and 
 refinements of civilization originated in Thoreau, no less than in 
 Whitman, in the aspiration for soul-development. They have 
 abundantly justified their own methods. Their conceptions were 
 original because vitalized by outdoor light and air and sunshine. 
 Most people are what Professor Geddes terms " ear-minded," 
 instead of eye-minded they take things at second and third
 
 n Mature 23 
 
 hand. The nature-lover derives his knowledge direct from the 
 source. It is thus that the sublimity of assurance is reached. 
 " It is when we do not have to believe, but come into actual 
 contact with Truth and are related to her in the most direct and 
 intimate way. Waves of serener life pass over us from time to 
 time like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather." 
 Openness and receptivity of mind conduce to this result. Man's 
 life should be constantly fresh as a river. " It should be the 
 same channel, but a new water every instant." Thoreau's met- 
 aphors are most fascinating : he dwelt in an atmosphere so much 
 rarer than that of our ordinary commonplace levels ! 
 
 His life was a protest against all forms of tyranny. " It is 
 hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a North- 
 ern one ; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of your- 
 self." Yet so few people are conscious of being enslaved ! 
 Thoreau was never deluded by popular standards. " The greater 
 part of what my neighbors call good, " he said, " I believe in my 
 soul to be bad." He demanded something more than material 
 progress. " While civilization has been improving our houses, 
 it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It 
 has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen 
 and kings. . . . The luxury of one class is counterbalanced 
 by the indigence of another." In primitive times man was but 
 a sojourner in nature, but lo ! now " men have become the tools 
 of their tools." We are weighted with self-imposed burdens in 
 respect to houses, furniture, clothes, etc., and must continue to 
 bear those burdens until we heed the cry, " Simplicity, simplicity, 
 simplicity ! " Only when we do this will it be possible to loaf 
 and invite one's soul. Our lives are so full not merely of things
 
 24 
 
 to be done, but also of exaggerated concern about the doing, that 
 we seldom have leisure to make or keep spiritual appointments. 
 And we are mostly engrossed with what is altogether irksome, if 
 not trivial. Thoreau prophesies that " the truly efficient laborer 
 will not crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task 
 surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure, and then do what 
 he loves best." Leaving the " halo of ease and leisure " out of 
 the question, of how many workers, think you, to-day is this 
 true, that they do what they love best? There are certain 
 occupations, indeed, in which it is possible to take some joy, and 
 some of us enter them bravely enough. A few months, or per- 
 haps days, suffice to damp our ardor. Sooner or later we are 
 prevented from reaching our highest capacity by some overseer 
 or person in authority whose estimate of skill is purely on a finan- 
 cial basis, and sadly we learn to acquiesce in conditions in which 
 our desire for self-realization in work is irrevocably thwarted. 
 
 When Thoreau affirmed that " the mass of men lead lives of 
 quiet desperation," it was no mere figure of speech. Conversa- 
 tion with the employees of almost every business elicits testi- 
 mony as to the joylessness of their work. Yet the unconge- 
 niality of their position is the least part of the hardship the 
 insecurity is worst of all. The desperation of the capitalist 
 differs somewhat in character and is attributable to other causes ; 
 but it is none the less a fact. In his case it is worry and ennui 
 instead of worry and overwork. He has no more joy in the in- 
 dustry which affords him an income than his dependents, but 
 the dollars which he extracts are his reward. They enable him 
 to lead a parasitic life and, did he but know it, are but a poor 
 compensation indeed for the glad expression of personality in pro-
 
 in ^ature 25 
 
 ductive work, the fruit of one's own genius. Compare the suc- 
 cess within the reach of the most influential magnate of society 
 with that which Thoreau portrays. " If the day and night are 
 such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like 
 flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, 
 more immortal, that is your success. All nature is your con- 
 gratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself." 
 
 The qualities possessed by idealists are not those which make 
 for material prosperity. Wealth comes in the long run to those 
 to whom it is indispensable, but not to those who believe they 
 can do without it and whose happiness rests on surer founda- 
 tions. In life we choose our prizes for ourselves. Sometimes we 
 are disappointed with them when they come fashioned though 
 they be by our inmost desire. If we have outgrown the need for 
 them it is well. 
 
 Though he honored labor and despised idle learning, yet the 
 schemes of financiers and the expedients of commerce, with its 
 vulgarity of advertising and dishonesty of adulteration, had lit- 
 tle to attract such a man as Thoreau. His only escape from 
 ways so foreign to his temperament was to the " impartial and 
 unbribable beneficence of nature." Political events were far less 
 important to him than changes in the aspect of physical nature, 
 the drying-up of rivers or the decay of forests. The universe 
 seemed to him so aptly fitted to our organization that he found 
 on every side something to soothe and refresh the senses. As 
 for the so-called practical affairs, commonly deemed of such mo- 
 ment, he could " postpone them all " to hear a locust sing. He 
 feared less living men than dead institutions. The danger of 
 being cursed by some "monster institution" that is a real
 
 26 
 
 menace to freedom. He seeks refuge in forest wild or flowing 
 river. 
 
 Ordinary clothes are apt to be an impediment to the appre- 
 ciation of nature. For women the disqualifications of dress have 
 been very serious happily becoming less so, not so much from 
 a saner view of the dignity of the body as from the requirements 
 of locomotive improvements. We owe it to the bicycle that 
 many hitherto incapable or indisposed to walk now have their 
 blood abundantly oxygenized by the more rapid motion of the 
 wheel. 
 
 It is worth while to consider the nature cure in these days of 
 unnatural remedies and unscientific science. After being daily 
 in the open air for nearly two years without drugs or medicine, 
 Whitman attributed his much-restored health to this close asso- 
 ciation with nature. In his joyous, secluded sun-baths he found 
 the sweetest exhilarating ecstasy. Thoreau believed the diseases 
 of the body could not be cured by addressing the body alone, 
 and affirmed the need of a physician who should minister to both 
 body and soul at once that is, to man. 
 
 It requires, however, more courage than the conventional man 
 possesses to confront nature, as Thoreau did, with impregnability 
 of soul. Might not the heroic virtues be better developed by 
 conflict with the elements than by the fratricidal brutality of the 
 battle-field ? We stultify ourselves when we yield to the seduc- 
 tions of ease. Our strength approximates to the demands made 
 on it. People usually prefer to follow the line of least resistance, 
 ignoring the effect of such a course on character. 
 
 Thus, it was Thoreau's experience that travelers generally ex- 
 aggerate the difficulties of a mountain ascent or of traveling
 
 'tf 3f|o2 in ^ature 27 
 
 through forests. This was true even of the country folk he met, 
 for whom it might have been expected that long familiarity would 
 have robbed forest and mountain of their terrors. So with char- 
 acteristic independence he disregarded such of their warnings as 
 he believed to be inspired by imaginary fears and followed his 
 own judgment. If he was lost, he reflected, he was standing in 
 his own shoes, and for the time being living on the spot where 
 he was standing, and therefore it was merely the places that had 
 known him that were lost and not really himself. " I am not 
 alone," he declares, " if I stand by myself." 
 
 Our love of nature is utilitarian. On our summer vacations, 
 if we are not of the pleasure-seekers, we half reluctantly allow 
 ourselves a brief respite from routine in the hope of securing 
 health or increased capacity for remunerative work. During such 
 periods of leisure the observer can estimate fairly well how large 
 a place nature occupies in the affections of average mortals. As 
 a rule, various other matters appear to take precedence, and the 
 appreciation of natural beauties is more or less perfunctory. The 
 weather on such occasions is apt to be of two genders : there are 
 certain days when it would be all very well for a man to venture 
 out-of-doors, but quite out of the question for women. Women 
 have unhappily become more habituated to indoor life than men, 
 and so feel the deprivation less. The amount of labor and ex- 
 pense involved in damage to their flimsy attire is enough to make 
 them unwilling to take unnecessary risks. Few of our urban 
 residents of either sex, however, display any conspicuous hardi- 
 hood or enthusiasm in their return to Mother Earth in her vary- 
 ing moods, and delight in the elemental abandon of primitive 
 unconstraint is rare to find. Owing to various reasons, there-
 
 28 3fcittttan'0 3|Deal 
 
 fore, the sanest joys embodied by poet or artist in poem or pic- 
 ture are known to us chiefly on paper or canvas, and we accept 
 this second-hand refreshment without regret. 
 
 Even under the pressure of modern commercial demands we 
 might have more opportunity for the enjoyment of nature, or for 
 following the bent of our own natures, than we do, if there were 
 less of the Shylock in our business dealings. The severity has 
 been somewhat relaxed within the walls of workshop or office, and 
 stools or chairs are now provided where a very few years ago they 
 were rigidly prohibited. But the employee is still compelled to 
 yield the full legal quota of time to the purchaser of his labor, 
 equally whether he rushes at breathless speed or sits, during dull 
 spells, with folded hands. Perhaps this wastefulness is inevitable 
 at the present stage of evolution, and it may be a more humane 
 system awaits the growth of consciousness that quality which 
 modern competitive methods have done their best to enfeeble. 
 The desire for tangible results eclipses the desire to be to grow 
 into harmony with the universal life. To be harmonious with 
 conditions and with one's fellows the two streams of develop- 
 ment are in this direction. We evolve not by mere abstract love 
 of nature and humanity, but by the specific love, based on sym- 
 pathy, of natural beauties manifested in sky or ocean, animal or 
 plant, and by the love of soul-beauties manifested in individuals. 
 " Men nowhere east or west live yet a natural life round which 
 the vine clings and the elm willingly shadows. Man would dese- 
 crate it by his touch and so the beauty of the world remains veiled 
 to him. He needs not only to be spiritualized, but naturalized, 
 on the soil of the earth." There is always a tendency to value 
 things at cost, and therefore to set little store by things that are
 
 in Mature 29 
 
 free to all. Simple pleasures, like weeds, are often despised. 
 " Heaven may be defined as the place which men avoid." 
 
 Thoreau's world was a world of thought ; it was this inner 
 realm that delighted him, and the outer world was but the canvas* 
 to his imagination. Like Whitman he esteemed diversity and dep- 
 recated discipleship. " I would not have any one adopt my mode 
 of living on any account, for beside that before he had fairly 
 learned it I may have found out another for myself, I desire that 
 there may be as many different persons in the world as possible ; 
 but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue 
 his own way, and not his father's or his mother's or his neighbor's 
 instead." His feeling is akin to that of Ibsen's Dr. Stockmann, 
 of whom he reminds us when he voices the isolation of spirit of 
 which at times all highly differentiated types are overwhelmingly 
 conscious : " In what concerns you most, do not think that you 
 have companions. Know that you are alone in the world." 
 
 Let it not be imagined, however, that the love of nature is ex- 
 clusive or incompatible with depth of human affection. To some 
 readers it appears that Thoreau subordinated human nature to na- 
 ture. Isolated passages may be cited in support of this view, but, 
 taking his work as a whole, I find no evidence that he lacked the 
 proper sense of proportion. In common with many other pioneers, 
 he sought to emphasize the unpopular side of questions, believing 
 that there were plenty in the conventional ranks to champion 
 orthodox institutions. The conservative tendencies of the race 
 may always be counted on. There is every reason to suppose 
 that Thoreau's individuality was strengthened by sympathetic as- 
 sociation with nature, and that he thereby developed a higher con- 
 ception of human relationships and a correspondingly high capacity
 
 3 o 
 
 for such. Here is one of his inimitable similes : "As I love nature, 
 as I love singing birds and gleaming stubble and morning and 
 evening and summer and winter, I love thee, my friend." When 
 *men and women once more fraternize with nature and cease to 
 pay homage to superficialities and shams, will they indeed love 
 one another thus with a love so spontaneous, so confident, so 
 constant, so devoid of calculation ? 
 
 Thoreau aimed " above mere morality." The bounty of nature 
 left its impress on his thought. His pleasure was not enhanced 
 by monopoly. He was non-invasive and self-sufficing. He desired 
 to be honest with his fellows. "There is none who does not 
 lie hourly in the respect he pays to false appearance. How sweet 
 it would be to treat men and things for an hour for just what they 
 are ! " 
 
 In the pursuit of happiness, in order to understand the use of 
 materials and attain intellectual power and experience on various 
 planes, we have wandered far. We have learnt the futility of 
 many of our ambitions, and with the final needs of the soul still 
 unsatisfied, we return to behold in the universe and in ourselves 
 what our unpractised eyes had previously failed to discern. " The 
 ears were not made for such trivial uses as men are wont to sup- 
 pose, but to hear celestial sounds. The eyes were not made for 
 such grovelling uses as they are now put to and worn out by, but 
 to behold beauty now invisible."
 
 of Eefeolt: Belief 4 
 Carpenter 
 
 MY suggestion to consider Whitman as the Poet of Revolt 
 has resulted in the grouping of three names under this des- 
 ignation. While the inclusion of two transatlantic revolt-motors 
 will preclude any approach to exhaustive treatment, it may yet 
 afford us bases of comparison of some practical value, since Amer- 
 ica has emulated many of the defects of the older civilizations, 
 and not a few of the problems which in them press so hard for 
 solution are here imminent. The exigencies of the theme will 
 involve more or less sociological reference, and, if I hint at the 
 application, it is that, in so far as I apprehend the master's song, 
 although it now and then contains the invitation to loaf, yet the 
 dominant note is " March ! " 
 
 " Whoever you are, come forth ! or man or woman, come forth ! 
 You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house though you 
 built it, or though it has been built for you! " 
 
 It may almost seem that for Whitman Fellows the "passing hour" 
 which he yields us, " in our tracks to pause oblivious," recurs 
 with undue frequency not as an interval of needed rest in the 
 resistless march of compact ranks over toilsome roads, but as a 
 serene goal of complacency wherein we might be more fittingly 
 lulled by " piano-tunes " than by the blast of the trumpet and 
 the far-off daybreak call of " Pioneers ! O Pioneers ! " 
 
 It is so much less disturbing to speculate as to whether, for
 
 32 
 
 instance, " Leaves of Grass " is entitled to rank as poetry, than 
 it is to enter into the atmosphere of the poet's thought, and from 
 thence to pursue our own flights to do our part as he has 
 done his. For the acceptance of this " utterance from full-grown 
 human personality, as from a tree growing in itself, or any other 
 objective fact of the universe, from its own laws, oblivious of 
 conformity," it may be necessary to prepare ourselves by the re- 
 adjustment of the bases of our individual lives and by a concep- 
 tion of deeper ethical, social, and political purposes. Since Whit- 
 man has repeatedly assured us that no one will understand his 
 verses " who insists upon viewing them as a literary perform- 
 ance, or attempt at such performance, or as aiming mainly towards 
 art or aestheticism," it is clear that we cannot ignore the wider 
 trend of his muse "needs newer, larger, stronger, keener com- 
 pensations and compellers." 
 
 Whitmanites, too, can hardly fail to be conscious of the dan- 
 gers incidental to a broad, all-inclusive tolerance of all philos- 
 ophies and creeds the danger of degenerating into the laissez- 
 faire attitude of stagnation. Whitman, however, has demon- 
 strated none better that tolerance is compatible with the 
 strongest personal conviction and a tenacity of purpose against 
 which the little hammers of convention, expediency, and the 
 like, strike their impotent blows in vain. The optimism which 
 refuses to acknowledge absolute evil, which discerns only good 
 in the universe, not excluding pain and suffering, is but half 
 expressed unless it also recognizes that, albeit the soul evolves 
 through suffering, yet the aspiring and combative effort, the re- 
 volt against tyranny, are also good and necessary to the world's 
 advancement. Whitman held that :
 
 }->orts of UrUolr 33 
 
 u The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers and 
 revolutionists are indispensable to counteract the inertness and 
 fossilism making so large a part of human institutions. . . . As 
 circulation is to air, so is agitation and a plentiful degree of spec- 
 ulative license to political and moral sanity." 
 
 Among many who have taken up " the task eternal," three 
 men are conspicuous in promoting this counter-attitude, and our 
 survey will be confined to Shelley, Whitman, and Edward Car- 
 penter. For our present purpose they must be considered not 
 only as poets, but as reformers and seers. In glancing at their 
 familiar portraits we at once enter the realm of reality and con- 
 front vital issues, for these are they who convince " not by ar- 
 guments, similes, rhymes ; " they convince by their " presence." 
 In addition to their revolutionary writings, they have all pio- 
 neered valiantly in their lives, and therefore appeal to us with the 
 only authority some of us would be willing to heed, that born 
 of experience, pointing out to us now and again the safety or 
 peril of the road, and always addressing us with the imperative 
 " Come ! " which, in the annals of military dictatorship, has 
 proved so much more effective than the arbitrary command, 
 " Go ! " 
 
 We will first make a sort of composite picture, to review such 
 points of contact as may serve to elucidate the aspects before us, 
 and later we will try to portray their more striking distinctive 
 traits and divergencies. 
 
 If we inquire from what founts these inspirers of heroism de- 
 rive their own indomitable valor, we learn that they are indebted 
 largely to communion with nature and the unseen ; to comrade- 
 ship, the companionship of the living and the dead ; and to such
 
 34 
 
 subjective equipments as love, sympathy, ideality, mysticism, 
 faith in human possibilities, imperturbability, indifference to re- 
 sults (material comfort), etc. They are all essentially open-air 
 poets, and the soul conscious of the pure radiations of such ro- 
 bust personalities grows impatient of confining walls and seeks 
 to escape to the boundless beyond, and the untamable elements 
 more in harmony with the spirit of "freedom's athletes" 
 " hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies and Na- 
 ture's dauntlessness." 
 
 "Voices of mountain and star, 
 Of cloud and forest and ocean," 
 
 are to the silent listener replete with divine lore, and the visible 
 world an open book of symbols. 
 
 I lie abstracted and hear beautiful tales of things and the reasons of things, 
 They are so beautiful, I nudge myself to listen." 
 
 It is pleasant to recall Shelley's joy in nature, and to picture him 
 " companioning the winds and the waves," or writing his poems 
 in the perfect environment of a pine forest. Then Whitman : 
 
 "I think heroic deeds were all conceived in the open air, and all free poems 
 
 also, 
 I think I could stop here myself and do miracles." 
 
 Or Carpenter: 
 
 "Who shall understand the words of the ferns lifting their fronds innumerable? 
 What man shall go forth into the world holding his life in his open palm 
 With high adventurous joy from sunrise to sunset 
 Fearless, in his sleeve laughing, having outflanked his enemies? 
 His heart like nature's garden that all men abide in 
 Free, where the great winds blow, rains fall and the sun shines, 
 And manifold growths come forth and scatter their fragrance?"
 
 of Ifcebolt 35 
 
 Admissions of the insufficiency of nature, however, are not 
 lacking : 
 
 " For to tread life's dismaying wilderness 
 
 Without one smile to cheer, one voice to bless, 
 Amid the snares and scoffs of human kind, 
 Is hard." . . . 
 
 And this brings us to the conception of comradeship which occu- 
 pies so prominent a place in Whitman's and Carpenter's ideals. 
 Following closely the lines just quoted, Shelley continues : 
 
 " With deathless minds which leave where they have passed 
 A path of light, my soul communion knew 
 Till from that glorious intercourse, at last, 
 As from a mine of magic store, I drew 
 Words which were weapons; round my heart there grew 
 The adamantine armor of their power." 
 
 The profounder social and political significance of comrade- 
 ship, as conceived by Whitman and Carpenter, will be touched 
 upon further on. 
 
 As might be inferred, intervals of time and place notwithstand- 
 ing, we find that the citadels against which our poets have directed 
 their attacks are often identical in structure. " The whole ques- 
 tion hangs together and fastens and links all peoples." Tyranny 
 has many forms, and the majestic figure of Liberty never ceases 
 to beckon. The indictment against a capitalistic regime, which en- 
 riches the few at the expense of the life-blood of the many, dis- 
 covers a vulnerable place in our boasted civilization and pros- 
 perity. The difference " between a splendid and a happy land " 
 needs still to be emphasized. When Shelley showers obloquy 
 on the name of king, we are reminded of the possibility of "chang-
 
 36 
 
 ing the place and keeping the pain." As Victor Hugo pointed 
 out : "Tyranny resides elsewhere than in royal palaces, and des- 
 potism is as fatal to happiness and development if manifested 
 through a narrow and intolerant popular spirit as if it emanated 
 from a throne." Similarly, when Shelley declaims against the 
 emptiness of religion, we have little cause for self-congratulation. 
 We turn to Whitman's more recent diagnosis and read : " Gen- 
 uine belief seems to have left us. . . . A lot of churches, the most 
 dismal phantasms I know, usurp the name of religion." While 
 Carpenter declares that the church is dead, and points to a na- 
 tion dying," dying slowly and surely of unbelief and there can 
 be no deadlier disease, no plague of the Middle Ages, no cholera 
 epidemic deadlier." But he contemplates the gloomy spectacle 
 without dismay, for he has seen what lies deeper far than the life 
 and death of nations, and he sings, "Joy, joy ! " for what he has 
 seen "is sufficient." 
 
 Again, democracy is menaced by custom, which " maketh blind 
 and obdurate the loftiest hearts," and by dilettanteism. " Fear 
 grace, elegance, civilization, delicatesse " ; " these are not the 
 times of canary birds, nor of trifling with art and philosophy and 
 impertinent philanthropic schemes this is the time of grown 
 Men and Women." Self-thraldom must not be permitted to bar 
 the way. 
 
 The subordination of women is among the earliest centers of 
 attack. " Can man be free if woman is a slave ? " Democracy 
 demands the formation of robuster ideals, " not of men only, but 
 of women," which will be capable of realization as soon as women 
 can " bring themselves to give up toys and fictions, and launch 
 forth, as men do, amid real, independent, stormy life." The con-
 
 of Kebolc 37 
 
 tempt for manual labor, too, shrank from as "that which worse 
 than damns," is a remnant of the aristocratic spirit. "The 
 common ambition strains for elevations, to become some privi- 
 leged exclusive. The master sees greatness and health in being 
 part of the mass." 
 
 From some such common platform as that just adumbrated 
 our poets go forth in invincible armor, as crusaders to battle, re- 
 cruiting as they go. 
 
 " My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion. 
 He going with me must go well arm'd, 
 
 He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies, de- 
 sertions." 
 
 Following in their wake, the possibility of endless parallels 
 opens up before us to entice the itinerant mind to desert from the 
 red flag which we have unfurled. It behooves us to resist the 
 allurements of the pleasure-grounds of literature if we would 
 keep within sound of the drum. 
 
 Putting aside our imperfect composite picture, which it is to 
 be feared was rather blurred, we approach our group and single 
 out, first, Shelley, for closer inspection. It is the face of an en- 
 thusiast who has retained much of the spirituality and charm of 
 youthen manhood's early years, when most men have succumbed 
 to the materializing and conventionalizing tendencies of environ- 
 ing influences. The brave, high-spirited boy, who refused to fag 
 at Eton, and who, exasperated to the point of frenzy, stood at 
 bay, surrounded and hooted at by his schoolfellows, was typical
 
 38 T&tyitmzn'ti 2fl&*al 
 
 of the man Shelley, fighting, single-handed, the reactionary and 
 conservative forces of society, and the hosts of detractors, as 
 incapable of appreciating his nobility of purpose as were the tor- 
 mentors of his school-days. 
 
 Entering life's arena during the period of intense reaction fol- 
 lowing the French Revolution, Shelley must, indeed, have "strug- 
 gled against great odds." There must have been much to op- 
 press and arouse the indignation of a nature possessing such 
 generous sympathies verily, it was to him "the night of the 
 world!" In the first recoil of his freedom-loving soul against 
 bigotry and injustice, it was not to be expected that his eager 
 aim would be uniformly true and deliberate. Thus we marvel 
 not that he occasionally lacked judgment and discrimination, or 
 that he confused ecclesiasticism with religion, but marvel rather 
 at the rare insight which anticipated the lines of social and polit- 
 ical advancement and foresaw the extirpation of abuses which 
 were subsequently trampled under foot in humanity's onward 
 march. His onslaught upon the narrowness of a crystallized or- 
 thodoxy may be regarded as the natural outcome of lofty spiritual 
 aspiration the "effluence," as Browning defines his work, of 
 one "whose spirit invariably saw and spoke from the last height 
 to which it had attained." How could he do otherwise than dis- 
 trust a church which seemed to ally itself with tyranny, inter- 
 preting the will of God as a rod "to scourge" men "into 
 slaves," affirming 
 
 . . . " that priests and kings, * 
 Custom, domestic sway, ay, all that brings 
 Man's freeborn soul beneath the oppressor's heel, 
 Are his strong ministers"?
 
 of Hcbolt 39 
 
 That, despite his early death, the force of his life and work 
 influenced and evoked grateful tribute from such a man as 
 Browning, and that he has infused many a humble wayfarer 
 with exaltation and courage, are monumental facts. " Child of 
 the revolution," he was " a clarion-voice of faith, hope, and 
 love " at a time when inspiring voices were rarer than they are 
 to-day. The " passion for reforming the world," which he 
 himself acknowledges, and a deep, abiding sympathy with the 
 oppressed were the basic motives of his life. 
 
 One or two quotations must suffice to illustrate the purity of 
 his ideals : 
 
 . . . "A nation 
 
 Made free by love, a mighty brotherhood 
 
 Linked in a jealous interchange of good." 
 
 ..." The man remains 
 Scepterless, free, uncircumscribed, but man : 
 Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king 
 Over himself; just, gentle, wise: but man." 
 
 Over his great drama, with the titantic Prometheus, prefigur- 
 ative of mankind, long-suffering, unyielding, and finally tri- 
 umphant over evil, we cannot linger. Shelley's conception of 
 the life-struggle, which Vida Scudder sums up in the one word 
 " endurance," is finely expressed in the closing stanza. 
 
 Many of his ideals are yet reserved for future attainment. To 
 the Europe of the beginning of the century they must indeed 
 have seemed Utopian, and the steadfastness of his devotion to 
 them, regardless of the anathemas hurled upon him, evidences a 
 faith beyond that of the unquestioning adherent of authoritative 
 dogma. His note on the vindication of extravagant expenditure
 
 40 ^^itman'fl! Jl&eal 
 
 on luxuries one of the economic fallacies which seem to 
 thrive on repeated refutations is an instance of his clear-sight- 
 edness. His righteous wrath, however, never degenerated into 
 vindictiveness, for 
 
 ..." To avenge misdeed 
 
 On the misdoer doth but misery feed 
 
 With her own broken heart." 
 
 In common with many present-day reformers, to bring about 
 the consummation for which he yearned he relied rather on the 
 diffusion of saner ideals than on any structural changes in soci- 
 ety achieved by an appeal to force, which would be of no per- 
 manent value, since they would leave the spirit unchanged. 
 
 . . . "In the midst 
 
 I paused and saw how ugly and how fell 
 
 O Hate! thou art, even when thy life thou shedd'st 
 
 For love." . . . 
 
 We may smile at the fearlessness with which Shelley discusses 
 problems which have baffled sages before and since. Such an 
 expression as " ghastly death " suggests comparison with Whit- 
 man's sublime poems on death, and is a mere instance, among 
 others, of crudity rectifiable by experience. His philosophy must 
 be adjudged as necessarily immature, and the world's indebted- 
 ness estimated by his fidelity and the scope of his tendencies. 
 
 His appeals to the men of England are among the most stir- 
 ring rally ing-calls to arouse the apathetic to enlist themselves in 
 the anti-wage-slavery war, and are too characteristic to be alto- 
 gether omitted from our sketch :
 
 ports of Urtiolt 4 i 
 
 "Rise, like lions after slumber, 
 In unvanquishable number! 
 Shake your chains to earth like dew 
 Which in sleep had fallen on you ! 
 Ye are many, they are few. 
 
 "What is freedom? Ye can tell 
 That which slavery is too well, 
 For its very name has grown 
 To an echo of your own. 
 
 " 'T is to be a slave in soul 
 And to hold no strong control 
 Over your own wills, but be 
 All that others make of ye." 
 
 We now come to the central figure of our group Whitman, 
 " the sworn poet " of revolt, one of the " savage, eternal peaks " 
 to which none turn in vain ; and let us for a moment see him 
 as Carpenter sees him : 
 
 "Who is this, for instance, easy with open shirt and brown neck and face 
 the whites of his eyes just seen in the sultry twilight through the 
 city garden swinging?" 
 
 " [Who anyhow is he that is simple and free and without afterthought? 
 Who passes among his fellows without constraint and without encroach- 
 ment, without embarrassment and without grimaces? and does not act 
 from motives? 
 
 Who is ignorant or careless of what is termed politeness? Who makes 
 life wherever he goes desirable, and removes stumbling-blocks instead of 
 creating them?] "
 
 42 3fcitman'0 31&eai Democracy 
 
 "Grave and strong and untamed, 
 This is the clear-browed unconstrained tender face, with full lips and 
 
 bearded chin, this is the regardless defiant face I love and tnist; 
 Which I came out to see, and having seen do not forget." 
 
 For the complete portraiture, here necessarily abridged, see 
 " Towards Democracy," third edition, pp. 4244. 
 
 As has been pointed out, the term " revolt " ceases to have 
 any specific implication when applied to Whitman's poems, since 
 his whole life and work were a revolt, and, to appropriate a 
 phrase which he uses in another connection, "the indirect is just 
 as much as the direct." 
 
 "Piety and conformity to them that like, 
 Peace, obesity, allegiance to them that like, 
 I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations, 
 Crying, Leap from your seats and contend for your lives!" 
 
 We have already noted sundry accordances in our group, and 
 it remains to observe some divergences arising from differences 
 of environment, maturer philosophy, and more nearly perfect 
 cosmic vision. While Shelley was continually opposing himself 
 against institutions, Whitman asserts that he is "neither for nor 
 against institutions." Whitman appears to have been concerned 
 primarily with his own soul, determined to dismiss whatever 
 should insult it ; therefore, although he is indifferent to institu- 
 tions, as such, it may often happen that in defending his own in- 
 terior integrity he becomes a stern opponent. He bids " neither 
 for soft eulogies, big money returns, nor the approbation of ex- 
 isting schools and conventions," and often has scathing stric- 
 tures to offer anent the said schools and conventions. He con-
 
 . of Hebolt 43 
 
 fronts " peace, security, and all the settled laws to unsettle 
 them." 
 
 Yet Whitman does not rail, as some esthetes and reformers 
 have done, against materialistic achievements, but accepts them 
 with pride and joy, and for a moment the eat-drink-and-be-merry 
 section might deem him on their side. Vain illusion ! " Is 
 there," he demands, "a great moral and religious civilization 
 the only justification of a great material one ? " Of the achieve- 
 ments which are the ultimatum of the commercial spirit he de- 
 clares tfc that the soul of man will not with such only nay, not 
 with such at all be- finally satisfied." Thus he revolts against 
 the ultra-mundane no less than against the ultra-spiritual, and 
 such subtlety of thought may well elude superficial readers and 
 confuse them as to the poet's drift. 
 
 It is to the emotional depths revealed to him in the Secession 
 War the strong provocation of war sights and scenes that 
 Whitman attributes his formative power, considering America as 
 " really the great test or trial case for all the problems and prom- 
 ises and speculations of humanity." 
 
 "Come, my tan-faced children, 
 Follow well in order, get your weapons ready, 
 Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes? 
 Pioneers! O pioneers! 
 
 " For we cannot tarry here, 
 
 We must march, my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, 
 We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, 
 Pioneers! O pioneers!
 
 44 
 
 " Have the elder races halted? 
 
 Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas? 
 We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson, 
 Pioneers! O pioneers!" 
 
 " Rapt with love for all," he emerges from the " sad shows 
 with deafening noises of hatred and smoke of war," to sing of 
 " saner wars, sweet wars, life-giving wars." 
 
 "Exult, O lands! victorious lands! 
 Not there your victory on those red shuddering fields, 
 But here and hence your victory." 
 
 " Myself and this contentious soul of mine, 
 Still on our own campaigning bound, 
 Through untried roads with ambushes opponents lined, 
 Through many a sharp defeat and many a crisis, often baffled, 
 Here marching, ever marching on, a war fight out aye here, 
 To fiercer, weightier battles give expression." 
 
 In certain quarters, by those who seek the remedy in a return 
 to belligerent exploits, we are frequently taunted (and perhaps 
 with reason) for our pusillanimity. But the rare emotions which 
 war has sometimes evoked must not be permitted to perish with 
 the decline of militarism, but must be transmuted into enthusi- 
 asm serviceable to the industrial commonwealth. The war spirit 
 tends to narrow the sympathies to a prescribed area, and to en- 
 gender anti-fraternal sentiments towards those without. 
 
 "Wert capable of war, its tugs and trials? be capable of peace, its trials, 
 For the tug and mortal strain of nations come at last in prosperous peace 
 not war."
 
 of 
 
 45 
 
 The fuller significance of comradeship, alluded to in its less 
 heroic phases in relation to Shelley, will be unfolded as we con- 
 sider Whitman's more exacting claims on its behalf. " Intense 
 and loving comradeship, the personal and passionate attachment 
 of man to man, which, hard to define, underlies the lessons 
 and ideals of the profound saviors of every land and age . . . 
 carried to degrees hitherto unknown . . . seems to promise," 
 he says, " when thoroughly developed and recognized in man- 
 ners and literature, the most substantial hope and safety of the 
 future of these States." In this conception, culminating in the 
 "continent indissoluble," the "inseparable cities with their 
 arms about each other's necks," may be traced potencies 
 which are eventually to triumph over anti-social institutions and 
 racial animosities. Henceforth nevermore lonely, despairing, 
 baffled, overwhelmed in the struggle, but hand in hand with the 
 Great Companions " the goal that was named cannot be coun- 
 termanded." Neither the " ironical smiles and mockings of 
 those who remain behind," nor the " beckonings of love," nor 
 the hold of the " reach'd hands," avail to detain those on whom 
 has flashed, for a brief moment, the illumination from the " orb 
 of many orbs " 
 
 "Thou peerless^ passionate, good cause, 
 Thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea, 
 Deathless throughout the ages, races, lands." 
 
 Always mindful of the spirituality of the bond which unites all 
 who have taken up arms for freedom, Whitman infuses us with 
 the consciousness of the vastness and inexhaustibility of the is- 
 sues
 
 4 6 ^&itman'0 3fi&eal Democracy 
 
 " The joy of being toss'd in the brave turmoil of these times 
 
 the promulgation and the path, obedient, lowly reverent to 
 the voice, the gesture of the god, or holy ghost, which others 
 see not, hear not a little or a larger band a band of brave 
 and true, unprecedented yet arm'd and equipt at every point 
 
 the members, it may be, separated by different dates and States 
 . . . but always one, compact in soul, conscience-conserving, 
 God-inculcating, inspired achievers, not only in literature, the 
 greatest art, but achievers in all art, a new undying order, 
 dynasty, from age to age transmitted a band,'a class, at least 
 as fit to cope with current years, our dangers, needs, as those 
 who, for their times, so long, so well, in armor or in cowl, up- 
 held and made illustrious the far-back feudal, priestly world." 
 
 No one has confronted failure so dauntlessly as he has, nor 
 projected such brave interpretations of its import : 
 
 "I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquered 
 
 and slain persons. 
 
 Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? 
 
 I also say it is good to fall; battles are lost in the same spirit in which they 
 are won." 
 
 " We try often, though we fall back often. A brave delight, 
 fit for freedom's athletes, fills these arenas, and fully satisfies, out 
 of the action in them, irrespective of success. Whatever we do 
 not attain, we at any rate attain the experiences of the fight, the 
 hardening of the strong campaign, and throb with currents of 
 attempt at least. Time is ample. Let the victors come after us. 
 . . . Yet there is an immortal courage and prophecy in every 
 sane soul that cannot, must not, under any circumstances, capit- 
 ulate. Vive, the attack the perennial assault! Vive, the un-
 
 of Kebolt 47 
 
 popular cause the spirit that audaciously aims the never- 
 abandon'd efforts, pursued the same amid opposing proofs and 
 precedents." 
 
 Noteworthy as a differentiation in method is Whitman's aban- 
 donment of the political claims, the assertion of which he leaves 
 to others, relying on " Literature a new, superb, democratic 
 literature to be the medicine and lever, and (with Art) the 
 chief influence in modern civilization." This constructive work, 
 for which literature is to be a lever (" great poets and great 
 audiences, too "), is to be no mere surface veneer, but to revo- 
 lutionize the entire life. " The building up of the masses " is 
 to be accomplished by " building up grand individuals" cen- 
 ters from which proceed the " quenchless, indispensable fire." 
 
 But whatever the method, his supreme faith in liberty remains 
 unabated, and, as to France, when her harsh, discordant natal 
 screams reach him over the waves, his loving response is ever 
 forthcoming : 
 
 "Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribution? 
 Could I wish humanity different? 
 Could I wish the people made of wood and stone? 
 Or that there be no justice in destiny or time? " 
 
 "Then courage, European revolter, revoltress! 
 For till all ceases neither must you cease. 
 
 "I do not know what you are for, (I do not know what I am for myself, 
 
 nor what anything is for,) 
 
 But I will search carefully for it even in being foil'd, 
 In defeat, poverty, misconception, imprisonment for they, too, are 
 
 great."
 
 48 
 
 Carpenter 
 
 It remains now to complete our triad. Not amid the clash of 
 swords and armed battalions, but in the tumult of the deadlier 
 strife between classes nearing the long-deferred settlement of 
 arrears, has Edward Carpenter gained the power to speak words. 
 Adjusted to England, as Whitman was to America, moving in 
 and out, accepted by the people, sharing the heroisms of their 
 daily life, identifying himself with all things, witness of continual 
 violations of the law of liberty he, too, comes with a promise 
 of deliverance, and with exhortation to courage and the daring 
 deed : 
 
 "See, you are in prison, and I can give you space; 
 
 You are choked down below there, and I can give you the pure intoxica- 
 ting air of the mountains to breathe; 
 
 I can make you a king and show you all the lands of the earth; 
 And from yourself to yourself I can deliver you." 
 
 A promulgator of the gospel of personal honesty, he has done 
 much to simplify the problems as a remedy for which such vari- 
 ous recipes have been proposed, emphasizing " the importance of 
 mere personal actions as in a sense preceding all schemes and de- 
 termining whether they are to ripen to any fruitful end or not." 
 In his impeachment of plutocratic ideals and the luxurious acces- 
 sories of wealth he is more definitely advocative of the simplifi- 
 cation of life than Whitman : 
 
 ft 
 
 "For a soldier who is going a campaign does not seek what fresh furniture 
 
 he can carry on his back, but rather what he can leave behind; 
 Knowing well that every additional thing which he cannot use and handle 
 is an impediment to him."
 
 of ftetoolt 49 
 
 Thus he dignifies " the sweet and necessary labor of the day," 
 the " few needs, the exhilarated, radiant life." He invites man 
 to uprear himself, to arise once more to dwell with nature, and 
 he tears off the mask from conventions, which stifle all natural 
 instincts the " puppet-dance of gentility," in which even pleas- 
 ure is alloyed with the " disgust of repletion," " a polite trap and 
 circle of endlessly complaisant faces bowing you back from all 
 reality," wherein men " condemn themselves to pick oakum of 
 the strands of real life." 
 
 "The common and universal" these contain untold laten- 
 cies, and it is impossible to go beyond them. Ever exalting lowly 
 and despised things, inwardly refusing or disowning none, Car- 
 penter inquires of whoever would seek to become a savior : 
 
 Who are you who go about to save them that are lost? 
 Are you saved yourself? 
 
 "Have you dropped into the bottomless pit from between yourself and them 
 all hallucination of superiority, all flatulence of knowledge, every shred 
 of abhorrence and loathing? 
 Is it equal, is it free as the wind between you? " 
 
 He counterbalances the ceaseless unrest of the modern world 
 the needless anxieties, self-imposed obligations, "toy duties." 
 He loosens the " golden hand-cuffs," bidding man " stand indif- 
 ferent " and by faith make himself master of his life. 
 
 "Begin to-day to understand that which you will not understand when you 
 read these words for the first time, nor perhaps when you have read 
 them for the hundredth time. 
 
 Begin to-day to understand why the animals are not hurried, and do not 
 
 concern themselves about affairs, nor the clouds nor the trees nor the 
 
 stars but only man and he but for a few thousand years in history: 
 
 [For it is one thing to do things, but another to be concerned about the 
 
 doing of them.]"
 
 50 
 
 Not for the liberation of the body alone does he sing, but for 
 the freed soul of man, before whose resistless might the hirelings 
 of wealth-conferred power vanish like mists before the dawn. 
 
 "For this the heroes and lovers of all ages have laid down their lives; and 
 nations like tigers have fought, knowing well that this life was a mere 
 empty blob without Freedom." 
 
 "Of that which exists in the soul, political freedom and institutions of equal- 
 ity, etc., are but the shadows (necessarily thrown); and Democracy in 
 states or constitutions but the shadow of that which first expresses itself 
 in the glance of the eye or the appearance of the skin. 
 Without these first the others are of no account and need not be further 
 mentioned." 
 
 In a young nationality it is perhaps hardly possible to realize 
 the relation of the people to the land, which Carpenter voices 
 incomparably : 
 
 "Between a great people and the earth springs a passionate attachment, life- 
 long and the earth loves indeed her children, broad-breasted, broad- 
 browed, and talks with them night and day, storm and sunshine, sum- 
 mer and winter alike." 
 
 "Do you think that England or any land will rise into life, will display her 
 surpassing beauty, will pour out her love, to the touch of false owners 
 of people who finger bank-notes, who make traffic buying and selling 
 her, who own by force of title deeds, laws, police who yet deny her, 
 turning their backs upon her winds and waves, and ashamed to touch 
 her soil with their hands? " 
 
 "Of those who are truly the People, they are jealous of their land; the 
 woods and the fields and the open sea are covered with their love 
 inseparable from life." 
 
 For " the earth gives her own laws," and it is upon the authority
 
 ports of Urttolt 5 i 
 
 of these that his condemnation of landlordism is based, and of 
 many sequential abuses inseparable from the system : 
 
 " I come forth from the darkness to smite Thee. 
 Who art thou, insolent of all the earth, 
 With thy faint sneer for him who wins thee bread, 
 And him who clothes thee, and for him who toils 
 Daylong and nightlong dark in the earth for thee? 
 Coward, without a name ! 
 
 Ignorant curse! and yet with names as many 
 Alas! almost as Wealth has. Unclean life 
 That makest a blight wherever thou alightest ! 
 I smite thee back. 
 Darest thou yet be seen? (How long, how long, 
 
 patient suffering men, will ye endure?) 
 Darest thou yet be seen? 
 
 1 smite thee back. Go, return whence thou earnest. 
 The gardens and the beautiful terraces, 
 
 The palaces and theaters and halls 
 
 Of our fair cities shall not see thee more." 
 
 But this stern defiance is without personal rancor. Wiping a 
 " mirror " and placing it in the hands of these victims to greed, he 
 stands ready to open the door of love whereby they may pass in- 
 to "joy eternal." 
 
 As examples of deliberate incitement to loving fellowship and 
 organized rebellion against industrial serfdom, I am reminded of 
 a volume of " Labor Songs," edited by Edward Carpenter, in 
 which our poets of revolt are each represented. From mass 
 meetings across the ocean I seem to hear the reverberations from 
 a thousand throats, thundered with the rugged fervor of men 
 whose daily bread is at stake, and whose unselfish aims and per- 
 sistent sacrifice for principle are a menace to exploiters and a
 
 52 
 
 glorification of high endeavor. It is to be regretted that songs so 
 relevant to our theme cannot be introduced here ; but hearing 
 them thus, I essay no feeble emulation. Within various combi- 
 nations of heterogeneous elements unsuspected nuclei are slowly 
 being shaped ; these are eventually 
 
 "To form an indissoluble union and compact, a brotherhood unalterable, 
 Far-pervading, fresh and invisible as the wind, united in Freedom 
 A golden circle of stamens hidden beneath the petals of humanity 
 And guarding the sacred ark." 
 
 In the more condensed phases of oligarchic sway and the 
 greater relative intensity of the emotion generated in a smaller 
 area, it is not surprising that Shelley and Carpenter appeal more 
 directly to the sympathies than Whitman does. Passionate lov- 
 ers of democracy, surrounded on every side by survivals of privi- 
 lege and monopoly, beholding the people crucified, the iron 
 must have entered their very souls. Yet we watch in vain for 
 indications of wavering faith in the midst of scenes of depression. 
 In " the great coherent Whole," " all is well to-day and a mil- 
 lion years hence, equally." Differences of external conditions ex- 
 plain also occasional distinct variations in tone. One can hardly 
 conceive of the weary, burden-bearing children of our age, crowded 
 in slums and alleys of Old World cities, responding to Whit- 
 man's heroic challenges and joyous martial music, addressed to 
 enterprising settlers, imbued with pluck and energy to conquer 
 new territory, to level primeval forests, and to bring into cultiva- 
 tion the virgin soil. But to the tired wanderers Carpenter gently 
 draws near with assurances of peace and rest, and words of con- 
 solation and encouragement inexpressibly sweet. In this way he
 
 IDorrs of Urtoolt 53 
 
 fortifies them to fill their places in ranks marching to certain 
 victory. 
 
 His attitude towards success is characteristic, and comes with 
 timely warning to stem the rising tide of ambition : 
 
 "If you are successful in all you do, you cannot also battle magnificently 
 
 against odds; 
 If you have fortune and good health and a loving wife and children, you 
 
 cannot also be of those who are happy without these things. 
 Covet not overmuch. Let the strong desires come and go; refuse them 
 
 not, disown them not; but think not that in them lurks finally the thing 
 
 you want." 
 
 
 Like Whitman, Carpenter is free from all taint of asceticism. 
 Evil is not an objective foe to be slain by soldiers of the cross, 
 a supernaturally endowed, maleficent spirit to be exorcised by 
 mortification of the flesh or magic incantation, but rather a 
 magnificent, benign force, a part of the mighty cosmos, to be sub- 
 jugated by the soul of man, co-operated with, fraternized with. 
 Man no longer renders abject homage to a tyrant, a bogey, but 
 arises, erect, triumphant, equal in majesty and power. 
 
 " For (over and over again) there is nothing that is evil except because a man 
 has not mastery over it; and there is no good thing that is not evil if it 
 have mastery over a man ; 
 
 And there is no passitfn, or power, or pleasure, or pain, or created thing 
 whatsoever, which is not ultimately for man and for his use or which 
 he need be afraid of, or ashamed at." 
 
 Such restoration of harmony is the realization of the refusal of 
 the ego to submit to aught exterior (Whitman's permanent atti- 
 tude towards " irrational things ") ; it is " to be indeed a God ! "
 
 54 
 
 " I conceive a millennium on earth a millennium not of riches nor of me- 
 chanical facilities, nor of intellectual facilities, nor absolutely of im- 
 munity from disease, nor absolutely of immunity from pain; but a time 
 when men and women all over the earth shall ascend and enter into re- 
 lation with their bodies shall attain freedom and joy." 
 
 This prophecy suggests questions which we have been unable 
 to discuss here. It may, however, aid us much in the right un- 
 derstanding of democratic literature and ideals to note the allu- 
 sion therein to the intellectual, the disproportional development 
 of which is detrimental to true enlightenment. Hence this fur- 
 ther injunction : 
 
 "Take care (I have warned you before) how you touch these words: with 
 curious intellect come not near lest I utterly destroy you: but come 
 with bold heart and true and careless, and they shall bless you beyond 
 imagination."
 
 Btyftraan'fl 
 
 AMONG the worshippers of graven images and the icono- 
 clasts, the pleasure-seekers and the ascetics, Whitman tow- 
 ers majestic. Those of them who have emancipated themselves 
 from leading-strings and self-thraldom, in their transition to 
 higher planes, discern the dim outlines of truth. They decipher 
 the larger characters distinguishable on the one facet before them, 
 and offer to mankind the message, more or less dogmatically, as 
 a complete panacea. Occasionally one, more adventurous than 
 his fellows, has ventured near enough to read the words in smaller 
 type, and has reached a standpoint from whence other aspects of 
 the ideal become visible ; sometimes it has been a mere bird's- 
 eye view which has been gained, useful for correcting the falla- 
 cious reports of the one-sided witnesses, but lacking in definite- 
 ness and proportion. If one, now and again, has made a more 
 favorably focussed detour, the would-be pioneer has usually with- 
 drawn in affright, too timid to face the lucent manifestations re- 
 served for the stout-hearted, fearing even to confess to the world 
 the revelations that have been vouchsafed to him. 
 
 It has seemed to me that Whitman he who would go far- 
 ther than the farthest is one who has pointed men not to one 
 facet only, but who, refusing to accept a partial view, has had the 
 courage to encompass truth and to declare with sonorous voice 
 that which he beholds. Those who have traveled with him, 
 " loos'd of limits and imaginary lines," indifferent as to whether 
 victory or defeat await them, those who have ringing in their 
 ears his bugle-call, " Yourself, yourself, yourself, forever and
 
 56 ^fcttman'sf 31tieal SDentocrac^ 
 
 ever," know well how inimitably he has sung of personality 
 and proclaimed the joys of self-realization. They know, also, 
 that when he sings of " One's-Self, a simple, separate person," 
 in the next line he utters the word " En-masse." It therefore 
 surprised me somewhat to find the poet characterized as " anti-al- 
 truistic." Having the master's authority for distrusting the ac- 
 counts of his friends, I have endeavored to decide for myself how 
 far such a dictum is justifiable, claiming a like distrust for any 
 tentative words I may write. 
 
 To the singer of the universal I venture to think there are few 
 opportunities for applying the prefix " anti." 
 
 "I have the idea of all and am all, and believe in all." 
 
 " (Have I forgotten any part? anything in the past? 
 Come to me whoever and whatever, till I give you recognition.) " 
 
 All-inclusive, embracing and summarizing every religion and 
 philosophy, adopting " each theory, myth, god and demi-god," 
 recognizing the underlying unity of all, there must yet be some 
 basis for the conclusion which I have heard expressed on more 
 than one occasion that he is antagonistic to altruism. The fact 
 which has given birth to this allegation is, I opine, as before 
 hinted, his grand conception of personality. We have become so 
 accustomed to reformers who, in their partisan zeal for the spe- 
 cial little "ism" which most appeals to them, -see everything 
 outside in shadow which falls densest on objects immediately 
 opposite, that we are unprepared for the comprehensiveness of 
 the all-encloser. It is needless to cite instances. The point at 
 issue is whether it is not rather an assumption than a fact that 
 Whitman's egoism excludes altruism.
 
 57 
 
 Logically and obviously egoism precedes altruism, and, like 
 many neglected elementary lessons, needs to be emphasized in 
 the higher education which is to result in a sane, self-directing 
 unit. It is true also that a study of philosophical egoism has ma- 
 terially enlarged our conception of its scope, and possibly a defini- 
 tion of it might be formulated which would connote consideration 
 for the welfare of others. But this, I take it, is outside the com- 
 mon acceptation of the term, and therefore irrelevant to our 
 present purpose. Similarly, altruism might, and probably should, 
 be amplified to include self-regarding functions, indeed, it is so 
 defined by eminent authorities, which increases the difficulty 
 of the anti-altruistic postulate. With a deepening sense of the 
 interrelatedness of life, and the impossibility of isolating ourselves 
 from our fellows, it becomes apparent that an absolute distinction 
 is untenable. A finely adjusted ethical balance demands the re- 
 jection of neither. 
 
 If we proceed to interrogate Whitman's life and works we find 
 much in the former that is altruistic to the point of self-sacrifice 
 notably, the tender nursing of the dear camerados in the war 
 which left him bankrupt of physical health. 
 
 "I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the 
 wounded person." 
 
 Such perfect sympathy is rare. 
 
 "If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake." 
 And this, to the poor wounded boy whom he never knew : 
 
 " Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would 
 save you."
 
 58 ^Ijitman'fi! 3J&eal EDemocraci? 
 
 In " Leaves of Grass " the non-egoistic passages are numerous : 
 
 " Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity 
 When I give I give myself." 
 
 "I will scatter myself among men and women as I go, 
 I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them." 
 
 "I have given alms to every one that ask'd, stood up for the stupid and 
 
 crazy, devoted my income and labor to others . . . 
 
 Claim' d nothing to myself which I have not carefully claim' d for others 
 on the same terms." 
 
 This self-revealing language is not that of one indifferent to 
 the welfare of others. It expresses, moreover, no mere mental 
 abstraction, but a " living impulse," surely. Every page pulsates 
 with the warm vitality of him whose " spirit has passed in com- 
 passion and determination round the whole earth." It is this 
 fluidity, this radiation of love, which attracts " by more than at- 
 traction," and is potent to produce the great magnetic personality 
 in order to develop which he exhorts a pupil to " if need be give 
 up all else." 
 
 Nay, more. Since " each is not for his own sake," he deems 
 even self-denying action compatible with his comprehensive con- 
 ception of the self-poised ego. Hence he tells us : 
 
 " All the world have I given up for my dear brothers' and sisters' sake, for 
 the soul's sake." 
 
 Congruently with this personal avowal, he extols 
 
 "All self-denial that stood steady and aloof on wrecks, and saw others fill 
 
 the seats of the boats, 
 
 All offering of substance or life for the good old cause, or for a friend' s 
 sake, or opinion's sake."
 
 altruism 59 
 
 And likewise, in " Passage to India " : 
 
 "What cheerful willingness for others' sake to give up all? 
 For others' sake to suffer all ?' * 
 
 Corroborative passages might be multiplied. The equitable 
 mind of the poet is constantly disinterestedly regardful of others 
 
 "as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others 
 possess the same." In such copious, vivifying utterances there is 
 little danger of being betrayed by the letter and losing the spirit, 
 for the. latter so pervades the former that they are practically dis- 
 associable. His pages contain no "empty words." 
 
 A more synthetical survey is equally convincing. His bound- 
 less sympathy and fervid joy in others predominate. Altruism is 
 a predicable consequence of deep spiritual insight and recognition 
 of the subjectivity of God. Yet, let it be noted, it is altruism 
 born not of self-humiliation and self-depreciation, but of self- 
 esteem and self-reverence the fruition of the democratic spirit 
 
 such reverence for self and others as conduces to an erect, 
 hospitable attitude of the soul. If a man of Whitman's stature 
 needs labeling, then " ego-altruistic " is, I submit, more apt. 
 Egoism and altruism, long divorced, are reconciled in the cosmic 
 consciousness. Gladly I welcome their reunion. 
 
 Prominent among reconcilers stands Hegel, whose points of 
 contact with Whitman it is interesting to trace : 
 
 " The way to self-realization is through self-renunciation 
 /'. e., through the renunciation of that natural and immediate life 
 of the self which is opposed to the not-self. . . . As it is a con- 
 dition of our intellectual life that we exist for ourselves only, as 
 other things and beings exist for us, so it is the condition of our
 
 60 igljttman's? 31&*al SDentocraci? 
 
 practical life that we realize ourselves only as we live for other 
 ends and beings than ourselves. . . . For it is only in break- 
 ing down the boundary that separates our life from the life of 
 others that we can at the same time break down the boundary 
 that prevents their life from becoming ours." 
 
 Without overestimating the importance of altruism in the evo- 
 lution of character, we may yet note that the ability to sacrifice 
 for the good of others has been one of the invariable equipments 
 of heroism. It is the necessity of this ability to sacrifice, and the 
 value, incidentally, of its results to the individual, that are en- 
 forced in the " Song of Prudence " : 
 
 . . . "That the young man who composedly peril' d his life and lost it has 
 
 done exceedingly well for himself without doubt, 
 That he who never peril' d his life, but retains it to old age in riches and ease, 
 
 has probably achiev'd nothing for himself worth mentioning." 
 
 Biological bases for both egoism and altruism are not wanting. 
 The promptings of self-interest are manifest in the process of 
 nutrition, and the surrender of love is apparent in parental and 
 sexual relationships. The altruistic element in nature, erstwhile 
 engulfed in the evolutionist's struggle-for-existence principle, has 
 been carefully extricated by Kropotkin, J. Arthur Thomson, and 
 others. The voluntary mutual aid evolved by ants, and other sub- 
 human communities, points to the time when the actions of men 
 shall become spontaneously mutual when men shall no longer 
 be driven in the paths of social rectitude at the point of the bay- 
 onet or the policeman's baton. 
 
 History, however, furnishes countless examples of the undue 
 exaltation of self-sacrifice, till it becomes an end, limiting spirit- 
 ual growth. The evils of the excessive fostering of the self-ab-
 
 61 
 
 negating spirit, uncounterbalanced by more robust ideals, have 
 been amply attested by the religious asceticism which this century 
 has, happily, mostly outgrown, and by the artificial types of 
 womanhood and extreme differentiation of the sexes which sur- 
 vive at the present time. A violent rebound is the natural tend- 
 ency. " Up to a certain point," as Spencer puts it, "altruistic 
 action blesses giver and receiver, beyond a certain point it curses 
 giver and receiver." To avoid confusion of thought it is essen- 
 tial to discriminate between legitimate altruism, which is for the 
 good of all, and its morbid counterpart, which is in reality a dis- 
 guised selfishness.
 
 fcergug Organisation 
 
 A] a result of the development of the individualistic ideal, it 
 is not surprising to find a number of advanced people 
 whose cardinal virtue is that they do not "join anything " ; and 
 the propagandist who is less a partisan than an idealist a truth- 
 seeker, willing to revise his principles continually by the light of 
 accumulated experience is compelled to pause and weigh the 
 advantages of organization and the co-operative methods he rec- 
 ommends. The disadvantages have been glaringly obvious to 
 many minds, and the contemplation of them has given rise to 
 the present reaction. The domination of the weak by the 
 strong, or by those ambitious of power ; the modification of in- 
 dividual differences in conformity with a stereotyped " constitu- 
 tion " ; the tendency to mental inertia, the society becoming a 
 prop instead of a stimulus to self-reliance ; the possibility of pro- 
 longed, half-hearted adherence, from force of habit or difficulty 
 of secession; these, and such as these, are serious obstacles 
 to the growth of individuality. On the other hand, we are beset 
 by the importunities of people possessed by the club mania, with 
 an exaggerated estimate of the strength of union regardless of 
 compatibility, who feel that the efforts of two or three, " gath- 
 ered together," are necessarily a blessing to the world. 
 
 Hence, with a lively sense of the pros and cons, we press for 
 an answer to the question, Why should one join anything ? Why 
 should not one concentrate one's efforts on the enhancement of 
 the brilliancy of one's own individual light, in order to become
 
 31nDitnDualt0m bertfusf (^rganijatton 63 
 
 " a. lantern of strength to men," separate and distinct, and irre- 
 spective of other orbs greater or less ? The idea appeals to me. 
 With Whitman, I shout, " Yourself, yourself, yourself, forever 
 and ever " but he does not stop there ; neither do I. When I 
 come to consider how one may best enhance this brilliancy, I 
 find that sympathy, co-operation, reciprocity, fellowship, solidar- 
 ity, are most potent aids, that thejndividual self and the social 
 self are one and indivisible, and that he who would be completely 
 rounded must disown neither. In organized association the larger 
 self may find satisfaction and contribute to the growth of the 
 lesser self. It has been maintained that self-development and 
 self-devotion are very nearly the same thing, since " we can only 
 develop ourselves by devoting ourselves to objective ends " ; 
 while " the only valuable kind of self-denial is that for the sake 
 of objective interests, by devotion to which we are developed." 
 Thus, it may be inferred that individualism and organization are 
 not inherently antagonistic ; by deeper analysis the reconciliation 
 is established, and they take their places side by side, with no in- 
 terposing " versus " as above. 
 
 In estimating the important results of association, its value 
 emotionally and in the evolution of sympathy must not be ig- 
 nored. The mere " intellectual all-in-all " gives little and receives 
 little. Furthermore, the unrestricted interchange of thought is 
 a powerful aid to the attainment of definiteness and a clearer 
 conception of practical possibilities. The more extensive the 
 stores of experience contributing to the elucidation of life's prob- 
 lems the better. Definiteness is a valuable preliminary to strong 
 concerted action when the opportune moment arrives. Few per- 
 sons deny the need of reform, but with endless diversity of
 
 64 ^Ijitman's! 3fl&ral 
 
 method the process is painfully slow. Free discussion tends to 
 unanimity in essentials. 
 
 The prejudice against any system of organized effort is chiefly 
 due to confusion of thought in regard to the actual source of 
 danger. It is not that organization is in itself inimical to indi- 
 vidual development ; it is only so when it takes the compulsory 
 form. The voluntary principle in organization is the safeguard 
 of individual liberty. 
 
 Some people guard their freedom so jealously that they love 
 only themselves. Their social development has not kept pace 
 with their personal development. " To walk free and own no 
 superior " is a brave ideal, but not to be misapplied into the repu- 
 diation of equals. The basic difficulty which has been lost sight 
 of in recent periods of reaction (first, in the reaction from the 
 extreme of self-seeking and greed, and next, in the reaction 
 from the extreme of majority control and state regulation) is the 
 maintenance of a just balance between egoism and altruism, be- 
 tween the centripetal and centrifugal, between isolation and fu- 
 sion, between identity and totality. We see things one at a 
 time, and thus the two-sidedness of the laws of being eludes us. 
 
 Intense individualism, expressing itself in the passionate yearn- 
 ing for freedom, is not adventitious in origin. External freedom 
 symbolizes the freedom of the soul. The soul of man defies co- 
 ercion and brooks no artificial limits to the experience which its 
 evolution demands. Of equally profound import is the social 
 passion so powerfully manifesting itself to-day in the most varied 
 forms. It is based on the essential oneness of all life, which 
 makes brotherhood not a mere sentiment, but an inherent fact, 
 pointing to ultimate harmony.
 
 31nOtUtt)uaU0m urrsus Organisation 55 
 
 Contributing both to individual and collective ends, social ef- 
 fort becomes, somewhat as love is, its own justification." It is an 
 expressible delight to " throb with currents of attempt," heed- 
 less of results. But let it not be forgotten that the importance 
 to the evolution of the unit of non-interference in personal con- 
 cerns is a primary lesson in sociology. The cause of freedom 
 suffers if any individual be restrained against his will, on any 
 pretext. 
 
 The remedy for organization in which the old coercive spirit 
 still lingers is to be found in association so infused with the free 
 
 O 
 
 spirit that opinions of assent and dissent are treated with equal 
 respect, in which individual variation and unconventionality in 
 word and act meet with frank, unreserved welcome.
 
 Sfngemritieg of (Economic argument 
 
 OPEN warfare may give place to covert attack, but progress 
 turns not aside from its appointed course. The " athletic 
 democracy," the sworn allies, fighting in behalf of the " stern, 
 remorseless, sweet idea," scarce pause to heed the shafts of their 
 assailants. Yet the ephemeral expedients adopted in defence of 
 the established social order in various crises of history are not 
 devoid of psychological and sociological interest. Monuments of 
 ingenuity as they often are, though fashioned in perishable clay, 
 it may occasionally be worth while to give them more durable 
 form, if not in the public square, where perhaps they may offend 
 the sensibilities of the enlightened, in archives and museums, as 
 material for future archaeologists and historians. 
 
 It is in the realm of economics that the cleverest arguments 
 are to be found. Old sophistries are slain and new ones are in- 
 voked to support the structure venerated by many as the temple 
 of financial prosperity. President Eliot's exaltation of the " scab " 
 as a " creditable type of nineteenth-century hero " is novel. It 
 is claimed for the scab that " in defence of his rights as an indi- 
 vidual he deliberately incurs the reprobation of his fellows, and 
 runs the immediate risk of bodily injury or even death," and 
 that " in so doing he displays remarkable courage and renders a 
 great service to his fellowmen." This view must surprise many 
 good trades-unionists, and I doubt if it ever occurred to the scab 
 himself. It is one of those specious conclusions, not born of ex- 
 perience, which issue from the heated atmosphere of the study, 
 to perish in the first contact with the life-current outside. The
 
 ^Ingenuities of economic Argument 67 
 
 typical scab, I take it, is actuated by very ordinary unheroic self- 
 interest. If he has conscientious objections to trades-unionism, 
 that fact is incidental and not the motive which prompts his action. 
 Were it otherwise there would be instances on record of men 
 abandoning lucrative positions in order to become scabs. As a 
 rule he is not deliberately obeying the behests of a principle of 
 resistance to trades-union tyranny. Up to the time of his back- 
 sliding he has perhaps been a good trades-union member, but, 
 lacking in class consciousness, with will too weak to stand the 
 crucial test, he succumbs, terrified lest the wolf, never far off, 
 now cross his threshold. If he is an outsider he is possibly 
 ignorant of the merits of the dispute and not disposed to allow 
 considerations of equity to weigh with him. When President 
 Eliot, in his zeal to do honor to his newly discovered hero, fur- 
 ther maintains that he " risks his livelihood for the future and 
 thereby the well-being of his family," the bewilderment increases. 
 The trades-union leaders risk their livelihood for the future. The 
 scab is either an employee reluctant to sacrifice his wages and to 
 incur the possible consequences of his employer's vindictiveness, 
 or he is out of work and glad of any opportunity to earn some- 
 thing. In the former case a not unusual inducement is the pos- 
 sibility of promotion ; in either case the favor and protection of 
 the employer can often be counted upon as an aid to the afore- 
 said " remarkable courage." 
 
 Heroism does not consist in indifference to scoffs and obloquy, 
 though it may include this. The heroic act is " clean contrary 
 to a sensual prosperity " and " measures itself by its contempt of 
 some external good." The action of the scab cannot be thus de- 
 fined, for it is the " external good " which he seeks for himself.
 
 68 ^tyitman'st 2fl&eal Democracy 
 
 The courage to withstand the jeers and censure of his associates 
 is counterbalanced by the cowardice which refuses to risk imme- 
 diate personal gain for prospective benefits to be shared with his 
 fellow workers. 
 
 There is much to be urged against trades-union tyranny, but 
 many people fail to realize that the present alternative to majority 
 rule is autocracy, and that freedom is impossible under the wage 
 system. The organization of labor is an attempt to enable the 
 employee to treat with the employer on more nearly equal terms, 
 and the effectiveness of trades-union methods is dependent upon 
 the unanimity of the support they receive. The strike is the bar- 
 baric sword which universal love will one day turn into a plow- 
 share. It is a clumsy weapon at best, but it is " Hobson's choice." 
 When labor is emancipated, " when the slave ceases and the mas- 
 ter of slaves ceases," when we begin to have an inkling of the 
 meaning of brotherhood, then all reason for defensive and aggres- 
 sive tactics is gone. It is necessary to coerce the criminal into 
 respect for the liberty of his fellows. On the same principle the 
 anti-social tendencies of the wage-earner must be checked for the 
 welfare of the community. It is the method, not the end, in either 
 case which is open to question. The courage of the burglar and 
 of the scab is closely allied. Both are the victims of a social sys- 
 tem based upon inequality of opportunity, avarice, and self-seek- 
 ing- 
 
 A German writer, Dr. Friedrich Kleinwachter, discussing " das 
 
 Einkommen," has recently vindicated profits very neatly by show- 
 ing that they arise " from the ability to foresee and avoid dangers 
 and risks which the average man has not the courage to face nor 
 the skill to avoid." To such a statement an exclamation-point
 
 ^Ingenuities of (Economic Argument 6 9 
 
 is perhaps an adequate reply. With the division of labor carried 
 to such an extreme that a man may spend his life in a ceaseless 
 repetition of some detail in mechanism, ability has little oppor- 
 tunity to develop. The conditions likewise have been unfavor- 
 able to the promotion of resourcefulness and administrative skill. 
 The monotony, the dullness, the joylessness of his task have con- 
 verted the human craftsman into a machine. Nevertheless, the 
 ability and the creative power lie latent in the automaton, biding 
 their time. It is a common subterfuge, as Mazzini has pointed 
 out, for the exploiter to seek justification " by appealing to a fact 
 of his own creation." Still, despite all the disadvantages suffered 
 by the toiler, the plutocrat has yet to establish his claim to supe- 
 riority. Some of us who hold no brief for the profit system have 
 watched in silent marvel the dexterity, the delicacy of manipula- 
 tion, the promptness and precision, the nicety of calculation, the 
 concentration, manifested in their work by many among the sons 
 of toil, and the comparison with the sons of wealth enjoyers 
 of that which they are incapable of producing has risen invol- 
 untarily to our minds, till the latter, notwithstanding external pol- 
 ish and acquisitions, seem puerile and dwarfed and disproportioned, 
 and the former the true potentates. The artisan, the navvy, the 
 sailor, place themselves unflinchingly in positions that call for 
 daily exhibitions of courage, and men of such sterling type may 
 well regard with contempt the empty taunts and assumptions of 
 kid-glove braves. Age after age witnesses potential Christs bear- 
 ing crosses to crucifixions to which man will one day turn with 
 quickened sympathies and purified will. 
 
 Many earnest progressive people stumble over the " risks " of 
 capital. They contend that as the risks are assumed exclusively
 
 7 o 
 
 by the capitalist he is entitled to the exorbitant remuneration 
 which he exacts. Those who take this stand are apparently un- 
 aware of the daily risks of the wage-earner. It would seem that 
 in some directions the education of the u poor rich " has been 
 sadly neglected. Let us compare these risks. The employer is 
 dependent for success upon the market, upon his wisdom in the 
 choice of supervisors, his reputation, shrewdness, etc., and when 
 he is unfortunate in these respects he risks the reduction of his 
 share of the profits from, say, sixteen times that of his employees 
 to six times (the figures are unimportant for our present purpose). 
 The worst that can befall him is insolvency. The employee runs 
 the risk of being discharged at any moment on various pretexts : 
 fluctuations in the demand for labor, changes in fashion, the in- 
 troduction of new methods or machinery, the caprice of a foreman, 
 and, more rarely, his own incompetency or intractability. 
 
 In view of these considerations and others that might be cited, 
 it needs no statistics to prove that the average employee is in 
 more frequent danger of being out of employment than is the 
 average employer of being insolvent. Furthermore, when such 
 calamity falls to either the power of recuperation is considerably 
 greater in the one case than in the other. The capitalist usually 
 has wealthy and influential connections who can help him finan- 
 cially or with " influence " either to regain his position or to en- 
 ter another field in which technical knowledge is not required. 
 If he has sprung from the moneyed classes he has probably had 
 the benefit of superior education and greater leisure for culture, 
 which are valuable equipments in making a fresh start ; though 
 it is but fair to admit that he may suffer acutely from false pride 
 and an ingenuous desire to keep up appearances. The wage-earner
 
 ^Ingenuities of economic Argument 7! 
 
 has friends as helpless as himself. He may have devoted his life 
 to the acquirement of facility in production in one branch of his 
 trade, and one only. He has had little leisure for the develop- 
 ment of his brain, has perhaps been ill-born, illr-paid, and ill-nour- 
 ished mentally and physically. Among the anxieties of the wage- 
 earner, sickness is one of the most appalling. To him this means 
 the cessation of his wages and destitution for those dependent 
 upon him. The income of the capitalist, on the other hand, is 
 oftentimes unaffected to any great degree by his absence from 
 business. 
 
 Usually such reasoning as I have quoted above is so insidiously 
 intertwined with truths or half-truths that, when presented with 
 benevolent intent, it obtains credence with and captivates the 
 judgment of those whose experience it transcends and who, like 
 its originators, wish to believe it. It is a result of looking at the 
 world, not as an harmonious whole, but as a chaotic conglomer- 
 ation of opposing factions with diverse interests and destinies. 
 Nothing demonstrates more forcibly how far we are at present 
 from the apprehension of equality. The complacency with which 
 we accept the blessings of our heaven of limited dimensions is 
 only equalled by our indifference to the curse which it entails on 
 all in the vast hell without. The old hymn, 
 
 " Not more than others I deserve, 
 Yet God has given me more," 
 
 summarizes the common conception of divine justice. The trend 
 of public opinion, backed by the orthodox economics, has, of 
 course, utterly confused the general intelligence in regard to the 
 distinction between the indebtedness of society to the non-pro-
 
 72 ^^itman'sf 3fl&eal Democracy 
 
 ductive capitalist for the use of his capital, and to the non-capi- 
 talist productive classes for the various services rendered by them. 
 Yet it would seem that no amount of legal or scholastic support 
 could perpetuate the social chaos which we dignify with the name 
 of civilization, and the serfdom which we countenance under the 
 banner of freedom. If our eyes were not dazzled by the glitter 
 of gold, and our ears deafened by the cries of false prophets, we 
 should surely discern the simple underlying unity of life and 
 should co-operate with nature toward the fruition. 
 
 When the ship is riddled with holes, it were wiser to take to 
 the boats than to catch at straws.
 
 Last ^>tan& against ^emocrac? in 
 
 THE love of pictorial fame will perhaps be the last strong- 
 hold to yield to the increasingly urgent demand for democ- 
 racy in sex. It may be that the desire for admiration has its place 
 in certain stages of development, but the desire to win it not by 
 distinction of character but by extrinsic adornment has long been 
 an insidious impediment to progress. Well might Whitman, in 
 his consideration of the materialistic advancement of the United 
 States and his searching diagnosis of the failure of New World 
 democracy " in its social aspects and in really grand religious, 
 moral, literary, and esthetic results," lay heavy stress on " the 
 entire redemption of woman out of these incredible holds and 
 webs of silliness, millinery, and every kind of dyspeptic deple- 
 tion " as a factor of primary importance in the new sociology. 
 
 Physiologists, rational-dress reformers, and Audubon societies 
 have done good service in calling attention to the more flagrant 
 violations of the laws of health and humanity sometimes they 
 have done more than this ; nevertheless the pictorial ideal main- 
 tains its hold. True, the number of women is decreasing who 
 may be described as 
 
 " Unhappy statuettes and miserable trinkets, 
 
 Poor alabaster chimney-piece ornaments under glass cases," 
 
 but they may still sacrifice dignity, concentrative power, comfort, 
 leisure, culture, art, beauty, individuality, on this altar of fashion, 
 and society applauds. Specialists ardent for emancipation dismiss 
 these facts and focus their energies on the removal of the par-
 
 74 ^tiittttan'tf 31&eal 
 
 ticular grievances that appeal to them. They do not remember 
 that " it is not what is done to us but what is made of us that 
 wrongs us." They confess their fear of imperiling the reform 
 they have at heart if they attack the popular idols. Higher edu- 
 cation, the franchise, economic independence, these will bring 
 about the millennium of freedom and equality. What are the 
 results of this indifference ? The perpetuation of the ideal of 
 subserviency in which women are regarded as adjuncts, objects 
 of use or pleasure, or both. Thus woman appeals primarily to 
 the body of man, not to his soul. 
 
 The degradation has penetrated deep. Witness such para- 
 graphs as the following, in a daily of such repute as the Boston 
 Herald: 
 
 "As usual, lovely woman and her clothes are receiving more 
 attention at Madison Square Garden than the finest horses. Even 
 the men admit it. Considering this to be the case, why not cre- 
 ate a diversion in what is a rather hackneyed show, and award 
 the blue ribbon or a 4 highly commended ' to the best-dressed 
 and the smartest woman ? Trot her out on the tanbark, and 
 let 's see who does the greatest credit to her dressmaker." 
 
 And this, in the same column : " O fickle loveliness ! Tired al- 
 ready of the 4 blouse effect ' ? " Similar things are printed time 
 and again, and no one thinks of resenting them. Why do not 
 the women suffragists and sex reformers make a decided stand 
 against this continual posing, this craving for spectacular effect ? 
 
 The mighty " they say" awes even the enlightened. Absurd- 
 ities devised for the beguilement of idle hands and the diversion 
 of empty brains tempt busy hands to embarrass themselves with 
 needless tasks and pervert the judgment of well-equipped intel-
 
 &gain$t Democracy in ^ejr 75 
 
 lects. The endless waste of human labor is appalling. Con- 
 formity necessitates either dependence or slavery dependence 
 upon the labor of others where pecuniary resources are unlim- 
 ited, or slavery for the individual, combined with gratuitous anx- 
 ieties, where economy rules. What is admirable to-day is con- 
 temptible to-morrow. Let no one personally guiltless of these 
 sins think he can withdraw himself from the ignominy. What- 
 ever degrades one member of a sex degrades all, and an insult 
 offered to one sex is an insult to both. 
 
 Men are not only sufferers from these toy ideals ; they are 
 also offenders. Their love of ostentation and sense of what is 
 due to their self-importance often cause them to demand in the 
 dress of wives and sisters an exhibit of financial prosperity. At 
 the summer resorts, or in any form of outdoor recreation, the 
 gulf between the interests of men and women is painfully ap- 
 parent. The men find strenuous, adventurous, health-giving en- 
 joyment in all weathers, but the women have to consider whether 
 the possible damage to their wardrobe makes it worth while to 
 quit the safe alternative of the rocking-chair and novel. Gen- 
 uine comradeship is possible only when the man becomes effem- 
 inate or when the woman to some extent rationalizes her cos- 
 tume. Draperies that incapacitate for practical work might, if 
 fitness were the standard, be reserved for occasions of festivity, 
 where they would enhance the gaiety and need not be restricted 
 to one sex. 
 
 Concentration on the external naturally breeds neglect of the 
 body. Hence the shame of the physical, parent of grave ethical 
 disaster. Even in a woman's gymnasium, where some apprecia- 
 tion of the dignity of the body might be expected, the rule for
 
 76 
 
 restricting the wearing of the gymnasium suit to one part of the 
 building is enforced without protest, lest profane eyes behold the 
 human form in garments so eminently sensible and decent and 
 suited to the requirements of free and graceful motion. 
 
 The conventional poison is imbibed very young. Juvenile 
 critics manifest their lofty disapproval of any deviation from the 
 authorized width or pointedness of shoes, or the regulation length 
 of skirts, while the fondness for inartistic artificial floral adorn- 
 ment and for decorations derived from the plumage of slaughtered 
 birds is equally precocious. Paper dolls, modeled upon the latest 
 matured atrocities in style, contribute to the vitiation of the form 
 and color sense, and prepare the young students to graduate in 
 due season as " animated clothes-pegs." Thereafter the milliner 
 and dressmaker, experts in the technique of their trade, but, with 
 rare exceptions, without a knowledge of the first principles of 
 art, wield absolute sway on matters in which such knowledge 
 should be indispensable. The eye has adapted itself to meretri- 
 cious design. For head-gear the most heterogeneous and tawdry 
 masses of material are held up for admiration. A minority with 
 some natural feeling for form and color and fitness are vaguely 
 dissatisfied but helpless, and so the divorce between art and life 
 is perpetuated. Everywhere the same depressing uniformity, or 
 attempt at uniformity. Even the immigrants hasten Jo discard 
 their picturesque national costumes for the prevailing mode. Thus 
 a legitimate source of joy is eliminated from the streets and from 
 places of public assembly. 
 
 The evidences of the power of fashion and the devotion of 
 its votaries, after all, but express pathetic aberrations of the love 
 of the beautiful which will dethrone the usurper and transform
 
 n >tf 77 
 
 the world. These blind gropings are prophecies. Something 
 beautiful is evolved now and then by accident, and wins deserved 
 but unintelligent admiration. Novelty is sought because it is mis- 
 taken for beauty. No one who has once looked with appreciation 
 on a group of artists in Liberty woolens, in art colors, simply 
 made, gracefully following the lines of the figure, could ever again 
 fall into this error ; and perhaps no one who has not had the 
 advantage of some similar basis of comparison can realize what 
 we lose by submission to the ancient tyranny.
 
 in 
 
 THE telegraphic report of Ingersoll's address before the 
 Militant Church congregation, Chicago, contains the fol- 
 lowing passage : 
 
 " I make a difference between granting divorce to a man and 
 to a woman, and for this reason : a woman dowers her husband 
 with her youth and beauty. He should not be allowed to desert 
 her because she has grown wrinkled and old. Her capital is gone, 
 her prospects in life lessened, while, on the contrary, he may be 
 far better able to succeed than when he married her. As a rule, 
 the man can take care of himself, and, as a rule, {he woman needs 
 help. So I would not allow him to cast her off, unless she had 
 flagrantly violated the contract. But for the sake of the commu- 
 nity, and especially for the sake of the babes, I would give her a 
 divorce for the asking." 
 
 Such obvious generosity of motive tends to disarm criticism. 
 It behooves those who have wrestled long with privilege, and 
 finally driven him from their midst with heavy scourges of igno- 
 miny, to be on the alert for his reappearance under a new guise. 
 
 Vices do not become virtues by transplantation. I find myself 
 as ready to resent special favors and immunities for women as for 
 men, just as I resent the theory that, in its rebound from the old 
 idea of inferiority and subordination, places woman on a pedestal, 
 proffering vain adulation. The underlying principle in each is a 
 violation of the law of equality and is a snare. The privileges are 
 a mirage concealing an abyss ; the adulation is rarely sincere, is 
 partial, and not preclusive of demands for menial service.
 
 3|nequalit in EDttoorce 79 
 
 Truly the laws are far from embodying our ideals, and it may 
 be claimed that to give women the advantage in this respect is 
 the most equitable and only practicable course under existing con- 
 ditions. But the supposed necessity arises from economic condi- 
 tions that are rapidly disappearing, and from effete customs that 
 such concessions as that proposed by Ingersoll will aid in perpet- 
 uating. We long submit to regulations that have outlived their 
 beneficence. Agitation for legislative reform should not lag far 
 behind the advance-guard of thought. The more space the en- 
 actment leaves for the growth of ideal the better; with the utmost 
 elasticity the limit will only endure for a season. Unless it has 
 seriously enfeebled the social organism, when at length it is burst 
 asunder it will not need to be replaced, and the allegiance accorded 
 to the ancient, uncouth good may be transferred to the new-found, 
 indwelling truth. The god without yields precedence to the god 
 within. 
 
 To many, however, the statute-book is a teacher ; public opin- 
 ion, a priest. No more immoral lesson could, from my point of 
 view, be promulgated than the suggestion that it is righteous to 
 retain by legal bonds the person of another whose spirit has be- 
 come alien. To the developed woman it would be an intolerable 
 spiritual degradation for material ends. 
 
 The circumstances that have enlisted such valiant champion- 
 ship are presumably those in which, the woman having sacrificed 
 her body, the law may legitimately come to the rescue and secure 
 to her maintenance and care during incapacity and sickness. Her 
 health and material comfort, however considering the matter 
 on the lowest plane will be ill-attained by condemning her to 
 the unwilling companionship of an uncongenial temperament, or
 
 so ^Ijttman's ^fjueal SE>etnocrac^ 
 
 by making her dependent on grudgingly bestowed support. In 
 such situations the only appeal is to the moral conscientiousness 
 of the husband and to his sense of responsibility for voluntarily 
 incurred obligations. Public opinion may further aid in stimula- 
 ting him to disinterested action. Failing this, the law is impotent. 
 By a noble impulse, spontaneous or suggested, another's interest 
 may be subserved, and good may accrue therefrom. The enforced 
 exaction is barren and worthless. The right adjustment of differ- 
 ences cannot fail to follow naturally the awakening of inborn 
 justice and generosity consequent upon the weakening of external 
 authority. 
 
 With the diffusion of more enlightened ideals of sex relation- 
 ships a rapid decrease in the recurrence of such unhappy cases 
 may be predicted. In taking it for granted that the woman, as a 
 rule " needs help," Ingersoll must surely have mistaken the frail 
 exotic for the normal type after the manner of those who clas- 
 sify women as invalids (see " Man and Woman," Havelock Ellis, 
 pp. 246 f.), when a more searching glance might have revealed to 
 him in outline the coming generations of reverent, sane livers 
 radiant in health, "strong, well equipped in muscle and skill," 
 self-owning and self-dependent. It is not surprising that he should 
 have been betrayed into hasty generalization, for the forced arti- 
 ficial product has well-nigh crowded out the native growth, and 
 at times has threatened to exterminate it. Never extinct, it sur- 
 vives, by a singular misuse of terms, in the so-called New Woman, 
 and has its imitators in another abnormal type, more correctly 
 termed " new," which can boast of nothing more than a super- 
 ficial resemblance to the model which it parodies. We are accus- 
 tomed to numerous pathological deviations from the normal in
 
 ]finrquaUt in 2E>tboree 81 
 
 both sexes, but we have hitherto avoided the absurdity of basing 
 legislation for the entire community on the requirements of our 
 hospital population, and should probably continue to avoid doing 
 so even if the relative proportions were reversed. 
 
 " Youth and beauty " will not be the "capital" of the econom- 
 ically freed woman. I am unfamiliar with Ingersoll's economic 
 views, and therefore in protesting against his assignment of a com- 
 mercial value to attractiveness of outward form, and the assump- 
 tion that a woman's " prospects in life " are dependent on this, I 
 must disclaim any attempt to interpret him or to criticise his 
 prevalent attitude. Of course, from such meagre data, I may have 
 unwittingly travestied his position. The passage, however, as it 
 stands, is repellent both in sentiment and expression, and unless 
 amplified or amended must be taken as reported. The paragraph 
 preceding the one quoted, to which I take no exception, shows 
 that, in some respects at least, he has realized the fundamental 
 essentials of the problem. His present attitude is probably an in- 
 stance of the persistence of a feeling which has been fostered in 
 the race for centuries, and has at length become organic, and 
 which, however contrary to the judgment, cannot be suddenly 
 eliminated. Similar survivals of sentiment are continually con- 
 flicting with new ideals of womanhood. Like the solicitude of 
 the too-indulgent parent, such paternalism is a mistaken kindness 
 which the full-grown woman must be strong to resist. Freedom 
 and inequality seldom fraternize. 
 
 Ordinarily the opponents of divorce are haunted by a vague 
 dread of impending social chaos in the event of any commutation 
 of what Edward Carpenter terms the " life-sentence." They 
 would preserve the sanctity of the home by a profanation of love.
 
 SDemocraci? 
 
 Ingersoll has too just an appreciation of the value of freedom to 
 fall into this error, and too practical a mind to ignore the conse- 
 quences of such a fallacy on the offspring of the coerced ; but 
 that does not prevent his countenancing a relationship still more 
 dishonoring to women. With the best intentions, he would have 
 them sell their birthright for the merest mess of pottage. Not 
 thus, O women, will you gain freedom ! Everything has its price, 
 but here the cost has been estimated too highly. The petty ad- 
 vantages to be given in exchange are not worthy to be compared 
 to the joys attainable by the untrammeled, self-poised soul. Let 
 our faith in freedom be above doubt. Our timid little concessions 
 to expediency trail it in the dust. We do not give it a chance to 
 soar aloft where it may command the homage of upward-striving 
 humanity. 
 
 Being as yet mastered by and not the masters of our instru- 
 ments, our efforts are fraught with pain. In marriage, as else- 
 where, mistakes involve suffering. But this fact is inherent and 
 beyond our power to circumvent. Artifice will not avail. It is im- 
 portant to note, however, that the inevitable suffering is greatly 
 aggravated by the domination of false ideals, and that it will not 
 be lessened by external pressure. What was stated above, with 
 regard to the effects of enforced companionship on material com- 
 fort, applies with infinitely greater force to mental and spiritual 
 well-being. The point which Ingersoll seems sometimes to miss 
 is the one permanent factor, the value of the results of experi- 
 ence to the individual. At some stages of growth the soul can 
 only evolve through suffering. Thence it emerges, not embit- 
 tered, but seeking for the expression of the love-force higher chan- 
 nels. The true source of strength has been sensed by those who
 
 31nequaliti? in SDiborce 83 
 
 remain steadfast, who rise above disappointment, and who con- 
 tinue firm in faith and of good courage. Prescient with the wis- 
 dom that no vicarious experience can confer, they refuse to chain 
 themselves to the past, and the future heaven stands revealed. 
 " When half-gods go the gods arrive." 
 
 It is the perception of that which lies deeper than all personal 
 ties which urges representatives of diverse schools to unite in 
 opposing the arbitrary attempts, whether of minorities or majori- 
 ties, to regulate other lives in accordance with approved models. 
 If men and women find their highest in lifelong unions, the open 
 door will not entice them. Neither will unity be secured by 
 turning the key. The eternal verities cannot be violated, but 
 reality may be mocked by the preservation of a hollow sem- 
 blance. Equality seems the hardest lesson to be learned ; we 
 trifle with it continually and accept unworthy substitutes.
 
 AJ item of British news, which I find reported at length in 
 the London Daily Chronicle, October 28 and 30 [1895], 
 furnishes significant comment on Grant Allen's recent contribu- 
 tion to the marriage question. The facts are briefly as follows : 
 Edith Lanchester, of Battersea, England, twenty-four years of 
 age, an active socialist and a candidate for West Lambeth at the 
 School Board election last year, after matriculating at London 
 University, elected to live her own life and become self-support- 
 ing. At first she earned her livelihood as a school-teacher, but 
 her views on social questions being too advanced for the Maria 
 Grey Training-School, where she was for some time engaged, 
 she subsequently acquired a knowledge of shorthand and type- 
 writing and obtained office work. Whilst so occupied she took 
 up her residence with Mr. and Mrs. Gray, prominent members 
 of the Social Democratic Federation, and the latter a Guardian 
 of the Poor for the Wadsworth and Clapham Union. She was 
 generally understood for some three or four years past to have 
 been affianced to James Sullivan, " a young artisan of good char- 
 acter and much intelligence, who was also an earnest worker in 
 the socialist ranks, and generally liked." Since the publication of 
 " The Woman Who Did," however, Edith Lanchester, " against 
 whose high character and purity of motive not one word can be 
 said," resolved not to conform to marriage laws which she re- 
 garded as dishonoring to women. This view being shared by James 
 Sullivan, and both having the courage of their convictions, they 
 prepared a comfortable home with the intention of living together
 
 Carriage >afeguar&$ 85 
 
 without marriage ceremony, civil or religious. But Miss Lanches- 
 ter's father, a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 
 in " good position," and other relatives, determined upon prac- 
 tical opposing action. Her father, three brothers, and a doctor 
 accordingly proceeded to her residence and, during Mrs. Gray's 
 temporary absence from thq room, forcibly conveyed her to a 
 brougham, which was in waiting, and drove away. In her violent 
 struggles she broke one of the windows of the carriage, but the 
 men one of whom was of herculean proportions prevented 
 further resistance by tying her hands and threatening to tie her 
 legs if she were not quiet. She was thus conveyed to a private 
 asylum on the doctor's certification that he had discovered signs 
 of mental aberration. Thanks to aid that might not have been 
 so readily forthcoming in the case of any one less prominently 
 associated with social work, and to the publicity given to the 
 whole proceedings through the press, she was released a few days 
 later. The Lunacy Commissioners were moved to act, and their 
 inquiry satisfied them that there was no just reason for her deten- 
 tion. 
 
 According to the reports, there appears not to have been the 
 slightest warrant for the doctor's certification, beyond the fact of 
 Edith Lanchester's heterodox views. John Burns was among 
 those instrumental in securing her release, while numerous peo- 
 ple, including the Marquis of Queensberry, wrote to John Sulli- 
 van, offering help. A revolt which elicits the sympathies of birds 
 of such diverse feather will hardly be quelled by straight-jacket 
 or prison-gyve. 
 
 Whatever marriage forms may in future be deemed most 
 favorable to individual development, and thence promoting the
 
 86 lt)itman'$ 2fl&eal Democracy 
 
 best interests of society, it is obvious that any woman who has 
 outgrown the conventional ideals may well hesitate to place 
 herself under the jurisdiction of existing marriage laws. It is fu- 
 tile and inhuman to put such a heavy price on freedom as to de- 
 ter all but the most heroic souls from the quest. It requires but 
 little imagination .to realize the bitterness which such indignities 
 as the above forcible incarceration must have entailed on a finely 
 wrought nature, true to conviction beyond the mere lip-loyalty 
 of less sensitive types. The world continually puts a premium on 
 insincerity. An institution needing to be sustained by such an 
 iniquitous expedient as the abduction cited would appear to have 
 little inherent vitality. 
 
 This is but one among many instances in which the worship 
 of the symbol has degenerated into a mere superstition, blinding 
 its adherents to the reality symbolized. And here the reality, 
 which law and public opinion have attempted to stereotype, is 
 too valuable to be sacrificed on the altar of custom ; it is nothing 
 less than a union based on such free and spontaneous love as 
 compulsion renders impossible. 
 
 "Ne may love be compelled by maistery; 
 For soon as maistery comes, sweet love anon 
 Taketh his nimble wings and soon away is gone." 
 
 Since, then, the self-appointed custodians of morality are de- 
 termined to preserve the artificial bond, without modification, at 
 whatever cost, there seems no alternative for freedom-lovers but 
 to unite in a crusade against the enforced irrevocable contract, 
 for the protection of truer marriage relations not, indeed, as 
 Grant Allen and others insist, because women's "social and
 
 &>afrguarDs 87 
 
 moral salvation " lies in maternity, or that voluntary celibacy is 
 to be regarded as a misfortune, but in order that men and women 
 alike may be untrammeled in their choice of such life conditions 
 as they deem best calculated to promote their all-round develop- 
 ment. In this way only will the cast-iron codes more rigid, 
 perhaps, in sex matters than any other give place to a saner, 
 more democratic attitude, encouraging freer relationships based 
 on sympathy, enduring affection, and " sweet, eternal, perfect " 
 comradeship. The scaffolding required to rear the structure above 
 the mere physical groundwork, when the higher planes are 
 reached, will have served its purpose and may be removed with- 
 out disaster. The distinction between essentials and non-essen- 
 tials cannot be too much emphasized. 
 
 Whether the effort to live one's ideals, even in the face of so- 
 cial ostracism, should be termed self-sacrifice or self-realization 
 depends, of course, on one's philosophy. Herminia Barton's 
 11 martyrdom " was attributable perhaps fully as much to the 
 " blank pessimism " which Grant Allen declares to be " the one 
 creed possible for all save fools " as to the anachronistic laws 
 against which she so devotedly precipitated herself for a season. 
 With a deeper faith, her daughter's reversion and failure to fulfil 
 her expectations, far from being overwhelming, would have been 
 simply a spur to continue the relentless struggle for principle, 
 without the distraction of personal ties. 
 
 The story of Herminia Barton has already been sufficiently 
 discussed, but it may be noted in passing that the author has 
 somewhat confused the main issues by questionable generaliza- 
 tions, occasional exaggerations of statement, and a tendency to 
 push his points beyond their logical conclusions. His heroine's
 
 88 ^^ttman'0 Kl&ral SDemocracj? 
 
 admittedly exclusive attention, from her youth up, to one set of 
 problems was prejudicial to the complete self-emancipation which 
 her experiment demanded. Almost every page bristles with con- 
 trovertible points, whether examined by conventional or radical 
 tests. The timely incarnation, therefore, of Herminia Barton's 
 rare courage and scorn of compromise, and the persecuting spirit 
 which it aroused, cannot fail to be profoundly suggestive to 
 minds alert for the momentous social revolution that is even 
 now in process.
 
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