LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
 University of California Berkeley 
 

WALT WHITMAN 
 
 (THE CAMDEN SAGE) 
 
 AS 
 
 RELIGIOUS AND MORAL TEACHER 
 
 STUDY 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM NORMAN GUTHR1E 
 
 CINCINNATI 
 
 THE ROBERT CLARKE COMPANY 
 1897 
 
Only one hundred copies of this brochure on laid 
 paper have been printed. 
 
 This copy is No. I...Q _ 
 
 Copyrighted, 1897, 
 By the Robert Clarke Company. 
 
A WORD TO THE READER. 
 
 This essay, the last in the recently published volume, " Modern 
 Poet Prophets," appears by itself alone for such as desire to see 
 nothing between cover and cover but an honest attempt to re- 
 move obstacles of prejudice from the path of him who would 
 seriously approach our Titan. 
 
 Few like to admit that they have been converted. It is a 
 dangerous admission. It implies the possibility of further con- 
 version. We forget that firmness, obstinate tenacity, virtues in 
 conduct are vices in thought. To be ever ready to change when 
 superior reasons are against us, is just that unchangeable loyalty 
 to truth we commend. We must abandon the lower round of 
 the ladder for the higher, be constantly inconstant, if we would 
 mount. 
 
 It may seeni a questionable expedient to print in the Appendix 
 extracts from an insolent critique. Still, the extracts when hos- 
 tile, are so ferocious as to condemn themselves. They will, how- 
 ever serve to prove that the writer of this essay went through the 
 usual phases of amazement, horror, indignation, fury, exaspera- 
 tion, disapproval, qualified dislike, qualified liking, till at length 
 he is forced by common honesty to confess himself an ardent 
 lover of much that our great American champion of Democracy, 
 political and spiritual, has written. 
 
 For my own part, I am not coward enough to be afraid to own 
 my whole-hearted loyalty to the teacher, even though I may 
 differ from him on many points deemed cardinal by most men. 
 He himself desires us to be independent of him. He bids us not 
 " look through his eyes," but our own. The Whitmanite does 
 
 (iii) 
 
IV A WORD TO THE READER. 
 
 not worship Whitman, but joins Whitman in the worship of 
 independent manhood, striving to be himself the man. 
 
 Many make extravagant claims for Whitman. Others still 
 think it worth their while to vent their wrath in vehement 
 epithets, or express a refined scorn by a slight lift of the tip of 
 the aquiline nose when his name is mentioned. For my part I 
 am content to be in such good company as I find myself, when 
 among admirers and reverers of Whitman. Not English literary 
 men alone Tennyson, A. C. Swinburne, the Rossettis,E. Dowden, 
 J. A. Symonds, Mrs. Gilchrist, Miss Blind, and a host of others de- 
 servedly famous but Americans of various types, like the Sted- 
 mans, father and son, John Burroughs, Whitelaw Reid, Charles A. 
 Dana, John Swinton, George W. Childs, and many, many more, who 
 knew the man as well as his work, and often loved the work for 
 the sake of the man whom they have somehow succeeded in im- 
 posing on us as the " Good Gray Poet," and the " Camden Sage," 
 titles which will do more for his fame, surely than the laureate- 
 ship did for Wordsworth, or the barony for Tennyson nay, more 
 than all laudatory critiques and biographies. What 's in a name ? 
 An influence, second only to a living character. Even his haters 
 and assailers bow before the venerable, picturesque champion of 
 the doctrine of the "God" in any and every man, the prophet 
 of a great America about to be discovered, when the chaos of 
 these states has become cosmos by the creation of a new type of 
 athletic, yet spiritual, manhood. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS TEACHER, 9 
 
 WHAT is RELIGION? 14 
 
 DIVINE PRIDE, 25 
 
 WORSHIP, 35 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF EVIL, 43 
 
 SALVATION AND THE SAVIOR, 56 
 
 IMMORTALITY, 62 
 
 PERSONAL IDENTITY, 70 
 
 PERPETUITY OF CHARACTER, 76 
 
 TRAVELING SOULS AND THEIR END, 80 
 
 WHITMAN'S METHODS AND STYLE, 84 
 
 "So LONG," 93 
 
 APPENDIX, 99 
 
 (v) 
 

 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 (THE CAMDEN SAGE) 
 
 AS RELIGIOUS AND MORAL TEACHER. 
 
 r 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS TEACHER. 
 
 A man of genius has his phases of inner growth, . . . 
 and to look for a narrow, definite, consistent body of doctrine in 
 his writings is to look for something that is not there, that was 
 never intended to be there, and that could not, in the very nature 
 of things, have been there.* 
 
 Doubtless something of this sort was in Walt 
 Whitman's mind when he wrote : 
 
 I charge you forever reject those who would expound me, for I 
 
 can not expound myself. 
 
 1 charge that there be no theory or school founded out of me. 
 I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free. 
 
 (Myself and Mine, p. 190.) t 
 
 He had grown. Like Emerson, he cared nothing 
 for mere mechanical consistency. 
 
 Do I contradict myself ? 
 
 Very well, then, I contradict myself, (p. 78.) 
 
 * " Walt Whitman," by Win. Clarke, p. 105. (Macmillan & 
 Co., 1892.) 
 
 t All references are to the complete edition of Whitman's 
 works, in two volumes. David McKay, Philadelphia. The sim- 
 ple figures refer to pages in "Leaves of Grass;" those prefixed 
 Pr., to the companion volume of Complete Prose Works. 
 
 (9) 
 
10 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 Besides, the individual need not consciously 
 trouble himself about being consistent. Life will see 
 to it that he be not. Life is change. Remaining the 
 same is but wearing a mask, or it is death. There is, 
 however, a beautiful continuity in every energetic ca- 
 reer. You find nothing in it which, when you know 
 the whole, you think might not have been predicted 
 at the outset. Yet it was not, because, as a matter of 
 fact, it could not be foreseen. 
 
 No man has given us more self-criticism, proba- 
 bly, of a frank, helpful sort, than Whitman. His 
 large volume of prose is practically a commentary on 
 his poetic work. He shows that, in a sense, he cer- 
 tainly could expound himself. His was no incoherent 
 message. He received it gradually, and gave it as he re- 
 ceived it ; but nevertheless it constitutes a vital whole. 
 
 Avowals of irreconcilable tenets alternate affirmations and 
 denials, that seem the utterances of some concord transcendental- 
 ist, who should have lost his wits, and never gone in search of 
 them to any purpose.* 
 
 Had I not committed these words to that terrible 
 Satan, the printed page, I should not believe that I 
 understood Whitman so ill eight years ago. 
 
 We have a right to demand that there shall be in the sev- 
 eral tenets upheld symptoms at least of a possible reconciliation. 
 
 After diligently reading "Leaves of Grass," and 
 constructing an index for ready reference to its con- 
 tents, I still felt obliged to save the author's sanity 
 by supposing he often did not mean what he said ! 
 So difficult is Whitman to some of us when we ap- 
 proach him for the first time ! 
 
 * " The Apostle of Chaotism." See Appendix. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS TEACHER. 11 
 
 I, too, . . . inaugurate a religion, 
 
 Each is not for its own sake. 
 
 I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for relig- 
 ion's sake. 
 
 I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough. 
 
 Know you, solely to drop in the earth the germs of a greater re- 
 ligion, 
 
 The following chants, each for its kind, I sing. (p. 23.) 
 
 If Walt Whitman, then, has rightly conceived 
 of his own mission, it is by a consideration of him as 
 a religious teacher that we shall do well to approach 
 his work. 
 
 r 
 
 I I have arrived 
 
 I To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe, 
 
 V For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them. (p. 27.) 
 
 Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed and shall bless 
 me. (p. 123.) 
 
 Listen ! I will be honest with you. 
 
 I do not offer the old, smooth prizes, but offer rough, new prizes. 
 
 -(p. 126.) 
 
 I myself am not one who bestows nothing upon man and woman, 
 For I bestow upon any man or woman the entrance to all the 
 gifts of the universe, (p. 216.) 
 
 Language so definite as this, so tremendous in 
 import, passes beyond all hyperbolic license, unless, 
 indeed, he has a " new religion," a " greater one," to 
 impart. We have a right to ask him for a redemp- 
 tion of promises so amazing, which should he fail to 
 do, one could hardly help but class him among mega- 
 lomaniacswith Professor Lornbroso.* 
 
 Who has read " Specimen Days," and not felt the 
 
 * " The Man of Genius," by Cesare Lombroso. Charles Scrib- 
 ner's Sons, New York, 1895. For the construction of the above 
 sentence, I have no apology to offer. Ambiguity is often a merit. 
 Cf. p. 45 of Lombroso's book. 
 
12 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 loveableness of the man? What beautiful strength 
 and tenderness ! His magnetism is irresistible. Then, 
 too, the witness of his friends ! What friends ! Who 
 was so worshiped by those who knew him ? What 
 self-oblivious tenderness and great-hearted enthusiasm 
 did he not elicit? The "good gray poet" indeed! It 
 is quite in vain he attempts to repel one. He tries to 
 shock us : 
 
 Walt. Whitman, a Kosmos, of Manhattan the son, 
 Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking, and breeding. 
 
 (p. 48.) 
 He insinuates doubts : 
 
 Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal ? 
 
 Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground toward a 
 real heroic man ? 
 
 Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all may a, illu- 
 sion? (p. 103.) 
 
 It is useless for him to speak of 
 The silent manner of me without charm, (p. 105.) 
 
 His defiant, rude treatment of us does not dis- 
 courage us. We still shocked though we may think 
 ourselves, and angry with him hear something in us 
 that says, as Emerson is reported to have exclaimed : 
 " What a man !" And we want to know him better, 
 to understand and test his gospel. If it could give us 
 the secret of his great faith in humanity, for instance, 
 we should be well rewarded for much endurance of his 
 bearish buffeting. 
 
 But we ask ourselves, what does Walt Whitman 
 mean by religion ? Does he not bid us " be not cu- 
 rious about God ?" (p. 76.) And what can he mean 
 by driving all the gods from all the heavens like cattle 
 to the crack of his whip his " barbaric yawp " sound- 
 ing "over the roofs of the world" (p. 78), into the 
 
THE RELIGIOUS TEACHER. 13 
 
 shambles of his " egotism," for his " omnivorous 
 lines" (p. 69) to devour? The ordinary reader is 
 horrified at this greedy ogre, who eats gods instead of 
 children ! (Cf. p. 67.) It is amazing, too, rather a 
 shock to one's old-fashioned notions, to have a wedge 
 literally driven with sledge-hammer blows into the com- 
 pact Trinity to make room for Satan ! Is it a whim- 
 sical prejudice against the venerable triangle which 
 makes him attempt to forge on his anvil a " square 
 deific?" (p. 339.) One wonders, somewhat irrever- 
 ently, how Satan feels between God the Son and God 
 the Holy Ghost ; whether he thanks the Camden sage 
 for such unforseen promotion to uncomfortable glory 
 from his old " bad eminence " in Milton's epic. But, 
 upon reflection, all such questions turn out to be irrel- 
 evant. To Whitman, all these divine names represent 
 no persons. For him, they are 
 
 Eidolons, eidolons, eidolons, (p. 13.) 
 Rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself, (p. 67.) 
 
 They are 
 Outlines I plead for my brothers and sisters, (p. 78.) 
 
 Iii plain terms, they are ideals mankind has pro- 
 posed to itself for attainment. They have been em- 
 bodied in myth, anchored in historic personages, pre- 
 cipitated by theologians as dogma in the test tube of 
 unimaginative reason. It is for us to realize what, 
 taken together, they mean, namely, a divine revelation 
 of our possibilities, which they were fashioned ex- 
 pressly to hand down from age to age, until men 
 could once more have access for themselves to the 
 kingdom of God within them. 
 
14 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 WHAT IS RELIGION? 
 
 We must not be daunted by paradox. Let us 
 turn to Whitman's prose to glean a definition of re- 
 ligion, after we have first weighed the significant fact 
 that he was of Quaker descent, and that he thought it 
 worth while to write of Elias Hicks and George Fox 
 as follows : 
 
 Doubtless the greatest scientists and theologians will some- 
 times find themselves saying: "It is not only those who know 
 most who contribute most to God's glory." Doubtless these very 
 scientists at times stand with bared heads before the humblest 
 lives and personalities. For there is something greater (is there 
 not?) than all the science and poems of the world above all 
 else, like the stars shining eternal above Shakespeare's plays, or 
 Concord philosophy, or art of Angelo or Raphael, something 
 that shines illusive, like beams of Hesperus at evening high 
 above all the vaunted wealth and pride proved by its practical 
 outcropping in life, each case after its own concomitants, the in- 
 tuitive blending of divine love and faith in a human emotional 
 character blending for all, for the unlearned, the common, and 
 the poor. (Pr., p. 472.) 
 
 What is poor, plain George Fox compared with William 
 Shakespeare to fancy's lord, imagination's heir? Yet George 
 Fox stands for something, too, a thought, the thought that wakes 
 in silent hours perhaps the deepest, most eternal thought latent 
 in the human soul. This is the thought of God, merged in the 
 thoughts of moral right, and the immortality of identity. Great, 
 great is this thought aye, greater than all else, . . . the only 
 certain source of what all are seeking, but few or none find in it 
 I for myself see the first, the last, the deepest depths and highest 
 heights of art, of literature, and of the purposes of life. I say, 
 whoever labors here, makes contributions here, or, best of all, sets 
 an incarnated example here, of life or death is dearest to hu- 
 manity remains after the rest are gone. And here, for these 
 purposes, and up to the light that was in him, the man Elias 
 Hicks as the man George Fox had done years before him lived 
 long, and died, faithful in life, and faithful in death. (Pr., p. 476.) 
 
WHAT IS KELIGION? 15 
 
 I have transcribed these two paragraphs because 
 they are likely to help the perplexed student to a 
 better understanding of Whitman. He can not bear 
 to have abstractions compete for our interest with men 
 and women. Better than any theology is a man. 
 Better than any metaphysical idea of God is a woman. 
 (p. 175.) It is after all the idea of the diety incar- 
 nated by avatars in human form (p. 115) that alone 
 seriously interests him. 
 
 He sees eternity in men and women ; he does not see men 
 and women as dreams or dots. (p. 270.) 
 
 " In the faces of men and women," he sees " God," 
 and in his " own face in the glass." (p. 76.) Every 
 thing is for the soul's sake. To be of worth, it must 
 contribute to the soul. " The universe itself" is 
 merely " a road . . . for traveling souls." (p. 127.) 
 
 What then is religion ? A state of the soul ? 
 What then is God? A vision the soul obtains of 
 itself? According to Whitman, these would be fair 
 definitions. And in these definitions he would not be 
 straying far from Quakerism as he understood it. 
 
 The true Christian religion (such was the teaching of Elias 
 Hicks) consists neither in rites, or bibles, or sermons, or Sundays, 
 but in noiseless, secret ecstasy and unremitted aspiration, in 
 purity, in a good practical life, in charity to the poor and tolera- 
 tion to all. . . . He believed little in church as organized, 
 . . . but he believed always in the Universal Church, in the 
 soul of man, invisibly rapt, ever-waiting, ever-responding to uni- 
 versal truths. (Pr., note, p. 464).* 
 
 * Whitman views religion as essentially unsocial : " I should 
 /> say, indeed, that only in the perfect uncontamination and soli- 
 tariness of individuality may the spirituality of religion posi- 
 tively come forth at all. Only here, and on such terms, the mani- 
 
16 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 It is the doctrine of " the light within " which 
 constitutes the vital core of Quakerism. Walt Whit- 
 man perceives a kinship thus between Fox and Hicks 
 and Plato. It is the same " doctrine that the ideals 
 of character, of justice, of religious action, whenever 
 the highest is at stake, are to be conformed to no out- 
 side doctrine of creeds, bibles, legislative enactments, 
 conventionalities, or even decorums, but are to follow 
 the inward deity-planted law of the emotional soul." 
 (Pr., p. 465.) In his prefatory note (Pr., p. 455), he 
 comments on Hicks as " pointing to the fountain of 
 all ... religion . . . in yourself and your in- 
 herent relations." " Others talk of bibles, etc., . . . 
 the canons outside of yourself," . . . but Elias 
 Hicks points "to the religion inside of man's very 
 own nature." 
 
 The point at which Walt Whitman takes issue 
 with Elias Hicks is the Quaker's thorough exclusive be- 
 lief in the Hebrew scriptures. Walt Whitman has 
 not restricted himself to them, so that his own reli- 
 gion might be termed a Quakerism cut loose con- 
 sistently from the last shadow of external authority, 
 not substituting for the Bible any concensus even of 
 all the sacred books of the world. Nor is he unap- 
 preciative of these. Only he observes : 
 
 I do not say they are not divine ; 
 I say they have all grown out of you, and may grow out of you 
 
 still. 
 
 It is not they who give the life ; it is you who give the life. 
 Leaves are not more shed from the trees, or trees from the earth, 
 
 than they are shed from you. (p. 172.) 
 
 festations, the devout ecstasy, the soaring flight," etc. The rest of 
 this interesting paragraph is well worth referring to. " Democratic 
 Vistas." (Pr., p. 233.) 
 
WHAT IS RELIGION? 17 
 
 If it is possible for the soul to get " passage in- 
 deed to primal thought/' to its " own clear fresh- 
 ness," to "realms of budding bibles" (p. 320), why 
 should a man any longer " take things at second or 
 third hand," or " look through the eyes of the dead," 
 or " feed on the specters of books ? " Why not " filter 
 them from oneself?" (p. 30.) Even the saviours " 
 are " countless," but only historical or mythical names 
 for " saviours latent within" oneself, where "bibles" 
 " equal to any " can be unclasped and read. (p. 350.) 
 The " outside authority" ought always to enter after 
 the precedence of inside authority, (p. 153.) With 
 such a rigid test as his, " outside authority " in the 
 matter of spiritual beliefs, it is clear there can be 
 none. It is, to be sure, only the old Catholic test, the 
 " ab omnibus," which, with the Christian traditionalist, 
 however, always carefully excludes the heretic as 
 though he were non-existent. The appeal was to the 
 universal consensus, but the nature of what the con- 
 sensus ought to be was so preassumed as to eliminate 
 objectionable factors. With Whitman there is no 
 such petitio principii. 
 
 Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so. 
 Only what nobody denies is so. (p. 83.) 
 
 As for the " inside authority " it is challenged 
 and brought into play by the outside world : 
 
 All truths wait in all things, (p. 53). 
 
 All truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so concealed 
 either, 
 
 They are calm, subtle, intransmissible by print. 
 
 They are imbued through all things, conveying themselves will- 
 ingly, 
 
 Conveying a sentiment and invitation, (p. 176.) 
 
18 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 The tests of truth are always, 
 
 Inner, serene, unapproachable to analysis, in the soul, 
 
 Not traditions, not the outer authorities are the judges, 
 
 They are the judges of outer authorities and of all traditions. 
 
 (p. 305.) 
 In fact, 
 
 Whatever satisfies souls is true. (p. 201.) 
 
 If your soul is diseased it can not be trusted. 
 Yet, again, you would have to trust your soul as to 
 what healthier man should be made your test. For 
 of course arguments do not convince. They usually 
 are excuses the soul furnishes to the mechanical side 
 of itself for entertaining certain convictions. In the 
 last analysis " outside authority " invariably turns out 
 to be " inside authority," more or less arbitrarily at- 
 tached to some exterior symbol. 
 
 How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed ! 
 
 How the floridness of the materials of cities shrivels before a man's 
 
 or woman's look ! 
 
 All waits or goes by default till a strong being appears ; 
 A strong being is the proof of the race and of the ability of the 
 
 universe. 
 
 When he or she appears materials are overawed, 
 The dispute on the soul stops, 
 The old customs and phrases are confronted, turned back, or laid 
 
 away. (p. 153.) 
 
 Of course the great man can not directly en- 
 lighten us, but though " Wisdom can not be passed 
 from one having it to another not having it," though 
 " Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof," 
 yet " Something there is in the float of the sight of 
 things that provokes it out of the soul." (p. 123). 
 And no sight is so potent to elicit wisdom from our 
 souls as the sight of the wise man. When in doubt of 
 
WHAT IS RELIGION? 19 
 
 my very being, "A morning glory at my window 
 satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books." 
 (p. 39.) More than " a university course," and the 
 learned memories with which it has stored the soul, 
 "A slumbering woman and child convince." (p. 175.) 
 
 I see the sleeping babe nestling the breast of its mother, 
 The sleeping mother and babe hushed, I study them long and 
 long. (p. 217.) 
 
 And the last resort always will be to the touch of 
 a loving hand. All "the terrible doubt of appear- 
 ances " is answered : 
 
 When he whom I love travels with me or site a long while hold- 
 ing me by the hand, 
 
 When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and 
 reason hold not, surround us and pervade us, 
 
 Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom, I am 
 silent, I require nothing further, 
 
 I can not answer the question of appearances or that of identity 
 beyond the grave, 
 
 But I walk or sit indifferent, I am satisfied, 
 
 He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me. (p. 175.) 
 
 Who that has been with his fellow-men in their 
 sorest need has not found that all one man can do for 
 another is to be himself strong, convinced, patient, 
 and to press the sick or dying doubter's hand ten- 
 derly ? 
 
 Considering, however, the extent to which he 
 carries out all its implications, we ought not to be 
 amazed when we find Walt Whitman's doctrines of 
 the inner light admitting of companions from lands 
 and literatures strange to Christendom. The doctrine 
 of a spiritual body of St. Paul of Tarsus, Emanuel 
 Swedenborg, and William Blake hobnobs goodna- 
 turedly with a metempsychosis doctrine definitely 
 
v 
 
 20 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 indicated; while a doctrine of cosmic cycles faintly 
 looms up in the distance ; and Vedantic views are at 
 times expressed with such originality and energy as 
 to have brought a smile of delight to the serene im- 
 mobile countenance of a Hindu friend, to whom I 
 read them. 
 
 The negative and positive poles, as it were, of 
 Whitman's current of religion can be pointed out now 
 in his own words. On the one hand we have the 
 - " divine pride of a man in himself the radical foun- 
 dation of the new religion " (Pr., p. 246) ; on the other 
 hand " religious " is defined to mean " possessing the 
 idea of the infinite." (Pr., p. 238.) The true thing 
 itself, strictly speaking, is neither, but their union : 
 
 Yet I in this dull scene . . . why ain I so (almost) happy 
 here and alone ? Why would any intrusion even from people I 
 like spoil the charm ? But am I alone ? Doubtless there comes a 
 time perhaps it has come to me when one feels through his 
 whole being, and pronouncedly in the emotional part, that 
 identity between himself subjectively and nature objectively 
 which Schelling and Fichte are so fond of pressing. How it is, 
 I know not, but I often realize a presence here in clear moods I 
 am certain of it (Pr., p. 105). 
 
 Some "vital unseen presence" (Pr., p. 99) haunts 
 for us cold nature a ghost maybe of ourself. " The 
 victorious fusion " in man " of the Real and Ideal," 
 which the poet sets forth, is Religion. (Pr., p. 398.) 
 
 But Walt Whitman puts the matter, I conceive, 
 once more in different terms : 
 
 Great unspeakably great is the Will ! the free Soul of man. 
 (Pr.,p.336.) 
 
 Something that fully satisfies that something is the All, and 
 the idea of the All, etc. (Pr., p. 253.) I have the idea of all, 
 and am all, and believe in all. (p. 192.) 
 
WHAT IS RELIGION? 21 
 
 " The eternal soul of man " (Pr., p. 286) is to be 
 saved freed by union with this " Idea of the All." 
 " Liberty," he tells us is not " release from all law." 
 
 The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws, 
 namely, the fusion and combination of the conscious will, or par- 
 tial individual law, with those universal, eternal unconscious 
 ones which run through all Time, pervade history, prove immor- 
 tality, give moral purpose to the entire objective world, and the 
 last dignity to human life. (Pr., p. 337.) 
 
 The whole matter is restated in a note to his es- 
 say, "Poetry To-day in America." (Pr., p. 299.) The 
 " conscious will " is to be reconciled to the " great uncon- 
 scious and abysmic second will." The soul is to 
 "cheerfully range itself under universal laws, and 
 embody them." 
 
 But unfamiliar with oriental speculations, or not 
 possessing a sure grasp of the principle of " inner 
 light " and what it logically leads to (particularly as 
 the Friends never followed it out to the end, re- 
 strained, unconsciously by the language of Christian 
 theological tradition), there may be those who find it 
 difficult to represent tb- themselves the position of 
 Whitman. Another method of approach may per- 
 haps serve them in good stead. I shall allow myself, 
 therefore, a brief abstract disquisition, with no intent 
 of converting them to Whitman, or any notion of 
 stating personal views. 
 
 There are the great ecstatic moments of the soul. 
 Strange moments ! * To some they have come in na- 
 ture, to others " at a meeting ;" to some from an idea, 
 to others from an ideal ; to some meditating on scien- 
 
 Cf. Emerson's Essay on the " Over Soul." 
 
22 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 tific law, to others in poetic dreams ; to some during 
 metaphysical speculations, to others when confronted 
 with a living character. In every instance, however, 
 the rapture was of the same nature. The soul became 
 fluid feeling, and embraced the visible universe as the 
 ocean would an island ; and now the man has ebbed 
 back to his ordinary self, the old indefinite extent of 
 conscious feeling at ecstatic high tide is thought to ex- 
 ist, apart from him, centered outside of him. There 
 arises thus a painful sense of the gap between the self 
 of ecstasy and the self of ordinary thought and feel- 
 ing. Having once experienced the blissful oblitera- 
 tion of all hostility to the soul, the momentary swal- 
 lowing up of all that claims to be independent of the 
 soul by the soul, one can never again be rid of hun- 
 ger and thirst for the renewal of the experience at 
 least in some degree. All beautiful arts, all religious 
 organizations, are separate efforts to accomplish this. 
 Those with whom these means are invariably success- 
 ful, let an overflow of gratitude glorify them. They 
 praise with enthusiasm statue, picture, symphony, so- 
 ciety, creed. The experience thus tends to become all 
 the more readily an empty tradition. Those who 
 have not had it very naturally suppose that the works 
 of art or the theological doctrines and ecclesiastical 
 rites are in themselves the end, instead of mere means 
 to this spiritual ecstasy. Occasionally such formalists 
 stumble on the true meaning of the doctrines they 
 have received. More often are men initiated by ex- 
 treme sorrows and despairs. Then they wonder 
 they could have so long handled holy things without 
 the knowledge of their true purpose, when, after all, 
 
WHAT IS RELIGION? 23 
 
 they bear the stamp of it so plainly upon them for 
 him who has eyes and sees. 
 
 Now, one reason so few understand this mystic se- 
 cret of religion according to this exposition, is the 
 difficulty of suggesting it by any word. Lay the 
 stress on the ordinary state of man the so-called real, 
 or actual more properly termed the apparent, and 
 the obvious danger is that we shall consider the so- 
 called Ideal (more properly the Real) as a god, in- 
 finitely different from us ; and then, passing by use 
 of language to anthropomorphism the difference will 
 be construed as a quarrel : a sin on our part and a 
 wrath on his. Atonement in order to Communion, 
 becomes then easily a reconciliation through external 
 mediators and through sacrifices the teachers being 
 the historic basis for the former, their sufferings 
 or the hardships necessary to attainment of the 
 Ideal, giving an objective or subjective rationale to the 
 latter. Of such a nature, it may be argued, are all 
 exoteric religions. The esoteric side of every religion, 
 however, lays the stress, not on the apparent, but the 
 Real. The mystic turns his eyes inward. He can not 
 gaze upon the real core of his own being. That 
 phantom-self vanishes as he approaches, until the 
 mystery is nameless, awful, infinite. So he recognizes 
 in the unfathomable abyss within, the self of hours 
 of ecstacy. He may call it " God," adopt all the 
 language of his unmystical brethren, but for him it 
 has a new significance. Whether he adopts or not 
 their terms he knows it as Self. The danger, how- 
 ever, appears very soon. To communicate his mean- 
 ing is well-nigh impossible. In all probability the 
 
24 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 uninitiated who accepts the mystic as his authority 
 deludes himself, anticipates results, and progress is 
 paralyzed. He thinks there is nothing to do. Be- 
 cause he knows the divine is the Real in him, he 
 takes no pains to transform the apparent, actual man. 
 He gives the flesh, mayhe the full license of the spirit, 
 and is immoral on the pretext of being above moral- 
 ity. The dualist, emphasizer of the apparent, becomes 
 contrariwise in all probability, if he be in earnest, a 
 chastiser of himself. Thus antinomianism and asceti- 
 cism are the two penalties men pay for embracing 
 either horn of the dilemma, and misunderstanding 
 the true meaning : a God without viewed as sepa- 
 rate, hostile, to be reconciled by self-imposed hard- 
 ships; a God within viewed as really at one with the 
 worshiper, arid therefore the premature assumption of 
 divine freedom ! Many Mystics strive to overcome 
 the difficulty by using both lines of expression alter- 
 nately, and thus, by oscillation between extremes, to 
 indicate what they believe to be the true mean. 
 
 Now, Walt Whitman prefers to speak of the 
 potential as actual, to call God, Self, as a rule ; though 
 he tries to obviate misconstructions by occasional use 
 of other language, and a constant emphasis on the 
 thought of growth or the Hegelian u becoming." 
 Change is a death and a birth. What is must cease 
 to be in order that what is to be may come into 
 being. We have had talk of " death unto the 
 flesh," and " birth from above," with equivalent 
 phrases, more or less understood, for now nine- 
 teen centuries. Whitman prefers to use the con- 
 ception of evolution or growth instead of those 
 
DIVINE PRIDE. 25 
 
 two terms which together express the same thought. 
 He uses the word " death " to indicate the unknown^ 
 life. He adds often the adjective " heavenly," lest he 
 be misunderstood to mean by " death " the dissolution \ 
 of the body or of the soul. Yet, in spite of every 
 effort to be clear, he is steadily misunderstood by most 
 readers for years, unless they have chanced to study 
 the Idealist philosophers of Germany, the Mystics of 
 Christian centuries, the Neoplatonists, or, better yet, 
 for interpreting Emerson and Whitman, the Bhagavad 
 Gita. 
 
 DIVINE PRIDE. 
 
 Let us consider, now, first, what Whitman calls 
 " the radical foundation of the new religion :" the 
 " divine pride in one's self." His last words of criti- 
 cism upon this point will be found in "A Backward 
 Glance O'er Travel* d Roads." (Appendix to Leaves 
 of Grass, p. 435.) 
 
 " I think this pride indispensable to an American. 
 I think it not inconsistent with obedience, humanity, 
 deference, and self-questioning." 
 
 It is no more than fair to accept his own definition 
 of terms. Whatever would be wholty inconsistent 
 with these states of mind and heart is then not what 
 Whitman means by " pride." One is free, no doubt, 
 to reprehend his use of the word. Perhaps, however, 
 it will not be so easy to find a less objectionable 
 term. 
 
 And here, in considering the attitude Whitman 
 takes toward his present undeveloped self because of 
 its great, unspeakable destiny, we can not too forcibly 
 remind ourselves that he does not say these things of 
 
26 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 himself as other than us ; that he really means to put 
 
 them in our mouths : 
 
 I will effuse egotism and show it underlying all. (p. 24.) 
 
 I celebrate myself and sing myself, 
 
 And what I assume you shall assume, (p. 29.) 
 
 All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own, 
 L ' Else it were time lost listening to me. (p. 44.) 
 
 It is you talking just as much as myself; I act as the tongue 
 
 of you, 
 Tied in your mouth, in mine it begins to be loosened, (p. 75.) 
 
 I know perfectly well my own egotism, 
 
 Know my omnivorous lines and must not write any less, 
 
 And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself, (p. 69.) 
 
 He hints that in the "Answerer," or Maker of 
 s / Ideals, men ought not to, and do not, revere another, 
 whatever they may fancy: 
 
 Him they accept, in him lave, in him perceive themselves as amid 
 light, (p. 134.) 
 
 If not, how could the "Answerer" or Messiah be 
 of use to men ? 
 
 And, finally, in order that his object in singing 
 himself may be clear to all, he uses the pronoun 
 ' you" in the following lines, as well as in the glorious 
 poem, " To You : " (p. 186.) 
 
 Whoever you are ! motion and reflection are especially for you, 
 
 The divine ships sail the divine sea for you. 
 
 Whoever you are ! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid 
 
 and liquid ; 
 
 You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky, 
 For none more than you are the present and the past, 
 For none more than you is immortality. 
 Each man to himself and each woman to herself is the word of 
 
 the past and the present, and the true word of immortality ; 
 
DIVINB PRIDE. 27 
 
 No one can acquire for another not one, 
 Not one can grow for another not one, . . . 
 And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, 
 or the indication of his own. (p. 178.) 
 
 Let no reader, then, be any more disturbed by 
 Lombrosian qualms at Whitman's supposed " Megalo- 
 mania." The very essence of the disease is absurd 
 exaltation of oneself at the expense of one's neigh- 
 bor ; while Whitman's egotism is displayed only to en- 
 gender the like in his reader, which, whatever one 
 may think of it, is quite a different thing. Neverthe- 
 less, the manner of Walt Whitman is so frankly ar- 
 rogant, he urges such extraordinary claims for us, that 
 many a beginner insists on not taking him at his word 
 and on supposing he meant all these vast attributes 
 and defiant attitudes to be descriptive only of his 
 private personality! On this point, at the risk of 
 being tedious, one can not lay too much stress. Stand- 
 ing at the grave of Emerson, Whitman uttered these 
 words : * 
 
 A just man, poised on himself, all-loving, all inclosing and 
 sane and clear as the sun. Nor does it seem so much Emerson 
 himself we are here to honor it is conscience, simplicity, cult- 
 ure, humanity's attributes at their best, yet applicable, if need be, 
 to average affairs, and eligible to all. (Pr., p. 197.) 
 
 Elsewhere in a very interesting critique on Emer- 
 son, he says of him : 
 
 His final influence is to make his students cease to worship 
 any thing almost cease to believe in any thing outside of them- 
 selves. (Pr., p. 320.) 
 
 Whether actually spoken, I do not know. 
 
28 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 Now, Whitman would not have us do this 
 "almost," but altogether: 
 
 You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things 
 
 from me, 
 You shall listen to all sides and filter them for yourself, (p. 30.) 
 
 What were the advantage cutting us loose from 
 all glorious traditions, if he should, in his turn, become 
 one himself, and repress our development from within, 
 which he held as the one law of sterling manhood ? 
 
 Not I, nor any one else, can travel that road for you, 
 You must travel it for yourself, (p. 73.) 
 
 Besides, he definitely teaches " straying from him- 
 self :" (p. 75.) 
 
 Each singing what belongs to him or her and to no one else. 
 
 -(p. 17.) 
 
 And he puts it very unmistakably in fourteen lines, 
 using the figure of the " teacher of athletes/' which 
 end: 
 
 He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the 
 teacher, (p. 74.) 
 
 In this matter surely he has been less of an ego- 
 tist than most men of genius. Only now and then 
 does he refer to himself as a separate person from the 
 reader, and then it is modestly, sometimes pathetically 
 -4 (e. g., "As I ebbed with the Ocean of Life." Stanza 2, 
 p. 202). " Every great character," Whitman observes 
 (writing of Elias Hicks), is "adjusted strictly with 
 reference to itself." (Pr., p. 472.) The great lesson 
 of nature is poise, self-sufficiency, appropriation from 
 without only of what can be subordinated to the life 
 
DIVINE PRIDE. 29 
 
 that makes us grow from within, and so, assimi- 
 lated : 
 
 I will confront these shows of the day and night, 
 
 I will know if I am to be less than they, 
 
 I will see if I am not as majestic as they, 
 
 I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they, 
 
 I will see if I am to be less generous than they, 
 
 I will see if I have no meaning, while the houses and ships have 
 
 meaning, 
 I will see if the fishes and birds are to be enough for themselves, 
 
 and I am not to be enough for myself, (p. 275.) 
 
 Unconscious contact with " serene moving ani- 
 mals teaching content " and " the primal sanities of 
 nature" (p. 244), is the reason that 
 
 The secret of the making of the best persons, 
 
 Is to grow in the open air, and to eat and sleep with the earth. 
 
 -(P- 123.) 
 
 On this account, his "Leaves of Grass" lies "un- 
 born or dead " in libraries, (p. 98.) It is not so much 
 that he refuses to "translate" himself, "except in the 
 open air" (p. 75), but that the seclusion between the 
 four walls makes for the ordinary reader any expansive 
 "divine pride" difficult; and not merely in the case 
 of architecture or music, but in that of every art 
 whatsoever, in the last analysis, as he tells us : 
 
 All ... is what you do to it when you look upon it. 
 
 All ... is what awakes from you. ... (p. 173 ; cf. p. 282.)* 
 
 But he who contemplates the continence of vege- 
 tables, birds, animals, can not but feel with Whit- 
 man 
 
 * For the open air, therefore, as a test of literary worth, cf. Pr. 
 199 and 501, with p. 433 in " Leaves of Grass." 
 
30 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 The consequent meanness of me should I skulk, or find myself 
 indecent, while birds or animals never once skulk or find 
 themselves indecent, (p. 91.) 
 
 Elsewhere, again, in his grim way, he makes us 
 laugh at the proud " Lord of Nature," so called : 
 
 I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid 
 
 and self-contained, 
 
 I stand and look at them long and long. 
 They do not sweat and whine about their condition. . . . 
 Not one is respectable or happy over the whole earth, (p. 54.) 
 
 Consequently he continues the thought else- 
 where, 
 
 I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood, 
 I see that the elementary laws never apologize. 
 I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house 
 by, after all. (p. 45.) 
 
 And I say to any man or woman, let your soul stand cool and 
 composed before a million universes, (p. 76.) 
 
 If ever Whitman is sublime, it is when he chants 
 this self-centered " spiritual manhood poised " on 
 itself, "giving, not taking law." (p. 167.) 
 
 The joy of manly selfhood ! 
 
 To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known 
 or unknown, 
 
 To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic, 
 
 To look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye, 
 
 To speak with a full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest, 
 
 To confront with your personality all the other personalities of 
 the earth, (p. 146.) 
 
 O, while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, 
 
 To meet life as a powerful conqueror, 
 
 No fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms, 
 
 To these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, prov- 
 ing my soul impregnable, 
 
 And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me. (p. 147.) 
 
DIVINE PRIDE. 31 
 
 to be self-balanced for contingencies, 
 
 To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, 
 as the trees and animals do. (p. 16.) 
 
 " Why should I pray ? Why should I venerate 
 and be ceremonious?" asks Whitman, (p. 44.) Yet 
 communion of the soul with God within is the very 
 end and aim of life. None has framed a nobler prajer 
 than that he has put into the mouth of Columbus, 
 (p. 323). Nor does Whitman fail to follow the 
 maxim of Rossetti in Soothsay : 
 
 To God at best, to chance at worst, 
 Give thanks for good things, last as first. 
 
 He is always overflowing with gratitude and love. 
 His prose is full of praise and thanksgiving and 
 usually we feel that it goes as " at best " it should 
 to God. (p. 398). K 
 
 But the real questions for the disturbed reader of 
 Whitman to ask himself would be, " what really is 
 worship?" and "what is worship for?" The pur- 
 pose of uttered worship is relief to the soul which can 
 not any longer endure the pressure of pent adoration. 
 It is to uplift the soul, not in any sense to confer a 
 favor on its god. And the purpose of worship defines 
 its true nature. Not the cries of " Lord, Lord " 
 (Lk. vi, 46 ; Matt, vii, 21-23), but the doing of the 
 will is the main ingredient. How idolatrous we are 
 it is not easy for a mind unused to watching its own 
 motions fully to realize. Have you rid yourself of 
 " idols made with hands ? " Well, so far, so good. 
 Have you wholly rid yourself of idols made by the 
 imagination ? If not, then you are worshiping dis- 
 embodied idols, ghosts of idols. Is it BO wise to 
 
32 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 decry idolatry, when perhaps you shall find one man 
 only in a million really able to worship God in his un- 
 represented Being ? Would not such worship be prac- 
 tically atheistic for all but that extremely small num- 
 ber who can understand that what most utterly eludes 
 all thought is the most real ? 
 
 To Whitman, of course, God is Subject of subject, 
 Object of object. Behind yourself is God. Behind 
 the universe is God. You and the universe are the 
 two-fold veil of the One. True worship is worship of 
 that One. Obedience to the Maker is being yourself. 
 To be real is the best homage to Reality. If there is 
 to be worship, it will be beyond words or it will pass 
 through one of the two symbols (yourself and the 
 universe) or through both at one and the same time. 
 Such verbal identification of the One with these is un- 
 satisfactory. Yet, so long as the One Reality passes our 
 thought, because thought invariably analyzes being 
 into subject and predicate (as Plotinus long ago 
 showed), we must not speak of It at all, or be con- 
 tent to give It in terms of that which we expressly 
 say It is not. Nor is such language improper. Even 
 if we are to realize in " ecstacy" the nature of this 
 " Reality," we shall have to pass beyond thought 
 through some such inadequate self-contradictory 
 thought of the Unthinkable. 
 
 Whitman in his prefaces to Leaves of Grass for 
 1855 to 1872 and 1876 fully enough expounds his 
 ideas on the subject of the poet and his office, and the 
 aims of his own performance. To give a provisional 
 body to the Spirit of religion until it be incarnate 
 fully in men and women readers of such poetry is 
 the highest duty of the poet. (Of. Pr. 272-279.) 
 
DIVINE PRIDE. 33 
 
 It was originally my intention, after chanting in " Leaves of 
 Grass," the songs of the body and existence, to then compose a 
 further equally needed volume, based on those convictions of per- 
 petuity and conservation which, enveloping all precedents, make 
 the unseen soul govern absolutely at the last. I meant while in 
 a sort continuing the theme of my first chants, to shift the slides 
 and exhibit the problem and paradox of the same ardent and 
 fully appointed personality entering the sphere of the resistless 
 gravitation of spiritual law, and with cheerful face estimating 
 death, not at all as the cessation, but as somehow what I feel it % . 
 must be, the entrance upon by far the greatest part of existence, 
 and something that life is at least as much for as it is for itself. 
 But the full construction of such a work is beyond my powers, 
 and must remain for some bard in the future. The physical and 
 the sensuous, in themselves or their immediate continuations, retain holds 
 upon me which / think are never entirely released ; and those holds T 
 have not only not denied, but hardly wish to weaken. (Pr., p. 281 ; 
 C/. footnote, Pr., p. 284.) 
 
 This paragraph I transcribe, because it ought to 
 prevent us seeking in Whitman's work what he does 
 not profess to furnish. The highest rapture which he 
 conceives possible is denied him. Greater poets and(/ 
 prophets are to come than those that have been. In 
 the domain of the very highest, he feels his unfitness 
 for a sufficiently bold flight. 
 
 Over the mountain growths disease and sorrow, 
 An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering, 
 High in the purer, happier air. 
 
 From imperfection's murkiest cloud, 
 Darts always forth one ray of perfect light, 
 One flash of heaven's glory, (p. 182.) 
 
 "A soul-sight of that divine clue" (Pr., p. 174) is 
 vouchsafed him, "a guiding thread so fine along the 
 mighty labyrinth." It is " belief in the plan " of God, 
 " inclosed in time and space health, peace, salvation 
 
NJ 
 
 34 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 universal." (p. 182.) You may retort : " This is vague." 
 Nevertheless, Whitman may be right when he says: 
 " The faintest indication is the indication of the best, 
 and then, becomes the clearest indication." (Pr., p. 267.) 
 
 Is it a dream ? 
 
 Nay, but the lack of it the dream, 
 
 And failing it, life's lore and wealth a dream, 
 
 And all the world a dream, (p. 183.) 
 
 If, in the superb " Song of the Universal," he is 
 breathless with the burden of the Spirit of God, in 
 the allegory of " the Passage to India," which he ex- 
 pressly declares to be a sort of last word (Pr., foot- 
 note, p. 280), he makes his intentions clear enough : 
 
 Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God, 
 
 At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death, 
 
 But that I, turning, call to thee, O Soul, thou actual Me, 
 
 And lo, thou gently masterest orbs, 
 
 Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death, 
 
 And fittest, swellest full the vastnesses of Space, (p. 321.) 
 
 If the strain is great, it is because there is no ef- 
 fort to hide behind words or rites : 
 
 Ah more than any priest Soul, we too believe in God, 
 But with the mystery of God we dare not dally. 
 Bathe me, O God, in thee, mounting to thee, 
 I and my soul to range in range of Thee. (p. 321.) 
 
 I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own. (p. 32.) 
 
 Reckoning ahead Soul, when thou, the time achieved, 
 The seas all crossed, weathered the capes, the voyage done, 
 Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, the aim attained, 
 As, filled with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother found , 
 The Younger melts in fondness in his arms. (p. 322.) 
 
 More definite utterance it was impossible for 
 Whitman to give his thought. So long as there is 
 
WORSHIP. 35 
 
 consciousness of God as separate and distinct, com- 
 munion is not entire ; when it is entire, self merges 
 with Self, the younger brother and the Elder Brother 
 pass away, and the One alone is. 
 
 WORSHIP. 
 
 In the close of the magnificent poem just quoted 
 from, Whitman describes the Absolute as the "you" 
 of waters, woods, mountains, prairies, clouds, suns 
 and stars. Idolatry is always the refuge of wing- 
 weary aspirants. 
 
 My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain, 
 The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms, 
 The great Comerado, the lover true for whom I pine, will be 
 there, (p. 73.) 
 
 Then why strive to anticipate? Visions of Him 
 would be premature, and, maybe, if over-distinct, in- 
 jurious to progress in the Soul's consolidation for an 
 eternal identity aware of itself in God. Let symbols 
 suffice for the present! His "Gods" are various 
 names of the One. (p. 213.) The divine Lover, the 
 Ideal Man, Death, the Best Idea, historic heroisms, 
 Time, Space, the Earth, the Sun, the Stars. But of 
 such Gods, or symbols of God, there is none " more 
 divine than yourself." (p. 299.) None more than 
 the " other gods, these men and women I love." (p. 
 375.) Besides, it is clear, no symbol is so significant 
 as one's own being if " nothing is greater to one than 
 one's self is" (p. 76), particularly if the thought of 
 God as other than the Reality of you, is the thought 
 of something beyond knowledge and intuition. "The 
 unseen is proved by the seen" (p. 31), and the body is 
 
36 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 symbol of the soul. It is so much of the soul as we 
 perceive through the senses. Therefore, if you per- 
 sist in asking what he worships, he answers : 
 
 If I worship one thing more than another, it shall be the spread of 
 my own body ; (p. 49.) 
 
 and he will not shrink from a complete delight in 
 it that most eloquent word, if " things " be indeed as 
 "Whitman conceives, " words of God." (Cf. p. 176.) 
 
 I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious, 
 Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy. (p. 49.) 
 
 Nor is this worship of the body so alien to his main 
 purpose as it might seem. It is not mere defiance. 
 If true worship of the Divine is to make the self 
 realize its dignity as that which proceeds from It, ex- 
 presses It, goes to It; and if the body is for us, most 
 of the time, the hieroglyph for self and soul; it is of 
 paramount importance to realize the greatness, the 
 beauty, the sacred nature of the body. " Temple of the 
 Holy Ghost" we have been taught to call it, but 
 thanks to a strange eclipse of much of its glory by con- 
 ventional clothes, we shrink unconsciously from repre- 
 senting ourselves the whole, sound, perfectly developed 
 body as athrill with God. Yet, " If any thing is 
 sacred, the human body is sacred." (p. 86.) And 
 Whitman means to rescue for himself his entire 
 body from any indignities placed upon it in ages of 
 ignorance or impiety. " The expression of a well 
 made man appears not only in his face." (p. 81.) 
 "In any man or woman, a clean, strong, firm-fibered 
 body is more beautiful than the most beautiful face." 
 (p. 86.) 
 
 Who will venture to praise the folds of drapery 
 
WORSHIP. 37 
 
 as more graceful and modest than the play of muscle 
 and sinew? Not alone the marbles of ancient Greece 
 shall have the right to a glorious nudity. In his 
 Prose we are supplied with a complete commentary 
 on this, to many adverse critics, the most objectionable 
 part of Whitman's work. 
 
 Sweet, sane, still Nakedness in Nature! ah. if poor, sick, 
 purient humanity in cities might really know you once more ! Is 
 not nakedness then indecent? No, not inherently. It is your 
 thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability, that is 
 indecent. There come moods when these clothes of ours are not 
 only too irksome to wear, but are themselves indecent, (p. 104.) 
 
 An entire essay in his Collect is devoted to this 
 subject and makes his position at all events quite in- 
 telligible. (Pr., p. 302-306.) " To the pure all things," 
 of course, " are pure," and when God made man he 
 ventured to think his work all "very good." The 
 poet surely has a right to adopt God's point of view, 
 and if he does not, who shall? 
 
 I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall 
 
 bo complete, 
 The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who 
 
 remains jagged and broken, (p. 179.) 
 
 Old as the world is and beyond statement as are the countless 
 and splendid results of its culture and evolution, perhaps the 
 best, and earliest, and purest intuitions of the human race have 
 yet to be developed. (Pr. p. 306.) 
 
 These rudimentary convictions it is the poet's 
 special business to bring into full consciousness. The 
 bird is not only singing for his mate, but also for the 
 eggs she covers with ruffled feathers, (p. 24.) One of 
 those rudimentary convictions is the sacredness of the 
 unadorned body. Still why, 
 
 " If I worship one thing more than another " 
 
38 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 must it be the body? Because it is the one thing 
 that is really mine, the worship of which exalts me, 
 and implies a worship still more devout of that which 
 can not be called a " thing," namely, " Me," who 
 dwell in it. i_> 
 
 But there are doubtless some who do not yet un- 
 derstand. They will urge : " Is there no greater body 
 than your body ? Is there no greater soul than your 
 soul ? Why not prefer to w T orship an Apollo Belve- 
 dere ? Why not bow, if bow you must, to the soul of 
 Plato? Surely here are more adequate symbols 
 better idols !" Whitman would answer : 
 
 After all these are only to me ideas. If that 
 which these ideas connote be greater in fact to an- 
 other impartial person than rny body and my soul, 
 which are to him also mere ideas, they are not so to 
 me. For him they are comparable. For me they are 
 not. My body is something more to me than the 
 best idea of a body. My soul is something more to 
 me than the loftiest notion I can form of a soul. 
 Even could I institute a comparison and realize the 
 superiority, I should not on that account necessarily 
 prefer Apollo and Plato as symbols of the Divine. 
 " The seed perfection " nestles safely inclosed in every 
 being (p. 181), and after all " size is only develop- 
 ment." (p. 45.) "Any thing is but a part." (p. 73.) 
 Only the whole is really divine. Each thing in its 
 place is equally fit as symbol of that whole. 
 
 I do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something 
 
 else. (p. 38.) 
 
 I do not call one greater and one smaller, 
 That which fills its period and place is equal to any. (p. 71.) 
 Each of us inevitable, 
 
WORSHIP. 39 
 
 Each of us limitless each of us with his or her right upon the 
 
 earth, 
 
 Each of us allow'd the eternal purports of the earth, 
 Each of us here as divinely as any is here. (p. 119.) 
 
 After all, when we look out upon the world, it is 
 a fact that all lines converge to the eye. You may 
 deplore this if you choose. You may argue from the 
 fact that others perceive the same phenomenon, that 
 it is an evident illusion. Yet, as long as you wish to 
 paint this world, you will have to accept this optic 
 egotism as a fundamental fact of our world. Else 
 what you paint will be untrue to the only experience 
 we have of the landscape. 
 
 Have you thought there could be but a single supreme? 
 
 There can be any number of supremes one does not countervail 
 
 another any more than one eyesight countervails another, or 
 
 one life countervails another. 
 All is eligible to all, 
 All is for individuals, all is for you, 
 No condition is prohibited, not God's or any. 
 iAli comes by the body, only health puts one rapport with the 
 \ universe, (p. 264.) 
 
 If this egotism be charged against us as crime,' we 
 can but say : 
 
 The universe is dulylin order ; every thing is in its place. 
 
 -(P- 331.) 
 and clearly, 
 
 I stand in my place with my own day here. (p. 20.) 
 
 If the past and its names interests me, how much 
 more would this my present and I interest the men 
 of old? 
 
 I sat studying at the feet of the great masters. 
 Now, if eligible, O that the great masters might return and study 
 me. (p. 20.) 
 
40 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 I know that the past was great and the future will be great, 
 And I know that both curiously conjoint in the present time. 
 
 -(p. 193.) 
 
 As the corpse was fittest for its days, the heir is 
 fittest now for his. (p. 266.) Let me " exalt the present 
 and the real." (p. 162.) 
 
 Immense have been the preparations for me . . . 
 All forces have been steadily employed to complete and de- 
 light me. 
 Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul. (p. 72.) 
 
 In literature, we may have supposed we could 
 avoid this egocentric perspective. Thought we fancied 
 is impersonal. But only the infinite circle has no 
 center or has its center every-where, which amounts 
 to the same and the mind can not inclose the in- 
 finite. It can " drown itself" in such a thought as 
 Leopardi so well put it. If the soul is to realize its 
 thought, set its affections upon it, make of the idea 
 an ideal, the radius must be finite, and then, of course, 
 every thing once more groups itself about you. As 
 Whitman expressed it, " even for the treatment of 
 the universal, in politics, metaphysics, or any thing, 
 sooner or later we come down to one single, solitary 
 soul." (Pr., p. 229.) To give full expression to this 
 truth was the " Song of Myself" written. 
 
 Where I am . . . there is the center of all, there is the mean- 
 ing of all. (p. 193.) 
 
 The true nature of things I do not penetrate. 
 Nothing is transparent. 
 
 We fathom you not, we love you. . . . 
 
 You furnish your parts toward the soul. (p. 134.) 
 
 Things are "only inaudable words." (p. 176.) 
 They " express me better than I can express myself." 
 
WORSHIP. 41 
 
 (p. 122.) The whole world-show is but " myself disin- 
 tegrated " (p. 129) ; a spectrum, analysis, so to speak, 
 of my soul. If I wish to contemplate myself, I must 
 "absorb all" the sights of the cities "to myself." 
 (p. 38.) They 
 
 Tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them, 
 And such as it is to be of these more or less I am, 
 And of these one and all I weave the song of myself. 
 
 -(p. 41.) 
 
 All the " shows of Day and Night," " I absorb all 
 in myself, and become master myself." (p. 275.) All 
 history " tastes good and becomes mine." (p. 59.) 
 Even the civil war of the early sixties serves me best /**" .. 
 by illustrating the "vehement struggle . V . for ]f* 
 unity in one's self." (p. 373.) 
 
 Apart from my view of them, " solid things " only 
 " stand for realities." In that sense, too, they are 
 words not merely mirrors of myself. 
 
 Have you ever reckoned that the landscape took substance and 
 form that it might be painted in a picture ? (p. 172.) 
 
 Things, however, while not transparent, are at 
 least dimly translucent, and the Real, that filters 
 through them, if it be the same Real that shines 
 through me, I may well call it by the same name. I 
 have then a right a reasonable right to identify 
 myself with things, not merely with my sensations 
 and notions of them, but with what they are. 
 
 Underneath all to me is myself, to you yourself, (p. 274.) 
 One's self must never give way that is the final substance that 
 
 out of all is sure. . . . 
 When shows break up, what but One's Self is sure ? (p. 342.) 
 
 The proper use of things, then, to which the poet 
 (and according to Whitman he is every man) is bound 
 
42 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 to be " faithful " (p. 271) is to " enter by them to an 
 area " fit for the self's " dwelling " (p. 47), " taking all 
 hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them." 
 (p. 197.) For the business of the soul is growth 
 growth from within. My business is but to " ex- 
 tricate" myself out of myself, (p. 351.) 
 
 My real self has yet to come forth, 
 
 It shall yet march forth o'ermastering, till all lies beneath me, 
 
 It shall yet stand up the soldier of ultimate victory, (p. 364.) 
 
 If for this I need the outer world of symbol why 
 expend energy on seeking the rare and extraordinary ? 
 
 You surely come back at last, 
 In things best known to you finding the best. (p. 175.) 
 
 Because after all 
 
 What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me, 
 Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns, 
 Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me, 
 Not asking the sky to come down to my good will, 
 Scattering it freely, forever, (p. 39.) 
 
 Rare and extraordinary things indeed might over- 
 awe me, I might forget that I was really master. In 
 the magnitude and novelty of my experience, per- 
 haps, some rival to my soul would lurk. My ideal is 
 not Kelson, then, or Socrates, or Newton, or any 
 greater name of saint or god, but myself, endowed 
 with their perfections. Let us openly avow this to 
 our souls ; repeat it again and again till we are in no 
 danger of deceiving ourselves at any time on this 
 subject. Let us not pretend to see otherwise than our 
 eyes permit. Let us wait to speak impersonally till 
 we have passed to a higher plane of consciousness, 
 that shall be impersonal. Let us boldly paint all our 
 ideal pictures with the lines converging with " refer- 
 ence to the soul " (p. 351) for me, mine, for you, yours. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 43 
 
 Such is the substance of Whitman's teaching. Not 
 only is all knowledge of ours subjective, but (clear to 
 the eye of faith) the real Object is identical with the 
 real Subject, so that the terms u I " and " It," " One's 
 Self" and " God " are convertible. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 
 
 It becomes incumbent on us now to investigate 
 the practical corollaries of the propositions philosophic 
 and theological which we have hitherto considered. 
 
 It is with some hesitation indeed that I approach 
 this part of my exposition, as it will be far less easy 
 than elsewhere to make Walt. Whitman speak for 
 himself, and in speaking for him there is liable to 
 enter a hardly calculable personal factor. All the 
 guidance we have is in the hypothesis that his own 
 unexpressed view reconciled all his self-contradictions 
 and paradoxes. For is there not in the very tone of 
 the already quoted lines, " Very well, then, I con- 
 tradict myself," something which might suggest rather 
 a concession for argument's sake than an actual plea 
 of guilty to any charge of reckless inconsistency? If 
 evil is declared at one time non-existent, at another 
 time part of the Divine, evil must bear two senses, or 
 we should have to conclude that the Divine itself is 
 non-existent. The tangle is by no means easy for the 
 reader of Whitman to ravel. But the critic is obliged 
 to attempt this. We might, perhaps, out of sheer 
 despair, have set the whole matter of morality aside, 
 as we do with Keats' poetry, were it not that Whit- 
 man so clearly in his prose arrogates for himself a 
 moral purpose. He tells us that " all great art must 
 have an ethic purpose." (Pr., p. 188.) To be sure, 
 
44 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 he warns us in his preface of 1885 that "the greatest 
 X poet does not moralize or make applications of morals, 
 he knows the soul." (Pr., p. 267.) But as long as 
 Religion and Ethics are inseparable (works being the 
 fruit of a living flower of faith), and that he boldly 
 claims to " inaugurate a religion," one can not evade 
 the question altogether. It is interesting also to note 
 by the way Whitman's criticism of J. F. Millet's 
 picture, which may have suggested to Mr. Havelock 
 Ellis his helpful comparison of Whitman and Millet.* 
 
 Besides this masterpiece (" The First Sower ") there were many 
 others, (I shall never forget the simple evening scene, " Watering 
 the Cow,"), all inimitable, all perfect as pictures, works of mere 
 art ; and then it seemed to me, with that last impalpable ethic pur- 
 pose from the artist (most likely unconscious to himself) which I 
 am always looking for. (Pr., p. 181.) 
 
 But that Whitman was not indifferent as to the 
 moral effect of his work, is put beyond all dispute by 
 the note to his Preface of 1876, a paragraph of which 
 shall be quoted : 
 
 Since I have been ill (1873-74-75), mostly without serious 
 pain, and with plenty of time and frequent inclination to judge 
 my poems (never composed with an eye on the book market, nor 
 for fame, nor for any pecuniary profit), I have felt temporary de- 
 pression more than once, for fear that in " Leaves of Grass " the 
 moral parts were not sufficiently pronounced. But in my clearest 
 and calmest moods I have realized that as those " Leaves," all 
 and several, surely prepare a way for and necessitate morals, and 
 are adjusted to them, just the same as nature does and is, they 
 are what, consistently with my plan they must and probably 
 should be. (In a certain sense, while the Moral is the purport 
 and last intelligence of all Nature, there is absolutely nothing of 
 the moral in the works, or laws, or shows of Nature. Those only 
 lead inevitably to it begin and necessitate it.) (Pr., p. 284.) 
 
 * The New Spirit, by Havelock Ellis. Walter Scott. London, 
 pages 104-107, a very suggestive little volume of essays. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 45 
 
 According to Whitman's own judgment, it will 
 be impossible to extract a little treatise on morals, 
 and difficult to obtain a systematic solution of 
 problem of evil, from his poems. 
 
 There are those who nowadays venture to claim 
 that without evil there can be for man no good. 
 Therefore, as they would perpetuate the consciously 
 moral in man, they find themselves obliged to con- 
 template an eternity of evil, at least of a subjective 
 sort. There must always remain in the mind, even 
 should it pass out of the being, that which is different 
 from good, if there is to be consciousness of good ! 
 There must always remain in the world of experience 
 the painful, obstructive, and dangerous, in order that 
 there may be opportunity for the display of will ! 
 To this view Whitman does not seem to accord much 
 sympathy. I suppose he would have argued that it 
 was, in the first place, not at all necessary that we 
 should remain consciously moral. 
 
 I give nothing as duties, 
 
 What others give as duties, I give as living impulses, 
 
 (Shall I give the heart's action as a duty?) (p. 190.) 
 
 If the figure is to be taken strictly, he would 
 rather have morality relegated to the subconscious 
 sphere of life. Perfect health involves oblivion of the 
 body as a functioning organism. The soul, when 
 complete in ideal efficiency, knows of no obligation, 
 the " ought " having become the " is." For any thing 
 that looks like dualism, we have a sharp reproof. It 
 is puerile, and absurd : 
 
 Silent and amazed even when a little boy, 
 I remember I heard the preacher every Sunday put God in his 
 statements 
 
46 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 As contending against some being or influence, (p. 217.)* 
 
 He sets down his disagreement with such views 
 as I have occasionally heard ascribed to him by appa- 
 rently conscientious readers of "Leaves of Grass," 
 and which have been stated above. 
 
 Koaming in thought over the Universe, I saw the little that is 
 good steadily hastening toward immortality, 
 
 And the vast all that is called Evil I saw hastening to merge 
 itself and become lost and dead. (p. 216.) 
 Only the good is universal, (p. 181.) 
 
 Whitman summarizes with evident approval 
 what he believes to be the views of Hegel on this 
 subject : 
 
 The specious, the unjust, the cruel, and what is called the 
 unnatural, though not only permitted in a certain sense (like 
 shade to light), inevitable in the divine scheme, are by the whole 
 constitution of that scheme, partial, inconsistent, temporary, and 
 though having ever so great an ostensible majority, are certainly 
 destined to failure, after causing much suffering. (Pr., p. 176.) 
 
 To mere "optimism," explaining "only the sur- 
 face and fringe" (Pr., p. 174), he has no leaning. He 
 desires always to see things as they really seem to the 
 eye. The " divine cue," of which he claims a " soul 
 sight," is the thought that " the whole congeries of 
 things " is " like a leashed dog in the hand of the 
 hunter" (Pr., p. 174); "that there is central and never 
 broken unity " and one " consistent and eternal pur- 
 pose." (Pr., p. 176.) The notion that there is any 
 thing inherently evil or foul in the universe seems 
 to him "to impugn Creation" (Pr., p. 306), God 
 "seeing no evil" in it. (Cf. Hab. i, 13.) When he 
 tells us that 
 
 *(y.Pr.,p.270. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 47 
 
 The difference between sin and goodness is no delusion, (p. 335.) 
 he must doubtless have in mind a conception some- 
 what akin to this of Browning : 
 
 The evil is null, is naught, is silence, implying sound ; 
 What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more. 
 
 (Abt. Vogeler. St. IX, 1. 6.) 
 
 Growth from good to better is quite sufficient to al- 
 low of the full exercise of the will. Evil thus be- 
 comes merely the name of a good that has been 
 transcended. 
 
 The soul is always beautiful, it appears more or it appears less, 
 
 it comes or it lags behind, (p. 331.) 
 Nothing out of its place is good, nothing in its place is bad. 
 
 -(p. 269.) 
 The universe is duly in order, every thing is in its place, (p. 331.) 
 
 By this is meant, then, that, while in the universe 
 absolute law and order obtains, and the whole there- 
 fore is good, yet the individual can occupy divers 
 places in this whole, and if it prefer to occupy a 
 lower one than it might occupy, embodied as it now 
 is, it is bad with reference to its possibilities it has 
 yet to grow. 
 
 The fundamental difficulty about this evolution- 
 ary conception of " Evil " as propounded by some 
 oriental theosophies would seem to lie in the postula- 
 tion of a universe infinite and perfect, giving their 
 strict sense to these words infinite and perfect. To 
 speak of progress with reference to a whole, felt to be 
 thus infinite and perfect, is sufficiently meaningless. 
 And if the whole can not be conceived as growing, be- 
 cause already all that it can be, and yet each portion of 
 it grows, we are confronted with a serious problem in- 
 deed. One solution immediately offers itself, which, 
 while it would serve to account for our experiences 
 
48 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 of incorrigible wrong-doing,* is hardly satisfactory to 
 our moral or aesthetic sense, namely : that retrogres- 
 sion in some exactly balances progression in others, 
 so that the whole remains in stable equilibrium per- 
 petually self-identical. But the thought of such a 
 universe is a horrible purposeless swirl and monstrous 
 unrest, sickening the soul with the very prospect of its 
 own imperishable existence. And then to tell us, by way 
 of consolation, as some would, that such is the uni- 
 verse, to be sure, but that an escape is provided for any 
 soul out of this fiery " wheel of Nature" f upon definite 
 conditions into what is to us now as yet nou -being ; and 
 that though souls are thus constantly passing out, be- 
 coming "extinct," indeed, so far as such poor living as 
 this can be dignified by the name of life, neverthe- 
 less the number that keep up the universal swirl of 
 being, never suffers diminution on that account, be- 
 cause originally infinite ; surely this were only to pile 
 paradox on paradox, to answer a question by a 
 harder question, to satisfy the spiritual cravings of 
 man at the expense of accurate thinking. 
 
 Perhaps it would be better to recognize that 
 thought can not deal with what has avowedly no lim- 
 its. The zero and the infinite when they enter our 
 premises vitiate our logic hopelessly, and no conclu- 
 sion has cogency. Wherefore, if with human faculties 
 even a picturesque solution of the mystery of existence 
 
 *Cf. Couds without water, carried along by winds; autumn 
 trees without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roo^s ; wild 
 waves of the sea, foaming out their own shames; wandering 
 stars, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. 
 (St. Jude xii, 13.) 
 
 tSt. Jas., iii, 6. 
 
THE PROBLEM OP EVIL. 49 
 
 is to be legitimately obtained, one which will afford 
 the mind a rational repose, it would be well not to 
 render at the very atart all thought impossible by the 
 quite gratuitous assumption that we are dealing with 
 a literary "infinite" and therefore "perfect" or "fin- 
 ished" universe. 
 
 Now, it would scarcely be fair to Whitman to im- 
 pute to him such views. It suffices him to assert 
 that the universe is as it should be, and is good ; that 
 it is adapted to the best advantages of us human 
 souls and our less advanced fellows in animal, vege- 
 table and crystal. The universe bafiles our intel- 
 lectual, moral, and aesthetic faculties of judgment. 
 Therefore we say it is infinite, meaning that its lim- 
 its are for us uudiscoverable ; that it is perfect, mean- 
 ing that the intensity of its goodness and beauty are 
 beyond our sense to endure. He has no cast-iron 
 theory of the Cosmos. He regards even the seas and 
 wind as " too big for formal handling " (Pr., p. 95), 
 and therefore as improper subjects for the poet. The 
 "common soil" itself (Pr., p. 100) escapes artistic 
 grasp. All one can do in attempting a " pen and 
 ink " sketch of it, is to enumerate various sensuous 
 appeals it makes, several phases of its appearance. 
 On this account the " demesne of poetry will always 
 be not the exterior but the interior;" not the ma- 
 crocosm but the microcosm." (Pr., p. 298.) He 
 " leaves all free " (p. 190), and charges his disciples to 
 do the same. 
 
 I resist any thing better than my own diversity, 
 Breathe the air, but leave plenty after me. (p. 42.) 
 
 So far as he can see, " Evolution " will explain 
 every thing. He does not feel himself bound to 
 
50 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 reckon over closely with what is beyond his sight, 
 with possible "infinites" and " eternities " of an ab- 
 solute sort. He enjoys Hegel's glorious philosophic 
 tour-de-force, but he would be the last to pin his faith 
 to Hegel. He insists on " leaving room ahead of him- 
 self" (Pr., p. 266), and of us, on what he calls "keep- 
 ing vista." (p. 268.) Hegel after all is no more than 
 an " indispensable " contributor to the " erudition of 
 America's future," but hardly worth so much as the 
 messages of the old " spiritual poets and poetry of 
 other lands." (Pr., p. 177.) " Encompass worlds, 
 but never try to encompass me " (p. 50), would be his 
 defiant reply to urgent invitations of any officious 
 spider of a Metaphysician to come into his gluey net 
 of a parlor, besplangled though it were with the dews 
 of the morning all asparkle in the sun. 
 
 But it will save space if I set forth dogmatically, 
 at the risk of a little repetition, what seems to be the 
 solution of the moral tangle in Whitman's poetry. 
 Dogmatism is always a capital yoke-fellow to doubt ; 
 it is usually prudent to make up in positiveness for 
 any lack of definite knowledge, as is the custom with 
 not a few ! 
 
 The word Evil is used by Whitman with five dis- 
 tinct meanings : 
 
 (1) Evil may mean the less good as compared to 
 the good, the good as compared to better, the better 
 as compared to best. In this sense " evil " is really 
 " good ; " different in degree only, not in kind. 
 
 (2) Evil may mean a supposed not-good ; as such 
 its existence is denied. 
 
 Omnes ! Omnes ! Let others ignore what they may, 
 
 I make the poem of evil also, I commemorate that part also, 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 51 
 
 I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is and I 
 
 say there is in fact no evil, 
 (Or if there is, I say it is just as important to you, to the land or 
 
 to me, as any thing else. (p. 22.) 
 
 In this passage we clearly see the first two mean- 
 ings presented together. 
 
 (3) Evil may mean failure to develop according 
 to the " inner light" (Pr., p. 465), the " spiritual divine 
 faculty " (Pr., p. 284), " the inward Deity-planted law " 
 (Pr., p. 465), because of an inadequate realization of 
 one's destiny. 
 
 On this account, Whitman feels he has con- 
 tributed a u new religion," and makes the start with 
 the " divine pride " in one's self. 
 
 None has ever yet adored and worshiped half enough. 
 None has begun to think how divine he himself is and how cer- 
 tain the future, (p. 22.) 
 
 Here he strengthens the soul by a recognition of 
 absolute law, to which there are no exceptions. He 
 ridicules " miracles " in that sense. Privileges, too, 
 he will have for none. (p. 48.) Therefore, there can 
 be, of course, no substitutional atonements, no forgive- 
 ness. Remorseless law, expiation, and conversion in 
 the strict sense of " turning about," and repentance in 
 the sense of doing better, are with him the great 
 pivotal words of ethics.* 
 
 A careful study of his conception of " sceptic " or 
 " infidel " seems to give the word the sense of " a 
 man who does not believe in man (c/*., p. 217), and 
 consequently not in his own better self ; a man who 
 opposes the champion of liberty, political, social, per- 
 
 * These pointe will be substantiated by quotation later on in 
 this paper. 
 
52 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 sonal, who " supposes he triumphs " over principles 
 and causes by crushing those who maintain and 
 espouse them,* when in truth he is crushing himself 
 in them. If a man can not love God unless he love 
 man whom he hath seen, is it not equally true that 
 unless a man believe in men, he never can believe in 
 God ? No man who believes in man is an infidel, 
 however much he may think himself one. His em- 
 phatic denials are but perverse affirmations. 
 
 In such a wondrous world as this, goodness and 
 faith in self can not seem strange : 
 
 Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear, it would not 
 
 amaze me. (p. 123.) 
 The wonder is always and always, how there can be a mean man 
 
 or an infidel, (p. 47.) 
 
 It is Whitman's special mission to "confound" 
 wholly the " skeptic " "with the hush of his lips." (p. 
 50.) And surely no poet has held up to the man who 
 has disbelieved in himself a more terrible "hand- 
 mirror " than he. He shows the " infidel " (i. e., the un- 
 believer in Whitman's religion) that he has become a 
 slave that his body publishes it abroad and he cries 
 out in a sympathetic despair for the man : 
 
 Such a result so soon, and from such a beginning ! (p. 213.) 
 
 I 
 
 (4) But evil may not mean failure to develop 
 courageously from within, though such " evil" is the 
 only evil there can be that is deplorable. 
 
 The true poet is " master of obedience." (p. 273, 
 cf. Pr., p. 264.) The states must " obey little " and 
 "resist much." (p. 15.) Men and women are to 
 
 * Cf. " But for all this liberty, has not some out of place nor 
 the infidel entered into full possession." (p. 287.) 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 53 
 
 " think lightly of the laws" as such. (p. 152.) Whit- 
 man goes so far as to " beat the gong of revolt." (p. 
 48.) His words are "reminders" of "life," "free- 
 dom," "extrication." (p. 48.) He is "really" 
 " neither for nor against institutions " (p. 107), but 
 he is for the soul. Now, if the soul did not refuse to 
 be shaped from without, it could never develop from 
 within. Rebellion against conventions, laws, de- 
 corums, any exterior efforts to reform or improve, 
 must be. It is perfectly clear that if the " Holy 
 Spirit " (interior Energy) is to work according to its 
 own vital individual methods in the world of uni- 
 versal Law (of the "Father"), there needs to be in 
 man " Satan," which is revolt not against the true 
 "Father" from whom the "Holy Spirit" derives 
 (who dictates to the individual his true development 
 in perfect harmony with his world), but against a false 
 " Law " of outside imposition ; against also that very 
 " Father " misconceived as external to the soul, for 
 
 The soul has that measureless pride which revolts from every 
 lesson but its own. (p. 291.) 
 
 The Savior the "mightier God" (p. 339), the 
 " beautiful, gentle God " (p. 58), the " beautiful God 
 the Christ" (p. 113), is he who manifested as sym- 
 pathy and love, makes men aware of God the Holy 
 Ghost,* and so may be said to " send " Him to them, 
 who in his turn enlightening them " leads into all 
 truth," so that "Satan" "falls from heaven," being 
 no longer a god (i. e., a good) to man, as man be- 
 
 *Is the "Holy Ghost" or "Inner Light" to be considered 
 synonymous with " Conscience ? " (Cf. Pr., pp. 284, 465.) 
 
54 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 comes " one with the Father " through the " media- 
 tion of the Son." 
 
 Such would seem to be the meaning of the 
 / " Square Deific " (p. 339), which for years refused to 
 \ / yield up its secret, because I was unable to see that 
 with Whitman the " quaternary " that takes the place 
 of the orthodox Christian Trinity represents in its 
 manifoldness a process, not a being. The true God is 
 not many, but One. When known as One Being, he 
 is known as Self, and all differences and distinctions 
 in the Deity necessarily efface themselves in rapturous 
 ecstasy. If this doctrine, novel and strange, be a first 
 installment of the new theology (Pr., p. 278), the more 
 splendid theology (Pr., p. 286) which according to Whit- 
 man is fast coming, there are those who will feel 
 somewhat alarmed. But, for their comfort, let me 
 state that Whitman claims no infallible popes, coun- 
 cils, or churches for his dogma. He thinks the " New 
 Theology " will not be " settled " quite " in a year 
 nor even a century ! " (Pr., p. 286.) 
 
 In the sense, then, of " Satan," evil is provision- 
 ally good. It is energy turned outward in self-defense, 
 instead of being engaged at its normal work of build- 
 ing up the organism.* 
 
 (5) Evil may finally mean pain, defeat, age, death, 
 the so-called ills which " flesh is heir to." 
 
 In this sense, Whitman denies that evil is to be 
 deplored. Quotations might easily be multiplied in- 
 definitely. "The soul forever and forever" (p. 21), 
 and it would seem the soul is never more distinctly 
 
 * Compare with the " Chanting the Square Deific " the 
 " Rounded Catalogue Divine Complete." (p. 419.) 
 
THE PROBLEM OF EVIL. 55 
 
 self-conscious as master, than when it is confronted by 
 a hostile environment. The whole of heroism and 
 greatness is this attitude of defiance and denial. From 
 the " Song of Joys," these lines are to the point : 
 
 O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted ! 
 To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand! 
 To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face! 
 To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with 
 
 perfect nonchalance ! 
 To be indeed a God ! (p. 148.) 
 
 Defeat is as glorious as victory. The true guage of 
 success is soul -growth. 
 
 "Battles are lost in the same spirit in which 
 they are won." (p. 43.) All " overcome heroes " are 
 to be cheered : 
 
 Did we think victory great? 
 
 So it is but now it seems to rue, when it can not be helped, that 
 
 defeat is great, 
 And that death and dismay are great, (p. 288.) 
 
 Old age is met with the same spirit : 
 
 Sublime old age of manhood or womanhood, 
 Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the 
 
 universe, 
 Old age, flowing free with the delicious nearby freedom of death. 
 
 -(p. 126.) 
 
 O the old manhood of me, my noblest joy of all ! 
 My children and grandchildren, my white hair and beard, 
 My largeness, calmness, majesty out of the long stretch of my 
 
 life. (p. 145.) 
 
 Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young, 
 The young are beautiful but the old are more beautiful than the 
 
 young, (p. 217.) 
 
 No poet has sung old age more sublimely ; his own iu 
 the gem entitled " Halcyon Days " (p. 388) ; old age 
 and youth contrasted in " Youth, Day, Old Age and 
 Night " (p. 180) ; the old man in st. 3. of " I sing the 
 
56 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 body Electric." (p. 82.) " The ideal woman ; prac- 
 tical, spiritual," in "As at thy portals also death " (p. 
 376) ; st. 11 of " Song of the Broad Axe " (p. 157) ; in 
 the surpassingly beautiful st. 5 of " From Noon to 
 Starry Night." (p. 355.) Death the " great sea " to 
 which old age is the enlarging " estuary " " grandly 
 spreading itself" is glorified, (p. 218.) 
 
 It may he that Walt Whitman has not treated 
 this theme adequately. Certainly he has treated it as 
 no one before him. There is nothing of Leopardi's 
 courting of death because life is evil. It is just be- 
 cause life is good that he is led to believe " death " 
 the unknown life still better. It is "just as lucky 
 to die " as " to be born." (p. 34.) " What will be 
 will be wall, for what is is well." (p. 335.) Of death 
 as immortality it is not yet time for us to treat. 
 
 If now pain, defeat, age,*death, turn out to be no 
 evils at all, what, then, is evil ? Let us summarize the 
 last few paragraphs : 
 
 Evil (1) = the less good: essentially good ; only relatively speak- 
 ing not good. 
 
 (2) = the not good : non-existent. 
 
 (3) = failure to develop from within : the lack of good. 
 
 (4) = revolt against external laws: a temporary good. 
 
 (5) = pain, defeat, old age, death : opportunities for good, 
 
 all good. 
 
 Of these, then, the only evil to be feared is the third, 
 and that is the want of good, deficiency, failure to de- 
 velop latent possibilities, sloth of soul ; all which is 
 not something self-existent, eternally opposed to good. 
 
 SALVATION AND THE SAVIOR. 
 
 The quality of BEING in the object's self, according to its own 
 central idea and purpose, and of growing therefrom and thereto 
 
SALVATION AND THE SAVIOR. 57 
 
 not criticism by other standards and adjustments thereto is the 
 lesson of Nature. (Pr., p. 230.) 
 
 It is in this thought of evolution from within, 
 of the vital guide at the heart, all else with reference 
 to the individual thing tending to assist in its self- 
 fulfillment, that Whitman finds his moral principle. 
 
 The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one 
 single individual namely to You. (p. 273.) 
 
 All parts away for the progress of souls, (p. 127.) 
 
 Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indiffer- 
 ent, (p. 46.) 
 
 I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait. (p. 32.) 
 
 The soul is ... real, 
 
 No reasoning, no proof has established it, 
 
 Undeniable growth has established it. (p. 180.) 
 
 So far as we can see, growth is for growth's 
 sake, for growth is but " being " nor can we push 
 forward to a farther conception. 
 
 Have the past struggles succeeded ? . . . 
 
 Now understand me well it is provided in the essence of things 
 that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall 
 come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary. 
 
 -(p. 128.) 
 
 I said to my spirit : " When we become the enfolders of those orbs 
 and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, 
 shall we be filled and satisfied then ?" 
 And my spirit said: "No; we but level that lift, to pass and 
 
 continue beyond." (p. 74.) 
 
 The law of promotion and transformation can not be eluded. 
 
 -(p. 336.) 
 
 If you want a substantial conception rather than 
 the formal one of "growth," he will suggest as syno- 
 nym " eternal life." Does that need emotive qualifi- 
 cation? If so, he can afford to give it the familiar 
 name "happiness." (p. 78.) For to him, "the efflux 
 of the soul is happiness." (p. 124.) The drift of 
 
58 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 things is indefinable "it is grand" and "it is happi- 
 ness." (p. 171.) The " core of life" is "happiness." 
 (p. 300.) Hence, a man needs to wait for no one and 
 no thing to be complete. To be is to grow. To grow 
 is eternal life. Eternal life is happiness. 
 
 All triumphs and glories are complete in themselves, to lead 
 onward, (p. 373.) 
 
 No stopping place is thought of the end being 
 beyond thought. Our last thought is progress beyond 
 thought. From this we can readily make clear to our- 
 selves why Walt Whitman is so strong in his rejec- 
 tion of asceticism. Every natural function is pure 
 and good. There is no merit in mutilation. The 
 body and its needs are to be reverenced : 
 
 I believe in the flesh and the appetites, (p. 49.) 
 
 He is ambitious in his writings to 
 
 permit to speak at every hazard 
 Nature without check, with original energy, (p. 29.) 
 
 It is not too much life we have, but too little. 
 Asceticism were the proper theory if any part of us 
 could under any circumstances be overdeveloped. 
 What seems overdevelopment of one, is really under- 
 development of some other, organ or function. What 
 we need, then, is not repression, but right stimulation. 
 
 Not that Whitman utterly despises ascetic good- 
 ness.* It is good, no doubt, but simply not the best. 
 It is, at all events, narrow, unbeautiful. It has its use 
 as the method for exemplifying singly, certain par- 
 ticular perfections. But the object of nature is the 
 man entire, characterized, like the poetry of the Bible, 
 by "immense sensuousness immensely spiritual." (Pr. 
 
 Note his appreciation of Whittier. (Pr., pp. 181 and 481.) 
 
SALVATION AND THE SAVIOR. 59 
 
 p. 380.) In complete accord with Obermann, he thinks 
 this result will be attained by remembering "that our 
 best dependence is to be upon humanity itself, and its 
 own inherent, normal, full-grown qualities, without 
 any superstitious support whatever." (Pr., p. 214.) 
 
 How such a result is to be attained in particular 
 cases, we are left to infer for ourselves. We have 
 seen he recognizes a " universal will " the destiny of 
 any and every individual to be perfect. That "will" 
 is, of course, " abysmic," and enters consciousness as 
 the "conscience." The objects of conscience are 
 seized upon with an enthusiasm which, fortified by a 
 cosmic philosophy of indefinite development for the 
 individual, is a Religion. But, so far as we can tell, 
 Religion subserves a still higher end. 
 
 Even in religious fervor there is a touch of animal heat. But 
 moral conscientiousness, crystalline, without flaw, not Godlike 
 only, entirely human, awes and enchants forever. Great is emo- 
 tional love, even in the order of the rational universe. But, if we 
 must make gradations, I am clear there is something greater. 
 (Pr., p. 248.) 
 
 How this object is to be attained that is, how 
 this religious fervor is to be kindled, and to be in due 
 time transmuted into "something greater"* is made 
 fairly evident. Of course, you can not probe, preach, 
 and persecute any more. If you did, you would only 
 arouse "Satan" in a man. 
 
 Underneath Christ the Divine I see, 
 
 The dear love of man for his comrade, (p. 102.) 
 
 Comerado I give you my hand, 
 
 I give you my love more precious than money, 
 
 I give myself before preaching or law, 
 
 Will you give me yourself ? Will you come travel with me ? 
 
 -(p. 129.) 
 
 * Emerson's " Celestial Love ? " 
 
60 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 An invitation of this sort can be accepted by the 
 proudest soul. 
 
 Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity, 
 When I give, I give myself, (p. 66.) 
 
 Whoever walks a furlong without sympathy, walks to his own 
 funeral drest in his shroud, (p. 76.) 
 
 And with Whitman this is not mere highsound- 
 ing hyperbole. Lack of sympathy argues that you 
 have fallen from a consciousness of that Self, which is 
 also your neighbor's. 
 
 I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become 
 
 the wounded person. 
 My hurts turn livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe. 
 
 -(p. 60.) 
 
 If he finds you depressed he will infuse in you 
 
 The joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human 
 soul is capable of generating and emitting in steady and 
 limitless floods, (p. 143.) 
 
 He knows his own incompleteness. It is relatively 
 just as great as that of the lowest men. 
 
 I feel I am of them I belong to those convicts and prostitutes 
 myself, 
 
 And henceforth I will not deny them for how can I deny my- 
 self? (p. 299.) 
 
 Does he meet them, his eye, his gesture, his 
 mouth will reassure them : 
 
 Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you. 
 
 Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you, and the leaves to 
 
 rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for 
 
 you. (p. 299.) 
 
 Indeed he will keep his promise and break forth 
 into his glorious hymn, " To You." (p. 186.) 
 
 Your true soul and body appear before me. . . . 
 None has understood you, but I understand you, 
 
SALVATION AND THE SAVIOUR. 61 
 
 None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to your 
 
 self, 
 None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection 
 
 in you, 
 None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never 
 
 consent to subordinate you. 
 I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, 
 
 beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself. . . . 
 You have not known what you are, you have slumbered upon 
 
 yourself all your life. . . . 
 The mockeries are not you. 
 
 Underneath them and within them I see you lurk, . . . 
 If these conceal you from others they do not conceal you from 
 
 me. . . . 
 Whoever you are, claim your own at every hazard, (p. 186-187.) 
 
 This is the " new religion," the " greater re- 
 ligion," which yet is not new. Behind our most mod- 
 ern philosophy and art is " the same old heart and 
 brain;" the "insight and inspiration of the same old 
 humanity." The "physiognomy" alone can change, 
 thinks Whitman. (Cf. Pr., p. 335.) 
 
 However, it is frankly as "Poet" that he sees 
 the " Saviour." In literature is to be the soul of 
 democracy. It is to be a general consciousness. (Cf. 
 Pr., p. 247.) " The Song of the Answerer," " By Blue 
 Ontario's Shore," and " Democratic Vistas " have this 
 thought for burden ; and Whitman would contend that 
 after all this notion is confirmed by the history of the 
 greatest teacher of antiquity and the nature of his influ- 
 ence to-day. In the simple home it is Jesus the Poet, 
 the maker of certain beautiful parables, who influences 
 for good. It is his life, itself the poem of poems, 
 which, apart from all theories about his person and 
 his work, touches the souls of men, and infilters itself 
 into their lives. Of course by " literature " we know 
 
62 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 just what Whitman means. For him the poet is a 
 'free channel of himself," (Pr., p. 268), giving 
 " things without increase or diminution." " He takes 
 his data from science. (Cf. Pr., p. 269.) His manner 
 is characterized by an " absence of tricks." (Pr., p. 
 272.) His subject is "not nature, but man." (Pr.,p.298.) 
 He has the " rapt vision " to which the " seen becomes 
 the prophecy of the unseen " (Pr., p. 299) ; he is the 
 complete lover of the universe," " leaving room ahead 
 of himself" (Pr., p. 266), and he treats even the 
 universal from no fictitious point of view, but from 
 that which he actually occupies. (Pr., p. 229.) He 
 himself illustrates his doctrine for he is 
 
 The glory and extract thus far of things and of the human 
 race. (p. 137.) 
 
 " Leaves of Grass " also, since " personal force is 
 behind every thing " (p. 435), presents us a "Person;" 
 (p. 438) and so, for the true "Answerer " " the Maker 
 of poems," who " settles justice, reality, immortality " 
 (p. 137), he "gives us himself" after all (p. 66), having, 
 as he admits, unconsciously taken upon himself to be 
 an Answerer. 
 
 IMMORTALITY. 
 
 Let us now turn our attention to the doctrine of im- 
 mortality as it was conceived by Walt Whitman. In 
 this region especially are his theological exotics exuber- 
 ant. His doctrine of the divine Self has a latent strain 
 of oriental mysticism. In his dealing, however, with 
 life, death, and immortality the progress of that 
 divine Self beyond these known conditions he orien- 
 talizes, if possible, yet more decidedly. And as he 
 laid great stress on " what " a man or a nation " thinks 
 
IMMORTALITY. 63 
 
 of death " because in his opinion the " idea of im- 
 mortality, above all other ideas," is to " give crown- 
 ing religious stamp to democracy in the new world " 
 (Pr., p. 281), it is incumbent upon every sympathetic 
 student to ascertain just what Whitman himself 
 thought likely to be the form of the doctrine suited 
 to modern times. Here, too, I conceive, it is not my 
 duty to criticise but to present. Strictures are al- 
 ways an inviting field for the flying of rhetorical 
 kites. All you can learn from them, though, is how 
 the wind of prejudice is blowing for him who holds 
 the strings. I venture to think a painstaking 
 mosaic of "Whitman's chief utterances will serve the 
 reader better than some gratuitous observations of the 
 present writer on the damnable wickedness of heresy ! 
 Let it be clearly understood, however, that there 
 is nothing willful and capricious in Whitman's adop- 
 tion of views on these subjects unusual to us of the 
 West. Indeed, his doctrines,* though often undoubt- 
 edly coincident with oriental theories are developed 
 for very different reasons. They originate with him in 
 his passion for an ideal democracy, an ultimate divine 
 City of Friends, where there will be no occasion for 
 the preference of one to another, because all are pos- 
 sitively equal. 
 
 Much as Whitman believes in "love" he never 
 could adopt it as a provisional solution of the prob- 
 lem of divine justice. He never cared to believe that 
 "stars differ from one another in glory." (1 Cor. 
 
 * See footnote of this essay at the end of Section 8 (p. 314) for 
 corroborative evidence on Whitman's independent development 
 of those ideas concerning which the suspicion of direct deriva- 
 tion from oriental theosophies is most plausible. 
 
64 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 xv, 41.) Such a doctrine seemed to him a projection 
 of arbitrary social distinction into the sphere of eter- 
 nity. He could not believe in a cosmic partiality. 
 All must have had the same beginning. All must end 
 in the same perfection. The different degrees of 
 natural endowment can not of course be chance ; if 
 they can not be ascribed to divine caprice, after the 
 Calvinistic fashion, there is only room left for the 
 thought that the physical and spiritual capital with 
 which we start here is what we have earned according 
 to universal law in an eternal pre-existence. The 
 differences to us, which make the doctrine of " equal- 
 ity " incredible, and that of " fraternity " therefore 
 difficult of reduction to practice, are only a matter of 
 relative speed. God fixes the beginning and the 
 end nay, is the beginning arid the end. He gives us 
 indefinite time, and leaves us free to choose our 
 route. We can travel in a straight line, or in vast 
 spirals, or in fantastic loops and labyrinthine tangles. 
 But the end, "the seed perfection," was within the 
 " first huge nothing " (p. 71), and is to the open spir- 
 itual eye so distinctly visible as to make even now the 
 democratic faith a beautiful certainty. 
 
 The thought of the family in which each rejoices 
 that he is really surpassed by some brother or sister ; 
 the delight of self-subordination to those we love ; 
 the keen selfless enjoyment, in sympathy, of the 
 greatness that is greater than any we shall ever at- 
 tain ; the delicious attribution of our greatness to 
 those less great, not as ours, but as a revelation of 
 His who is their Father and ours ; a communion of 
 reciprocal aspiration and inspiration up a vast stair- 
 way of grades of being, one current of holy Love, 
 
IMMORTALITY. 65 
 
 and beatific selflessness running up and down the 
 chain of joined hands : (God Himself the unity of 
 this eternal diversity the white light in which the 
 several rays are absorbed, lost to vision, though still 
 continuous distinct elements of its manifold whole) : 
 such symbol ideas of the life beyond were apparently 
 incompatible with a thorough belief in democracy, 
 according to Whitman. It was not for their strange- 
 ness' sake that he suggests a Swedenborgian spiritual 
 body, a Hindu metempsychosis, and hints a resolution 
 of all inequality in a " One formed out of all," (p. 21) 
 making the " vast similitude " the night creates to 
 the eye (cf. p. 207) or sleep to the mind, significant of 
 the " Truth :" 
 
 The antipodes, and every one between this and them in the dark, 
 
 I swear they are averaged now one is no better than the other, 
 
 The night and sleep have likened them and restwed them. 
 
 I swear they are beautiful, 
 
 Every one that sleeps is beautiful, every thing in the dim light is 
 
 beautiful, 
 
 The wildest and bloodiest is over, and all is peace. 
 Peace is always beautiful, 
 The myth of heaven indicates peace and Night, (pp. 330-1.) 
 
 Not, thus, as hitherto customary among us, the 
 day, that distinguishes, but the night that charitably 
 and, one might say, unmorally covers all disparities, 
 and fuses in one tranquil mystery all that is, serves 
 Whitman as symbol of his ultimate Ideal. (Cf. Pr., 
 pp. 101, 119, 126; L. of G. 344, 369.) 
 
 There never could have been in Whitman any 
 love of exotics as such. 
 
 Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some ship ? (p. 271) 
 is one of his searching questions to the would-be poet 
 of America. For the poet must be original ; singers and 
 
66 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 rhymers as he calls them, amused with " a prettiness," 
 are not under obligation to create. (Cf. p. 272.) But in 
 the poet's work every thing must be native ; and the 
 more one ponders over the doctrines of apparently ori- 
 ental origin, the more one is convinced they are with 
 Whitman developed from within. Transcendental sen- 
 timents consistent with a " divine democracy " took 
 speculative formal elements from such eastern doc- 
 trines as were suited for wholesome and complete 
 assimilation by them ; and with Whitman these senti- 
 ments were never allowed to forget their immediate 
 origin: an unreasoned faith in the unqualified equal- 
 ity and fraternity of man.* 
 
 See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that, 
 
 Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that. (p. 73.) 
 
 Now when the soul is at its highest vital pitch it 
 declares confidently : 
 
 I know I have the best of time and space, and was never meas- 
 ured, and never will be measured, (p. 73.) 
 
 I know I am deathless, 
 
 I know this orbit of mine can not be swept by a carpenter's com- 
 pass, 
 
 * Democracy is to Whitman so wonderful, because it is, as he 
 conceives it, the method of Nature. (Pr., pp. 68-69.) It individ- 
 ualizes and universalizes. (Pr., p. 220.) The individualization is 
 the source itself of sympathy, as a clear self-knowledge implies a 
 knowledge of others. Sympathy universalizes. This sympathy 
 or love he terms adhesiveness. (Pr., foot-note, p. 247.) Poetry is 
 to be the Soul of democracy (Pr., p. 247), in that it is to individ- 
 ualize men, bring them to self-knowledge. It is to be the vehicle 
 of religion. (Pr., pp. 222, 279.) For an understanding of his 
 views on the essence of democracy perhaps the shortest helpful 
 essay is his " Carlyle from an American point of view." (Pr., pp. 
 170-178.) The three prefaces and "Democratic Vistas" should 
 be read if possible. 
 
IMMORTALITY. 67 
 
 I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt 
 stick at night, 
 
 I laugh at what you call dissolution, 
 
 And I know the amplitude of time. (p. 45.) 
 
 He is not of those who assert that it makes no 
 difference whether or not there be any outlook beyond 
 the laying down of the body: 
 
 Is to-day nothing? is the beginningless past nothing? 
 
 If the future is nothing they are just as surely nothing, (p. 333.) 
 
 The future is no more uncertain than the present, (p. 151.) 
 
 Do you suspect death ? If I were to suspect death I should die 
 
 now, 
 
 Do you think I could walk pleasantly and well suited toward an- 
 nihilation? (p. 337.) 
 
 But the fact is he does " walk pleasantly and well 
 suited ;" and though he can not cogently reason out to 
 a satisfactory conclusion, he sees in the facts an imma- 
 nent assurance : 
 
 I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen is provided for 
 in the inherences of things, (p. 342.) 
 
 Did you think Life was so well provided for, and Death, the pur- 
 port of all Life, is not well provided for? (p. 342.) 
 
 For, apparently, life is for death : 
 
 What invigorates life invigorates death ; (p. 151.) 
 so much so that 
 
 Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according. 
 
 -(p. 346.) 
 
 A thing is never understood but in relation to its 
 origin and end. The mystery of life is not without 
 
 reason : 
 
 ! I see now that life can not exhibit all to me, as the day can not, 
 I see that I am to wait for what will be explained by death. 
 
 -(p. 345.) 
 
 The question " what is life?" involves the question 
 
68 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 "what is death?" The thought that they are one, 
 while it gives us no clearer understanding of life, 
 leaves the soul at all events satisfied. "We have seen 
 about us the wonderful play of life. Every spring 
 from " dead clods and chills as from low burial graves," 
 a " thousand forms " rise. " Bloom and growth " im- 
 ply materials, (p. 399.) In decay Whitman smells 
 " the white roses sweet and scented " and reaches to 
 "leafy lips" and "to the polished breasts of melons." 
 (p. 77.) " What chemistry !" he cries, considering 
 "that all is clean forever and forever," and an ecstasy 
 fills him when he realizes that the earth which 
 
 Gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings at 
 
 last, 
 Grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, 
 
 and in spite of all attempts to pollute, "turns harm- 
 less and stainless on its axis." (pp. 286-7.) 
 
 Tow, a consideration of the destiny of man in the 
 " light of the processes wherein " life " seems " the 
 leaving of many deaths " would lead us up to a 
 doctrine like that of George Eliot's ' Choir In- 
 visible.' ' But although (with Whitman), we may 
 believe this to be a doctrine of immortality entirely 
 true so far as it goes, nothing prevents us (with 
 Whitman also) going beyond it to further assertions 
 of the perpetuation of spiritual being, if we are not 
 yet reconciled to death, when told that life is a con- 
 tinual dying. We may admit that the earth is falling 
 to the sun every moment while aware that she is not 
 arriving at her destination very fast. Similarly the 
 bird is sinking earthward, but the libration of his 
 wings is at the same time lifting him heavenward, 
 and so he soars on quietly in the blue serene. 
 
IMMORTALITY. 69 
 
 living always, always dying ! 
 
 O the burials of me past and present, 
 
 O me while I stride ahead, material, visible as ever. 
 
 -(p. 344.) 
 
 That is just it. Our life is a delicate balance in 
 favor of the organism between constructive energies 
 and destructive forces. Face to face with death, in- 
 deed, the horrible doubt comes : 
 
 Matter is conqueror matter triumphant, continues forever. 
 
 (p. 341.) 
 
 Are souls drowned and destroyed so ? 
 Is only matter triumphant? (p. 345.) 
 
 But as a loyal Positivist you cry " No ! " Soul 
 triumphs as fully as matter. No form of matter 
 abides. No form of soul does either. A spiritual 
 chemistry analogous to that of the physical world 
 actually perpetuates all that is precious, 
 
 And nothing endures but personal qualities, (p. 152.) 
 If all come to ashes of dung, 
 
 If maggots and rats ended us, then Alarum ! for we are betrayed. 
 
 -(p. 337.) 
 
 You may say that the martyrs live. 
 
 They live in other young men, Kings, 
 They live in brothers again to defy you, 
 They were purified by death, they were taught and exalted. 
 
 -(p. 212.) 
 
 Doubtless this is perfectly reasonable. It is a 
 matter besides not of speculation but of experience, 
 and, as shown by the quotations, Whitman heartily 
 agrees with all this. Not by the elimination of the 
 spiritually weak (as unfit to survive), but rather by the 
 elimination of the spiritually strong (as needing no 
 longer to survive), is virtue in this world increased. 
 For every one true man slain two arise in his place. 
 
70 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 Propagation of spiritual qualities is not by physical 
 inheritance, but by moral inoculation. So is 
 
 The loftiest of life upheld by death, (p. 366.) 
 It is a noble thing to sing the song of the old 
 California trees : 
 
 Nor yield we mournfully, majestic brothers, 
 
 We who have grandly filled our time ; 
 
 With Nature's calm content, with tacit huge delight, 
 
 We welcome what we wrought for through the past, 
 
 And leave the field for them. 
 
 For them predicted long, 
 
 For a superber race, they too to fill their time, 
 
 For them we abdicate, in them ourselves ye forest kings ! 
 
 -(p. 166-7.) 
 
 PERSONAL IDENTITY. 
 
 But true as all this doubtless is, it is hard to be- 
 lieve that u personal qualities " can only be trans- 
 ferred as flame from torch to torch. 
 
 "I swear nothing is good to me that ignores 
 individuals." (p. 341.) And this sort of " qualitative 
 immortality " does absolutely ignore the individual. 
 
 " Only what satisfies souls is true." (p. 201.) 
 This Comtist doctrine in and of itself can not sat- 
 isfy the soul. We do not believe we are " qualities " 
 merely. We know we are substance; whatever that 
 may be, it is what we are. If we were conscious of 
 ourselves as " mere qualities " undoubtedly the propa- 
 gation of them would be the continuance of our con- 
 scious life. Whitman, thinking of the past history 
 of the race, asks significantly : 
 
 Are those billions of men really gone ? 
 
 Are those women of the old experience of the earth gone ? 
 
 Do their lives, cities, arts, rest only with us f 
 
 Did they achieve nothing for good for themselves f 
 
PERSONAL IDENTITY. 71 
 
 I believe all those men and women . . . every one exists, etc. 
 
 (p. 289.) 
 
 What do you think has become of the young and old men ? 
 And what do you thiuk has become of the women and children ? 
 They are alive and well somewhere, 
 The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, 
 And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the 
 
 end to arrest it, 
 
 And ceased the moment life appeared. 
 All goes onward and onward, nothing collapses, 
 And to die is different from what any one supposed and luckier. 
 
 -(p. 34.) 
 
 " In fact I know I am deathless" (p. 44) in an 
 individual way. 
 
 There is that in me I do not know what it is but I know it is 
 
 in me. . . . 
 
 I do not know it it is without name. . . . 
 It is not chaos or death it is form, union, plan 
 It is eternal life it is Happiness, (pp. 77-78.) 
 
 Then, too, when " I plead " in my heart with the 
 universe " for my brothers and sisters " (p. 78) I can 
 not but remember " the young man " and "the young 
 woman put by his side" their lives only a beau- 
 tiful morning ; " the little child that peeped in at 
 the door, and then drew back and was never seen 
 again" a mere false start; "the old man who 
 has lived without purpose," and now that it is too 
 late, has become aware of it, " and feels it with bit- 
 terness worse than gall ;" there are the diseased, 
 the degraded, those still half-brutish, those that are 
 " sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to 
 slip in." (p. 70.) For these he perceives that life as 
 we know it does not provide ; they can not be over- 
 looked in the universal providence; that something 
 which provides for them is again Life. Only Life can 
 
72 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 complete life. Of this Life, " this heavenly mansion," 
 death is "the opener and usher" (p. 213), to it death 
 is " the exquisite transition." (p. 373.) Love teaches 
 this lesson : 
 
 Death, death, death, death, death! (p. 201.) 
 and the " vast heart, like a planet's chained and 
 chaffing" of the moonlit sea telling its "tale of 
 cosmic elemental passion" (p. 392) utters also : 
 
 The word of the sweetest song and all songs, 
 That strong and delicious word. . . . (p. 201.) 
 
 But not in grief only is this felt to be love's 
 natural lesson : 
 
 For how calm, how solemn it grows to ascend to the atmosphere 
 
 of lovers. 
 
 Death or life I am then indifferent, my soul declines to prefer. 
 (I am not sure but the high soul of lovers welcomes death most.) 
 
 -(p. 96.) 
 
 . . . You are folded inseparably, you, love and death are. 
 Nor will I allow you to balk me any more with what I was calling 
 
 life, 
 
 For now it is conveyed to me that you are the purports essential, 
 That you abide in those shifting forms of life, for reasons, and 
 
 that they are mainly for you, 
 That you beyond them come forth to remain the real reality. 
 
 -(p. 97.) 
 
 The great intellectual insights into life, as loudly 
 and clearly as love does, speak of death. 
 
 I foresee too much, it means more than I thought, 
 It appears to me I am dying, (p. 381.) 
 
 Indeed, " Fancy," to which at death the poet says 
 farewell, may be but another name for it. 
 
 May be it is yourself now really ushering me to the true songs. 
 
 -(p. 422.) 
 
 therefore, " retaining " his " heart's and soul's un- 
 
PERSONAL IDENTITY. 73 
 
 mitigated faith" up "to the last" (Pr., p. 520) the 
 dying poet cries : 
 
 Good-bye and hail ! my Fancy ! (p. 422.) 
 
 It is not mere despair of this life ; it is life at its 
 height that promises continuance and completion. It 
 is sympathy, love, it is transcendent moments of vital 
 vision, it is flashes of spiritual illumination, it is this 
 all which urges the soul to say deliberately aloud : 
 
 I do not think life provides for all, and for time and space, but I 
 believe Heavenly Death provides for all. (p. 342.) 
 
 Death of earth is birth of heaven. How does the 
 soul know this ? How can you be sure you should 
 call it " heavenly ? " May it not indeed be " hellish ? " 
 If justice is not fully shown us here and now, may 
 not a monster Injustice, naked, bloodsmeared, eyes 
 lurid in the dark savage tooth and claw eager to 
 rend us hold despotic sway in those realms un- 
 known ? To this Whitman can only answer that he 
 has not found a lack of justice here. " "What is " is 
 well with reference to what was. " What will be 
 will be well " therefore with reference to " what is." 
 (p. 335.) " The law of promotion and transformation 
 can not be eluded." (p. 336.) There is no evil at all 
 in this our experience of life but what amounts to a 
 " lagging i 11 the race," and that will be set right by 
 indefinite time. 
 
 I do not know what is untried and afterward, 
 
 But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient and can not fail. 
 
 -(p. 70.) 
 
 Whither I walk I can not define, but I know it is good, 
 The whole universe indicates that it is good, 
 The past and the present indicate that it is good. (p. 337.) 
 
74 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 Therefore, he can invoke death with a gentle 
 song (p. 346) as though singing his own painless 
 birth, or soothing his past to sleep awhile in the 
 gentle cradle of the grave. 
 
 But once grant this indestructible identity 
 throughout change to man, why should it be denied 
 to animals and trees ? Why, the very thought of 
 fixed species is odious.* Nothing ought to be ar- 
 bitrarily fixed forever. " Every thing " for Whitman 
 " has an eternal soul." 
 
 The trees have rooted in the ground ! the weeds of the sea have ! 
 the animals! (p. 337.) 
 
 The soul " receives identity through materials." 
 (p. 146.) It built up out of these a body, and so the 
 soul " received identity by its body." 
 
 That I was I knew was of nay body, and what I should be I knew 
 I should be of my body. (p. 131.) 
 
 This body was "born" of its "mother" to 
 " identify " the soul. (p. 335.) 
 
 The known life, the transient, 
 
 Is to form and decide identity for the unknown life, the permanent. 
 
 -(p. 337.) 
 
 The world about it " leads " the soul to " identity " 
 and " body " (p. 349) and offers it further : 
 
 The temporary use of materials for identity's sake ; (p. 374.) 
 and finally, "there is nothing but immortality." 
 (p. 337.) 
 
 All is preparation for it and identity is for it. (Id.) 
 
 * " On the Origin of Species, etc.," 1859, " The Descent of 
 Man, etc.," 1871, Whitman, as Goethe (Wordsworth on one oc- 
 casion) and Browning must be credited with a thorough grasp of 
 the idea of universal evolution before the epoch making books of 
 Darwin were composed. 
 
PERSONAL IDENTITY. 75 
 
 But if " identity " always implies "body " and the 
 " corpse " we will leave will be but " excrementitions," 
 (p. 344) indeed, " for reasons " it is "myself" who 
 "'discharge my excrementitious body " (p. 147) there 
 must be a " real body doubtless left to me for other 
 spheres." The " voided body " returns to " further 
 offices," to "the eternal uses of the earth." (Id.) If 
 even now " it is not my material eyes which finally 
 see, nor my material body which finally loves, walks, 
 laughs, shouts, embraces, procreates" (p. 146), then 
 even now there must be a real body that does these 
 things. 
 
 The living look upon the corpse with their eyesight 
 But without eyesight lingers a different living and looks curiously 
 on the corpse, (p. 333.) 
 
 to disengage myself from those corpses of me, which I turn and 
 
 look at where I cast them, (p, 344.) 
 
 Such lines then as these are not to be taken as 
 fanciful altogether. Whitman does not doubt that 
 "interiors have their interiors, and that exteriors have 
 their exteriors;" "that the eyesight has another eye- 
 sight, and the hearing another hearing, and the voice 
 another voice." (p. 342.) Even now to the seer 
 "your true soul and body appear." (p. 186.) Just as 
 surely as 
 
 1 see one building, the house that serves him for a few years, or 
 
 seventy or eighty years at most, 
 
 if my spiritual eyes were open could 
 
 I see one building, the house that serves him longer than that. 
 
 -(p. 334.) 
 
 Indeed, Whitman can see his fellow-man con- 
 structing, though unconsciously, "the house of him- 
 self or herself" that will " serve for all time." (p. 304.) 
 
76 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 Nor does this " real body " pass out empty, as it 
 "passes to fitting spheres," for it "carries what has 
 accrued to it from the moment of birth to the mo- 
 ment of death." (p. 25.) It has been thus fashioned, 
 invisibly, by the hands of life to serve as organ to 
 your veritable Self. No bullet can really "kill what 
 you really are." (p. 251.) 
 
 What you are picks its way. (p. 188.) 
 Nay, already while leading this life of fleshly vi- 
 cissitude "Apart from the pulling and hauling stands 
 what I am. ... I witness and wait." (p. 32.) 
 What is more, this "Me myself" (p. 32) is not the 
 soul, if Whitman be relied upon to use his terms with 
 any accuracy, for elsewhere we read : 
 
 I too, with my soul and body, 
 
 We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way. (p. 185.) 
 
 We should have then, according to our review so 
 far of Whitman's doctrine, at least four distinct ele- 
 ments in man : 
 
 (1) the excrementitious body.* 
 
 (2) the real body. 
 
 (3) the soul. 
 
 (4) Me myself. 
 
 PERPETUITY OF CHARACTER. 
 
 But all this would seem unnecessary speculation 
 if for the soul beyond these spheres there were nothing 
 more to provide for than identity. "What has ac- 
 crued to the soul" on earth, of which the real body is 
 vehicle, must be irr itself a secure possession. Now 
 on no subject is Whitman more emphatic than on the 
 
PERPETUITY OF CHARACTER. 77 
 
 universality of Law. " The whole Universe is abso- 
 lute Law." (Pr., p. 336.) Miracles in the sense of 
 wonders all things whatsoever most assuredly are : 
 
 Why, who makes much of a miracle ? 
 
 As to me I know of nothing but miracles (p. 301) ; 
 
 in the sense of exceptions, however, there can be none 
 without immediately reducing cosmos to chaos. " The 
 great master has nothing to do with miracles." (Pr., 
 p. 270.) The true modern Poet denies all exceptions. 
 " Law is the unshakable order of the universe forever ; 
 and the law over all, and law of laws, is the law of 
 successions ; that of the superior law, in time, gradu- 
 ally supplanting and overwhelming the inferior one." 
 (Pr., p. 219.) This passage has immediate reference, 
 to be sure, to " physical force being superseded by 
 that of the spirit," but its language implies that it is 
 of general validity. Thus we have evolution as the 
 " law of laws." 
 
 With the irrefragableness of law * and with the 
 doctrine besides that " only the soul is of itself all 
 else has reference to what ensues" so that in it is the 
 real judge of conduct,f it is clear there can be "no 
 possible forgiveness or deputed atonement." (p. 291 ; 
 Pr., p. 273.) " Each man to himself, and each woman 
 to herself, is the word of the past and the present, and 
 the true word of immortality." J (p. 178.) Jehovah, 
 
 * Cf. Miracles, p. 301. 
 
 t Compare " There is no one or any particle but has reference 
 to the soul " (p. 25) with " It is not consistent with the reality of 
 the soul to admit that there is any thing in the known universe 
 more divine than men and women." (Pr., p. 270.) 
 
 t See in Appendix a note on Lord Byron as a " Chanter of 
 Personality " m the sense of a moral responsibility that can not 
 be shifted on another. 
 
78 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 Brahm, or Saturnius, Universal Law in Time, "is re- 
 lentless " and "forgives no man " " dispenses . . . 
 judgments inexorable without the least remorse." (p. 
 339.) Expiation alone blots out : 
 
 Miserable ! yet for thy errors, vanities, sins, I will not now rebuke 
 
 thee, 
 
 Thy unexampled woes and pangs have quelled them all, 
 And left thee sacred, (p. 306.) 
 
 It is, however, not suffering as such that helps. 
 It is suffering, of the kind that quells the sins by 
 stimulating growth, which of itself alone amounts to 
 a " forgiveness." 
 
 In the higher structure of a human self, or of community, the 
 Moral, the Religious, the Spiritual, is strictly analogous to the 
 subtle vitalization and antiseptic play called Health in the physi- 
 ological structure. (Pr., p. 471.) 
 
 Reformation comes from within. Evil being uu- 
 derdevelopment, all that is needed is development. 
 There is, when the ways are amended, no sin left to 
 forgive. 
 
 Of all " leadings," " none lead to greater things " 
 than occupations " lead to." (p. 175.) Columbus 
 gave God a " long and crowded life of active work, 
 not adoration merely." (p. 323.) 
 
 Ah! little recks the laborer, 
 
 How near his work is holding him to God, 
 
 The loving Laborer through space and time. (p. 157.) 
 
 For the law of action and reaction being equal 
 and contrary extends into the spiritual world, and is 
 its chief law : " Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall 
 he also reap." (Gal. vi, 7.) 
 
 All that a person does, says, thinks, is of consequence, 
 
 Not a move can a man or woman make that affects him or her in 
 
PERPETUITY OF CHARACTER. 79 
 
 a day, month, any part of the direct lifetime, or the hour of 
 
 death, 
 But the same affects him or her onward afterward through the 
 
 indirect lifetime, (p. 290.) 
 All that is to be henceforth thought or done by you, whoever you 
 
 are, or by any one, 
 These inure, have inured, shall inure, to the identities from which 
 
 they sprang, or shall spring, (p. 291.) 
 
 Therefore, there is a " prudence that suits im- 
 mortality." (p. 289.)* True, "caution" has refer- 
 ence to the eternal, preferring it to the temporal. 
 (Cf. Pr., p. 272.) It "knows that only that person 
 has really learned " the lesson of life well, who has 
 "learned to prefer results" (p. 291),f "immense 
 spiritual results " (p. 374) ; and aware that every act 
 " has results beyond death as really as before death " 
 (p. 290), the truly prudent man, whose caution goes 
 far enough (Pr., p. 272), realizes to the full that 
 
 Charity and personal force are the only investments worth any 
 thing for after all. (p. 290.) 
 
 " Itself only finally satisfies the soul " (p. 291), 
 and not any thing exterior and adventitious con- 
 tributing to its real secret felicity, which as seen before 
 is always an " Efflux of the Soul." 
 
 We shall have to add then to our analysis of the 
 constitution of man, according to Whitman, a fur- 
 ther element inhering in the real body and the soul, 
 the perpetuity of which is strongly affirmed the Char- 
 acter. 
 
 We have thus five distinct elements : 
 
 * Cf. Emerson's Essays on Prudence, Self-Reliance, and Com- 
 pensation. 
 
 t Not utilitarian doctrine, e. g,, his idea of the greatness of 
 defeat, etc., pp. 43, 45, 288, etc. 
 
80 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 1) excrementitious Body, 
 
 2) the real Body, 
 
 ~ , f (3) the Character, 
 { (4) the Soul, 
 
 Spirit (5) Me myself, 
 
 which, if we have bracketed the first two couples, are 
 very readily reducible to the Pauline trichotomy.* 
 
 "TRAVELING SOULS" AND THEIR END. 
 
 In the matter of Whitman's theology there now 
 remains only to adduce evidence as to what his con- 
 ception of immortal life really is. "Something there 
 is more immortal than the stars." (p. 206.) He be- 
 lieves in nothing short of perfection for each and all. 
 It is part of Whitman's very manliness that he does 
 not want privileged classes, saints or heroes. He 
 wants equal opportunities. He does not himself get 
 
 * Particular evidence of the view taken in this paper (that 
 Whitman's oriental doctrines were not merely borrowed or 
 adopted) may be found in the fact that his analysis of man gives 
 us five elements only instead of the Hindu Seven. To make them 
 seven, the " Me Myself " would have to be declared a Trinity. If 
 it be contended that he does recognize Father, Son and Holy 
 Ghost, it must be remembered that where he does so, he gives 
 similar recognition to Satan. In case then you take the " Square 
 Deific" literally as analyzing the "Divine Me Myself," you would 
 have eight and not seven elements. But, as indicated already, I 
 do not understand the " Square Deific " as a study of "God," but 
 of our " Idea of God," quite another thing. Whitman does not 
 presume to give us a bit of Divine Psychology. Of the inner life 
 of Diety, he does not pretend to know more than any other sane 
 and enlightened mortal. And, for one, " with the Mystery of 
 God he dares not dally." 
 
"TRAVELING SOULS " AND THEIR END. 81 
 
 any mean comfort from being above others. He is 
 thoroughly consistent, as most revolutionaries and 
 vindicators of the people's rights, alas, are not: 
 
 By God ! I will accept nothing which all can not have their coun- 
 terpart of on the same terms, (p. 48.) 
 
 He sings exultantly : 
 
 Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand 
 roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed em- 
 blem and sustenance. 
 
 Forever alive, forever forward . . . 
 
 They go ! they go ! I know that they go, but I know not where 
 they go, 
 
 But I know that they go toward the best. (p. 127.) 
 
 Feeling that he has not really finished the work 
 he might have done, not learned the lesson out, not 
 tasted all the legitimate delights here, he believes that 
 he will "come again upon the earth after five thou- 
 sand years." (p. 69.) When he meets a man full of 
 his achievements he pointedly reminds him of a cer- 
 tain possibility likely to calm him : 
 
 Have you outstript the rest ? are you the president ? 
 It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there, every one and still 
 pass on. (p. 45.) 
 
 Clearly it will not be in this particular earth life. 
 To members of low and unfortunate races he addresses 
 words of comfort and encouragement : 
 
 I do not say one word against you way back there where you 
 
 stand, 
 You will come forward in due time to my side. (p. 120.) 
 
 He is not anxious about the ill-born and ill- 
 bred : 
 
 The twisted skull waits, the watery or rotten blood waits, 
 The child of the glutton waits long, and the child of the drunkard 
 waits long, and the drunkard himself waits long, 
 
82 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 The sleepers that lived and died wait, the far advanced are to go 
 
 on in their turns, and the far behind are to come on in their 
 
 turns, (p. 331.) 
 I saw the face of the most smeared and slobbering idiot they had 
 
 at the asylum, 
 
 And I knew for my consolation what they knew not, 
 I knew of the agents that emptied and broke my brother, 
 The same wait to clear the rubbish from the fallen tenement, 
 And I shall look again in a score or two of ages, 
 And I shall meet the real landlord perfect and unharmed, every 
 
 inch as good as myself, (p. 354.) 
 
 His attitude to the animals is of course exactly 
 the same; and why not? Does he not feel between 
 them and himself a very decided kinship ? 
 
 They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their 
 
 possession, 
 
 I wonder where they got those tokens, 
 
 Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them ? 
 
 -(P- 54.) 
 
 Nor will he confine his doctrine of progress from 
 form to form by any means to animals: 
 
 The vegetables and the minerals are all perfect, and the impon- 
 derable fluids perfect; 
 
 Slowly and surely they have passed on to this, and slowly and 
 surely they yet pass on. (p. 337.) 
 
 How significant, after perusing those extracts to- 
 gether, sound not now the words quoted before in a 
 feebler sense : 
 
 As to you Life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths, 
 (No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before !) (p. 77.) 
 
 He is not one whit tired in spirit : 
 All below duly traveled, and still I mount and mount.* (p. 71.) 
 
 * That Whitman ever went further, and found it necessary to 
 adopt a theory of cycles or " cosmic incarnations," so to say, is 
 very doubtful. The word " cycle " appears three times in L. of 
 G., pp. 27, 72, 85. With his anthropocentric view, the cosmos 
 
"TRAVELING SOULS " AND THEIR END. 83 
 
 We have seen that he has fully kept his word, 
 having sung the " Songs of birth and shown that there 
 are many births." (p. 380.) 
 
 If any one should protest, but " I do not care to 
 be perfect at such a cost; I don't want you to be 
 urging me this way. I am tired. Sing me a pleasant 
 lullaby instead, about how every thing is going to be 
 done for me!" I fancy sturdy old Walt would answer: 
 " Go lull yourself with what you can understand, and 
 with pianoforte tunes, for I lull nobody, and you will 
 never understand me." (p. 252.) Yet there is a peace 
 ahead. That fifth element in man, the Me myself, is 
 one in all. To live in it is to be finally at rest. This 
 it was the very object of Whitman to glorify, yet 
 with beautiful candor he confesses inability to approach 
 it for us. 
 
 The diverse shall be no less diverse, but they shall flow and 
 unite they unite now. (p. 331.) 
 
 There is to be yet a " salvation universal," an in- 
 describable attainment : 
 
 When I undertake to tell the best, I find I can not. . . . 
 I become a dumb man. (p. 179.) 
 
 Aware that . . . before all my arrogant poems the real Me 
 stands, yet untouched, untold, altogether unreached, 
 
 Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock congratulatory signs and 
 bows, 
 
 With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have 
 written, 
 
 did not interest him per se. To account for it was not his object. 
 Indeed he tells us (cf. Pr., p. 298) " the rule and demesne of poetry 
 will always be not the exterior but the interior, not the macro- 
 cosm but microcosm, not Nature but Man. Of the doctrine of 
 metempsychosis a good illustration is given in the closing eight 
 lines of " The Sleepers." (p. 332.) (Cf. p. 282 of this essay.) 
 
84 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 Pointing in silence to these songs and then to the sand beneath, 
 I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single 
 
 object, and that no man ever can, 
 Nature here in sight of the sea, taking advantage of me to dart 
 
 upon me and sting me, 
 Because I have dared to open my mouth and sing at all. 
 
 -(pp. 202-3.) 
 
 In the poem, "A Eiddle Song," he shows why 
 this is so. That which eludes him is that which 
 makes all intelligible, and which itself can only be 
 known face to face. 
 
 Haply God's riddle it, so vague and yet so certain, 
 The soul for it, and all the visible universe for it, 
 And heaven at last for it. (p. 363.) 
 
 It is the terrible " One Self" * 
 The fanged and glittering One whose head is over all, (p. 21.) 
 
 and of whom to speak as one's self is absurd, and yet 
 as "other than one's Self" absurder still. 
 
 Hymns to the universal God from the universal 
 Man are the last fact we discern with mortal eye, il- 
 lumined though it be : 
 
 The ocean filled with joy the atmosphere all joy ! 
 
 Joy ! Joy ! in freedom, worship, love ! joy in the ecstasy of life ! 
 
 Enough to merely be ! enough to breathe ! 
 
 Joy ! Joy ! all over joy ! (p. 358. )t 
 
 WHITMAN'S METHODS AND STYLE. 
 
 To compose according to a theory that greatly 
 varies from what may be said to have at least been 
 immanent in literature before, is a perilous venture. 
 
 * For clearness' sake I have taken some liberties with the 
 word " oneself," spelling it differently according to the different 
 meanings. 
 
 t See pp. 255-259 for an exposition of the doctrine of the One. 
 
WHITMAN'S METHODS AND STYLE. 85 
 
 Men of great initiative genius and courage will, to be 
 sure, always stake life and fame upon a consistent 
 protest against tyrannous tradition. But more often 
 than not a man's theory of composition is one thing, 
 and his practice another. 
 
 Now, Whitman undoubtedly repels many a 
 reader by his oracular manner. He is fully aware of 
 this. 
 
 These leaves and me you will not understand, 
 
 They will elude you at first and still more afterward. I will cer- 
 tainly elude you. 
 
 Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, 
 behold! 
 
 Already you see I have escaped from you. (p. 98.) 
 
 Nor is it any thing we can really bring against 
 him. He writes to " tease us out of" our usual petty 
 " thought." * He delights in paradox. He does not 
 try to astonish. The man is free from any conscious 
 tricks. The fact is, however, that the whole object 
 of Whitman at all times is not to do something for 
 his reader, but to make his reader do something for 
 himself. 
 
 You are asking me questions and I hear you, 
 
 I answer that I can not answer, you must find out for yourself. 
 
 -(p. 74.) 
 
 If poetry be " criticism of life" or not, is best set- 
 tled by the fact perhaps that the only true criticism of 
 great poetry is life. Such Walt Whitman's surely is 
 if we should accept this test that the great poetry 
 keeps pace with our advance, always a step or two 
 ahead while poetry that is not great we soon leave 
 behind : 
 
 * Keat's " Ode to a Grecian Urn ;" the office of all true art. 
 
86 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this 
 
 book, 
 Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it. (p. 98.) 
 
 Undoubtedly however there are other tests of 
 poetry which seem more important to the majority of 
 critics. That he should have to "wait to be under- 
 stood by the growth of the taste of" himself (p. 273) 
 would be nothing peculiar to him ; Wordsworth, 
 Shelley, Browning, are well known modern instances 
 of an author's having, as it were, to beget a new gen- 
 eration of readers. 
 
 But though Whitman's " words " do undoubtedly 
 "itch at" one's "ears," till they are understood (p. 75), 
 it would be insincere in the most enthusiastic disciple 
 not to admit the many difficulties of approach to his 
 master which seem at first sight gratuitous tests of pa- 
 tience, fortitude, self-control, and one might almost 
 add foolhardihood. A man who boldly declares that 
 "serving art in its highest" is "only the other name 
 for serving God, and serving humanity" (Pr., p. 242), 
 would, it might be supposed, spare no pains to make 
 what he attempts to create as nearly perfect as possi- 
 ble. But it is not so much that Whitman considers 
 the "love of the best" a "friend" that only "harries" 
 man ;* it is that with him the poem is not on paper, 
 or in the ear of the reader, but in his mind. Perfect 
 " literary form" to Whitman is whatever most directly 
 arouses in the reader's mind what is in the poet's own. 
 lie goes even further than this. A moral purpose is 
 always latent. " Not the book needs so much to be 
 the complete thing, but the reader of the book does." 
 (Pr.,p. 257.) The reader " must himself construct . . . 
 
 * Cf. "Sphinx" of E. W. Emerson. 
 
WHITMAN'S METHODS AND STYLE. 87 
 
 the poem." The poet's language, if "fanned by the 
 breath of nature," " seldomer tells a thing than sug- 
 gests or necessitates it." (Id.) The poet, because he is a 
 poet, wants to make a poet of you. He is "hungry 
 for equals day and night." (Pr., p. 269.) Like Moses 
 he cries " would God that all the Lord's people were 
 prophets and that the Lord would put his spirit upon 
 them."* He will have you not only become quite in- 
 dependent of him furnishing your own home-made 
 chants, but he will have you illustrate them in what 
 you are. "All must give place to men and women." 
 (p. 175.) " How dare you place any thing before a 
 man?" (p. 272.) "The psalm" does not sing itself, 
 therefore he prefers " the singer," and, quite consist- 
 ently, the reader is more precious to him than the 
 poems he shall peruse, (p. 175.) These are, therefore, 
 "not the finish," but rather "the outset." "To none 
 will they bring to be content and full." (p. 138.) 
 They will be "good health to you." (p. 79.) They 
 are "chants ... to vivify all" (p. 20) by inspiring 
 the faith which in turn arouses dormant powers. 
 
 Now it is a fact that Whitman's poems possess, to 
 a very eminent degree, this vital suggestiveness.f Nor 
 is there any respectable critic who will quarrel with 
 their originality of form as such. He does not con- 
 sider our prejudices when he writes.! "People resent 
 any thing new as a personal insult" (Pr., p. 482), and 
 in support of this he quotes Bacon as saying that 
 " the first sight of any work really new and first rate 
 
 * Numb, xi, 29. 
 
 t Whitman does not leave this doctrine of " suggestion " to 
 be inferred. (C/. Pr., pp. 483 and 493 ; L. of G., p. 434.) 
 t Cf. on writing for the public. (Pr., p. 497.) 
 
88 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 in beauty or originality always arouses something 
 disagreeable and repulsive." (Pr., p. 482.) In tbis 
 we can not but agree witb him. But we are still not 
 wholly convinced that any true theory of composition 
 can justify some things in Leaves of Grass. In fact 
 we are sure that whenever Whitman was most con- 
 sistent with an extreme doctrine of " suggestion" 
 he utterly failed in his purpose. To men endowed 
 with a quick, pictorial imagination, page-long cata- 
 logues of geographical and physiological names may 
 conceivably be a source of extreme delight, and 
 amount to a trip around the world, or to the posses- 
 sion of a wonderful human body translucent, nay 
 transparent for the investigator's eye. To most men, 
 however, these catalogues are a "reductio ad absurdum" 
 of the theory.* They mean little or nothing at all. 
 They are simply a weariness to the flesh. Nothing 
 perhaps has more contributed to heap deserved ridi- 
 cule on Whitman. 
 
 True that a so-called " negligent list of one after 
 
 * Sydney Lanier's use of the " catalogue " in the " Symphony " 
 is very astonishing and effective. Each name a note as it were. 
 We can not but honestly admit a feeling that the disciple here 
 succeeded where the master failed. 
 
 Speaking of Sydney Lanier, were not those clever would-be 
 destructive paragraphs in his <: English Novel "a somewhat un- 
 generous attempt to conceal from himself and his readers his own 
 evident indebtedness, in his best poetry, to the rugged singer of 
 "athletic manhood?" Poor, sick Sydney Lanier ! How such a 
 line as " only health puts one rapport with the universe " must 
 have stung him! But old Walt can well afford to be mag- 
 nanimous, and wholly ignores his impertinent critique, including 
 Lanier's in the list of names for which he has a " heart-beuison " 
 and " reverence for their memories," " the galaxy of the past." 
 (Cf. Pr., pp. 431-482.) 
 
WHITMAN'S METHODS AND STYLE. 89 
 
 another as I happen to call them to me or think of 
 them " (p. 89) is not without an inner law, but it is 
 one of purely personal association and therefore to us 
 readers in all probability an unintelligible law. For 
 him the beads maybe made a necklace, but he has cut 
 the string and hurried the beads helter skelter into 
 our lap. There is no use pretending that we shall 
 re-string them. We do not. But, when the list is 
 systematic, then we are still more annoyed. We feel 
 that he is tricking us. He has had a text-book con- 
 veniently at hand, surely, for reference, or his memory 
 is really altogether too retentive. 
 
 We are not surprised that there should be much 
 incoherence in chants professedly " ecstatic," but that 
 the sentence form should be deliberately abandoned is 
 somewhat amazing. For after all, if man occupies 
 the central position in nature, which Whitman ar- 
 rogates for him, he surely has a right to impose on 
 nature the laws of his own being. It is quite true 
 that things are not respectively subjects and objects 
 set off against one another, distinguished from all 
 other things, and fettered in unique relations, rep- 
 resented by verbs hovering between subjects and 
 objects. Nevertheless it is useless to defy man's 
 mental constitution. If Whitman does not make 
 sentences for us, we must, mentally at least, make 
 sentences for ourselves out of his fragments. Still, 
 again, we ought to admit with all candor that a 
 breathless speed, a sense of kaleidoscopic change, are 
 often effects apparently due to this rejection of the 
 sentence-form ; and we would venture to suggest that 
 whenever Whitman deliberately constructed a cata- 
 logue, or refused to form sentences, he failed of his 
 
90 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 purpose, and deserved to fail, but when the verbal in- 
 coherency, the bombardment of independent nouns 
 was a necessity imposed from within, he succeeded in 
 producing the desired result. 
 
 Poetic style, when addressed to the soul, is less definite form, 
 outline, sculpture, and becomes vista, music, half tints, and even 
 less than half tints. True, it may be architecture ; but again it 
 maybe the forest wild wood, or the best effect thereof at twilight, 
 the waving oaks, and cedars in the wind, and the impalpable 
 odor. (Pr., p. 287.) 
 
 The general truth of this we may admit. We 
 may give up the " garden " (Pr., p. 497) for the road- 
 side mob of wild flowers ; with him, we may prefer 
 the Rocky Mountains to a row of pyramids and 
 obelisks (Pr., p. 143), and yet might we not protest 
 that every thing man makes must have a beginning, 
 a middle and an end, a center and a circumference ? 
 After all, as said above, man imposes on the wildest 
 landscape la\vs of perspective that reduce it to human 
 comprehension. It would be more natural if we 
 should emancipate things from this arbitrary tyranny, 
 but how can we be thus " faithful to things " (p. 271) 
 without failing to reject " whatever insults " our souls 
 (p. 273), both which are imperative commands of 
 Whitman to the true Poet of Democracy ? (Pr., p. 
 265-6.) Whitman's best poems are neither chaotic, nor 
 mechanically symmetrical. They are true organisms. 
 They are sons of his spirit " begotten, not made." 
 
 Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distilled from poems pass 
 
 away, 
 
 The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes, 
 Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but the soil of liter- 
 ature, (p. 272.) 
 
 We would not for one moment have Whitman 
 
91 
 
 less arrogant, defiant. We have too much enjoyed, 
 in sympathy, his great declaration of independence. 
 We would boldly assert that it is good, very good, in- 
 deed, that Whitman abandoned the old forms of " ar- 
 bitrary and rhyming metre." We are willing he 
 should " soar to the freer, vast, diviner heaven of 
 prose." We are quite satisfied, provided his work is 
 as he himself demands " subtly and necessarily, always 
 rhythmic " / . . " distinguishable easily enough." 
 (Pr., p. 328.) This it is not always. It does not always 
 "soar." It often has no wings at all. It sometimes 
 falls far below the veriest flats of prose. Is Matthew 
 Arnold's Philomela verse? and therefore poetry? 
 Then quite as surely must Whitman's good work be 
 recognized as poety, even if Sidney and Shelley be 
 vociferously voted heretics by a majority of critics for 
 calling Plato a poet, though he wrote in prose. 
 Rhythm is the pulse of poetry ; should it not then 
 quicken with emotion, become sluggish almost sus- 
 pended, with the feeling of inner stillness; or should 
 it by its clock-like regularity argue the mere abstract- 
 ness of the poem, our utter indifference to it, the entire 
 lack of vital sympathy between spirit and form, mak- 
 ing the form not a living expressive body, but a life- 
 less vessel wholly unconcerned with the nature of its 
 contents?* To quote superb instances from Whit- 
 man would be a delightful and extremely easy task. 
 
 * Again, in this matter of " organic form," Lanier has grasped 
 the same idea as Whitman. " Corn " and two of his " Hymns to 
 the Marshes," in some respects his very best work, have, pre- 
 serving rhyme, and with an over-use, perhaps, of alliteration, ut- 
 terly abandoned metre of a fixed kind, and an arbitrary stanza, 
 while the rhythm is made to impart the mood. 
 
92 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 Whitman rarely spoils good matter with bad form ; it 
 is because matter unfit for use, or such as he at all 
 events did not know how to use, is mixed with it, that 
 there are gaps, bottomless pits of not prose but 
 something as much below plain prose as his levels and 
 heights are above it. As for his vocabulary, no one 
 will say that Whitman was a slavish "follower of 
 beauty," though, again, he was not always her 
 " august master." (p. 137.) He is right, no doubt, 
 in saying that "slang "is an "attempt" "to escape 
 from bald literalism, and express itself inimitably" 
 made by common humanity; but, is it a successful 
 attempt always, and is common humanity to be the 
 measure of "the Answerer?" If we are to see our- 
 selves glorified in him, he must be above our faults, 
 succeed easily where we fail. Barbaric importations,* 
 words ruthlessly mutilated, a disregard for the asso- 
 ciative atmosphere of words, are complaints easily 
 lodged against our poet. We do wish he had not 
 given the adversary so much occasion to blaspheme. 
 We love the man, we reverence his purpose. One 
 who prefers me, the reader, to his own poem, I will 
 endure much from things at the hand of another 
 wholly beyond a moment's sufferance. Why " meat 
 of a man?" Would not "flesh" do? Why "Ma 
 femme" for "bride" or "wife?" Why "rapport" 
 for "touch" or "sympathy? "f Why some of the 
 
 * If Whitman hoped these foreign words used occasionally 
 would serve to express the composite nature of the American 
 people, he failed signally. Could we assimilate as ill our immi- 
 grants as Whitman's English does these unhappy foreign words, 
 our people would indeed become a crazy quilt! 
 
 tin his prose, terrific expressions abound: " toploftical," 
 
"SO LONG." 93 
 
 words that have appeared, in spite of all efforts to ex- 
 clude such disturbers of the peace, in the quotations 
 made in this paper ? We can only, as lovers of Whit- 
 man, regret them. We shall learn not to notice 
 them. Why a plural verb with a singular subject, or 
 the reverse? Why "ye" with a singular noun in an 
 apostrophe ? Such trifles sour the temper of the new 
 reader, and make proselyting no easy affair. And 
 who, ha*ving felt that Whitman has done him good, 
 does not wish to do a little private unostentatious 
 proselyting ? 
 
 Is it necessary to point out in conclusion what are 
 Whitman's successes artistically? Perhaps a list of 
 poems to read might well be constructed, though we 
 now have from Mr. Arthur Stedman a selection which 
 can be obtained in America.* Englishmen have been 
 more fortunate.f Not that I could spare any thing 
 from Whitman's volume, but there is a good deal in 
 it that is rather strong meat for babes, and for my 
 part I should like to put Whitman's book into the 
 hands of babes. 
 
 Crossing Brooklyn Ferry A SONG OF JOYS 
 Song of the Universal To You Out of the Cradle 
 Endlessly Rocking Tears To the Man-of- Warbird 
 
 " civilizee," cohered out of," " literatuses," "fetching up at," 
 " technists," " admirant toward," " arrive," (= background), etc. 
 
 * Also " Gems from Whitman," by Elizabeth Porter. 
 
 Prof. Oscar L. Triggs, of Chicago University, is now engaged 
 upon a long needed " Primer to Whitman." 
 
 t Selections of Walt Whitman's poems, edited with introduc- 
 tion by Wm. M. Rossetti. Chatto & Windus, London, 1886. 
 
 " Whitman" (selections), edited by Ernest Rhys, in Canter- 
 bury Poets. Walter Scott, London. 
 
94 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 On the Beach at Night The World Below the 
 Brine On the Beach at Night Alone Gods Beat ! 
 Beat! Drums! The Artillery Man's Vision WHEN 
 LILACS LAST IN THE DOCKYARD BLOOMED This Com- 
 post Warble for Lilac-time Sparkles from the Wheel 
 The Ox-tamer PASSAGE TO INDIA PRAYER OF CO- 
 LUMBUS A Noiseless Patient Spider Thou Orb Aloft 
 Full- dazzling THE MYSTIC TRUMPETER To a Loco- 
 motive in Winter A Riddle Song Old War Dreams 
 Ashes of Soldiers CAMPS OF GREEN Halcyon Days 
 WITH HUSKY, HAUGHTY LIPS, SEA. 
 
 This list, by no means of course complete, is made 
 with reference to the reader. Nothing in these, we 
 fancy, can possibly give him any reasonable offense. 
 If he has come to enjoy all of these, let him trust 
 himself to the sea. He may swallow a little brine, 
 but he will not drown. 
 
 It is altogether of no use to praise. Praise seems 
 impertinent to him who has enjoyed, and foolish to 
 the prejudiced or unfortunate person who can not 
 sympathize. Suffice it to say that minor difficulties 
 will settle themselves in time for the student. " r With 
 care for a man or book such would be surmounted, 
 and without it, what avails the faultlessness of 
 either?" No more appropriate words here than 
 these of Robert Browning concerning his Sordello. 
 The greatest difficulties are for the most part in the 
 reader. Walt Whitman never claimed to be more 
 than a pioneer. He tells us that in his work "the 
 words " are nothing, the drift " every thing." (p. 17.) 
 Then, too, all his " chants " may not be for you. 
 "Each for its kind" (p. 23) says he; mine for me, 
 therefore, and yours for you. No doubt he is quite 
 
95 
 
 ready to " offer his style to any one " (p. 380) and be 
 surpassed by the humblest reader. (Of. p. 74.) Un- 
 doubtedly some of us who have been brought up in 
 hot-houses will feel uncomfortable in his open air, 
 but, after the first horror is over, the sensation of 
 limitless freedom will probably seem pleasant if any- 
 thing. 
 
 As to morals and decency of course no one can 
 answer such objections. I for one should allow them 
 to remain insuperable. If your morals and your 
 modesty should be in imminent danger because for- 
 sooth Whitman, like your physician, knows you have 
 a body, and, like your conscience, is sure you have 
 sinned enough not to cast stones at the most degraded 
 brother or sister, is it w T ith him, forsooth, you are go- 
 ing to be angry when he lets " nature speak with 
 original energy?" (p. 27) when he makes his song 
 and you meet " the facts face to face?" (p. 271.) 
 Do you suppose Whitman never had any qualms 
 about his "Adamic" songs? (Cf. Pr., p. 191.) If 
 against the wishes of dear friends he would not con- 
 sent to their suppression he must have thought he 
 had a good reason. He explains himself fully on this 
 point in " Ventures on an old Theme." (Pr., p. 322.) 
 If he eliminated the " stock poetic expressions " so 
 dear to you, it will perhaps comfort you to know it 
 cost him a great deal of trouble to do this. (Pr., pp. 
 20, 518.) If, wishing " the strength of health," not 
 of " delirium " (Pr., p. 157), he sometimes gives you 
 what he terms the " drench of passions " " life coarse 
 and rank " (p. 94), it is better than if he had indulged 
 you in spiced innuendos and prurient proprieties. If 
 he annoys you by his perpetual cheer, if in your fits 
 
yb WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 of cultured listlessness or philosophic despondency 
 he positively irritates you by giving " himself the 
 benefit of the doubt," and insisting that he is happy 
 unless he is very sure indeed of the contrary (Pr., p. 
 92), it may perhaps be a pleasant thought to you that 
 he at times felt " these modern tendencies to turn 
 every thing to pathos, ennui, morbidity, dissatisfac- 
 tion, death." (Pr., p. 109.) Thirty years of ill health 
 could not break his spirit. He insisted that " in the 
 fact of life itself" we should " discover and achieve 
 happiness." (Pr., p. 249.) 
 
 Do you say, O all this optimism would be well in 
 Millennial days, not now? Well, he will tell you it is 
 good to live in the future. It is magnificent to have 
 occasion for the "afflatus" to fall on you, it is glorious 
 to hear the "holy ghost" speak within, to have the 
 "prophetic vision." (Pr., p. 227.) 
 
 If you are angered by his self-sufficiency, and 
 fancy he means really to repel you, it will be well to 
 remember that " though the live-oak glistens " solitary, 
 Whitman knows very well that he at all events "could 
 not without a friend, a lover near." (p. 106.) If 
 you wish he had been a greater scholar, like yourself 
 very learned, incapable of technical blunders even 
 when off his guard, you will be apt to forgive him 
 when you consider how on the occasion of his remark 
 that Browning "must be deeply studied out" and 
 "quite certainly repays the trouble," he frankly ad- 
 mitted that he for his part was " too old and indolent," 
 that he could not "study" and "in fact never" had 
 "studied." (Pr., p. 483.) 
 
 After all Whitman is what he is. If you want 
 him to take you by the hand he will do it in his own 
 
 \ 
 
97 
 
 hearty, rough way. He will not shake your arm out 
 of joint, but no one can promise that your monocle 
 will not be dislodged from its supercilious place; 
 and who would venture his reputation as a prophet 
 by assuring you that your immaculate shirt bosom 
 will suffer no rumples if he should happen to put his 
 big brawny arms about you? 
 
 In conclusion, you may ask me, why can I not 
 get the same thing Whitman gives from another say, 
 Emerson or Browning? Well, perhaps you can. The 
 fact however is that Emerson's words sound imper- 
 sonal, abstract and cold vague, unreal while there 
 is no doubt you shall have to understand Whitman. 
 He drives his ideas like wedges of live lightning into 
 your soul. No shields or helmets or customary con- 
 vention will protect it. You may walk with Brown- 
 ing (I say you may) and take an absurd delight in his 
 difficulties as such, you may fancy all he says has 
 reference only to this man or that woman you may 
 apply the sermon to your neighbor in the pew and 
 remain Pharisaically content you may look upon 
 Browning's poetry only as an arsenal for controversial 
 weapons, and use Elvire's husband's logic to justify 
 your marital irregularities, or Bishop Blougram's argu- 
 ments to fortify your soul in lucrative deceit (I have 
 known a bishop to quote his sophistries copiously, elabo- 
 rately, in a defense of his own theological position !) but 
 one thing is very sure, Whitman's Message is to you. It 
 is positively you he means. There is no doubt about 
 this. When he lashes, it is you are hurt. When he 
 mocks, it is you who feel rebuked. When he exults, 
 it is you who are uplifted from the slough of your 
 despond. When you try to pose as virtuous, it is you 
 
98 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 he will denounce. If you are dealing in " doubts, 
 swervings," and subtle "doublings upon" yourself 
 "typical of our age" (Pr., p. 403), it is out of you he 
 will "shame silliness" (p. 38) and make you very sure 
 of yourself. If you are thinking of what a poor 
 chance in life you have, he will tell you it is just what 
 you make of it, and that you can be a hero, " a God " 
 if you please. Now all this is said to you unmistak- 
 ably to you and there is no possible evasion! How 
 then can you afford to wrap yourself in a cloak of re- 
 fined prejudices? 
 
 Stranger, if you passing meet rne and desire to speak to me, why 
 
 should you not speak to me ? 
 And why should I not speak to you ? (p. 18.) 
 
APPENDIX 1. 
 
 BYRON AS CHANTER OF PERSONALITY. 
 (See note J, page 77.) 
 
 As Chanter of personality Whitman had a predecessor in 
 Lord Byron, the spell of whose poetry on his contemporaries was 
 due in large measure to the novel importance accorded the " in- 
 dividual will." In the early romances the integrity of the indi- 
 vidual was made to seem of more importance than moral laws. 
 In Childe Harold's Pilgrimage we were given a passionate diary, 
 and in Don Juan a sarcastic one, of that defiant individuality. In 
 Manfred he appears as hero. The world can not yield him ob- 
 livion when too late he has found out that 
 
 " The tree of knowledge is not that of life." 
 
 Nor can the beauty of it, for he would have to surrender him- 
 self to it a thing he will not do. Every thing speaks to him of 
 himself. Summoning to his aid magical powers, he brings before 
 himself the shadow of Astarte, his beloved, for the destruction 
 of whose happiness, it is, his soul is suffering perpetual torture. 
 He has long ceased to justify "his" deeds u unto" himself 
 " the last infirmity of evil." All left to him is self-mastery, 
 making: 
 
 " His torture tributary to his will. . . ." 
 
 "No other spirit . . . hath 
 A soul like his or power upon his soul." 
 
 For his power over spirits 
 
 " Was purchased by no compact, . . . 
 But by superior science." 
 
 He did not bow to Arimanes, prince of devils : 
 
 " Bid him bow down to that which is above him 
 The overruling Infinite . . . 
 And we will kneel together." 
 
 He utterly rejects the comforts of Christianity, as hitherto 
 understood, which are offered by the Abbot : 
 
 (99) 
 
100 APPENDIX. 
 
 " Whate'er 
 
 I may have been, or am, doth rest between 
 Heaven and myself. I shall not choose a mortal 
 To be my mediator." 
 
 " There is no power . . . 
 Can exorcise . . . 
 
 From out the unbounded spirit, the quick sense 
 Of its own sins, wrongs, sufferance, and revenge 
 Upon itself ; there is no future pang 
 Can deal that justice on the self-condemned 
 He deals on his own soul." 
 
 As he has refused the help of heaven, so does he defy the 
 powers of hell : 
 
 "Away. I'll die as I have lived alone. . . ." 
 " I do defy ye, though I feel my soul 
 
 Is ebbing from me, yet I do defy ye ; ... 
 What ye take 
 
 Shall be ta'en limb by limb." 
 
 " I stand 
 
 Upon my strength I do defy deny 
 Spurn back, and scorn ye !" 
 
 " Back to thy hell ! 
 
 Thou hast no power upon me, that I feel ; 
 Thou never shall possess me, that I know ; 
 What I have done is done." 
 
 " Thou did'st not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt me ; 
 I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey 
 
 But was my own destroyer, and will be 
 My own hereafter. Back, ye baffled fiends ! 
 The hand of Death is on me but not yours!" 
 
 A strong protest all through, surely, against the immoral no- 
 tion (however religious it may be) that we are but a battle-field 
 for angels and devils ! How wretched is he whose individuality 
 and its exceeding pride sunders him from his fellows is also shown 
 in Manfred. What draws us in Manfred is not however the fact 
 of his misery, but his tremendous sense of responsibility, his in- 
 domitable courage, his determination for good or ill to be himself, 
 and to consider no dastardly escape putting his guilt on an inno- 
 
APPENDIX. 101 
 
 cent Savior as worthy of a man ; yet at the same time equally 
 prepared to extirpate the cowardice that would throw the burden 
 on evil spirits. For this powerful protest against whatever would 
 destroy the dignity of the soul, we must honor Byron, and realize 
 fully the advance that has been made in this direction when we 
 compare the last scene of Manfred with the pitiful moral break- 
 down of Faustus in the great Marlowe's drama, which does duty 
 for catastrophe, and has been so extravagantly praised, not, alas, 
 always for its poetry, but for the indirect tribute it is supposed to 
 pay to a moribund theology. Does poor Kit turn in his grave, 
 when that scene is thus praised ? 
 
 APPEKDIX 2. 
 
 A HOSTILE CRITIQUE ON WHITMAN. 
 (See note *, page 10.) 
 
 The Apostle of Chaotism. The University of the South 
 Magazine, predecessor of the Sewanee Review, May, 1890 : 
 
 " We have before us a book, and one, whatever may be said 
 of it, unique in character. It purports to contain poetry. Capi- 
 tals at the beginning of jaggedVlines inform the eye of that de- 
 liberate intention. The whole is launched defiantly into the 
 world. From hearsay we gather that Wordsworth's prophecy has 
 been at length fulfilled. Surely, he who chanted immortality of 
 idiot boys and Peter Bells would hail this robust disciple of his 
 theory who uses the language of semi-cultivated men to express 
 life as fully as he perceives it, unflinchingly, forcibly, without re- 
 gard to aesthetic or ethical conventions, a prophet superior to all 
 time-honored artifice. The Master put great faith in his reader's 
 longevity, the more advanced Disciple, in his unliability to 
 nausea. . . . Was the book written solely to obtain notoriety 
 for one who had vainly striven after legitimate fame ? To be 
 novel at any price was his purpose, think you? To disprove 
 Solomon's wisdom by letting the sun shine on something new? 
 All had been tried that seemed not in absolute violation of beauty 
 and decency. There remained for an ambitious conqueror only 
 what had been hitherto contemned. Better be king of gutter-filth 
 and " foetor," to plant one's foot on the world's dung-hill, than to 
 cower, one of many, be they never so noble, or to be jostled on the 
 
102 APPENDIX. 
 
 thronged steps of shining temples where none seem great but the 
 superhuman." 
 
 " I am willing to wait to be understood by the growth of the 
 taste of myself." So a dim hope is really extended to us, lest we 
 might fancy ignorance and folly were trying to pass for inspira- 
 tion, thanks to a veil of chaotic incomprehensibility, and that for 
 aught we knew a maniac might be the veiled prophet! 
 
 Any definition of verse stricter than one which might admit 
 the best utterances of Whitman, would exclude those of David, 
 Solomon, Ezekiel, Job, and St. John the Divine. 
 
 " Faces so pale with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather closer yet 
 Draw close, but speak not. 
 Phantoms of countless lost, 
 Invisible to the rest, henceforth my companions, 
 Follow me ever desert me not while I live. 
 Sweet are the blooming checks of the living sweet are the 
 
 musical voices sounding, 
 But sweet, ah, sweet are the dead with their silent eyes ! " 
 
 Will this be prose, and Matthew Arnold's " Philomela " verse, 
 and consequently poetry? Read the closing strophe of the 
 " Passage to India." Do you pronounce it utterly prose ? Has it 
 not more fire than much American " poetry ? " 
 
 Verse of English poets has hitherto been rhythmic within 
 metric limits somew r hat arbitrarily adopted, but once adopted, in- 
 violable. Here we have language intended to be rhythmic with- 
 out such fixed metric limits. Shall then the best utterances of 
 Whitman be confined forever deep in a Dantesque hell of prose, 
 without hope of purgatory or heaven ? Had we only these best 
 utterances, a case might be made. Doubtless, Whitman consci- 
 entiously thought that, except in those rare cases where he 
 rhymed intentionally, he had succeeded in casting all forms to the 
 wind. To obey any restrictions, whether of fair precedent or 
 reason, would have been quite inconsistent in the "Adamic " citi- 
 zen and " chanter " of these states ; hence he resolved to take his 
 natural limitations for his only law. Nevertheless, to say that he 
 " escaped form " were absurd. Whenever he is most harmonious, 
 he can be scanned, and we can not doubt but that in his heart he 
 preferred those passages. Furthermore, he is fast bound in the 
 
APPENDIX. 103 
 
 most illiberal of mannerisms. Having rejected meters, he 
 adopted as his perpetual style ejaculatory abruptness, impas- 
 sioned contempt for grammar and logic. Anacolouthon trans- 
 figured is his favorite mold for " ecstatic chants." Miltonic latin- 
 isms sorely out of atmosphere ; barbarisms that career through 
 his pages like Huns putting all harmony to fire and sword ; vul- 
 garities that rasp and rip; inconceivable pilings of detached 
 words, formless pyramids without visible apex or foundation, 
 very towers of Babel with plentiful confusion of tongues English 
 Spanish, French, and Slang to the utter consternation of the 
 reader, and the temporary prostration of his aesthetic and moral 
 judgment. Let us see what is possible to this contemner of 
 style. Why, a frenetic upward flight of nine hundred and fifteen 
 words no rest, no real connection a thunder-cloud of crows to 
 obscure the sun, and deafen the earth with hoarse cries. Here is 
 the peccant period, yet innocent compared with some of its Kith 
 and Kin. (Song of Myself, Strophe, 33.) 
 
 In " Salut au Monde " we are regaled with geography ecstatics 
 insane, and foaming at the mouth : nations, cities, rivers, mount- 
 ains, all in a stupendous whirl of incoherence, introduced by 8 
 Walt Whitman's, 18 I hears, 16 I sees, 2 I beJwlds (on account of the 
 word's superior rarity patronizing 9 some clauses), 19 others, 2 
 wait ats, with a redoubtable array of cities, 50 / sees, 5 / am cover- 
 ings, with 24 cities, 1 I belong in with 7, 1 1 descend with a full stop. 
 Then with renewed ardor, having touched ground, 12 1 sees, 1 
 1 look on, I I see at, 1 / look on, 8 I sees, 27 exclamatory yous, 2 all 
 yous, 2 and yous, 5 each ofus's 18 yous, 2 I do's, etc., etc. This is 
 climax without doubt, but with respect to infinite distances, 
 where parallel lines meet and other strange things will occur from 
 time to time; ay, a climax, to be sure, leviathen-like and 
 choice! . 
 
 We begin to understand his poetic rapacity and would be led 
 to fancy the digestive powers of his " omnivorous " lines excellent, 
 but for " belched words." And yet he says : " I have offered my 
 style to every one !" For him the muses are undaunted Bacchantes, 
 hands gored with the blood of Orpheus, feet frantic around the 
 huge anacolouthon which serves for throne to Jove, shouting in- 
 sanely and tossing out their hydrophobic carols. 
 
 As has been implied, his Rhapsodies are for the most part 
 didactic. Very much precious time is spent in assuring us with 
 exquisite irrelevancy that he sings. Could frequent reiteration 
 
104 APPENDIX. 
 
 change falsehood into truth, some would doubtless become 
 convinced of that would-be fact. It is no exaggeration to state 
 that his usual song consists in saying over and over again that, he 
 is about to sing, and cataloguing the subjects of future " re- 
 citatives," "ecstatic songs," " chants," and " carols." Evidently 
 this ends in becoming more formal even than the stilted invoca- 
 tions which Byron satirized in " Hail, muse, etc., we left Don 
 Juan." 
 
 Sympathy and manliness (although the former is often un- 
 bearably blasphemous and the latter brutal, or bestial), are his most 
 captivating qualities." 
 
 Alas ! Who, or rather what, is his God ? ... It is univer- 
 sally inclusive a sort of aqua regia that dissolves all hetero- 
 geneous substance into homogeneous (protoplasmic ?) liquid, which 
 may be taken like a patent medicine for all soul and skin diseases 
 in homoeopathic doses. "Why should I pray? Why should I 
 venerate and be ceremonious ? . . . I find no sweeter fat than 
 sticks to my own bones." In my case, I should prefer that 
 interesting comparison to be post-mortem. "And I say to man- 
 kind, be not curious about God." " I see something of God each 
 hour of the twenty-four." " I find letters from God dropped in 
 the street," thanks to a trans-stellar postal service, "and every 
 one signed by God's name." We believe we have reached a 
 materialistic pantheism with a ubiquitous quasi-gazeous " deus in 
 machina." In spite of lack of " curiosity," like Mephistopheles 
 he likes to keep on good terms " with the Old Man" (we quote 
 from Goethe), and so the average man represented by Walt 
 Whitman pays occasionally a personal visit to his Collective or 
 Average God. " My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain ! " 
 
 I this (referring to the Square Deific) the sublimity of drunk- 
 enness? Nay, hear this Vesuvian burst of adoration: "Santa 
 Spirita," etc., etc. 
 
 Let us follow him step by step, from his Nihilistic Theology 
 and Chaotistic Ethics, to his more positive creed: " Knowing the 
 perfect fitness of things, while they discuss I am silent and go 
 and bathe and admire myself." " To look on my rose-colored 
 flesh! ... To be this incredible God I am !" Lo, Polyphemus, 
 his only eye put out by Lust, playing at Narcissus by the stream 
 side 1 "If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the 
 
APPENDIX. 105 
 
 spread of my body or any part of it, etc., etc.;" for, then, in spite 
 of the Doctrine of Indifference, dinned in our ears over and over 
 again, he specializes from his belligerent Pan-Fetichism with an 
 incredible enthusiasm ; and, after substituting " meat " for " flesh," 
 "procreation" for "creation," "breeding" for "love" in the 
 technical terminology, and furthermore, supplementing it with a 
 munificent new vocabulary of hilarious diabolism, he attempts to 
 establish in utterly unquotable ravings his more perfectly evolved 
 system of Neo-phallicism. 
 
 Yea, thou prophet, thou Apostle of Chaotism, we greet thee ! 
 Hail, thou that art nay, let us grow calm only a man, rude, and 
 glorying in his rudeness ; crude, and magnifying crudeness ; dar- 
 ing, brutal, sympathic, bestial, atheistic, nihilistic, socialistic, 
 American, cosmopolitan, materialistic, mystic, dreamer, ranter 
 nay, let us not call him fool, let us not call him maniac, only the 
 benign Apostle of Chaotism! He who finds "humanity" too 
 narrow a term and would substitute " animality," which is less 
 exclusive ! 
 
 This rhapsodist, this poet (if we may call a sewer-rat astray 
 in the secret parts of Parnassus by such names), although he is 
 ever raving of this land, God be praised, he is not representative 
 of these States, nor of Canada (spelt with a K), nor of the Potta- 
 wattami Indians, primitive though they be. He does not stand 
 for America, nor for this age, nor for mankind in any historic 
 age. Catullus, Boccaccio, Eabelais, were prudes-among-Puritans to 
 him. He is a monstrosity that can be classed in no known geo- 
 logical age, nor Pliocene, nor Miocene ; but in one only, of which 
 he is the sole relic, and which by analogy to these we might term 
 conveniently the Obscene. 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 30, line 10, for " happy " read " unhappy." 
 Page 37, line 8, for "purient" read "prurient." 
 Page 49, line 5, for " literary " read " literally." 
 Page 63, line 30, for "p. 814" read "p. 80." 
 Page 84, last line, for " pp. 255-259 " read " pp. 32-34." 
 Page 104, line 30, for " I this " read "Is this." 
 
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