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 Whitman and Traubel. 
 
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WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
WHITMAN AND 
 TRAUBEL . 
 
 WILLIAM ENGLISH WALLING 
 
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Copyright, 1916, 
 By Albert and Chasi£S Boni 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 CHAPTER FAQB 
 
 I. The Poet of Democracy i 
 
 II. The Individualist 22 
 
 HORACE TRAUBEL 
 
 III. Forerunner of a New Literature ... 39 
 
 IV. The Humanist 62 
 
 V. The Philosopher of Democracy ... 90 
 
 VI. The Poet of Socialism iii 
 
 Notes 143 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 T^OES the spirit of Walt Whitman live in any 
 ■*-^ of the writers to-day? Has he a successor? 
 Is that successor his biographer and literary exec- 
 utor, Horace Traubel? 
 
 This question is being answered in the affirma- 
 tive by a rapidly growing number of persons. And 
 those who have become interested in Traubel feel 
 quite as strong an admiration for his work as they 
 do for that of Whitman. Let me quote a typical 
 opinion, that of Eugene V. Debs : 
 
 Horace Traubel has the distinctest personality of 
 any man of letters now before the American people. 
 He can be likened to no other author or writer, living 
 or dead. Although a loyal disciple and devotee of 
 Walt Whitman, from whom he undoubtedly caught 
 his earliest and deepest inspiration, he goes far be- 
 yond his revered master. He not only brings the 
 old Prophet of Democracy up to date but he traverses 
 untrodden fields and explores new realms in questj 
 of the truth. 
 
 Horace Traubel has the clear vision of a prophet, 
 the analytical mind of a philosopher, the daring imagi- 
 nation of a poet, the heroic soul of a martyr, and 
 the unpolluted heart of a child. 
 
WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 Horace Traubel's work has only recently begun 
 to take book form. Soon after Walt Whitman's 
 death, Traubel, acting as Whitman's literary lega- 
 tee, began his remarkable biographical study, "Walt 
 Whitman in Camden," but the first volume was not 
 published until 1906, and only three of the vol- 
 umes out of a probable eight have been issued. For 
 twenty-five years, a^ editor of The Conservator, he - 
 has developed Whitman's literary and social ideals, 
 besides engaging in other literary and journalistic 
 activity. But his first prose book, "Chants Com- 
 munal," was published in 1904, and his "Optimos," 
 which brought together the best of his poems, ap- 
 peared only in 191 1, and selections from his "Col- 
 lects" in 1914. The larger part of his writings, and 
 some of his best work, is still to be found only in the 
 monthly Conservator, which he has now published 
 for twenty-five years. It contains not only those 
 poems that have appeared since the publication of 
 "Optimos," but nearly all of his prose work. In 
 every month's issue besides the "Collect," there are 
 several book reviews, and these are among the most 
 original, sympathetic, and profound of Traubel's 
 writings — among the most remarkable series of 
 book reviews ever published in the English lan- 
 guage. The larger part of my quotations are taken 
 from "Collects" and book reviews, and uncollected 
 poems. 
 
 An adequate appreciation of Traubel demands 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 that the value of the work of Whitman should be 
 brought before the reader's mind, that his genius 
 should be characterized and his limitations pointed 
 out. In discussing Whitman I believe I have 
 avoided covering old ground and have adopted a 
 new standpoint. I have sought not to criticize his 
 poetry but to appreciate his philosophy. In per- 
 forming this task I have made use of a new source, 
 "With Walt Whitman in Camden," and have had 
 the invaluable assistance of the author of that work 
 — which is probably the most remarkable and valu- 
 able human document since Boswell's Johnson. 
 
WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 THE POET OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 WALT WHITMAN is now recognized as one 
 of the greatest poets of all time. To the tes- 
 timony of his contemporaries, such as Emerson, 
 Tennyson, Rossetti, and Symonds, has been added 
 that of the majority of later poets and critics. 
 
 Whitman is appreciated chiefly as the world's 
 foremost poet of democracy. He contended from 
 first to last that democracy, the masses of men, 
 were his inspiration — ^that ever3rthing else, no mat- 
 ter how deeply felt, was secondary to that. Of late, 
 however, his fame as the poet of democracy is in 
 danger of being eclipsed, to some degree, by his 
 fame as a lyric poet. His exaggerations, his de- 
 ficiencies, and his crudities are all attributed to his 
 democracy, while his marvelous poetic powers are 
 supposed to arise directly out of the genius shared 
 with other poets untouched by democracy. He is 
 meeting the fate of Tolstoi, William Morris and 
 many others whose social radicalism does not inter- 
 est the merely aesthetic part of the public. The 
 
2 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 vision, the inspiration, and the message of all these 
 writers are supposed to be separable from their art. 
 They were great, we are told, in spite of their ideas. 
 
 Yet Whitman's poetry and Whitman's democracy 
 are inseparable. There was no Whitman outside 
 of this, his great life principle. He insists upon 
 this himself on every page. And if we follow his 
 life and his writings carefully we find that his own 
 interpretation is the right one. 
 
 In 1855 and 1856, within a year after the pub- 
 lication of his great work, "Leaves of Grass," Whit- 
 man wrote three brief notices of his own sig- 
 nificance as a poet. [They were published in thei 
 volume, "In Re Walt Whitman," which appeared] 
 in 1893, immediately after his death.] These ideas 
 are the same as those spread throughout his poetry 
 and prose. He describes himself (in the third per- 
 son) as "no dilettante democrat — a man who is 
 part and parcel with the commonalty, and with im- 
 mediate life." 
 
 "If health were not his distinguishing attribute 
 this poet would be the very harlot of persons. 
 Right and left he flings his arms, drawing men 
 and women with undeniable love to his close em- 
 brace, loving the clasp of their hands, the touch of 
 their necks and breasts, and the sound of their 
 voices. All else seems to burn up under his fierce 
 affection for persons. Politics, religions, institu- 
 tions, art, quickly fall aside before them." 
 
THE POET OF DEMOCRACY 3 
 
 He pursues his self-description by means of a 
 contrast between his own democratic manner of life 
 and its opposite, the aristocratic manner: 
 
 "A person who does not associate with literary- 
 people — a man never called upon to make speeches 
 at public dinners — never on platforms amid the 
 crowds of clergymen, or professors, or aldermen, 
 or congressmen — ^rather down on the bay with pilots 
 in their pilot boat — or off on a cruise with fishers 
 in their fishing-smack — or riding on a Broadway 
 omnibus side by side with the driver — or with a 
 band of loungers over the open ground of the 
 country — fond of Brooklyn and New York." As 
 Whitman by this time had already made a place for 
 himself as editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, these dem- 
 ocratic preferences were a matter of deliberate 
 choice, not of necessity. He proceeds : 
 
 "No breath of Europe, or her monarchies, or 
 priestly conventions, or her notion of gentlemen 
 and ladies, founded on the idea of caste, seems ever 
 to have fanned his face or been inhaled into his 
 lungs." And he includes as "genteel persons" all 
 who would make any claim whatever in that di- 
 rection, the "college-learned," those "used to be 
 served by servants," etc. 
 
 The importance of democracy to Whitman is 
 that it must first be lived before it can be written 
 about, and that the largest life can arise only out of 
 the largest association with people. 
 
4 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 A poet, like Tennyson, who has lived an aristo- 
 cratic life, he contends, can only write from that 
 pitifully narrow and false viewpoint: 
 
 "The spirit of the burnished society of upper- 
 class England fills this writer (Tennyson) and his 
 effusions from top to toe. . . . He meets the no- 
 bility and gentry half-way. The models are the 
 same both to the poet and the parlors. Both have 
 the same supercilious elegance, both love the rem- 
 iniscences which extol caste, both agree on the top- 
 ics proper for mention and discussion, both hold the 
 same undertone of church and state." 
 
 Against the aristocratic note, which, as he points 
 out, has prevailed to a greater or less degree in all 
 previous poetry. Whitman proposes democracy: 
 
 "Other poets celebrate great events, personages, 
 romances, wars, loves, passions, the victories and 
 power of their country, or some real or imagined 
 incident — and polish their work and come to con- 
 clusions, and satisfy the reader. This poet cele- 
 brates natural propensities in himself; and that is 
 the way he celebrates all. He comes to no conclu- 
 sions, and does not satisfy the reader." 
 
 But, while Whitman comes to no conclusions, and 
 denies any "special" purpose, his work is purpose- 
 ful to the last degree. His poetry, as he says, 
 "eludes and mocks criticism" because its purpose 
 appears exclusively in its "results." 
 
 "Every sentence and every passage tells of an 
 
THE POET OF DEMOCRACY 5 
 
 interior not always seen, and exudes an impalpable 
 something that sticks to him that reads, and per- 
 vades and provokes him to tread the half-invisible 
 road where the poet, like an apparition, is striding 
 fearlessly before." [My italics.] 
 
 Whitman is not merely singing, then. He has 
 a message at every moment of his song. As he so 
 frequently says, he is a prophet or bard and wants 
 to move the reader to action, and to life of a defi- 
 nite kind — democratic life. 
 
 "If Walt Whitman's premises are true, then there 
 is a subtler range of poetry than that of the gran- 
 deur of acts and events, as in Homer, or of char- 
 acters, as in Shakespeare — poetry to which all other 
 writing is subservient, and which confronts the very 
 mcEinings of the works of nature and competes with 
 them. It is the direct bringing of occurrences and 
 persons and things to bear on the listener or be- 
 holder, to reappear through him or her." [My 
 italics.] 
 
 Thus Whitman is not satisfied, like previous 
 poets, to write of characters, actions, and events. 
 He wishes directly to create characters and to stir 
 to action. In a word, he preaches, but he does not 
 preach mere morality; as he says, he "animates to 
 life itself." 
 
 When we turn to "Leaves of Grass" or the prose 
 writings, we find that this description of Whitman 
 by himself is the true one; that it was his demo- 
 
6 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 cratic life and democratic view of the poet's func- 
 tion that shaped all his work. 
 
 The leading note in all his writings is his exalta- 
 tion of the individual (everyman). The following 
 is, perhaps, the most illuminating passage on this 
 point : 
 
 And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's 
 self is. . . . 
 
 And I say to any man or woman. Let your soul stand 
 cool and composed before a million universes. . . . 
 
 I hear and behold God in every object, yet under- 
 stand God not in the least. 
 
 Nor do I understand who there can be more won- 
 derful than myself. 
 
 The individual is both the beginning and the end 
 of all Whitman's writing and all his thought. He 
 solves the central problem of philosophy by re- 
 fusing to regard either religion, spirituality, or ma- 
 terialism as basic — as when he says (in the "Song 
 of the Open Road") that all religion and all solid 
 things must fall away before individuals. The same 
 thought is continued in the "Song for Occupations" : 
 
 We consider bibles and religions divine — 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. . . . 
 
THE POET OF DEMOCRACY 7 
 
 List close my scholars dear. 
 
 Doctrines, politics and civilization exurge from you. 
 
 He recognizes that the material aspect of life 
 is of equal importance with the spiritual: 
 
 Behold, the body includes and is the meaning, the 
 main concern, and includes and is the soul: 
 
 Whoever you are, how superb and how divine is 
 your body, or any part of it ! 
 
 And again: 
 
 I accept Reality and dare not question it. 
 Materialism first and last imbuing. 
 
 Whitman often uses the expressions of religion; 
 but his deep sympathy with the leading agnostic of 
 his country and his time, Robert G. Ingersoll, shows 
 that he used such expressions with a poet's license 
 and not at all in their ordinary meaning. There 
 were few persons he admired more than he did 
 Ingersoll, as may be seen from the following refer- 
 ence from "Walt Whitman in Camden" (Vol. IH, 
 p. 497) : 
 
 "The main thing is that he has done his divinely 
 appointed job : O the dear wonderful man ! He was 
 sent by high heaven to save the race and he has 
 done it." 
 
8 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 "But God? God? Well, there are other divini- 
 ties : they are not of the hell and damnation sort : they 
 are not of the legs and arms sort — ^the personal sort : 
 they yet remain, more firmly on their throne, in the 
 race, than ever: they continue their supremacy. Bob 
 (IngersoU) does not intellectually account for them: 
 He has them in his heart: they are one part of his 
 noble protest — whether he knows it or not." [My 
 italics.] 
 
 It is difficult to believe that IngersoU himself 
 would have objected to "divinities other than God." 
 
 All that is merely spiritual, ideal, or intellectual, 
 Whitman rejects because it is not sufficiently hu- 
 man, does not represent the whole man. 
 
 In many passages this thought of the all-impor- 
 tance of the whole man recurs. Undoubtedly the 
 following — which we can never read too often — is 
 the best: 
 
 When the psalm sings instead of the singer. 
 When the script preaches instead of the preacher. 
 When the pulpit descends and goes instead of the 
 
 carver that carved the supporting desk. 
 When I can touch the body of books by night or by 
 
 day, and when they touch my body back again. 
 When a university course convinces like a slumbering 
 
 woman and child convince. 
 When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the 
 
 night-watchman's daughter. 
 
THE POET OF DEMOCRACY 9 
 
 When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite and 
 
 are my friendly companions, 
 I intend to reach them my hand, and make as much 
 
 of them as I do of men and women like you.^ 
 
 It is in this exaltation of life itself, of sheer 
 personality, as against everything that limits or 
 restricts it, that Whitman develops his well-known 
 poetic power and that abandon which confounds 
 all merely rational analysis. 
 
 We can see this thought at its best, and in a con- 
 densed form, in Whitman's description of the poet: 
 
 He is no arguer, he is judgment (Nature accepts him 
 
 absolutely), 
 He judges not as the judge judges but as the sun 
 
 falling round a helpless thing. 
 As he sees the farthest he has the most faith. 
 His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things. . . . 
 He sees eternity in men and women, he does not 
 
 see men and women as dreams or dots.^ 
 
 It is unnecessary to dwell either upon the poetry 
 or upon the democracy of such passages as these. 
 But Whitman is more than a mere idealist of de- 
 mocracy — he is a militant partizan. His revolution- 
 ary spirit is shown, both in his poems and in some 
 of his conversations with Traubel just before his 
 death, to have proceeded very much further than the 
 general public realizes. Could any rational revo- 
 
10 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 lutionist go farther than Whitman did in his mes- 
 sage "To the States": 
 
 To the States or any one of them, or any city of the 
 
 States, Resist much, obey little. 
 Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved, 
 Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this 
 earth, ever afterward resumes its liberty. (Whit- 
 man's italics.) 
 
 Not only was Whitman a rebel but he was a mili- 
 tant rebel and believed in fighting. Of course he 
 was opposed to war, but the Civil War, being di- 
 rected against slavery, was to him a righteous war, 
 though he is filled with sympathy rather than hatred 
 towards that South with which he was engaged in 
 a life and death struggle. 
 
 Slavery — ^the murderous, treacherous conspiracy to 
 raise it upon the ruins of all the rest. 
 
 On and on to the grapple with it — Assassin! then 
 your life or ours be the stake, and respite no more. 
 
 (Lo, high toward heaven, this day, 
 Libertad, from the conqueress' field return'd, 
 I mark the new aureola around your head. 
 No more of soft stral, but dazzling and fierce. 
 With war's flames and the lambent lightnings play- 
 ing, 
 And your port immovable where you stand. 
 
THE POET OF DEMOCRACY ii 
 
 With still the inextinguishable glance and the clinch'd 
 and lifted fist, 
 
 And your foot on the neck of the menacing one, the 
 scomer utterly crush'd beneath you. 
 
 The menacing arrogant one that strode and advanced 
 with his senseless scorn, bearing the murderous 
 knife. 
 
 The wide-swelling one, the braggart that would yes- 
 terday do so much, 
 
 To-day a carrion dead and damn'd, the despised of 
 all the earth. 
 
 An offal rank, to the dunghill maggots spurn'd.)* 
 
 That Whitman was a rebel both by temperament 
 and conviction we can see also in his lines in which 
 he pictures the "free city," 
 
 Where the men and women think lightly of the laws. 
 
 Where the slave ceases, and the master of slaves 
 ceases. 
 
 Where the populace rise at once against the never- 
 ending audacity of elected persons, 
 
 Where fierce men and women pour forth as the sea 
 to the whistle of death pours its sweeping and un- 
 ript waves.* 
 
 So we find that by opposition to laws Whitman 
 means nothing less than readiness to enter into ac- 
 tual physical combat against them. 
 
 All aspects of present civilization, since all are 
 
12 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 connected, necessarily come under the criticism of 
 the revolutionist. So Whitman demands that the 
 individual shall examine each and every part of the 
 culture that is handed down to him and be ready 
 to reject it all: 
 
 Are you not of some coterie? some school or mere 
 
 religion ? 
 Are you done with reviews and criticisms of life? 
 
 animating now to life itself? . . . 
 Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, 
 
 politicians, literats, of enemies' lands? 
 Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is 
 
 still here?° 
 
 His conception of liberty, and still more his con- 
 ception of equality, prove that his democracy is 
 absolute. Consider only his exclamation: "By 
 God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have 
 their counterpart of on the same terms" ("Song- 
 of Myself"). A large part of his writing may 
 be regarded as nothing else than an elaboration of 
 this passionate declaration, and any sincere student 
 must admit that in all his work and Ufe he lived 
 up to this principle of social equality. 
 
 Perhaps even more fundamental in Whitman's 
 thinking than this insistence upon social equality, 
 is his faith in the future of men; the past and 
 the present are not to be allowed to block the way : 
 
THE POET OF DEMOCRACY 13 
 
 What is known I strip away, 
 
 I launch all men and women forward with me into 
 the Unknown.* 
 
 Nearly everybody feels the inspiration of Whit- 
 man's poetry. The majority admit the essential 
 soundness and the depth of his democratic message. 
 But many persons now believe that both Whitman 
 and his social philosophy were limited by time and 
 place. They feel that he was an extremist in his 
 Americanism and that he grasped and appealed to 
 the people of his time rather than to our generation. 
 
 We shall examine the measure of truth contained 
 in this view in the following chapter. The present 
 book has been written because of the belief that if 
 Whitman's message is to have its full effect, it must 
 indeed be re-stated over and over again — ^as Whit- 
 man himself proclaimed. 
 
 But before we try to pass beyond the farthest 
 point reached by Whitman, before we enquire if 
 any one has successfully attempted to develop his 
 thought and enlarge the world he gave us, we must 
 be sure that we do full justice to his work. And 
 many of the conversations written down by Traubel 
 show that he was not only far from being provincial- 
 ly American, but that he was equally far from ignor- 
 ing the new civilization that was just foreshadowing 
 itself in his later days and is only now becoming a 
 practical certainty of the not distant future. 
 
14 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 Whitman's Americanism exalted the United 
 States chiefly because it was a great free space be- 
 longing to the whole world, where democracy could 
 and would be most easily and quickly developed. 
 In this great field neither Americans nor American 
 traditions were to be preferred. They must take 
 an even chance with the immigrants and their civi- 
 lizations so far as these were suited to survive un- 
 der the free and democratic conditions of human- 
 ity's newest area of development. 
 
 When one of his visitors — in 1888, the date of 
 the "Traubel Memoirs" — proposed that immigra- 
 tion should be restricted Whitman made this vig- 
 orous protest: 
 
 In that narrow sense I am no American — count me 
 out. Restrict nothing — ^keep everything open: to 
 Italy, to China, to anybody. I love America, I be- 
 lieve in America, because her belly can hold and digest 
 all — anarchist, socialist, peacemakers, fighters, dis- 
 turbers or degenerates of whatever sort — ^hold and 
 digest all. If I felt that America could not do this 
 I would be indifferent as between our institutions and 
 any others. America is not all in all — the sum total : 
 she is only to contribute her contribution to the big 
 scheme.^ 
 
 No thought occurs more frequently in Whitman's 
 conversations during the period recorded by Trau- 
 bel (in "Walt Whitman in Camden") than this: 
 
THE POET OF DEMOCRACY 15 
 
 America is for one thing only — and if not for 
 that for what? America must welcome all — Chinese, 
 Irish, German, pauper or not, criminal or not.* 
 
 Both Whitman's democracy and his American- 
 ism — and to him they were one and the same thing 
 — led him to a standpoint that embraced the whole 
 world and all humanity. "Real democracy," he de- 
 clared, meant "a world democracy" (Vol. II, p. 
 317) and he asked "Can any sound man believe in a 
 patriotism that means 'America alone?'" (Vol. 
 Ill, p. 160.) Here is another passage where the 
 same thought occurs: 
 
 No man is a democrat, a true democrat, who forgets 
 that he is interested in the welfare of the race. Who 
 asks only, what is best for America? instead of what 
 is best for man — the whole of man? Is a man a citi- 
 zen of Camden only ? No — ^no, indeed. And if not of 
 Camden, not of New Jersey, nor even of America. 
 No — no — no — no: a man is no democrat if he takes 
 the narrow in preference to the broad view. He may 
 talk of democracy, of the people, but it's all a lie — all 
 false — nothing but nuts crackling under a pot.' 
 
 Not only was Whitman thoroughly international 
 in his outlook, but as a democrat he felt that the 
 peoples could be relied upon to bring about a world 
 federation, and that there were already premonitory 
 symptoms of a "general, divine war," which would 
 
i6 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 overthrow the tyrannies that stand in the way of 
 this great consummation. In his poem, "Years of 
 the Modem," he asks : 
 
 What whispers are these, O lands, running ahead 
 of you, passing under the seas ? 
 
 Are all nations communing? Is there going to be 
 but one heart to the globe? 
 
 Is humanity forming en masse? for lo, tyrants trem- 
 ble, crowns grow dim; 
 
 The earth, restive, confronts a new era, perhaps a 
 general divine war. . . . 
 
 The perform'd America and Europe grow dim, retir- 
 ing in shadow behind me. 
 
 The unperform'd more gigantic than ever, advance, 
 advance upon me. 
 
 In his internationalism Whitman was both prac- 
 tical and uncompromising. For example, he had no 
 feeling against the Negroes. He believed they 
 would be eliminated like the Indians, and that their 
 blood would become mingled with that of the 
 whites. In these views he faced what he consid- 
 ered to be the truth entirely aside from his personal 
 feeling about it. For he was an ardent admirer of 
 mixed breeds. He describes and lauds the "creoles" 
 of New Orleans, and then concludes: 
 
 I have considered the problem from all sides. It 
 is wonderful the readiness with which French and 
 
THE POET OF DEMOCRACY 17 
 
 Negro, or Spanish and Negro, will marry — inter- 
 lock — and the results are always good. It is the 
 same with the Injun and Nigger — ^they too will ask 
 no questions: they, too, achieve equally fine re- 
 productivities.^" 
 
 So we see that Whitman's internationalism was, 
 indeed, universal. But it was also practical. He 
 realized that if the nations continued to build up 
 artificial barriers hostility would result, while free 
 intercourse would lead inevitably towards a world- 
 state. So he rejected national egoism or national- 
 ism absolutely. Traubel records him as follows: 
 
 "I am for free trade — absolute free trade: for the 
 federation of the world. . . ." 
 
 "But isn't it our first duty to take care of ourselves — 
 our America?" "Yes — that's right," replied W. : 
 "Take care of your family, your state, your nation — 
 that's right from a certain standpoint: some people 
 seem ordained to care for one man, for a dozen men, 
 for a single nation : and some other people — of whom 
 I hope I am one — to care for them all. All sounds so 
 damned much better than one — don't you think ? The 
 whole business done at once instead of a little patch 
 of it here and there! I don't want the brotherhood 
 of the world to be so long a-coming. I can wait till 
 it comes — it is sure to come — but if I can hurry it 
 by a day or so I am going to do so." " 
 
 It is true that Whitman bases his international 
 
i8 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 conception of Americanism largely on the exist- 
 ence — ^at least in his days — of an empire of unoc- 
 cupied land in this country (Vol. II, p. 34). But 
 we cannot doubt that his internationalism had far 
 deeper roots than this. If he had lived to reach 
 our conclusion that the world cannot go on indefi- 
 nitely making small farmers out of its surplus popu- 
 lation, there is no ground whatever to suppose that 
 he would have deserted his democracy or his inter- 
 nationalism on this account, and there is some very 
 definite evidence for believing that his economic and 
 social ideas would have become more radical and 
 more Socialistic, the direction in which they were 
 tending in his later days. 
 
 For one part of his creed of Americanism, as we 
 have seep, was that America was destined to do far 
 greater things, to solve far more difficult problems 
 in the ^future than it had in the past. This is 
 another* view that is constantly repeated in his con- 
 versations with Traubel: 
 «• 
 
 America is yet to achieve things of which these 
 men little dream! All the real problems, the funda- 
 mentals, are yet ahead of us — will have to be tackled 
 by us or by our children or theirs: not skin-ticklers, 
 like the tariff, but life and death challenges which 
 will line us up fiercely on this side or that.^^ 
 
 And Whitman indicated very definitely what the 
 nature of these "real, fundamental problems" was: 
 
THE POET OF DEMOCRACY 19 
 
 Against the things we call successes I see other, 
 counter, tendencies working — an increased indisposi- 
 tion of certain classes to do the honest labor of the 
 world, and the solidification of the money powers 
 against the fraternity of the masses. Either one of 
 these might, both of them are sure, to ruin the republic, 
 if nothing appears to contravene them. 
 
 So when Traubel talked Socialism to him he was 
 always to the last degree responsive. Traubel re- 
 ports : 
 
 I said: "Walt, you'll be a revolutionist yet!" He 
 was grave over it. "I have been: haven't I been?" 
 Then he shook his head: "I see a stirring time com- 
 ing but I won't be in it : but you'll be in it — you're in 
 it already : you'll have to fight big enough for us both : 
 I'll steady your right arm : you'll feel me with you." 
 
 Then he added: "I do not forget what you drove 
 so hard at me yesterday — ^the day before — ^that what 
 you want I want too: what you youngsters want is 
 what I want too: I never had it driven at me in 
 just that way before, but now that you have done 
 it realize that you are nearer right than I have 
 been in some of my suppositions." ^* 
 
 Whitman was fully alive to the existence of the"' 
 "social problem," though in America it was almost 
 non-existent in his youth, and was only beginning to 
 become important in his old age. He realized that 
 "the gap between the rich and the poor" was "grow- 
 
20 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 ing worse and worse" and was fully prepared for a 
 revolutionary solution (Vol. II, p. 282). Indeed he 
 seemed on the very verge of Socialism, though 
 ^wholly opposed to the idea of a Socialist Party. 
 He explained himself on this last point as follows : 
 
 The labor question was not up then [in Civil War 
 times] as it is now — ^perhaps that's the reason I did 
 not embrace it. It is getting to be a live question — 
 some day will be the live question — then somebody 
 will have to look out — especially the bodies with big 
 fortunes wrung from the sweat and blood of the poor. 
 That is all so — all of it so. Yet I do not feel as if I 
 belonged to any one party .^* 
 
 At this time (1887) there was no Socialist move- 
 ment of any moment either in America or England. 
 But even if there had been, we have every reason 
 to believe that Whitman would have refused it his 
 support, however strong might have been his 53^1- 
 pathy with its principles. For he was personally a 
 fervent individualist: not an organization man, he 
 was opposed to all movements of a partizan charac- 
 ter no matter how democratic or popular they might 
 be. This is one of the characteristics in which he 
 differs most profoundly from Traubel.^ The reason 
 is not far to seek. Nearly everybody in this coun- 
 try claimed to be a radical democrat in those days; 
 and usually with considerable plausibility. Ameri- 
 cans who were privileged and regarded themselves 
 
THE POET OF DEMOCRACY 21 
 
 as such were very few in numbers a generation ago ; 
 now the outspoken opponents of democracy are 
 numbered by the millions. 
 
 Yet we must necessarily take Whitman as he was 
 when he lived, not as he probably would be if he 
 were alive to-day. And, after all, he was not a 
 socialist but an individualist. The nature of his 
 individualism I shall discuss in the following 
 chapter. 
 
II 
 
 THE INDIVIDUALIST 
 
 TXT HITMAN believed without qualification in 
 ' * democracy and equal opportunity. In the 
 deepest sense he was a social democrat. But he did 
 not contemplate social solutions for political prob- 
 lems and was even unaware of the existence of a 
 social problem until his later years. His outlook 
 was subject, necessarily, to the limitations of his 
 generation. Moreover, an ultra-sympathetic nature 
 like Whitman's is influenced not only by the condi- 
 tions and opinions of its time, but still more deeply 
 and subtly by the human types, the characteristics 
 and feelings these conditions had produced. Con- 
 sequently he was an individualist not only in his 
 politics but even in his feelings and his subconscious 
 self. The people of his time were nearly all indi- 
 vidualists of one kind or another ; therefore he was 
 the ultra, arch, universal individualist. 
 
 Two of the dominant notes of his work suffi- 
 ciently characterize his social philosophy — ^his in- 
 sistence that love and comradeship are the solu- 
 tion of all social problems, and his optimism, which 
 
THE INDIVIDUALIST 23 
 
 was so extreme that it apparently excluded the 
 need for any great social change. 
 
 He offered us "fervid comradeship" as "the 
 counterbalance and offset of our materialistic and 
 vulgar American democracy" and exposed his mean- 
 ing fully when he said that this comradeship was 
 to rival in intensity "amative love," that is the 
 attraction between the sexes. 
 
 Such a simple and exclusive solution of human- 
 it/ s problems by the regeneration of the individual 
 precludes all interest in or effective criticism of 
 faulty social arrangements. Whitman attacked 
 existing institutions and culture ceaselessly, but he 
 never reached the conclusion that opinions, feel- 
 ings, and character of the individual are themselves 
 largely the result of social conditions — and that a 
 universal "fervid comradeship" cannot arise with- 
 out a revolutionary change in the social system. 
 
 And Whitman's optimism reached a point where 
 it threatened to extinguish that "divine discontent" 
 which underlies all progress. We see this in the 
 lines : 
 
 And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase 
 
 the pick of the earth. 
 And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod 
 
 confounds the learning of all times. 
 And there is no trade or employment hut the young 
 
 man following it may become a hero, 
 
24 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for 
 the wheel'd universe.^^ [My italics.] 
 
 The lines I have placed in italics clearly preach 
 contentment to the poorer classes. The need of an 
 industrial or social democracy was certainly not 
 fully realized by the individual who held the key 
 to the whole universe on such easy terms as these. 
 We see the same thought again in the lines : 
 
 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 — ^toward 
 
 something great.^' 
 
 If all are headed for the best, if nobody is going 
 in the wrong direction, then why should we trouble 
 ourselves about the future of democracy? In ac- 
 cord with this universal toleration Whitman has a 
 kind word even for the reactionary and anti-demo- 
 crat. In theory, that is, he will not blame them — > 
 though he is ready to have them killed, as his 
 unqualified endorsement of the Civil War (above 
 quoted) demonstrates. Indeed both Whitman's 
 doctrine of universal love and that of universal 
 optimism are largely theoretical. They are deeply 
 and sincerely felt, but we find him tangled up with 
 the current metaphysics of his generation, which 
 he evidently adopted bodily and without any serious 
 
THE INDIVIDUAUST 25 
 
 criticism. That is, his social panaceas of love 
 and optimism represent genuine intellectual conclu- 
 sions and convictions, but they do not disclose his 
 deepest nature, his personality ; for they were shared 
 with countless other Americans of his day (and 
 ours) who neither brought any such message as 
 his nor were ready to receive it when it arrived. 
 
 Intellectually Whitman seemed to accept even 
 that thoroughly undemocratic doctrine of metaphy- 
 sical idealism, which was implicit in the American 
 thought of his day, as we see in the following 
 passage : 
 
 The culmination and fruit of literary artistic ex- 
 pression, and its final fields of pleasure for the human 
 soul, are in metaphysics, including the mysteries of 
 the spiritual world, the soul itself, and the question 
 of the immortal continuation of our identity. In all 
 ages, the mind of man has brought up here — and al- 
 ways will. Here, at least, of whatever race or era, 
 we stand on common ground.^' 
 
 This reads to us to-day as if it were written a 
 thousand years ago. In another passage there is a 
 regular summary of the leading abstractions of past 
 ages, the very abstractions which are the center of 
 attack for the democratic philosophy of our time: 
 
 And lo ! to the consciousness of the soul, the per- 
 manent identity, the thought, the something, before 
 
26 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 which the magnitude even of democracy, art, litera- 
 ture, etc., dwindles, becomes partial, measurable — 
 something that fully satisfies (which those do not). 
 That something is the All, and the idea of All, with 
 the accompanying idea of eternity, and of itself, the 
 soul, buoyant, indestructible, sailing space forever, 
 visiting every region, as a ship the sea.^* 
 
 This philosophical Absolutism, this finality, has 
 been found to be the most serviceable of intellectual 
 tools for leading the people away from the infini- 
 ties of real life, for confusing their minds, for mak- 
 ing them satisfied — with abstractions. Nobody has 
 insisted more strongly on the good of material life, 
 on the boundless possibilities of the future on this 
 earth, than did Whitman. He simply failed to 
 see the contrary implications of the current meta- 
 physics — which he had made his own. 
 
 We must not leave the impression, however, that 
 Whitman was retrogressive^ — even in his metaphy- 
 sics. The really important thing to be noted after 
 all is that his personality is always larger than his 
 ideas — and nearly always dominates them. Only a 
 few pages further on from the passage I have just 
 quoted he returns to his thoroughly revolutionary 
 thought — diametrically opposed to all permanence : 
 
 For you too (America) , as for all lands, the strug- 
 gle, the traitor, the wily person in ofifice, scrofulous 
 wealth, the surfeit of prosperity, the demonism of 
 
THE INDIVIDUAUST 27 
 
 greed, the hell of passion, the decay of faith, the long 
 postponement, the fossil-like lethargy, the ceaseless 
 need of revolutions, prophets, thunder-storms, deaths, 
 births, new projections and invigorations of ideas and 
 men." [My italics.] 
 
 Similarly, when addressing Christ and other 
 founders of religions, the great Greek writers, 
 Dante, Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, Kant and He- 
 gel, l^esays: 
 
 Ye powerful and resplendent ones! Ye were, in 
 your atmospheres, grown not for America, but rather 
 for her foes, the feudal and the old — while our genius 
 is democratic and modern. Yet could ye, indeed, but 
 breathe your breath of life into our New World's nos- 
 trils — not to enslave us, as now, but, for our needs, 
 to breed a spirit like your own — perhaps (dare we 
 to say it?) to dominate, even destroy, what you your- 
 selves have left! On your plane, and no less, but 
 even higher and wider, must we mete and measure 
 for to-day and here. I demand races of orbic bards, 
 with unconditional uncompromising sway. Come 
 forth, sweet democratic despots of the west I '"' 
 
 It is difficult indeed to escape the impression from 
 this and other passages that Whitman believed that 
 we are on the verge of an entirely new civilization 
 and a new age — far in advance of the America of 
 his day. He stands for outright rebellion, for the 
 
28 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 populace "that rise up at once against the never- 
 ending audacity of elected persons," for "the cease- 
 less need of revolutions, prophets, thunderstorms, 
 birth, death, new projections and invigorations of 
 the ideas of man," and for the destruction of the 
 old culture. 
 
 But when we ask what is to be put in the place 
 of the old civilization we find nothing definite, ex- 
 cept a sort of an idealization of the America he 
 knew — that of 1840 to 1890. Asked by Traubel 
 whether he saw a way out of our social problem he 
 replied, "I look forward to a world of small own- 
 ers." Traubel asked him whether a world of no 
 owners at all was not better, and insisted on an an- 
 swer. At first Whitman said: "I don't know. I 
 haven't thought it out: it sounds best: could it be 
 best ? Could it be made to work ?" But he finally 
 admitted : "I have to believe it : if I don't believe 
 that I couldn't believe anything." (Vol. Ill, p. 
 
 315-) 
 
 The question at once arises whether Whitman — 1 
 
 even in this instance — was not admitting commun- 
 ism only as an ultimate society without much prac- 
 tical relation to the immediate future. That this 
 was probably his real feeling is indicated by a state- 
 ment made a few days later : 
 
 "Sometimes, I think, I feel almost sure, Socialism 
 is the next thing coming. I shrink from it in some 
 ways : yet it looks like our only hope." 
 
THE INDIVIDUALIST 29 
 
 In a word, Whitman admitted the probability 
 of Socialism, but assumed no positive relation to- 
 wards it. 
 
 How then, did he propose to bring about the great 
 revolution he expected? The means he chooses 
 show that he failed entirely to realize the true nature 
 of the change to come. For he refuses to put his 
 faith in modern popular movements and calls instead 
 for "orbic bards" ; in place of the modern "cause," 
 he preaches a modernized revival of Hebrew pro- 
 phecy. 
 
 He is, in fact, almost a hero-worshiper, almost 
 a believer in the great man theory, though the hero 
 with Whitman is a prophet-bard instead of a states- 
 man-soldier. In his future America "the Presidents 
 shall not be the common referees so much as that 
 great race of poets shall" and in preparation for 
 this great function. Whitman's own scope of life, 
 he claims, is "the amplest of any yet in philosophy." 
 Yet, in apparent contradiction, this spiritual auto- 
 crat and law-giver is a democrat. "For every atom 
 belonging to me, as good belongs to you." 
 
 Here we see into the very heart of Whitman's 
 social philosophy. His role as the prophet of a new 
 religion of democracy makes him take himself as 
 the standard and the leader. No words can describe 
 his greatness and imiversality. He contains all 
 characters and experiences in himself. But others 
 are "as good" as he. That is, all are essentially 
 
30 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 alike. There are in reality no individuals in Whit- 
 man's world, only the indimdiiol. The only differ- 
 ence between persons is difference in size, as he 
 definitely states. Individuals are all commensurate, 
 larger or smaller, better or worse, and "size is only 
 development," that is, requires nothing but time and 
 opportunity. Essentially all persons have the same 
 potentialities. Their differences arise chiefly from 
 varying experiences. And these experiences are 
 due to the accidents either of geographical location 
 or of emplo)rment. Hence the crucial importance 
 ascribed to geography and to occupations in all 
 Whitman's writings. There Eire really no individ- 
 uals, there is only Man in his varying occupations. 
 And so Whitman feels the employments, under- 
 stands them as perhaps no poet or writer ever did 
 before. All human differences — ^with the exception 
 of general differences in temperament — ^being 
 traced to occupations, they become the source of 
 the most profound and endless romance. 
 
 But the strength of Whitman's social philosophy 
 is also its weakness. As individuals are supposed to 
 be essentially alike, human relations are supposed 
 to be essentially alike, and all are reduced to one 
 type. Whatever their occupations, all human be- 
 ings are, or should be, comrades, and no variation 
 of this relation is of any moment. Even difference 
 of sex is not to sub-divide this type-relation. 
 
 It follows that Whitman's concept of social rela- 
 
THE INDIVIDUAUST 31 
 
 tions and of society is as simplified and defective 
 as his concept of individuals. Human beings are 
 related two by two. The manifold forms of inter- 
 dependence of the members of larger social groups 
 and of communities are entirely secondary and 
 must not materially modify the "comrade" relation- 
 ship. Society — as an organized community — is 
 really non-existent. 
 
 And, finally, this romantic interest in occupations 
 leads him frequently into an ultra-conservative posi- 
 tion. For he assumes that in America every occupa- 
 tion is as desirable as every other occupation. 
 "Every employment is adorned." This is the essen- 
 tial social philosophy of his life and work. It is on 
 a par with the effort of Carlyle and the Tory demo- 
 crats to keep the lower classes contented by telling 
 them that all work is honorable — ^though, of course, 
 Whitman's motives were the very opposite to theirs, 
 and he was led into this radically false view by his 
 intense sociability and the traditional theories of 
 abstract democracy of the small property holders. 
 
 To the end of his life he failed to recognize the 
 overwhelming influence of conditions. When he 
 said to Traubel : "My leanings are all towards the 
 radicals: but I am not in any proper sense of the 
 word a revolutionnaire. ... I have always had a 
 latent toleration for people who choose the reac- 
 tionary course" (Vol. I, p. 193), he expressed his 
 essential position. Individuals, in so far as they 
 
32 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 differ fundamentally, are prcxiucts of their own 
 wills. Temperament and mental idiosyncrasy and 
 not occupation decide whether a man is a radical 
 or a reactionary. They both freely "choose" their 
 course, and so (doubtless) the truth lies some- 
 where between them. This was the general view 
 of Americans in Whitman's time and is the pre- 
 vailing view even to-day, though obviously it is 
 true only of differences within a given social class. 
 
 In many passages Whitman returns to this "ideo- 
 logical" social philosophy, as Marx would have 
 called it, the diametrical opposite, that is, of the 
 view that prevails to-day, not only among Socialists, 
 radicals, social reformers, business men and econo- 
 mists, but even among the majority of the population 
 in many countries. Underneath politics, we are told 
 in Traubel's memoirs as well as in Whitman's prose 
 and poetry, are "spiritual" forces; "The spiritual 
 influences back of ever)rthing else — subtle, unseen, 
 invisible, mainly discredited — they finally arbitrate 
 the social order. That strange, inarticulate, force 
 is. not less operative in the institutions of society — 
 in politics, literature, music, science, art — than in 
 the physical realm." (Vol. II, p. 84.) 
 
 Yet one of the main currents in Whitman's 
 thought, as we see even in the context from which 
 the above quotation is taken, is his recognition of 
 the importance of the material world. How are we 
 to account for this seeming contradiction? Whit- 
 
THE INDIVIDUALIST 33 
 
 man often recognized fully the importance of the 
 physiological side to the individual^ — but he usually 
 gave a preferred position to the psychological — and 
 only rarely did he harmonize the two. And, more- 
 over, when he did harmonize the two aspects of our 
 nature he rarely applied this inclusive standpoint to 
 the economic problems of society, to the material 
 things upon which both physiological and psycho- 
 logical development are so largely dependent. His 
 discovery of the vast importance of the material 
 universe was somewhat of a novelty in his time. 
 He failed to work out all the implications of this 
 very revolutionary discovery, because he was forced 
 to spend a large part of his energy in defending 
 even the half-way position he had reached. 
 
 At times he recognizes the importance of economic 
 forces. But forthwith he apologetically explains 
 them as only one among countless other factors. 
 We see this in the following passage : 
 
 One of the painful facts in connection with this 
 human misery — a fact insisted upon by the men who 
 know most and who know what to do with their 
 knowledge — is that the evil cannot be remedied by 
 any one change, one reform, or even half a dozen 
 changes and reforms, but must be accomplished by 
 countless forces working towards the one effect. 
 Hygiene will help — oh ! help much. But how will we 
 get our hygiene ? I am quite well aware that there are 
 economic considerations, also, to be taken into account. 
 
34 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 It strikes me again, as it always has struck me, that 
 the whole business finally comes back to the good 
 body — not back to wealth, to poverty, but to the 
 strong body — the sane, sufficient body. . . . 
 
 I think all the scientists would agree with me, as 
 I agree with the scientists, that a beautiful, compe- 
 tent, sufficing body is the prime force making towards 
 the virtues in civilization, life, history. I think I now 
 see better what you mean when you speak of the 
 economic problems as coming before all the rest and 
 though I have not stated it in that extreme way my- 
 self I do not doubt your position: I have great faith 
 in science — real science: the science that is the sci- 
 ence of the soul as well as the science of the body 
 (you know, many men of half sciences seem to forget 
 the soul) . ^^ 
 
 Here is a bundle of strange contradictions. The 
 physiological is all important, he says, hygiene 
 scarcely less so. This is a recognition of the very 
 basis of the economic view. Yet wealth and pov- 
 erty, he holds, are of little account, and he gives to 
 economic considerations a wholly subordinate role. 
 
 The same contradictions appear at times in his 
 views with regard to social evolution. In innumer- 
 able passages he seems to deny the evolution both 
 of human individuals and of human society; every- 
 thing great is spiritual and eternal, even democ- 
 racy: 
 
THE INDIVIDUALIST 35 
 
 Take Democracy, for instance: The American, 
 the average American, thinks he has a new idea. The 
 truth is that even our proud modern definitions of 
 democracy are antiquated — can be heard reflected in 
 the language of the Elizabethan period in England 
 — in the atmosphere created by Bacon, Ben Jonson, 
 and the rest of that crowd. I would not like to 
 say there might not have been latent in the utter- 
 ances of that group of men the seed stuff of our 
 American liberty — not to speak of the still older sug- 
 gestions of it to be found in Greek and Roman 
 sources.''^ 
 
 It need scarcely be pointed out that there was and 
 could be no real democracy in Greece, Rome, or 
 Elizabethan England. 
 
 Whitman's social philosophy was still the Utopian 
 individualism of the eighteenth century. He be- 
 lieved in the "Idea" of the bard rather than in the 
 movement of the age. So far was he from con- 
 ceiving' social evolution that as late as 1872 he 
 actually said that "our political organization is firmly 
 established as far ahead as we can calculate." And 
 he failed altogether to realize that even "science" 
 and "democracy" would have to be revolutionized 
 and socialized, before they could serve as the basis 
 of a real social democracy. 
 
 There are other passages where he gives us to 
 understand that in America all political and social 
 evolution has ceased, our constitution and political 
 
36 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 institutions having reached perfection. In America 
 are "the only stable forms of politics upon the 
 earth" and in the United States "no innovations 
 must be permitted on the stern severities of our 
 liberty and equality." 
 
 No more fatal fallacy is conceivable than this 
 idea of Whitman's that the America of small prop- 
 erty owners that he knew was already leading the 
 world into a new civilization. America may indeed 
 come to lead the world, but this can only be in pro- 
 portion as she moves as far away as possible from 
 the civilization of small farms, in which she was 
 merely repeating the early experience of other coun- 
 tries, towards that organization of industry where 
 she may yet become a real pioneer. He was blind to 
 the obvious truth that, while the geographical and 
 physical conquest of the continent by the pioneers 
 paved the way for civilization, it reduced the 
 pioneers themselves in large measure to primitive 
 functions, to mere primitive men. In many essen- 
 tial ways their tasks and manner of life were the 
 same as those of the barbarian pioneers of ancient 
 Germany, for example, and of all other pioneers 
 since the dawn of civilization. Whitman was thus 
 led to a complete reversal of the fundamental eco- 
 nomic truth. For, as a matter of fact, in so far as 
 the Americans were mere pioneers they were neces- 
 sarily centuries or even millenniums behind the Eu- 
 ropeans. 
 
THE INDIVIDUALIST 37 
 
 Yet here again, fortunately, is inconsistency. At 
 times Whitman clearly recognized the evolution of 
 society and the influence of this evolution over ideas 
 and ideals. A good illustration is in his changing 
 views about Emerson, who was undoubtedly the 
 writer and philosopher who most influenced him. 
 In 1872, he wrote in a letter: 
 
 Emerson has just been this way lecturing. He 
 maintains about the same attitude as twenty-five or 
 thirty years ago (1842-1847, the period of Emer- 
 son's essays). It seems to me pretty thin. Immense 
 upheavals have occurred since then, putting the world 
 into new relations.^' 
 
 Yet on several occasions during Traubel's con- 
 versations in 1888 Whitman used terms of the most 
 extreme praise with regard to Emerson — referring 
 to him as being "always right" and "almost ulti- 
 mate." 
 
 This seemed to be a lapse into Whitman's earliest 
 feeling for Emerson, acquired before the war, and 
 on October 4th of the same year (1888) we find 
 him taking up once more the view of his maturity, 
 that of 1872. After having read a little from 
 Emerson he said : 
 
 As I read, an old feeling came back to me — a feel- 
 ing returned after the lapse of many years — a feeling 
 that the book is a little, just a little, antique. Then 
 
38 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 after a brief pause and some evident thought: And 
 here and there signs of preaching — ^just a little of it: 
 don't you perceive it?^* 
 
 One might say that Whitman's reverence for 
 Emerson — and all that , Emerson stood for — was 
 such as to make a very severe test for his moral 
 courage; and few men have more clearly had the 
 courage of their convictions in most directions. He 
 perceived, in 1872, that Emerson (like all intel- 
 lectual leaders of past generations), must begin to 
 mean less and less to us as the years go by. His 
 consciousness of this fact was equally strong in 
 1888, but he hardly had the courage to give voice to 
 his conviction. It was nothing less than intellectual 
 awe that Whitman felt for Emerson — feeling that 
 was justified both on the ground of the latter's in- 
 tellectual attainments and capacity and because 
 Whitman's purely intellectual development was far 
 inferior. Nevertheless Whitman might have 
 trusted his feeling about Emerson, even if he 
 would not match his intellect against him. 
 
 We can only conclude either that Whitman never 
 fully realized the great truth that all ideas and 
 ideals are mortal, the products of social evolution, 
 and lose their significance with time — or that he 
 did not wish to face this truth, in view of its 
 possible application to his own work. 
 
Ill 
 
 HORACE TRAUBEL, 
 
 Forerunner of a New Literature 
 
 A WHOLE new world has been born since Whit- 
 ■^ *•, man's days and Traubel is of this world," says 
 George D. Herron. 
 
 "Whitman himself would be the first to recoghize 
 this. Traubel walks in the light of a social vision 
 which had not broken upon man even when Whit- 
 man went out into the larger quest." 
 
 Similarities in the work of Whitman and Trau^ 
 bel will strikie the reader on nearly every page. But 
 the differences are no less vital. The most funda- 
 mental distinction is undoubtedly the fact that Trau- 
 bel is a Socialist, a part of the democratic movement, 
 "the outspoken advocate and herald of commun- 
 ism," as a German critic expresses it. 
 
 Traubel says that Whitman felt that to stand for 
 any particular movement, no matter how just it 
 might be, was to limit himself, while he feels, on 
 the contrary, that if a writer is strong enough, he 
 ought to be able to keep all of Whitman's breadth of 
 
 39 
 
40 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 vision and yet be a partisan of a cause on which 
 he believes all the future of democracy — and of 
 humanity — depends. 
 
 With this fundamental contrast of viewpoint it 
 is impossible that Traubel should be a mere disci- 
 ple of Whitman's. When some one compared Mase- 
 field to Whitman recently, Traubel made a protest 
 which shows how he feels about such a relationship: 
 
 Some one has spoke of John Masefield as the Walt 
 Whitman of 1912. Which means — don't it? — that 
 Walt Whitman was the John Masefield of 1855. This 
 is like killing two men with one shot. But why kill 
 anybody ? Why kill Whitman with Masefield or Mase- 
 field with Whitman ? Why not let them both live ? ^° 
 
 Of course there can be no question that Trau- 
 bel's chief significance to the general public up to 
 the present has been that he is the foremost living 
 interpreter of Whitman's work and life, as well as 
 the chief continuator of many of his ideas and lit- 
 erary innovations. But Traubel has developed — 
 along both lines. And, moreover, he already stands 
 to a large and growing public for another thing as 
 important as this noteworthy development of Whit- 
 manism; he is probably the leading writer in this 
 country, if not in the world, whose work is com- 
 pletely saturated with Socialism and, indeed, grows 
 exclusively out of Socialism, in the broader sense of 
 the word^ It seems that in Traubel we have at last 
 
HORACE TRAUBEL 41 
 
 a forerunner of those Socialist writers who are pre- 
 destined, if we are ever to have a Socialist cul- 
 ture — not writers of the first rank who are inci- 
 dentally Socialists (of whom there are many) nor 
 Socialists who are able writers incidentally, but So- 
 cialist-writers or writer-Socialists, who are equally 
 eminent in either capacity. If Traubel is indeed a 
 forerunner of the literature of the future in this 
 sense, his appearance has an almost revolutionary 
 significance. For as Herron has pointed out, the 
 purely literary product of such Socialist writers 
 as William Morris (as opposed to their social 
 writings) did not spring from the social move- 
 ment. 
 
 The contrast between Traubel's standpoint and 
 that of Morris has been drawn by Traubel him- 
 self, when he says of Morris: 
 
 His speculative Utopias were wonderful. But he 
 couldn't have lived in them. They were not made 
 for mortal men and women but for immortal super- 
 people. I don't mean by this that he went too far. 
 He went far enough with his dreams. But he didn't 
 go far enough with his facts. He felj that he was 
 dreaming beyond truth. But I can see all kinds of 
 truth beyond any possible, dreams. I have such faith 
 in the democracy that I expect to see it so expanded 
 as to make the best man's best dream vulgar and 
 belated."' 
 
42 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 The inspiration of Morris arose out of his be- 
 liefs as to what can be done with the people ; Trau- 
 bel's inspiration comes from what the people are 
 doing with themselves. He is not an idealist, he is 
 a realist. 
 
 Nothing can better suggest Traubel's view of lit- 
 erature than his own passionate reaction against 
 the literature and the writers of the present day. 
 A recent address to contemporary poets shows — < 
 magnificently — both his own position and the nature 
 of this reaction: 
 
 You who put words on yourselves as chains. . . . 
 You to whom a trust is given have betrayed it. I 
 believe in the sacredness of the word. I want words 
 to live. I want words to be creators. Some writers 
 are so vital that they can't say "and " or "the" or 
 "but" without thrilling you. There are some writers 
 so dead they can't say immortality without a funeral. 
 I want the living word. How can I get it? By 
 using words instead of being used by words. By 
 speaking out of my heart instead of out of books. 
 By not trying to write. By living. . . . 
 
 Words are the cant of our religion. Words are 
 the sophistry of our law. Words are the fog we 
 lose our way in. We'd be safe if it wasn't for words. 
 Words are our peril. Words are the obstacles in the 
 way. If you want to be understood don't talk. 
 Whatever you have to say, don't trust it to words. 
 Try not to try. ... To be considered clever. To be 
 
HORACE TRAUBEL 43 
 
 a best seller. To go into many editions. To be in- 
 vited to lecture in colleges. To be asked to write 
 for the magazines. To be in demand. That's what 
 you use words for. So as to be listed in the lit- 
 erary four hundred. . . . What are you doing with 
 word^? Giving them to life or giving them to death? 
 Making them counterfeit or keeping them genuine? 
 Not trying to get life from words? But rather giv- 
 ing life to words? 
 
 You writers who are trying to write. Stop trying' 
 to write. Then you can write. Live. Let the writ- 
 ing take care of itself. . . . You are not to produce 
 a work of art. You are to produce a work of life. 
 . . . You've got to give up everything to get life. 
 The whole language if necessary. The whole fabric 
 of delicate grace. All the flowers of speech. All the 
 rhymes and lilts. All the niceties of manner and 
 the assurances of routine. They must all go. All 
 effort must go. You've not only got to be free of 
 the alphabet. And not only free of the traditions. 
 And not only free of the cliques. But you've got to 
 be free of effort. You've got to cease trying. You've 
 got to get where you have stopped caring or not 
 caring.^' 
 
 You wonder why the people don't care for what 
 you say. I'll tell you why. Because the people are 
 more interested in how you live than in what you 
 say. You don't talk out of your lives. You talk 
 out of books. You are not creators. You are beg- 
 gars and borrowers and stealers. You don't build 
 
44 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 from foundations. You only hang flowers on the 
 walls. You are decorators. That is the reason the 
 people have turned away from you. You first turned 
 away from the people. . . . The poets meet together 
 and tell each other what a poor lot the people are. 
 How much the people need to be educated. How 
 little the people know of essentials in the spiritual 
 realm. How great a gap there is between the cul- 
 turally saved and the culturally damned. How glori- 
 ous it would be to have a world of poets rather than 
 a world of people.". . . Poetry is no place for a 
 man. It is only a place for a poet.^' 
 
 Traubel is neither a poet's poet nor the poet of 
 a privileged educated class. He is a people's poet. 
 He will not confine his work to themes usually con- 
 sidered poetic, he will take in all the deeper and 
 larger interests of man : 
 
 Before books and after books is the human soul, 
 Before the beauty and eminence of that which is writ- 
 ten is the superior beauty and eminence of that 
 which is written about, 
 Before the magnificence of the greatest book comes 
 the majesty of the meanest soul.^° 
 
 And the human soul, in a period such as that 
 in which we are living, expresses itself tnost fully 
 in some relation with the social movement of the 
 times, and is necesssarily most deeply concerned with 
 the tremendous social revolution that is impending : 
 
HORACE TRAUBEL 45 
 
 I am hailed as the courier and promise of social 
 
 regeneration. . . . 
 Drilled not by schools and traditions but in the stem 
 
 clash of revolt.*" 
 
 It might be supposed that Traubel's radicalism 
 is merely the now familiar radicalism of half the 
 poets and writers of the day ; but he is not merely a 
 vague and well-meaning radical, he is a militant 
 revolutionist. His criticism of Masefield, a typical 
 radical, would apply to all the rest. He complains 
 that they are not democrats in their inner being, 
 but merely strive to become democrats, and do de- 
 mocracy the honor of making it their ideal: 
 
 It seems like literary slumming. Like the humor 
 of the people who put off their laces for a night and 
 go into the east sides or south sides of cities for 
 experience. You can't enter the temple by such a door. 
 Starving yourslf to death is not the same as being 
 starved to death. . . .'^ 
 
 Traubel does not believe that there is any such 
 thing as poetry as a separate entity apart from 
 all the rest of life. His view amounts to a complete 
 rejection of nearly everything that we have hitherto 
 considered as poetry and art: 
 
 Do you help me to live? That is the question I 
 ask the author. ... All other possible questions stand 
 
46 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 aside for this question. I do not ask any man: Are; 
 you an artist? That will determine itself. I ask 
 every man : Do you know how to live ? Living is the 
 only sufficient art. All other art falls short. . . . Do 
 you pour yourself out to the world in floods of re- 
 generating conviction ? ^^ 
 
 I say of poetry what Spinoza said of religion. To 
 define it is to deny it. ... I don't get enjoyment 
 out of poetry whether or no. I get it out of life. 
 If you can get life into a poem or a picture or a 
 song, I enjoy it. I don't enjoy it as a poem or a 
 picture. I enjoy it as life. If you don't bring me 
 life you bring me nothing. If you bring me art for 
 art's sake. If you bring me beauty that's its own ex- 
 cuse for being. I still say no. I can't get on to it. 
 I know life for life's sake. I know life as its own 
 excuse for being. But your detached mechanisms and 
 your segregated graces miss the mark. All the poems 
 may die. And all poetry may be left. . . . What it is 
 that happens when I like something somebody says 
 or writes I can't say. That thing working that way 
 in my blood may be poetry in action. But if you 
 ask me to put it to the proof I yield the case. I 
 don't know what a man is. How should I know what 
 poetry is? You can't confine poetry to words. But 
 you can confine it to life. If the poet is the maker 
 then poetry is creation. Creation may put itself into 
 phrases. Or it may put itself into processes. If 
 you enjoy life then you enjoy poetry. The poet gets 
 into things. Gets behind things. Goes to roots. Hur- 
 ries on ahead. Participates in the infinite reactions 
 
HORACE TRAUBEL 47 
 
 of phenomena. ... I doubt if what is traditionally 
 called jpoetry to-day will go by that name in the 
 future.'' 
 
 Traubel is perfectly aware that his work is not all 
 poetry in the old sense of the term, but suggests that 
 it may be more welcome than the old poetry: 
 
 What can it be ? you say : your poems are not poems 
 but they are good to have around.'* 
 
 Traubel's admirers do not claim for his poetry the 
 same inspired lyric quality that is foimd in Whit- 
 man. But they claim that it has other qualities. 
 It is even more profoundly emotional, more com- 
 pletely and exclusively human. We cannot do bet- 
 ter than to quote a critic of Traubel in T. P.'s 
 Weekly on this point : 
 
 His poems are in the Whitman form. Rhymeless"^ 
 recitatives, rhapsodies and apostrophes, in simple, di- 
 rect and often vehement language. We seek in 
 "Optimos" in vain for purple patches and conceits 
 such as abound in "Leave of Grass." Walt Whitman 
 was called the "Good Gray Poet," but his poetry was 
 never gray. Traubel has the same passion for hu- 
 manity, the same loving faith in common, average 
 men and women, and, although he chants his senti- 
 ments well enough, you never expect him to surprise 
 you by bursting into song. 
 
48 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 In spite of the high-seriousness of his poems, I 
 find more originaHty and even more poetry in his prose 
 — ^that quaintly flickering prose with its swift, vivid 
 little sentences, and its readiness to give a helping 
 hand to unliterary idiom and the fallen language of 
 the streets. "Chants Communal" is a modern mas- 
 terpiece. Certainly nothing has come to us from 
 America with quite such an inspired ring about it 
 since "Leaves of Grass." I wish some English pub- 
 lisher would have the sense to publish it and our 
 people the sense to absorb its wisdom. "Chants Com- 
 munal" pumps wisdom with the quick monotony of 
 a mitrailleuse pumping lead, but every time it hits the 
 mark it restores the faculty of life. Traubel would 
 make the deadest soul enthusiastic about life.'^j 
 
 If we wish to understand what Traubel means 
 when he says he does not regard himself primarily 
 as a poet, let us read the reasons why he did not 
 choose to regard a writer he admired as much as 
 he did Tolstoy as being primarily, a writer : 
 
 Tolstoy was not a great writer. He was some- 
 thing else great before he was a great writer. He 
 was a force first of all. And then a force again. 
 And then perhaps later on he was a writer. He was 
 a greater writer for being a great force. He never 
 seemed to me to write. He seemed to me to live. 
 I never thought of him as writing. I always thought 
 of him as living. The whole men are not techni- 
 cians. They spend no time trying to be artisfs.'* 
 
HORACE TRAUBEL 49 
 
 The great men who write, to follow Traubel's 
 thought (I am purposely dropping the term "great 
 writer"), are those for whom words and writing 
 are the merest tools. What has chanced to be writ- 
 ten down, then, is the smallest part of such men 
 and their lives, while they themselves are mere drops 
 in the great ocean of humanity. In the face of this 
 all-important fact mere words and phrases fall into 
 comparative insignificance : 
 
 The written life has made light of the unwritten life, 
 
 The song that was sung has taken the place of the 
 song that was left unsung: 
 
 We have united in the praise of words, in the adora- 
 tion of the pageantry of phrases. . . . 
 
 Who can account for the mysterious emptiness of 
 words? ... 
 
 Words are stuffed and choked with their stale air. 
 
 And I can already brush dust off the newest words. . . . 
 
 When tried by the test of words life is bound to 
 fail. . . . 
 
 Words never lead the soul, words always follow the 
 soul. 
 
 Words are the appeal and the record but life is the 
 hand that writqp.^^ 
 
 In Traubel's view language and literature should 
 be not mere vehicles of thought but vehicles of life 
 and action. They must not only have life behind 
 them, they must have life before them, and visibly 
 
50 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 affect the life of the reader or' listener. The real 
 poet is "the master whose words are no more mere 
 words but events and persons." Used in this way, 
 as a means of communication from one active in- 
 dividual, to another equally active, words may be the 
 most pregnant form of action: 
 
 You say words do nothing. You call words to ac- 
 count. I see deeds that are empty and I see words 
 that are iulU^ 
 
 So Traubel admires most of all those writers who 
 are vital human forces — even if they are not in the 
 first rank from a merely literary standpoint. Their 
 work lives in human beings, if not in books. Among 
 such forces he classes Tom Paine, Robert Ingersoll, 
 and Wendell Phillips : 
 
 Paine, Ingersoll and Phillips were all marvel- 
 ously vital human forces. But they were not lit- 
 erary. Not professional. The polite arts were ab- 
 horrent to them. They always made that manifest. 
 So that the esthetic historians who put the way a 
 thing's done above what is done have never regarded 
 them seriously. What did Paine ever do for the 
 literature of the world? Or Phillips? Or Ingersoll? 
 They ask me that as if it had some point. I'm not 
 concerned with that. I only want to know what 
 they've done for the world. The world's literature 
 can take its chances. The fact is that, though they're 
 
HORACE TRAUBEL 51 
 
 all dead, they're all very much alive still. And 
 they've had plenty of time to die. Especially Paine: 
 he's had time to spare. And they're still potent. 
 Call them what you choose. It's always worried some 
 people whether Walt Whitman should be called a 
 poet. They're willing to call him something. And 
 something big and worth while. But poet? No. 
 They shrink from desecrating so sacred a word. So 
 with the three men I'm talking about. . . . Phillips 
 and Ingersoll both survive. They're walking dele- 
 gates. They stir up strife. They keep the waters 
 from stagnating. Being dead is not conclusive. For 
 they still live. I'd rather be a moving factor in the 
 average life than an essay in a book. Some repu- 
 tations continue in a book. They have ceased to be 
 entities. They have receded into a record. . . . 
 Phillips was eminently impractical. Everybody said 
 so. The practical man is so proud of himself. The 
 business man. The man of business in politics. He 
 wants to do things. He says he's the only one who 
 can do them. But I notice he makes as many mis- 
 takes as anybody. ... If a dream has any defects 
 it's in seeing too far. If a fact has any defect it's 
 in not seeing far enough. But nothing's so much a 
 fact as an inclusive dream. And nothing's so much 
 a dream as an inclusive fact. Give a man like Phil- 
 lips time enough and he's more practical than the 
 best executive of his generation. What the possi- 
 bilist does he has to do right now or it's useless. 
 What the impossibilist does he can take his time 
 with because it's bound to be useful in the end.^' 
 
52 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 In Traubel's view then, as in that of Whitman, 
 the poet's sphere is the universe, or rather, to avoid 
 any suggestion of abstractions, the poet's world is 
 the whole life of men — ^and not those chosen im- 
 ages, objects, feelings, or states of consciousness 
 with which poets have hitherto been exclusively con- 
 cerned. 
 
 There can be little question that Whitman's ex- 
 periments in extending the realm of poetry to em- 
 brace the whole life of man (every trifle included) 
 sometimes appear as mechanical and as failures even 
 to his most ardent admirers. Such failures occur 
 less frequently with Traubel, although he also seems, 
 occasionally, to restrain a sort of transcendental 
 opinion that all the distinctions that mankind has 
 hitherto made between the significant and the in- 
 significant, between beauty and ugliness, are worth- 
 less: 
 
 For now I see that all the effort I spent trying 
 to discover why lives are beautiful or ugly has shown 
 me that all ugliness and all beauty finally must lapse 
 in one transfiguration.*" 
 
 Traubel's universality or humanism appears 
 better in his social philosophy than in his esthetics, 
 and especially the fact that he is willing to be a par- 
 tizan — ^when the cause is sufficiently great, in his 
 absorption in the daily life of the people, and in his 
 
HORACE TRAUBEL 53 
 
 romantic feeling that there is no sameness or uni- 
 formity there, but a life that is always new and in- 
 finite in its variety and power, even under the tragic 
 limitations of our present civilization: 
 
 Some artists think they can't be artists if they are 
 partizans. Every great artist is a partizan. The lit- 
 tle fellows are afraid the revolution will master them. 
 So they run away from it. The big fellows know they 
 can master the revolution. So they welcome it.*^ 
 
 Whitman idealizes while Traubel realizes the life 
 that is in the people. Whitman idealizes the actual 
 commonplaces of life. Traubel realizes the infi- 
 nitely greater beauty of the possible life that still 
 lies undeveloped in the common man, a life which 
 at present is either entirely suppressed or is only 
 beginning to express itself. For example, he feels 
 the deepest interest in all the literary channels by 
 which the life of the people comes to expression, 
 such as the popular newspapers. It may be doubted 
 if any professional journalist gives a more serious 
 or a broader attention to nearly everything with 
 which the newspapers deal. 
 
 Traubel comes into intimate contact with a great 
 many persons, as many as he can possibly manage 
 to meet, whether casually or through mutual sym- 
 pathies. But direct contact with very many indi- 
 viduals is impossible for an industrious writer, and 
 
54 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 the great majority of books deal either with the past 
 or with an abstract or literary view of Hfe, so that 
 Traubel, or any man in his position, is naturally 
 reduced in some measure to a third means of meet- 
 ing other minds and becoming acquainted with the 
 lives of other persons — ^namely, the periodical liter- 
 ature of the day. 
 
 It is needless to say that Traubel's view of what 
 really is significant in the news is thoroughly revo- 
 lutionary : 
 
 I go about looking for good news. . . . Yes, good 
 news. News of the people. News of the growth and 
 revolt of the people. News of the fulfilments of 
 the people. That's my good news. And I insist upon 
 it Avherever I am. Nothing less than this interests 
 me. ... I read the papers for good news. Not news. 
 I want good news. And I don't care who you are, 
 I ask good news of you. I don't ask you what you 
 think of me. I ask you for good news. . . . Those 
 upon whom all culture is founded. Those who plant 
 and raise the trees but are kicked out of the orchard. 
 They are my good news. And when I see them ready 
 at last to take what belongs to them they become my 
 better news. And when in a farther day they as- 
 sume the earth they will become my best news. That's 
 the only kind of news my heart is hungry for and 
 is ready to receive. ... I don't want news of your 
 aristocracies whether of parlors or philosophies. That 
 news is always bad news. I want news of the streets 
 
HORACE TRAUBEL 55 
 
 and of peoples. That news is always good news^ I 
 know the peoples can't always invite their oppressors 
 out. They won't be invited out. They have to be 
 thrown out. That news is good news. I don't want 
 to see anybody hurt. But I won't see my good news 
 hurt. My good news comes first of all.*^ 
 
 Traubel has not "adopted" the standpoint of the 
 masses, he is and always has been in every way one 
 of them, and quite naturally feels as they do : 
 
 I repeat myself? So I do. But the evil, too, re- 
 peats itself. As long as the evil repeats itself I 
 will repeat myself.*' 
 
 As long as the evils of the time are in the fore- 
 front of the people's consciousness they have ever 
 a fresh interest — to the people. 
 
 While Traubel, then, is one of the people, he 
 claims that it is open to every one to be in the same 
 position if he so desires. For the sentimentalist who 
 cries out, "What can I do?" he has no use. To this 
 man Traubel answers by pointing out what he him- 
 self has done, and has been ready to do, for the 
 cause : 
 
 What can I do? I can give myself to life when 
 other men refuse themselves to life. . . . What can 
 I do? I can gather the fragments of my life to- 
 gether into one coherent life. . . . What can I do? 
 
56 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 Believe in man. Go without income. Walk on my 
 uppers. Give life one hundred per cent, of myself. 
 Not care first what other people think of me. Care 
 first what I think of myself. Not declare against 
 the sins of the world and go on sinning. Stop sin- 
 ning. Give up property for people. Not stake 
 my private interest against the total human interest. 
 Not be afraid of slander. Not feel bad when I am 
 misunderstood. Expect to find all my neighbors 
 arrayed against me. Remain contented when no one 
 will come near me. I can starve. I can die. That 
 is what I can do." 
 
 The same thought, with similar autobiographical 
 illustrations, is continued in another "Collect": 
 
 I always felt I had a particular thing to do in the 
 world. I did not feel that I was an atomic acci- 
 dent. I never conceded that there could be uses for 
 stars and no uses for people. So I started myself 
 going. I assumed myself. . . . This put me in the 
 line somewhere. Gave me a place. Set me right 
 with my own consciousness. Made me realize myself. 
 I did not worry from that time on over what I could 
 do and could not do. ... I was one of the stillest 
 palest boys in my crowd. And I did not always 
 or ever maybe blurt out what I thought of myself 
 or my destiny. But I assumed myself before every- 
 thing else. Whatever the surface of the stream may 
 have said, underneath everywhere you would surely 
 have seen in me this inveterate humbling pride. 
 
HORACE TRAUBEL 57 
 
 Things have been against me. Most things for most 
 of the time. But this has been for me. When the 
 outlook was clouded the inlook was clear. When 
 there was nothing else left this was left. I was often 
 without a cent. But I was never without this. There 
 may have been reason for it. But it endured and 
 was triumphant. It was my flaming immortal fire. 
 ... I got to that stage very early and am likely to 
 stay very late. I looked innocent as death but I was 
 guilty as life. I had no intentions. I had not cleared 
 myself up. I had not debated myself out. I did not 
 know what I was to do. I did not have schemes 
 to try upon society. I left all that for time and events 
 to take care of. All I did was to assume myself. . . ." 
 
 Here are some more autobiographical lines, with 
 the same moral, written by Traubel on the twenty- 
 fifth anniversary of his monthly publication, The 
 Conservator: 
 
 So I kept on : while my betters were doing the recog- 
 nized things I was left with what was discarded: 
 
 I took my place in the ranks : I was happy : it's best 
 of all to just serve unseen: 
 
 It's not half as much fun being the rose as the root: 
 oh! how I like it down there in the ground! 
 
 It's not half as much fun eating the fruit as hav- 
 ing been the cause of the fruit: oh! how I like it 
 being a ray of the sun! 
 
 It's more my wish to be something very necessary 
 yet totally unknown : to be required but denied : 
 
58 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 That's how I've traveled my voyage: under cover: 
 
 invisible: never named by those who make out the 
 
 lists : 
 A mere atom, maybe, yet a necessary grain of sand: 
 
 perhaps the most needed item of all yet unspelled 
 
 in words. 
 
 Yet there is no admixture of humility in Trau- 
 bel's feeling about himself — ^though his passionate 
 desire to be at one with the average man or woman 
 excludes all egoism. He continues: 
 
 The hidden cause: the veiled omnipotence: the cur- 
 tained fuel of the flame: 
 
 Oh! that was what I wanted to be: I'd give up all 
 for that: that would be my gladdest reward: 
 
 Not heavens with the saved nor hells with the damned 
 but mere days with their simple men and women : 
 
 I came from them : I've stayed with them : I've never 
 left the level: now we're still equal mates: 
 
 Talking of the same ideals : matching ourselves against 
 the same forces: stirred by the glow of the same 
 victories. 
 
 By the circumstances of his birth, then, by his 
 character, by his intimacy with Whitman, by his 
 work, by his associations, by his daily life and by 
 his whole experience, Traubel is fitted for the role 
 he has assumed, that of poet-prophet of democracy. 
 If his writing is separated by a whole world from 
 
HORACE TRAUBEL 59 
 
 that of other writers, with the partial exception of 
 Whitman, it is because his Hfe has been an entirely 
 different life. His moral appeals are not those of 
 the professional moralists, who drive their reader 
 through a blind sense of duty to a far-off goal, but 
 of a pioneer who has actually seen a new country 
 and can convince every open-minded and sensible 
 hearer that it is in all ways better than the old. The 
 reason why his appeals draw nothing from the past 
 and look wholly to the future is because they give 
 us the personal experience of one who has projected 
 his life almost wholly into the future. Take for ex- 
 ample that typical "Collect," "What Are You Do- 
 ing for the Cause?" A few passages will be 
 enough to show that while there is nothing left in it 
 of the old morality, Traubd's writing shows a depth 
 of conviction, and radiates a power, perhaps beyond 
 any message that has been at all adapted to our 
 time or has proved even tolerable to modem ears. 
 He writes : 
 
 What are you doing for the cause? Not for your- 
 self. For all. Not to keep yourself going. To keep 
 the race going. What are you doing for to-morrow 
 that you didn't do yesterday for to-day? I don't say 
 for what cause. I say for any cause. I don't ask 
 you what you are doing with tasks I might set you. 
 I ask what you are doing with tasks that you your- 
 self set. I know what you do in eating and work- 
 ing at your trade and sleeping at night. You do 
 
6o WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 that in order not to die. Everybody does that. I 
 ask you what you are doing in order to live. I know 
 what you say. I read what you write. I have heard 
 your promises. But this is not enough. This hardly 
 tells me what I want to learn. I know what you do 
 with what you have to do. I want to know what you 
 do with what you don't have to do. . . . 
 
 Every man somehow belongs first to himself. Do 
 I say that? Yes. Then I say something more. He 
 also belongs first to the race. He stands for per- 
 sonality. There he's for himself. He stands for 
 service and progress. There he stands for the race. 
 I can't interpret his moods or his impulses. I can 
 guess them. But their interior purport is beyond 
 the reach of my vision. That is why I ask: What 
 are you doing for the cause? And that is why I 
 say: I shall not say what cause. The cause has 
 done everything for you. What are you doing for 
 it? . . . 
 
 You are doing nothing for the cause. You are 
 making a living. But you are not making life. You 
 are personal. You have not surcharged yourself with 
 the general inspirations. . . . Making good because 
 some one else makes bad. That is your code. . . . 
 Letting any one do the work of progress. You 
 doing nothing. That's the code. . . . You encourage 
 them to go on. But you don't go on with them. . . . 
 My ears know your voice. I can tell when you are 
 around, though you say nothing. Little as you know 
 it, I follow you through all the intricacies of your 
 psychic retreats. Do you think you can cover your 
 
HORACE TRAUBEL 6i 
 
 tracks? Right or left, up or down, in or out, across 
 or around: wherever you go I tally you. Every step 
 you take is within my horizon. Do you resent my 
 inevitable attendance? You say: I mean the same 
 thing you do. And you say: I am with you, only 
 not so fast. You say: You can count on me, too, 
 but not too soon. You say: You can depend on my 
 good will, but not too far. You've always some rea- 
 son for holding back. Some reason for not putting 
 up money or service. Some reason for withholding 
 your confession. Somebody is always too violent 
 for you. Too extreme. Too exacting. Too in- 
 evitable. You want at the same time to be and not 
 to be. . . . 
 
 What are you doing for the cause? You do every- 
 thing for the cause. You work for the cause as the 
 sun sheds light. . . . You don't wait to hear some 
 one else say the word first. You say it. ... I never 
 spend a minute trying to find out what my duty is. 
 There is no duty. I'm just driven. There is no duty. 
 I must keep on. When I say cause I say sun and 
 stars and earth and air and food. I say love and 
 those I love. I say that which makes life and is 
 made by life. If I hesitated an instant there would 
 be no cause again. . . . 
 
 I don't want you to say: I'll ask my wife or my 
 husband or my father or my mother or somebody. 
 I don't even want you to ask your own spirit. I 
 want you to act. / want you to answer before the 
 question is put. I want you to spring before the 
 challenge is issued. [My italics.] 
 
IV 
 
 THE HUMANIST 
 
 "Men, All Men, and Nothing but Men" 
 
 '' I ^HE foundations of Traubel's social philosophy 
 ■*■ are not ideas at all, but a passionate, persist- 
 ent and sincere interest in all the human units that 
 compose the social whole. Whitman's social phil- 
 osophy, as we have seen, was based, in part on his 
 social instinct, in part on current metaphysics ; Trau- 
 bel's is based almost wholly on social instinct. — ^the 
 only admixture of metaphysics being what he has 
 taken over from Whitman. Whitman was pro- 
 foundly interested in "the All," "eternity," "the 
 soul," and so on. Traubel is touched with Whit- 
 man's dogmatic optimism and interest in "eternity," 
 but his metaphysical side is less developed and is 
 altogether dissolved and lost in his social feeling. 
 For Whitman's "All" he substitutes "people," or 
 "the crowd." 
 
 If we seek a phrase to cover Traubel's philosophy, 
 we must call it a practical or concrete humanism. 
 Human beings are not only the goal of his thought, 
 they are its sole subject. But he does not carry this 
 
 62 
 
THE HUMANIST 63 
 
 idea out to its intellectual absurdity as Whitman so 
 often does. He does not — as a rule — profess an 
 equal interest in all human beings (as Whitman 
 does). He does not — as a rule — profess an equal 
 interest in all parts of human nature (as Whitman 
 seems to do). 
 
 Yet, while Traubel turns his back on all systematic 
 or formal philosophy, he is sub-consciously logical 
 and systematic — more so than Whitman. He does 
 not contradict himself. He finds no need to reserve 
 that privilege for himself — as Whitman and Emer- 
 son did. The reason for the difference is that there 
 is no vital contradiction between his individual phil- 
 osophy and his social philosophy, as it was inevit- 
 able there should be in their time. He sees life 
 steadily and he sees it whole. 
 
 Of course Traubel's philosophy is that of the 
 writer and not that of the professional philosophers 
 — with their conscious systems. But he acts entirely 
 in the spirit of the new pragmatic philosophy when 
 he rejects the claims of ordinary logic, and, like 
 other inspired writers, substitutes a sub-conscious 
 "organic" logic of his own. He does not try to 
 think in those long-continued chains which so often 
 result in dogmatism, even in the minds of the mas- 
 ter philosophers that use that method. Like Emer- 
 son he allows all of life that spontaneously relates 
 itself to a given moment of thought and feeling to 
 come to expression at that moment. In his "Col- 
 
64 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 lects" he is formally logical in so far as he never 
 considers any position except in connection with 
 its opposite, but his chain of reasoning never pro- 
 ceeds farther than this. Here is his logic : Let all 
 of life as far as possible into each mood, but do 
 not endeavor to tie together the thoughts and feel- 
 ings of these moods into a system; for there are 
 natural periods and rhythms in our thinking, as in 
 the rest of our life, and the attempt to substitute a 
 mechanical logic for this natural habit would result 
 in the loss of the best fruits of our mental activity. 
 This pragmatic habit of thought is the logical proc- 
 ess of all poets and great litterateurs, as distinct 
 from professional philosophers, but Traubel has 
 held to it more consistently than have most other 
 writers. He is consistently free from dogma. He 
 has no system into which he might be tempted to 
 force the facts. But neither does he contradict 
 himself. 
 
 Traubel' s almost complete freedom from doctrine 
 and dogma is due to the fact that he is interested 
 exclusively in actual persons. And all his philoso- 
 phy is based on his plea that we should not reduce 
 other individuals to any formula, nor allow our- 
 selves to be so reduced — not even to the formula of 
 "being free from formula." He says: 
 
 There's never any doctrine so dangerous to you 
 as your doctrine. You may escape every other men- 
 
THE HUMANIST 65 
 
 ace. But that will throw you. Don't mistake a frag- 
 ment of life for the total of life. That's first. Then 
 don't drift with anything. Not even with God. Not 
 even with the eternal verities. Not even with love. 
 Start knowing for what, proceed knowing why, ar- 
 rive knowing when. Of course this theory has its 
 dubious elements. I can see how we must sometimes 
 go on knowing nothing. How an inner impulse pre- 
 possesses us and compels oyr wholesale abandonment 
 to a passion. The finest wisdom may consist in not 
 comprehending that which you apprehend. In not 
 being able to explain that which can't be denied. In 
 not putting into words that which surges in your 
 blood. In not making demonstrations which are not 
 evidences. But then we go farther. We may say 
 again that even if we must go on a journey we can't 
 justify we may still remain master of the voyage. 
 That though I can't realize the sea or the sky or the 
 ship or the port I'm going to I may still stick to the 
 wheel. In painfully imshackling ourselves from drifts 
 we mustn't shackle ourselves with masteries. Get- 
 ting free may become a creed. And being free may 
 become another creed. ... I want to be in the stream. 
 I want the big stream to be in me. I want to take 
 account of everything. I want everything to take 
 account of me. I want life so orbic I can put my 
 arms about it in an embrace of revelation. Yet I 
 also want life so atmospherically liberated I couldn't 
 include it in any finite definitions. I don't want any 
 man or woman to be all hashed up into meaningless 
 
66 ■ WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 inconsecutiveness. Neither do I want any man or 
 woman tied into an all-consistent knot.*' 
 
 The unprecedented width of Traubel's mental 
 horizon is due to this refusal to adopt any exclu- 
 sive doctrine: 
 
 It's not enough to say your motive was clean. I'm 
 willing to admit that. But that Wouldn't be an 
 answer. . . . 
 
 Remember that nothing can be left out without 
 peril to what's left in. Every atom of rejected truth 
 is a threat leveled at the structure you have raised. 
 You can't make up a decision alone from what you 
 see. It's just as much your business to include what 
 I see. It's not only not wise. It's not honest. Until 
 you have been as hospitable towards what displeases 
 you as towards what pleases you you are debarred 
 from expressing judgment. This is the law and com- 
 mon sense of all conviction. This is the spirit of 
 all fair controversy. This is the foundation of all 
 faith. No matter how dispassionate you may super- 
 ficially appear to be you are warped and corrupt. 
 I've every right to demand that you study me. Un- 
 less you do study me you are neither my friend nor 
 my enemy. You can't know where I stand or where 
 you stand. You are adrift. Your feet may be on a 
 rock. But you're adrift. Before you can say: I 
 believe, you must know what I mean when I say: 
 I believe. And you are required to wait till I've 
 said my last word. As long as I seem to have some- 
 
THE HUMANIST dy 
 
 thing to add you must make room for me. You've got 
 to live my life as well as your own life if you pro- 
 pose to live your life full and whole.** 
 
 As free as possible from all forms of authority, 
 whether of words, ideas, or systems, Traubel does 
 not allow his own favorite ideas to become a re- 
 ligion, and will not permit even the chief object 
 of his thought and care, "the human race," to out- 
 weigh the ultimate reality, the living individual: — 
 "You say everything must be done to preserve the 
 race. I say only one kind of a race is worth pre- 
 serving." Here indeed is "the one word clearly 
 spoken" which "upsets all the figures of the schools" 
 (to employ an expression of Traubel's). 
 
 If our revolutionary poet fails to succumb to the 
 ultra-modern "welfare of the race" theory, or to 
 the idea that "society" is ,God, we should not ex- 
 pect him to bow to the earlier religions, now less in 
 vogue; we should not expect him to succumb to "sci- 
 ence" or to "natural law," to "altruism" or to 
 "God" : 
 
 I think God has written a new will and made me his 
 heir, 
 
 (Brother, you may feel as I do, and become your- 
 self, too, that only heir). . . . 
 
 I think the natural laws have taken some time off 
 and left me to run things for a while myself. 
 
68 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 (Brother, you may feel as I do, and the natural laws 
 will stand aside for you as they do for me).** 
 
 Against "natural laws" or theological paradise, 
 Traubel asserts the individual self; he will accept 
 no bounds of any kind either for himself or for 
 others : 
 
 Only to let things go. 
 
 Only to stop fixing bounds for myself . . . 
 
 Only to see the farthest by not trying to see at all. 
 
 Only to hear divine voices by not listening for voices 
 
 at all. 
 Only to be myself without making an effort to be 
 
 myself at all . . . 
 Only to get beyond the cry of the strongest voice call- 
 ing me back, 
 Only to get where no chase can any longer dog my 
 
 quickened feet. 
 Only to wrench my despoiled self free from the 
 
 habits of the ruly. 
 Only to salute the fraternity of a world lawlessly 
 
 superior to law . . . 
 To be as I am before I become a social asset or an 
 
 industrial fact. . . .^° 
 
 The cult of "altruism" is probably less influen- 
 tial to-day than the dogmas built upon "science," 
 "natural laws," or "the race," because it is less 
 highly thought of than it formerly was among the 
 upper classes, but it is still far from extinct. 
 
THE HUMANIST 69 
 
 Traubel adopts Ellen Key's denunciation of this 
 outworn dogma of religious ethics: 
 
 She daringly denounces the theory "that it is al- 
 ways the death of the soul to sacrifice others, and 
 the life of the soul to sacrifice oneself." All depends. 
 Depends upon whether sacrificing yourself helps the 
 big thing along in the end. Upon whether sacrificing 
 others may not be best for all in the end.^'- 
 
 A far greater danger to individual liberty, because 
 it is usually unexpressed, is the tendency to lay 
 undue stress upon institutions or institutional 
 change. Traubel does not contemplate a social sys- 
 tem where the individual will give way before any 
 institutions whatever, either those already existing 
 or others likely to be created. The individual is 
 "to sign no single power away." The new society 
 is to be built primarily not upon new institutions 
 but upon new individuals, or even upon existing in- 
 dividuals, who when free from their shackles will 
 be quite other than what they are: 
 
 I declare that the social order is to be superseded 
 by another social order: 
 
 I know the quality of your folly when you go about 
 the streets looking in the dust of noisy oratory for 
 the complete state: 
 
 I know very well that when the complete state ap- 
 pears it will appear because you bring it to others, 
 not because others bring it to you. 
 
70 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 And I know that you will not carry it as a burden 
 upon your back but as something unscroUed 
 within.''^ 
 
 Existing institutions often seem to have such 
 deep foundations and to have spread so far that it 
 appears impossible to remove them, but this is an 
 illusion : 
 
 Nothing is impossible if we put all our force back 
 of ourselves. We impeach the great frowning insti- 
 tutions. They laugh at us. We seem so harmless. 
 But give us a little time. We will laugh at the insti- 
 tutions. . . . What is an institution to a man any- 
 way? . . . Do not doubt your own inspiration. Are 
 you afraid to be identified with your heresies ? Your 
 heresies are what takes you on. The best part of 
 a man is that far-away thing in him which all his 
 nearby friends warn him against.''^ 
 
 The boldest ideas of man often prove to be the 
 soundest and greatest. One group of such ideas 
 constitutes the germ of that revolution in human 
 nature which is not only indispensable to bring 
 about that general revolution in institutions known 
 as Socialism but is the very essence of the change : 
 
 The Socialist needs to revolutionize human nature. 
 He is doing it. Or human nature is revolutionizing 
 itself. Or rather he is not revolutionizing human 
 nature — he is giving it a chance to be human.^* 
 
THE HUMANIST 71 
 
 Traubel's conception of the individual, that is of 
 human nature and its possibiHties, which must be 
 that of every thoughtful Socialist, is radically dif- 
 ferent from the prevailing view. If he regarded 
 human nature as it is ordinarily regarded, there 
 would indeed be little hope of its being revolution- 
 ized. The Socialist idea of human nature, however, 
 differs from that ordinarily accepted in that it views 
 the great bulk of man's impulses as being good 
 from the beginning, certainly as being the source of 
 at least as much good as his conscious reasoning. 
 Traubel embodies this thought in one of his strik- 
 ing and typical poems, "I Go Where My Heart 
 Goes" : 
 
 I go where my heart goes : where else should I go ? 
 
 With or without reason, I go with my heart: 
 
 Whether urged to go or warned to stay, I go with 
 my heart: 
 
 In the face of everything bitter and sweet, false and 
 true, I go with my heart: 
 
 Joyously into any shadow, victoriously towards what- 
 ever defeat, I go with my heart: 
 
 Being afraid sometimes to risk what I must become, 
 yet being more afraid to remain what I am: 
 
 Often denying love to go with love, denying light 
 to find light. . . . 
 
 Acknowledging the world I leave but ready and eager 
 for the world I go to. . . . 
 
72 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 If you don't go where your heart goes where do you 
 
 go? — if you don't go to love where do you go? 
 And if you go east while your heart goes west what 
 
 will fill up the mocking gap between? . . . 
 And you arraign the heart: you have discovered that 
 
 the heart is a stumbling guide: 
 And you say that the heart needs eyes, which I say, 
 
 too: who sees it better than I do? 
 And I say that the heart has eyes, which you do not 
 
 say, too: 
 (Oh such eyes as the heart has! has life eyes? only 
 
 such eyes as the heart has !) '^ 
 
 The same thought recurs again in a typical "Col- 
 lect" entitled "It All Seems Reasonable to Me" : 
 
 My reason goes where my heart goes. I don't want 
 my reason to go where my heart can't go. Let the 
 heart have its way. Don't be afraid of the heart. 
 Reason reasons but reason can't see. . . . 
 
 Do our systems apply love? If they do they are 
 reasonable. But if they apply profit. If they apply 
 enmity, caste, law. If jthey apply anything that 
 neglects love. Then they are unreasonable. No stolen 
 dollar was ever reasonable. No stolen opportunity 
 of life. No stolen prestige. Nothing that can be 
 used by one to lord it over another. The black or 
 white of your skin. The strength or weakness of 
 your right arm. The genius or the mediocrity of your 
 brain. The volubility or the reticence of your speech. 
 All advantages and disadvantages. All talents and 
 
THE HUMANIST 73 
 
 superiorities. They are all unreasonable. None of 
 them stand the test. The other thing alone stands the 
 test. The total opposite. You may not be able to 
 adjust it to your logic. But you can adjust it to 
 your love. . . J"" 
 
 In proportion as conditions allow the free de- 
 velopment and expression of a man's impulses, these 
 impulses serve as connecting bonds between him 
 and other human being's, so that all other bonds be- 
 come superfluous. This emotionally or socially de- 
 veloped person leads a life in every way fuller and 
 more productive, that is, a more reasonable life. 
 Free relations with others gradually take the place 
 of institutions, authorities and duties: 
 
 Walt Whitman says: "What others give as duties 
 I give as living impulses." The duty is my claim 
 on you. The impulse is your claim on yourself. . . . 
 Duty is the major tyrant. Duty is the irrevocable in- 
 sanity. Duty is the knife that severs. But when 
 I say duty you will repeat it after me. We have wars 
 because we have duties. And hates. And the quarrels 
 of brothers with brothers. And the brawls of peace. 
 And partizan schools in art. And pettifogging sci- 
 ences. And the blind atomists of cosmic chance. 
 They all belong. When we breathe that little two- 
 syllabled remnant word of abled theisms the world 
 flies apart. It's cut in two at the center. Duty is 
 judgment. Duty is the sword and the bullet. It's 
 standing armies and navies. It's threatening policies 
 
74 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 and balances of hypocritic power. When I say duty 
 I put you in jail. When you say it you put me in 
 jail. Duty is the infinite inquisition. It's the denial 
 of fatherhood. It's the refutation of love. What has 
 the lover to do with duty ? •"■ 
 
 Yet Traubel believes that the more developed man 
 of the new society, though more ruled by his heart 
 than by his head, will no longer be governed by 
 the same emotions that rule him now. He will 
 pass beyond mere love and hate: 
 
 In the farther intimations of the spirit I am not 
 wholly myself until I am set free from both hate and 
 love."* 
 
 But he does not commend those non-resistant 
 sentimentalists who are without love or hate only 
 because they fall short of both: 
 
 I don't want to mislead the tyrannies. I want them 
 to know I hate them. I want it to be understood 
 that I am using hate as an inexorable weapon of 
 annihilation. I am not to be bought off, fooled off, 
 scared off or killed off. I say over and over again 
 to the crowned wrong of my era: I hate you. 
 And I say again and again: I'll stop at nothing to 
 drive you off the face of the earth. And I say again 
 and again : I will let the king live but I will raze his 
 throne.'* 
 
THE HUMANIST 75 
 
 Indeed the poet proceeds to reassure all those 
 who feel that a wrong impression might be created 
 by his continued use of the much over-used term, 
 "love," by saying that in the last analysis, if a choice 
 must be made between two evils, he prefers, "hate" 
 to "love" and the "bad" to the "good": 
 
 I am afraid of being thought too well of. I would 
 rather be thought bad than good if I had to be thought 
 either. Hate balances the disturbed fancies and fal- 
 lacies of the physical world. . . . Love overlooks. 
 Hate is omnivisual."' 
 
 It might appear to the casual reader that Trau- 
 bel's work, in which the emotional aspect of human 
 nature is regarded as predominant, could scarcely 
 be held together by a coordinated social philosophy 
 — ^beyond the revolt against all authority and the 
 generous view of human nature I have just de- 
 scribed — and, indeed, Traubel himself makes no 
 claim to such a philosophy. His system, like that 
 of other poets, is largely unconscious, but never- 
 theless all his work has a logic of its own. The 
 starting-point of his thought is "life" : 
 
 I put everything aside for life. Property. Honor. 
 Wages. All go for life. My revolt is based upon 
 life. Your resistance is resistance against life."^ 
 
 This leads at once to the question: What does 
 Traubel mean by "life"? 
 
76 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 In an editorial entitled "Music and Sex" he 
 gives us the beginning of an answer : "All of man's 
 activities are to be viewed as intimately related, and 
 no activity is to be accepted for its own sake but 
 only in relation to life as a whole" : 
 
 Music must be saved by something not music. The 
 creative musicians contain that something. That is 
 why they are as a rule poised and equable. But the 
 interpreting musician often loses himself in the mazes 
 of his sentimental titillations. Gives way to them. 
 Translates all life into rudimentary emotion. Does 
 not hold on to things. 
 
 That is taking big chances. May carry fatal penal- 
 ties along with it. Like giving way to sex. Sex is 
 divine. Sex may be devilish. You cannot trust sex 
 alone or music alone. Sex for sex's sake. Music 
 for music's sake. They are as bad as art for art's 
 sake. . . . 
 
 Musicians, the interpreters, seem to say: "There is 
 no life. There is only music." So that when it comes 
 to the communal things, to social prophecy, they seem 
 to say: "There is no good and bad. There is only 
 music." A musician said to me: "My business has 
 nothing to do with public service. I am a musician. 
 Music absorbs everything. Music is my Hfe." But 
 sometimes music may not be a man's life. Music may 
 be a man's death."^ 
 
 In the same way logic, and those closed systems 
 of thought that ordinarily monopolize the name, 
 
THE HUMANIST 77 
 
 philosophy, are criticized (like music) as often 
 leading away from life rather than towards it: 
 
 I am not sure of things. I am only sure of myself. 
 My feet go their own way. ... I am refuted every 
 day I live. By every man I meet. By institutions 
 and systems. By cataclysms and sea-tides. They all 
 refute me. But I do not refute myself. I do not see 
 why you should not be happy in spite of reasons. I 
 do not see why any sort of a reason, why any accumu- 
 lation of probabilities, should set aside, should refute 
 me as a man, you as my brother, my comrade or my 
 lover. One laugh may put all the planets to flight. 
 One word fairly spoken may upset all the figurers 
 of the schools. I acknowledge the telescope and the 
 microscope. But nothing can bring anything as near 
 to me as my own flesh. . . . You can bury me with 
 quibbles. But I can resurrect myself with affirmations. 
 You may have to have reasons. I don't. I am not 
 made good in an argument. Nothing does so little for 
 me as tradition and legality. Nothing so little as 
 the idea that one thing is so because another thing 
 is so.°* 
 
 Argument, that is, means an appeal to tradition 
 and legality. There is no doubt that this has been 
 true of the systems of logic and philosophy of the 
 past. The way to escape such logic is to follow 
 one's own deepest inclinations and intuitions, under 
 the supposition, of course, that one's nature is thor- 
 oughly social — ^like Traubel's, or like most natures 
 
78 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 in a society which allows a free and natural de- 
 velopment. 
 
 No one is lost who stays with himself. And no 
 one is found who wanders from himself. There is 
 no practical and unpractical. There is no reason- 
 able and unreasonable. There is only a man and 
 his vision. There is only what a man is and what 
 a man sees. And if he fails to follow what he sees 
 he deserts himself.** 
 
 Traubel's logic may be called reversed logic, work- 
 ing always from the conclusion, and in this, too, it 
 is the logic of pragmatism: 
 
 The good conclusion is to me a working hypothe- 
 sis. ... I do not ask myself: Which idea is true 
 and which is false? I only ask: Which idea serves 
 me best? By serving best I mean humanizes me. 
 Makes me more useful as a man and more fruitful 
 as a comrade. By serving best I mean builds me up 
 and spreads me out in efficiency. Gives me vision and 
 reach. Gives me direction and consecration. My 
 Hfe is my only asset. And yours is the same. . . . 
 
 If I feel the universe on top of me crushing me I 
 am a failure. If I feel it under my feet eternally 
 succoring me I am a success. ... I keep myself ahead 
 of the facts. The facts are too slow for me."" 
 
 But enough of Traubel's method of thinking. 
 The substance of his thought is equally revolution- 
 
THE HUMANIST 79 
 
 ary. Having rejected the claim of logic as a suffi- 
 cient guide to life, he also refuses to postpone his 
 direct experience of life while seeking to compre- 
 hend the "universe," and he objects vigorously to 
 the typical philosophical attitude which insists that, 
 first of all, the universe must be explained — "I do 
 not wait for the universe to explain itself," he says, 
 "Maybe the universe cannot be explained" : 
 
 Why should I put question marks into the sky in 
 place of stars? It is my main business to live. To 
 live nearest the best life I can discover. To live near- 
 est the natural laws. To live nearest people. . . . 
 I can cite no justifications. But I can cite my com- 
 rades. . . . The Cause explains enough, though it 
 don't explain it all."" 
 
 The function of men is to understand, not the 
 universe, but one another: "People intoxicate me. 
 My eyes see people (I don't acknowledge things)." 
 
 I don't need to see all : I see enough : 
 
 I see your eyes as you look at me : 
 
 I see my own face in the glass : 
 
 I see to the roots of trees : I see to the tops of moun- 
 tains : 
 
 If I look in the right way I see to the bottom of seas : 
 I can watch the seed in the ground grow: 
 
 I don't need to see everything : that which I see leads 
 me to that which I don't see: 
 
8o WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 There are roads I can't travel: I can see round cor- 
 ners my feet never turn: 
 
 My hand touches you : my fingers play in your hair : 
 I see that everything leads to you: 
 
 My ears hear your voice : I can listen to the invisible 
 in the tones of your common speech: 
 
 It's all so mysterious : so much is veiled : yet so much 
 is also disclosed : 
 
 I might see all and know nothing: I might see noth- 
 ing and know all : there's no one path : 
 
 The reasonable people ask me every day : How do you 
 explain this and this? 
 
 I don't explain it: I see it: I follow it: it takes me 
 very far down somewhere and very far up some- 
 where : 
 
 That seems to me to be all I want : I don't want analy- 
 sis: no: I want to see: 
 
 If I could tell you about a thing — ^that would be tak- 
 ing it apart : the dissector can do that : 
 
 If I see a thing — that is putting it together: only 
 love can do that: . . .*' 
 
 Even the theory of evolution, which has served 
 in the hands of most of its expounders to enlarge 
 the universe and belittle man, is used by Traubel 
 to magnify man : 
 
 I don't propose to hand myself back to the resi- 
 dual gases. I propose to pass myself forward to 
 the impeccable gods. . . ."' 
 
THE HUMANIST 8i 
 
 Yet Traubel's optimism, like Whitman's, has an 
 undoubted philosophic basis (if an unconscious 
 one) : 
 
 I say that a man is not an atom in an infinity. I 
 bring you a great secret. I say that infinity is but an 
 atom in you.°° 
 
 "There is no telling how big a man is because 
 there is nothing by which to measure a man," he 
 continues. And here again Traubel is followed by 
 the newer anthropocentric philosophy (pragma- 
 tism). His optimism seldom relapses to the ab- 
 solute, transcendental optimism that is so common 
 with Whitman. Its usual form may be seen in 
 these lines: 
 
 There is no loss but all lose: there is no gain but 
 all gain: we move together.'"* 
 
 Traubel here concedes, as against Whitman, that 
 there may be a loss in the imiverse. He insists only 
 that where one loses all lose and where one gains 
 all gain. 
 
 But even more fundamental in Traubel's mental 
 make-up than his sub-conscious logic and philosophy 
 is his courage in asserting himself and proclaiming 
 the joy of life. Like Whitman he seizes, not so 
 much with his mind as with his whole being, the 
 central truth of life : 
 
82 WHITMAN, AND TRAUBEL 
 
 Duty won't put a man anywhere. Or what his 
 fathers and mothers said he should and should not. 
 Or books called sacred. Or the rigid arbitrary tra- 
 ditions of the schools. Only joy will put a man any- 
 where. . . . 
 
 Is it reasonable? What difference does that make? 
 It's life. It's action. It's joy. . . . Suppose I am 
 the most illogical of men. I am also the most joy- 
 ous of men. I can't prove life. But I can live. I 
 can't give you reasons. But I can give you life. . . . 
 
 Fortunes are made for somebody's fun of it. Revo- 
 lutions break out just for everybody's fun of it. And 
 when the disturbances are over the fun of it can be 
 enjoyed by all.''^ 
 
 Traubel's attitude towards the future society, 
 and indeed his whole work, as well as his philoso- 
 phy, are all based on this humanistic optimism, and 
 it is this that makes him an absolute rebel against 
 present-day society. His whole position rests on 
 what people have sometimes called faith, but it is 
 not necessary to use that term. It should rather 
 be called the courage of one's impulses (as we speak 
 of the courage of one's convictions), or rather the 
 courage of humanity's impulses, in which we all — ■ 
 in our varying ways — share. 
 
 From this point of view nothing is sacred except 
 human nature. Human nature can take its natural 
 forms only in a free society. And the only way we 
 can bring about this new society is to unite in re- 
 
tHE HUMANIST 83 
 
 fusing — as far as we can — ^to allow our natures to 
 be coerced into existing molds. For example : 
 
 Nothing is so obvious to the world we live in as 
 that business must come before pleasure. Nothing 
 after a while will be so obvious as the idiocy of this 
 proposition. . . . My dearest comrade says: I'm so 
 busy I can't write you. No one has any business 
 to be so busy he can't write me. . . . The supposi- 
 tion is that love can be adjourned but that business 
 can't be adjourned. But look out if you adjourn 
 love. It's fatal. ... I'd like to go into every busy 
 office in the land and scatter its votaries to the four 
 winds. There they are, too fat and too thin, too 
 red and too pale, worshiping away like contrite as- 
 cetics in a temple. And they'-U tell you, and every- 
 body'U tell you, that it would be blasphemy to inter- 
 rupt this divine procedure. My God. It makes me 
 sick to see this arrogant infamy.''^ 
 
 From this profoundly revolutionary foundation, 
 which amounts to a denial, in the name of human 
 nature, of each and every principle upon which 
 our society is supposed to rest, all of Traubel's 
 revolutionary ideas may be logically traced, whether 
 relating to individual morality or to society. 
 
 But what shall we say of Traubel's religious ten- 
 dencies? Traubel's Conservator was originally an 
 organ working for a broader religious unity, and 
 Traubel himself was at first very much under the 
 
84 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 influence of Emerson as well as Whitman. But his 
 religion is ultra-rational rather than transcendental 
 or mystical. Like Tolstoy he still has a tendency 
 to retain the older terms, but in his "super-ration- 
 ality" he even passes beyond Tolstoy. He quotes 
 Spinoza's saying, "To define God would be to deny 
 him," but he uses the term in such a way as very 
 clearly to define and to deny the "God of our fa- 
 thers." He deals with "God" as he does with 
 "love," making them both no more important than 
 their diametrical opposites: 
 
 I am no more afraid of Satan's bad than of God's 
 
 good: 
 And but for me neither could have been and but for 
 
 my good health the two would never merge : 
 And the good health of my body and of my soul is 
 
 the good health of the spheres : 
 And Satan could not damn me alone : God would have 
 
 something to say about that: 
 And God could not save me alone : Satan would have 
 
 something to say about that: 
 And it is whispered me that I am to be neither saved 
 
 nor damned anyway. 
 But that I am to save or damn myself to all eternity : 
 I, in whom God and Satan, for purposes not all seen, 
 
 eternally melt beyond severance.''* 
 
 Then he practically makes God a man among 
 men, a brother rather than a father: 
 
THE HUMANIST 85 
 
 Therefore I say that I have taken God to be my 
 
 brother not my king — ■ 
 Therefore I say that this comrade universe is for all, 
 
 God and all men and women and children equals 
 
 of God, share and share alike. . . . 
 And it would be no disgrace to God to be as loyal 
 
 to me as I am expected to be to God: 
 The debt must be paid both ways until no balance 
 
 is left on either side: 
 The debt of God to me so vast accruing and my debt 
 
 to God piled up in mountainous eras of time. . . . 
 I meeting God perfectly equipped and worthy of God 
 
 forever : 
 God meeting me perfectly equipped and worthy of 
 
 me forever. . . . 
 They say I am too familiar with God, 
 They say that I talk of God as if he lived next door, 
 They say that I use God's name as freely as if it 
 
 was my name or my child's name or the name of 
 
 my bosom friend: 
 I am accused of being on speaking terms with 
 
 God. . . . 
 And what God does for me is too wonderful to be 
 
 set down with figures in an argument, 
 And I do not question but that what I do for God 
 
 is no insignificant item. . . . 
 I have made God common to the commonest earth 
 
 — he is the genius of every day and the crowd : 
 I have made God my brother where once I was told 
 
 he was my ruler.''* 
 
86 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 Not only does Traubel refuse to put his God 
 above man, but he refuses to give his God a su- 
 perior position to himself — as we have already seen : 
 
 Let me be self-approved: 
 
 Once I prayed to God for myself and went hungry 
 
 and thirsty with a full meal: 
 Now I pray to myself for God and though my lips 
 
 receive neither food nor drink I am fed on richest 
 
 returns. . . . 
 I pray to my soul, 
 I lock out the priest, I prohibit God, I forget how to 
 
 read the books, 
 I refuse all presences but that presence which issues 
 
 in myself. 
 Myself alone in prayer to myself alone. . . . 
 I pray for prayer alone and self alone ever and 
 
 ever. . . . 
 The nearer you bring men to each other the nearer 
 
 you have brought God to man : 
 What God can do for you is of least importance: 
 
 what you can do for God is everything. . . . 
 You have hurried to accuse God: I accuse no one: 
 You have hastened to pardon God : I pardon no one.^^ 
 
 Nor is his treatment of Christ any more rever- 
 ential (as reverence is ordinarily understood). In 
 reviewing a recent work on Christ, Bouck White's 
 "The Call of the Carpenter," Traubel says:, 
 
THE HUMANIST 87 
 
 He realizes the crimes of institutional Christianity. 
 But he wants to save Jesus. I have no doubt Jesus 
 will be saved. But he won't be a lonesome figure. 
 There will be Jesus. And there will be others. There 
 will be a man bearing your name. And there will be 
 a man bearing my name. And there will be men 
 bearing everybody's names. They will be saved too. 
 And no one will enjoy a special heaven or an isolated 
 apotheosis. Jesus will take his chances. His human 
 chances. Not his god chances. His man chances. 
 Just as you will and I will. He will not be set apart. 
 He is set apart to-day. . . . Jesus will never again be 
 honored as a savior of saviors. He will only remain 
 a savior. He will not be a god. He will be a 
 brother. . . ." 
 
 In his treatment of the problem of body and soul, 
 as well as the problem of sex, there also appears, 
 at first sight, to be just a touch of the old religious 
 asceticism or metaphysics, which is really the oppo- 
 site to all that Traubel stands for: 
 
 My body, too, demands worship. But there was 
 something before it. ... I do not preach the un- 
 seen at the expense of the seen. ... I follow the 
 lead of my body till it becomes soul. I follow the 
 lead of my soul till it becomes immortality.''^ 
 
 Here the body seems to be made inferior to and 
 more or less separate from the soul, but other pas- 
 
88 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 sages remove the impression. This uncertainty is 
 probably due to the history of every language, which 
 makes it extremely difficult, and almost impossible 
 to avoid the use of these two terms, body and soul. 
 The matter is clarified, however, in a poem published 
 since the issue of "Optimos" : 
 
 So I asked myself : How can there be any body and 
 soul after all ? maybe there's only me. . . . 
 
 And so I said to my body : I will no longer call you 
 body: there must be another name for you: 
 
 And so I said to my soul : I will no longer call you 
 soul: there must be another name for you.''' 
 
 Nor is there any asceticism in Traubel's treat- 
 ment of sex, and in this he is a perfect disciple of 
 Whitman : 
 
 Now I say we must all gather ourselves on the side 
 
 of reverence. 
 Answering with a triumphant yes the questions of the 
 
 ardent blood. . . . 
 Think what it means to treat your passions as if the 
 
 soul could not get along without them.''" 
 
 Like all poets who have written effectively of love, 
 Traubel realizes fully that the flesh and spirit, 
 especially in this relation, are absolutely one: 
 
 If you will tell me why other things will submit to 
 be denied and sent away but why love will never 
 submit to be denied and sent away. . . . 
 
THE HUMANIST 89 
 
 If you win tell me what the dreams of lovers made 
 
 flesh are for, 
 If you will tell me what the flesh of lovers made dream 
 
 is for. . . . 
 If you will tell me what love is for I will tell you what 
 
 life is for.'" 
 
 Love between the sexes is to give way before 
 nothing in life: 
 
 And so I do not doubt that the corruption in a man 
 with love is purer than the saintliness in a man 
 without love. . . . 
 
 And that you, no matter who you are, should go with 
 love to the ends of love and not be afraid.'^ 
 
 "And I know that only those who are rich enough 
 to pay tolls should attempt the journey," he con- 
 tinues, showing that he is no mere leveler. Nor is 
 his treatment of sex life ever abstract, as his treat- 
 ment of "love" in general sometimes appears to be. 
 He will tolerate no theory of love — and to-day it is 
 theories that are the levelers: 
 
 We speak of the sex problem as if it was all one 
 story. But there are as many sex problems as there 
 are people. And each case stands alone. Every 
 time a man meets a woman a new sex problem is 
 propounded. . . . Every time a boy makes love to 
 a girl it is a first time. There's always something 
 which never entered into the solution before.*^ 
 
THE PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 "The Collective People" 
 
 T TTE are now prepared to grasp the most im- 
 * ' portant part of Traubel's thought and work, 
 .his social philosophy. 
 
 Fully as basic in his character and philosophy as 
 his Socialism, is his extraordinarily eloquent in- 
 sistence on the absolute inviolability of the indi- 
 vidual, the ultimate import of human personality: 
 
 You can never know what you amount to till you 
 count yourself up. Till you have made immense 
 claims. Till you have been guilty of colossal im^ 
 pudence. . . . Voltaire said : If God did not exist we 
 would have to invent him. You say: If I did not 
 exist God would have to invent me.'* 
 
 Nor does Traubel fail to reconcile his apparently 
 contradictory affirmations of the inviolability of the 
 individual and the all-importance of the masses : 
 
 Let me be my own kind of a man. I would rather 
 be my own kind of a man than any other kind of a 
 
 90 
 
PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY 91 
 
 man. Than any genius. Than any saint. ... I don't 
 want to be happy. I do want to be myself. I want 
 all that comes to me as myself. But I want nothing 
 that comes to me as some one else. . . . Every man 
 belongs to himself. Demands first of all the sov- 
 ereignty of his own soul. 
 
 Makes no compromise. Yet acquiesces in the crowd. 
 Owns himself, yet is owned by the crowd. Willingly 
 defers in crowd things to the decision of the crowd. 
 Never confuses the one claim with the other. . . . 
 Regarding the boundaries between the two with deli- 
 cate honor. Even with a cruel austerity. My life 
 and other lives. Yet acknowledging again that the 
 line drawn can't be drawn. Leaving the matter un- 
 solved. Intimating rfither than insisting upon the 
 distinction. Feeling rather than seeing the way. . . . 
 
 Any kind of a man can be lost in a crowd. But 
 to be found in a crowd : that demands a man of men.'* 
 
 At the same time Traubel's attachment to the~' 
 masses is as unqualified as is his devotion to the in- 
 dividual man. He does not lose himself in the 
 masses. But neither does he lose his relation to 
 them, nor allow this relation to become merely 
 idealistic. The individual has his significance solely 
 as his life directly proceeds from and goes out to 
 other individuals and to the great masses of men ^ 
 
 I've met the sayers of democracy. But I want to 
 meet the democrat. They say the people may be all 
 
92 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 right sometime but not yet. I take the people as they 
 are. I don't ideaHze them. They're the sure ma- 
 terial in my foundations. I don't give them faith. 
 They give me faith. They're not built upon me. I'm 
 built upon them. . . . I've changed my definitions. 
 I've never modified my purposes. I've always wanted 
 the one result. I've not always agreed with myself 
 as to how the result was to be brought about. I've 
 wanted people without anything else. I've wanted 
 to make less of countries and more of people. Less 
 of books. Less of arts and sciences. Less of beauty. 
 Important as all may be. Less of all of them and 
 more of all the people. . . . People first. Before all 
 the wealth and splendor of state. Before all the 
 saviors and savings of society. Before all incomes and 
 ambitions. . . . That's what I was born into the 
 world for a quarter of a century ago. That's what 
 I've stayed in the world for. That's what I'm going 
 to pass into the future for. To say this one thing.*' 
 
 ' The reconciliation of individual self assertion and 
 devotion to the masses — which seems an insoluble 
 contradiction to many — is in reality no problem at 
 all for Traubel. His sole self-expression lies in that 
 direction and in every communion with the crowd 
 he is always able to find something for himself, to 
 further his own development. He goes farther, for 
 he recognizes no separation, but feels himself the 
 
 jVery child of "the collective people" : • 
 
PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY 93 
 
 I am not bom of the seed of my father planted in 
 the . body of my mother. I am born of the collec- 
 tive people. I can't conceive of the man and the 
 crowd. As if they were set off from each other. No. 
 I can only see the man in the crowd. As I can also 
 mystically see the crowd in the man when I look 
 again. If I hadn't the people to talk about I'd have 
 nothing to say. If I was left to talk of some one 
 person or of myself I'd feel as if I was without a 
 subject. . . . Some of you have money in bank and 
 live on that. Some of you are famous. You live on 
 fame. But I? What have I got? Only the people. 
 I live on the people. And so I say everything that's 
 worth while lives on the people. Every product of 
 the brain or the heart that's worth while lives on the 
 people. Philosophy, religion, the inspired canvases, 
 the visions of seers : they all live on the people. *° 
 
 Nor does Traubel care where this deepest feeling 
 of his soul leads him, he gives himself over to it 
 with utmost abandon' — not by an act of faith, for it 
 is done entirely of his own spontaneous initiative, 
 without internal struggle, but by an act of will — an 
 act that is in no degree forced, but an expression of 
 his whole nature. After describing the - eloquent 
 sermon of a Negro minister, which contained the 
 refrain "I don't know where I'll be, but I'll be in 
 the procession of the 'Lord," Traubel says of him- 
 self: 
 
94 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 I don't know where I'll be but I'll be in the procession 
 
 of man: 
 I may be first or last: what difference does it make? 
 
 I may be much or nothing: 
 Look for me: can you find me? in there: in the 
 
 throng — in the endless winding moving pano- 
 rama: 
 Look in the farthest back place: there you'll see me: 
 
 where the crush is greatest: there I'll be: 
 Not with the artists: not with the famous: no: with 
 
 the crowding jamming nondescripts : there : 
 I'm not proud or humble : I like the touch of the tm- 
 
 known: I'm at home with unlettered things: the 
 
 university scares me: 
 I reach for a spot where life is commonest: I find 
 
 my part in the mix of the street: I drop out of 
 
 sight : 
 But I'm never out of the procession: I never step 
 
 aside, letting it go on without me : I'm with it for 
 
 good and all: 
 I may be tired: I may be jostled: I may be hurt: I 
 
 may even be angry : but I never step aside.*^ 
 
 It is true that his advocacy of the cause of the 
 "people" is occasionally expressed in such a way as 
 to sound like leveling populism or the regimentation 
 of State Socialism rather than the individualistic 
 Socialism of a free society. We have an example 
 of this when he says : 
 
PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY 95 
 
 Now I gave genius back all its prestige, 
 Now I was contented to be alone with love 
 In the average practice of men. 
 
 But such passages are rather passing moods than 
 permanent elements in Traubel's philosophy, for his 
 insistence on the absolute inviolability of every indi- 
 vidual portends an increase of the role of genius, 
 the unshackling of all the latent genius that now 
 goes to waste among the masses of the people, 
 rather than an acceptance of "the average practice 
 of men." He idealizes "the crowd," not in order 
 to reduce the individual, but because he believes 
 that the individual can only have his maximum de- 
 velopment in the most complete democracy, and 
 because the masses of to-day, precisely on account 
 of their present lack of culture, are the only force 
 through which the traditional culture of the past 
 can be effectively opposed. 
 
 The individual finds his present meaning only in 
 the crowd, just as he finds his lasting meaning only 
 in the race: 
 
 It makes me feel so big to feel all my fathers and 
 mothers back of me pushing me ahead: 
 
 It makes me feel so little to feel all the girls and 
 boys, my farthest children, dragging me into the 
 illimitable future. . . . 
 
96 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 For having all the earth to myself would be nothing 
 to me if I did not have the people inhabiting the 
 earth.*® 
 
 When you corner anything. Even virtue. When 
 you comer pictures or books or curios. When you 
 corner ideas. When you jealously comer your 
 dreams. When you eat too much while others eat 
 too little. When you dedicate any of the sources of 
 life to anything but the common privilege. Then 
 you have sold your soul for dirt. If your love stops 
 with your family. If you can love your own children 
 and not love the children of others.*' 
 
 Dependence on the people or on the race is in no 
 way a limitation of the individual but only his nat- 
 ural fulfilment: 
 
 I was sent here I don't know what for: I know I 
 was not sent here to be free: 
 
 I can't cut loose, I can't be dismissed : I can no more 
 sign myself away than be signed away. 
 
 Is it so terrible to be tied to things? to not be able 
 to lose yourselves in nowhere as nobodies? 
 
 It would be more terrible to be a cosmic or- 
 phan. . . .»" 
 
 An excellent concrete illustration of Traubel's 
 conception of the relations of society and the indi- 
 vidual is found in his treatment of marriage. Mar- 
 
PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY 97 
 
 riage is neither the exclusive concern of the indi- 
 vidual nor is it purely a social institution: 
 
 Nothing can take the place of love. Nothing in 
 marriage and nothing outside of marriage. If love is 
 dead within marriage that moment the marriage ceases. 
 And if love come to life outside marriage that mo- 
 ment the marriage begins. This is not a question 
 as if between free love and some other kind of love. 
 It's a question as if between loving and not lov- 
 ing. . . . It's no. mistake for people who do love to 
 live together the life of love wherever and however. 
 And it's no mistake for people who don't love to 
 live apart the life of friendship wherever and how- 
 ever. You can quote the law either way and it has 
 no weight. Love alone fixes the standards of be- 
 havior. Every real marriage abolishes every law. . . . 
 No individual has any right to say that such a thing 
 is exclusively his business. Nothing is exclusively a 
 man's own business. If he lived detached. If what 
 he did had no general results. Then it might be his 
 business. But nothing he does or thinks or says is 
 so personal as that. It all reacts in some way on 
 others. Everything has such reactions. Even your 
 diet. Even your habits. Whether you get rest when 
 you sleep. Whether you breathe right or wrong. It 
 all has the remotest influences. That may not mean 
 that the community should pass laws to control us 
 so intimately. It only means that it's up to us, the 
 individuals, to recognize the communal obligations. 
 . . . "Marriage is at bottom a social institution." . . . 
 
98 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 "Hence the mistake of the libertarians." I'd rather 
 say : "Marriage is at bottom a love institution." "We 
 must recognize this question to be at bottom a ques- 
 tion of sex." I'd say love here instead of sex, as I 
 said love there instead of social. . . . Marriage so 
 far has been chiefly experimental. . . ,°^ 
 
 J Traubel provides a place for the genius and the 
 exceptional individual; that place is in the crowd. 
 He says finely of Lincoln : "He emerged from the 
 crowd by staying in the crowd." ^''^ But it cannot be 
 denied that he gives far greater attention to the 
 people in the mass than he does to any individuals 
 who have become differentiated. Nor does he make! 
 exception even for those men of the people who, 
 like Lincoln, are most representative of the people. 
 Like all revolutionary Socialists, Traubel is op- 
 posed to "leaders." This is well shown in what he 
 says of H. G. Wells and others, as the authors of 
 "The Great State" : 
 
 These anticipators and specifiers want to go ahead 
 and say: Come on. What they should do is to 
 stay in the press of the fight and say: Let's go on. 
 You persuade more people by comradery than by tu- 
 torship. You are more potential as a friend than 
 as a prophet. Nothing is more offensive to a man 
 who is not himself inherently a follower than to be 
 followed by others. The instant a genuine leader 
 finds himself followed he sneaks to the rear. I don't 
 
PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY 99 
 
 want to be the light of the world. I want to add my 
 light to the light of the world.*'' 
 
 Traubel believes that the feeling of to-day that 
 there must always be somebody to lead is due solely 
 to the servile condition in which the masses of men 
 find themselves: 
 
 You have got so in the habit of serving under mas- 
 ters. You have been the subjects of kings so long. 
 And of parliaments and presidents. And you have 
 such false awe of professional men. Of men who 
 talk and write. Of the merely ornamental arbiters 
 of social values. That you imagine that when you 
 pass over the border into the new life the leaders and 
 professors will migrate with you. That you will still 
 be compelled to look to them for the articles of so- 
 cial federation. You deify leadership. You are afraid 
 to think of heaven as a democracy."' 
 
 I am pulling down the monuments. The great men. 
 The masters. The leaders and superiors. The ge- 
 niuses and the marvels. I shake them down in a 
 common ruin. In order to rebuild greatness. In or- 
 der to bring out of all what so far has been all brought 
 out of some. I turn all values upside down. I turn 
 ideals and instrumentalities upside down. In order 
 that man may come up. Now man is below all the 
 rest. Then all the rest will be below man.°* 
 
 Traubel's attack on leaders is really one of the 
 clearest definitions of his democracy, for if self- 
 
loo WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 government is to mean anything it must mean that 
 the people do not follow. And what else does a 
 leader mean except a person whom people follow? 
 He objects as much, then, to spiritual leaders as to 
 political leaders, for he feels that their influence is 
 mainly to demoralize individual initiative on the one 
 hand, and, on the other hand, to make perverted 
 egoists out of the few who offer themselves as 
 leaders : 
 
 When the great artist appeared with his miracles I 
 
 thought of the plain facts of my own life and was 
 
 ashamed : 
 I showed my back to this wonderful performer and 
 
 returned as one dissatisfied among my fellows. . . . 
 And even the children were less than children, and 
 
 the men and women less than men and women. 
 This was worship: this was my reach from the mud 
 
 to heaven: this was to go into the dust and ask 
 
 of life that it pardon me for having lived : 
 This strange awe before power and skill — ^this shudder 
 
 of despair, this knave confession and fool regard. 
 This was what came in the travail of my passions, 
 
 when power was let loose without love. 
 This was the largess of authority, this was the legend 
 
 and entail of the despot." 
 
 Perhaps the world has never had a spiritual leader 
 or great man so much exalted and so universally 
 recognized as Shakespeare. Without sharing in 
 
PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY loi 
 
 any of the petty criticisms of Harris or Shaw, with- 
 out taking anything whatever away from Shake- 
 speare or his work, Traubel makes this eflfective 
 protest against Shakespeare worship : 
 
 All the priesthoods agree about Shakespeare as 
 they do about the Bible. The theological, literary, 
 university, journalistic, scientific, medical, priesthood'. 
 They all say the same thing. And they say it with 
 a club. They say it with armed and vitriolic ad- 
 jectives. If you defy their creed you are subject to 
 inquisitorial denunciation. Your reputation's gone. 
 You're no scholar. You have no historic perspective. 
 You're unesthetic. You take yourself too seriously. 
 You're in revolt against culture. ... I don't blame 
 Shakespeare for being puffed up by gaseous adu- 
 lation into a historic monstrosity. He had nothing to 
 do with it. But I don't find myself drawn towards 
 such an irritating and arrogant tradition. Every new 
 Shakespeare book excites in me this old Shakespeare 
 resentment. I was going to say I want a place in the 
 sun for greatness but not for the great man. But 
 maybe I should say I want a place in greatness, which 
 is the general sun, for the people and not for the 
 incidental genius of a master. Then again making 
 one too big makes all the rest too little. The great 
 man of the schools is less likely to light the way 
 than to be in the way. You who are reading me 
 right now: What do you honestly think of Shake- 
 speare? I don't ask you to tell me, though I'd like 
 you to. I only ask you to tell yourself, for you must. 
 
102 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 If, as the orthodox inform us, the Bible and Shake- 
 speare are enough, then pastoralism and feudalism are 
 enough. Then we might as well all be dead. Then 
 we are all dead. But if pastoralism and feudalism 
 are not enough, then Shakespeare and the Bible are 
 not enough. Then open your doors and let the fresh 
 air in. Then we might as well all be alive. Then 
 we are all alive."' 
 
 Traubel attacks our present civilization in the 
 name of the people. This civilization consists, 
 largely, in the false voices of leaders — spiritual and 
 temporal : 
 
 They are the false voices. They have told your 
 story. Or, rather, told an invented story as yours. 
 You will find it in most of their arts and literatures. 
 They have lied about you. They have lied against 
 you in lying for you. They have got everybody 
 crooked. And they have been believed in. Why, 
 even you have believed in them. You have acqui- 
 esced in their terrible picture of yourselves. You 
 have assented to yourselves at their estimate. . . . 
 You have never trusted yourselves to your own voice. 
 Any other voice was better than your own. Any 
 fool voice. Any corrupt voice. Any king's voice or 
 bishop's voice or baron's voice. Any voice was more 
 welcome to you than your own voice. . . . 
 
 You allowed others to say it for you. They did not 
 say it. Now you must let me say it for you. I will 
 say it. If I fool you then send me where you sent 
 
PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY 103 
 
 them. I will say it for you for a little bit. Merely 
 until you are ready to say it for yourself. Just over- 
 night, maybe. Just while you are getting good and 
 ready, maybe. Just to fill the gap. Holding you up 
 not to your own scorn but to your own pride. Not to 
 tell you I can take charge of your affairs for you. 
 Telling you only that you must take charge of them 
 yourselves. Not flattering you. Not praising you for 
 what you are not and have not done. No. Rather 
 accusing you. Rather pointing out what you may be- 
 come and what you may do. Let me say it for you. 
 And even if I do not say it for you you have got to 
 live it for yourself. And living is better than saying.*' 
 
 Civilization is represented by the lies of the lead- 
 ers of the past and present. Against this dead or 
 dying civilization stand the living men of to-day : 
 
 Everything goes back to the people. I'm not in- 
 terested in suns. I'm interested in people. Moun- 
 tains and moons and trees have no meaning to me till 
 they are peopled. Your philosophies and dreams are 
 insignificant till they are peopled. I know nothing 
 but people. I comprehend nothing but people. If you 
 sing a song I hear people in it. If you paint a pic- 
 ture I see people in it. If I didn't hear the people or 
 see the people I might as well be deaf and blind. If 
 you tell me there are so many rivers in a country or 
 so many acres of ground and ask me: What do you 
 think of that? I say: I don't think of that: I only 
 think of people. If you name the great men to me and 
 
I04 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 ask : What do you make of them ? I answer : I make 
 nothing of them : I make everything of the people. . . . 
 If your theories don't give me the people. Or your 
 governments. Or your sciences. Or your vast cities. 
 Or anything you build or pride yourselves upon. . . . 
 You say the sculpture of Greece, the paintings of 
 Italy, the music of Germany. I say people.** 
 
 Our present civilization in its so-called "higher" 
 aspects is held as a burden that the people carry 
 and not as a treasure they inherit : 
 
 What pack have you got on your back ? What load 
 are you carrying tljat's not your own? What's that 
 burden under which you are bent? Symonds wrote to 
 Walt Whitman : "Do what I may I can't get that Ox- 
 ford pack off my back." . . . Think what we've carried 
 round on our backs. All the creeds exciting people 
 against people. All the laws making least of most 
 and most of least. All the jails for saints 'and all the 
 executive mansions for sinners. All the arts treacher- 
 ous to all. The churches alone are full of death. It's 
 a wonder we ever survived the churches alone. Not 
 to speak of the colleges founded by and for the aris- 
 tocracy. They have all been on our backs. And 
 the books that made light of the people. Millions of 
 dead books mountain high."' 
 
 Traubel's revolutionism spares nothing. He 
 attacks not only our civilization but nearly all its 
 
PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY 105 
 
 products, its much vaunted "education," its heroes, 
 and even its saviors, who after all are only a sort of 
 sanctified leaders: 
 
 Every time you try to live for yourself some savior 
 interferes to live for you. . . . The church will live 
 for your soul. The state will live for your body. You 
 iind all the saviors waiting to live for you. Refusing 
 to let you live for yourself. Taxing you to death to 
 crown themselves for life. You have thought of the 
 saviors dying that you might live. Think again. And 
 you will see yourself dying that the saviors may live. 
 My life is the people's life. I no more die for the 
 people than the people die for me. Look the saviors 
 straight in the face. Defy them. Refute them by an 
 appeal to your own treasure. Every time you save 
 yourself you destroy a savior. Do you want to be 
 saved by another? What is the price of salvation? 
 Your body and soul are the price. You are to give up 
 everything. That is the price. Not give up everything 
 to all. No. That would be a fair price. Give up 
 everything to the saviors. That is the price. That is 
 the pirate fee. . . . What is left after you have settled 
 with the saviors? The saviors are left. But nothing 
 is left of you. . . . The saviors used to succeed. Now 
 you may notice that the saviors fail. The saviors only 
 succeed when the people fail. When the people suc- 
 ceed the saviors fail. Saviors belong with kings and 
 owners and bosses. When the people at last object to 
 being ruled or owned or bossed the saviors will dis- 
 appear with the saved.^"" 
 
io6 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 The mere fact that civilization is so largely in- 
 herited' is in itself an evidence that it is in so far 
 dead. The people must question — ^and question sus- 
 piciously — every iota of "culture" that is handed 
 down to them, whether from those above them to- 
 day, or by their own ancestors, the miseducated 
 masses of past generations: 
 
 So people mustn't be telling people all the time in 
 hushed tones that tradition is to be respected. Ten 
 chances out of nine it's rather to be distrusted than 
 confided in. At the very least we must test it every 
 day to see if it has grown any with time overnight. 
 Nobody has more love for the Declaration than I have. 
 But I keep on asking it questions. And I always ex- 
 pect it to answer my questions. So with any body of 
 procedure, legal, ecclesiastical or literary. With any 
 pre-assumption of the sciences or the arts. I ask ques- 
 tions. And I want answers. I always say to every- 
 body : Ask questions. I want the crowd to ask ques- 
 tions. The mob. They didn't ask so many at the start 
 when the United States got under way. They've been 
 asking more and more. And they've got more still 
 coming. We can't afford to give masters, bosses, su- 
 periors, rulers, compacts, kings, presidents, a mo- 
 ment's peace. We'd be guilty if we let them sleep any 
 nights. And we'd be sinners if we let them loaf any 
 days. They must give an account of themselves. Not 
 to a few. Not to committees, commissions, judges, 
 assemblies : not to any special set self -selected, chosen, 
 or appointed.^"^ 
 
PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY 107 
 
 I have already illustrated the mixture of deep 
 sympathy and irreverence with which Traubel han- 
 dles the sacred things of our civilization. This 
 spirit is very strongly brought out in his recent 
 poem, "Hello, Central!": 
 
 y 
 
 Hello, central! 
 
 Hello, central ! And the answer came back : 
 
 Along the mysterious wire traveled the voice of the 
 invisible to the ear of the unseen. . . . 
 
 What do you want? the words hurried me out of my 
 dream : what do you want ? 
 
 What did I want ? I wanted religion : I said so : give 
 me religion : 
 
 And I waited, hearing the click and buzz of strange 
 sounds: feeling the sting of the current flowing 
 across : 
 
 Give me religion, I said : and then it came : I am re- 
 ligion, it said : 
 
 And I asked my questions : they were the questions of 
 my heart: but they went unanswered: 
 
 It was not religion answering : it was theology : it was 
 a creed : I heard the mumbled prayers of a priest : 
 
 Hello, central I I cried : you've given me the wrong 
 number: I wanted religion: you've given me the 
 church. 
 
 I called up information: What's religion's number? I 
 asked : 
 
 Information said: I don't know anything about re- 
 ligion: I only know the church. 
 
io8 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 Was I to despair? was I to sit down and cry myself 
 
 sick ? where was religion ? 
 Hello, central! central again: try, justice: try equity: 
 
 give me honor and equality! 
 I heard my name called : how did they inow my name? 
 
 well, what did I want ? 
 I was again answered without getting an answer: I 
 
 don't seem to know what you want, the answerer 
 
 said: 
 And the answerer said : I am the state : I don't seem 
 
 to know anything about right and wrong ! ^"^ 
 
 Apply this renunciation of saviors and sanctities 
 to the poet-prophet idea of Whitman. America was 
 to be saved by a new class of heroes. They were 
 to be leaders who brought new ideas and a new 
 inspiration to the people. These were to be demo- 
 cratic ideas, but the inspiration was to come from 
 the few to the many, from a natural born elite. 
 Traubel, on the contrary, renounces heroes, leaders, 
 prophets — and bibles, new or old. He will go to 
 the people to get inspiration just as much as to 
 bring it to them. He will not tell them how to 
 be worthy democrats. They will tell him how to 
 be a worthy democrat, and he will pass on the 
 message to the world. 
 
 In reviewing Bernard Shaw's "Socialism and 
 Superior Brains" Traubel shows even less respect 
 than Shaw does for all that now goes under the 
 name of education and culture : 
 
PHILOSOPHER OF DEMOCRACY 109 
 
 Do I see your superior brains? You go to school. 
 You learn how to use good English. You can't do 
 anything. But you can talk nice. I can make a shoe 
 for your foot.- Can you make anything for my mind? 
 No. You can only talk good English. You can only 
 fol de rol about philosophy and art. You can't help 
 people to live. You can't even help them to die. Do 
 I see your superior brains? I know the hyena can 
 bite. I know the craft of the fox. I know the poison 
 of the snake. Do I see your superior brains? You 
 weigh more pounds than I do. You go away in sum- 
 mer and loaf somewhere at your ease. You know how 
 to spend money. You don't know how to make money. 
 Honestly. By some form of human service. But you 
 know how to spend.^"' 
 
 Our present education and culture Traubel re- 
 gards as a mere by-product of class rule. He does 
 not deny that a great many of the really stronger 
 characters find their way from the masses into the 
 ruling classes, nor that a more than proportionate 
 number of the weaker ones remains among the 
 mass, but mere strength is not necessarily worth 
 anything whatever to society or to the race: 
 
 We do everything to produce the weak men. The 
 strong men are either seduced or destroyed. The 
 strong man is given only one alternative. He can 
 decide to be weak. Then he may be left to be honest. 
 
no WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 He may decide to be strong. Then he must be con- 
 verted to the class of those who exploit. Our civili- 
 zation leaves only honesty to the weak. It leaves only 
 robbery to the strong.^"* 
 
VI 
 
 THE POET OF SOCIALISM 
 
 A S a radical Socialist Traubel is not satisfied to 
 -^ *■ attack existing institutions from a vagliely pop- 
 ular standpoint, but sees that if a people's movement 
 is to revolutionize all civilization, it must be organ- 
 ized and must develop a program in accord with the 
 tendencies of social evolution. He believes that the 
 Socialist movement has such a program and he fully 
 accepts that movement, though without allowing 
 himself for a moment to be submerged by its tem- 
 porary forms. He even concedes the need of a 
 rigidly logical doctrine, and only protests against 
 materialism or any interpretation of Socialism that 
 is exclusive or narrow: j 
 
 My material economists give me only another word 
 for the mystery. They have not begun to see. But 
 they think they are through seeing. . . . Socialism is 
 not only anti profit. Not only anti exploitation. Not 
 only anti to all physical lordships. Socialism goes be- 
 low all foundations and above all superstructures. It 
 can be proved to a cent. And it baffles all demonstra- 
 tion. I understand what the too too Socialist Socialists 
 
 III 
 
112 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 say to all this. . . . They say: Why don't you stick 
 to figures ? But you've got to stick to something else 
 before and after you stick to figures.^"'^ 
 
 You may sneer all you choose at the Socialism that's 
 up in the air. It still remains true that you breathe 
 the air. You may say anything you please of our 
 dreams. It still remains true that nothing ever became 
 a fact but through a dream. . . . Well — what are you 
 doing with the technique of Socialism? You want to 
 learn it. Then you want to forget you ever knew 
 anything about it. You want to use it as an instru- 
 ment. But you mustn't adopt it as an end. The tech- 
 nique of Socialism is like the technique of anything 
 else. It's often best observed in the breach. Tech- 
 nique makes cowards of us all. If Socialism is an 
 invention then it can be diagrammed for good. But if 
 it's an evolution then it must have variations and elas- 
 ticity and submit itself to the constant expansions of 
 the human spirit. Natural selection will dispose of 
 the dogmatist. Jessie Hughan says : "The tactics are 
 still in the making." So they are. So they always 
 will be. Once they are made they become a tyrant 
 institution. They are only safe in the making. They 
 become a menace when made. . . . You and I, too: 
 we are only useful in the making. If we ever get made 
 we'll be a check on the truth. You can't exempt your 
 historic movements from this law. Socialism will al- 
 ways only be safe in the making. When it gets made 
 something'll have to happen to get it making again. 
 Some people already have Socialism made.^"* 
 
THE POET OF SOCIALISM 113 
 
 Traubel will accept no substitute for the Socialist 
 reality. Recognition of certain facts is not Social- 
 ism, neither is the acceptance of any formula, nor 
 adhesion to any fixed social tactics or individual 
 course of conduct. And aboye all he rejects that 
 interpretation of Socialism which makes it an ex- 
 clusive instead of an inclusive movement : 
 
 Note the radicals. We take it for granted that 
 they're not drifters. Yet some of the deadest dead 
 wood of thought is called radical. Radicals get into 
 ruts. They group into classes, cliques, machines, or- 
 thodoxies. They commit themselves to incidental fol- 
 lies. They test the whole of life by a piece of life 
 instead of a piece of life by the whole of life. They 
 advise the people but they refuse to be advised by the 
 people. . . . You may assume that all institutional 
 feeling is drift and all revolutionary feeling is mas- 
 tery. But that don't follow. There's radical drift 
 as well as conservative drift. There's drift towards 
 as well as away from the past. Your libertarians 
 themselves may be slaves of a process — ^pawns in a 
 routine.^"' 
 
 It is unnecessary to point out that such a liberal 
 Socialist as Traubel will pay. a far higher and more 
 willing tribute to the great individualists — provided 
 only they are democrats — than he will to the dog- 
 matic or partizan Socialists, however eminent. It 
 may be doubted, for example, if the character of 
 
114 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 that uncompromising anti-Socialist, John Bright, has 
 ever received a fuller appreciation than this : 
 
 He was for getting rid of all the rulers everywhere 
 and all the ruled everywhere. The final touch was 
 never given to Bright's nerve. He was never poor. 
 He was never in prison. But he was better than ever 
 having been poor. He was capable of being poor. 
 And he was better than ever having been in prison. 
 He was capable of enduring imprisonment. Being 
 poor may be a necessity. Being in jail may be a mis- 
 fortune. But being ready to face and accept adver- 
 sity is the supreme gift of personality. Bright had 
 no earth himger. He was for England giving up what 
 she has rather than for seizing more. He had no 
 money hunger. He was for everybody having enough 
 money. He didn't seem to know how they could get 
 enough. But he was in favor of it. . . . He was not 
 afraid to be called a sentimentalist. To remind gran- 
 dees and ecclesiastics that their powers and their gra- 
 tuities were all drawn from the blood of the people. 
 He didn't go the route. But he talked the route. He 
 acknowledged that we may be able at a given time to 
 go only part way. But he insisted that we could al- 
 ways see all the way. Bright didn't seem to realize 
 what privilege was built on. But he recognized its 
 victims. He protested without knowing just what 
 he was protesting against. But he made his charge in 
 a spirit so righteously aflame that its fire scorched the 
 flesh of the guilty. He had so much faith in peace 
 that he fought like a soldier.*"* 
 
THE POET OF SOCIALISM 115 
 
 While Traubel must be regarded as a liberal 
 Socialist he is also one of the most radical; indeed, 
 he turns out to be quite as much a fighter as a 
 lover : 
 
 We are going to make mistakes. We are going to 
 be hot. We are going to do you some injustice. We 
 are going to be stern. We are going to use words that 
 overshoot and words that undershoot the mark. . . . 
 Fight. That is our word. . . . We do not fight be- 
 cause we hate but because we love. We do not fight 
 to take away anything from anybody. We fight to 
 give away everything to everybody.^"' 
 
 In a review of Emma Goldman's book on An- 
 archism, while disagreeing with her on some funda- 
 mental points, he yet puts a high value on her work 
 and life just because she is a fighter against existing 
 institutions : 
 
 Emma Goldman is one of the voices of the new 
 evangelization. One of the stirrers of strife, if you 
 choose. Stirrers of strife are stirrers of life. Stirrers 
 of love."" 
 
 In one of his most eloquent "Collects," Traubel 
 regards himself also as a "stirrer of strife." One 
 passage contains as bold and defiant a challenge to 
 the ruling classes as can be found an5rwhere, though 
 it is by no means a unique passage in Traubel's 
 writings. He says: 
 
ii6 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 I hit you without apologizing instead of apologizing 
 without hitting you. I might be so gentle you could 
 not understand my rebuke. That would please you. 
 But I am so honest you can't misunderstand me. That 
 pleases me. My business is not to platitudinize my- 
 self into the favor of the court. My business is to be 
 always in contempt of court. I could not shine as 
 a ruly member of society. I am only at home as an 
 outcast. I am only at ease when the police are after 
 me. I am only right when I have done wrong. I 
 know that when I am endorsed there is something the 
 matter with me. And I know that when I am de- 
 nounced I am all right. For I am a disturber of the 
 peace. . . . 
 
 I break in upon you with my brutal taunts. I turn 
 myself into a question mark and follow you wher- 
 ever you go. I am in the food you eat. In the 
 clothes you wear. In every cent you spend. You 
 can't buy a box of cigars but I lean over your shoul- 
 der and say something to distress you. I make you 
 report to me. I ask you for figures. My presence 
 fills you with hatred. I come and go before your 
 eyes planting revolt. Little by little, here and there, 
 by words that warn and challenge, I succeed in stir- 
 ring up the waters under your ship. ... In order 
 that all of us may be what all of us must become the 
 few of you must be reduced to the ranks. . . . We 
 don't go round through all the hours of the night like 
 loyal watchmen crying : It's one o'clock — or any other 
 o'clock— and all is well! We don't cry: Sleep on! 
 
THE POET OF SOCIALISM 117 
 
 We cry: It's one o'clock — or any o'clock — and all is 
 ill! We cry: Wake upP" 
 
 The only kind of radical Traubel cares about is 
 the militant radical, the agitator, the type that was 
 embodied, for example, in Wendell Phillips. Of the 
 great abolitionist he writes: 
 
 Phillips was no beg your pardon revolutionist. He 
 was no by your leave man. There was no now you 
 see me now you don't in his propaganda. He was 
 always all there. He was never round the corner. He 
 was never missing. He had no important friends to 
 pay court to or ornamental dinners to stuif with.^^^ 
 
 j^There can be no question that with all of Traubel's 
 attacks on the ruling classes there is mixed a deep 
 element of sympathy. His hope is always to make 
 converts of them — for their own sakes-reven 
 though he confesses he has been often disillusioned 
 in this direction and is aware that the democratic 
 movement can have no hope of winning over the 
 privileged class as a whole. And, whether his hope 
 is justified or not, his attack is so just and pierces 
 so deep that it tends to force these classes to a 
 realignment along the line of the deeper issues, 
 which is a vast gain — ^no matter which side they 
 finally take. 
 
 Yet Traubel does not spare the ruling class. In 
 accord with the most profound truth of the whole 
 
ii8 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 Socialist philosophy, he makes all of his attacks 
 personal. He gives no attention to the social 
 system in the abstract. He attacks it as embodied 
 in men — though he never goes so far as to say that 
 class-consciousness is all that is embodied in any 
 man:, v 
 
 Labor is finding that it has been too generous. It 
 is wondering why it should fatten you with plenty 
 and starve itself. It has been comparing the rosy 
 cheeks of your children with the pale faces of its 
 own darlings. . . . You have charged the costs of cul- 
 ture to labor. Every college represents an enforced 
 tribute. . . . Labor is not going to borrow the weap- 
 ons of earthquakes and waterspouts. It is simply 
 going to swarm on its own roads, occupy its own home- 
 steads, enjoy its own pleasures, work out the measure 
 and shape of its own will, and leave you to fall in line 
 in the one way that will secure you against annihila- 
 tion. Labor is not going to destroy anything. It is 
 not going to destroy even you. It is going to use 
 everything. It is going to use you. Labor does not 
 say you are useless. Labor says you are useful. And 
 to prove you against yourself labor is going to make 
 use of you.^^' 
 
 It's all nonsense for the man up town to call the 
 man down town his brother. For the man at the top 
 to call the man at the bottom his brother. For the 
 man who is a victim to call the man who is the victor 
 his brother. The man who is my brother goes round 
 with my money in his pocket. More than that, with 
 
THE POET OF SOCIALISM 119 
 
 my dreams in his soul. He makes my possible op- 
 portunity for life his actual opportunity for life. He's 
 my brother, he says. He's not my brother, I say. 
 And I couldn't be his brother under the same condi- 
 tions.^^* 
 
 Whether the proffered "brothering" on the part 
 of the ruling classes takes the shape of telling the 
 wage-earner how to finance his family or how to 
 use his leisure it is equally insufficient : 
 
 Don't ask the workingman what he can live with. 
 Ask him what he can live without. Don't ask him 
 how much food he needs to be really alive on. Ask 
 him how much food will keep him from really dying. 
 Don't let him figure it out for himself. You figure it 
 out for him. His income must not be the wages of 
 your sin. He's not to choose. He's to be chosen for. 
 Good people, bad people, indifferent people, are study- 
 ing the question. . . . All this tabulated sympathy is a 
 species of negation. It sounds like: What can I do 
 for you my good man? No matter how innocent we 
 may be we suggest guilt. We don't say : Present your 
 bill. We say: Let us edit your bill. . . . What is 
 the working class creatively to help itself to? Can 
 you tell? No. You only want to know what they 
 can live on. You say nothing as to what belongs to 
 them. You only speak of what they can be allowed. 
 The working class, you see, are not to have what they 
 produce. They are to be given an allowance. A liv- 
 ing allowance is hay to feed the horse on to-night 
 
120 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 so the horse can work for us to-morrow again. You 
 can cut off all his sources of supply. If you do you 
 cut off his source of life. If he can't work you must. 
 So he must be kept in condition. Not in condition 
 for manhood. Far from that. In condition for an 
 industrial serfdom. You don't want him to be good 
 off. Then he'd get cocky. You don't want him to 
 be too bad off. Then he'd die. You want him to live 
 so you can live. If he dies you die. Or you work. 
 Which is worse than dying. So we must discover some 
 way of preservation. We want to take care of a man 
 so he can do the most work possible with his chains 
 on."= 
 
 Our fight is a fight for leisure. That's true. But 
 it's not leisure's fight for us. It's our fight for leisure. 
 Remember that. We want to do things. We need 
 time and space to do them in. We're fighting for that 
 time and space. That time and space is what we call 
 leisure. We need room to move round in. That's 
 what we're fighting for. Not for meals and clothes 
 and houses. That's only the incident. We're after 
 life and more life. We're after expansion. We want 
 fresh air and sunlight to grow in. That's our fight. 
 We don't fight to possess goods. We fight to stop 
 goods from possessing us. We don't want to pos- 
 sess. Only, we don't want the other fellow to possess 
 either. We want possession vested in all not in one. 
 I only need to own when others own. If others stop 
 owning I can be safe without a cent. . . . That illu- 
 sion of the intellectual well-to-do that he is chosen 
 to save the soul of the intellectual pauper is offensively 
 
THE POET OF SOCIALISM 121 
 
 gratuitous. There's no man so rich he has any sal- 
 vation to spare. There's no man so poor he has no 
 salvation to pay for his keep. . . .^^' 
 
 While Traubel occasionally writes to the ruling 
 class as if he thought it might be persuaded to con- 
 sent to the social revolution, he never promises the 
 people that they can gain anything without the 
 stubborn resistance of that class. Thus he advises 
 the people: 
 
 Keep to the road : do not turn back : no matter what 
 happens, do not turn back: 
 
 There's poverty ahead and starvation ahead and bat- 
 tle ahead and death ahead: I refuse to see noth- 
 ing. . . . 
 
 You have challenged the masters of the people and 
 they are everywhere out to meet you: 
 
 The lords god of money, the lords god of trade, the 
 lords god of the land, are out to meet you.^^'' 
 
 And again : 
 
 "^ Strikes are desperate expedients. They are war. 
 What's the use pretending? Let's tell our real names. 
 There is war between capitalism and labor. Desperate, 
 unequivocal war. The war is on. . . . Now labor 
 challenges. Now capitalism challenges. They may 
 compromise. But they don't forgive. There'll be no 
 stop till the object is won. Labor will say when the 
 war's over. Capitalism will have nothing to do with 
 
122 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 fixing the date. Capitalism has had most of its say. 
 Labor is yet to get most of its say. . . . This is a 
 world war. It's not a quarrel between two races. 
 ' It's a quarrel within the whole race. Take it to a still 
 higher plane. It's a war between ideas. That which 
 has been but is not to be. That which is to be but 
 never has been.^ . . Every morning you see fifty 
 things in your paper about the war. It's not called 
 war news. But it's war fact. If we printed all this 
 news on a page or on pages together under a single 
 display head indicating what it intrinsically is every 
 man reading it would catch its dramatic suggestions. 
 He would see that we are living through the immensest 
 epic of the ages. He would read by the light of this 
 conflagration the decrees of fate. Thermopylae, 
 Waterloo, Gettysburg, Sedan, alone or together, would 
 seem cheap beside this overarching crisis. . . . Most 
 people are blind. They say nothing's going on. They 
 hear the noise of the conflict but they don't know' 
 what it means. Even when they are wounded they 
 don't know what hit them. Evep when they prema- 
 turely die they don't divine to what they are sacri- 
 ficed. They look upon boycotts and strikes and lock- 
 outs as evidences of peace. No. They are evidences 
 of war. And this war instead of being the mildest 
 is the severest of wars. Old wars were horrible in 
 form and trivial in substance. The new war is ter- 
 rible in substance and innocent in form.^^' 
 
 As the social war involves suffering on the part of 
 the oppressed so Traubel has a right to demand from 
 
THE POET OF SOCIALISM 123 
 
 the oppressor that he too make a sacrifice, though 
 it may be against existing human nature to expect 
 that this appeal will be heeded in social cir9les where 
 material allurements are so great and where training 
 has been so radically wrong. Whichever class he 
 may come from, every genuine Socialist must be 
 driven mainly, not by the material advantages he 
 can hope to obtain in the near future for himself or 
 his fellows, but by the feeUng that his work for So- 
 cialism gives him his present mission in the world 
 and promises the greatest present opportunity both 
 for self-development and for social service: 
 
 Of course I have a mission: and you? 
 
 If I had no mission what would I have? and you? 
 
 If I had no mission I would have no life: if I had 
 no mission I would have no love: 
 
 My mission is the course I sail: my mission is my 
 indestructible dream: 
 
 There are the stars I steer by: there are the com- 
 rades I steer by. . . . 
 
 With masters against slaves, with money against men : 
 do we know what our mission is? . . . 
 
 With drawing lines everywhere instead of wiping 
 lines out everywhere: do we know what our mis- 
 sion is?"* 
 
 Traubel thinks, however, that class lines exist, 
 and must be recognized if they are to be wiped out, 
 that everybody is involved in some way in the 
 
124 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 class struggle — if not actively, then, passively. If 
 one does not take an active part in bringing about 
 the new society or in defending the old, one is at 
 least either among the exploiters or among the 
 exploited. There is no innocent public: 
 
 Then they tell us about the innocent public. The 
 innocent public suffers. Suffers for something it has 
 nothing to do with. Don't believe it. There is no 
 innocent public. There is only the guilty public. If 
 that innocent public wasn't guilty there'd never be 
 a strike. If that innocent public wasn't the guilty 
 stubborner of profit there'd be no economic injus- 
 tice. Don't talk to me about the innocent public. I 
 have its face hung in my rogues gallery .^^^ 
 
 Traubel is not a Socialist who drifts whichever 
 way the movement happens to be going for the 
 moment. He is a Socialist only so long as the move^ 
 ment is true to itself. For example, he condemns 
 the mere reformer inside the movement as well as 
 without — the man, that is, who in advocating cer- 
 tain relatively small social changes believes, or pre- 
 tends to believe, that he is working as fast as is 
 practicable towards a new society : 
 
 I want Socialism to be sternly narrow so it may be- 
 come prophetically broad. I want it to be cruel so 
 it may be kind. I want it out of feeling to not care 
 whose feelings it hurts. I want it to refuse to have 
 
THE POET OF SOCIALISM 125 
 
 anything that it has to get wearing a mask. It is 
 entrusted with an earth mission. I want it to have 
 an earth voice. I want it to have an earth scope. I 
 want it to get what belongs to it as soon as it can. 
 But I want it to wait as long as it must. I don't want 
 it to abbreviate itself to the dimensions of a political 
 platform. Nor do I want it to withdraw into some 
 hermit isolation. I'm not afraid of banners. I who 
 believe in symbols. I don't discredit the stars and 
 stripes. I who credit the red flag. I'm not sorry to 
 have my feet on earth. I whose brow is in the heavens. 
 But after all I am a quarreler. I plant myself on 
 the spot where I belong. There I challenge the con- 
 ventions.^"^ 
 
 It must not be supposed that Traubel despises any 
 reform or is unwilling to accept any concessions. 
 He is only unwilling to make concessions himself, 
 or to accept, even in part, any existing social injus- 
 tice — which he would consider as making him an 
 accomplice in social crime, a "compounder of the 
 felony." 
 
 You will never hear me say that you are defeated, 
 dear comrades. You may make concessions. But I 
 will make no concessions. Do you think that when 
 I look at your children I can make concessions? . . . 
 Your masters have sent you to bed whipped. Will 
 you get up to-morrow morning defiant? Your tem- 
 porary report is made to defeat. Your final report 
 
126 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 is made to victory. You asked for ten per cent. You 
 asked for nine hours. You asked for something. You 
 got nothing. That is, nothing except a little stiffen- 
 ing of the fiber. And so you think you were licked. 
 But I tell you that strengthening of the fiber is worth 
 more to you than ten per cent, or than nine hours. 
 Defeat? This world is your world. But you have 
 thrown away the title. And no admitted defeat will 
 pick up that title for you again. But the defeats 
 that you will not admit will in the hour of your riper 
 courage return you your rejected heritage. . . . 
 
 I would rather have a whole-hearted enemy than a 
 half-hearted friend. I would rather entertain a bad 
 idea with all my heart than a good idea with half 
 my heart. I would rather that capital was all right 
 and labor all wrong than that labor should compro- 
 mise with half a claim for the sake of peace. I would 
 rather have a world full of honest tyrants than a world 
 full of dishonest courtiers. I would rather have 
 strength in my enemy than weakness in myself .^^^ 
 
 To Traubel Socialism means a vast social move- 
 ment and not a mere political party. He is not 
 willing to appeal to the public for the party on the 
 opportunistic ground that the victory of Socialism 
 will make no sweeping changes and have no effect 
 on cherished institutions and ideals, such as patriot- 
 ism and the home, nor does he believe that the 
 changes which it is to bring about can be guaran- 
 teed to keep within any fixed limitations whatever : 
 
THE POET OF SOCIALISM 127 
 
 We shouldn't take our gospel to the world and 
 try to show how little it's going to shake up things. 
 We should show how much it's going to shake up 
 things. We shouldn't say: Don't be foolish and be 
 afraid. We should say: Be wise and be afraid.^^' 
 
 With these views, Traubel naturally does not care 
 for the compromising, dilatory, non-Socialist re- 
 former. One of the best of these in America, Brand 
 Whitlock, he trenchantly characterizes in less than 
 four lines: 
 
 Whitlock is one of the thousand year men. He 
 says these millennial results will surely come but give 
 them time. I say: They may take time but I won't 
 give them time. 
 
 Here we have not only the typical reformer's view 
 but also that of the genuine Socialist as opposed to 
 him. Could more be said in so few words? 
 
 In these days of destructive and criminal "patriot- 
 ism" directed as much against other countries as for 
 the benefit of one's own, there is no better test of the 
 true revolutionary spirit than one's attitude on this 
 question. Here as elsewhere Traubel does not 
 flinch. He reviews Gustave Herve's "Leur Patrie" 
 with full approval and asks: 
 
 When will the whole Socialist movement consent 
 to stand unequivocally against patriotism? We are 
 
128 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 either one race or we are not one race. We are 
 either a brotherhood or we are not a brotherhood. 
 If we are one race, if we are a brotherhood, then the 
 patriot is out of place. He belongs to another world. 
 Unfortunately, not to a world that the world has out- 
 lived. Hardly that. But to a world that we are out- 
 living. To a world that the Socialist certainly has 
 outlived. . . . But the Socialist patriot? What can 
 we say to the Socialist patriot? He is an anomaly. 
 He is without a reason for being.*^* 
 
 When Traubel wrote these lines the present war 
 had not begun and Socialist "patriots" were not yet 
 in a majority as they are now in all the countries at 
 war, if not everywhere. This situation, together 
 with Traubel's profound and instinctive antipathy 
 to war, makes his views in the present great con- 
 flict between the nations one of the best possible 
 tests of his whole position. He has handled it at 
 great length and from many angles. 
 
 It needs hardly be said that Traubel has seized 
 this occasion once more to point out that no real 
 democrat can be a mere nationalist or patriot, a 
 mere American, for example : 
 
 If I say I'd choose my country wrong to any other 
 country right you slap me on the back as a patriot. 
 But if I say I'd choose any other country right to 
 my country wrong you shoot me as a traitor. You 
 say: Now's the time to shut up. I say: Now's the 
 
THE POET OF SOCIALISM 129 
 
 time to talk out. They ask me: Would you like to 
 be a German? Or they ask me: Would you like to 
 be an Englishman? What can I say? I had nothing 
 to do with what I am. I want to have nothing to do 
 with what I'm to be. When it comes to races, I don't 
 want to choose. Or men, I don't want to choose. 
 If I choose then I'm lost. Then I've set one above 
 another. That's war. I'm for peace.^^^ 
 
 In another passage Traubel shows how pro- 
 foundly opposed democracy is to that militant na- 
 tionalism which rests upon assertions of superiority. 
 He says : 
 
 I don't want to be superior. I hate superiority. 
 When the German's superior I become anti. When 
 the Englishman's superior I become anti again. A 
 man may be right in all his ideas. But his superiority's 
 wrong. I might agree with all his theories. But I 
 dissent from his superiority. And the more right his 
 superiority is the more I despise it.^^° 
 
 But Traubel is more radical than most Socialists. ' 
 He is a communist, believing in the equal division 
 of goods, and this belief is based — as in the case of 
 Whitman and Tolstoy — on a belief in the essential 
 sameness of persons. People being essentially equal 
 and alike, there is no reason why one person (or 
 nation) should be given more power or "means" 
 than another, no reason why one person (or nation) 
 should "use" another at all: 
 
130 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 We'll have no peace as long as a shred of the old 
 theories of combat and victory is left. As long as 
 anybody anywhere has to fight for anything. Strug- 
 gle will never be outlived. But the sacrifice of one 
 by another must stop. 
 
 This is the very opposite idea to that of Kipling's 
 "White Man's Burden." It is seen again in Trau- 
 bel's sympathy for many of the ideas of Tolstoy: 
 
 The main thing in Tolstoy is his emphasis placed 
 on people. On everybody. Not on somebody. Not 
 on the virtuous. Not on selected democracies. But 
 on the mob. The ragtag and bobtail. The discred- 
 ited. Tolstoy contends for all. 
 
 This is the psychological or spiritual basis of com- 
 munism as we see it in the founders of religions. 
 The Socialist who is not a communist, on the con- 
 trary, believes that the value of individuals and of 
 societies to humanity varies exceedingly. In this 
 respect the Socialist is at the opposite pole from the 
 communist. Traubel sometimes goes so far that 
 he draws as little distinction between the various 
 social systems as he does between individuals. He 
 says: 
 
 I can't follow the hairsplitters and the quibblers. 
 The document worshipers and the constitution mon- 
 gers. For the people always come back to me. The 
 
THE POET OF SOCIALISM 131 
 
 plaintive cry of the people. I can't draw lines. 
 They're all people. Just about equally wise. Just 
 about equally foolish. Just about equally deceived. 
 Just about equally brutalized. 
 
 But here Traubel does not state his own position 
 altogether correctly. For in another passage, writ- 
 ten about the same time, he suggests that, while he is 
 not uncritical of America, he distinctly prefers the 
 American social system, because of its greater 
 advance towards democracy: 
 
 For America to put on airs about its democracy is 
 as bad as for Europe to put on airs about its culture. 
 We are still in a wretched tangle. All of us. We 
 have every reason for all being dubious of our per- 
 fections. Yet all also have good reasons for being 
 thankful to each other. The worst of us has con- 
 tributed something to the fund. The best of us haven't 
 contributed enough to brag about. And as the ef- 
 fort of the bad to be good is often nobler than the 
 effort of the good to be better we can say of nations 
 that the treasure of the worst may stand for more than 
 the treasure of the best. Our United States have 
 made a state. It's full of faults. It looks back as 
 well as ahead. It's anti-democratic as well as demo- 
 cratic. It discredits the people as well as trusts the 
 people. It contradicts itself. It lies about itself. It 
 shows itself one thing when it's another. Still it has 
 eyes. It's peering into the future. It's calculating 
 upon extensions of its democratic practice. To say 
 
132 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 that we have a state administered by the people, con- 
 trolled by the people, made as they please and un- 
 made as they please by the people, is to go ahead of 
 the figures. That's what we want. But that's not 
 what we've got. In economics the people want the 
 earth. But they've got very little of it. In politics 
 they want the state. But they've got hardly any of 
 it. There's too much between. Just as in religion. 
 The people want the church. But they can't have 
 it. And literature. And art and science. The peo- 
 ple want all and sometimes I think they have noth- 
 ing. 
 
 Traubel's self-imposed task in this passage was to 
 state the case against America; he does it in a way 
 to disclose his belief that it is in this country — at 
 the present moment — that the greatest efforts 
 towards democracy are being made. He does dis- 
 criminate between nations then — ^if only in favor of 
 America. 
 
 Traubel's strongest attack on the present war is 
 when he assaults those non-Socialists who claim it 
 is being fought for democracy and against mili- 
 tarism. He points out that when these persons are 
 not Socialists they are not really democrats them- 
 selves, since they stand for another and a far more 
 costly war: 
 
 But terrible as this war is your economic peace is 
 worse. Low as the war goes this peace goes lower. 
 
THE POET OF SOCIALISM 133 
 
 Savage as battles are profits are savager. Treacher- 
 ous as strategy is the system is more deceitful. You 
 are horrified because the -Germans laid tribute on 
 Brussels. It was horrible. But horror don't become 
 you. For you have exacted such tribute that this 
 is in comparison a mere mote in a sunbeam. You can 
 be shocked by a formal war. But here we have a 
 war worse than war. And here you are unperturbed. 
 You shudder over a battlefield. But you regard pov- 
 erty with equanimity. . . . Coupons, dividends, in- 
 terests, profits: they're all deadlier than rifle balls. 
 They're the blow in the dark. They're the assault 
 in the night. You who denounce the Zeppelins ap- 
 prove of profits. The Zeppelin murders while the 
 people sleep. So does your income. And you are 
 so concerned for the noncombatant. For the people 
 who can't fight back. For women and children. For 
 the too old and the too young. But who does your 
 income spare? When you get that which you have 
 given no equivalent for, who is spared ?^^^ 
 
 Yet in spite of his intense reaction against the 
 present war, Traubel's optimism stands the test, he 
 will not take a pessimistic view even of war. The 
 motives that led to the conflict are among the 
 worst, the results may be of the best. And it is 
 the social function of the people to see to it that it 
 is so. The war must be fought, not to a finish, but 
 "to a revolution" : 
 
134 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 What are the people going to get out of the war? 
 Is the clock to be set back? I never see anything 
 going that way. I see everything going on. I don't 
 grieve with my sorrows. I make use of them. I can't 
 see the war wholly wasted however I look at it. I 
 can see it wholly wicked. Wholly horrible and wholly 
 inexcusable. Wholly stupid and wholly impossible. 
 Yet I gather up its ashes and scatter them across the 
 earth and know that they must bring us returns. I'm 
 not making the worst of the best bargain. I'm mak- 
 ing the best of the worst bargain. I can't conceive of 
 a worse way to get anywhere. I can't imagine a more 
 idiotic method of humanizing society. I can't con- 
 coct a more devilish scheme of growth. But I'm 
 still resolute. I still say granting you your barbarism 
 I'm going to get something civilized out of it. Some- 
 thing for the people. That's' the only civilized thing 
 anywhere, anytime, anyhow. Anything you get for 
 the masters of the people. Anything you get for 
 those who isolate land and the product of labor 
 from the people. Anything you leave in the posses- 
 sion of rulers. Anything. That's all blasphemy. 
 That's all robbery. That's all barbarism. But any- 
 thing you get for the people. No matter what you 
 get. No matter how little the people want it or even 
 deserve it. That's all civilized.^^* 
 
 A social rebel like Traubel would be expected to 
 carry his spirit of revolt to the foundations of insti- 
 tutions and in all directions. Nor does he hesitate 
 for a moment to say that his attitude is destructive, 
 
THE POET OF SOCIALISM 135 
 
 and must be destructive in order that a larger con- 
 struction may finally result : 
 
 It may be necessary to sweep half our world away 
 in the interest of the other half. It may be neces- 
 sary to stampede all values. To abrogate all treaties. 
 To repeal all laws. To annul all respectabili- 
 ties. . . ."» 
 
 Without following Nietzsche in his ethics, Trau- 
 bel takes an equally radical and an almost identical 
 position on the question of good and evil, a posi- 
 tion destructive of the very foundations of the 
 whole moral system of to-day: 
 
 We used to be worms that never die. We used to 
 be kindling wood for hell. We used to be told that 
 our hearts were rotten. . . . Most everybody used to 
 be taught that. It was put into literature. The paint- 
 ers represented it in pictures. The pulpits thundered 
 it. No wonder we succumbed. . . . The idea that 
 there was no bad and no good never entered our 
 skulls. We just acquiesced in the common moral 
 surrender. ... If a man believed he was good, why 
 what wouldn't he do? What outrage wouldn't he 
 perpetrate? ... 
 
 I was not only in revolt against being bad. I was 
 also in revolt against being good. I wanted to be 
 free of both obligations. ... If people ain't bad 
 what are we going to build a church on ? Or a stage ? 
 Or social regulation ? If people ain't bad what would 
 
136 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 we do with our policemen and armies and navies ? If 
 people made more of love than of hate what would 
 become of all the people who live on hate? We have 
 built up society on the supposition that people are bad. 
 This theory of their goodness undermines the social 
 order. You are taking the foundations out from 
 under. We've nothing to stand on. . . . 
 
 I see through your bad to your good. I see through 
 your good to you. ... I know that if you give peo- 
 ple half a chance to be themselves they'll not try 
 to be anybody else. ... I can understand that my 
 coat may be incorrigibly bad. But I can't understand 
 how I can be incorrigibly bad. The human stuff is 
 made to last.^'" 
 
 Recognizing neither "good" nor "evil," but only 
 social or anti-social conduct, Traubel refuses to 
 accept that kind of democracy which consists only in 
 efforts towards democracy, however sincere or even 
 "heroic" that effort may be : 
 
 A woman said to me that she found it hard to 
 be a democrat. She wished to be a democrat but 
 found it difficult to mix with the crowd. She asked 
 me : Do you ? I said it was not hard to be a demo- 
 crat. I said it was hard to force yourself to be a 
 democrat. I said it was not hard for the crowd to 
 mix with the crowd. I said it was hard for an alien 
 to mix with the crowd.^'^ 
 
 The most interesting person in history is myself. 
 And the most interesting to you should be yourself. 
 
THE POET OF SOCIALISM 137 
 
 And to every man should be himself. Then we have 
 a democracy. When every man sees that he is in- 
 dispensable to all and is responsible accordingly, That 
 brings us all face to face.^'^ 
 
 Evidently the type of social individual Trau- 
 bel here presupposes will become general only under 
 the improved conditions of the future society. So, 
 like Whitman, Traubel is a futurist, if I may use 
 this much-abused term. But he is far less influenced 
 than Whitman was by the past and is undoubtedly 
 even more closely in touch with the masses of men — 
 which gives him a more solid foundation for his 
 construction. His interest in the future, moreover, 
 does not consist in a willingness to postpone that 
 future, because of the certainty of its coming. 
 Traubel is not an evolutionist of the old school, he 
 is a pragmatist: 
 
 Why should we skulk in the present ? Why should 
 we apologize? Why should we be willing to admit 
 that the future is good enough for justice but that the 
 present is not good enough for justice ? . . . You are 
 learned in nonsense. You quote evolution against 
 haste. . . . But what will evolution do for you if you 
 do nothing for evolution? Evolution includes delay. 
 But it also includes hurry. . . . Am I to be a dead 
 tool of evolution? Or am I to be a vital factor in 
 evolution ? ^^' 
 
138 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEt 
 
 "History reaches back into the jungle. It reaches 
 forward into the commune." 
 
 Traubel repudiates "the old apologists of old sys- 
 tems and the old interpreters of old saviors," and 
 all those who look to the past rather than the fu- 
 ture, on the ground that their culture separates 
 them from the living currents among the masses 
 of men of our time. Not one of these "autocrats 
 of culture," he says, hears "either the laugh of the 
 unlettered or the cry of the living." ^^* 
 
 Traubel is confident as to the future for two 
 reasons: because of his views about society and 
 because of his views about individuals. Believing 
 as he does that existing civilization is a burden al- 
 most as much as it is a benefit to the masses of men, 
 he reasons, with undeniable logic, if his premise is 
 accepted, that progress will be hastened enormously 
 when this colossal burden is removed. And even if 
 he did not see concretely the form of society that 
 will take the place of the old, he believes that man- 
 kind has now, as it has always had, the power to 
 rebuild : 
 
 Listen, you high and mighty lordlings of things and 
 
 affairs : 
 I take all your books and properties and precedents 
 
 and cultures and put them on a pile together. 
 And I light them with a simple match into a vast flame, 
 
THE POET OF SOCIALISM 139 
 
 And you stand close by with me and see them all go 
 
 up in smoke. . . . 
 And then you look at me wondering what now is to 
 
 come to the earth. 
 
 I will tell you what is to come to the earth, you lord- 
 lings of affairs and things. . . . 
 
 All that has just burned up before you so casually 
 will come to the earth again and woiild always 
 come: 
 
 For they have always come out of the people, who 
 are the masters of life, 
 
 For they do not come making man but they come 
 made by man, 
 
 And will always come^ and be destroyed, and come 
 again and again. . . .^^ 
 
 Again Traubel's confidence in the future lies in ' 
 his belief in individual human nature, which he 
 bases, not on speculation, but on his observation of 
 individuals. Every human being that is bom into 
 the world is obviously restricted by the limitations 
 of civilization, and feels this restriction. Society 
 even makes a conscious effort to mold the child into 
 a serviceable and obedient being, but fortunately itj 
 fails : 
 
 If it was not for the boys, or for the boy left over 
 in the man, ever)^hing would always remain about 
 where it is. We draw a line up against which we 
 
140 WHITMAN AND TRAUBEL 
 
 halt the boy. The boy walks straightway over. He 
 does not defy us. He does not hear us. The boy 
 has eye and ear for sights and sounds ahead. But 
 no cries from the past arrest his impatient feet. Every 
 boy brings the youth of the race back again. The 
 hope you have lost your boy recovers. When you 
 say rebellion you say boy. ... If injustice could 
 live in a world of grown men it would feel safe. In- 
 justice fears the cradle. Injustice is not afraid of 
 your brain, your culture, your curiosity or your logic. 
 Injustice is afraid of the boy. The boy dreams. And 
 the boy believes in dreams. Grown men dream, too. 
 But they are less apt to believe in their dreams. The 
 boy tries fact by dream. The man tries dream by 
 fact. That is what makes the man conservative and 
 the boy radical. That is what makes the man the 
 apologist and the boy a menace. The boy is the typical 
 striker. He is up at once for his rights. He thinks 
 neither of family nor society. He thinks only of his 
 rights."' 
 
 Traubel does not assert that human nature can 
 be made over by any artificial arrangements how- 
 ever "socialistic" or "idealistic" they may be, but 
 he believes that it will make itself over if artificial 
 arrangements give it the opportunity. 
 \/Like Whitman, Traubel distrusts all institutions 
 and systems, past, present, and future. But he goes 
 beyond Whitman in his distrust of ideals and ideas 
 — which may tyraimize over the individual as much 
 
THE POET OF SOCIALISM 141 
 
 as institutions and systems. Whitman wanted 
 to renovate and utilize the old religion and the old 
 metaphysics. Traubel is as much opposed to the 
 rule of the abstractions and faiths of the future 
 as he is to their continued authority in their present 
 forms. Whitman was a democrat on all sides but 
 this. He did not see that the religion and meta- 
 physics of a period are the last stronghold of its 
 social system. So he left these authorities funda- 
 mentally undisturbed. Traubel, a democrat on all 
 sides, recognizes no authority — either existing or 
 to come. 
 
NOTES 
 
 6. 
 7- 
 
 8. 
 9- 
 
 10. 
 
 II. 
 
 12. 
 
 13- 
 14. 
 IS- 
 16. 
 
 17- 
 
 18. 
 19. 
 20. 
 21. 
 
 22. 
 
 23- 
 24. 
 
 2S- 
 
 "Song of Myself." 
 
 "By Blue Ontario's 
 Shore." 
 
 Ibid. 
 
 "Song of the Broad- 
 Axe." 
 
 "By Blue Ontario's 
 Shore." 
 
 "Song of Myself." 
 
 Walt Whitman in Cam- 
 den, Vol. I, p. 113, 
 
 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 34. 
 
 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 35. 
 
 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 283. 
 
 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 2SS. 
 
 Ibid., Vol. Ill, p. 69. 
 
 Ibid., Vol. Ill, pp. 491, 492. 
 
 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 193. 
 
 "Song of Myself." 
 
 "Song of the Open Road." 
 
 Note to "Democratic Vis- 
 
 ^ tas." 
 
 "Democratic Vistas." 
 
 Ibid. 
 
 Ibid. 
 
 Walt Whitman in Cam- 
 den, Vol. II, pp. 87, 88. 
 
 Ibid., Vol. II, p. S3. 
 
 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 321. 
 
 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 439. 
 
 "The Conservator," Vol. 
 XXIII, p. 104. 
 
 26. Ibid. Vol. XXV. 
 
 27. Ibid., Vol. XXV, No. I, 
 
 pp. 1-4. 
 
 28. Ibid., Vol. XXII, pp. 66- 
 
 67. 
 
 29. "Optimos,'' p. 131. 
 
 30. Ibid., p. IS3. 
 
 31. "The Conservator," Vol. 
 
 XXIII, p. 105. 
 
 32. Ibid., Vol. XVIII, pp. 6s- 
 
 67. 
 
 33. Ibid., Vol. XXIV, No. S, 
 
 p. 77- 
 
 34. Ibid., Vol. XXII, p. i6s. 
 
 35. "T. P.'s Weekly," Octo- 
 
 ber 17, 1914. 
 
 36. "The Conservator," Vol. 
 
 XXII, p. 188. 
 
 37. "Optimos," pp. 132-149. 
 
 38. "The Conservator," Vol. 
 
 XXI, p. 35. 
 
 39. Ibid., Vol. XXV. 
 
 40. "Optimos," p. 60. 
 
 41. "The Conservator," Vol. 
 
 XXIII, p. 13. 
 
 43. Ibid., Vol. XXII, pp. 113- 
 116. 
 
 43. "Chants Communal," p. 
 
 97- 
 
 44. Ibid., p. 171. 
 
 45. "The Conservator," Vol. 
 
 XXn, pp. 18, 19, 35, 36. 
 
144 
 
 NOTES 
 
 46. Ibid., Vol. XXIV. No. 10, 72. 
 
 pp. 162-164. 73- 
 
 47- Ibid., Vol. XXV. 74. 
 
 48. Ibid., Vol. XXV. 75. 
 
 49. "Optimos," p. 67. 76. 
 
 50. "Optimos," pp. 126, 127. 
 
 51. "The Conservator," Vol. 77. 
 
 XXII, p. 169. 
 
 52. "Optimos," p. 288. 78. 
 
 53. "The Conservator,'' Vol. 79. 
 
 XXII, p. 35. 80. 
 
 54. Ibid., Vol. XXII, p. 119. 81. 
 
 55. "Optimos," pp. 199-201. 82. 
 
 56. "The Conservator," Vol. 
 
 XXII, pp. 1-4. 83. 
 
 57. Ibid., Vol. XXV. 
 
 58. Ibid., Vol. XXIV, No. 7, 84. 
 
 pp. 115, 116. 
 
 59. Ibid., Vol. XIX, pp. 114, 85. 
 
 "5. 
 
 60. Ibid., Vol. XIX, p. 114. 86. 
 
 61. "Chants Communal," p. 87. 
 
 150. 88. 
 
 62. "The Conservator," Vol. 89. 
 
 XXI, p. 168. 
 
 63. Ibid., Vol. XXII, pp. 99, 90. 
 
 100. 91- 
 
 64. Ibid., Vol. XXII, p. 180. 
 
 65. Ibid., Vol. XXII, pp. 146, 92. 
 
 147- 93- 
 
 66. Ibid., Vol. XXIV, No. 10, 
 
 pp. 164, 165. 94- 
 
 67. Ibid., Vol. XIX, p. 18. 
 
 68. Ibid., Vol. XXIII, p. 109. 95- 
 
 69. Ibid., Vol. XXI, p. 148. 96. 
 
 70. "Optimos," p. 370. 
 
 71. "The Conservator," Vol. 97. 
 
 XXII, pp. 82-84. 
 
 Ibid., Vol. XXIII, p. 67. 
 "Optimos," pp. 34, 35. 
 Ibid., pp. 78, 115-121. 
 Ibid., pp. loi, 104. 
 "The Conservator," Vol. 
 
 XXII, pp. 184, 185. 
 Ibid., Vol. XXI, pp. 33, 
 
 34- 
 Ibid., Vol. XXII, p. iSa. 
 "Optimos," pp. 177, 180. 
 Ibid., pp. 206, 209. 
 Ibid., pp. 208, 209. 
 The Conservator, Vol. 
 
 XXI, p. 171. 
 Ibid., Vol. XXIII, pp. 100, 
 
 lOI. 
 
 Ibid., Vol. XXII, pp. 98- 
 
 100. 
 "The Conservator," Vol. 
 
 XXV. 
 Ibid., Vol. XXV. 
 Ibid., Vol. XXV. 
 "Optimos," p. 368. 
 "The Conservator," Vol. 
 
 XXIV, No. 7, p. 100. 
 Ibid., Vol. XXII, p. 117. 
 Ibid., Vol. XXIV, No. 10, 
 
 pp. 170, 171. 
 Ibid., Vol. XXIII, p. 106. 
 "Chants Communal," p. 
 
 177. 
 "The Conservator," Vol. 
 
 XXIV, No. 7. p. loi. 
 "Optimos," pp. 46, 47. 
 "The Conservator," Vol. 
 
 XXV. 
 Ibid., Vol. XXII, pp. 131, 
 
 132. 
 
NOTES 
 
 I4S 
 
 98. Ibid., Vol. XXIII, p. 98. 
 
 99. Ibid.. Vol. XXV. 
 
 100. Ibid.. Vol. XXIII, p. 99. 
 loi. Ibid., Vol. XXV. 
 
 102. Ibid., Vol. XXIII, p. S3. 
 
 103. Ibid., Vol. XXI, p. 137. 
 
 104. Ibid.. Vol. XXIII, pp. 50, 
 
 SI. 
 
 105. "Chants Communal," pp. 
 
 142, 143. 
 
 106. "The Conservator," Vol. 
 
 XXIII, p. 59. 
 
 107. Ibid., Vol. XXIV, No. 
 
 10, pp. 168, 169. 
 
 108. Ibid., Vol. XXV. 
 
 109. Ibid.. Vol. XXV. 
 
 no. "Chants Communal," pp. 
 
 33. 34- 
 
 111. "The Conservator," Vol. 
 
 XXI, p. 172. 
 
 112. Ibid., Vol. XXII, pp. 162- 
 
 164. 
 
 113. Ibid., Vol. XXV. 
 
 114. "Chants Communal," pp. 
 
 66-68. 
 
 115. "The Conservator," Vol. 
 
 XXIV, No. 6. 
 
 116. Ibid.. Vol. XXIV, No. 
 
 10, pp. 169, 170. 
 
 117. Ibid.. Vol. XXIV, No. 
 
 10, p. 172. 
 
 118. "Optimos," p. 313. 
 
 119. "The Conservator," Vol. 
 
 XXV, No. I, p. 13. 
 
 120. Ibid.. Vol. XXII, pp. 20, 
 
 21. 
 
 121. Ibid.. Vol. XXIII, pp. 26, 
 
 S8, S9. 
 
 122. Ibid.. Vol. XXIII, p. 
 26. 
 
 123. "Chants Communal," pp. 
 
 73, 75. 83, 84. 
 
 124. "The Conservator," Vol. 
 
 XXIII, p. 75. 
 
 125. Ibid., Vol. XXI, p. 109. 
 
 126. Ibid., Vol. XXV. 
 
 127. "The Conservator," Vol. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 128. Ibid., Vol. XXV. 
 
 129. Ibid., Vol. XXIII, pp. 
 
 IDS, 106. 
 
 130. Ibid., Vol. XXII, pp 3, 
 
 4- 
 
 131. Ibid., Vol. XXIII, pp. 
 
 1-4. 6. 
 
 132. Ibid., Vol. XXIII, p. 6. 
 
 133. Ibid., Vol. XXII, p. 83. 
 
 134. "Chants Communal," pp. 
 
 132-134- 
 135- "Optimos," pp. 282, 283. . 
 136. "Chants Communal," pp. 
 
 12-13.