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 r «.t Whitman : Poet of 
 the Human Whole^ 
 
 William Thur^on Brown 
 
 Principal "Tiie Modem School" 
 
 PRICE 
 15 CENTS 
 
 Published by "THE MODERN SCHOOL" 
 
 PORTLAND, OREGON 
 
 -^ / /- / / 
 

 To 
 
 Charles Erskine Scott Wood, 
 
 Poet, Artist, and Man, 
 
 this appreciation of a kindred spirit 
 
 is affectionately inscribed 
 
 by the Author, 
 
<tS' 
 
 1/ 
 
 <^ 
 
 h 
 
 WALT WHITMAN: POET AND MAN. 
 
 William Thurston Brown. 
 
 Until comparatively recent times, it has been assumed 
 by historians and other writers that the great events and 
 the great changes which history records have been and 
 are the product of a few great personalities or great 
 geniuses; that, as some one has said, institutions are the 
 prolonged shadows of great men. This is what is called 
 ''the great man theory." So advanced a writer as 
 Carlyle held that theory, perhaps Emerson also. Today, 
 I think, no thoughtful students of history or sociology 
 or anthropology would entertain that theory for a mo- 
 ment. The fuller knowledge which modern research has 
 produced makes no room at all for any such idea. Great 
 movements, great changes in society, great events in 
 liistory, are not at all the product of geniuses, but, on the 
 contrary, geniuses or great men Are themselves the 
 product of inevitable changes in the economic and social 
 organism. The very foundation of sociology as a science 
 is the fact that society is an organism, and the chief thing 
 that makes society an organism is its fundamentally eco- 
 nomic nature, the primary necessity of food, and the 
 methods by which that necessity is met. The social organ- 
 ism grows, changes, outgrows, becomes conscious of new 
 and larger necessities, and the so-called "great man" or 
 
2 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 ''genius" is simply the man who becomes aAvare of this 
 new necessity, with whose creation he had absolutely 
 nothing whatever to do. 
 
 That history has personalities worthy to be called 
 ''great," no one doubts or questions — the less so now 
 that we understand clearly what these phenomena really 
 mean. And now that we know what they do mean, the 
 thing which must interest us most deeply is the social or 
 economic changes, the social growth, the expansion of the 
 social organism, by which alone such men are possible. 
 We begin to understand that society itself in its evolution 
 is the most fruitful field of study, and to that field we 
 are now applying ourselves with results in intelligence 
 and in well-defined movements such as all preceding 
 history has never once seen. If it is worth while at all to 
 study the writings or personalities of so-called great men, 
 it is simply because such a study throws light upon the 
 nature of the social organism and the social changes 
 which have been or are in progress. And this is the chief 
 reason why a study of Walt Whitman as a poet and a 
 personality of history has value and importance. 
 
 In order that those of us who may have little or no 
 knowledge of Whitman's personality and literary product 
 may begin this study with some presumption as to the 
 man's real place in the unfolding of human life, I want 
 to repeat the words of two well-known men respecting 
 the value and influence of Whitman's writings. The 
 first is a letter written to Whitman by Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson in 1885. Let it be borne in mind that the first 
 
WALT WHITMAN 3 
 
 issue of Whitman's verse occurred in the year 1855, and 
 that a fairly complete edition of ''Leaves of Grass," as 
 he named his collected verses, was issued in 1872. In 
 other words, for nearly a generation some of the most 
 vital of Whitman's literary products had been in printed 
 form when this letter was written by Emerson. The let- 
 ter is dated: "Concord, Mass., July 21, 1885," and is as 
 
 follows : 
 
 "Dear Sir: — I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift 
 of 'Leaves of Grass.' I find it the most extraordinary piec? 
 of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very 
 happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the 
 demand I am always making of what seems the sterile and stingy 
 Nature, as if too much handiwork of too much lymph in the tem- 
 perament were making our western wits fat and mean. I give you 
 joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find 
 incomparable things, said incomparably well, as they must be. 
 I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which 
 large perception only can inspire. 
 
 *'I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet 
 must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. 
 I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; 
 but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the 
 best merits — namely, of fortifying and encouraging. 
 
 "I did not know, until I last night saw the book advertised 
 in a newspaper, that I could trust the name as real and available 
 for a post-office. 
 
 ''I wish to see my benefactor, and have felt much like striking 
 my tasks, and visiting New York to pay you my respects. 
 
 R. W. EMERSON." 
 
 Who was Emerson, and what is the significance of 
 this letter? Perhaps it is not too much to say that up to 
 date Emerson has had a greater influence upon the think- 
 
1 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 ing of America than any other man. It does not follow, 
 of course, that the opinions of Emerson or his estimates 
 of value are to be accepted without question. But it does 
 at least create a strong presumption in favor of the idea 
 that there is value where he seemed to find value. 
 
 This letter is the frank recognition by Emerson of 
 something higher and greater than himself. He had 
 already given the world his best, but he calls "Leaves of 
 Grass" the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom 
 America has yet contributed to the literature of the 
 world. He recognizes that it is literature, in all the noble 
 meaning of that word. That is to say, it is a valid and 
 convincing interpretation of life, a fuller and riper and 
 completer interpretation than any preceding American 
 writer, at least, has made. He says he finds in it "incom- 
 parable things said incomparably well." And that is 
 exactly what scores, perhaps hundreds, of the most 
 earnest, serious, thoughtful men in all the world have 
 found in Whitman. So wonderful does it seem to Emer- 
 son that such a piece of writing should have been pro- 
 duced by an}^ one, especially an American, that he rubbed 
 his eyes to see if he were not dreaming. And I don't 
 wonder at it. America has lagged behind almost every 
 nation in Christendom in its contributions to anything 
 worthy to be called literature. 
 
 There cannot be any doubt as to the impression which 
 Wliitman made on Emerson. And Emerson never re- 
 tracted what he said in that letter. It may be that he later 
 on suffered some change of opinion regarding some of 
 
WALT WHITMAN 5 
 
 the things which Whitman wrote : he probably did, prob- 
 ably felt repelled by them, as many others have felt re- 
 pelled. I can hardly conceive it possible for Emerson to 
 have accepted Whitman's verses entitled "Children of 
 Adam" with approval. But it surely is a significant 
 thing that a man of the intellectual and moral caliber of 
 Emerson should have written as he did to Whitman; for 
 Emerson was, more than anything else, a seeker after the 
 highest things in human possibilities. 
 
 I want to deepen in your minds, if I can, the pre- 
 sumption that Whitman had and has still a profound moral 
 significance for us by citing one more illustration. It is a 
 confession of one of the greatest and most democratic of 
 modern English critics, John Addington Symonds. The 
 following are the closing paragraphs of Mr. Symond's 
 book entitled, "A Study of Walt Whitman": 
 
 "After all, the great thing is, if possible, to induce 
 people to study Whitman for themselves. I am convinced 
 that, especially for young men, his spirit, if intelligently 
 understood and sympathized with, must be productive of 
 incalculable good. This I venture to emphasize by relat- 
 ing what he did for me. I had received the ordinary 
 English gentleman's education at Harrow and Oxford. 
 Being physically below the average in health and strength, 
 my development proceeded more upon the intellectual 
 than the athletic side. In a word, I was decidedly aca- 
 demical, and in danger of becoming a prig. What was 
 more, my constitution in the year 1865 seemed to have 
 broken down, and no career in life lay open to me. In 
 
6 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 the autumn of that year, my friend Frederic Myers read 
 me aloud a poem from 'Leaves of Grass.' We were to- 
 gether in his rooms at Trinity College, Cambridge; and 
 I can well remember the effect of his sonorous voice roll- 
 ing out sentence after sentence, sending electric thrills 
 through the very marrow of my mind. I immediately 
 procured the Boston edition of 1860-61, and began to 
 study it attentively. It cannot be denied that much in 
 Whitman puzzled and repelled me. But it was the aes- 
 thetic, not the moral, sensibility that suffered; for T felt 
 at once that his method of treating sexual things (the 
 common stumbling block to beginners) was the right one, 
 and wished that I had come across 'Children of Adam' 
 several years earlier. My academical prejudices, the 
 literary instincts trained by two decades of Greek and 
 Latin studies, the refinements of culture, and the exclu- 
 siveness of aristocratic breeding, revolted against the un- 
 couthness, roughness, irregularity, coarseness, of the poet 
 and his style. But, in the course of a short time. Whitman 
 delivered my soul of* these debilities. 
 
 "As I have said elsewhere in print, he taught me to 
 comprehend the harmony between the democratic spirit, 
 science, and that larger religion to which the modern 
 world is being led by the conception of human brother- 
 hood, and by the spirituality inherent in any really scien- 
 tific view of the universe. He gave body, concrete vitality, 
 to the religious creed which I had already been forming 
 for myself upon the study of Goethe, Greek and Roman 
 Stoics, Giordano Bruno, and the founders of the evolu- 
 
WALT WHITMAN 7 
 
 tionary doctrine. He inspired me with faith, and made 
 me feel that optimism was not unreasonable. This gave 
 me great cheer in those evil years of enforced idleness 
 and intellectual torpor which my ill-health imposed upon 
 me. Moreover, he helped to free me from many conceits 
 and pettinesses to which academical culture is liable. He 
 opened my eyes to the beauty, goodness and greatness 
 which may be found in all worthy human beings, the 
 humblest and the highest. He made me respect personality 
 more than attainments or position in the world. Through 
 him, I stripped my soul of social prejudices. Through him, 
 I have been able to fraternise in comradeship with men 
 of all classes and several races, irrespective of their caste, 
 creed, occupation, and special training. To him I owe 
 some of the best friends I now claim — sons of the soil, 
 hard workers, natural and nonchalant, 'powerful unedu- 
 cated persons.' 
 
 ''Only those who have been condemned by imperfect 
 health to take a back seat in life so far as physical enjoy- 
 ments are concerned, and who have also chosen the ca- 
 reer of literature, can understand what is meant by the 
 deliverance from foibles besetting invalids and pedants 
 for which I have to thank Walt Whitman. 
 
 "What he has done for me, I feel he will do for 
 others — for each and all of those who take counsel of 
 him. and seek from him a solution of difficulties differing 
 in kind according to the temper of the individual — if only 
 they approach him in the right spirit of confidence and 
 open-mindedness. ' ' 
 
WALT WHITMAN 
 
 Do not you agree with me that in this confession of 
 Mr. Symonds — so simple, sincere and genuine — we have 
 a real and convincing testimony to the virtue of Walt 
 Whitman? Is it not a remarkable thing that is here re- 
 corded : that the simple, straightforward words of a man 
 who all his life lived as a working man, of one who never 
 received a college degree, never was inside of a college as 
 a student, never received anything of the training of the 
 schools such as is commonly considered indispensable for 
 a literary career — that the words of such a man should 
 bear to this child of ancient British aristocracy the 
 message and uplift of a moral emancipation, completely 
 transforming his life, making the world new to him. in- 
 vesting existence for him with such purpose as otherwise 
 he could never have known? Of course, it does not 
 follow that what Whitman did for Symonds he can also 
 do for any one else. It does not follow that his writings 
 can have for men of all classes the effect they had for a 
 man like Symonds. But I am convinced that for many 
 men of every class in society a knowledge of the v^erses 
 of Whitman and a sympathetic understanding of his per- 
 sonality has all the exhilaration and stimulus, in a moral 
 way, that a cold bath has in a physical way. And from 
 personal experience I do not hesitate to say that I know of 
 no other writer, ancient or modern, of whose verse it is 
 more fitting to say: "Come on in— the water's fine." 
 
 In the case of Whitman, the facts of his personal 
 biography are altogether the least important things to 
 know. A knowledge of them adds absolutely nothing to 
 
WALT WHITMAN 9 
 
 anything he has written. Nothing about his birth or 
 ancestry accounts for him or his writings in any sense 
 whatever. Well does he say of his verses: 
 ''These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands — 
 
 they are not original with me ; 
 If they are not yours as much as mine, they are nothing. 
 
 or next to nothing; 
 This is the grass that grows wherever the land is, and the 
 
 water is; 
 This is the common air that bathes the globe." 
 
 And of no book I have ever read does it seem to me 
 so true to say, as Whitman says of his literary product : 
 ''This is no bookj 
 
 Who touches this, touches a man." 
 The most interesting thing to know about him is the fact 
 that his life was lived almost wholly out of doors, in the 
 country in closest contact with nature in her many 
 moods, in the city in closest touch with the great body of 
 workers upon whom the social structure is reared, on 
 the battle-fields of the Civil War and in its hospitals as 
 a nurse, the most efficient, I suppose, that whole period 
 knew. All his life he made himself familiar with natural 
 scenery, tramping over a considerable part of the United 
 States and Canada, and everywhere making himself at 
 home. No other man of his time knew people as famil- 
 iarly as he did — no other poet in the world's history has 
 approached him in the intimate interpretation of the 
 great varied multitude of ordinary men and women. His 
 life from the age of 28 to 35, when he wrote his "Leaves 
 
10 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 of Grass," was spent as a sort of hobo, earning his living 
 always, but moving from place to place and becoming 
 acquainted with all sorts of men and women as comrade 
 and fellow. That, in a large measure, was his preparation 
 for at least the descriptive work which he did. And dur- 
 ing those years and all the time he was writing his poems 
 he had perfect bodily health. He was a man about six 
 feet tall and well proportioned. And though his clothing 
 was always plain and often worn, it was always scrupu- 
 lously clean. Cleanness of body and mind were a vital 
 part of his religion. 
 
 Inasmuch as Whitman has given a description of his 
 motive in writing his poems, I cannot do better than 
 quote his own words. "When I commenced, years ago," 
 he says in the preface to the edition of 1872, "elaborating 
 the plan of my poems, and continued turning over that 
 plan, and shifting it in my mind through many years 
 (from the age of 28 to 35), experimenting much, writing 
 and abandoning much, one deep purpose underlay all 
 others, and has underlain them and their execution ever 
 since — and that has been the religious purpose." It 
 should not be supposed, however, that Whitman means 
 by this term "religious" what is commonly meant by it. 
 Quite otherwise. He explains what he means by it. "Not 
 of course to exhibit itself in the old ways," he says, "as 
 in the writing of hymns or psalms with an eye to the 
 church pew or to express conventional pietism or the sick- 
 ly yearnings of devotees, but in new ways, and aiming at 
 the widest sub-bases and inclusions of humanity, and tally- 
 
WALT WHITMAN H 
 
 ing the fresh air of sea and land. I will see (said I to my- 
 self) whether there is not for my purposes as poet a reli- 
 gion, and a sound religious germinancy, in the average hu- 
 man race, and in the common fiber and native yearnings 
 and elements, deeper and larger, and affording more prof- 
 itable returns than all mere sects and churches— as bound- 
 less and joyous and vital as Nature itself— a germinancy 
 that has too long been unencouraged, unsung, almost un- 
 known. With science the old theology of the East, long 
 in its dotage, begins evidently to die and disappear. But 
 (to my mind) science— and maybe such will prove its 
 principal service— as evidently prepares the way for one 
 indescribably grander— Time's young but perfect off- 
 spring—the New Theology— heir of the West— lusty and 
 loving, and wondrous beautiful. The time has certainly 
 come to begin to discharge the idea of religion from mere 
 ecclesiasticism, and from Sundays and churches and 
 church-going, and assign it to that general position, 
 chiefest, most indispensable, most exhilarating, to which 
 the others are to be adjusted, inside of all human charac- 
 ter and education and affairs. The people, especially the 
 young men and women of America, must begin to learn 
 that religion (like poetry) is something far different from 
 what they supposed. It is, indeed, too important to the 
 power and perpetuity of the New World to be consigned 
 any longer to churches old or new. Catholic or Protestant, 
 Saint this or Saint that. It must be consigned henceforth 
 to Democracy en masse, and to literature. It must enter 
 into the poems of the nation. It must make the nation." 
 
12 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 Whatever we may think of Whitman's use of some of 
 these old terms or phrases, when we consider the fact that 
 he wrote his verses as far back as 1855 and this introduc- 
 tion before 1872, we cannot help seeing what a tremendous 
 advance his thought meant over that of any of his Ameri- 
 can contemporaries. It was nothing less than a revolu- 
 tionary idea that possessed him, as revolutionary now as 
 it was then, regardless of his choice of words. For what 
 he proposed to do was to include everything within the 
 sphere of that which is to be held supremely sacred. That 
 is exactly what he did. He refused to recognize any dual- 
 ism at all, although the church of that time was univer- 
 sally duaJistic in its conceptions. Whitman's purpose was 
 the very purpose which makes a man either a true poet 
 or a true philosopher. It Avas a purpose absolutely akin 
 to that which has animated every great philosopher : that 
 of unifying all knowledge and all life. In this respect. 
 Whitman stands alone, so far as I know, among the poets 
 _of all the ages. 
 
 But perhaps the question will occur to some one's 
 mind, Was Whitman a poet at all? Is this loosely strung 
 mass of writing poetry? Many have answered: No. He 
 is not a poet. This writing, violating all the rules of 
 rhythm, all the standards of accustomed style, is not 
 poetry. And one immediately calls to mind the works of 
 those poets of the past, ancient and modern, whom the 
 world calls great; such names as Homer, Virgil, Dante. 
 Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Spenser, Tennyson, Brown- 
 ing, Goethe, and the rest. When you compare the work 
 
WALT WHITMAN 13 
 
 of Whitman with the work of these men. you are bound 
 to see a most radical difference. If we are limited for our 
 definition of poet by the standards of style which these 
 accepted poets of the past used, then Whitman is not a 
 poet and Avhat he has written is not poetry. True, 
 rhymes are not poetry, rhyme has no essential relation to 
 poetry. The masterpieces of poetry are not written in 
 rhyme — they are composed in some sort of blank verse. 
 They have meter, rhythm, but they do not have rhyme. 
 This is true of Homer, Virgil, Dante, IMilton, Shakespeare 
 and Browning especially. But Whitman does -not write 
 in blank verse, even. He has discarded every method 
 Avhich any former poet observed. And yet, there are 
 lines in some of Whitman's writings which have a rhythm 
 and a power which are not surpassed in those of any other 
 who has ever written. 
 
 Where among all the writings of American poets can 
 you match in epic expression these lines addressed to the 
 future of this New World : 
 "Sail — sail thy best, ship of Democracy! 
 Of value in thy freight — 'tis not the Present only. 
 The Past is also stored in thee ! 
 Thou boldest not the venture of thyself alone — not of thy 
 
 western continent alone; 
 Earth's resume entire floats on thy keel, ship — is 
 
 steadied by thy spars; 
 With thee Time voyages in trust — the antecedent nations 
 
 sink or swim with thee ; 
 
14 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 AVith all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, 
 wars, thou bear'st the other continents; 
 
 Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination port tri- 
 umphant : 
 
 — Steer, steer with good strong hand and wary eye, O 
 helmsman — thou carriest great companions, 
 
 Venerable, priestly Asia sails this day with thee. 
 
 And royal, feudal Europe sails Avith thee. 
 
 Beautiful world of new, superber Birth, that rises to my 
 
 eyes, 
 Like a limitless golden cloud, filling the western sky — 
 The Present holds thee not — for such vast growth as thine 
 
 — for such unparalleled flights as thine. 
 The Future only holds thee, and can hold thee.'' 
 
 No other American, whether poet or statesman, has 
 ever had anything approaching the conceptions expressed 
 by Whitman — the conceptions of Democracy's destiny. 
 
 I could not name another writer who has so combined 
 melody of Avords Avith Avonder of thought as Whitman in 
 "The Mystic Trumpeter": 
 
 "BloAA^, trumpeter, free and clear — I folloAV thee. 
 While at thy liquid prelude, glad, serene. 
 The fretting Avorld, the streets, the noisy hours of day, 
 
 withdraAA^ ; 
 A holy calm descends, like dew, upon me, 
 I Avalk, in cool refreshing night, the Avalks of Paradise, 
 I scent the grass, the moist air, and the roses; 
 
WALT WHITMAN 1 5 
 
 Th}^ song expends my numb'd, imbonded spirit — thou 
 
 freest, launchest me, 
 Floating and basking upon Heaven's lake. 
 
 ''Blow again, trumpeter! and for thy theme, 
 
 Take now the enclosing theme of all — the sustenance and 
 
 the pang; 
 The heart of man and woman all for love ; 
 No other theme but love — knitting, enclosing, all-diffusing 
 
 love. 
 0, how the immortal phantoms crowd around me! 
 I see the vast alembic ever working—! see and know the 
 
 flames that heat the world ; 
 The glow, the blush, the beating hearts of lovers. 
 So blissful happy some — and some so silent, dark and 
 
 nigh to death ; 
 Love, that is all the earth to lovers — -Love, that mocks 
 
 time and space. 
 Love, that is day and night — Love, that is sun, moon and 
 
 stars ; 
 Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with perfume ; 
 No other words, but words of love — no other thought but 
 
 Love. 
 
 "0 trumpeter! methinks I am myself the instrument thou 
 
 playest ! 
 Thou melt'st my heart, my brain— thou movest, drawest. 
 
 changest them at will, 
 And now thy sullen notes send darkness through me; 
 
16 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 Thou takest away all cheering light — all hope : 
 
 I see the enslaved, the overthrown, the hurt, the oppressed 
 
 of the whole earth, 
 I feel the measureless shame and humiliation of my race- 
 it becomes all mine; 
 
 ''Now, trumpeter, for thy close, 
 
 Vouchsafe a higher strain than any yet ; 
 
 Sing to my soul — renew its languishing faith and hope; 
 
 Rouse up my slow belief — give me some vision of the 
 
 future ; 
 Give me, for once, its prophecy and joy. 
 
 "O glad, exulting, culminating song! 
 
 A vigor more than earth's is in thy notes! 
 
 Marches of victory — man disenthralled — the conqueror 
 
 at last! 
 A reborn race appears — a perfect world, all joy! 
 Women and men. in wisdom, innocence and health — all 
 
 joy! 
 War, sorrow, suffering gone — the rank earth purged — 
 
 nothing left but joy. 
 Joy! Joy! in freedom, worship, love ! Joy in the ecstasy 
 
 of life ! 
 Enough to merely be ! Enough to breathe ! 
 Joy! Joy! all over Joy!" 
 
 The qualities which give immortality to any poems 
 are not in the form, but in the essence. And if we trv 
 
WALT WHITMAN 17 
 
 to find an explanation of Whitman's departure from all 
 accepted standards in his style of writing, we shall find 
 it when we discover the purpose which inspired him. 
 Every poet must choose the medium which best serves 
 his purpose. Only on that ground is there any explanation 
 of .variety in poetical forms. Epic poetry differs from 
 lyric, dramatic from didactic, and so on. It is the 
 purpose of the poet which dictates the form in which he 
 will write. Think, then, of the difference — as wide as the 
 world — which lies between the motive or purpose out of 
 which the poems of other men have come and the motive 
 or purpose which created the verse of Whitman. What, 
 for example, were Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Shakes- 
 peare and others trying to express? In almost every case 
 these men w^ere attempting to voice either the accepted 
 religious or theological ideas of their time, or, as in the 
 case of Shakespeare, to portray the passions and ambitions, 
 as well as the superstitions, of that portion of society that 
 lived on the l)acks of the toiling multitude. Not one of 
 those poets who have been called great — except possibly 
 Browning — has ever attempted to sing the songs of the 
 human whole, just as no movement up till our own time — 
 religious or political — has dreamed of including all. 
 What is Paradise Lost? It is an epic based on the the- 
 ology of the 16th century, a theology which has been un- 
 dermined and rendered baseless by the science of today. 
 The same is true of Dante's great poem. What are the 
 poems of Homer and Virgil? They are epics of an age of 
 war. The}^ embody the myths of their time, and they have 
 
18 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 not a word or a syllable in honor of the man who does the 
 fundamental work of the world — for that man was a 
 slave. What are Shakespeare's dramas? Wonderful in 
 their portrayal of human passion of every sort, among 
 those who count in the world's life, they undoubtedly are. 
 But you might read every word he ever wrote without 
 finding one to commemmorate the hopes or desires or 
 destiny of the innumerable class of workers on whose 
 backs the society of that day and the society of this and 
 all days, thus far, is builded. So far as I know, Whitman 
 is the only poet who has sung the songs of the whole of 
 humanity, the first poet who could say: 
 ''I do not ask who you are — -that is not so important 
 
 for me : 
 You can do nothing, and be nothing, but what I Avill in- 
 fold you." 
 "Through me many long dumb voices; 
 Voices of the interminable generations of slaves; 
 Voices of prostitutes and deformed persons; 
 Voices of the diseased and despairing, and of thieves and 
 
 dwarfs ; 
 Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion. 
 And of the threads that connect the stars — and of wombs 
 
 and of the father-stuff. 
 And of the rights of them the others are down upon." 
 "I speak the pass- word primeval — I give the sign of 
 
 democracy ; 
 I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counter- 
 part of on the same terms." 
 
WALT WHITMAN 19 
 
 Whitman brings tlie thinking world face to face with 
 the question, May there not be now at our very doors the 
 dawn of a new and incomparably nobler era, an era 
 fraught with vaster consequences than that which gives 
 us our present calendar? Indeed, the whole message of 
 Whitman is exactly the announcement and the moral 
 challenge of such an era now impending, now throwing 
 its first red light up the eastern sky. It should not seem 
 strange that such a phenomenon as Whitman — a man 
 who cannot be classified according to any previous stand- 
 ard — should appear, for it is only history repeating itself. 
 There never yet has been any big change in our human 
 world which poets have not foreseen long before any 
 other class of men did. That is what makes a man a 
 poet. A poet is not a versifier, a lackey — like Alfred 
 Austin, whom Queen Victoria made laureate on the death 
 of Tennyson, in spite of the fact that in William Morris 
 all the deepest feeling and clearest vision of England 
 were finding expression. The poet is a seer. He is the 
 man who sees — sees what is coming through the mist of 
 years, senses the tidal pulse of a new epoch and becomes 
 its herald and singer. That Whitman amply fits this 
 definition is seen in the fact that, though Darwin did not 
 publish his epoch-making discovery in the field of evolu- 
 tionary science, effecting a complete revolution in all our 
 knowledge, until 1859, Whitman over and over portrays 
 the evolutionary process in his "Leaves of Grass' in 1855. 
 
 These older poetical forms with which we are familiar 
 were suited to their time and purpose, just as the various 
 
20 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 architectural forms have been. But they are not suited 
 at all to a radically different era, on whose threshold we 
 now unconsciously are standing. We can easily under- 
 stand that forms of law and government which were 
 perfectly appropriate to an era which accepted as final 
 the divine right of kings must be obsolete in an age which 
 has abolished kings. We can understand that those reli- 
 gious ideas which grew up in an age of almost universal 
 ignorance and superstition must lose their value in an 
 age of widespread enlightenment. If now there should 
 come in human society another and vaster revolution — a 
 revolution which will leave no man the master of another, 
 no man in possession of power over another's destiny, 
 every man and woman a partner in cooperative service, 
 is it not evident that such a new order of society would 
 render many things obsolete and useless which we have 
 grown accustomed to regard as fixed and settled? That 
 a new age should demand and create a new literary form 
 for the expression of its essential meaning is simply 
 inevitable. And that is the significance of Whitman as a 
 poet. He is not the poet of the old, he is the poet of the 
 new. If his verse sounds to many of us strange, uncouth 
 foolish, forbidding, repellent, may it not be because our 
 minds have become warped out of their natural shape by 
 moral or immoral adjustment to an outgrown and deca- 
 dent civilization? 
 
 I suppose the most repellent thing in all the writings 
 of Whitman, that which more than all else staggers men 
 and women, is his treatment of things belonging to sex. 
 
WALT WHITMAN 21 
 
 In the face of Whitman's free and frank glorification of 
 the sexual organs and even the sexual act, many people 
 draw back and refuse to go any further. But the people 
 who shrink from such frank acceptance of sex, even from 
 glorification of sex functions, are not only mistaken, but 
 are positively immoral and unclean, and of all people on 
 this earth are most in need of the moral bath which the 
 writings of Whitman afford. 
 
 Think for a moment what is the status of sex and 
 things sexual in our present civilization, in our alleged 
 moral and religious training. Let us see if our present 
 attitude towards sexuality is so perfect and satisfactory, 
 tliat any change would be a misfortune. And let us see, 
 too, in what direction change must surely take place in 
 this matter. There is nothing about which the mass of 
 humanity are taught less, either at home or at school, than 
 about sex. There is nothing in the whole constitution of 
 man and woman concerning which there is such wide- 
 spread and dense ignorance as about altogether the most 
 important function human beings possess, the one func- 
 tion which surpasses all others together in importance. 
 We could scarcely be more successful in keeping our chil- 
 dren totally ignorant of the meaning or function of sex, 
 if we had deliberately planned to promote such ignorance. 
 Am I not right when I say that our almost universal 
 treatment of sex and sex relations is such as to create the 
 feeling in most minds that there is something essentially 
 low and shameful indissolubly connected with that part 
 of our physical being? The lowest word we can apply to 
 a woman is the word ^'prostitute." Though why we 
 
22 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 should limit that word to one class of women, and not 
 apply it to large quantities of respectable women and 
 multitudes of respectable men, is quite beyond any ra- 
 tional explanation. Such a situation could obtain only 
 in a civilization that is rotten to the core, a civilization 
 that smells to heaven, a civilization that no alleged re- 
 vivals of religion, though converts were numbered by 
 the millions instead of the hundreds, can ever make 
 decent or clean. "We have a double standard of morals, 
 so that a woman, who from whatever stress of hardship 
 or extremity of want violates a certain convention, is 
 branded forever and becomes an outcast from society, 
 while a man who is guilty of the same thing habitually, 
 and the fact known far and wide, retains his place in 
 society undisturbed. And yet, where there is one woman 
 who is prostituting her sex, there are scores and hundreds 
 of men who are constantly and cheerfully and fervently 
 prostituting their minds, their brains, their whole life in 
 ways far more disastrous. 
 
 And we shall have to lay the blame for no small part 
 of this terrible sex immorality, which curses the world, 
 at the door of the Christian Church. This Christian 
 Church has been very fond of quoting the Avords of its 
 alleged founder: ''Ye have the poor always with you." 
 And certainly the membership of the church have done 
 their best to see to it that we shall have quantities of poor 
 forever with us. But they have just as cheerfully and 
 determinedly declared that we must also have prostitution 
 with us. It probably is not well understood by many 
 people, because most people do not think, will not think, 
 
WALT WHITMAN 23 
 
 will suffer any penalty rather than think — but the 
 church and the brothel are both and equally parasitic 
 growths on society, the one as inexcusable and unnec- 
 essary as the other, and they will both disappear together. 
 
 Upon no subject has the teaching of the church been 
 more pernicious than on the subject of sex. Orthodox 
 Christianity has no more cherished doctrine than that of 
 the Immaculate Conception. The inevitable corollary of 
 that doctrine is that all natural conception, all conception 
 produced in the normal way, is essentially impure and 
 low. That idea even occurs in Mrs. Eddy's teaching. It 
 was inevitable that the Roman Church should teach, as 
 it now teaches, that celibacy, or abstinence from all sexual 
 expression, is the highest condition of human life. In 
 other words, that very process without which no man or 
 woman ever came into the world or ever can come is a 
 more or less immoral, base, animal process. And the 
 deliberate suppression and disuse of one of the highest 
 functions of the human body is a religious duty, a religious 
 virtue! The whole influence of the Christian Church in 
 this matter has been an immoral and degrading influence 
 and will sometime be seen so to have been. The domina- 
 tion of the Christian Church over the world will sometime 
 be looked back upon as one long nightmare, one black 
 shadow, one fearful violation of human life. 
 
 Society thus far has treated this whole matter of sex 
 in a negative way, never in a positive, constructive way. 
 It cannot be said that we have accomplished anything in 
 this direction to be proud of. Largely as a result of the 
 widespread ignorance of the meaning of sex which we 
 
24 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 foster in our children, leaving the whole subject out of 
 the public school system and letting our boys and girls 
 pick up their knowledge of these things out of the gutter, 
 out of obscene stories and vicious habits, we have reached 
 the proud distinction — absolutely unknown among sav- 
 ages — of making venereal diseases the most common and 
 widespread of all diseases known to man. 80 much has 
 this fact been impressed on ph.ysiciaus, that some of them 
 are inclined to call our civilization a "syphilisation." 
 And they are not far out of the way. 
 
 The remedy for what we call social or sexual vice does 
 not lie in the direction of suppression or ignorance or 
 mystery or any other sort of superstition. It lies exactly 
 in the direction to which Whitman points: in the direc- 
 tion of fullest knowledge for every child that comes into 
 the world not only of its own sexual significance, but 
 equally of that of the opposite sex ; in the direction of 
 including this whole matter of sex within the area of the 
 things which we hold sacred, giving it the positive sanc- 
 tion of all that belongs to beauty, to happiness, to good. 
 This is not to put a premium on immodesty or to sanction 
 promiscuity — quite otherwise. But, whether we like it 
 or not, we may as well make up our minds that the only 
 direction in which the solution of any problem lies, I 
 care not what, is the direction of freedom and knowledge. 
 Suppression is evasion, always has been, always will be. 
 Life is expression. Virtue is expression. No man or 
 woman has any more virtue than he or she has positive 
 conviction and generous, joyous expression. 
 
 The poetry of Whitman is the denial of dualism. It 
 
WALT WHITMAN 25 
 
 is the affirmation of monism, of one substance, of all 
 things as good. There is no ''base" or "low" in this 
 nature of ours, and it is only mistaken and degrading 
 human laws that create such ideas in the minds of people. 
 The world has for ages been cursed by the fals^ and im- 
 moral distinction of "sacred" and "secular" — one of the 
 sole and legitimate products of the so-called religious in- 
 stitution, one of the things which the Christian Church 
 alone has given the world — and we are everywhere suffer- 
 ing beyond all words from that false and immoral dis- 
 tinction. But it is no better to separate the human body 
 into sacred and secular, than it is to separate one's social 
 or moral life that way. Unless every bit of the body is 
 sacred, none of it is, and none of it can be made so or 
 considered so. If any part of the body is considered by 
 any one profane or low or shameful, you will find that 
 such a person will find none of the body really sacred. 
 And this is the message of Whitman : Sex is sacred, is 
 divine, is fundamental, is the holiest thing this world con- 
 tains, is the fountain of all that means anything, of all 
 value, of all poetry, of all truth, of all beauty, of all love, 
 of all life. And only as you so regard it can you ever enter 
 into 3^our full inheritance as men and women. More than 
 that, there can be no real morality which does not freely 
 and joyously recognize the sacredness of sex, which does 
 not banish this immoral and degrading sense of shame in 
 the reverent, whole-souled acceptance of sex and all that 
 pertains to it as fundamental to life and beauty and ful- 
 filment. Sings Whitman : 
 
26 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 ''Sex contains all, 
 
 Bodies, Souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, re- 
 sults, promulgations, 
 Songs, commands, health, pride, the maternal mystery, the 
 
 seminal milk; 
 All hopes, benefactions, bestowals, 
 All the passions, loves, beauties, delights of the earth, 
 All the governments, judges, gods, followed persons of 
 
 the earth, 
 These are all contained in sex, as parts of itself, and justi- 
 fication of itself." 
 "Without shame the man I like knows and avows the 
 
 deliciousness of his sex. 
 Without shame the woman I like knows and avows hers." 
 No thoughtful person will question the value of the 
 influence of the Puritan in our race-life and history, 
 but it is easy to exaggerate that influence, to extend it 
 beyond the limits to which it properly belongs. And that 
 is exactly what has been done. Beginning as a mighty 
 protest against despotism, against injustice, and rein- 
 forced by theological conceptions which were colossal 
 for their time, the Puritan movement became the resist- 
 less conqueror of a vicious and corrupt despotism both 
 in church and state — even if it did not go to the root of 
 the matter — and if it had done no more than give the 
 world a Cromwell, it would defy any attempt at belittle- 
 ment. But when it transcended its proper limits and 
 threw a pall of gloom over one whole side of human life, 
 making pleasure a sin and joy an evil thing and dividing 
 the dominion of the body between a God and a Devil, 
 
WALT WHITMAN 27 
 
 producing the most absurd moral monstrosity: so that it 
 is justlj" said that the Puritans were opposed to bear- 
 baiting, not through any feeling of pity for the bears, 
 but because men might get some pleasure out of it; when 
 that issue was reached, Puritanism became an immoral 
 and irreligious thing, and the Avorld has not even yet 
 escaped from its baneful shadow. And there is no escape 
 from it, or from the sorrowful results which it 
 has produced, except in the whole-hearted acceptance of 
 joy, pleasure, happiness, expression, the sacredness of 
 the whole body — nay, the acceptance of the body as itself 
 containing and implying all the sacredness that ever has 
 been claimed for what is called the soul. If Whitman had 
 done nothing else than sing the sacredness of the body 
 and declare that the body is just as divine, jusi: as clean, 
 just as holy, just as sacred as ever the soul has been 
 thought to be, he would have earned the never-dying 
 gratitude of all the unborn myriads of human beings that 
 are to come into this human world. 
 "I have said that the soul is not more than the body, 
 And I have said that the body is not more than the soul ; 
 And nothing, but God, is greater to one than one's self is, 
 And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy, walks 
 to his funeral, drest in his shroud.'' 
 The infinite and unspeakable pity and pathos of our 
 world as it is now organized, as life is now lived, or as 
 existence now goes on, lies in the fact that such an in- 
 numerable multitude of men and women are doing exactly 
 what Whitman here describes: they 
 
 ''walk to their own funeral, drest in a shroud." 
 
28 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 Be it remembered, too, that if Whitman all through his 
 poems uses the first person, he is, after all, the most im- 
 personal of all poets. He is the poet of affirmation, and 
 the ''I" that speaks, that affirms, that enfolds the whole 
 universe, that looks into the face of Nature and pro- 
 nounces it good — yes, the actual man. Whitman, who in 
 his own clean, natural, healthy, wholesome life hailed 
 every man and woman as comrade and equal, and who 
 lived out the beauty of his poems as naturally as a flower 
 blooms — that ''I," that personality, is nothing more than 
 all of us, every last man and woman of us, finding voice, 
 uttering our challenge in the face of warping and hinder- 
 ing and oppressive laws and institutions, claiming our 
 sacred heritage, hungering and thirsting for the bread 
 and water of life, seeking and demanding the uttermost 
 of right and fulfilment. More than that, infinitely more 
 than that, deeper, higher, vaster — the voice of Whitman 
 is the voice of all Nature, of the whole universe, proclaim- 
 ing laws, principles, truths, which infinitely transcend 
 all these little limiting and enslaving statutes and enact- 
 ments which measure the degree of our ignorance and 
 our slavery — laws, principles, truths, before whose very 
 names, entering bodily into human consciousness, these 
 blasting, blighting institutions of an insane society shrink 
 and wither and fade like mists before the sun. 
 "I heard you whispering there, stars of heaven; 
 O suns! grass of graves! perpetual transfers and 
 
 promotions ! 
 If you do not say anything, how can I say anything?" 
 The time is coming, as surely as the earth turns on its 
 
WALT WHITMAN 29 
 
 axis, when no one in all the world will look upon chains 
 or shackles or negations or prohibitions of any sort what- 
 ever as having virtue, when we shall know that all things 
 are good, and so accepting them shall find them good. 
 Acceptance — that is one of the central words of the vaster 
 and diviner unity which Whitman sings. There is no 
 more justification in feeling a sense of shame regarding 
 the sexual nature than there is respecting the beauty and 
 glory of a day in June, a rose bush, a leaf, a sunset, a 
 poem, a symphony, or any other of the things which we 
 are accustomed to associate with sublimity, with worship, 
 with joy. Find me a man or woman who never has 
 learned or known the first syllable of the mystery and 
 wonder of love, who never at the thought of another 
 human being has heard ''the singing of dried-up springs, 
 felt the sap rising in dead boughs, the renewal of life's 
 creative forces;" never found "strength as well as intoxi- 
 cation" in that thought, "nourishment as well as a 
 feast," — and I will show you a man or woman for whom 
 Whitman's divinest words will have no meaning, a person 
 who cannot read with any appreciation his exulting paeans 
 of joy in the creative powers and functions of the human 
 body. But find me a man or woman *whose whole being 
 has been transfigured by a human love, who has found 
 that other being who "is empowered by love to the 
 miracle of redeeming our soul — as itself by ours is re- 
 deemed — from the sense of being a stranger on the 
 earth," that other person in union with whom alone is 
 life and joy and all ennobling service, and I will show 
 you a man or woman who will find not a syllable or sen- 
 
30 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 tence in Whitman's words that is not as clean and pure 
 as the dew-drop on a rose, as the air after a shower, as 
 the health}^ body of a new-born babe. 
 
 I do not wonder at all that Mr. Symonds, whom I 
 have already quoted, should say of Whitman and his 
 epoch-making utterance : 
 
 ''Whether this cosmic enthusiasm, which has been 
 expressed by Whitman with a passion of self-dedication, 
 a particularity of knowledge, and a sublimity of imagina- 
 tion unapproached b^^ an}^ poet-prophet since the death 
 of Bruno, i^ destined to reinforce the soul of man with 
 faith and inaugurate a new religion, I dare not even 
 pause to question. We are told that it is not calculated 
 to inspire the ignorant with rapture, to console the indi- 
 gent and suffering by suggestions of some mitigation of 
 their lot. 
 
 "Still, I may point out that it is the only type of 
 faith which agrees with the conclusions and determina- 
 tions of science. To bear the yoke of universal law is the 
 plain destiny of human beings. If we could learn to bear 
 that yoke with gladness, to thrill with vibrant fibers to 
 the pulses of the infinite machine we constitute — (for 
 if it were possible that the least of us should be eliminated, 
 annihilated, the whole machine would stop and crumble 
 into chaos) — if, I say, we could feel pride and joy in our 
 participation of the cosmic life, then we might stand 
 where Whitman stood with 
 
 'feet tenoned and mortised in granite.' 
 I do not think it is a religion only for the rich, the power- 
 ful, the wise, the healthy. For my own part, I may con- 
 
WALT WHITMAN 31 
 
 fess that it shone upon me when my life was broken, 
 when I was weak, sickly, poor, and of no account; and 
 I have ever lived thenceforward in the light and warmth 
 of it. In bounden duty towards Whitman, I make this 
 personal statement: for had it not been for the contact 
 of his fervent spirit with my own, the pyre ready to be 
 lighted, the combustible materials of modern thought 
 awaiting the touch of the fire-bringer, might never have 
 leaped up into the flame of life-long faith and consola- 
 tion. During my darkest hours, it comforted me with the 
 conviction that I too played my part in the illimitable 
 symphony of cosmic life. When I repined, sorrowed, suf- 
 fered, it touched me with gentle hand of sympathy and 
 understanding, sustained me with the strong arm of as- 
 surance that in the end I could not go amiss (for I was a 
 part, an integrating part, of the great whole) ; and when 
 strength revived in me, it stirred a healthy pride and 
 courage to effectuate myself, to bear the slings and arrows 
 of outrageous fortune. For this reason, in duty to my 
 master Whitman, and in the hope that my experience 
 may encourage others to seek the same source of inspira- 
 tion, I have exceeded the bounds of an analytical essay 
 by pouring forth my personal confession." 
 
 I do not wonder that this book by John Addington 
 Symonds, written simply as a piece of literary criticism, 
 should spontaneously blossom out into this personal con- 
 fession of moral renewal, of unspeakable moral inspira- 
 tion and enrichment. It is not at all necessary that his 
 confession should be ours or any one's else. It is not to 
 be thought either that his interpretation of Whitman is 
 
32 WALT WHITMAN 
 
 a final or even an adequate one. It isn't. It is limited 
 and narrowed by the very limitations of his own caste, 
 his own training. It is enough to know that Whitman's 
 great inclusive cosmic sj^mphony released the life of even 
 such a man from many of his trammels and made the 
 world new to him. The greatness of Whitman is unlike 
 that of any other poet I can think of. It isn't the great- 
 ness of a single personality. It isn't the greatness of 
 mystery, or vast knowledge, or finished mastery of style 
 or anything of the kind. All the greatness Whitman has, 
 either in his verses or in himself, is no other than the 
 inherent greatness of the common man, of the common 
 substance of human life. Unless you find yourself in 
 Whitman, you do not find him at all. He cannot exist 
 for you or for any one, except as fulfilment, as the per- 
 suasive voice of your own deepest need, your own highest 
 longing. His spirit is the spirit of the universal. No 
 narrowing sect can be built on the foundation of his vision 
 and utterance. All sects must vanish in the vaster unity 
 of his all-inclusive conceptions. His verse may not serve 
 as the propaganda of that revolutionary process by which 
 mankind will break the shell of an outgrown and hamper- 
 ing social and economic system, but no emancipation of 
 the human race or any part of it is possible of which the 
 song of Whitman is not the natural and inevitable music. 
 If he does not throw the fullest light upon the path which 
 our feet must tread to the day of freedom, he lights up 
 the goal of our journey with a radiance no other poet 
 has ever shed upon it and quickens the pace and lightens 
 the heart on our travel toward it. 
 
Published Lectures by William Thurston Brown : 
 
 Will You Have War or Peace! A Plain Question to 
 
 Capitalist Society 32pp. 10c 
 
 Is Humanity Hungering for Oodf The Answer of His- 
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 What Socialism Means as a Philosophy and as a Move- 
 ment 32pp. 10c 
 
 Walt Whitman: Poet of the Human Whole 32pp. 15c 
 
 Socialism and the Individual 32pp. 15c 
 
 The Church and Human Progress .32pp. 10c 
 
 The Hell of War: Who Pays the Bills 32pp. 10c 
 
 The Eevolutionary Proletariat. (In preparation).: 32pp. 10c 
 
 Love and Marriage Series: 
 
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 n. Love *8 Freedom and Fulfilment 32pp. 15c 
 
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LIBRPRY 
 
 [W ANNOUNCE natural persons to arise; 
 I I announce justice triumphant; 
 I I announce uncompromising liberty and equality; 
 ^ I announce the justification of candor, and the 
 
 justification of pride. 
 I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, 
 
 spiritual, bold; 
 I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet 
 
 its translation; 
 J announce myrittds of youths, beautiful, gigantic, 
 
 s^eet-blooded; 
 I annoiftice a race of splendid' and savage old men. 
 
 —WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 ^PORTLAND PRINTINQ HOUSE CO. 
 
 TENTH AND TAYLOR STa. 
 
 PORTLAND. ORE.