ngs and the divine authority
of priests is gone; that, in some other time or some other place God was
nearer man than now and here,--this idea is gone. Indeed, the whole of
man's spiritual and religious belief which forms the background of
literature has changed,--a change as great as if the sky were to change
from blue to red or to orange. The light of day is different. But
literature deals with life, and the essential conditions of life, you say,
always remain the same. Yes, but the expression of their artistic values
is forever changing. If we ask where is the modern imaginative work that
is based upon these revelations of science, the work in which they are the
blood and vital juices, I answer, "Leaves of Grass," and no other. The
work is the outgrowth of science and modern ideas, just as truly as Dante
is the outgrowth of mediaeval ideas and superstitions; and the imagination,
the creative spirit, is just as unhampered in Whitman as in Dante or in
Shakespeare. The poet finds the universe just as plastic and ductile, just
as obedient to his will, and just as ready to take the impress of his
spirit, as did these supreme artists. Science has not hardened it at all.
The poet opposes himself to it, and masters it and rises superior. He is
not balked or oppressed for a moment. He knows from the start what science
can bring him, what it can give, and what it can take away; he knows the
universe is not orphaned; he finds more grounds than ever for a paean of
thanksgiving and praise. His conviction of the identity of soul and body,
matter and spirit, does not shake his faith in immortality in the least.
His faith arises, not from half views, but from whole views. In him the
idea of the soul, of humanity, of identity, easily balanced the idea of
the material universe. Man was more than a match for nature. It was all
for him, and not for itself. His enormous egotism, or hold upon the
central thought or instinct of human worth and import, was an anchor that
never gave way. Science sees man as the ephemeron of an hour, an
iridescent bubble on a seething, whirling torrent, an accident in a world
of incalculable and clashing forces. Whitman sees him as inevitable and as
immortal as God himself. Indeed, he is quite as egotistical and
anthropomorphic, though in an entirely different way, as were the old
bards and prophets before the advent of science. The whole import of the
universe is directed to one man,--to you. His anthropomorphi