pride of man," the pride that refuses to own any master
outside of itself.

"I know my omnivorous words, and cannot say any less,
And would fetch you, whoever you are, flush with myself."

HIS RELATION TO RELIGION

Whitman, as I have elsewhere said, was swayed by two or three great
passions, and the chief of these was doubtless his religious passion. He
thrilled to the thought of the mystery and destiny of the soul.

"The soul,
Forever and forever--longer than soil is brown and solid--longer than
water ebbs and flows."

He urged that there could be no permanent national grandeur, and no worthy
manly or womanly development, without religion.

"I specifically announce that the real and permanent grandeur of these
States must be their Religion,
Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur."

All materials point to and end at last in spiritual results.

"Each is not for its own sake,
I say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for Religion's
sake."

All our ostensible realities, our art, our literature, our business
pursuits, etc., are but fuel to religion.

"For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential
life of the earth,
Any more than such are to Religion."

Again he says:--

"My Comrade!
For you to share with me two greatnesses--And a third one, rising
inclusive and more resplendent,
The greatness of Love and Democracy--and the greatness of Religion."

It is hardly necessary to say that the religion which Whitman celebrates
is not any form of ecclesiasticism. It was larger than any creed that has
yet been formulated. It was the conviction of the man of science touched
and vivified by the emotion of the prophet and poet. As exemplified in his
life its chief elements were faith, hope, charity. Its object was to
prepare you to live, not to die, and to "earn for the body and the mind
what adheres and goes forward, and is not dropped by death."

The old religion, the religion of our fathers, was founded upon a curse.
Sin, repentance, fear, Satan, hell, play important parts. Creation had
resulted in a tragedy in which the very elemental forces were implicated.
The grand scheme of an infinite Being failed through the machinations of
the Devil. Salvation was an escape from a wrath to come. The way was
through agony and tears. Heaven was only gained by denying earth. The
great mass of the huma