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said about Whitman's affection being comprehensive rather than intense applies equally to Morris. Why? Because it is the way of the Democrat and the Social Reformer. To such the individual suggests a whole class, a class suggests the race. Whitman is always speaking to man as man, rarely does he touch on individual men. If he does so, it is only to pass on to some cosmic thoughts suggested by the particular instance. Perhaps the most inspiring thing about Whitman's attitude towards humanity is his thorough understanding of the working classes, and his quick discernment of the healthy naturalism that animates them. He neither patronizes them nor idealizes them; he sees their faults, which are obvious enough; but he also sees, what is not so obvious, their fine independence of spirit, their eager thirst for improvement, for ampler knowledge, for larger opportunities, and their latent idealism. No doubt there is more independence, greater vigour, less servility, in America than in England; but the men he especially delights in, the artisan or mechanic, represent the best of the working classes in either country. In this respect Whitman and Tolstoy, differing in so many ways, join hands. In the "powerful uneducated person" they see the salvation of society, the renovation of its anaemic life. IV Whitman is no moralist, and has no formal philosophy to offer. But the modern spirit which always seeks after some "criticism of life" does not forsake even the Vagabond. He is certainly the only Vagabond, with the exception of Thoreau, who has felt himself charged with a message for his fellows. The popular tendency is to look for a "message" in all literary artists, and the result is that the art in question is knocked sometimes out of all shape in order to wrest from it some creed or ethical teaching. And as the particular message usually happens to be something that especially appeals to the seeker, the number of conflicting messages wrung from the unfortunate literary artist are somewhat disconcerting. But in Whitman's case the task of the message hunter is quite simple. Whitman never leaves us in doubt what he believes in, and what ideas he wishes to propagate. It is of course easy--perhaps inevitable--that with a writer whose method it is to hint, suggest, indicate, rather than formulate, elaborate, codify, the student should read in more than was intended. And, after all, as George Eliot said, "
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