, then, I contradict myself!" with this
addition, not so feminine and perhaps not altogether so satisfactory: "I
am large--I contain multitudes." Life, as a matter of fact, partakes
largely of the nature of tragedy. The gospel according to Whitman, even
if it be not so logical, has this advantage over the gospel according to
Pangloss, that it does not utterly disregard the existence of temporal
evil. Whitman accepts the fact of disease and wretchedness like an
honest man; and instead of trying to qualify it in the interest of his
optimism, sets himself to spur people up to be helpful. He expresses a
conviction, indeed, that all will be made up to the victims in the end;
that "what is untried and afterward" will fail no one, not even "the old
man who has lived without purpose and feels it with bitterness worse
than gall." But this is not to palliate our sense of what is hard or
melancholy in the present. Pangloss, smarting under one of the worst
things that ever was supposed to come from America, consoled himself
with the reflection that it was the price we have to pay for cochineal.
And with that murderous parody, logical optimism and the praises of the
best of possible worlds went irrevocably out of season, and have been no
more heard of in the mouths of reasonable men. Whitman spares us all
allusions to the cochineal; he treats evil and sorrow in a spirit almost
as of welcome; as an old sea-dog might have welcomed the sight of the
enemy's topsails off the Spanish Main. There, at least, he seems to say,
is something obvious to be done. I do not know many better things in
literature than the brief pictures--brief and vivid like things seen by
lightning,--with which he tries to stir up the world's heart upon the
side of mercy. He braces us, on the one hand, with examples of heroic
duty and helpfulness; on the other, he touches us with pitiful instances
of people needing help. He knows how to make the heart beat at a brave
story; to inflame us with just resentment over the hunted slave; to stop
our mouths for shame when he tells of the drunken prostitute. For all
the afflicted, all the weak, all the wicked, a good word is said in a
spirit which I can only call one of ultra Christianity; and however
wild, however contradictory, it may be in parts, this at least may be
said for his book, as it may be said of the Christian Gospels, that no
one will read it, however respectable, but he gets a knock upon his
conscience; no one h