It is better to leave him as he is than
to teach him whining. It is better that he should go without
the cheerful lights of culture, if cheerless doubt and
paralysing sentimentalism are to be the consequence. Let us,
by all means, fight against that hide-bound stolidity of
sensation and sluggishness of mind which blurs and
decolorises for poor natures the wonderful pageant of
consciousness; let us teach people, as much as we can, to
enjoy, and they will learn for themselves to sympathise; but
let us see to it, above all, that we give these lessons in a
brave, vivacious note, and build the man up in courage while
we demolish its substitute, indifference.
Whitman is alive to all this. He sees that, if the poet is
to be of any help, he must testify to the livableness of
life. His poems, he tells us, are to be "hymns of the praise
of things." They are to make for a certain high joy in
living, or what he calls himself "a brave delight fit for
freedom's athletes." And he has had no difficulty in
introducing his optimism: it fitted readily enough with his
system; for the average man is truly a courageous person and
truly fond of living. One of Whitman's remarks upon this
head is worth quotation, as he is there perfectly successful,
and does precisely what he designs to do throughout: Takes
ordinary and even commonplace circumstances; throws them out,
by a happy turn of thinking, into significance and something
like beauty; and tacks a hopeful moral lesson to the end.
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