But Whitman, who has a somewhat
vulgar inclination for technical talk and the jargon of
philosophy, is not content with a few pregnant hints; he must
put the dots upon his i's; he must corroborate the songs of
Apollo by some of the darkest talk of human metaphysic. He
tells his disciples that they must be ready "to confront the
growing arrogance of Realism." Each person is, for himself,
the keystone and the occasion of this universal edifice.
"Nothing, not God," he says, "is greater to one than oneself
is;" a statement with an irreligious smack at the first
sight; but like most startling sayings, a manifest truism on
a second. He will give effect to his own character without
apology; he sees "that the elementary laws never apologise."
"I reckon," he adds, with quaint colloquial arrogance, "I
reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house
by, after all." The level follows the law of its being; so,
unrelentingly, will he; everything, every person, is good in
his own place and way; God is the maker of all and all are in
one design. For he believes in God, and that with a sort of
blasphemous security. "No array of terms," quoth he, "no
array of terms can say how much at peace I am about God and
about death." There certainly never was a prophet who
carried things with a higher hand; he gives us less a body of
dogmas than a series of proclamations by the grace of God;
and language, you will observe, positively fails him to
express how far he stands above the highest human doubts and
trepidations.
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