Morality has been ceremoniously extruded from the door only
to be brought in again by the window. We are told, on one
page, to do as we please; and on the next we are sharply
upbraided for not having done as the author pleases. We are
first assured that we are the finest fellows in the world in
our own right; and then it appears that we are only fine
fellows in so far as we practise a most quixotic code of
morals. The disciple who saw himself in clear ether a moment
before is plunged down again among the fogs and complications
of duty. And this is all the more overwhelming because
Whitman insists not only on love between sex and sex, and
between friends of the same sex, but in the field of the less
intense political sympathies; and his ideal man must not only
be a generous friend but a conscientious voter into the
bargain.
His method somewhat lessens the difficulty. He is not, the
reader will remember, to tell us how good we ought to be, but
to remind us how good we are. He is to encourage us to be
free and kind, by proving that we are free and kind already.
He passes our corporate life under review, to show that it is
upheld by the very virtues of which he makes himself the
advocate. "There is no object so soft," he says somewhere in
his big, plain way, "there is no object so soft but it makes
a hub for the wheel'd universe.
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