They are the voice and
exposition
of liberty.
Whitman
What has ever happened, what happens, and whatever may or shall
happen, the vital laws enclose all: they are sufficient for any case and
for all cases--none to be hurried or retarded--any miracle of affairs or
persons inadmissible in the vast clear scheme where every motion, and every
spear of grass, and the frames and spirits of men and women, and all that
concerns them, are unspeakably perfect miracles, all referring to all, and
each distinct and in its place. It is also not consistent with the reality
of the soul to admit that there is anything in the known universe more
divine than men and women.
Men and women, and the earth and all upon it, are simply to be taken as
they are, and the investigation of their past and present and future shall
be unintermitted, and shall be done with perfect candour. Upon this basis
philosophy speculates, ever looking toward the poet, ever regarding the
eternal tendencies of all toward happiness, never inconsistent with what is
clear to the senses and to the soul. For the eternal tendencies of all
toward happiness make the only point of sane philosophy. Whatever
comprehends less than that--whatever is less than the laws of light and of
astronomical motion--or less than the laws that follow the thief, the liar,
the glutton, and the drunkard, through this life, and doubtless afterward--
or less than vast stretches of time, or the slow formation of density, or
the patient upheaving of strata--is of no account. Whatever would put God
in a poem or system of philosophy as contending against some being or
influence is also of no account. Sanity and ensemble characterise the great
master:--spoilt in one principle, all is spoilt. The great master has
nothing to do with miracles. He sees health for himself in being one of the
mass--he sees the hiatus in singular eminence. To the perfect shape comes
common ground. To be under the general law is great, for that is to
correspond with it. The master knows that he is unspeakably great, and that
all are unspeakably great--that nothing, for instance, is greater than to
conceive children, and bring them up well--that to be is just as great as
to perceive or tell.
In the make of the great masters the idea of political liberty is
indispensable. Liberty takes the adherence of heroes wherever men and women
exist; but never takes any adherence or welcome from the rest more than
from poets.
They are the voice and exposition of liberty. They out of ages
are worthy the grand idea,--to them it is confided, and they must sustain
it. Nothing has precedence of it, and nothing can warp or degrade it. The
attitude of great poets is to cheer up slaves and horrify despots. The turn
of their necks, the sound of their feet, the motions of their wrists, are
full of hazard to the one and hope to the other. Come nigh them a while,
and, though they neither speak nor advise, you shall learn the faithful
American lesson. Liberty is poorly served by men whose good intent is
quelled from one failure or two failures or any number of failures, or from
the casual indifference or ingratitude of the people, or from the sharp
show of the tushes of power, or the bringing to bear soldiers and cannon or
any penal statutes. Liberty relies upon itself, invites no one, promises
nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, and knows no
discouragement. The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent
advance and retreat--the enemy triumphs--the prison, the handcuffs, the
iron necklace and anklet, the scaffold, garrote, and lead-balls, do their
work--the cause is asleep--the strong throats are choked with their own
blood--the young men drop their eyelashes toward the ground when they pass
each other . . . and is liberty gone out of that place? No, never. When
liberty goes, it is not the first to go, nor the second or third to go: it
waits for all the rest to go--it is the last. When the memories of the old
martyrs are faded utterly away--when the large names of patriots are
laughed at in the public halls from the lips of the orators--when the boys
are no more christened after the same, but christened after tyrants and
traitors instead--when the laws of the free are grudgingly permitted, and
laws for informers and blood-money are sweet to the taste of the people--
when I and you walk abroad upon the earth, stung with compassion at the
sight of numberless brothers answering our equal friendship, and calling no
man master--and when we are elated with noble joy at the sight of slaves--
when the soul retires in the cool communion of the night, and surveys its
experience, and has much ecstasy over the word and deed that put back a
helpless innocent person into the gripe of the gripers or into any cruel
inferiority--when those in all parts of these states who could easier
realise the true American character, but do not yet[1]--when the swarms of
cringers, suckers, doughfaces, lice of politics, planners of sly
involutions for their own preferment to city offices or state legislatures
or the judiciary or Congress or the Presidency, obtain a response of love
and natural deference from the people, whether they get the offices or no--
when it is better to be a bound booby and rogue in office at a high salary
than the poorest free mechanic or farmer, with his hat unmoved from his
head, and firm eyes, and a candid and generous heart--and when servility by
town or state or the federal government, or any oppression on a large scale
or small scale, can be tried on without its own punishment following duly
after in exact proportion, against the smallest chance of escape--or rather
when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any
part of the earth--then only shall the instinct of liberty be discharged
from that part of the earth.
[Footnote 1: This clause is obviously imperfect in some respect: it is here
reproduced _verbatim_ from the American edition.
happen, the vital laws enclose all: they are sufficient for any case and
for all cases--none to be hurried or retarded--any miracle of affairs or
persons inadmissible in the vast clear scheme where every motion, and every
spear of grass, and the frames and spirits of men and women, and all that
concerns them, are unspeakably perfect miracles, all referring to all, and
each distinct and in its place. It is also not consistent with the reality
of the soul to admit that there is anything in the known universe more
divine than men and women.
Men and women, and the earth and all upon it, are simply to be taken as
they are, and the investigation of their past and present and future shall
be unintermitted, and shall be done with perfect candour. Upon this basis
philosophy speculates, ever looking toward the poet, ever regarding the
eternal tendencies of all toward happiness, never inconsistent with what is
clear to the senses and to the soul. For the eternal tendencies of all
toward happiness make the only point of sane philosophy. Whatever
comprehends less than that--whatever is less than the laws of light and of
astronomical motion--or less than the laws that follow the thief, the liar,
the glutton, and the drunkard, through this life, and doubtless afterward--
or less than vast stretches of time, or the slow formation of density, or
the patient upheaving of strata--is of no account. Whatever would put God
in a poem or system of philosophy as contending against some being or
influence is also of no account. Sanity and ensemble characterise the great
master:--spoilt in one principle, all is spoilt. The great master has
nothing to do with miracles. He sees health for himself in being one of the
mass--he sees the hiatus in singular eminence. To the perfect shape comes
common ground. To be under the general law is great, for that is to
correspond with it. The master knows that he is unspeakably great, and that
all are unspeakably great--that nothing, for instance, is greater than to
conceive children, and bring them up well--that to be is just as great as
to perceive or tell.
In the make of the great masters the idea of political liberty is
indispensable. Liberty takes the adherence of heroes wherever men and women
exist; but never takes any adherence or welcome from the rest more than
from poets.
They are the voice and exposition of liberty. They out of ages
are worthy the grand idea,--to them it is confided, and they must sustain
it. Nothing has precedence of it, and nothing can warp or degrade it. The
attitude of great poets is to cheer up slaves and horrify despots. The turn
of their necks, the sound of their feet, the motions of their wrists, are
full of hazard to the one and hope to the other. Come nigh them a while,
and, though they neither speak nor advise, you shall learn the faithful
American lesson. Liberty is poorly served by men whose good intent is
quelled from one failure or two failures or any number of failures, or from
the casual indifference or ingratitude of the people, or from the sharp
show of the tushes of power, or the bringing to bear soldiers and cannon or
any penal statutes. Liberty relies upon itself, invites no one, promises
nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, and knows no
discouragement. The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent
advance and retreat--the enemy triumphs--the prison, the handcuffs, the
iron necklace and anklet, the scaffold, garrote, and lead-balls, do their
work--the cause is asleep--the strong throats are choked with their own
blood--the young men drop their eyelashes toward the ground when they pass
each other . . . and is liberty gone out of that place? No, never. When
liberty goes, it is not the first to go, nor the second or third to go: it
waits for all the rest to go--it is the last. When the memories of the old
martyrs are faded utterly away--when the large names of patriots are
laughed at in the public halls from the lips of the orators--when the boys
are no more christened after the same, but christened after tyrants and
traitors instead--when the laws of the free are grudgingly permitted, and
laws for informers and blood-money are sweet to the taste of the people--
when I and you walk abroad upon the earth, stung with compassion at the
sight of numberless brothers answering our equal friendship, and calling no
man master--and when we are elated with noble joy at the sight of slaves--
when the soul retires in the cool communion of the night, and surveys its
experience, and has much ecstasy over the word and deed that put back a
helpless innocent person into the gripe of the gripers or into any cruel
inferiority--when those in all parts of these states who could easier
realise the true American character, but do not yet[1]--when the swarms of
cringers, suckers, doughfaces, lice of politics, planners of sly
involutions for their own preferment to city offices or state legislatures
or the judiciary or Congress or the Presidency, obtain a response of love
and natural deference from the people, whether they get the offices or no--
when it is better to be a bound booby and rogue in office at a high salary
than the poorest free mechanic or farmer, with his hat unmoved from his
head, and firm eyes, and a candid and generous heart--and when servility by
town or state or the federal government, or any oppression on a large scale
or small scale, can be tried on without its own punishment following duly
after in exact proportion, against the smallest chance of escape--or rather
when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any
part of the earth--then only shall the instinct of liberty be discharged
from that part of the earth.
[Footnote 1: This clause is obviously imperfect in some respect: it is here
reproduced _verbatim_ from the American edition.
