ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



likely to see their own limitations for the limitations 

 of Whitman. It is as if we thought that the length of 

 our sounding-line was the measure of the ocean's 

 depth. It may be so, but it is not always so. A man 

 of strict moral and ethical ideas, according to con- 

 ventional standards, will find Whitman rank with 

 original sin. Is not Nature rank with the same 

 form of evil? Whitman did not shrink from natural 

 tests. Naturalism was the essence of his religion. 



" Nothing out of place is good, nothing in its place is bad." 



But the good in Nature is vastly more than the 

 evil, else you and I would not be here, and the 

 good in Whitman is vastly more than the evil, or 

 he would have been forgotten long ago. 



Evil, as we use the term, attends all great things. 

 Evil — some man's evil — comes out of the sun- 

 shine, the rains, the protecting snows. One of our 

 poets objects to Whitman's saying that evil is just 

 as perfect as good. Whitman does not say it is just 

 as desirable, but just as perfect. Are not these things 

 we call evil perfect — snakes, nettles, thorns, vol- 

 canoes, earthquakes? Is not a fungus as perfect as a 

 rose? — a toad as perfect as a bird? Each obeys its 

 own law. The germs of typhoid fever and of pneu- 

 monia are just as perfect as the germs that favor us. 

 Whitman said: 



"I permit to speak at every hazard Nature without check, with 

 original energy." 



320 



