WOMAN AND FREEDOM IN WHITMAN 379 



adjust them to new combinations, our own days." He de- 

 scribes the community he conceives of, a possibility for to- 

 day, where "perfect personalities without noise meet;" where 

 "best men and women of ordinary worldly status have by 

 luck been drawn together, with nothing extra of genius or 

 wealth, but virtuous, chaste, industrious, cheerful, resolute, 

 friendly, and devout." He conceives "such a community organ- 

 ized in running order, powers judiciously delegated, farming, 

 building, trade, courts, mails, schools, elections all attended 

 to, and then the rest of life, the main thing freely branching 

 and blossoming in each individual;" and he sees there in 

 "every young and old man and in every woman a true 

 personality developed, exercised proportionally in body and 

 mind and spirit;" and this case he imagines "in buoyant 

 accordance with the municipal and general requirements of 

 our times." 



It is not possible to pass over in silence the practical side 

 of woman's life on matters of equality, which our poet asks 

 for her, though, in view of present-day systems, Whitman is 

 silent in directing her how she is to obtain this equality. He 

 says, "I seek less to state or display any scheme or thought, 

 and more to bring you, reader, into the atmosphere of the 

 theme or thought, there to pursue your own flight." 



To discuss the rhythmic rise and fall in woman's develop- 

 ment through the times is beyond these bounds, nor can these 

 limits include a review of woman's history from any point of 

 view. It conceded, as a wise biologist has said, that man is 

 the result of what woman has made him; likewise is it true 

 that man has not been entirely inactive in woman's construc- 

 tion. We must take woman, in any consideration of the sub- 

 ject, as we find her to-day, in the light of a modern civiliza- 

 tion, as the resultant of a long series of conditions, as more 

 or less the creature of her environment, physically, men- 

 tally, and spiritually. 



I have to omit, for want of space, the discussion in any de- 

 tail of woman's inequalities, and I will merely mention those 

 upon which Whitman dwells. However, it would scarcely be 

 fair to my subject to leave out mentioning one other inequal- 



