WOMAN AND FREEDOM IN WHITMAN 389 



unspeakably great is the Will! the free Soul of man! At its 

 greatest, understanding and obeying the laws, it can then, 

 and then only, maintain true liberty. For there is to the highest 

 that law as absolute as any more absolute than any the 

 Law of Liberty. The shallow, as intimated, consider liberty 

 a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise see 

 in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws, namely, the 

 fusion and combination of the conscious will, or partial in- 

 dividual law, with those universal, eternal, unconscious ones 

 which run through all Time, pervade history, prove immor- 

 tality, give moral purpose to the entire objective world, and 

 the last dignity to human life." 



Walt Whitman charges us here, and elsewhere in his writ- 

 ings, to see to it that we seek this freedom. He gives, too, so 

 beautifully the progress of souls as the means of gaining im- 

 mortality. But the soul with its germs of unfolding possibili- 

 ties can only bud and blossom in free fields. 



This thought finds expression by Whitman in these words : 



"O sight of pity, shame and dole! 

 O fearful thought a convict soul! " 



I think I shall not only express my own but the thoughts 

 of others when I say that after all Whitman has said on 

 woman there remains a feeling of dissatisfaction. Woman in 

 many characters accompanies the poet, but there comes a 

 moment in the life of his poems when his path seems to di- 

 verge from hers. He goes on his way to heights and out- reach- 

 ing vistas alone. Nature becomes more and more a source 

 of his inspiration. In his spiritual growth and aspirations 

 woman is not found, in his poems, by his side. Later and 

 later she is more and more out-distanced, till in "Sands of 

 Seventy, " with the exception of the lines in tribute to "My 

 science friend, my noblest woman friend," woman's influ- 

 ence seems nigh dead. 



Nowhere among his writings do I find woman standing out 

 in bold relief as the embodiment of great emotions, no- 

 where does she rise up as a form inspiratrice. Nor has Whit- 

 man embodied woman's thought, passion, and power in such 



