390 LITERARY PAPERS 



frames as Ibsen and Browning have here and there placed 

 their womanly creations in. 



Of a spiritual womanly ideal, Whitman has reached in 

 these words his highest one: "Prophetic joys of better, loftier 

 love's ideals, the divine wife, the sweet, eternal, perfect com- 

 rade." In the passages cited, however, where he treats of 

 woman in the lower planes of life, he has been full and clear 

 in his utterance. 



Woman divested of her corporeal attributes as a reality in 

 comradeship, has not become a part of the poet's theme. And 

 the vast areas of the regions of the super- sensuous he has not 

 explored with her. Whitman has not met woman on a plane 

 of reciprocity where truth, liberty, and love re-echo from soul 

 to soul here on earth or in thoughts of death, and where the 

 soul of man and woman are entwined and live as one enfold- 

 ing form. Nor has Whitman been touched by the quivering 

 light from that unseen and far-away realm where thoughts 

 on life and immortality pass from hand to heart, from lips 

 to soul, to that blessed unity awaiting man and woman, which 

 is eternity's own! 



But this silence of Whitman's mind is not inharmonious 

 with his plan. In his writings he distinctly says that he is 

 describing his own personality, the personality of its own 

 time and place. And there are chords of harmony in these 

 relations of the sexes which Whitman never touched or 

 heard. 1 



To me, Whitman's idea of comradeship even does not 

 clearly stand for the mutual development of man towards 

 woman or woman towards man, which may exist and be the 

 outcome of a state resting on perfect freedom and liberty. It 

 may be that woman herself alone is capable of giving the 

 truest utterances about herself; and in turning to the pages 



1 Man and woman are parts of one and the same humanity, "the human 

 integral," each brings something which is specially pertinent to individual 

 sex. Hope for humanity in the future would seem to rest on the co5peration of 

 the sexes. This cooperation may or may not be based on unity in aspiration 

 and reciprocal sympathy, but when these elements arise, they do not inter- 

 fere, on the contrary they aid the force of cooperation for the good of others. 

 Whitman's position towards love in this broadest sense is a negative one. 



