242 DEMOCRATIC ART 



mingled ancestry, not any portion of which has been, or can 

 be, absolutely cast aside. To escape the fatality of hereditary 

 transmission is hopeless. No individual man can be wholly 

 original, in the sense of being independent of his progenitors 

 and predecessors. Far more impossible is it for whole nations 

 to fling themselves adrift from their moorings, or to construct 

 an ideal world of culture corresponding to temporary con- 

 ditions however urgent and imposing. The advent of the 

 people, paramount as it is in the experience of the nineteenth 

 century, will not revolutionise the laws which govern human 

 society. Language, the instrument of thought and the 

 vehicle of utterance, remains an uncontrollable witness to the 

 dependence of the present on the past. No one has been so 

 insane as to pretend that odes and epics could be written in 

 Volapiik. 1 



After making these deductions, Whitman's claim for a new 

 start in culture deserves serious consideration. Democracy is 

 a fact, the main fact, I repeat it, of our epoch. It is more than 

 a political phenomenon. It contains the germ of a religious 

 enthusiasm. If the modern world is destined to be remodell( 

 by Democracy and in some form or other this must happen 

 then what is applicable to America will in a large measure 



1 Whitman himself seems willing to concede the point on which I have 

 insisted in this paragraph. He says, in an article on the ' Poetry of the 

 Future ' (North American Review, February, 1881 why not included ii 

 his ' November Boughs,' I know not) : ' I see that this world of 

 West, as part of all, fuses inseparably with the East, and with all, as time 

 does the ever new, yet old, old human race " the same subject continued,' 

 as the novels of our grandfathers had it for chapter-heads. If we are nc 

 to hospitably receive and complete the inaugurations of the old civilis 

 tions, and change their small scale to the largest, broadest scale, what 

 on earth are we for ? ' That is common sense. Here Whitman puts his 

 position with regard to the innovatory and superseding destiny of the 

 United States in a reasonable light. Wishing to do him justice, I have 

 quoted the passage ; although I am not aware that he has republished 

 the article in which it occurs. It may appear in one of the many collec- 

 tions of his works in prose and verse with which I am unacquainted. At 

 any rate, the essay ought to be read by students of Whitman, for it is 

 full of fine things. 



