DEMOCRATIC ART 243 



apply to Europe also. We need not accept the postulate that 

 Democracy must prove itself beyond cavil by creating intel- 

 lectual types which shall displace all that previously existed. 

 But we may believe that Democracy will and ought to produce 

 arts and a literature differing in essential points from those 

 of classical antiquity and romantic feudalism. We may admit 

 that Graeco-Roman and mediaeval ideals are inadequate to the 

 modern, democratic, scientific stage upon which humanity has 

 definitely entered. We may even be so sanguine as to hope 

 that this new phase of development contains an ideality of its 

 own, capable of contributing hitherto unapprehended sources 

 of inspiration to the artist. 



This is the problem offered to investigation in my present 

 essay. I wish to consider it mainly from the point of view 

 furnished by Whitman's writings. 



IV 



There are two aspects under which the problem of Demo- 

 cratic Art must be regarded. In the first place we have to 

 ask what sort of art, including literature under this title, 

 Democracy requires. To this question Whitman, in his 

 'Democratic Vistas,' gives an answer: turbid in expression, 

 far from lucid, but pregnant with sympathetic intelligence of 

 the main issues. In the second place we have to ask what 

 elements are furnished to the artist by the people, which have 

 not already been worked out in the classical and feudal forms 

 and their derivatives. Whitman attempts to supply us with 

 an answer to this second question also, not in his speculative 

 essays, but in the mass of imaginative compositions which he 

 designates by the name of poems or notes for poems. His 

 report upon both topics may be postponed for the moment, 

 while we revert to the revolution effected by the romantic 

 movement of a hundred years ago. It behoves us to review 

 the clearance of obsolete obstructions, and to survey the new 

 ground gained, whereon our hopes are founded of a future 

 reconstruction. 



Delivered from scholastic traditions regarding style and 



