DEMOCRATIC ART 255 



Le monde sera propre et net comme une ecuelle ; 

 L'humanitairerie en fera sa gamelle, 

 Et le globe rase, sans barbe ni cheveux, 

 Comme un grand potiron roulera dans les cieux. 



In a word, do the people, in this democratic age, possess 

 qualities which are capable of evoking a great art from the 

 sympathy of men of genius ? Or is art destined to subside 

 lower and lower into a kind of Byzantine decrepitude, as the 

 toy of a so-called cultivated minority ? 



It is questionable whether Whitman will help us to see 

 light in these perplexities. Yet he has a burning belief in 

 Democracy ; and, what is more, he is one of the very few 

 great writers now alive who was born among the people, who 

 has lived with the people, who understands and loves them 

 thoroughly, and who dedicated his health and energies to 

 their service in a time of overwhelming national anxiety. 



VII 



Whitman is firmly persuaded that the real greatness of 

 a nation or an epoch has never been, and can never be, tested 

 by material prosperity. The wealth and strength, the 

 mechanical industries, the expansive vigour, the superabun- 

 dant population of a state, constitute its body only. These will 

 impose upon the world, control the present, and be a fact to 

 reckon with for many generations. Yet these must eventually 

 pass away, and sink into oblivion, unless the race attains to 

 consciousness and noble spiritual life. Literature and art 

 compose the soul which informs that colossal body with 

 vitality, and which will continue to exist after the material 

 forces of the race have crumbled into nothingness. Hellas 

 lives ideally in Homer, Pheidias, .ZEschylus ; Israel, in the 

 Prophets and the Psalms ; the Middles Ages, in Dante ; 

 Feudalism, in Shakespeare. But where is Phosnicia, where 

 is Carthage ? Nothing survives to symbolise their greatness, 

 because they lacked ideas and ideal utterance. 



In America, Whitman finds the material conditions of a 



