262 DEMOCRATIC ART 



great American war. 'Probably no future age can know, 

 but I well know, how the gist of this fiercest and most reso- 

 lute of the world's warlike contentions resided exclusively in 

 the unnamed, unknown rank and file; and how the brunt 

 of its labour of death was, to all essential purposes, Volun- 

 teered.' * Grand common stock ! to me the accomplished 

 and convincing growth, prophetic of the future ; proof un- 

 deniable to sharpest sense of perfect beauty, tenderness, and 

 pluck, that never feudal lord, nor Greek, nor Roman breed 

 yet rivalled.' 



We now understand what Whitman means by ' the divine 

 average ' ; why he exclaims : ' Ever the most precious in the 

 common. Ever the fresh breeze of field, or hill, or lake is 

 more than any palpitation of fans, though of ivory, and 

 redolent with perfume ; and the air is more than the costliest 

 perfumes.' 



Finally, something must be said about Whitman's attitude 

 toward the past. His polemic against contemporary culture, 

 his firm insistence upon the fact that ' the mind, which alone 

 builds the permanent edifice, haughtily builds for itself,' 

 and that consequently a great nation like America, a new 

 principle like Democracy, is bound to find its own ideal 

 expression or ' to prove the most tremendous failure of 

 time ' all this may blind us to his reverence for the arts 

 and literatures of races and of ages which have passed away. 

 How easy it would be to assume a contempt for history 

 in Whitman is clear enough to students of his writings. 

 From the pages which he dedicates to the use and value of 

 bygone literatures it will be sufficient to extract the following 

 paragraph : 



Gathered by geniuses of city, race, or age, and put by them in the 

 highest of art's forms, namely, the literary form, the peculiar combina- 

 tions, and the outshows of that city, race, and age, its particular m< 

 of the universal attributes and passions, its faiths, heroes, lovers am 

 gods, wars, traditions, struggles, crimes, emotions, joys (or the subtle 

 spirit of these) having been passed on to us to illumine our own selfhood 

 and its experiences what they supply, indispensable and highest, if 

 taken away, nothing else in all the world's boundless storehouses could 

 make up to us or ever return again. 



