THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE 203 



he is not afraid of over-praising, or making too 

 much of the commonest individual. What exalts 

 others exalts him. 



We have had great help in Emei;son in certain 

 ways, — first-class service. He probes the conscience 

 and the moral purpose as few men have done, and 

 gives much needed stimulus there. But, after him, 

 the need is all the more pressing for a broad, power- 

 ful, opulent, human personality to absorb these 

 ideals, and make something more of them than fine 

 sayings. With Emerson alone we are rich in sun- 

 light, but poor in rain and dew, — poor, too, in soil, 

 and in the moist, gestating earth principle. Emer- 

 son's tendency is not to broaden and enrich, but to 

 concentrate and refine. 



Then, is there not an excessive modesty, without 

 warrant in philosophy or nature, dwindling us in 

 this country, drying us up in the viscera ? Is there 

 not a decay — a deliberate, strange abnegation and 

 dread — of sane sexuality, of maternity and pater- 

 nity, among us, and in our literary ideals and social 

 types of men and women? Eor myseK, I welcome 

 any evidence to the contrary, or any evidence that 

 deeper and counteracting agencies are at work, as 

 unspeakably precious. I do not know where this 

 evidence is furnished in such ample measure as in 

 the pages of Walt Whitman. The great lesson of 

 nature, I take it, is that a sane sensuality must be 

 preserved at all hazards, and this, it seems to me, 

 is also the great lesson of his writings. The point 

 is fully settled in him that, however they may have 



