WOMAN AND FREEDOM IN WHITMAN 389 
unspeakably great—is the Will! the free Soul of man! At its 
greatest, understanding and obeying the laws, it can then, 
and then only, maintain true liberty. For there is to the highest 
that law as absolute as any — more absolute than any — the 
Law of Liberty. The shallow, as intimated, consider liberty 
a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise see 
in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws, namely, the 
fusion and combination of the conscious will, or partial in¬ 
dividual law, with those universal, eternal, unconscious ones 
which run through all Time, pervade history, prove immor¬ 
tality, give moral purpose to the entire objective world, and 
the last dignity to human life.” 
Walt Whitman charges us here, and elsewhere in his writ¬ 
ings, to see to it that we seek this freedom. He gives, too, so 
beautifully the progress of souls as the means of gaining im¬ 
mortality. But the soul with its germs of unfolding possibili¬ 
ties can only bud and blossom in free fields. 
This thought finds expression by Whitman in these words: — 
“O sight of pity, shame and dole! 
O fearful thought — a convict soul! ” 
I think I shall not only express my own but the thoughts 
of others when I say that after all Whitman has said on 
woman there remains a feeling of dissatisfaction. Woman in 
many characters accompanies the poet, but there comes a 
moment in the fife of his poems when his path seems to di¬ 
verge from hers. He goes on his way to heights and out-reach¬ 
ing vistas alone. Nature becomes more and more a source 
of his inspiration. In his spiritual growth and aspirations 
woman is not found, in his poems, by his side. Later and 
later she is more and more out-distanced, till in “ Sands of 
Seventy,” with the exception of the lines in tribute to “My 
science friend, my noblest woman friend,” woman’s influ¬ 
ence seems nigh dead. 
Nowhere among his writings do I find woman standing out 
in bold relief as the embodiment of great emotions, — no¬ 
where does she rise up as a form inspiratrice. Nor has Whit¬ 
man embodied woman’s thought, passion, and power in such 
