Cosmic emotions leave no room for those special manifestations of concentrated feeling in individual instances which men with a narrower range of sympathies frequently show.
For in denying that Whitman was a man capable of “a very deep human love,” no moral censure is implied. If not deep, it was certainly comprehensive; and rarely, if ever, do the two qualities coexist. Depth of feeling is not to be found in men of the tolerant, passive type; it is the intolerant, comparatively narrow-minded man who loves deeply; the man of few friends, not the man who takes the whole human race to his heart in one colossal embrace. Narrowness may exist, of course, without intensity. But intensity of temperament always carries with it a certain forceful narrowness. Such a man, strongly idiosyncratic, with his sympathies running in a special groove, is capable of one or two affections that absorb his entire nature. Those whom he cares for are so subtly bound up with
the peculiarities of his temperament that they become a part of his very life. And if they go, so interwoven are their personalities with the fibres of his being, that part of his life goes with them. To such the death of an intimate friend is a blow that shatters them beyond recovery. Courage and endurance, indeed, they may show, and the undiscerning may never note how fell the blow has been. But though the healing finger of Time will assuage the wound, the scars they will carry to their dying day.
As a rule, such men, lovable as they may be to the few, are not of the stuff of which social reformers are made. They feel too keenly, too sensitively, are guided too much by individual temperamental preferences. It is of no use for any man who has to deal with coarse-grained humanity, with all sorts and conditions of men, to be fastidious in his tastes. A certain bluntness, a certain rude hardiness, a certain evenness of disposition is absolutely necessary. We are told of Whitman by one of his most ardent admirers that his life was “a pleased, uninterested saunter through the world—no hurry, no fever, no strife, hence no bitterness, no depression, no wasted energies . . . in all his tastes and attractions always aiming to live thoroughly in the free nonchalant spirit of the day.”
Yes; this is the type of man wanted as a social pioneer, as a poet of the people. A man who felt more acutely, for whom the world was far too terrible a place for sauntering, would be quite unfitted for Whitman’s task. It was essential that he should have lacked deep individual affection. Something had to be sacrificed
for the work he had before him, and we need not lament that he had no predilection for those intimate personal ties that mean so much to some.
A man who has to speak a word of cheer to so many can ill afford to linger with the few. He is not even concerned to convert you to his way of thinking. He throws out a hint, a suggestion, the rest you must do for yourself.
“I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you, and then averts his face. Leaving you to prove and define it. Expecting the main things from you.”
Nowhere are Whitman’s qualities more admirably shown than in his attitude towards the average human being. As a rule the ordinary man is not a person whom the Poet delights to honour. He is concerned with the exceptional, the extraordinary type. Whitman’s attitude then is of special interest.
“I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you;
None has understood you, but I understand you;
None has done justice to you—you have not done justice to yourself.
None but has found you imperfect; I only find no imperfection in you.
None but would subordinate you; I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you.”* * * * *
“Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of all;
From the head of the centre figure, spreading a nimbus of gold-coloured light.
But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of gold-coloured light.
From My hand, from the brain of every man and woman it streams effulgently flowing for ever.
O! I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
You have not known what you are; you have slumbered upon yourself all your time. . . .”