Calamus, like the bundle labelled Leaves of Grass, closes on the note of personal presence.[311]
I trust it has already been sufficiently suggested that Whitman’s mysticism is not to be confused with much that hitherto has passed under that name. Mysticism it is, for it is the expression of mystical experience; but it is clearly not the mysticism which is completed in a circle of devotion, religious exercises, meditation and ecstasy. It is the mysticism which recreates the world in a new image. Professor Royce, in his most interesting lectures on “The World and the Individual,” has described it, or something very similar to it, under the title of Idealism; and his careful and suggestive elaboration of his theme is the best indirect commentary upon what I have called the mysticism of Whitman with which I am acquainted. It includes an admirable exposition of the meaning of the Soul or Self.
Your whole world, he declares, is your whole Self—Whitman would perhaps have said, it is the mirror which reveals yourself. The Infinite Universe, whereof yours is but a part, is the Self of God. We live, but are not lost in Him, for we are as it were His members. There are two aspects of the human self: the temporal, in which it appears as a mere momentary consciousness, and the eternal, which reveals it as an indestructible purpose, the essence of reality. For reality, the professor argues, is the visible expression of purpose or meaning.
To proceed to the social aspect of this teaching: the individual, when he becomes conscious of his world—his Self—becomes conscious, too, that his world is only one aspect of the Universe, that there are a myriad others, and that the Universal Life consists of a Fellowship of such Selves as his. Thus, God is the Many-in-One; in Him the Many are one Self and complete. And the Many do not only seek completion in the Divine Unity; they also seek fellowship with one another. The Divine life, which is the basis of Human life, is thus a life of Fellowship—as the Apostle says, it is Love. It is not merely a trinity, it is a City of Friends; or rather of Lovers, as Edward Carpenter suggested in his recent essays.[312]
Now I am convinced that this thought underlies Calamus; not, indeed, as a metaphysical theory, but as one of those overwhelming realisations of the ultimate significance of things which I have described inadequately as Whitman’s symbolism. Seeking to plumb the depths of passion, he found God. Sex became for him, in its essence, the potency of that Life wherein we are One. And comradeship, a passion as intense as that of sex, he beheld as the same relation between spiritual or ætherial bodies.[313] He was aware that the noblest of passions is the most liable to base misunderstandings. But in it alone the soul finds full freedom. Sex passion finds its proper expression in physical rites, it is the passion of the life in Time; on the contrary, the passion of comrades is of eternity and only finds expression in Death.[314] This appears to have been Whitman’s conviction.
Yet another bundle follows Calamus; a packet of more or less personal letters or messages called Messenger Leaves. In subsequent editions they were sorted out into other sections. They are not all new; but among those that now appear for the first time are the daring and noble lines to Jesus.
My spirit to yours, dear brother,
Do not mind because many, sounding your name, do not understand you,