The comparison with Nietzsche suggests the limits of Whitman’s Hegelianism. For though he once declared that he “rated Hegel as Humanity’s chiefest teacher and the choicest loved physician of my mind and soul”; and again, that his teaching was the undercurrent which fructified his views of life,[649] yet it may well be doubted whether he ever really mastered the full Hegelian theory, or realised the futility of many of those generalisations in which German idealism has been so prolific. It was because Hegel saw life, both the Me and the Not Me, as a single Whole, and found a place for evil in his world-purpose, that Whitman hailed him as the one truly “American” thinker of the age. But in the individualism of Nietzsche is the partial corrective of Hegel’s position; and as I have suggested, Whitman would have accepted it as such.
Perhaps the foregoing very rough and ready comparisons may have thrown some light on the outstanding features of Whitman’s personal message and influence. But there remains another, which I have already suggested, and to which for a moment we must return.
Whitman was essentially a prophet-mystic, and while he derived nothing from most of the men with whom his thought is related, the indirect influence upon him of George Fox the Quaker is certain.[650]
Fox’s distinguishing quality was his intense personal reality; there are few more vivid figures on any page of history. This seems to be due to the fulness of life which he realised, and could focus in his actual consciousness. From this he did not derive “advanced views” but vital power. And vital power is equally, and perhaps in fuller measure, characteristic of Whitman, manifesting itself by various signs in his daily life, and in the phrases of his book.
In Whitman, as in Fox, this was an attractive power of extraordinary force. Around Fox it created a Society of Friends; and one cannot doubt that sooner or later a world-wide Fellowship of Comrades will result from the life-work of Whitman.
Fox’s “Friends”—though the meaning of the title may originally have been “Friends of the Truth”—were real friends; united in a new ideal of communion. They shared the highest experience in common; meeting for the purpose of entering together into “the power of the life”.
And Whitman also realised that life at its highest is only revealed to comrades. His view of religion was even less formal than that of the early Quakers; but he, too, preferred to sit in silence with those he loved, realising that Divine power and purpose which was one in them.
Quakerism has not unfairly been spoken of as a spiritual aristocracy; there seems to be something essentially exclusive about it. On the other hand, it is essentially democratic and would exclude none; but the methods necessary to its conception of truth do not appeal to the many.