[720] L. of G., 425.
[721] I cannot omit some reference to the brilliant and interesting criticism of Whitman by Mr. George Santayana, especially that contained in his Poetry and Religion, pp. 175-87, etc., though it is somewhat outside my proper field.
Mr. Santayana, if I understand him aright, regards all mysticism as a form of spiritual loafing; he heartily discounts the more primal emotions as being “low” in the scale of evolution, and sets a correspondingly high premium upon all that is subtle and complex. Though he seeks to be just to his victim, his lack of sympathy is clearly evidenced in the cleverly rhetorical but quite unworthy passage (p. 180) wherein Whitman is described as having “wallowed in the stream of his own sensibility, as later, at Camden, in the shallows of his favourite brook”. Such phrases may be funny, but I trust the preceding pages have shown that they are not true to the facts of Whitman’s life. To reply to Mr. Santayana is obviously beyond my scope; and, even if I could undertake the task, it would entail upon the reader many laborious pages devoted to the study of æsthetic values. For I suspect, that, whichever of us may be right, our difference goes back to the beginning.
[722] Comp. Prose, 426, 439, 457, 474.
[723] L. of G., 488.
[724] L. of G., 433.
[725] Ib., 388.
[726] Ib., 392.
[727] Ib., 399.
[728] Ib., 403 n.