Walt Whitman: An Address

by Robert Green Ingersoll

II.

THE RELIGION OF THE BODY.

Walt Whitman stood, when he published his book, where all stand to-night—on the perpetually moving line where history ends and prophecy begins. He was full of life to the very tips of his fingers—brave, eager, candid, joyous with health. He was acquainted with the past. He knew something of song and story, of philosophy and art—much of the heroic dead, of brave suffering, of the thoughts of men, the habits of the people—rich as well as poor—familiar with labor, a friend of wind and wave, touched by love and friendship—liking the open road, enjoying the fields and paths, the crags—friend of the forest—feeling that he was free—neither master nor slave—willing that all should know his thoughts—open as the sky, candid as nature—and he gave his thoughts, his dreams, his conclusions, his hopes, and his mental portrait to his fellow-men.

Walt Whitman announced the gospel of the body. He confronted the people. He denied the depravity of man. He insisted that love is not a crime; that men and women should be proudly natural; that they need not grovel on the earth and cover their faces for shame. He taught the dignity and glory of the father and mother; the sacredness of maternity.

Maternity, tender and pure as the tear of pity, holy as suffering—the crown, the flower, the ecstasy of love.

People had been taught from bibles and from creeds that maternity was a kind of crime; that the woman should be purified by some ceremony in some temple built in honor of some god. This barbarism was attacked in "Leaves of Grass."

The glory of simple life was sung; a declaration of independence was made for each and all.

And yet this appeal to manhood and to womanhood was misunderstood. It was denounced simply because it was in harmony with the great trend of nature. To me, the most obscene word in our language is celibacy.

It was not the fashion for people to speak or write their thoughts. We were flooded with the literature of hypocrisy. The writers did not faithfully describe the worlds in which they lived. They endeavored to make a fashionable world. They pretended that the cottage or the hut in which they dwelt was a palace, and they called the little area in which they threw their slops their domain, their realm, their empire. They were ashamed of the real, of what their world actually was. They imitated; that is to say, they told lies, and these lies filled the literature of most lands.