America is really the great test or trial case for all the problems and promises and speculations of humanity, and of the past and present.
I say, too, we{41} are not to look so much to changes, ameliorations, and adaptations in Politics as to those of Literature and (thence) domestic Sociology. I have accordingly in the following melange introduced many themes besides political ones.
Several of the pieces are ostensibly in explanation of my own writings; but in that very process they best include and set forth their side of principles and generalities pressing vehemently for consideration our age.
Upon the whole, it is on the atmosphere they are born in, and, (I hope) give out, more than any specific piece or trait, I would care to rest.
I think Literature—a new, superb, democratic literature—is to be the medicine and lever, and (with Art) the chief influence in modern civilization. I have myself not so much made a dead set at this theory, or attempted to present it directly, as admitted it to color and sometimes dominate what I had to say. In both Europe and America we have serried phalanxes who promulge and defend the political claims: I go for an equal force to uphold the other.
WALT WHITMAN,
CAMDEN, NEW JERSEY, April, 1888.
Endnotes:
{41} We who, in many departments, ways, make the building up of the masses, by building up grand individuals, our shibboleth: and in brief that is the marrow of this book.