The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-12-26
WALT MHIrMAN.

The cynics (pretty little lambs) tell
 us that experience and the advance of
 years teach us the hollowness and arti-
 ficiality of things. In our youth, they
 say, we imagine ourselves among roses,
 but when we pluck them they are red
 paper Now, I believe everybody alive
 knows that the reverse of this Is the
 truth. We grow conservative as we
 grow old, it is true. But we do not grow conservative because we have found so
 many new things spurious. We grow
 conservative because we have found SO
 many old things genuine. We begin by thinking all conventions, all traditions false and meaningless. Then one con vention after another, one tradition
 after another, one tradition after aa-
 other. begins to explain Itself, begins to beat with life under our hand, We
 thought these things were simply stuck on to human life; we find that they are rooted. We thought it was only a tire some regulation that we should take off our hats to lady; we find 1t is the pulse of chivalry and the splendor of the west. We thought 1t was artifcal to dress for dinner. We realize that the festive idea, the idea of the wedding
 garment, is more natural than nature itself. As I say, the precise opposite of the cynical statement is the truth. Our
 ardent boyhood sbelieves things to be
 dead; our graver manhood discovers them to be alive We awaken in our infancy and believe ourselves surround ed by red paper. We pluck at 1t and find 1t is roses.
 A good instance may be found in the
 case of a great man who has been the sole spiritual support of me and many others, and who will remain one of our principal spiritual supports Walt whitman is I suppose, beyond question | the ablest man America has yet pro-. duced. He also happens to be, ir-i lcidentally, the greatest man of the nineteenth century, Ibsen is all very well, and zola is all very well, and
 Maeterlinck is all very well but we have begun already to get to the end of them. And we have not yet begun to
 get to the beginning of Whitman. The l egoism of which men accuse him is that
 sense of human divinity which no one l has felt since Christ. The badness of
 which men accuse him is simply that lsplendidly casual utterance which no sage has used since Christ. But all the
 same, this gradual and glowing con- servatism which grows upon us as we l live leads us to feel that in just those points in which he violated the chief tconventions of poetry, in just those points he was wrong. He was mistaken l in abandoning meter in poetry; not be- cause in forsaking it he was forsaking anything ornamental or anything civili- zed, as he himself thought. In forsak- | ing metre he was forsaking something I Iquite wild and barbarous, something as instinctive as anger and as necessary as meat. He forgot that all real things
 move in 3, rhythm, that the heart beart beats-in harmony, that the seas rise and ebb in harmony He forgot that any child shouts falls into some sort of repetition and assosance, that the wild ! est dancing is at the bottom nonot- onous. The whole of Nature moves in Irecurrent music; it is only with a con siderable effort of civilization that we can contrive to be other than musical.
 The whole words talks poetry; 1t is only we who with elaborate ingenuity,
 manage to talk prose.
 The same that is true of Whitman's violation of metre is true though in a
 minor degree, of his violation of what is the commonly called modesty. De- corum itself is of little social value; sometimes 1t is a sign of social decay.
 Decorum is the morality of immoral so- cieties. The people who care most about modesty are often those who care l least about chastity; no better ex-
 amples could be given than Oriental courts or the West end drawing rooms.
 But all the same Whitman was wrong.
 He was wrong because he had at the back of his mind the notion that mod esty or decency was itself an artificial thing. This is quite a mistake. The
 roots of modesty, like the rots of mercy or of any other traditional virtue, are to found in all fierce and primitive things While shyness, fugitive self
 possession, melongs to all simple crea-
 lures. It belongs to children; 1t belongs to savages; it belongs even to animals.
 To conceal something Is the first of Ma ture's lessons; 1t is far less elaborate
 than to explain everything. And If wo-
 men are as they certainly are much more dignified and much more modest than men, if they are more reticent, and, in the excellent current phrase, keep themselves to themselves" much more, the reason is very simple; it is
 because women are much more fierce
 and much more savage than men. To be thoroughly immidest Is an exceed ingly elaborate affair. To have com plete seIf-revelation one must have
 complete self consciousness. Thus it is that while from the beginning of the world men have had the most exquisite
 philosophies and social arrangements, nobody ever thought of complete inde-
 cency, iindecency on principle, until we
 reached a high and complete state of Icivilization. To conceal some things
 came to us like eating bread To talk.
 about everything never appeared until
 the age of the motor-car-G. K. Ches-, terton in London Daily News. !