. The thought of it possessed him
as thoroughly as the thought of Israel possessed the old Hebrew prophets.
Indeed, it is the same passion, and flames up with the same vitality and
power,--the same passion for race and nativity enlightened by science and
suffused with the modern humanitarian spirit. Israel was exclusive and
cruel. Democracy, as exemplified in Walt Whitman, is compassionate and
all-inclusive:--

"My spirit has passed in compassion and determination around the whole
earth,
I have looked for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all
lands;
I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them.

"O vapors! I think I have risen with you, and moved away to distant
continents, and fallen down there, for reasons,
I think I have blown with you, O winds,
O waters, I have fingered every shore with you."

II

The work springs from the modern democratic conception of society,--of
absolute social equality.

It embodies the modern scientific conception of the universe, as
distinguished from the old theological conception,--namely, that creation
is good and sound in all its parts.

It embodies a conception of evil as a part of the good, of death as the
friend and not the enemy of life.

It places comradeship, manly attachment, above sex love, and indicates it
as the cement of future states and republics.

It makes the woman the equal of the man, his mate and not his toy.

It treats sexuality as a matter too vital and important to be ignored or
trifled with, much less perverted or denied. A full and normal
sexuality,--upon this the race stands. We pervert, we deny, we corrupt sex
at our peril. Its perversions and abnormalities are to be remedied by a
frank and fervent recognition of it, almost a new Priapic cult.

It springs from a conception of poetry quite different from the current
conception. It aims at the poetry of things rather than of words, and
works by suggestion and indirection rather than by elaboration.

It aims to project into literature a conception of the new democratic
man,--a type larger, more copious, more candid, more religious, than we
have been used to. It finds its ideals, not among scholars or in the
parlor or counting-houses, but among workers, doers, farmers, mechanics,
the heroes of land and sea.

Hence the atmosphere which it breathes and effuses is that of real things,
real men and women. It has not the perfume of the distill