elect circle reserved for the few,--the aristocracy of the pure and just.
The religion of a democratic and scientific era, as voiced by Whitman and
as exemplified in his life, is of quite another character,--not
veneration, but joy and triumph; not fear, but love; not self-abasement,
but self-exaltation; not sacrifice, but service: in fact, not religion at
all in the old sense of the spiritual at war with the natural, the divine
with the human, this world a vale of tears, and mundane things but filth
and ashes, heaven for the good and hell for the bad; but in the new sense
of the divinity of all things, of the equality of gods and men, of the
brotherhood of the race, of the identity of the material and the
spiritual, of the beneficence of death and the perfection of the universe.
The poet turns his face to earth and not to heaven; he finds the
miraculous, the spiritual, in the things about him, and gods and goddesses
in the men and women he meets. He effaces the old distinctions; he
establishes a sort of universal suffrage in spiritual matters; there are
no select circles, no privileged persons. Is this the democracy of
religion? liberty, fraternity, and equality carried out in the spiritual
sphere? Death is the right hand of God, and evil plays a necessary part
also. Nothing is discriminated against; there are no reprisals or
postponements, no dualism or devilism. Everything is in its place; man's
life and all the things of his life are well-considered.

Carried out in practice, this democratic religion will not beget priests,
or churches, or creeds, or rituals, but a life cheerful and full on all
sides, helpful, loving, unworldly, tolerant, open-souled, temperate,
fearless, free, and contemplating with pleasure, rather than alarm, "the
exquisite transition of death."

A FINAL WORD

After all I have written about Whitman, I feel at times that the main
thing I wanted to say about him I have not said, cannot say; the best
about him cannot be told anyway. "My final merit I refuse you." His full
significance in connection with the great modern movement; how he embodies
it all and speaks out of it, and yet maintains his hold upon the
primitive, the aboriginal; how he presupposes science and culture, yet
draws his strength from that which antedates these things; how he glories
in the present, and yet is sustained and justified by the past; how he is
the poet of America and the modern, and yet translates these things