universe." Rightly understood, it is on the softest of all
objects, the sympathetic heart, that the wheel of society turns easily
and securely as on a perfect axle. There is no room, of course, for
doubt or discussion, about conduct, where every one is to follow the
law of his being with exact compliance. Whitman hates doubt, deprecates
discussion, and discourages to his utmost the craving, carping
sensibilities of the conscience. We are to imitate, to use one of his
absurd and happy phrases, "the satisfaction and aplomb of animals." If
he preaches a sort of ranting Christianity in morals, a fit consequent
to the ranting optimism of his cosmology, it is because he declares it
to be the original deliverance of the human heart; or at least, for he
would be honestly historical in method, of the human heart as at present
Christianised. His is a morality without a prohibition; his policy is
one of encouragement all round. A man must be a born hero to come up to
Whitman's standard in the practice of any of the positive virtues; but
of a negative virtue, such as temperance or chastity, he has so little
to say, that the reader need not be surprised if he drops a word or two
upon the other side. He would lay down nothing that would be a clog; he
would prescribe nothing that cannot be done ruddily, in a heat. The
great point is to get people under way. To the faithful Whitmanite this
would be justified by the belief that God made all, and that all was
good; the prophet, in this doctrine, has only to cry "Tally-ho," and
mankind will break into a gallop on the road to El Dorado. Perhaps, to
another class of minds, it may look like the result of the somewhat
cynical reflection that you will not make a kind man out of one who is
unkind by any precepts under heaven; tempered by the belief that, in
natural circumstances, the large majority is well disposed. Thence it
would follow, that if you can only get every one to feel more warmly and
act more courageously, the balance of results will be for good.

So far, you see, the doctrine is pretty coherent as a doctrine; as a
picture of man's life it is incomplete and misleading, although
eminently cheerful. This he is himself the first to acknowledge; for if
he is prophetic in anything, it is in his noble disregard of
consistency. "Do I contradict myself?" he asks somewhere; and then pat
comes the answer, the best answer ever given in print, worthy of a sage,
or rather of a woman: "Very well