Democracy is not so much spoken of in the "Leaves" as it is it that
speaks. The common, the familiar, are not denied and left behind, they are
made vital and masterful; it is the "divine average" that awakens
enthusiasm. Humanity is avenged upon the scholar and the "gentleman" for
the slights they have put upon it; creeds and schools in abeyance;
personal qualities, force of character, to the front. Whitman triumphs
over the mean, the vulgar, the commonplace, by accepting them and imbuing
them with the spirit of an heroic ideal. Wherever he reveals himself in
his work, it is as one of the common people, never as one of a coterie or
of the privileged and cultivated. He is determined there shall be no
mistake about it. He glories in the common heritage. He emphasizes in
himself the traits which he shares with workingmen, sailors, soldiers, and
those who live in the open air, even laying claim to the "rowdyish." He is
proud of freckles, sun-tan, brawn, and holds up the powerful and
unrefined.
"I am enamor'd of growing out-doors,
Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,
Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes
and mauls, and the drivers of horses;
I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out."
"Nothing endures," he says, "but personal qualities." "Produce great
persons and the rest follows." Does he glory in the present? he reverently
bows before the past also. Does he sound the call of battle for the Union?
but he nourishes the sick and wounded of the enemy as well. Does he flout
at the old religions? but he offers a larger religion in their stead. He
is never merely negative, he is never fanatical, he is never narrow. He
sees all and embraces and encloses all.
Then we see united and harmonized in Whitman the two great paramount
tendencies of our time and of the modern world,--the altruistic or
humanitarian tendency and the individualistic tendency; or, democracy and
individualism, pride and equality, or, rather, pride in equality. These
two forces, as they appear in separate individuals, are often
antagonistic. In Carlyle, individualism frowned upon democracy. In Whitman
they are blended and work together. Never was such audacious and
uncompromising individualism, and never was such bold and sweeping
fraternalism or otherism. The great pride of man in himself, which is one
motif of the poems, flows naturally into the great pride of man in his
fellows; his egoism does not separate him from, but rather unites him
with, all men. What he assumes they shall assume, and what he claims for
himself he demands in the same terms for all. He has set such an example
of self-trust and self-assertion as has no parallel in our literature, at
the same time that he has set an equal example in practical democracy and
universal brotherhood.