Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

other point of view would explain what we know of the universe and of man. All the same, I had no idea what had happened to me. I did not for a long time connect my experience in thought either with what I knew of psychology or with what I knew of history.

The experience which I have detailed threw a flood of light upon the teachings of "Leaves of Grass"; but strange to say (so it seems to me now) I saw no connection between it and the genesis of that book. My experience seemed to me a casual and isolated incident, having a deep individual but no special racial significance. Eighteen years passed away, occupied in continuous search for the secret. At last light da w ned. Strangely enough, I back in the same great city in which for the first and last time I had seen unveiled for a few seconds the truth. A man

was

NUMBER 22.

whom I had never met, but of whom I had heard as being possessed of extraordinary spiritual insight, was in the same city. I had wanted to see him for a long time. We made an appointment, met, and had a talk of some hours' duration. I found that he had entered the higher life of which I had had a glimpse and had had a large experience of its phenomena. In brief, my conversation with him, lit up by my own comparatively trivial experience, showed me not only where I stood,

SO

but where humanity stood, in relation to this new world, as it may be called. Especially, knowing Whitman well as I did, it showed me his position, where he obtained his inspiration, and the proof that this is absolutely genuine. I saw clearly also that the phenomenon of illumination was not an erratic, casual occurrence, but that it was part of the great scheme upon which the universe and especially humanity was originally planned. I saw that it was merely a

step in the great march of evolution, that many men had already taken this step, and that in due time it would be taken by the race at large; that among those who had taken the step was Whitman; and that the new faculties, mental and moral, the possession of which by him I had been unable to explain to myself, were simply attributes of this higher life belonging to AGE 71, 1890. the new humanity that was making its appearance. That Whitman actually manifested such higher faculties has been, and of course will be, disputed and denied; but I am here simply giving my own experiences and conclusions.

A single glance backward over Whitman's life and work, now that the clew was found, sufficed to show to a man like myself, who was thoroughly conversant with these, his possession of the new faculties, and when and how these came to him. It is known, for instance, that as a young man he

[graphic]

self to speak, to express itself. "Not words," he says, "not music or rhyme I want, not custom nor lecture, not even the best-only the lull I like, the hum of your valued voice." He was not as particular as his critics have been; all he asked was that the cosmic sense should speak and utter itself. He tells us that illumination came in June-the usual time of year; that after it came his life was absolutely controlled by it-it "held his feet." Then he tells of the peace, joy and knowledge (the moral exaltation and intellectual illumination which belong to the new birth), passing all the art and argument of the earth, that came to him. He saw the cosmic order-the "Brahmic Splendor". and that the basic facts of the universe and of the human soul are love and immortality.

[graphic]

NUMBER 23. AGE 72, 1892. was not markedly different from his contemporaries; that his writings at that time were not distinguished; but that at the age of thirty-six he had produced a volume which has been looked upon by many of the best minds of the present generation as almost unexampled in spiritual insight and power. Then he tells us of the sudden blaze of the subjective light, how

"As in a swoon, one instant,

Another sun, ineffable, full dazzles me, And all the orbs I knew, and brighter, unknown orbs;

One instant of the future land, Heaven's land."

[merged small][graphic]

On another page, addressing his new self, the cosmic sense, he tells in detail of his illumination. He says, in substance, to the new faculty: I believe in you. My other self (the self-conscious man) must not abase itself to you, and you must not be abased to it. Both these opposite errors have been fallen into by other men having cosmic consciousness; both the cosmic-conscious has tyrannized over the self-conscious man, and the self-conscious has obstructed the free life of the cosmic-conscious man. One notable case of the first error entailed on the Christian world untold misery. Whitman calls on the new

NUMBER 24. AGE 72, 1892.

1855 edition of the "Leaves." It runs as follows:

"I cannot be awake, for nothing looks to me as it did before,

Or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep."

The key once found, it became easy to follow Whitman through winding corridors, sometimes made purposely confusing, and past doors that seem intentionally locked to bar the approach of unbidden feet; and what seemed at first a pathless wilderness or a tangled jungle is revealed as a gracious, well-ordered garden of exquisite lawns, shrubs and flowers. All becomes clear; his optimism, unexampled except in men who belong to the same order as himself, is explained; we understand clearly his almost total absorption in religion; as for instance:

"Each is not for its own sake,

I say the whole earth, and all the stars in the sky, are for religion's sake.

I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough;

None has ever yet adored or worshipped half enough;

None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and how certain the future is."

We understand his convictions about God and immortality-the convictions of a man who has seen and who knows; we see whence comes what must be called his passion for God-a passion as real, warm and intense as any emotion ever felt by one human being for another; and whence came his devotion to man, which led him to sacrifice his health and life for the sick and wounded soldiers of the war. We comprehend his exalted patriotism, his love for the common people, his scorn of money, his hatred of tyranny, his compassion for all suffering, his pity for all weakness, his forbearance with all error. The passages in which these ideas and sentiments are expressed, and which, as long as we supposed they proceeded from an ordinary man, seemed

[blocks in formation]

So too we can follow him when, as in "Passage to India" and "Prayer of Columbus," he represents himself as the discoverer and announcer of a new world; for he is so. It is true that this new world had been visited and proclaimed by others before he was born; but of most of the announcers he knew nothing, and his discovery was none the less really such because others had made it-as that of Columbus was not less genuine because of the voyage of Eric.

Again we can see what he means, and realize, though perhaps somewhat dimly, its truth, when he enunciates, as he does over and over again in ever-varying language, the great verity (true of all men, but only seen

to be true by a small class of men): "I and my Father are one"-expressed by Whitman in such utterances as: "To be indeed a god," "Divine am I inside and out," "There is no god any more divine than yourself,' or "I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself." It becomes clear to us whence he derived "the urge, the ardor, the unconquerable will" that sustained him, in opposition to friends, enemies, critics, publishers and the world at large, in his almost desperate attempt to "clarify and transfigure" heretofore "indecent and forbidden voices." We see whence came to him "the potent, felt, interior command stronger than words."

When I say, then, that Whitman is a seer, I mean that he belongs to a family, the members of which, limited in number, are spread abroad throughout the advanced races of mankind and throughout the last forty centuries of the world's history. The trait that distinguishes these people from other men is this: their spiritual eyes have been opened and they have seen. The better-known members of this group, who, were they collected together, could be ac

these

commodated all at one time in a modern drawing room, have created all the great modern religions, beginning with Taoism and Buddhism, and, speaking generally, have created, through religion and literature, modern civilization. Not that they have contributed any large numerical proportion of the books which have been written, but that they have produced the few books which have inspired the larger number of all that have been written in modern times. These men dominate the last twenty-five, especially the last five, centuries as stars of the first magnitude dominate the midnight sky.

A man is identified as a member of this family by the fact that at a certain age he passes through a new birth and rises to a higher spiritual plane. The reality of the new birth is demonstrated by the subjective light and otherwise. Of this new race, which seems to be increasing in number gradually as the generations succeed one another, Whitman stands among the foremost members. We cannot condemn him unless we condemn his brethren also. It is true that they were condemned each in his own day. It is also true that they all triumphed at last; and so also undoubtedly will he.

[graphic]

THE PHILANTHROPIST'S LEGISLATIVE FUNCTION.

By Joseph Lee.

POOR man was once walking home after his day's work, when he slipped on an icy place on the sidewalk and fell and broke his leg. A passer-by saw him fall and came up to him and, seeing that he was a poor man and that he had hurt himself, gave him a dollar and passed on. Presently another person came along the street and, seeing the man sitting there, went up to see what was the matter. Finding that the man was seriously hurt and could not walk, this second person sent for an ambulance and had him taken to the hospital, took his address, called on his wife and children to tell them what had happened, procured for them the needed assistance to tide over the time that the man could not work, and went to see him and cheer him up until he got well. And this second passer-by, who had thought not of alleviation, but of cure, who had taken the trouble to really find out what was needed and to get it, and had seen how serious the mischief was, how hard it was to cure it, and how great had been the danger of permanent injury to the man and to his family, this second philanthropist then went and called upon the proper authorities, and stayed with them until that sidewalk and other sidewalks were put into such condition that people could

walk on them with comparative safety."

In the above parable, taken from an annual report of one of our charity organization societies, the first passerby represents charity as it used to be; the second, in his way of going to work to help the poor man, in his thoroughness and in his efficiency, is a fair type of charity as it is to-day, while in his resort to preventive measures he is a prophecy of a development, already begun indeed, but which is still further to characterize the charity of the future. It is in behalf of the speedier fulfilment of this prophecy, so far as its fulfilment is to be sought in the promotion of public action and especially of legislation, that I wish to speak. I believe that our philanthropists have a duty to perform in the systematic study and promotion of progressive social legislation. I believe that in our existing theory of legislation, or at least in our customary practice, an important function is left unfulfilled, the function, namely, of deliberate, thoughtful leadership; and that because of his superior qualifications, through familiarity with the facts on which progressive legislation should be based, the discharge of this function belongs, as regards a considerable range of subjects, to the practical philanthropic worker.

As I am speaking of the duties of a

« AnteriorContinuar »