But Whitman does not conceive of comradeship as a merely personal possession, delightful to the friends it links in bonds of amity. He regards it essentially as a social and political virtue. This human emotion is destined to cement society and to render commonwealths inviolable. Reading some of his poems, we are carried back to ancient Greece--to Plato's Symposium, to Philip gazing on the Sacred Band of Thebans after the fight at Chæronea.[73] "I dream'd in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth; I dream'd that was the new City of Friends; Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love--it led the rest; It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city, And in all their looks and words." And again:[74] "I believe the main purport of these States is to found a superb friendship, exalté, previously unknown, Because I perceive it waits, and has been always waiting, latent in all men." And once again:--[75] "Come, I will make the continent indissoluble; I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon; I will make divine magnetic lands, With the love of comrades, With the life-long love of comrades. I will plant companionship thick as trees all along the shores of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies; I will make inseparable cities, with their arms about each other's necks; By the love of comrades, By the manly love of comrades. For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme! For you, for you I am thrilling these songs." In the company of Walt Whitman we are very far away from Gibbon and Carlier, from Tardieux and Casper-Liman, from Krafft-Ebing and Ulrichs. What indeed has this "superb friendship, exalté, previously unknown," which "waits, and has been always waiting, latent in all men," that "something fierce in me, eligible to burst forth," "ethereal comradeship," "the last athletic reality"--what has all this in common with the painful topic of the preceding sections of my Essay?