The soul has that measureless pride which revolts from every lesson but its own. He carries the idea of individuality to its utmost hight: What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but that man or woman is as good as God? And that there is no God any more divine than Yourself? Glorying in individuality, in the freedom of the soul, he cries out: O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted! To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand! To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face! To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance! To be indeed a God! And again; O the joy of a manly self-hood! To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known or unknown, To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic, To look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye, To speak with full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest. To confront with your personality all the other personalities of the earth. Walt Whitman is willing to stand alone. He is sufficient unto himself, and he says: Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune. * * * * * Strong and content I travel the open road. He is one of Those that look carelessly in the faces of Presidents and Governors, as to say "Who are you?" And not only this, but he has the courage to say: "Nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self." Walt Whitman is the poet of Individuality--the defender of the rights of each for the sake of all--and his sympathies are as wide as the world. He is the defender of the whole race. VI. HUMANITY. The great poet is intensely human--infinitely sympathetic--entering into the joys and griefs of others, bearing their burdens, knowing their sorrows. Brain without heart is not much; they must act together. When the respectable people of the North, the rich, the successful, were willing to carry out the Fugitive Slave law, Walt Whitman said: I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs, Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen, I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn'd with the ooze of my skin, I fall on the weeds and stones, The riders spur their unwilling horses, haul close, Taunt my dizzy ears, and beat me violently over the head with whip-stocks. Agonies are one of my changes of garments, I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.... I ... see myself in prison shaped like another man, And feel the dull unintermitted pain. For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch, It is I let out in the morning and barr'd at night.