"I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled

systems,

And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of the farther systems:

Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,

Outward, outward, and forever outward:

My sun has his sun, and around him obediently wheels; He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit, And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.

"There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage; If I, you, the worlds, all beneath or upon their surfaces, and all the palpable life, were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in the long

run.

We should surely bring up again where we now stand, And as surely go as much farther - and then farther and farther.

A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not hazard the span to make it impatient.

They are but parts- anything is but a part,

See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that, Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that."

In all cases, Whitman's vision is as large as that of science, but it is always the vision of a man and not that of a philosopher. His report of the facts has an imaginative lift and a spiritual significance

which the man of science cannot give them. In him, for the first time, a personality has appeared that cannot be dwarfed and set aside by those things. He does not have to stretch himself at all to match in the human and emotional realm the stupendous discoveries and deductions of science. In him man refuses to stand aside and acknowledge himself of no account in the presence of the cosmic laws and areas. It is all for him, it is all directed to him; without him the universe is an empty void. This is the "full-spread pride of man," the pride that refuses to own any master outside of itself.

"I know my omnivorous words, and cannot say any less, And would fetch you, whoever you are, flush with myself."

HIS RELATION TO RELIGION

W

HITMAN, as I have elsewhere said, was

swayed by two or three great passions, and the chief of these was doubtless his religious passion. He thrilled to the thought of the mystery and destiny of the soul.

"The soul,

Forever and forever - longer than soil is brown and solid longer than water ebbs and flows."

He urged that there could be no permanent national grandeur, and no worthy manly or womanly development, without religion.

"I specifically announce that the real and permanent grandeur of these States must be their Religion, Otherwise there is no real and permanent grandeur.' All materials point to and end at last in spiritual results.

"Each is not for its own sake,

I

say the whole earth and all the stars in the sky are for Religion's sake."

All our ostensible realities, our art, our literature, our business pursuits, etc., are but fuel to religion. "For not all matter is fuel to heat, impalpable flame, the essential life of the earth,

Any more than such are to Religion."

Again he says:

"My comrade!

For you to share with me two greatnesses

third one, rising inclusive and more resplendent, The greatness of Love and Democracy and the greatness of Religion."

It is hardly necessary to say that the religion which Whitman celebrates is not any form of ecclesiasticism. It is larger than any creed that has yet been formulated. It is the conviction of the man of science touched and vivified by the emotion of the prophet and poet. As exemplified in his life its chief elements are faith, hope, charity. Its object is to prepare you to live, not to die, and to "earn for the body and the mind what adheres and goes forward, and is not dropped by death."

The old religion, the religion of our fathers, was founded upon a curse. Sin, repentance, fear, Satan, hell, play important parts. Creation had resulted in a tragedy in which the very elemental forces were implicated. The grand scheme of an infinite Being failed through the machinations of the Devil. Salvation was an escape from a wrath to come. The way was through agony and tears. Heaven was only gained by denying earth. The great mass of the human race was doomed to endless perdition. Now there is no trace of this religion in Whitman, and it