human heart as at present Christianised. His is a morality
without a prohibition; his policy is one of encouragement all
round. A man must be a born hero to come up to Whitman's
standard in the practice of any of the positive virtues; but
of a negative virtue, such as temperance or chastity, he has
so little to say, that the reader need not be surprised if he
drops a word or two upon the other side. He would lay down
nothing that would be a clog; he would prescribe nothing that
cannot be done ruddily, in a heat. The great point is to get
people under way. To the faithful Whitmanite this would be
justified by the belief that God made all, and that all was
good; the prophet, in this doctrine, has only to cry "Tally-
ho," and mankind will break into a gallop on the road to El
Dorado. Perhaps, to another class of minds, it may look like
the result of the somewhat cynical reflection that you will
not make a kind man out of one who is unkind by any precepts
under heaven; tempered by the belief that, in natural
circumstances, the large majority is well disposed. Thence
it would follow, that if you can only get every one to feel
more warmly and act more courageously, the balance of results
will be for good.

So far, you see, the doctrine is pretty coherent as a
doctrine; as a picture of man's life it is incomplete and
misleading, although eminently cheerful. This he is himself
the first to acknowledge; for if he is prophetic in anything,
it is in his noble disregard of consistency. "Do I
contradict myself?" he asks somewhere; and then pat comes the
answer, the best answer ever given in print, worthy of a
sage, or rather of a woman: "Very well, then, I contradict