A Problem in Modern Ethics Part 5

In addition to these cases a great many might be culled from the writings of Ulrichs, who has published a full account from his own early experience.[60] "I was fifteen years and ten and a half months old," he says, "when the first erotic dream announced the arrival of p.u.b.erty.

Never before that period had I known s.e.xual gratification of any kind whatever. The occurrence was therefore wholly normal. From a much earlier time, however, I had been subject to emotions, partly romantic, partly sensual, without any definite desire, and never for one and the same young man. These aimless yearnings of the senses plagued me in my solitary hours, and I could not overcome them. During my fifteenth year, while at school at Detmold, the vague longing took a twofold shape.

First, I came across Norman's 'Saulenordnungen,' and there I was vehemently attracted by the figure of a Greek G.o.d or hero, standing in naked beauty. Secondly, while studying in my little room, or before going to sleep, the thought used suddenly and irresistibly to rise up in my mind--If only a soldier would clamber through the window and come into my room! I then painted in my fancy the picture of a splendid soldier of twenty to twenty-two years old. And yet I had no definite idea of why I wanted him; nor had I ever come in contact with soldiers.

About two years after this, I happened to sit next a soldier in a post-carriage. The contact with his thigh excited me to the highest degree." Ulrichs also relates that in his tenth year he conceived an enthusiastic and romantic friends.h.i.+p for a boy two years his senior.

That experiences of the kind are very common, every one who has at all conversed with Urnings knows well. From private sources of unquestionable veracity, these may be added. _A_ relates that, before eight years old, reverie occurred to him during the day, and dreams at night, of naked sailors. When he began to study Latin and Greek, he dreamed of young G.o.ds, and at the age of fourteen, became deeply enamoured of the photograph of the Praxitelian Eros in the Vatican. He had a great dislike for physical contact with girls; and with boys was shy and reserved, indulging in no acts of sense. _B_ says that during his tenderest boyhood, long before the age of p.u.b.erty, he fell in love with a young shepherd on one of his father's farms, for whom he was so enthusiastic that the man had to be sent to a distant moor. _C_ at the same early age, conceived a violent affection for a footman; _D_ for an officer, who came to stay at his home; _E_ for the bridegroom of his eldest sister.

In nearly all the cases here cited, the inverted s.e.xual instinct sprang up spontaneously. Only a few of the autobiographies record seduction by an elder man as the origin of the affection. In none of them was it ever wholly overcome. Only five out of the twenty-seven men married. Twenty declare that, tortured by the sense of their dissimilarity to other males, haunted by shame and fear, they forced themselves to frequent public women soon after the age of p.u.b.erty. Some found themselves impotent. Others succeeded in accomplis.h.i.+ng their object with difficulty, or by means of evoking the images of men on whom their affections were set. All, except one, concur in emphatically a.s.serting the superior attraction which men have always exercised for them over women. Women leave them, if not altogether disgusted, yet cold and indifferent. Men rouse their strongest sympathies and instincts. The one exception just alluded to is what Ulrichs would call an Uranodioning.

The others are capable of friends.h.i.+p with women, some even of aesthetic admiration, and the tenderest regard for them, but not of genuine s.e.xual desire. Their case is literally an inversion of the ordinary.

Some observations may be made on Ulrichs' theory. It is now recognised by the leading authorities, medical and medico-juristic, in Germany, by writers like Casper-Liman and Krafft-Ebing, that s.e.xual inversion is more often than not innate. So far, without discussing the physiological or metaphysical explanations of this phenomenon, without considering whether Ulrichs is right in his theory of _anima muliebris inclusa in corpore virili_, or whether heredity, insanity, and similar general conditions are to be held responsible for the fact, it may be taken as admitted on all sides that the s.e.xual diathesis in question is in a very large number of instances congenital. But Ulrichs seems to claim too much for the position he has won. He ignores the frequency of acquired habits. He shuts his eyes to the force of fas.h.i.+on and depravity. He reckons men like Horace and Ovid and Catullus, among the ancients, who were clearly indifferent in their tastes (as indifferent as the modern Turks) to the account of Uranodionings. In one word, he is so enthusiastic for his physiological theory that he overlooks all other aspects of the question. Nevertheless, he has acquired the right to an impartial hearing, while pleading in defence of those who are acknowledged by all investigators of the problem to be the subjects of an inborn misplacement of the s.e.xual appet.i.te.

Let us turn, then, to the consideration of his arguments in favour of freeing Urnings from the terrible legal penalties to which they are at present subject, and, if this were possible, from the no less terrible social condemnation to which they are exposed by the repugnance they engender in the normally const.i.tuted majority. Dealing with these exceptions to the kindly race of men and women, these unfortunates who have no family ties knotted by bonds by mutual love, no children to expect, no reciprocity of pa.s.sion to enjoy, mankind, says Ulrichs, has. .h.i.therto acted just in the same way as a herd of deer acts when it drives the sickly and the weakly out to die in solitude; burdened with contumely, and cut off from common sympathy.

From the point of view of morality and law, he argues, it does not signify whether we regard the s.e.xual inversion of an Urning as morbid or as natural. He has become what he is in the dawn and first emergence of emotional existence. You may contend, that he derives perverted instincts from his ancestry, that he is the subject of a psychical disorder, that from the cradle he is predestined by atavism or disease to misery. I maintain that he is one of nature's sports, a creature healthy and well organised, evolved in her superb indifference to aberrations from the normal type. We need not quarrel over our solutions of the problem. The fact that he is there, among us, and that he const.i.tutes an ever-present factor in our social system, has to be faced. How are we to deal with him? Has society the right to punish individuals sent into the world with h.o.m.os.e.xual instincts? Putting the question at its lowest point, admitting that these persons are the victims of congenital morbidity, ought they to be treated as criminals?

It is established that their appet.i.tes, being innate, are _to them_ at least natural and undepraved; the common appet.i.tes, being excluded from their s.e.xual scheme, are _to them_ unnatural and abhorrent. Ought not such beings, instead of being hunted down and persecuted by legal bloodhounds, to be regarded with pitying solicitude as among the most unfortunate of human beings, doomed as they are to inextinguishable longings and life-long deprivation of that which is the chief prize of man's existence on this planet, a reciprocated love? As your laws at present stand, you include all cases of s.e.xual inversion under the one domination of crime. You make exceptions in some special instances, and treat the men involved as lunatics. But the Urning is neither criminal nor insane. He is only less fortunate than you are, through an accident of birth, which is at present obscure to our imperfect science of s.e.xual determination.

So far Ulrichs is justified in his pleading. When it has been admitted that s.e.xual inversion is usually a fact of congenital diathesis, the criminal law stands in no logical relation to the phenomenon. It is monstrous to punish people as wilfully wicked because, having been born with the same organs and the same appet.i.tes as their neighbours, they are doomed to suffer under the frightful disability of not being able to use their organs or to gratify their appet.i.tes in the ordinary way.

But here arises a difficulty, which cannot be ignored, since upon it is based the only valid excuse for the position taken up by society in dealing with this matter. Not all men and women possessed by abnormal s.e.xual desires can claim that these are innate. It is certain that the habits of sodomy are frequently acquired under conditions of exclusion from the company of persons of the other s.e.x--as in public schools, barracks, prisons, convents, s.h.i.+ps. In some cases they are deliberately adopted by natures tired of normal s.e.xual pleasure. They may even become fas.h.i.+onable and epidemic. Lastly, it is probable that curiosity and imitation communicate them to otherwise normal individuals at a susceptible moment of development. Therefore society has the right to say: Those who are the unfortunate subjects of inborn s.e.xual inversion shall not be allowed to indulge their pa.s.sions, lest the mischief should spread, and a vicious habit should contaminate our youth. From the utilitarian point of view, society is justified in protecting itself against a minority of exceptional beings whom it regards as pernicious to the general welfare. From any point of view, the majority is strong enough to coerce to inborn instincts and to trample on the anguish of a few unfortunates. But, asks Ulrichs, is this consistent with humanity, is it consistent with the august ideal of impartial equity? Are people, sound in body, vigorous in mind, wholesome in habit, capable of generous affections, good servants of the state, trustworthy in all the ordinary relations of life, to be condemned at law as criminals because they cannot feel s.e.xually as the majority feel, because they find some satisfaction for their inborn want in ways which the majority dislike?

Seeking a solution of the difficulty stated in the foregoing paragraph, Ulrichs finds it in fact and history. His answer is that if society leaves nature to take her course, with the abnormal as well as with the normal subjects of s.e.xual inclination, society will not suffer. In countries where legal penalties have been removed from inverted s.e.xuality, where this is placed upon the same footing as the normal--in France, Bavaria (?), the Netherlands (?)--no inconvenience has. .h.i.therto arisen.[61] There has ensued no sudden and flagrant outburst of a depraved habit, no dissemination of a spreading moral poison. On the other hand, in countries where these penalties exist and are enforced--in England, for example, and in the metropolis of England, London--inverted s.e.xuality runs riot, despite of legal prohibitions, despite of threats of prison, dread of exposure, and the intolerable pest of organised _chantage_. In the eyes of Ulrichs, society is engaged in sitting on a safety-valve, which if nature were allowed to operate unhindered would do society no harm, but rather good. The majority, he thinks, are not going to become Urnings, for the simple reason that they have not the unhappy const.i.tution of the Urning. Cease to persecute Urnings, accept them as inconsiderable, yet real, factors, in the social commonwealth, leave them to themselves, and you will not be the worse for it, and will also not carry on your conscience the burden of intolerant vindictiveness.

Substantiating this position, Ulrichs demonstrates that acquired habits of s.e.xual inversion are almost invariably thrown off by normal natures.

Your boys at public schools, he says, behave as though they were Urnings. In the lack of women, at the time when their pa.s.sions are predominant, they yield themselves up together to mutual indulgences which would bring your laws down with terrible effect upon adults. You are aware of this. You send your sons to Eton and to Harrow, and you know very well what goes on there. Yet you remain untroubled in your minds. And why? Because you feel convinced that they will return to their congenital instincts.

When the school, the barrack, the prison, the s.h.i.+p has been abandoned, the male reverts to the female. This is the truth about Dionings. The large majority of men and women remain normal, simply because they were made normal. They cannot find the satisfaction of their nature in those inverted practices to which they yielded for a time through want of normal outlet. Society risks little by the occasional caprice of the school, the barrack, the prison, and the s.h.i.+p. Some genuine Urnings may, indeed, discover their inborn inclination by means of the process to which you subject them. But you are quite right in supposing that a Dioning, though you have forced him to become for a time an Uraniaster, will never in the long run appear as an Urning. The extensive experience which English people possess regarding such matters, owing to the notorious condition of their public schools, goes to confirm Ulrichs'

position. Headmasters know how many Uraniasters they have dealt with, what excellent Dionings they become, and how comparatively rare, and yet how incorrigibly steadfast, are the genuine Urnings in their flock.

The upshot of this matter is that we are continually forcing our young men into conditions under which, if s.e.xual inversion were an acquired attribute, it would become stereotyped in their natures. Yet it does not do so. Provisionally, because they are shut off from girls, because they find no other outlet for their s.e.x at the moment of its most imperious claims, they turn toward males, and treat their younger school-fellows in ways which would consign an adult to penal servitude. They are Uraniasters by necessity and _faute de mieux_. But no sooner are they let loose upon the world than the majority revert to normal channels.

They pick up women in the streets, and form connections, as the phrase goes. Some undoubtedly, in this fiery furnace through which they have been pa.s.sed, discover their inborn s.e.xual inversion. Then, when they cannot resist the ply of their proclivity, you condemn them as criminals in their later years. Is that just? Would it not be better to revert from our civilisation to the manners of the savage man--to initiate youths into the mysteries of s.e.x, and to give each in his turn the chance of developing a normal instinct by putting him during his time of p.u.b.erty freely and frankly to the female? If you abhor Urnings, as you surely do, you are at least responsible for their mishap by the extraordinary way in which you bring them up. At all events, when they develop into the eccentric beings which they are, you are the last people in the world who have any right to punish them with legal penalties and social obloquy.

Considering the present state of the law in most countries to be inequitable toward a respectable minority of citizens, Ulrichs proposes that Urnings should be placed upon the same footing as other men. That is to say, s.e.xual relations between males and males should not be treated as criminal, unless they be attended with violence (as in the case of rape), or be carried on in such a way as to offend the public sense of decency (in places of general resort or on the open street), or thirdly be entertained between an adult and a boy under age (the protected age to be decided as in the case of girls). What he demands is that when an adult male, freely and of his own consent, complies with the proposals of an adult person of his own s.e.x, and their intercourse takes place with due regard for public decency, neither party shall be liable to prosecution and punishment at law. In fact he would be satisfied with the same conditions as those prevalent in France, and since June, 1889, in Italy.

If so much were conceded by the majority of normal people to the abnormal minority, continues Ulrichs, an immense amount of misery and furtive vice would be at once abolished. And it is difficult to conceive what evil results would follow. A defender of the present laws of England, Prussia, &c., might indeed reply: "This is opening a free way to the seduction and corruption of young men." But young men are surely at least as capable of defending themselves against seduction and corruption as young women are. Nay, they are far more able, not merely because they are stronger, but because they are not usually weakened by an overpowering s.e.xual instinct on which the seducer plays. Yet the seduction and corruption of young women is tolerated, in spite of the attendant consequences of illegitimate childbirth, and all which that involves. This toleration of the seduction of women by men springs from the a.s.sumption that only the normal s.e.xual appet.i.te is natural. The seduction of a man by a male pa.s.ses for criminal, because the inverted s.e.xual instinct is regarded as unnatural, depraved, and wilfully perverse. On the hypothesis that individuals subject to perverted instincts can suppress them at pleasure or convert them into normal appet.i.te, it is argued that they must be punished. But when the real facts come to be studied, it will be found: first, that these instincts are inborn in Urnings, and are therefore in their case natural; secondly, that the suppression of them is tantamount to life-long abstinence under the constant torture of s.e.xual solicitation; thirdly, that the conversion of them into normal channels is in a large percentage of cases totally impossible, in nearly all where it has been attempted is only partially successful, and where marriage ensues has generally ended in misery for both parties. Ulrichs, it will be noticed, does not distinguish between Urnings, in whom the inversion is admitted to be congenital, and Uraniasters, in whom it has been acquired or deliberately adopted. And it would be very difficult to frame laws which should take cognisance of these two cla.s.ses. The Code Napoleon legalises the position of both, theoretically at any rate. The English code treats both as criminal, doing thereby, it must be admitted, marked injustice to recognised Urnings, who at the worst are morbid or insane, or s.e.xually deformed, through no fault of their own.

In the present state of things, adds Ulrichs, the men who yield their bodies to abnormal lovers, do not merely do so out of compliance, sympathy, or the desire for reasonable reward. Too often they speculate upon the illegality of the connection, and have their main object in the extortion of money by threats of exposure. Thus the very basest of all trades, that of _chantage_, is encouraged by the law. Alter the law, and instead of increasing vice, you will diminish it; for a man who should then meet the advances of an Urning, would do so out of compliance, or, as is the case with female prost.i.tutes, upon the expectation of a reasonable gain. The temptation to ply a disgraceful profession with the object of extorting money would be removed. Moreover, as regards individuals alike abnormally const.i.tuted, voluntary and mutually satisfying relations, free from degrading risks, and possibly permanent, might be formed between responsible agents. Finally, if it be feared that the removal of legal disabilities would turn the whole male population into Urnings, consider whether London is now so much purer in this respect than Paris?

One serious objection to recognising and tolerating s.e.xual inversion has always been that it tends to check the population. This was a sound political and social argument in the time of Moses, when a small and militant tribe needed to multiply to the full extent of its procreative capacity. It is by no means so valid in our age, when the habitable portions of the globe are rapidly becoming overcrowded.[62] Moreover, we must bear in mind that society, under the existing order, sanctions female prost.i.tution, whereby men and women, the normally procreative, are sterilised to an indefinite extent. Logic, in these circ.u.mstances, renders it equitable and ridiculous to deny a sterile exercise of s.e.x to abnormal men and women, who are by instinct and congenital diathesis non-procreative.

As the result of these considerations, Ulrichs concludes that there is no real ground for the persecution of Urnings except as may be found in the repugnance by the vast numerical majority for an insignificant minority. The majority encourages matrimony, condones seduction, sanctions prost.i.tution, legalises divorce in the interests of its own s.e.xual proclivities. It makes temporary or permanent unions illegal for the minority whose inversion of instinct it abhors. And this persecution, in the popular mind at any rate, is justified, like many other inequitable acts of prejudice or ignorance, by theological a.s.sumptions and the so-called mandates of revelation.

In the next place it is objected that inversed s.e.xuality is demoralising to the manhood of a nation, that it degrades the dignity of a man, and that it is incapable of moral elevation. Each of these points may be taken separately. They are all of them at once and together contradicted by the history of ancient Greece. There the most warlike sections of the race, the Dorians of Crete and Sparta, and the Thebans, organised the love of male for male because of the social and military advantages they found in it. Their annals abound in eminent instances of heroic enthusiasm, patriotic devotion, and high living, inspired by h.o.m.os.e.xual pa.s.sion. The fighting peoples of the world, Kelts in ancient story, Normans, Turks, Afghans, Albanians, Tartars, have been distinguished by the frequency among them of what popular prejudice regards as an effeminate vice.

With regard to the dignity of man, is there, asks Ulrichs, anything more degrading to humanity in s.e.xual acts performed between male and male than in similar acts performed between male and female. In a certain sense all s.e.x has an element of grossness which inspires repugnance. The G.o.ds, says Swinburne,

"Have strewed one marriage-bed with tears and fire, For extreme loathing and supreme desire."

It would not be easy to maintain that a curate begetting his fourteenth baby on the body of a worn-out wife is a more elevating object of mental contemplation than Harmodius in the embrace of Aristogeiton, or that a young man sleeping with a prost.i.tute picked up in the Haymarket is cleaner than his brother sleeping with a soldier picked up in the Park. Much of this talk about the dignity of man, says Ulrichs, proceeds from a vulgar misconception as to the nature of inverted s.e.xual desire.

People a.s.sume that Urnings seek their pleasure only or mainly in an act of unmentionable indecency. The exact opposite, he a.s.sures them, is the truth. The act in question is no commoner between men and men than it is between men and women. Ulrichs, upon this point, may be suspected, perhaps, as an untrustworthy witness. His testimony, however, is confirmed by Krafft-Ebing, who, as we have seen, has studied s.e.xual inversion long and minutely from the point of view of psychical pathology. "As regards the nature of their s.e.xual gratification," he writes, "it must be established at the outset that the majority of them are contented with reciprocal embraces; the act commonly ascribed to them they generally abhor as much as normal men do; and, inasmuch as they always prefer adults, they are in no sense specially dangerous to boys."[63] This author proceeds to draw a distinction between Urnings in whom s.e.xual inversion is congenital, and old debauchees or half-idiotic individuals, who are in the habit of misusing boys. The vulgar have confounded two different cla.s.ses; and everybody who studies the psychology of Urnings is aware that this involves a grave injustice to the latter.

"But, after all," continues the objector, "you cannot show that inverted s.e.xuality is capable of any moral elevation." Without appealing to antiquity, the records of which confute this objection overwhelmingly, one might refer to the numerous pa.s.sages in Ulrich's writings where he relates the fidelity, loyalty, self-sacrifice, and romantic enthusiasm which frequently accompany such loves, and raises them above baseness.

But, since here again he may be considered a suspicious witness, it will suffice, as before, to translate a brief pa.s.sage from Krafft-Ebing. "The Urning loves, idolizes his friend, quite as much as the normal man loves and idolizes his girl. He is capable of making for him the greatest sacrifices. He suffers the pangs of unhappy, often unreturned, affection; feels jealousy, mourns under the fear of his friend's infidelity."[64] When the time comes for speaking about Walt Whitman's treatment of this topic, it will appear that the pa.s.sion of a man for his comrade has been idealised in fact and deed, as well as in poetry.

For the present it is enough to remark that a kind of love, however spontaneous and powerful, which is scouted, despised, tabooed, banned, punished, relegated to holes and corners, cannot be expected to show its best side to the world. The sense of sin and crime and danger, the humiliation and repression and distress to which the unfortunate pariahs of inverted s.e.xuality are daily and hourly exposed must inevitably deteriorate the n.o.bler elements in their emotion. Give abnormal love the same chance as normal love, subject it to the wholesome control of public opinion, allow it to be self-respecting, draw it from dark slums into the light of day, strike off its chains and set it free--and I am confident says Ulrichs, that it will exhibit a.n.a.logous virtues, checkered, of course, by a.n.a.logous vices, to those with which you are familiar in the mutual love of male and female. The slave has of necessity a slavish soul. The way to elevate is to emanc.i.p.ate him.

"All that may be true," replies the objector: "it is even possible that society will take the hard case of your Urnings into consideration, and listen to their bitter cry. But, in the meanwhile, supposing these inverted instincts to be inborn, supposing them to be irrepressible and inconvertible, supposing them to be less dirty and nasty than they are commonly considered, is it not the plain duty of the individual to suppress them, so long as the law of his country condemns them?" No, rejoins Ulrichs, a thousand times no! It is only the ignorant antipathy of the majority which renders such law as you speak of possible. Go to the best books of medical jurisprudence, go to the best authorities on psychical deviations from the normal type. You will find that these support me in my main contention. These, though hostile in their sentiments and chilled by natural repugnance, have a respect for science, and they agree with me in saying that the Urning came into this world an Urning, and must remain till the end of his life an Urning still. To deal with him according to your code is no less monstrous than if you were to punish the colour-blind, or the deaf and dumb, or albinoes, or crooked-back cripples. "Very well," answers the objector: "But I will quote the words of an eloquent living writer, and appeal to your generous instincts and your patriotism. Professor Dowden observes that 'self-surrender is at times sternly enjoined, and if the egoistic desires are brought into conflict with social duties, the individual life and joy within us, at whatever cost of personal suffering, must be sacrificed to the just claims of our fellows.'[65] What have you to say to that?" In the first place, replies Ulrichs, I demur in this case to the phrases _egoistic desires_, _social duties_, _just claims of our fellows_. I maintain that in trying to rehabilitate men of my own stamp and to justify their natural right to toleration I am not egoistic. It is begging the question to stigmatise their inborn desire as selfish.

The social duties of which you speak are not duties, but compliances to law framed in blindness and prejudice. The claims of our fellows, to which you appeal, are not just, but cruelly inequitous. My insurgence against all these things makes me act indeed as an innovator; and I may be condemned, as a consequence of my rashness, to persecution, exile, defamation, proscription. But let me remind you that Christ was crucified, and that he is now regarded as a benefactor. "Stop," breaks in the objector: "We need not bring most sacred names into this discussion. I admit that innovators have done the greatest service to society. But you have not proved that you are working for the salvation of humanity at large. Would it not be better to remain quiet, and to sacrifice your life and joy, the life and joy of an avowed minority, for the sake of the immense majority who cannot tolerate you, and who dread your innovation? The Catholic priesthood is vowed to celibacy; and unquestionably there are some adult men in that order who have trampled out the imperious appet.i.te of the male for the female. What they do for the sake of their vow will not you accomplish, when you have so much of good to gain, of evil to escape?" What good, what evil? rejoins Ulrichs.

You are again begging the question; and now you are making appeals to my selfishness, my personal desire for tranquillity, my wish to avoid persecution and shame. I have taken no vow of celibacy. If I have taken any vow at all, it is to fight for the rights of an innocent, harmless, downtrodden group of outraged personalities. The cross of a Crusade is sewn upon the sleeve of my right arm. To expect from me and from my fellows the renouncement voluntarily undertaken by a Catholic priest is an absurdity, when we join no order, have no faith to uphold, no ecclesiastical system to support. We maintain that we have the right to exist after the fas.h.i.+on in which nature made us. And if we cannot alter your laws, we shall go on breaking them. You may condemn us to infamy, exile, prison--as you formerly burned witches. You may degrade our emotional instincts and drive us into vice and misery. But you will not eradicate inverted s.e.xuality. Expel nature with a fork, and you know what happens. "That is enough," says the objector: "We had better close this conversation. I am sorry for you, sorry that you will not yield to sense and force. The Urning must be punished."

VIII.

LITERATURE--IDEALISTIC.

To speak of Walt Whitman at all in connection with Ulrichs and s.e.xual inversion seems paradoxical. At the outset it must be definitely stated that he has nothing to do with anomalous, abnormal, vicious, or diseased forms of the emotion which males entertain for males. Yet no man in the modern world has expressed so strong a conviction that "manly attachment," "athletic love," "the high towering love of comrades," is a main factor in human life, a virtue upon which society will have to rest, and a pa.s.sion equal in its permanence and intensity to s.e.xual affection.

He a.s.sumes, without raising the question, that the love of man for man co-exists with the love of man for woman in one and the same individual.

The relation of the two modes of feeling is clearly stated in this poem:--

"Fast-anch.o.r.ed, eternal, O love! O woman I love!

O bride! O wife! More resistless than I can tell, the thought of you Then separate, as disembodied, or another born, Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation; I ascend--I float in the regions of your love, O man, O sharer of my roving life."

Neuropathical Urnings are not hinted at in any pa.s.sage of his works. As his friend and commentator Mr. Burroughs puts it: "The sentiment is primitive, athletic, taking form in all manner of large and homely out-of-door images, and springs, as anyone may see, directly from the heart and experience of the poet."

This being so, Whitman never suggests that comrades.h.i.+p may occasion the development of physical desires. But then he does not in set terms condemn these desires, or warn his disciples against them. To a Western boy he says:--

"If you be not silently selected by lovers, and do not silently seek lovers, Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine."

Like Plato, in the Phaedrus, Whitman describes an enthusiastic type of masculine emotion, leaving its private details to the moral sense and special inclination of the person concerned.[66]

The language of "Calamus" (that section of "Leaves of Gra.s.s" which is devoted to the gospel of comrades.h.i.+p) has a pa.s.sionate glow, a warmth of emotional tone, beyond anything to which the modern world is used in the celebration of the love of friends. It recalls to our mind the early Greek enthusiasm--that fellows.h.i.+p in arms which flourished among Dorian tribes, and made a chivalry for prehistoric h.e.l.las. Nor does the poet himself appear to be unconscious that there are dangers and difficulties involved in the highly-pitched emotions he is praising. The whole tenor of two mysterious compositions, ent.i.tled "Whoever you are, Holding me now in Hand," and "Trickle, Drops," suggests an underlying sense of spiritual conflict. The following poem, again, is sufficiently significant and typical to call for literal transcription:--

"Earth, my likeness!

Though you look so impressive, ample and spheric here, I now suspect that is not all; I now suspect there is something fierce in you, eligible to burst forth; For an athletic is enamoured of me--and I of him, But toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me, eligible to burst forth, I dare not tell it in words--not even in these songs."

The reality of Whitman's feeling, the intense delight which he derives from the personal presence and physical contact of a beloved man, find expression in "A Glimpse," "Recorders ages hence," "When I heard at the Close of Day," "I saw in Louisiana a Live Oak growing," "Long I thought that Knowledge alone would content me,"[67] "O Tan-faced Prairie Boy,"

and "Vigil Strange I kept on the Field one Night."[68]

It is clear, then, that in his treatment of comrades.h.i.+p, or the impa.s.sioned love of man for man, Whitman has struck a keynote, to the emotional intensity of which the modern world is unaccustomed. It therefore becomes of much importance to discover the poet-prophet's _Stimmung_--his radical instinct with regard to the moral quality of the feeling he encourages. Studying his works by their own light, and by the light of their author's character, interpreting each part by reference to the whole and in the spirit of the whole, an impartial critic will, I think, be drawn to the conclusion that what he calls the "adhesiveness"

of comrades.h.i.+p is meant to have no interblending with the "amativeness"

of s.e.xual love. Personally, it is undeniable that Whitman possesses a specially keen sense of the fine restraint and continence, the cleanliness and chast.i.ty, that are inseparable from the perfectly virile and physically complete nature of healthy manhood. Still, we may predicate the same ground-qualities in the early Dorians, those martial founders of the inst.i.tution of Greek Love; and it is notorious to students of Greek civilisation that the lofty sentiment of their chivalry was intertwined with singular anomalies in its historical development.

To remove all doubt about Whitman's own intentions when he composed "Calamus," and promulgated his doctrine of impa.s.sioned comrades.h.i.+p, I wrote to him, frankly posing the questions which perplexed my mind. The answer I received, dated Camden, New Jersey, U.S.A., August 19, 1890, and which he permits me to make use of, puts the matter beyond all debate, and confirms the conclusions to which I had been led by criticism. He writes as follows: "About the questions on 'Calamus,'

&c., they quite daze me. 'Leaves of Gra.s.s' is only to be rightly construed by and within its own atmosphere and essential character--all its pages and pieces so coming strictly under. That the Calamus part has ever allowed the possibility of such construction as mentioned is terrible. I am fain to hope the pages themselves are not to be even mentioned for such gratuitous and quite at the time undreamed and unwished possibility of morbid inferences--which are disavowed by me and seem d.a.m.nable."