where on its surface and say, 'This is my country.'" By statesmen like Washington, Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, or Lincoln this utterance would have been accepted as suggesting the ultimate fruition of the highest statecraft. The diffusion of a spirit among men which will support and make possible such statecraft appeared to writers like Emerson and Whitman as perhaps the central function of the serious man of letters.
"I hate literature," said Whitman, conversing in Camden with colloquial over-emphasis. What he meant was that he rejected the famous "play-theory" of art and looked with disdain upon belles-lettres in their merely recreative and decorative aspects. "Literature is big," he explained on another occasion, "only in one way—when used as an aid in the growth of the humanities—a furthering of the cause of the masses—a means whereby men may be revealed to each other as brothers." Recognizing that "the real work of democracy is done underneath its politics," Whitman conceived of his mission from first to last as moral and spiritual; and nothing could be sillier than the current criticism which derides a sense of mission in the poet and at the same time proudly salutes Whitman as the chief American poet. It is as if one should say, "I am very fond of walnuts, but I don't like the meats." Not a part but the whole of his lifework is permeated with religious and moral intention. What gives to the Leaves of Grass its cumu-
