Chapter V: Individuality

In order to protect the liberties of a nation, we must protect the individual. A democracy is a nation of free individuals. The individuals are not to be sacrificed to the nation. The nation exists only for the purpose of guarding and protecting the individuality of men and women. Walt Whitman has told us that: "The whole theory of the universe is directed unerringly to one single individual--namely to You."

And he has also told us that the greatest city--the greatest nation--is "where the citizen is always the head and ideal."

And that

A great city is that which has the greatest men and women,
If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in
the whole world.

By this test maybe the greatest city on the continent to-night is Camden.

This poet has asked of us this question:

What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk
free and own no superior?

The man who asks this question has left no impress of his lips in the dust, and has no dirt upon his knees.

He was great enough to say:

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.