A MEMORANDUM AT A VENTURE
"All is proper to be express'd, provided our aim is only high enough."
--_J. F. Millet._
"The candor of science is the glory of the modern. It does not hide
and repress; it confronts, turns on the light. It alone has perfect
faith--faith not in a part only, but all. Does it not undermine the
old religious standards? Yes, in God's truth, by excluding the devil
from the theory of the universe--by showing that evil is not a law in
itself, but a sickness, a perversion of the good, and the other side
of the good--that in fact all of humanity, and of everything, is
divine in its bases, its eligibilities."
Shall the mention of such topics as I have briefly but plainly and
resolutely broach'd in the "Children of Adam" section of "Leaves of
Grass" be admitted in poetry and literature? Ought not the innovation
to be put down by opinion and criticism? and, if those fail, by the
District Attorney? True, I could not construct a poem which declaredly
took, as never before, the complete human identity, physical, moral,
emotional, and intellectual, (giving precedence and compass in a
certain sense to the first,) nor fulfil that _bona fide_ candor
and entirety of treatment which was a part of my purpose, without
comprehending this section also. But I would entrench myself more
deeply and widely than that. And while I do not ask any man to indorse
my theory, I confess myself anxious that what I sought to write and
express, and the ground I built on, shall be at least partially
understood, from its own platform.
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