But to transfer this
reticence about a matter of awful concern to some other region of
morals, what should we think of the parent who so feared to lessen
the affection of a child by rebuking it for a lie or a theft as to
let it go out into the world ignorant that either was reprobated?
Whitman's argument would rather be that a parent should say to a
child, "There is a force within you which will to a large extent
determine the happiness of your life; it must be guarded and
controlled. You will probably not be able to ignore or disregard
it, and you must bring it into harmonious co-operation with mind
and reason and duty. There is nothing that is shameful about its
being there; indeed, it is the dominant force in the world. The
shameful thing is to use it shamelessly." Yet the attitude of
parents too often is to treat the subject, not as if it were
sacred, but as if it were unmentionable; so that the very fact of
the child's own origin would seem to be an essentially shameful
thing.
The Greeks, it is true, had an instinct for the thought of the
vital interdependence of body and soul; but they thought too much
of the glowing manifestation of the health and beauty of youth, and
viewed the decay and deformity of the human frame too much as a
disgrace and an abasement. But here again comes in the largeness of
Whitman's presentment, that whatever disasters befall the body,
whether through drudgery or battle, disease or sin, they are all
parts of a rich and large experience, not necessarily interrupting
the co-operation of mind and matter.
Pages:
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68