rored in him. And in an oblique reference to the pseudosciences of physi-
ognomy and phrenology he repeats the claim he had made in “Faces,”
that he can discern the character of his fellow creatures beneath the
masks they present to the world. “Faith Poem” posits the existence of an
indwelling principle (here called “inherences”) that impels each person
forward in this life and beyond. The expression of this principle is note-
worthy because it exempli¤es Whitman’s developing philosophic dual-
ism. Each person, he implies, is endowed with a spiritual faculty (the “I
am”) that coexists with the mortal consciousness of the individual and
that prompts him or her toward spiritual ful¤llment:
I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have
their exteriors, and the eyesight has another eyesight, and the
hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice,
I do not doubt that the passionately wept deaths of young men
are provided for, and that the deaths of young women and the
deaths of little children are provided for...I do not doubt that whatever can possibly happen, any where, at
any time, is provided for in the inherences of things.In 1871, when Whitman had become much less the poet of the body and
its worldly delights and more distinctly “the poet of the soul,” he added
a line that emphasizes his enduring belief that death is a vital component
in the cycles of personal and universal evolution: “I do not think Life
provides for all and for Time and Space, but I believe Heavenly Death
provides for all.”^12
Whitman’s implication in “Song of Myself” that he is equally the poet
of the body and the poet of the soul may suggest that he consistently
affords equal importance to the body and the soul. Yet this assumption is
contradicted in his many attempts to develop an ideological synthesis
that could embrace all phases (or stages) of existence. And given the un-
likelihood of resolving the problem before him, contradiction is inevi-
table. Thus the brief 1856 lyric “Poem of Remembrances” (“Think of the
Soul”) plainly states that the body is less than the soul, its chief purpose
being to prepare the soul for the next phase of its eternal journey: “I swear
to you that body of yours gives proportions to your soul somehow to live
in other spheres.” That “somehow” highlights the underlying uncertainty
“The Progress of Souls” / 105