spirit “Harmonial Philosophy,” and credited the material progress of the
nineteenth century to its steady rapprochement with the spiritual world;
conversely, he predicted that a growing emphasis on the world of the
spirit would be ef¤cacious in promoting material progress. Similarly, the
physiologist Joseph Buchanan claimed to have discovered a steady grada-
tion reaching from the material world to the spiritual world. And other
unorthodox thinkers speculated that with the mastery of “psychology”
(the nascent “science of mind”) spiritual phenomena would soon become
subject to scienti¤c study.^24 Obviously, Whitman was not alone in seeking
to forge a uni¤ed ¤eld theory of science and spirit. His English admirer
Edward Carpenter agreed with him that science is merely “a stage that
has to be passed through on the way to a higher order of perception.”^25
Edward Livingston Youmans, the preeminent popularizer of science in
the three decades beginning in the mid-1850s, and a possible acquain-
tance of Whitman’s, claimed that Mosaic Law was being replaced by the
law of evolution, and that the universe was guided by “Omniscience” and
“divine laws.” And an 1879 article signi¤cantly entitled “Cosmic Emo-
tion,” intended to illustrate the idea that our mortal experience is only
part of “something higher,” pronounced Whitman “more in harmony
with advanced science than any other living poet.”^26
The preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass asserts that “the sailor
and traveler, the anatomist, chemist, astronomer, geologist, phrenologist,
spiritualist, mathematician, historian and lexicographer are not poets, but
they are the lawgivers of poets and their construction underlies the struc-
ture of every perfect poem”—an implication that poets and scientists
pursue the same truths. This statement is somewhat modi¤ed in section
23 of “Song of Myself,” which acknowledges that although the labors of
scientists have shed light on the meaning of existence, their ¤ndings do
not come as close in unlocking universal truths as do the intuitions of
the true poet. After voicing an ambiguous “Hurrah for positive science!”
and “exact demonstration!” the poet repeats his roll call of scientists and
semiscientists—including a lexicographer, an Egyptologist, and “one who
works with the scalpel,” with some of whom he appears to have been
personally acquainted.^27 In a half-ironic tone he acknowledges that al-
though their “facts are useful and real.... they are not my dwelling....
I enter by them to an area in my dwelling.” In a related notebook entry
Whitman made this comment about “pure and positive truths”: “I guess
46 / “Triumphal Drums for the Dead”