that after all reasoning and analogy and their most palpable demonstra-
tions of any thing, we have the real satisfaction only when the soul tells
and tests by its own arch-chemic power—superior to the learnedest
proofs, as one glance of the living sight, [sic] is more than quarto volumes
of description and maps.” Concerning “professors, lawyers, authors teach-
ers and whate not,” he added: “Of them we expect to be learned and
nothing more.”^28
Concluding the ¤rst segment of “Song of Myself,” sections 24 and 25
present the persona as a living miracle, a personi¤cation of the “law” that
pervades the universe, his personal grandeur demonstrating the possibili-
ties latent in every human being. “Through me the af®atus surging and
surging,” he boasts in striking electrical imagery; “through me the current
and index.” The “current,” or electrical life force, ®ows through him as it
does through every man or woman; but by calling himself the “index,” he
de¤nes himself as the inspired poet through whom the divine af®atus
courses so that his words can teach his fellows how to understand their
lives. He is able to utter “the password primeval” because, like the hero of
Emerson’s essay “The Poet,” he feels the unmediated pulse of nature
surging through him and enabling him to speak truths that are impervi-
ous to time. (Whitman would later boast that the universal spirit that
created Leaves of Grass and the spirit that formed the Rocky Mountains
are one and the same.)^29 Although “dumb,” oppressed, and despairing
humanity still must learn to recognize the inspirational forces that per-
vade creation, the persona positions himself as the spokesman of nature’s
“law” and believes himself to be capable of demonstrating how seemingly
ordinary phenomena are actually miracles in a world that is ¤lled with
miracles: The wonders of the universe may be studied in their microcos-
mic manifestations, he says. As “the plenum of proof ” of his argument, he
proposes that his readers—many of them familiar with the pseudoscience
of physiognomy—examine the photograph of his face that appears oppo-
site the title page of the 1855 edition, thus implying that his face may be
read as a dial plate (or “index”) of his own being and as a microcosm or
an emblem, of his universe. And he further illustrates the relation be-
tween macrocosm and microcosm in a delightful pun by declaring that “a
morning-glory at my window satis¤es me more than the metaphysics of
books,” thus suggesting that the ever-renewed glorious morning of the
world manifests itself in this humble ®ower as in all things. The morning
“Triumphal Drums for the Dead” / 47