I have felt from the first that my own work must assume the essential truths of evolution, or something like them. But when it comes to explaining absolute beginnings, ends, I doubt if evolution clears up the mystery any better than the philosophies that have preceded it. Science, grand as it is, stands baffled before the impenetrable miracle of the least law of the universe, and even the least leaf or insect.

The supreme and final science is the science of God,
What we call science being only its minister (as democracy is, or shall be, also.)
To me, the worlds of religiousness, of the conception of the divine and of the ideal, are just as absolute in humanity and the universe as the world of chemistry, or anything in the objective worlds.

The thought that wakes in silent hours—
Perhaps the deepest, most eternal thought latent in the human soul—
This is the thought of God,
Merged in the thoughts of moral right and the immortality of identity.
Great, great is this over-arching thought—aye, greater than all else,
Most neglected in life of all humanity’s attributes,
Easily cover’d with crust, deluded and abused, rejected,
Yet the only certain source of what all are seeking, but few or none find.

Humanity sees God, or the idea of God, as it sees all things else, from the point of view which its degree of vision, knowledge, etc. affords it capacity to see, and no more.
How far, far off, how pitiful and crude and mean, (to a better or fully developed mind,) how almost entirely human and anthropomorphic, how ready to sink and sure to dissipate utterly away like the flimsiest of cloud-figures, are the supposed portraitures of God held up in all ages to the peoples, in the present age and the current churches just as much as any.

Yet I cannot join men of science in their silent or expressed contempt of the vulgar idea of God. Not that it is true, but that, with all its violations of the rules of science, it is a faint indication, perhaps indirection (as much as the masses can hold,) of the all-enclosing truth, of the truth behind all science.

So the idea of God is to be accepted on any terms and made the best of. That idea seems to me to come out of the abysms. Grant all the harm that it has done in the history of man, what would man be, or have been, without it? In all history, poetic fables, and under all circumstances, it is vertebral to the whole of the rest.
With all its shortcomings, errors, perturbations, and frantic insanities, that great idea has been, and will ever be, a principal factor in the complicated influences of individual belief and character, individual nobility, and the human race’s progress.

But O, theologian, come not to argue with me about God,
As to the Deific identity I know, perhaps as well as anyone, how unknowable it is;
More than any priest, O soul, we too believe in God,
Yet understand God not in the least,
With the mystery of God we dare not dally—we absolutely know nothing.

In the dispute on God and eternity I am silent,
And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God.

But we need a reconstruction—are having a reconstruction in fact—of theology,
The new theology, lusty and loving, and wondrous beautiful—
Behold God in every object!

No man has ever adored or worship’d half enough,
The bull and the bug never worship’d half enough.
There is more miracle in a wave, a rock, a tree than we were attributing to the whole of theology—
Priests! Until you can explain a paving stone, do not try to explain God.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
Impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day.
What black and stupid hour is that,
While the unspeakable something in man’s eyes anywhere beams upon me,
That I do not feel the hint and the ecstasy of the presence of God?

Where will I, on the sea or on the land, be without the autograph of God?
I guess the grass is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say, Whose?
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

Time and space,
Or some fair shape I viewing, worship,
Or shape of Earth divine and wondrous,
Or lustrous orb of sun or star by night,
Be ye my gods.

Aught, aught of mightiest, best I see, conceive, or know,
All great ideas, the races’ aspirations,
All heroisms, deeds of rapt enthusiasts,
All that exalts, releases thee, my soul,
To break the stagnant tie—thee, thee to free, O soul,
Be ye my gods.

Thought of the infinite, the All!
Be thou my God—
Santa Spirita, the general soul, nameless, ethereal, most solid,
Oh! an indefinably august power enclosing, explaining, all,
Fluid, vast identity, life of the real identities, essence of forms,
Life of the great round world, the unseen something in all life,
The pulse of every heart and life throughout the world incessantly,
Pervading all, the fibre and the breath,
Including all life, including saviour and Satan, including God, (for without it what were God?)
Beyond paradise, perfumed solely with its own perfume,
Rapport of sun, moon, earth, and all the constellations,
Holding the universe with all its parts as one, the rounded catalogue divine complete.

Thou unseen force incessant,
In all, and over all, and through and under all,
What subtle indirection and significance in you?
What clue to all in you?
What central heart—and you the pulse—vivifies all?
What boundless aggregate of all?
What mightier centre of the true, the good, the loving?

Thou O God, that underlies me, of whom I am a part and instrument,
Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages, beyond the light,
Light rare untellable, light of the light, lighter than light, lighting the very light,
Thou my life hast lighted, with ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee.
All the vastness of space-systems of suns, carried in their computation to the farthest that figures are able, then multiplied in geometrical progression ten thousand billion fold, do not more than symbolize the reflection of the reflection of the spark thrown off a spark, from some emanation of God.

I will cling fast to Thee, O God, though the waves buffet me,
I have not once lost nor faith nor ecstasy in Thee,
My speculations, plans, begun and carried on in thoughts of Thee—
Intentions, purports, aspirations mine,
As for the way things finally turn out, leaving results to Thee,
Accepting all from Thee, as duly come from Thee;
The end I know not, it is all in Thee,
Thee, Thee at least I know.

Yes, I believe in the Trinity—
God reality, God beneficence or love, and God immortality or growth.
Bathe me O God in Thee,
Thou moral, spiritual fountain—affection’s source—thou reservoir,
I and my soul mounting to Thee, to range in range of Thee, commune with Thee,
Breathe, bathe myself once more in Thee.

O pensive soul of me—O thirst unsatisfied—waitest not there,
Waitest not haply for us somewhere there the Comrade perfect?
Lover divine and perfect Comrade,
Lover true for whom I pine,
Waiting content, invisible yet, but certain,
Be thou my God.

My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain.
The great Camerado will be there, O soul,
When thou, the time achiev’d,
Surrounded, copest, frontest God, the aim attain’d.
The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms,
As, fill’d with friendship, love complete, the elder brother found,
The younger melts in fondness in his arms.

Swiftly I would shrivel at the thought of God,
But that I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
Waiting my time to be one of the supremes,
The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as prodigious—
Who knows but I too shall in time be a god as pure and prodigious as any of them.

Have you thought there could be but a single supreme?
There can be any number of supremes,
One does not countervail another any more than one eyesight countervails another, or one life countervails another,
That is blasphemous, petty, and infidel which denies any immortal soul to be eligible to advance onward to be as supreme as any,
To grow through infinite time finally to be a supreme god himself or herself.

NEXT: The Divine Self

The texts in this anthology should NOT be cited as direct quotations from Whitman. If you want to quote from this site for something you are writing or posting, please read this first (click here).