What aspirations, wishes, outvie thine and ours O soul?
What dreams of the ideal? what plans of purity, perfection?
Give me to sing the songs of the great idea, aspirations toward the far ideal—
The great idea is the idea of perfect and free individuals. 

What are the attributes of perfect manhood? The answer to such questions ought to be the thoughts and results of a lifetime and we’d need a big volume.
Though the constituents of perfect manhood are much the same all lands and times, they will always be shifted and graduated a good deal by conditions. Seems to me, indeed, the whole varied machinery, intellect, and even emotion of the civilized universe, these years, are working toward the answer. My own books, poems and prose, have been a direct and indirect attempt at a contribution.

I perceive in clear moments that my work is not the accomplishment of perfections, but destined, I hope, always to arouse an unquenchable feeling and ardor for them. The spine or verteber principle of my book is a model or ideal of the growth of completer men than any yet—
The new culminating man,
A complete healthy, heroic, practical, modern man,
A grander better son, brother, husband, father, friend, citizen than any yet,
Formed and shaped in consonance with modern science, with democracy,
Well-developed in all that makes a person better, healthier, happier, more commanding, more beloved, and more a realizer of love—
Model of a woman also, equally modern and heroic,
A better daughter, wife, mother, citizen also, than any yet.

These words are for the great men,
The gigantic few that have plunged themselves deep through density and confusion,
And pushed back the jealous coverings of the earth,
And brought out the true and great things, and the sweet things,
And hung them like oranges rounder and riper than all the rest—
Persons not so very plenty,
Yet some few certainly of them running over the surface and area of humanity, in all ages, all times, all lands,
The few, very choice, taciturn, whom fate can never surprise nor death dismay.

This sort of nature of persons I have compared to little rills of water, flowing fresh, from perennial springs, as if, indeed—under the screams of passion, the groans of the suffering, the parching of struggles of money and politics, and all hell’s heat and noise and competition above and around—should come melting down from the mountains—from sources of unpolluted snows, far up there in God’s hidden, untrodden recesses, and so rippling along among us low in the ground, at men’s very feet—a curious little brook of clear and cool, and ever-healthy, ever-living water—enough to irrigate the soil, maintaining freshness.

Attempting, then, however crudely, a vivid picture of the most flowing grandeur of a fully complete man:
His shape arises,
We descry a well-begotten selfhood,
He has the simple magnificence of health and strength, lithe and erect, a font of bodily power,
In youth, fresh, ardent, emotional, aspiring, full of adventure,
At maturity, a man of gigantic stature, clear-blooded, strong-fibred physique, supple, healthy.

Uncombed head, bearded, countenance sunburnt, swart, unrefined, fiery, brave, perceptive,
Eyes of calm and steady gaze, spreading around with every look a golden world,
Yet capable also of flashing—his face strikes as with flashes of lightning whoever it turns toward;
His voice clear and sonorous, under control,
Neither too talkative nor too reticent, neither flippant nor sombre.
Wisdom undisturbed, acuteness, enlargement of intellect, stores of cephalic knowledge, self-respect, fortitude unshaken, are in his expression, his personality.

His gait is erect, slowstepping feet, calm and dignified,
The movements easy, accomplished, powerful, and resistless;
Dress does not hide him,
The quality he has and the strong, sweet, supple nature he has strike through cotton and woolen.
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,
To see his back is a spectacle,
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

By common consent there is nothing better for man or woman than a perfect and noble life, morally without flaw, happily balanced in activity, physically sound and pure, giving its due proportion, and no more, to the sympathetic, the human emotional element—a life, in all these, unhasting, unresting, untiring to the end. 

The towering individuality, which peers over all borderlands of race, is one with the great characters of all ages,
Nobler than the proudest mere genius or magnate in any field,
He fully realizes the conscience, the most exalted, superior, one may say perfect, moral sense.
Virtuous, chaste, industrious, voluptuous,
Affectionate, compassionate, combative, fully arm’d,
Conscientious—the very highest type of conscientiousness—unbaffled, undeviating, irrevocable,
He places virtue and self-denial above all the rest,
Never offering others, always offering himself.

Yet he has a simple, unsophisticated conscience, easily understood after all,
A life right out of the popular heart,
Unrefined, with nothing extra of genius or wealth,
A hero august and simple, simple as a child in his power,
Intuitive, resolute, cheerful,
Delighting in simplicity, ruggedness, naturalness, straightforward nativity,
In plain habits, clear thinking, doing,
Words simple as grass, laughter, and naivetè.
Common features, common modes and emanations, they descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers,
They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath, they fly out of the glance of his eyes.

Fair, able, beautiful, content, and loving,
One of the greatest, sweetest souls every way,
The same man in all relationships—
At home among common people,
And a general presence that holds its own in the company of the highest,
Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him,
They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay with them.

I don’t think there can be any great character, really great character, without centrality—
Some prevailing idea, some purpose at heart.
It is not always observed; it is a folded leaf,
Not absent because we fail to see it,
It needs only to be nudged to reveal itself;
The right man comes, the right hour—the leaf is lifted.

The great man is not only the man who conceives an idea,
But the man who can incorporate that idea into practical working human life,
With the largest consideration of the transcendental impetus to action—
People’s lips salute only doers, lovers, satisfiers.

Joined to his great power and wealth and strength the knowledge of the perfect equanimity, superior nonchalance,
Full of feeling, none more so—yet not swayed by feeling,
Full of sympathy—using it all—yet the clearest-eyed man of them all,
Satisfied with the present—not trapped into any partiality,
Of deep political, moral, spiritual subtlety, of world-capaciousness,
The spiritual, the divine faculty—devout, all-penetrating religiousness—exemplified in all his deeds and words through life, uncompromising to the end.

Of copious friendship, firmness, self-esteem, individuality, pride, sublimity, noble aspirations,
He shows to what a glorious height the man may ascend,
Centering life in self—in perfect persons—to force the real into the abstract ideal, to make himself the supremest example of personal identity.

Thou, thou, the ideal man,
Complete in body and dilate in spirit,
Be thou my god.

Every now and then, there are beings I meet—specimens of unworldliness, disinterestedness, animal purity, and heroism, on whose birth the calmness of heaven seems to have descended, and whose gradual growing up—whatever the circumstances of work-life, or change, or hardship, or small or no education that attended it—the power of a strange spiritual sweetness, fibre, and inward health have also attended. Such men must have some sane bottom, eternal in its purity of composition. 

I have had wonderful good luck in my life to have met a number of originals—not men of usual build, of usual ways, but men inherently set apart, a world each for himself.
Emerson’s personality was the most nearly perfect I ever came in contact with—perhaps the most nearly ideal the world has ever known. I don’t think I could honestly describe anything as a defect in Emerson. He seemed surely so far beyond defect—not perfect, either—yet beyond defect—beyond it. 

There is in some men an indefinable something which flows out and over you like a flood of light—as if they possessed it illimitably—their whole being suffused with it. Emerson’s whole attitude shed forth such an impression. Emerson’s face always seemed to me so radiant, clean—as if God had just washed it off; I should liken his manner to the finest, rarest plate glass. When you looked at Emerson it never occurred to you that there could be any villainies in the world.

I loved Emerson for his personality; he was wonderful with all his excellence. His manner carried with it something penetrating and sweet beyond mere description. One of those affable, sweet, magnetic men whose atmosphere utterly charmed, captured, compassed anyone who came near.
He had irresistible grace—absolutely pure, childlike—absolute frankness, genuineness, utterly without guile, so delicate, so simple, so fine, serene, quiet, conciliating; the slow sweet voice, the taste of lovableness he left behind.
He was unostentatiously loyal, put on no sanctified airs; a certain stateliness, dignity, reserve—but none too much, not more than was required. 

Emerson had pristine intelligence—the acutest, justest brain of all our world, the wisest creature of our time—saw everything, literally everything, in right perspective—things personal, things general; never lacked decision—he was indeed the firmest of men, never shaken from his place, lived according to his lights, not according to libraries, books, literature—greater by far than his books. 

Look at Emerson, with that far-in-the-future look which seemed to possess him in the best hours, saying: “This is so and so—seems so and so to me today; what will happen tomorrow I cannot tell.”
The glory of Emerson, if seen at his best, is that he provides the antidote for Emerson—teaches his own destruction, destroys his following.

It is very rarely that men come to know the really great fellows even when they are through,
Much less when they are in process of making;
How could the average men know any man of the first class?
Something veil’d and abstracted is often a part of the manners of these beings,
They are different from the rest—more silent,
Obeying the events and occasions about them, unaware of their own nature,
And apt to go off and meditate and muse in solitude. 

But there is invariably this fact about superior natures: they understand each other,
And with similar sight behold the soul, the universe, immortality, and all the aims and arts of men.
Perfections: only themselves understand themselves and the like of themselves,
Perfections are only understood and responded to by perfections.

Yet the people they meet respond to them—
Here is someone that they are not afraid of,
Now they have ease, perhaps for the first time in their lives; now they take holiday,
They do not feel awe or respect or suspicion,
They can be themselves; they can expose their secret failings and crimes. 

Why can we not see a being who, by the manliness and transparence of his nature, disarms the entire world, and brings one and all to his side, as friends and believers?
Can no father beget or mother conceive a child so entire and so elastic, and so free from all discords, whatever action he do or whatever syllable he speak, it shall be melodious to all creatures, and none shall be an exception to the universal and affectionate Yes of the earth? 
Picture: A thousand perfect men and women appear,
Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay children and youths, with offerings.

But perfection is no dream—
Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me,
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d it would not astonish me,
I believe in the eligibility of the human soul for all perfect things,
Perfect you, me—every man repeating the same experience.

What can be a more admirable aim for the most exalted human ambition than the wish and resolve to be perfect?
(Though the carrying out of this resolve requires some mental purification, the most of it, I think, is of a physical nature—my theory of physiological development underlying all else.)
Faint not, heart,
Advance stoutly and perseveringly.

NEXT: THE BODY

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).