O truth of things!
I am determined to press the whole way toward you,
I scale mountains, or dive in the sea after you.

All must have reference to the compact, all-diffused truth of the universe,
The truth includes all, and is compact just as much as space is compact,
And there is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth,
But all is truth without exception.

Truth consists in the just relations of objects to each other,
If there be equilibrium or volition there is truth,
If there be man or woman there is truth,
If there be things at all upon the earth there is truth. 

All truths wait in all things,
They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon.

Each thing exactly represents itself and what has preceded it,
Every object has its lesson, enclosing the suggestion of everything else—
Through them color, form, location, sublimity, ideality,
Through them every proof, comparison, and all the suggestions and determinations of ourselves. 

Great is the quality of truth in man,
Whatever becomes of us, tell the truth,
Fear nothing except to overstep the truth.
The thing to have is the truth,
Not to be satisfied even with the spirit of truth, but to demand the fact itself,
The divine unaided, uncircumlocuted, unmanipulated fact,
However bare, however it forbids.

It is a great thing to have a man who will tell the truth, irrespective of where it leads him—of what it leads him to deny or affirm. That is the recompense of everything or anything that had to be lost in the process.
The quality of truth in man supports itself through all changes,
It is inevitably in the man,
He and it are in love, and never leave each other;
I and the truth are one, we are curiously welded. 

Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so,
Only what nobody denies is so,
As we cannot be mistaken at last, they cannot be mistaken,
What does not satisfy each one and convince each one—that is of no account. 

A test of anything—it proves itself to the experience and senses of men and women!
Bring it to folk and you will see whether they doubt.
You doubt not the east and the west,
You doubt not contact or hunger or love, your desires or your fingernails,
You doubt not metal or acid or steam.

We do not doubt the mystery of life,
We do not doubt sight—
Who knows the curious mystery of the eyesight?
This is removed from any proof but its own,
A single glance of it mocks all the investigations of man,
And all the instruments and books of the earth,
And all reasoning.

Mystery is not superstition,
Mystery and reality are the two halves of the same sphere;
Mystery is not the denial of reason but its honest confirmation,
Reason leads inevitably to mystery.

This is curious and may not be realized immediately, but it must be realized:
Our planet seems now in the orbit of lies,
I feel in myself that I represent falsehoods equally with the rest,
And that the universe does.
But the worst lies are those with just a shred of truth—enough truth simply to get the ear—
Henceforth let no man of us lie.

But O me, discovering today that there are really no lies after all,
Nothing fails its perfect return, and what are called lies are perfect returns,
There is no lie or form of lie, and can be none, but grows as inevitably upon itself as the truth does upon itself—
Where has fail’d a perfect return indifferent of lies or the truth? 

Meditating among liars and retreating sternly into myself, I see that there are really no liars. There never grew up in any of the continents of the globe, nor upon any planet, nor in any part of ethereal space, nor under the fluid wet of the sea, nor at any time during the changes of life, nor in any process of formation or reformation anywhere, a being whose instinct hated the truth.

NEXT:  TRUTH IS SUBJECTIVE

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).