The Walt Whitman Archive
Commentary
Disciples
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Tuesday, February 18, 1890
7.30 P.M. Only briefly in to see W., who questioned me jokingly for "news," as he always does, and said when I told him I had been reading Johnson's little book on "The Worship
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of Jesus": "It must have a pith: I can fore-feel it, as they say. There seems to be propensity in human nature to worship some person—to tie to some person, ideal or actual: in the case of Christianity to Jesus. It is a marked, an irresistible—tendency. Whether this is a second sense, whether it originates as the taste for tobacco, rum—not from innate first instincts—is a further question which might well be debated."
I had narrated how O'Connor, the day I saw him, had often in the rush of speech, choked—apologized—saying his weakness took that with many other forms. W.: "That is new—it was not so before—it was a torrent—broken, often, but never stayed."
I said my impulse had been, after seeing the Alexander picture Sunday, to send a note to the Press critical of what had there previously appeared. W. urged me to do it. "Too often it is the tendency simply to accept such a thing—to not inquire of its merits—how it meets its pretensions. A word that calls order is often the best word to be said."