James reading Whitman's "To You" (or Picking Your Way)

last few lines from Whitman's "To You"

The hopples fall from your ankles—you find an unfailing sufficiency;

Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulgates itself;

Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted;

Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way.

William James, in the last lecture of Pragmatism, pegs "To You" to be "[v]erily a fine and moving poem" and that "there are two ways of taking it, both useful." The first way is to comfort yourself that you are always fine, no matter what life throws at you. The soothing of the self in all its "glories and grandeurs." He calls this reading the "monistic way":

...the mystical way of pure cosmic emotion. The glories and grandeurs, they are yours absolutely, even in the midst of your defacements. Whatever may happen to you, whatever you may appear to be, inwardly you are safe. Look back, LIE back, on your true principle of being! This is the famous way of quietism, of indifferentism. Its enemies compare it to a spiritual opium. Yet pragmatism must respect this way, for it has massive historic vindication.

The second approach to the poem, though, is less easy but also...well, its got more calories. Instead of telling the reader to take comfort and lie down, this reading urges--urges to keep going, keep moving, to take action and make the effort; to be humble too, and to "accept your poor life," and yet to keep on picking your way through the brambles along the path you continue to make of your life:

But pragmatism sees another way to be respected also, the pluralistic way of interpreting the poem. The you so glorified, to which the hymn is sung, may mean your better possibilities phenomenally taken, or the specific redemptive effects even of your failures, upon yourself or others. It may mean your loyalty to the possibilities of others whom you admire and love so that you are willing to accept your own poor life, for it is that glory's partner. You can at least appreciate, applaud, furnish the audience, of so brave a total world. Forget the low in yourself, then, think only of the high. Identify your life therewith; then, through angers, losses, ignorance, ennui, whatever you thus make yourself, whatever you thus most deeply are, picks its way.