The Walt Whitman Archive
In Whitman's Hand
Manuscripts
About this Item
Title: The new theologies bring forward
Creator: Walt Whitman
Date: Before or early in 1855
Whitman Archive ID: med.00746
Source: The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, ed. Edward F. Grier (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 6:2043. Grier based his text on Walt Whitman's Workshop, ed. Clifton J. Furness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1928), 43. The location of this manuscript is unknown. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of manuscripts, see our statement of editorial policy.
Editorial note: This manuscript includes lines that appeared, in a slightly altered form, in the preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, and later in the poem eventually titled "By Blue Ontario's Shore," first published in the 1856 edition of Leaves as "Poem of Many in One." The date of the manuscript is therefore probably before or early in 1855.
Contributors to digital file: Kirsten Clawson, Janel Cayer, Kevin McMullen, Nicole Gray, and Kenneth M. Price
The new theologies bring forward man—There is nothing in the universe any more divine than man. All gathers to the worship of man—How awful, how beautiful a being—How full of Gods is the world—There are none greater than these present ones—Why has it been taught that there is only one Supreme?—I say there are and must be myriads of Supremes. I say that that is blasphemous petty and infidel which denies any immortal soul to be eligible to advance onward to be as supreme as any—I say that all goes on to be eligible to become one of the Supremes—