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Whitman and the Phrenologists: The Divine Body and the Sensuous Soul

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Arthur Wrobel
Arthur Wrobel*
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky, Lexington
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Abstract

Insisting that the “Me” is the center and meaning of all experience and that reality is indistinguishable from the self, Whitman turns to the phrenological concept of the soul as the agent that makes the physical self susceptible to the spiritual and the infinite. He insists that it is the soul's office, literally, to translate the sensuous data apprehended by a physiologically endowed man perfectly attuned to the universe into the spiritual truths that are integral in the mystic union of all Being. So closely does Whitman identify robust health with spiritual awareness that this forms the basis of his materialistic monism, arguing that the body and the soul are merged into an indivisible One. Since the body is the soul, the sensible is in fact the suprasensible, and matter is mind, dualism presents no problem. Instead of the two principles, in Whitman a single identity is achieved when the active soul “charges” the surrounding universe and perceives the ideal in the actual. Major phrenological ideas also inform Whitman's unique equalitarian transcendentalism, his sensual mysticism, and his poetic catalogs where the persona, fusing with a cumulative imagery, signals his union with the larger Oneness where all contradictions are resolved.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 89 , Issue 1 , January 1974 , pp. 17 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1974

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References

Note 1 in page 22 [Walt Whitman], “Leaves of Grass: A Volume of Poems Just Published,” 29 Sept. 1855, in In Re Walt Whitman, ed. Horace Traubel, Richard M. Bucke, and Thomas Harned (Philadelphia: McKay, 1893), p. 24.

Note 2 in page 22 Good-Bye My Fancy—Concluding Annex to Leaves of Grass, in Prose Works 1892: Collect and Other Prose, ed. Floyd Stovall (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1964), ii, 739.

Note 3 in page 22 Walt Whitman Handbook (New York: Hendricks House, 1946), p. 265.

Note 4 in page 22 “Art of Health,” 4 June 1846; “Bathing-Cleanliness Personal Beauty,” 10 June 1846; “Can You Swim?” 18 June 1846; “Brooklyn Young Men—Athletic Exercises,” 23 July 1846; and “Health,” 28 Sept. 1846. Whitman also editorially supported the temperance movement and tightlacing reform because of potential hazards to constitutional and mental well-being. See also Thomas Brasher, Whitman as Editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1970), pp. 157–61, 179–87.

Note 5 in page 22 William L. Finkel, “Sources of Walt Whitman's Manuscript Notes on Physique,” American Literature, 22 (Nov. 1950), 308–31.

Note 6 in page 22 Catalogue of the Whitman Collection: Trent Collection, compiled by Ellen Frances Frey (Durham, N. C. : Duke Univ. Library, 1945), p. 38. Subsequent references are noted as Trent Collection Catalogue.

Note 7 in page 22 American Literature, 2 (Jan. 1931), 350–84.

Note 8 in page 22 Horace Traubel, ed., With Walt Whitman in Camden (Boston: Small Maynard, 1906), iii, 582. Also Walt Whitman: A Catalogue Based upon the Collections of the Library of Congress (Washington, D. C: The Library of Congress, 1955), Item No. 81, p. 17. Subsequent references are noted as Harned Collection Catalogue.

Note 9 in page 22 John Johnston and J. W. Wallace, Visits to Walt Whitman in 1890–1891 (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1917), pp. 33–35, et passim and John Burroughs, Walt Whitman:A Study (Boston: Houghton, 1902), p. 60.

Note 10 in page 22 Fowler's Practical Phrenology (New York: Fowler and Wells, n.d.), p. 32. Fowler's Practical Phrenology, the bible of the American phrenological movement, was found among Whitman's possessions. This volume was bound with Phrenology Proved, Illustrated, and Applied (New York : Fowler and Wells, 1849), by O. S. Fowler, L. N. Fowler, and Samuel Kirkham. See Trent Collection Catalogue, p. 113.

Note 11 in page 22 So certain was Whitman of the beneficence of the physical that he copied into an early notebook a passage attributed to O. S. Fowler: “Morality and talent are affected more by food, drink, physical habits, cheerfulness, exercise, regulated or irregulated amativeness than is supposed—O. S. Fowler” (Trent Collection Catalogue, Item No. 24, pp. 66–67). This passage was copied intact from Orson Squire Fowler's Physiology, Animal and Mental, Applied to the Preservation and Restoration of Health of Body and Power of Mind, 3rd ed. (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1847), p. 31. On Wednesday, 10 March 1847. in an article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle entitled “Something about Physiology and Phrenology,” Whitman declared that there is “probably much good in pursuing the study of phrenology.” He castigated the opponents of this new science declaring them to be “superficial,” and reminded his readers that all new sciences are subject to identical attacks which seek to ridicule rather than pursue a “course of inquiry after truth.” Whitman then recommends that his audience read two books by O. S. Fowler, Physiology, Animal and Mental and Memory, and Intellectual Improvement, saying the following about the two works: “The first of these is of those works on health, and the means of preserving or retrieving it, which are always opportune, and so to all persons. The second is an application of phrenology to education, both that of individuals toward themselves, and of teachers, etc. toward their pupils.” Whitman referred to both Fowler brothers and their partner Samuel Wells as “the most persevering workers in phrenology in this country.”

Note 12 in page 22 Memory, and Intellectual Improvement, 25th ed. (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1853), p. 223. See n. 11.

Note 13 in page 22 Fowler, Hereditary Descent: Its Laws and Facts Illustrated and Applied to the Improvement of Mankind (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1843), p. 173. Whitman's own ancestor, the Reverend Jason Whitman of Portland, Maine, was the subject of a phrenological examination as described in Hereditary Descent, and given the poet's curiosity about his genealogy, it is more than likely he was familiar with this volume. See Hungerford, p. 361.

Note 14 in page 22 Religion: Natural and Revealed: or, The Natural Theology and Moral Bearings of Phrenology and Physiology, 3rd ed. (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1844), p. 24.

Note 15 in page 23 Fowler, Education and Self-Improvement Founded on Physiology and Phrenology, 2nd ed. (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1844), p. 52.

Note 16 in page 23 The extravagant eclecticism of the phrenologists, who were always prepared to incorporate all aspects of 19th-century thought into their scientific-inductive framework as added testimony to its contemporaneity, is evident here in their espousal of the doctrine of correspondences. While it is commonly held that Whitman's own understanding of this doctrine was directly transmitted to him by Emerson, who, in turn, took the Swedish mystic Swedenborg as his father in this thinking, there is good reason to be less assertive. The Boston Swedenborgians in 1829 saw in George Combe's Constitution of Man a flattering and even scientific support of their own doctrines and so oversaw the republication of Combe's volume. Combe was responsible for adding to what was essentially conceived as a laboratory science a philosophical and metaphysical dimension. And after the passing of Combe, the phrenological mantle of succession fell on the shoulders of the brothers Fowler who not only retained Combe's thoughts but made phrenology even “practical.” John D. Davies, Phrenology: Fad and Science (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1955), p. 14.

Note 17 in page 23 George Combe, The Constitution of Man Considered in Relation to External Objects (New York: William H. Colyer, 1844), p. 8.

Note 18 in page 23 Walt Whitman's Workshop: A Collection of Unpublished Manuscripts, ed. Clifton Joseph Furness (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1928), p. 50.

Note 19 in page 23 “On the Beach at Night Alone,” Leaves of Grass:Comprehensive Reader's Edition, ed. Harold W. Blodgett and Sculley Bradley (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1965), p. 261, 1. 4. Subsequent references are noted in the text by poem and line.

Note 20 in page 23 Gay Wilson Allen, A Reader's Guide to Walt Whitman (New York: Farrar, 1970), p. 123.

Note 21 in page 23 Trent Collection Catalogue, Item No. 32, p. 26.

Note 22 in page 23 “Notices of New Books,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 21 Dec. 1846. Moore's own view of phrenology was favorable; he claimed that “its sober study is calculated greatly to advance the interests of man.”

Note 23 in page 23 Moore, The Use of the Body in Relation to the Mind (London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1846), p. 3.

Note 24 in page 23 This fragment is found among the Feinberg Papers housed at the Library of Congress. These are not yet formally cataloged. I wish to acknowledge Professor John C. Broderick at the Library of Congress for his kindness and help in giving me access to the Feinberg Papers when I had need of them, although they were not yet officially available to the public.

Note 25 in page 23 ih Leon Howard, “For a Critique of Whitman's Transcendentalism,” MLN, 47 (Feb. 1932), 79–85.

Note 26 in page 23 Emory Holloway, ed., The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman (New York: Doubleday, 1921), ii, 65.

Note 27 in page 23 In his friendly biography of Whitman, John Burroughs also noted the poet's interest in the human body and the association it had in his mind with the soul: “He built so extensively upon it, curiously identifying it with the soul.” John Burroughs, Whitman: A Study, Vol. x of The Writings of John Burroughs (Cambridge, Mass.: The Riverside Press, 1896), p. 59.

Note 28 in page 23 V. K. Chari, Whitman in the Light of Vedantic Mysticism (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1964), pp. 50–51.

Note 29 in page 23 Roger Asselineau, The Evolution of Walt Whitman (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1962), ii, 23–33.

Note 30 in page 23 Preface 1876 in Comprehensive Reader's Edition, p. 746, 42n-44n.