Democratic Vistas 3 by Walt Whitman p348
As I perceive, the tendencies of our day, in the States (and I entirely respect them), are toward those vast and sweeping movements, influences, moral and physical, of humanity, now and always current over the planet, on the scale of the impulses of the elements. Then it is also good to reduce the whole matter to the consideration of a single self, a man, a woman, on permanent grounds. Even for the treatment of the universal, in politics, metaphysics, or anything, sooner or later we come down to one single, solitary soul.
There is, in sanest hours, a consciousness, a thought that rises, independent, lifted out from all else, calm, like the stars, shining eternal. This is the thought of identity--- yours for you, whoever you are, as mine for me.
The quality of Being, in the object's self, according to its own central idea and purpose, and of growing therefrom and thereto--- not criticism by other standards, and adjustments thereto--- is the lesson of Nature.