ABSTRACT
The American tradition has developed from the persistent belief in three basic concepts: the free individual, the moral law, and progress. One of the characteristics of the American nation was, almost from the beginning, a sense of mission, and this was felt by Europeans as well as by Americans. In the development of the American tradition, Walt Whitman occupies a central position. To reveal the extraordinary importance of Whitman in absorbing and transmitting the American tradition it becomes necessary to survey briefly his characteristic ideas in their relation to that tradition. Though Whitman was a child of the Enlightenment and the Revolution, he was nurtured by the Romantic Movement. In politics, Whitman was equally nationalistic in conformity with the expansive spirit of the nineteenth century. Asia that for centuries had been in eclipse was reviving in Whitman’s day, and he foresaw that she would have much to teach America in the future.
