"There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done. They may wait awhile...perhaps a generation or two...dropping off by degrees. A superior breed shall take their place.... A new order shall arise, and they shall be the priests of man, and every man shall be his own priest. The churches built under their umbrage shall be the churches of men and women. Through the divinity of themselves shall the kosmos and the new breed of poets be interpreters of men and women and of all events and things. They shall find their inspiration in real objects today, symptoms of the past and future.... They shall not deign to defend immortality or God, or the perfection of things, or liberty, or the exquisite beauty and reality of the soul."-Walt Whitman, preface to Leaves of Grass

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