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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/29952-8.txt b/29952-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..354f19f --- /dev/null +++ b/29952-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5123 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The American Mind, by Bliss Perry + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The American Mind + The E. T. Earl Lectures + +Author: Bliss Perry + +Release Date: September 10, 2009 [EBook #29952] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AMERICAN MIND *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Diane Monico, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + + +THE AMERICAN MIND + +_The E. T. Earl Lectures_ + +1912 + + + + +By the Same Author + + +The American Mind +Park-Street Papers +John Greenleaf Whittier: A Memoir +Walt Whitman +The Amateur Spirit +A Study of Prose Fiction +The Powers at Play +The Plated City +Salem Kittredge and Other Stories +The Broughton House + + + + +The American Mind + +By Bliss Perry + +[Illustration: The Riverside Press] + +Boston and New York + +Houghton Mifflin Company + +1912 + + + + +COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY BLISS PERRY + +ALL RIGHTS RESERVED + +_Published October 1912_ + + + + +TO + +WALTER MORRIS HART + + + + +Preface + + +_The material for this book was delivered as the E. T. Earl Lectures +for 1912 at the Pacific Theological Seminary, Berkeley, California, and +I wish to take this opportunity to express to the President and Faculty +of that institution my appreciation of their generous hospitality._ + +_The lectures were also given at the Lowell Institute, Boston, the +Brooklyn Institute, and elsewhere, under the title "American Traits in +American Literature." In revising them for publication a briefer title +has seemed desirable, and I have therefore availed myself of +Jefferson's phrase "The American Mind," as suggesting, more accurately +perhaps than the original title, the real theme of discussion._ + + B. P. + +CAMBRIDGE, 1912. + + + + +Contents + + +I. RACE, NATION, AND BOOK 3 + +II. THE AMERICAN MIND 47 + +III. AMERICAN IDEALISM 86 + +IV. ROMANCE AND REACTION 128 + +V. HUMOR AND SATIRE 166 + +VI. INDIVIDUALISM AND FELLOWSHIP 209 + + + + +THE AMERICAN MIND + + + + +I + +Race, Nation, and Book + + +Many years ago, as a student in a foreign university, I remember +attacking, with the complacency of youth, a German history of the +English drama, in six volumes. I lost courage long before the author +reached the age of Elizabeth, but I still recall the subject of the +opening chapter: it was devoted to the physical geography of Great +Britain. Writing, as the good German professor did, in the triumphant +hour of Taine's theory as to the significance of place, period, and +environment in determining the character of any literary production, +what could be more logical than to begin at the beginning? Have not the +chalk cliffs guarding the southern coast of England, have not the +fatness of the midland counties and the soft rainy climate of a North +Atlantic island, and the proud, tenacious, self-assertive folk that are +bred there, all left their trace upon _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, and +_Every Man in his Humour_ and _She Stoops to Conquer_? Undoubtedly. +Latitude and longitude, soil and rainfall and food-supply, racial +origins and crossings, political and social and economic conditions, +must assuredly leave their marks upon the mental and artistic +productiveness of a people and upon the personality of individual +writers. + +Taine, who delighted to point out all this, and whose _English +Literature_ remains a monument of the defects as well as of the +advantages of his method, was of course not the inventor of the +climatic theory. It is older than Aristotle, who discusses it in his +treatise on _Politics_. It was a topic of interest to the scholars of +the Renaissance. Englishmen of the seventeenth century, with an unction +of pseudo-science added to their natural patriotism, discovered in the +English climate one of the reasons of England's greatness. Thomas +Sprat, writing in 1667 on the History of the Royal Society, waxes bold +and asserts: "If there can be a true character given of the Universal +Temper of any Nation under Heaven, then certainly this must be ascribed +to our countrymen, that they have commonly an unaffected sincerity, +that they love to deliver their minds with a sound simplicity, that +they have the middle qualities between the reserved, subtle southern +and the rough, unhewn northern people, that they are not extremely +prone to speak, that they are more concerned what others will think of +the strength than of the fineness of what they say, and that a +universal modesty possesses them. These qualities are so conspicuous +and proper to the soil that we often hear them objected to us by some +of our neighbor Satyrists in more disgraceful expressions.... Even the +position of our climate, the air, the influence of the heaven, the +composition of the English blood, as well as the embraces of the Ocean, +seem to join with the labours of the _Royal Society_ to render our +country a Land of Experimental Knowledge." + +The excellent Sprat was the friend and executor of the poet Cowley, who +has in the Preface to his _Poems_ a charming passage about the relation +of literature to the external circumstances in which it is written. + +"If _wit_ be such a _Plant_ that it scarce receives heat enough to keep +it alive even in the _summer_ of our cold _Clymate_, how can it choose +but wither in a long and a sharp _winter_? a warlike, various and a +tragical age is best to write _of_, but worst to write _in_." And he +adds this, concerning his own art of poetry: "There is nothing that +requires so much serenity and chearfulness of _spirit_; it must not be +either overwhelmed with the cares of _Life_, or overcast with the +_Clouds_ of _Melancholy_ and _Sorrow_, or shaken and disturbed with the +storms of injurious _Fortune_; it must, like the _Halcyon_, have fair +weather to breed in. The Soul must be filled with bright and delightful +_Idaeas_, when it undertakes to communicate delight to others, which is +the main end of _Poesie_. One may see through the stile of _Ovid de +Trist._, the humbled and dejected condition of _Spirit_ with which he +wrote it; there scarce remains any footstep of that _Genius_, _Quem nec +Jovis ira, nec ignes_, etc. The _cold_ of the country has strucken +through all his faculties, and benummed the very _feet_ of his +_Verses_." + +Madame de Staël's _Germany_, one of the most famous of the "national +character" books, begins with a description of the German landscape. +But though nobody, from Ovid in exile down to Madame de Staël, +questions the general significance of place, time, and circumstances as +affecting the nature of a literary product, when we come to the exact +and as it were mathematical demonstration of the precise workings of +these physical influences, our generation is distinctly more cautious +than were the literary critics of forty years ago. Indeed, it is a +hundred years since Fisher Ames, ridiculing the theory that climate +acts directly upon literary products, said wittily of Greece: "The figs +are as fine as ever, but where are the Pindars?" The theory of race, in +particular, has been sharply questioned by the experts. "Saxon" and +"Norman," for example, no longer seem to us such simple terms as +sufficed for the purpose of Scott's _Ivanhoe_ or of Thierry's _Norman +Conquest_, a book inspired by Scott's romance. The late Professor +Freeman, with characteristic bluntness, remarked of the latter book: +"Thierry says at the end of his work that there are no longer either +Normans or Saxons except in history.... But in Thierry's sense of the +word, it would be truer to say that there never were 'Normans' or +'Saxons' anywhere, save in the pages of romances like his own." + +There is a brutal directness about this verdict upon a rival historian +which we shall probably persist in calling "Saxon"; but it is no worse +than the criticisms of Matthew Arnold's essay on "The Celtic Spirit" +made to-day by university professors who happen to know Old Irish at +first hand, and consequently consider Arnold's opinion on Celtic +matters to be hopelessly amateurish. + +The wiser scepticism of our day concerning all hard-and-fast racial +distinctions has been admirably summed up by Josiah Royce. "A race +psychology," he declares, "is still a science for the future to +discover.... We do not scientifically know what the true racial +varieties of mental type really are. No doubt there are such varieties. +The judgment day, or the science of the future, may demonstrate what +they are. We are at present very ignorant regarding the whole matter." + +Nowhere have the extravagances of the application of racial theories to +intellectual products been more pronounced than in the fields of art +and literature. Audiences listen to a waltz which the programme +declares to be an adaptation of a Hungarian folk-song, and though they +may be more ignorant of Hungary than Shakespeare was of Bohemia, they +have no hesitation in exclaiming: "How truly Hungarian this is!" Or, +it may be, how truly "Japanese" is this vase which was made in +Japan--perhaps for the American market; or how intensely "Russian" is +this melancholy tale by Turgenieff. This prompt deduction of racial +qualities from works of art which themselves give the critic all the +information he possesses about the races in question,--or, in other +words, the enthusiastic assertion that a thing is like itself,--is one +of the familiar notes of amateur criticism. It is travelling in a +circle, and the corregiosity of Corregio is the next station. + +Blood tells, no doubt, and a masterpiece usually betrays some token of +the place and hour of its birth. A knowledge of the condition of +political parties in Athens in 416 B.C. adds immensely to the enjoyment +of the readers of Aristophanes; the fun becomes funnier and the daring +even more splendid than before. Molière's training as an actor does +affect the dramaturgic quality of his comedies. All this is +demonstrable, and to the prevalent consciousness of it our generation +is deeply indebted to Taine and his pupils. But before displaying +dogmatically the inevitable brandings of racial and national traits on +a national literature, before pointing to this and that unmistakable +evidence of local or temporal influence on the form or spirit of a +masterpiece, we are now inclined to make some distinct reservations. +These reservations are not without bearing upon our own literature in +America. + +There are, for instance, certain artists who seem to escape the +influences of the time-spirit. The most familiar example is that of +Keats. He can no doubt be assigned to the George the Fourth period by a +critical examination of his vocabulary, but the characteristic +political and social movements of that epoch in England left him almost +untouched. Edgar Allan Poe might have written some of his tales in the +seventeenth century or in the twentieth; he might, like Robert Louis +Stevenson, have written in Samoa rather than in the Baltimore, +Philadelphia, or New York of his day; his description of the Ragged +Mountains of Virginia, within very sight of the university which he +attended, was borrowed, in the good old convenient fashion, from +Macaulay; in fact, it requires something of Poe's own ingenuity to find +in Poe, who is one of the indubitable assets of American literature, +anything distinctly American. + +Wholly aside from such spiritual insulation of the single writer, +there is the obvious fact that none of the arts, not even literature, +and not all of them together, can furnish a wholly adequate +representation of racial or national characteristics. It is well known +to-day that the so-called "classic" examples of Greek art, most of +which were brought to light and discoursed upon by critics from two to +four centuries ago, represent but a single phase of Greek feeling; and +that the Greeks, even in what we choose to call their most +characteristic period, had a distinctly "romantic" tendency which their +more recently discovered plastic art betrays. But even if we had all +the lost statues, plays, poems, and orations, all the Greek paintings +about which we know so little, and the Greek music about which we know +still less, does anybody suppose that this wealth of artistic +expression would furnish a wholly satisfactory notion of the racial and +psychological traits of the Greek people? + +One may go even further. Does a truly national art exist anywhere,--an +art, that is to say, which conveys a trustworthy and adequate +expression of the national temper as a whole? We have but to reflect +upon the European and American judgments, during the last thirty +years, concerning the representative quality of the art of Japan, and +to observe how many of those facile generalizations about the Japanese +character, deduced from vases and prints and enamel, were smashed to +pieces by the Russo-Japanese War. This may illustrate the blunders of +foreign criticism, perhaps, rather than any inadequacy in the racially +representative character of Japanese art. But it is impossible that +critics, and artists themselves, should not err, in the conscious +endeavor to pronounce upon the infinitely complex materials with which +they are called upon to deal. We must confess that the expression of +racial and national characteristics, by means of only one art, such as +literature, or by all the arts together, is at best imperfect, and is +always likely to be misleading unless corroborated by other evidence. + +For it is to be remembered that in literature, as in the other fields +of artistic activity, we are dealing with the question of form; of +securing a concrete and pleasurable embodiment of certain emotions. It +may well happen that literature not merely fails to give an adequate +report of the racial or national or personal emotions felt during a +given epoch, but that it fails to report these emotions at all. Not +only the "old, unhappy, far-off" things of racial experience, but the +new and delight-giving experiences of the hour, may lack their poet. +Widespread moods of public elation or wistfulness or depression have +passed without leaving a shadow upon the mirror of art. There was no +one to hold the mirror or even to fashion it. No note of Renaissance +criticism, whether in Italy, France, or England, is more striking, and +in a way more touching, than the universal feeling that in the +rediscovery of the classics men had found at last the "terms of art," +the rules and methods of a game which they had long wished to be +playing. Englishmen and Frenchmen of the sixteenth century will not +allow that their powers are less virile, their emotions less eager, +than those of the Greeks and Romans. Only, lacking the very terms of +art, they had not been able to arrive at fit expression; the soul had +found no body wherewith to clothe itself into beauty. As they avowed in +all simplicity, they needed schoolmasters; the discipline of Aristotle +and Horace and Virgil; a body of critical doctrine, to teach them how +to express the France and England or Italy of their day, and thus give +permanence to their fleeting vision of the world. Naïve as may have +been the Renaissance expression of this need of formal training, blind +as it frequently was to the beauty which we recognize in the +undisciplined vernacular literatures of mediæval Europe, those groping +scholars were essentially right. No one can paint or compose by nature. +One must slowly master an art of expression. + +Now through long periods of time, and over many vast stretches of +territory, as our own American writing abundantly witnesses, the whole +formal side of expression may be neglected. "Literature," in its +narrower sense, may not exist. In that restricted and higher meaning of +the term, literature has always been uncommon enough, even in Athens or +Florence. It demands not merely personal distinction or power, not +merely some uncommon height or depth or breadth of capacity and +insight, but a purely artistic training, which in the very nature of +the case is rare. Millions of Russians, perhaps, have felt about the +general problems of life much as Turgenieff felt, but they lacked the +sheer literary art with which the _Notes of a Sportsman_ was written. +Thousands of frontier lawyers and politicians shared Lincoln's hard +and varied and admirable training in the mastery of speech, but in his +hands alone was the weapon wrought to such perfection of temper and +weight and edge that he spoke and wrote literature without knowing it. + +Such considerations belong, I am aware, to the accepted +commonplaces,--perhaps to what William James used to call "the +unprofitable delineation of the obvious." Everybody recognizes that +literary gifts imply an exceptionally rich development of general human +capacities, together with a professional aptitude and training of which +but few men are capable. There is but one lumberman in camp who can +play the fiddle, though the whole camp can dance. Thus the great book, +we are forever saying, is truly representative of myriads of minds in a +certain degree of culture, although but one man could have written it. +The writing member of a family is often the one who acquires notoriety +and a bank account, but he is likely to have candid friends who admit, +though not always in his presence, that, aside from this one +professional gift and practice, he is not intellectually or emotionally +or spiritually superior to his brothers and sisters. Waldo Emerson +thought himself the intellectual inferior of his brother Charles; and +good observers loved to maintain that John Holmes was wittier than +Oliver Wendell, and Ezekiel Webster a better lawyer than Daniel. + +Applied to the literary history of a race, this principle is +suggestive. We must be slow to affirm that, because certain ideas and +feelings did not attain, in this or that age or place, to purely +literary expression, they were therefore not in existence. The men and +women of the colonial period in our own country, for instance, have +been pretty uniformly declared to have been deficient in the sense of +beauty. What is the evidence? It is mostly negative. They produced no +poetry, fiction, painting, sculpture, or music worthy of the name. They +were predominantly Puritan, and the whole world has been informed that +English Puritanism was hostile to Art. They were preoccupied with +material and moral concerns. Even if they had remained in England, +Professor Trent affirms, these contemporaries of Milton and Bunyan +would have produced no art or literature. Now it is quite true that for +nearly two hundred years after the date of the first settlement of the +American colonists, opportunities for cultivating the arts did not +exist. But that the sense of beauty was wholly atrophied, I, for one, +do not believe. The passionate eagerness with which the forefathers +absorbed the noblest of all poetry and prose in the pages of their one +book, the Bible; the unwearied curiosity and care with which those +farmers and fishermen and woodsmen read the signs of the sky; their awe +of the dark wilderness and their familiar traffic with the great deep; +the silences of lonely places; the opulence of primeval meadows by the +clear streams; the English flowers that were made to bloom again in +farmhouse windows and along garden walks; the inner visions, more +lovely still, of duty and of moral law; the spirit of sacrifice; the +daily walk with God, whether by green pastures of the spirit or through +ways that were dark and terrible;--is there in all this no discipline +of the soul in moral beauty, and no training of the eye to perceive the +exquisite harmonies of the visible earth? It is true that the Puritans +had no professional men of letters; it is true that doctrinal sermons +provided their chief intellectual sustenance; true that their lives +were stern, and that many of the softer emotions were repressed. But +beauty may still be traced in the fragments of their recorded speech, +in their diaries and letters and phrases of devotion. You will search +the eighteenth century of old England in vain for such ecstasies of +wonder at the glorious beauty of the universe as were penned by +Jonathan Edwards in his youthful _Diary_. There is every presumption, +from what we know of the two men, that Whittier's father and +grandfather were peculiarly sensitive to the emotions of home and +neighborhood and domesticity which their gifted descendant--too +physically frail to be absorbed in the rude labor of the farm--has +embodied in _Snow-Bound_. The Quaker poet knew that he surpassed his +forefathers in facility in verse-making, but he would have been amused +(as his _Margaret Smith's Journal_ proves) at the notion that his +ancestors were without a sense of beauty or that they lacked +responsiveness to the chords of fireside sentiment. He was simply the +only Whittier, except his sister Elizabeth, who had ever found leisure, +as old-fashioned correspondents used to say, "to take his pen in hand." +This leisure developed in him the sense--latent no doubt in his +ancestors--of the beauty of words, and the excitement of rhythm. +Emerson's _Journal_ in the eighteen-thirties glows with a Dionysiac +rapture over what he calls "delicious days"; but did the seven +generations of clergymen from whom Emerson descended have no delicious +and haughty and tender days that passed unrecorded? Formal literature +perpetuates and glorifies many aspects of individual and national +experience; but how much eludes it wholly, or is told, if at all, in +broken syllables, in Pentecostal tongues that seem to be our own and +yet are unutterably strange! + +To confess thus that literature, in the proper sense of the word, +represents but a narrow segment of personal or racial experience, is +very far from a denial of the genuineness and the significance of the +affirmations which literature makes. We recognize instinctively that +Whittier's _Snow-Bound_ is a truthful report, not merely of a certain +farmhouse kitchen in East Haverhill, Massachusetts, during the early +nineteenth century, but of a mode of thinking and feeling which is +widely diffused wherever the Anglo-Saxon race has wandered. Perhaps +_Snow-Bound_ lacks a certain universality of suggestiveness which +belongs to a still more famous poem, _The Cotter's Saturday Night_ of +Burns, but both of these portrayals of rustic simplicity and peace owe +their celebrity to their truly representative character. They are +evidence furnished by a single art, as to a certain mode and coloring +of human existence; but every corroboration of that evidence heightens +our admiration for the artistic sincerity and insight of the poet. To +draw an illustration from a more splendid epoch, let us remind +ourselves that the literature of the "spacious times of great +Elizabeth"--a period of strong national excitement, and one deeply +representative of the very noblest and most permanent traits of English +national character--was produced within startlingly few years and in a +local territory extremely limited. The very language in which that +literature is clothed was spoken only by the court, by a couple of +counties, and at the two universities. Its prose and verse were frankly +experimental. It is true that such was the emotional ferment of the +score of years preceding the Armada, that great captains and voyagers +who scarcely wrote a line were hailed as kings of the realm of +imagination, and that Puttenham, in phrases which that generation +could not have found extravagant, inscribes his book on Poetry to Queen +Elizabeth as the "most excellent Poet" of the age. Well, the glorified +political images may grow dim or tawdry with time, but the poetry has +endured, and it is everywhere felt to be a truly national, a deeply +racial product. Its time and place and hour were all local; but the +Canadian and the American, the South African and Australasian +Englishman feels that that Elizabethan poetry is his poetry still. + +When we pass, therefore, as we must shortly do, to the consideration of +this and that literary product of America, and to the scrutiny of the +really representative character of our books, we must bear in mind that +the questions concerning the race, the place, the hour, the +man,--questions so familiar to modern criticism,--remain valid and +indeed essential; but that in applying them to American writing there +are certain allowances, qualifications, adjustments of the scale of +values, which are no less important to an intelligent perception of the +quality of our literature. This task is less simple than the critical +assessment of a typical German or French or Scandinavian writer, where +the strain of blood is unmixed, the continuity of literary tradition +unbroken, the precise impact of historical and personal influences more +easy to estimate. I open, for example, any one of half a dozen French +studies of Balzac. Here is a many-sided man, a multifarious writer, a +personality that makes ridiculous the merely formal pigeon-holing and +labelling processes of professional criticism. And yet with what +perfect precision of method and certainty of touch do Le Breton, for +example, or Brunetière, in their books on Balzac, proceed to indicate +those impulses of race and period and environment which affected the +character of Balzac's novels! The fact that he was born in Tours in +1799 results in the inevitable and inevitably expert paragraphs about +Gallic blood, and the physical exuberance of the Touraine surroundings +of his youth, and the post-revolutionary tendency to disillusion and +analysis. And so with Balzac's education, his removal to Paris in the +Restoration period, his ventures in business and his affairs of love, +his admiration for Shakespeare and for Fenimore Cooper; his mingled +Romanticism and Realism; his Titanism and his childishness; his +stupendous outline for the Human Comedy; and his scarcely less +astounding actual achievement. All this is discussed by his biographers +with the professional dexterity of critics trained intellectually in +the Latin traditions and instinctively aware of the claims of race, +biographers familiar with every page of French history, and profoundly +interested, like their readers, in every aspect of French life. Alas, +we may say, in despairing admiration of such workmanship, "they order +these things better in France." And they do; but racial unity, and long +lines of national literary tradition, make these things easier to order +than they are with us. The intellectual distinction of American +critical biographies like Lounsbury's _Cooper_ or Woodberry's +_Hawthorne_ is all the more notable because we possess such a slender +body of truly critical doctrine native to our own soil; because our +national literary tradition as to available material and methods is +hardly formed; because the very word "American" has a less precise +connotation than the word "New Zealander." + +Let us suppose, for instance, that like Professor Woodberry a few years +ago, we were asked to furnish a critical study of Hawthorne. The author +of _The Scarlet Letter_ is one of the most justly famous of American +writers. But precisely what national traits are to be discovered in +this eminent fellow-countryman of ours? We turn, like loyal disciples +of Taine and Sainte-Beuve, to his ancestral stock. We find that it is +English as far back as it can be traced; as purely English as the +ancestry of Dickens or Thackeray, and more purely English than the +ancestry of Browning or Burke or His Majesty George the Fifth. Was +Hawthorne, then, simply an Englishman living in America? He himself did +not think so,--as his _English Note-Books_ abundantly prove. But just +what subtle racial differentiation had been at work, since William +Hawthorne migrated to Massachusetts with Winthrop in 1630? Here we +face, unless I am mistaken, that troublesome but fascinating question +of Physical Geography. Climate, soil, food, occupation, religious or +moral preoccupation, social environment, Salem witchcraft and Salem +seafaring had all laid their invisible hands upon the physical and +intellectual endowment of the child born in 1804. Does this make +Nathaniel Hawthorne merely an "Englishman with a difference," as Mr. +Kipling, born in India, is an "Englishman with a difference"? +Hawthorne would have smiled, or, more probably, he would have sworn, at +such a question. He considered himself an American Democrat; in fact a +_contra mundum_ Democrat, for good or for ill. Is it, then, a political +theory, first put into full operation in this country a scant +generation before Hawthorne's birth, which made him un-English? We must +walk warily here. Our Canadian neighbors of English stock have much the +same climate, soil, occupations, and preoccupations as the inhabitants +of the northern territory of the United States. They have much the same +courts, churches, and legislatures. They read the same books and +magazines. They even prefer baseball to cricket. They are loyal +adherents of a monarchy, but they are precisely as free, as +self-governing, and--in the social sense of the word--as +"democratic"--in spite of the absence of a republican form of +government--as the citizens of that "land of the free and home of the +brave" which lies to the south of them. Yet Canadian literature, one +may venture to affirm, has remained to this hour a "colonial" +literature, or, if one prefers the phrase, a literature of "Greater +Britain." Was Hawthorne possibly right in his instinct that politics +did make a difference, and that in writing _The Marble Faun_,--the +scene of which is laid in Rome,--or _The House of the Seven +Gables_,--which is a story of Salem,--he was consistently engaged in +producing, not "colonial" or "Greater-British" but distinctly American +literature? We need not answer this question prematurely, if we wish to +reserve our judgment, but it is assuredly one of the questions which +the biographers and critics of our men of letters must ultimately face +and answer. + +Furthermore, the student of literature produced in the United States of +America must face other questions almost as complicated as this of +race. In fact, when we choose Hawthorne as a typical case in which to +observe the American refashioning of the English temper into something +not English, we are selecting a very simple problem compared with the +complexities which have resulted from the mingling of various European +stocks upon American soil. But take, for the moment, the mere obvious +matter of expanse of territory. We are obliged to reckon, not with a +compact province such as those in which many Old World literatures +have been produced, but with what our grandfathers considered a +"boundless continent." This vast national domain was long ago +"organized" for political purposes: but so far as literature is +concerned it remains unorganized to-day. We have, as has been +constantly observed, no literary capital, like London or Paris, to +serve as the seat of centralized authority; no code of literary +procedure and conduct; no "lawgivers of Parnassus"; no supreme court of +letters, whose judgments are recognized and obeyed. American public +opinion asserts itself with singular unanimity and promptness in the +field of politics. In literary matters we remain in the stage of +anarchic individualism, liable to be stampeded from time to time by +mob-excitement over a popular novel or moralistic tract, and then +disintegrating, as before, into an incoherent mass of individually +intelligent readers. + +The reader who has some personal acquaintance with the variations of +type in different sections of this immense territory of ours finds his +curiosity constantly stimulated by the presence of sectional and local +characteristics. There are sharply cut provincial peculiarities, of +course, in Great Britain and in Germany, in Italy and Spain, and in +all of the countries a corresponding "regional" literature has been +developed. Our provincial variations of accent and vocabulary, in +passing from North to South or East to West, are less striking, on the +whole, than the dialectical differences found in the various English +counties. But our general uniformity of grammar and the comparatively +slight variations in spoken accent cover an extraordinary variety of +local and sectional modes of thinking and feeling. The reader of +American short stories and lyrics must constantly ask himself: Is this +truth to local type consistent with the main trend of American +production? Is this merely a bit of Virginia or Texas or California, or +does it, while remaining no less Southern or Western in its local +coloring, suggest also the ampler light, the wide generous air of the +United States of America? + +The observer of this relationship between local and national types will +find some American communities where all the speech or habitual thought +is of the future. Foreigners usually consider such communities the most +typically "American," as doubtless they are; but there are other +sections, still more faithfully exploited by local writers, where the +mood is wistful and habitually regards the past. America, too, like the +Old World,--and in New England more than elsewhere,--has her note of +decadence, of disillusion, of autumnal brightness and transiency. Some +sections of the country, and notably the slave-holding states in the +forty years preceding the Civil War, have suffered widespread +intellectual blight. The best talent of the South, for a generation, +went into politics, in the passionately loyal endeavor to prop up a +doomed economic and social system; and the loss to the intellectual +life of the country cannot be reckoned. Over vast sections of our +prosperous and intelligent people of the Mississippi Basin to-day the +very genius of commonplaceness seems to hover. Take the great State of +Iowa, with its well-to-do and homogeneous population, its fortunate +absence of perplexing city-problems, its general air of prosperity and +content. It is a typical state of the most typically American portion +of the country; but it breeds no books. Yet in Indiana, another state +of the same general conditions as to population and prosperity, and +only one generation further removed than Iowa from primitive pioneer +conditions, books are produced at a rate which provokes a universal +American smile. I do not affirm that the literary critic is bound to +answer all such local puzzles as this. But he is bound at least to +reflect upon them, and to demand of every local literary product +throughout this varied expanse of states: Is the root of the +"All-American" plant growing here, or is it not? + +Furthermore, the critic must pursue this investigation of national +traits in our writing, not only over a wide and variegated territory, +but through a very considerable sweep of time. American literature is +often described as "callow," as the revelation of "national +inexperience," and in other similar terms. It is true that we had no +professional men of letters before Irving and that the blossoming time +of the notable New England group of writers did not come until nearly +the middle of the nineteenth century. But we have had time enough, +after all, to show what we wish to be and what we are. There have been +European books about America ever since the days of Columbus; it is +three hundred years since the first books were written in America. +Modern English prose, the language of journalism, of science, of social +intercourse, came into being only in the early eighteenth century, in +the age of Queen Anne. But Cotton Mather's _Magnalia_, a vast book +dealing with the past history of New England, was printed in 1702, only +a year later than Defoe's _True-Born Englishman_. For more than two +centuries the development of English speech and English writing on this +side of the Atlantic has kept measurable pace--now slower, now +swifter--with the speech of the mother country. When we recall the +scanty term of years within which was produced the literature of the +age of Elizabeth, it seems like special pleading to insist that America +has not yet had time to learn or recite her bookish lessons. + +This is not saying that we have had a continuous or adequate +development, either of the intellectual life, or of literary +expression. There are certain periods of strong intellectual movement, +of heightened emotion, alike in the colonial epoch and since the +adoption of our present form of government, in which it is natural to +search for revelations of those qualities which we now feel to be +essential to our national character. Certain epochs of our history, in +other words, have been peculiarly "American," and have furnished the +most ideal expression of national tendencies. + +If asked to select the three periods of our history which in this sense +have been most significant, most of us, I imagine, would choose the +first vigorous epoch of New England Puritanism, say from 1630 to 1676; +then, the epoch of the great Virginians, say from 1766 to 1789; and +finally the epoch of distinctly national feeling, in which New England +and the West were leaders, between 1830 and 1865. Those three +generations have been the most notable in the three hundred years since +the permanent settlements began. Each of them has revealed, in a noble +fashion, the political, ethical, and emotional traits of our people; +and although the first two of the three periods concerned themselves +but little with literary expression of the deep-lying characteristics +of our stock, the expression is not lacking. Thomas Hooker's sermon on +the "Foundation of Political Authority," John Winthrop's grave advice +on the "Nature of Liberty," Jefferson's "Declaration," Webster's "Reply +to Hayne," Lincoln's "Inaugurals," are all fundamentally American. +They are political in their immediate purpose, but, like the speeches +of Edmund Burke, they are no less literature because they are concerned +with the common needs and the common destiny. Hooker and Winthrop wrote +before our formal national existence began; Jefferson, at the hour of +the nation's birth; and Lincoln, in the day of its sharpest trial. Yet, +though separated from one another by long intervals of time, the +representative figures of the three epochs, English in blood and +American in feeling, are not so unlike as one might think. A thorough +grasp of our literature thus requires--and in scarcely less a degree +than the mastery of one of the literatures of Europe--a survey of a +long period, the search below the baffling or contradictory surface of +national experience for the main drift of that experience, and the +selection of the writers, of one generation after another, who have +given the most fit and permanent and personalized expression to the +underlying forces of the national life. + +There is another preliminary word which needs no less to be said. It +concerns the question of international influences upon national +literature. Our own generation has been taught by many events that no +race or country can any longer live "to itself." Internationalism is in +the very atmosphere: and not merely as regards politics in the narrowed +sense, but with reference to questions of economics, sociology, art, +and letters. The period of international isolation of the United +States, we are rather too fond of saying, closed with the +Spanish-American War. It would be nearer the truth to say that so far +as the things of the mind and the spirit are concerned, there has never +been any absolute isolation. The Middle West, from the days of Jackson +to Lincoln, that raw West described by Dickens and Mrs. Trollope, comes +nearer isolation than any other place or time. The period of the most +eloquent assertions of American independence in artistic and literary +matters was the epoch of New England Transcendentalism, which was +itself singularly cosmopolitan in its literary appetites. The letters +and journals of Emerson, Whitman, and Thoreau show the strong European +meat on which these men fed, just before their robust declarations of +our self-sufficiency. But there is no real self-sufficiency, and +Emerson and Whitman themselves, in other moods, have written most +suggestive passages upon our European inheritances and affiliations. + +The fortunes of the early New England colonies, in fact, were followed +by Protestant Europe with the keen solicitude and affection of kinsmen. +Oliver Cromwell signs his letter to John Cotton in 1651, "Your +affectionate friend to serve you." The settlements were regarded as +outposts of European ideas. Their Calvinism, so cheaply derided and so +superficially understood, even to-day, was the intellectual platform of +that portion of Europe which was mentally and morally awake to the vast +issues involved in individual responsibility and self-government. +Contemporary European democracy is hardly yet aware that Calvin's +_Institutes_ is one of its great charters. Continental Protestantism of +the seventeenth century, like the militant Republicanism of the English +Commonwealth, thus perused with fraternal interest the letters from +Massachusetts Bay. And if Europe watched America in those days, it was +no less true that America was watching Europe. Towards the end of the +century, Cotton Mather, "prostrate in the dust" before the Lord, as +his newly published _Diary_ tells us, is wrestling "on the behalf of +whole nations." He receives a "strong Persuasion that very overturning +Dispensations of Heaven will quickly befal the French Empire"; he +"lifts up his Cries for a mighty and speedy Revolution" there. "I +spread before the Lord the Condition of His Church abroad ... +especially in Great Britain and in France. And I prayed that the poor +Vaudois may not be ruined by the Peace now made between France and +Savoy. I prayed likewise for further Mortifications upon the Turkish +Empire." Here surely was one colonial who was trying, in Cecil Rhodes's +words, to "think continentally!" + +Furthermore, the leaders of those early colonies were in large measure +university men, disciplined in the classics, fit representatives of +European culture. It has been reckoned that between the years 1630 and +1690 there were in New England as many graduates of Cambridge and +Oxford as could be found in any population of similar size in the +mother country. At one time during those years there was in +Massachusetts and Connecticut alone a Cambridge graduate for every two +hundred and fifty inhabitants. Like the exiled Greeks in Matthew +Arnold's poem, they "undid their corded bales"--of learning, it is +true, rather than of merchandise--upon these strange and inhospitable +shores: and the traditions of Greek and Hebrew and Latin scholarship +were maintained with no loss of continuity. To the lover of letters +there will always be something fine in the thought of that narrow +seaboard fringe of faith in the classics, widening slowly as the +wilderness gave way, making its invisible road up the rivers, across +the mountains, into the great interior basin, and only after the Civil +War finding an enduring home in the magnificent state universities of +the West. Lovers of Greek and Roman literature may perhaps always feel +themselves pilgrims and exiles in this vast industrial democracy of +ours, but they have at least secured for us, and that from the very +first day of the colonies, some of the best fruitage of +internationalism. For that matter, what was, and is, that one Book--to +the eyes of the Protestant seventeenth century infallible and +inexpressively sacred--but the most potent and universal commerce of +ideas and spirit, passing from the Orient, through Greek and Roman +civilization, into the mind and heart of Western Europe and America? + + "Oh, East is East, and West is West, + And never the twain shall meet," + +declares a confident poet of to-day. But East and West met long ago in +the matchless phrases translated from Hebrew and Greek and Latin into +the English Bible; and the heart of the East there answers to the heart +of the West as in water face answereth to face. That the colonizing +Englishmen of the seventeenth century were Hebrews in spiritual +culture, and heirs of Greece and Rome without ceasing to be Anglo-Saxon +in blood, is one of the marvels of the history of civilization, and it +is one of the basal facts in the intellectual life of the United States +of to-day. + +Yet that life, as I have already hinted, is not so simple in its terms +as it might be if we had to reckon merely with the men of a single +stock, albeit with imaginations quickened by contact with an Oriental +religion, and minds disciplined, directly or indirectly, by the methods +and the literatures which the Revival of Learning imposed upon modern +Europe. American formal culture is, and has been, from the beginning, +predominantly English. Yet it has been colored by the influences of +other strains of race, and by alien intellectual traditions. Such +international influences as have reached us through German and +Scandinavian, Celtic and Italian, Russian and Jewish immigration, are +well marked in certain localities, although their traces may be +difficult to follow in the main trend of American writing. The presence +of Negro, Irishman, Jew, and German, has affected our popular humor and +satire, and is everywhere to be marked in the vocabulary and tone of +our newspapers. The cosmopolitan character of the population of such +cities as New York and Chicago strikes every foreign observer. Each one +of the manifold races now transplanted here and in process of +Americanization has for a while its own newspapers and churches and +social life carried on in a foreign dialect. But this stage of +evolution passes swiftly. The assimilative forces of American schools, +industry, commerce, politics, are too strong for the foreign immigrant +to resist. The Italian or Greek fruit pedler soon prefers to talk +English, and his children can be made to talk nothing else. This +extraordinary amalgamating power of English culture explains, no +doubt, why German and Scandinavian immigration--to take examples from +two of the most intelligent and educated races that have contributed to +the up-building of the country--have left so little trace, as yet, upon +our more permanent literature. + +But blood will have its say sooner or later. No one knows how +profoundly the strong mentality of the Jew, already evident enough in +the fields of manufacturing and finance, will mould the intellectual +life of the United States. The mere presence, to say nothing of the +rapid absorption, of these millions upon millions of aliens, as the +children of the Puritans regard them, is a constant evidence of the +subtle ways in which internationalism is playing its part in the +fashioning of the American temper. The moulding hand of the German +university has been laid upon our higher institutions of learning for +seventy years, although no one can demonstrate in set terms whether the +influence of Goethe, read now by three generations of American scholars +and studied by millions of youth in the schools, has left any real mark +upon our literature. Abraham Lincoln, in his store-keeping days, used +to sit under a tree outside the grocery store of Lincoln and Berry, +reading Voltaire. One would like to think that he then and there +assimilated something of the incomparable lucidity of style of the +great Frenchman. But Voltaire's influence upon Lincoln's style cannot +be proved, any more than Rousseau's direct influence upon Jefferson. +Tolstoï and Ibsen have, indeed, left unmistakable traces upon American +imaginative writing during the last quarter of a century. Frank Norris +was indebted to Zola for the scheme of that uncompleted trilogy, the +prose epic of the Wheat; and Owen Wister has revealed a not uncommon +experience of our younger writing men in confessing that the impulse +toward writing his Western stories came to him after reading the +delightful pages of a French romancer. But all this tells us merely +what we knew well enough before: that from colonial days to the present +hour the Atlantic has been no insuperable barrier between the thought +of Europe and the mind of America; that no one race bears aloft all the +torches of intellectual progress; and that a really vital writer of any +country finds a home in the spiritual life of every other country, even +though it may be difficult to find his name in the local directory. + +Finally, we must bear in mind that purely literary evidence as to the +existence of certain national traits needs corroboration from many +non-literary sources. If it is dangerous to judge modern Japan by the +characteristics of a piece of pottery, it is only less misleading to +select half a dozen excellent New England writers of fifty years ago as +sole witnesses to the qualities of contemporary America. We must +broaden the range of evidence. The historians of American literature +must ultimately reckon with all those sources of mental and emotional +quickening which have yielded to our pioneer people a substitute for +purely literary pleasures: they must do justice to the immense mass of +letters, diaries, sermons, editorials, speeches, which have served as +the grammar and phrase-book of national feeling. A history of our +literature must be flexible enough, as I have said elsewhere, to +include "the social and economic and geographical background of +American life; the zest of the explorer, the humor of the pioneer; the +passion of old political battles; the yearning after spiritual truth +and social readjustment; the baffled quest of beauty. Such a history +must be broad enough for the _Federalist_ and for Webster's oratory, +for Beecher's sermons and Greeley's editorials, and the Lincoln-Douglas +debates. It must picture the daily existence of our citizens from the +beginning; their working ideas, their phrases and shibboleths and all +their idols of the forum and the cave. It should portray the misspelled +ideals of a profoundly idealistic people who have been usually immersed +in material things." + +Our most characteristic American writing, as must be pointed out again +and again, is not the self-conscious literary performance of a Poe or a +Hawthorne. It is civic writing; a citizen literature, produced, like +the _Federalist_, and Garrison's editorials and Grant's _Memoirs_, +without any stylistic consciousness whatever; a sort of writing which +has been incidental to the accomplishment of some political, social, or +moral purpose, and which scarcely regards itself as literature at all. +The supreme example of it is the "Gettysburg Address." Homeliness, +simplicity, directness, preoccupation with moral issues, have here been +but the instrument of beauty; phrase and thought and feeling have a +noble fitness to the national theme. "Nothing of Europe here," we may +instinctively exclaim, and yet the profounder lesson of this citizen +literature of ours is in the universality of the fundamental questions +which our literature presents. The "Gettysburg Address" would not +to-day have a secure fame in Europe if it spoke nothing to the ear and +the heart of Europe. And this brings us back to our main theme. +Lincoln, like Franklin, like many another lesser master of our citizen +literature, is a typical American. In the writing produced by such men, +there cannot but be a revelation of American characteristics. We are +now to attempt an analysis of these national traits, as they have been +expressed by our representative writers. + +Simple as the problem seems, when thus stated, its adequate performance +calls for a constant sensitiveness to the conditions prevalent, during +a long period, in English and Continental society and literature. The +most rudimentary biographical sketch of such eminent contemporary +American authors as Mr. Henry James and Mr. Howells shows that Europe +is an essential factor in the intellectual life and in the artistic +procedure of these writers. Yet in their racial and national +relationships they are indubitably American. In their local variations +from type they demand from the critic an understanding of the culture +of the Ohio Valley, and of Boston and New York. The analysis of the +mingled racial, psychological, social, and professional traits in these +masters of contemporary American fiction presents to the critic a +problem as fascinating as, and I think more complex than, a +corresponding study of Meredith or Hardy, of Daudet or D'Annunzio. In +the three hundred years that have elapsed since Englishmen who were +trained under Queen Elizabeth settled at Jamestown, Virginia, we have +bred upon this soil many a master of speech. They have been men of +varied gifts: now of clear intelligence, now of commanding power; men +of rugged simplicity and of tantalizing subtlety; poets, novelists, +orators, essayists, and publicists, who have interpreted the soul of +America to the mind of the world. Our task is to exhibit the essential +Americanism of these spokesmen of ours, to point out the traits which +make them most truly representative of the instincts of the tongue-tied +millions who work and plan and pass from sight without the gift and +art of utterance; to find, in short, among the books which are +recognized as constituting our American literature, some vital and +illuminating illustrations of our national characteristics. For a truly +"American" book--like an American national game, or an American +city--is that which reveals, consciously or unconsciously, the American +mind. + + + + +II + +The American Mind + + +The origin of the phrase, "the American mind," was political. Shortly +after the middle of the eighteenth century, there began to be a +distinctly American way of regarding the debatable question of British +Imperial control. During the period of the Stamp Act agitation our +colonial-bred politicians and statesmen made the discovery that there +was a mode of thinking and feeling which was native--or had by that +time become a second nature--to all the colonists. Jefferson, for +example, employs those resonant and useful words "the American mind" to +indicate that throughout the American colonies an essential unity of +opinion had been developed as regards the chief political question of +the day. + +It is one of the most striking characteristics of the present United +States that this instinct of political unity should have endured, +triumphing over every temporary motive of division. The inhabitants of +the United States belong to a single political type. There is scarcely +a news-stand in any country of Continental Europe where one may not +purchase a newspaper openly or secretly opposed to the government,--not +merely attacking an unpopular administration or minister or ruler,--but +desiring and plotting the overthrow of the entire political system of +the country. It is very difficult to find such a newspaper anywhere in +the United States. I myself have never seen one. The opening sentence +of President Butler's admirable little book, _The American as He Is_, +originally delivered as lectures before the University of Copenhagen, +runs as follows: + + "The most impressive fact in American life is the substantial + unity of view in regard to the fundamental questions of + government and of conduct among a population so large, + distributed over an area so wide, recruited from sources so + many and so diverse, living under conditions so widely + different." + +But the American type of mind is evident in many other fields than that +of politics. The stimulating book from which I have just quoted, +attempts in its closing paragraph, after touching upon the more salient +features of our national activity, to define the typical American in +these words:-- + + "The typical American is he who, whether rich or poor, + whether dwelling in the North, South, East, or West, whether + scholar, professional man, merchant, manufacturer, farmer, or + skilled worker for wages, lives the life of a good citizen + and good neighbor; who believes loyally and with all his + heart in his country's institutions, and in the underlying + principles on which these institutions are built; who directs + both his private and his public life by sound principles; who + cherishes high ideals; and who aims to train his children for + a useful life and for their country's service." + +This modest and sensible statement indicates the existence of a +national point of view. We have developed in the course of time, as a +result of certain racial inheritances and historic experiences, a +national "temper" or "ethos"; a more or less settled way of considering +intellectual, moral, and social problems; in short, a peculiarly +national attitude toward the universal human questions. + +In a narrower sense, "the American mind" may mean the characteristics +of the American intelligence, as it has been studied by Mr. Bryce, De +Tocqueville, and other trained observers of our methods of thinking. It +may mean the specific achievements of the American intelligence in +fields like science and scholarship and history. In all these +particular departments of intellectual activity the methods and the +results of American workers have recently received expert and by no +means uniformly favorable assessment from investigators upon both sides +of the Atlantic. But the observer of literary processes and productions +must necessarily take a somewhat broader survey of national tendencies. +He must study what Nathaniel Hawthorne, with the instinct of a romance +writer, preferred to call the "heart" as distinguished from the mere +intellect. He must watch the moral and social and imaginative impulses +of the individual; the desire for beauty; the hunger for +self-expression; the conscious as well as the unconscious revelation of +personality; and he must bring all this into relation--if he can, and +knowing that the finer secrets are sure to elude him!--with the +age-long impulses of the race and with the mysterious tides of feeling +that flood or ebb with the changing fortunes of the nation. + +One way to begin to understand the typical American is to take a look +at him in Europe. It does not require a professional beggar or a +licensed guide to identify him. Not that the American in Europe need +recall in any particular the familiar pictorial caricature of "Uncle +Sam." He need not bear any outward resemblances to such stage types as +that presented in "The Man From Home." He need not even suggest, by +peculiarities of speech or manner, that he has escaped from the pages +of those novels of international observation in which Mr. James and Mr. +Howells long ago attained an unmatched artistry. Our "American Abroad," +at the present hour, may be studied without the aid of any literary +recollections whatever. There he is, with his wife and daughters, and +one may stare at him with all the frankness of a compatriot. He is +obviously well-to-do,--else he would not be there at all,--and the wife +and daughters seem very well-to-do indeed. He is kindly; +considerate--sometimes effusively considerate--of his fellow +travellers; patient with the ladies of his family, who in turn are +noticeably patient with him. He is genial--very willing to talk with +polyglot headwaiters and chauffeurs; in fact the wife and daughters are +also practised conversationalists, although their most loyal admirers +must admit that their voices _are_ a trifle sharp or flat. These ladies +are more widely read than "papa." He has not had much leisure for +Ruskin and Symonds and Ferrero. His lack of historical training limits +his curiosity concerning certain phases of his European surroundings; +but he uses his eyes well upon such general objects as trains, +hotel-service, and Englishmen. In spite of his habitual geniality, he +is rather critical of foreign ways, although this is partly due to his +lack of acquaintance with them. Intellectually, he is really more +modest and self-distrustful than his conversation or perhaps his +general bearing would imply; in fact, his wife and daughters, +emboldened very likely by the training of their women's clubs, have a +more commendable daring in assaulting new intellectual positions. + +Yet the American does not lack quickness, either of wits or emotion. +His humor and sentiment make him an entertaining companion. Even when +his spirits run low, his patriotism is sure to mount in proportion, and +he can always tell you with enthusiasm in just how many days he expects +to be back again in what he calls "God's country." + +This, or something like this, is the "American" whom the European +regards with curiosity, contempt, admiration, or envy, as the case may +be, but who is incontestably modifying Western Europe, even if he is +not, as many journalists and globe-trotters are fond of asserting, +"Americanizing" the world. Interesting as it is to glance at him +against that European background which adds picturesqueness to his +qualities, the "Man from Home" is still more interesting in his native +habitat. There he has been visited by hundreds of curious and observant +foreigners, who have left on record a whole literature of bewildered +and bewildering, irritating and flattering and amusing testimony +concerning the Americans. Settlers like Crèvecoeur in the glowing dawn +of the Republic, poets like Tom Moore, novelists like Charles +Dickens,--other novelists like Mr. Arnold Bennett,--professional +travellers like Captain Basil Hall, students of contemporary sociology +like Paul Bourget and Mr. H. G. Wells, French journalists, German +professors, Italian admirers of Colonel Roosevelt, political theorists +like De Tocqueville, profound and friendly observers like Mr. Bryce, +have had, and will continue to have, their say. + +The reader who tries to take all this testimony at its face value, and +to reconcile its contradictions, will be a candidate for the insane +asylum. Yet the testimony is too amusing to be neglected and some of it +is far too important to be ignored. Mr. John Graham Brooks, after long +familiarity with these foreign opinions of America, has gathered some +of the most representative of them into a delightful and stimulating +volume entitled _As Others See Us_. There one may find examples of what +the foreigner has seen, or imagined he has seen, during his sojourn in +America, and what he has said about it afterwards. Mr. Brooks is too +charitable to our visitors to quote the most fantastic and highly +colored of their observations; but what remains is sufficiently +bizarre. + +The real service of such a volume is to train us in discounting the +remarks made about us in a particular period like the +eighteen-thirties, or from observations made in a special place, like +Newport, or under special circumstances, like a Bishop's private car. +It helps us to make allowances for the inevitable angle of nationality, +the equally inevitable personal equation. A recent ambitious book on +America, by a Washington journalist of long residence here, although of +foreign birth, declares that "the chief trait of the American people is +the love of gain and the desire of wealth acquired through commerce." +That is the opinion of an expert observer, who has had extraordinary +chances for seeing precisely what he has seen. I think it, +notwithstanding, a preposterous opinion, fully as preposterous as +Professor Muensterberg's notion that America has latterly grown more +monarchical in its tendencies,--but I must remember that, in my own +case, as in that of the journalist under consideration, there are +allowances to be made for race, and training, and natural idiosyncracy +of vision. + +The native American, it may be well to remember, is something of an +observer himself. If his observations upon the characteristics of his +countrymen are less piquant than the foreigner's, it is chiefly +because the American writes, upon the whole, less incisively than he +talks. But incisive native writing about American traits is not +lacking. If a missionary, say in South Africa, has read the New York +_Nation_ every week for the past forty years, he has had an +extraordinary "moving picture" of American tendencies, as interpreted +by independent, trenchant, and high-minded criticism. That a file of +the _Nation_ will convey precisely the same impression of American +tendencies as a file of the _Sun_, for instance, or the _Boston Evening +Transcript_, is not to be affirmed. The humor of the London _Punch_ and +the New York _Life_ does not differ more radically than the aspects of +American civilization as viewed by two rival journals in Newspaper Row. +The complexity of the material now collected and presented in daily +journalism is so great that adequate editorial interpretation is +obviously impossible. All the more insistently does this heterogeneous +picture of American life demand the impartial interpretation of the +historian, the imaginative transcription of the novelist. Humorist and +moralist, preacher and mob orator and social essayist, shop-talk and +talk over the tea-cup or over the pipe, and the far more illuminating +instruction of events, are fashioning day by day the infinitely +delicate processes of our national self-assessment. Scholars like Mr. +Henry Adams or Mr. James Ford Rhodes will explain to us American life +as it was during the administrations of Jefferson or in the +eighteen-fifties. Professor Turner will expound the significance of the +frontier in American history. Mr. Henry James will portray with +unrivalled psychological insight the Europeanized American of the +eighteen-seventies and eighties. Literary critics like Professor +Wendell or Professor Trent will deduce from our literature itself +evidence concerning this or that national quality; and all this mass of +American expert testimony, itself a result and a proof of national +self-awareness and self-respect, must be put into the scales to +balance, to confirm, or to outweigh the reports furnished by +foreigners. + +I do not pretend to be able, like an expert accountant, to draw up a +balance-sheet of national qualities, to credit or debit the American +character with this or that precise quantity of excellence or defect. +But having turned the pages of many books about the United States, and +listened to many conversations about its inhabitants in many states of +the Union, I venture to collect a brief list of the qualities which +have been assigned to us, together with a few, but not, I trust, too +many, of our admitted national defects. + +Like that excellent German who wrote the History of the English Drama +in six volumes, I begin with Physical Geography. The differentiation of +the physical characteristics of our branch of the English race is +admittedly due, in part, to climate. In spite of the immense range of +climatic variations as one passes from New England to New Orleans, from +the Mississippi Valley to the high plains of the Far West, or from the +rainy Oregon belt southward to San Diego, the settlers of English stock +find a prevalent atmospheric condition, as a result of which they +begin, in a generation or two, to change in physique. They grow thinner +and more nervous, they "lean forward," as has been admirably said of +them, while the Englishman "leans back"; they are less heavy and less +steady; their voices are higher, sharper; their athletes get more +easily "on edge"; they respond, in short, to an excessively +stimulating climate. An old-fashioned sea-captain put it all into a +sentence when he said that he could drink a bottle of wine with his +dinner in Liverpool and only a half a bottle in New York. Explain the +cause as we may, the fact seems to be that the body of John Bull +changes, in the United States, into the body of Uncle Sam. + +There are mental differences no less pronounced. No adjective has been +more frequently applied to the Anglo-Saxon than the word "dull." The +American mind has been accused of ignorance, superficiality, levity, +commonplaceness, and dozens of other defects, but "dulness" is not one +of them. "Smartness," rather, is the preferred epithet of derogation; +or, to rise a little in the scale of valuation, it is the word +"cleverness," used with that lurking contempt for cleverness which is +truly English and which long survived in the dialect of New England, +where the village ne'er-do-well or Jack-of-all-trades used to be +pronounced a "clever" fellow. The variety of employments to which the +American pioneers were obliged to betake themselves has done something, +no doubt, to produce a national versatility, a quick assimilation of +new methods and notions, a ready adaptability to novel emergencies. An +invaluable pioneer trait is curiosity; the settler in a new country, +like Moses in the wilderness of Arabia, must "turn aside to see"; he +must look into things, learn to read signs,--or else the Indians or +frost or freshet will soon put an end to his pioneering. That curiosity +concerning strangers which so much irritated Dickens and Mrs. Trollope +was natural to the children of Western emigrants to whom the difference +between Sioux and Pawnee had once meant life or death. "What's your +business, stranger, in these parts?" was an instinctive, because it had +once been a vital, question. That it degenerates into mere +inquisitiveness is true enough; just as the "acuteness," the +"awareness," essential to the existence of one generation becomes only +"cuteness," the typical tin-pedler's habit of mind, in the generation +following. + +American inexperience, the national rawness and unsophistication which +has impressed so many observers, has likewise its double significance +when viewed historically. We have exhibited, no doubt, the +amateurishness and recklessness which spring from relative isolation, +from ignorance as to how they manage elsewhere this particular sort of +thing,--the conservation of forests, let us say, or the government of +colonial dependencies. National smugness and conceit, the impatience +crystallized in the phrase, "What have we got to do with abroad?" have +jarred upon the nerves of many cultivated Americans. But it is no less +true that a nation of pioneers and settlers, like the isolated +individual, learns certain rough-and-ready Robinson Crusoe ways of +getting things done. A California mining-camp is sure to establish law +and order in due time, though never, perhaps, a law and order quite +according to Blackstone. In the most trying crises of American +political history, it was not, after all, a question of profiting by +European experience. Washington and Lincoln, in their sorest struggles, +had nothing to do with "abroad"; the problem had first to be thought +through, and then fought through, in American and not in European +terms. Not a half-dozen Englishmen understood the bearings of the +Kansas-Nebraska Bill, or, if they did, we were little the wiser. We had +to wait until a slow-minded frontier lawyer mastered it in all its +implications, and then patiently explained it to the farmers of +Illinois, to the United States, and to the world. + +It is true that the unsophisticated mode of procedure may turn out to +be sheer folly,--a "sixteen to one" triumph of provincial barbarism. +But sometimes it is the secret of freshness and of force. Your +cross-country runner scorns the highway, but that is because he has +confidence in his legs and loins, and he likes to take the fences. +Fenimore Cooper, when he began to write stories, knew nothing about the +art of novel-making as practised in Europe, but he possessed something +infinitely better for him, namely, instinct, and he took the right road +to the climax of a narrative as unerringly as the homing bee follows +its viewless trail. + +No one can be unaware how easily this superb American confidence may +turn to over-confidence, to sheer recklessness. We love to run past the +signals, in our railroading and in our thinking. Emerson will "plunge" +on a new idea as serenely as any stock-gambler ever "plunged" in Wall +Street, and a pretty school-teacher will tell you that she has become +an advocate of the "New Thought" as complacently as an old financier +will boast of having bought Calumet and Hecla when it was selling at +25. (Perhaps the school-teacher may get as good a bargain. I cannot +say.) Upon the whole, Americans back individual guesswork and pay +cheerfully when they lose. A great many of them, as it happens, have +guessed right. Even those who continue to guess wrong, like Colonel +Sellers, have the indefeasible romantic appetite for guessing again. +The American temperament and the chances of American history have +brought constant temptation to speculation, and plenty of our people +prefer to gamble upon what they love to call a "proposition," rather +than to go to the bottom of the facts. They would rather speculate than +know. + +Doubtless there are purely physical causes that have encouraged this +mental attitude, such as the apparently inexhaustible resources of a +newly opened country, the consciousness of youthful energy, the feeling +that any very radical mistake in pitching camp to-day can easily be +rectified when we pitch camp to-morrow. The habit of exaggeration +which was so particularly annoying to English visitors in the middle +of the last century--annoying even to Charles Dickens, who was himself +something of an expert in exuberance--is a physical and moral no less +than a mental quality. That monstrous braggadocio which Dickens +properly satirized in _Martin Chuzzlewit_ was partly, of course, the +product of provincial ignorance. Doubtless there were, and there are +still, plenty of Pograms who are convinced that Henry Clay and Daniel +Webster overtop all the intellectual giants of the Old World. But that +youthful bragging, and perhaps some of the later bragging as well, has +its social side. It is a perverted idealism. It springs from group +loyalty, from sectional fidelity. The settlement of "Eden" may be +precisely what Dickens drew it: a miasmatic mud-hole. Yet we who are +interested in the new town do not intend, as the popular phrase has it, +"to give ourselves away." We back our own "proposition," so that to +this day Chicago cannot tell the truth to St. Louis, nor Harvard to +Yale. Braggadocio thus gets glorified through its rootage in loyalty; +and likewise extravagance--surely one of the worst of American mental +vices--is often based upon a romantic confidence in individual opinion +or in the righteousness of some specific cause. Convince a blue-blooded +American like Wendell Phillips that the abolition of slavery is right, +and, straightway, words and even facts become to him mere weapons in a +splendid warfare. His statements grow rhetorical, reckless, virulent. +Proof seems to him, as it did to the contemporary Transcendentalist +philosophers, an impertinence. The sole question is, "Are you on the +Lord's side?" i.e., on the side of Wendell Phillips. + +Excuse as we may the faults of a gifted combatant in a moral crisis +like the abolition controversy, the fact remains that the intellectual +dangers of the oratorical temperament are typically American. What is +commonly called our "Fourth of July" period has indeed passed away. It +has few apologists, perhaps fewer than it really deserves. It is +possible to regret the disappearance of that old-fashioned assertion of +patriotism and pride, and to question whether historical pageants and a +"noiseless Fourth" will develop any better citizens than the fathers +were. But on the purely intellectual side, the influence of that +spread-eagle oratory was disastrous. Throughout wide-extended regions +of the country, and particularly in the South and West, the "orator" +grew to be, in the popular mind, the normal representative of +intellectual ability. Words, rather than things, climbed into the +saddle. Popular assemblies were taught the vocabulary and the logic of +passion, rather than of sober, lucid reasoning. The "stump" grew more +potent than school-house and church and bench; and it taught its +reckless and passionate ways to more than one generation. The +intellectual leaders of the newer South have more than once suffered +ostracism for protesting against this glorification of mere oratory. +But it is not the South alone that has suffered. Wherever a mob can +gather, there are still the dangers of the old demagogic vocabulary and +rhetoric. The mob state of mind is lurking still in the excitable +American temperament. + +The intellectual temptations of that temperament are revealed no less +in our popular journalism. This journalism, it is needless to say, is +extremely able, but it is reckless to the last degree. The +extravagance of its head-lines and the over-statements of its news +columns are direct sources of profit, since they increase the +circulation and it is circulation which wins advertising space. I think +it is fair to say that the American people, as a whole, like precisely +the sort of journalism which they get. The tastes of the dwellers in +cities control, more and more, the character of our newspapers. The +journals of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco are steadily gaining +in circulation, in resourcefulness, and in public spirit, but they are, +for the most part, unscrupulous in attack, sophistical, and passionate. +They outvie the popular pulpit in sentimentality. They play with fire. + +The note of exaggeration which is heard in American oratory and +journalism is struck again in the popular magazines. Their campaign of +"exposure," during the last decade, has been careless of individual and +corporate rights and reputations. Even the magazine sketches and short +stories are keyed up to a hysteric pitch. So universally is this +characteristic national tension displayed in our periodical literature +that no one is much surprised to read in his morning paper that some +one has called the President of the United States a liar,--or that some +one has been called a liar by the President of the United States. + +For an explanation of these defects, shall we fall back upon a +convenient maxim of De Tocqueville's and admit with him that "a +democracy is unsuited to meditation"? We are forced to do so. But then +comes the inevitable second thought that a democracy must needs have +other things than meditation to attend to. Athenian and Florentine and +Versailles types of political despotism have all proved highly +favorable to the lucubrations of philosophers and men of letters who +enjoyed the despot's approbation. For that matter, no scheme of life +was ever better suited to meditation than an Indian reservation in the +eighteen-seventies, with a Great Father in Washington to furnish +blankets, flour, and tobacco. Yet that is not quite the American ideal +of existence, and it even failed to produce the peaceable fruits of +meditation in the Indian himself. + +One may freely admit the shortcomings of the American intelligence; the +"commonness of mind and tone" which Mr. Bryce believes to be +inseparable from the presence of such masses of men associated under +modern democratic government; the frivolity and extravagance which +represent the gasconading of the romantic temper in face of the grey +practicalities of everyday routine; the provincial boastfulness and bad +taste which have resulted from intellectual isolation; the lack, in +short, of a code, whether for thought or speech or behavior. And +nevertheless, one's instinctive Americanism replies, May it not be +better, after all, to have gone without a code for a while, to have +lacked that orderly and methodized and socialized European +intelligence, and to have had the glorious sense of bringing things to +pass in spite of it? There is just one thing that would have been fatal +to our democracy. It is the feeling expressed in La Bruyère's famous +book: "Everything has been said, everything has been written, +everything has been done." Here in America everything was to do; we +were forced to conjugate our verbs in the future tense. No doubt our +existence has been, in some respects, one of barbarism, but it has been +the barbarism of life and not of death. A rawboned baby sprawling on +the mud floor of a Kentucky log cabin is a more hopeful spectacle than +a wholly civilized funeral. + +"Perhaps it is," rejoins the European critic, somewhat impatiently, +"but you are confusing the issue. We find certain grave defects in the +American mind, defects which, if you had not had what Thomas Carlyle +called 'a great deal of land for a very few people,' would long ago +have involved you in disaster. You admit the mental defects, but you +promptly shift the question to one of moral qualities, of practical +energy, of subduing your wilderness, and so forth. You have too often +absented yourself from the wedding banquet, from the European symposium +of wit and philosophy, from the polished and orderly and delightful +play and interplay of civilized mind,--and your excuse is the old one: +that you are trying your yoke of oxen and cannot come. We charge you +with intellectual sins, and you enter the plea of moral preoccupation. +If you will permit personal examples, you Americans have made ere now +your national heroes out of men whose reasoning powers remained those +of a college sophomore, who were unable to state an opponent's position +with fairness, who lacked wholly the judicial quality, who were +vainglorious and extravagant, who had, in short, the mind of an +exuberant barbarian; but you instantly forget their intellectual +defects in the presence of their abounding physical and moral energy, +their freedom from any taint of personal corruption, their whole-souled +desire and effort for the public good. Were not such heroes, impossible +as they would have been in any other civilized country, perfectly +illuminative of your national state of mind?" + +For one, I confess that I do not know what reply to make to my +imaginary European critic. I suspect that he is right. At any rate, we +stand here at the fork of the road. If we do not wish to linger any +longer over a catalogue of intellectual sins, let us turn frankly to +our moral preoccupations, comforting ourselves, if we like, as we +abandon the field of purely intellectual rivalry with Europe, in the +reflection that it is the muddle-headed Anglo-Saxon, after all, who is +the dominant force in the modern world. + +The moral temper of the American people has been analyzed no less +frequently than their mental traits. Foreign and native observers are +alike agreed in their recognition of the extraordinary American +energy. The sheer power of the American bodily machine, driven by the +American will, is magnificent. It is often driven too hard, and with +reckless disregard of anything save immediate results. It wears out +more quickly than the bodily machine of the Englishman. It is typical +that the best distance runners of Great Britain usually beat ours, +while we beat them in the sprints. Our public men are frequently--as +the athletes say--"all in" at sixty. Their energy is exhausted at just +the time that many an English statesman begins his best public service. +But after making every allowance for wasteful excess, for the restless +and impatient consumption of nervous forces which nature intended that +we should hold in reserve, the fact remains that American history has +demonstrated the existence of a dynamic national energy, physical and +moral, which is still unabated. Immigration has turned hitherward the +feet of millions upon millions of young men from the hardiest stocks of +Europe. They replenish the slackening streams of vigor. When the +northern New Englander cannot make a living on the old farm, the French +Canadian takes it off his hands, and not only improves the farm, but +raises big crops of boys. So with Italians, Swedes, Germans, Irish, +Jews, and Portuguese, and all the rest. We are a nation of immigrants, +a digging, hewing, building, breeding, bettering race, of mixed blood +and varying creeds, but of fundamental faith in the wages of going on; +a race compounded of materials crude but potent; raw, but with blood +that is red and bones that are big; a race that is accomplishing its +vital tasks, and, little by little, transmuting brute forces and +material energies into the finer play of mind and spirit. + +From the very beginning, the American people have been characterized by +idealism. It was the inner light of Pilgrim and Quaker colonists; it +gleams no less in the faces of the children of Russian Jew immigrants +to-day. American irreverence has been noted by many a foreign critic, +but there are certain subjects in whose presence our reckless or +cynical speech is hushed. Compared with current Continental humor, our +characteristic American humor is peculiarly reverent. The purity of +woman and the reality of religion are not considered topics for +jocosity. Cleanness of body and of mind are held by our young men to be +not only desirable but attainable virtues. There is among us, in +comparison with France or Germany, a defective reverence for the State +as such; and a positive irreverence towards the laws of the +Commonwealth, and towards the occupants of high political positions. +Mayor, Judge, Governor, Senator, or even President, may be the butt of +such indecorous ridicule as shocks or disgusts the foreigner; but +nevertheless the personal joke stops short of certain topics which +Puritan tradition disapproves. The United States is properly called a +Christian nation, not merely because the Supreme Court has so affirmed +it, but because the phrase "a Christian nation" expresses the +historical form which the religious idealism of the country has made +its own. The Bible is still considered, by the mass of the people, a +sacred book; oaths in courts of law, oaths of persons elected to great +office, are administered upon it. American faith in education, as all +the world knows, has from the beginning gone hand in hand with faith in +religion; the school-house was almost as sacred a symbol as the +meeting-house; and the munificence of American private benefactions to +the cause of education furnishes to-day one of the most striking +instances of idealism in the history of civilization. + +The ideal passions of patriotism, of liberty, of loyalty to home and +section, of humanitarian and missionary effort, have all burned with a +clear flame in the United States. The optimism which lies so deeply +embedded in the American character is one phase of the national mind. +Charles Eliot Norton once said to me, with his dry humor, that there +was an infallible test of the American authorship of any anonymous +article or essay: "Does it contain the phrase 'After all, we need not +despair'? If it does, it was written by an American." In spite of all +that is said about the practicality of the American, his love of gain +and his absorption in material interests, those who really know him are +aware how habitually he confronts his practical tasks in a spirit of +romantic enthusiasm. He marches downtown to his prosaic day's job and +calls it "playing the game"; to work as hard as he can is to "get into +the game," and to work as long as he can is to "stay in the game"; he +loves to win fully as much as the Jew and he hates to lose fully as +much as the Englishman, but losing or winning, he carries into his +business activity the mood of the idealist. + +It is easy to think of all this as self-deception as the emotional +effusiveness of the American temperament; but to refuse to see its +idealism is to mistake fundamentally the character of the American man. +No doubt he does deceive himself often as to his real motives: he is a +mystic and a bargain-hunter by turns. Divided aims, confused ideals, +have struggled for the mastery among us, ever since Challon's _Voyage_, +in 1606, announced that the purpose of the first colonists to Virginia +was "both to seek to convert the savages, as also to seek out what +benefits or commodities might be had in those parts." How that +"both"--"as also" keeps echoing in American history: "both" to +christianize the Negro and work him at a profit, "both" duty and +advantage in retaining the Philippines; "both" international good will +and increased armaments; "both" Sunday morning precepts and Monday +morning practice; "both" horns of a dilemma; "both God and mammon"; did +ever a nation possess a more marvellous water-tight compartment method +of believing and honoring opposites! But in all this unconscious +hypocrisy the American is perhaps not worse--though he may be more +absurd!--than other men. + +Another aspect of the American mind is found in our radicalism. "To be +an American," it has been declared, "is to be a radical." That +statement needs qualification. Intellectually the American is inclined +to radical views; he is willing to push certain social theories very +far; he will found a new religion, a new philosophy, a new socialistic +community, at the slightest notice or provocation; but he has at bottom +a fund of moral and political conservatism. Thomas Jefferson, one of +the greatest of our radical idealists, had a good deal of the English +squire in him after all. Jeffersonianism endures, not merely because it +is a radical theory of human nature, but because it expresses certain +facts of human nature. The American mind looks forward, not back; but +in practical details of land, taxes, and governmental machinery we are +instinctively cautious of change. The State of Connecticut knows that +her constitution is ill adapted to the present conditions of her +population, but the difficulty is to persuade the rural legislators to +amend it. Yet everybody admits that amendment will come "some day." +This admission is a characteristic note of American feeling; and every +now and then come what we call "uplift" movements, when radicalism is +in the very air, and a thousand good "causes" take fresh vigor. + +One such period was in the New England of the eighteen-forties. We are +moving in a similar--only this time a national--current of radicalism, +to-day. But a change in the weather or the crops has before now turned +many of our citizens from radicalism into conservatism. There is, in +fact, conservatism in our blood and radicalism in our brains, and now +one and now the other rules. Very typical of American radicalism is +that story of the old sea-captain who was ignorant, as was supposed, of +the science of navigation, and who cheerfully defended himself by +saying that he could work his vessel down to Boston Light without +knowing any navigation, and after that he could go where he "dum +pleased." I suspect the old fellow pulled his sextant and chronometer +out of his chest as soon as he really needed them. American radicalism +is not always as innocent of the world's experience as it looks. In +fact, one of the most interesting phases of this twentieth century +"uplift" movement is its respect and even glorification of expert +opinion. A German expert in city-planning electrifies an audience of +Chicago club-women by talking to them about drains, ash-carts, and +flower-beds. A hundred other experts, in sanitation, hygiene, +chemistry, conservation of natural resources, government by commission, +tariffs, arbitration treaties, are talking quite as busily; and they +have the attention of a national audience that is listening with +genuine modesty, and with a real desire to refashion American life on +wiser and nobler plans. In this national forward movement in which we +are living, radicalism has shown its beneficent aspect of constructive +idealism. + +No catalogue of American qualities and defects can exclude the trait of +individualism. We exalt character over institutions, says Mr. Brownell; +we like our institutions because they suit us, and not because we +admire institutions. "Produce great persons," declares Walt Whitman, +"the rest follows." Whether the rest follows or not, there can be no +question that Americans, from the beginning, have laid singular stress +upon personal qualities. The religion and philosophy of the Puritans +were in this respect at one with the gospel of the frontier. It was the +principle of "every man for himself"; solitary confrontation of his +God, solitary struggle with the wilderness. "He that will not work," +declared John Smith after that first disastrous winter at Jamestown, +"neither let him eat." The pioneer must clear his own land, harvest his +own crops, defend his own fireside; his temporal and eternal salvation +were strictly his own affair. He asked, and expected, no aid from the +community; he could at most "change works" in time of harvest, with a +neighbor, if he had one. It was the sternest school of self-reliance, +from babyhood to the grave, that human society is ever likely to +witness. It bred heroes and cranks and hermits; its glories and its +eccentricities are written in the pages of Emerson, Thoreau, and +Whitman; they are written more permanently still in the instinctive +American faith in individual manhood. Our democracy idolizes a few +individuals; it ignores their defective training, or, it may be, their +defective culture; it likes to think of an Andrew Jackson who was a +"lawyer, judge, planter, merchant, general, and politician," before he +became President; it asks only that the man shall not change his +individual character in passing from one occupation or position to +another; in fact, it is amused and proud to think of Grant hauling +cordwood to market, of Lincoln keeping store or Roosevelt rounding-up +cattle. The one essential question was put by Hawthorne into the mouth +of Holgrave in the _House of the Seven Gables_. Holgrave had been by +turns a schoolmaster, clerk in a store, editor, pedler, lecturer on +Mesmerism, and daguerreotypist, but "amid all these personal +vicissitudes," says Hawthorne, "he had never lost his identity.... He +had never violated the innermost man, but had carried his conscience +along with him." There speaks the local accent of Puritanism, but the +voice insisting upon the moral integrity of the individual is the +undertone of America. + +Finally, and surely not the least notable of American traits, is public +spirit. Triumphant individualism checks itself, or is rudely checked +in spite of itself, by considerations of the general good. How often +have French critics confessed, with humiliation, that in spite of the +superior socialization of the French intelligence, France has yet to +learn from America the art and habit of devoting individual fortunes to +the good of the community. Our American literature, as has been already +pointed out, is characteristically a citizen literature, responsive to +the civic note, the production of men who, like the writers of the +_Federalist_, applied a vigorous practical intelligence, a robust +common sense, to questions affecting the interest of everybody. The +spirit of fair play in our free democracy has led Americans to ask not +merely what is right and just for one, the individual, but what are +righteousness and justice and fair play for all. Democracy, as embodied +in such a leader as Lincoln, has meant Fellowship. Nothing finer can be +said of a representative American than to say of him, as Mr. Norton +said of Mr. Lowell, that he had a "most public soul." + +No one can present such a catalogue of American qualities as I have +attempted without realizing how much escapes his classification. +Conscious criticism and assessment of national characteristics is +essential to an understanding of them; but one feels somehow that the +net is not holding. The analysis of English racial inheritances, as +modified by historical conditions, yields much, no doubt; but what are +we to say of such magnificent embodiments of the American spirit as are +revealed in the Swiss immigrant Agassiz, the German exile Carl Schurz, +the native-born mulatto Booker Washington? The Americanism of +representative Americans is something which must be felt; it is to be +reached by imaginative perception and sympathy, no less than by the +process of formal analysis. It would puzzle the experts in racial +tendencies to find arithmetically the common denominator of such +American figures as Franklin, Washington, Jackson, Webster, Lee, +Lincoln, Emerson, and "Mark Twain"; yet the countrymen of those typical +Americans instinctively recognize in them a sort of largeness, +genuineness, naturalness, kindliness, humor, effectiveness, idealism, +which are indubitably and fundamentally American. + +There are certain sentiments of which we ourselves are conscious, +though we can scarcely translate them into words, and these vaguely +felt emotions of admiration, of effort, of fellowship and social faith +are the invisible America. Take, for a single example, the national +admiration for what we call a "self-made" man: here is a boy selling +candy and newspapers on a Michigan Central train; he makes up his mind +to be a lawyer; in twelve years from that day he is general counsel for +the Michigan Central road; he enters the Senate of the United States +and becomes one of its leading figures. The instinctive flush of +sympathy and pride with which Americans listen to such a story is far +more deeply based than any vulgar admiration for money-making +abilities. No one cares whether such a man is rich or poor. He has +vindicated anew the possibilities of manhood under American conditions +of opportunity; the miracle of our faith has in him come true once +more. + +No one can understand America with his brains. It is too big, too +puzzling. It tempts, and it deceives. But many an illiterate immigrant +has felt the true America in his pulses before he ever crossed the +Atlantic. The descendant of the Pilgrims still remains ignorant of our +national life if he does not respond to its glorious zest, its +throbbing energy, its forward urge, its uncomprehending belief in the +future, its sense of the fresh and mighty world just beyond to-day's +horizon. Whitman's "Pioneers, O Pioneers" is one of the truest of +American poems because it beats with the pulse of this onward movement, +because it is full of this laughing and conquering fellowship and of +undefeated faith. + + + + +III + +American Idealism + + +Our endeavor to state the general characteristics of the American mind +has already given us some indication of what Americans really care for. +The things or the qualities which they like, the objects of their +conscious or unconscious striving, are their ideals. "There is what I +call the American idea," said Theodore Parker in the Anti-Slavery +Convention of 1850. "This idea demands, as the proximate organization +thereof, a democracy--that is, a government of all the people, by all +the people, for all the people; of course, a government on the +principle of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness' +sake, I will call it the idea of Freedom." That is one of a thousand +definitions of American idealism. Books devoted to the "Spirit of +America"--like the volume by Henry van Dyke which bears that very +title--give a programme of national accomplishments and aspirations. +But our immediate task is more specific. It is to point out how +adequately this idealistic side of the national temperament has been +expressed in American writing. Has our literature kept equal pace with +our thinking and feeling? + +We do not need, in attempting to answer this question, any definition +of idealism, in its philosophical or in its more purely literary sense. +There are certain fundamental human sentiments which lift men above +brutes, Frenchmen above "frog-eaters," and Englishmen above +"shop-keepers." These ennobling sentiments or ideals, while universal +in their essential nature, assume in each civilized nation a somewhat +specific coloring. The national literature reveals the myriad shades +and hues of private and public feeling, and the more truthful this +literary record, the more delicate and noble become the harmonies of +local and national thought or emotion with the universal instincts and +passions of mankind. On the other hand, when the literature of Spain, +for instance, or of Italy, fails, within a given period, in range and +depth of human interest, we are compelled to believe either that the +Spain or Italy of that age was wanting in the nobler ideals, or that +it lacked literary interpretation. + +In the case of America we are confronted by a similar dilemma. Since +the beginning of the seventeenth century this country has been, in a +peculiar sense, the home of idealism; but our literature has remained +through long periods thin and provincial, barren in cosmopolitan +significance; and the hard fact faces us to-day that only three or four +of our writers have aroused any strong interest in the cultivated +readers of continental Europe. Evidently, then, either the torch of +American idealism does not burn as brightly as we think, or else our +writers, with but few exceptions, have not hitherto possessed the +height and reach and grasp to hold up the torch so that the world could +see it. Let us look first at the flame, and then at the torch-bearers. + +Readers of Carlyle have often been touched by the humility with which +that disinherited child of Calvinism speaks of Goethe's doctrine of the +"Three Reverences," as set forth in _Wilhelm Meister_. Again and again, +in his correspondence and his essays, does Carlyle recur to that +teaching of the threefold Reverence: Reverence for what is above us, +for what is around us and for what is under us; that is to say, the +ethnic religion which frees us from debasing fear, the philosophical +religion which unites us with our comrades, and the Christian religion +which recognizes humility and poverty and suffering as divine. + +"To which of these religions do you specially adhere?" inquired +Wilhelm. + +"To all the three," replied the sages; "for in their union they produce +what may properly be called the true Religion. Out of those three +Reverences springs the highest Reverence, Reverence for Oneself." + +An admirable symbolism, surely; vaguer, no doubt, than the old symbols +which Carlyle had learned in the Kirk at Ecclefechan, but less vague, +in turn, than that doctrine of reverence for the Oversoul, which was +soon to be taught at Concord. + +As one meditates upon the idealism of the first colonists in America, +one is tempted to ask what their "reverences" were. Toward what +tangible symbols of the invisible did their eyes instinctively turn? + +For New England, at least, the answer is relatively simple. One form +of it is contained in John Adams's well-known prescription for +Virginia, as recorded in his _Diary_ for July 21, 1786. "Major +Langbourne dined with us again. He was lamenting the difference of +character between Virginia and New England. I offered to give him a +receipt for making a New England in Virginia. He desired it; and I +recommended to him town-meetings, training-days, town-schools, and +ministers." + +The "ministers," it will be noticed, come last on the Adams list. But +the order of precedence is unimportant. + +Here are four symbols, or, if you like, "reverences." Might not the +Virginia planters, loyal to their own specific symbol of the +"gentleman,"--no unworthy ideal, surely; one that had been glorified in +European literature ever since Castiligione wrote his _Courtier_, and +one that had been transplanted from England to Virginia as soon as Sir +Walter Raleigh's men set foot on the soil which took its name from the +Virgin Queen,--might not the Virginia gentlemen have pondered to their +profit over the blunt suggestion of the Massachusetts commoner? No +doubt; and yet how much picturesqueness and nobility--and tragedy, +too--we should have missed, if our history had not been full of these +varying symbols, clashing ideals, different Reverences! + +One Reverence, at least, was common to the Englishman of Virginia and +to the Englishman of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. They were joint +heirs of the Reformation, children of that waxing and puissant England +which was a nation of one book, the Bible; a book whose phrases color +alike the _Faerie Queen_ of Spenser and the essays of Francis Bacon; a +book rich beyond all others in human experience; full of poetry, +history, drama; the test of conduct; the manual of devotion; and above +all, and blinding all other considerations by the very splendor of the +thought, a book believed to be the veritable Word of the unseen God. +For these colonists in the wilderness, as for the Protestant Europe +which they had left irrevocably behind them, the Bible was the plainest +of all symbols of idealism: it was the first of the "Reverences." + +The Church was a symbol likewise, but to the greater portion of +colonial America the Church meant chiefly the tangible band of +militant believers within the limits of a certain township or parish, +rather than the mystical Bride of Christ. Except in Maryland and +Virginia, whither the older forms of Church worship were early +transplanted, there was scanty reverence for the Establishment. There +was neither clergyman nor minister on board the Mayflower. In Rufus +Choate's oration on the Pilgrims before the New England Society of New +York in 1843, occurred the famous sentence about "a church without a +bishop and a state without a King"; to which Dr. Wainwright, rector of +St. John's, replied wittily at the dinner following the oration that +there "can be no church without a bishop." This is perhaps a question +for experts; but Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, and John Cotton would +have sided with Rufus Choate. The awe which had once been paid to the +Establishment was transferred, in the seventeenth-century New England, +to the minister. The minister imposed himself upon the popular +imagination, partly through sheer force of personal ascendency, and +partly as a symbol of the theocracy,--the actual governing of the +Commonwealth by the laws and spirit of the sterner Scriptures. The +minister dwelt apart as upon an awful Sinai. It was no mere romantic +fancy of Hawthorne that shadowed his countenance with a black veil. The +church organization, too,--though it may have lacked its bishop,--had a +despotic power over its communicants; to be cast out of its fellowship +involved social and political consequences comparable to those +following excommunication by the Church of Rome. Hawthorne and Whittier +and Longfellow--all of them sound antiquarians, though none of them in +sympathy with the theology of Puritanism--have described in fit terms +the bareness of the New England meeting-house. What intellectual +severity and strain was there; what prodigality of learning; what +blazing intensity of devotion; what pathos of women's patience, and of +children, prematurely old, stretched upon the rack of insoluble +problems! What dramas of the soul were played through to the end in +those barn-like buildings, where the musket, perhaps, stood in the +corner of the pew! "How aweful is this place!" must have been murmured +by the lips of all; though there were many who have added, "This is the +gate of Heaven." + +The gentler side of colonial religion is winningly portrayed in +Whittier's _Pennsylvania Pilgrim_ and in his imaginary journal of +Margaret Smith. There were sunnier slopes, warmer exposures for the +ripening of the human spirit, in the Southern colonies. Even in New +England there was sporadic revolt from the beginning. The number of +non-church-members increased rapidly after 1700; Franklin as a youth in +Boston admired Cotton Mather's ability, but he did not go to church, +"Sunday being my studying day." Doubtless there were always humorous +sceptics like Mrs. Stowe's delightful Sam Lawson in _Oldtown Folks_. +Lawson's comment on Parson Simpson's service epitomizes two centuries +of New England thinking. "Wal," said Sam, "Parson Simpson's a smart +man; but I tell ye, it's kind o' discouragin'. Why, he said our state +and condition by natur was just like this. We was clear down in a well +fifty feet deep, and the sides all round nothin' but glare ice; but we +was under immediate obligations to get out, 'cause we was free, +voluntary agents. But nobody ever had got out, and nobody would, unless +the Lord reached down and took 'em. And whether he would or not nobody +could tell; it was all sovereignty. He said there wan't one in a +hundred, not one in a thousand,--not one in ten thousand,--that would +be saved. Lordy massy, says I to myself, ef that's so they're any of +'em welcome to my chance. _And so I kind o' ris up and come out._" + +Mrs. Stowe's novel is fairly representative of a great mass of +derivative literature which draws its materials from the meeting-house +period of American history. But the direct literature of that period +has passed almost wholly into oblivion. Jonathan Edwards had one of the +finest minds of his century; no European standard of comparison is too +high for him; he belongs with Pascal, with Augustine, if you like, with +Dante. But his great treatises written in the Stockbridge woods are +known only to a few technical students of philosophy. One terrible +sermon, preached at Enfield in 1741, is still read by the curious; but +scarcely anybody knows of the ineffable tenderness, dignity, and pathos +of his farewell sermon to his flock at Northampton: and the Yale +Library possesses nearly twelve hundred of Edwards's sermons which have +never been printed at all. Nor does anybody, save here and there an +antiquarian, read Shepard and Hooker and Mayhew. And yet these +preachers and their successors furnished the emotional equivalents of +great prose and verse to generations of men. "That is poetry," says +Professor Saintsbury (in a dangerous latitudinarianism, perhaps!), +"which gives the reader the feeling of poetry." Here we touch one of +the fundamental characteristics of our national state of mind, in its +relation to literature. We are careless of form and type, yet we crave +the emotional stimulus. Milton, greatest of Puritan poets, was read and +quoted all too seldom in the Puritan colonies, and yet those colonists +were no strangers to the emotions of sublimity and awe and beauty. They +found them in the meeting-house instead of in a book; precisely as, in +a later day, millions of Americans experienced what was for them the +emotional equivalent of poetry in the sermons of Henry Ward Beecher and +Phillips Brooks. French pulpit oratory of the seventeenth century wins +recognition as a distinct type of literature; its great practitioners, +like Massillon, Bourdaloue, Bossuet, are appraised in all the histories +of the national literature and in books devoted to the evolution of +literary species. In the American colonies the great preachers +performed the functions of men of letters without knowing it. They have +been treated with too scant respect in the histories of American +literature. It is one of the penalties of Protestantism that the +audiences, after a while, outgrow the preacher. The development of the +historic sense, of criticism, of science, makes an impassable gulf +between Jonathan Edwards and the American churches of the twentieth +century. A sense of profound changes in theology has left our +contemporaries indifferent to the literature in which the old theology +was clothed. + +There is one department of American literary production, of which +Bossuet's famous sermon on Queen Henrietta Maria of England may serve +to remind us, which illustrates significantly the national idealism. I +mean the commemorative oration. The addresses upon the Pilgrim Fathers +by such orators as Everett, Webster, and Choate; the countless orations +before such organizations as the New England Society of New York and +the Phi Beta Kappa; the papers read before historical and patriotic +societies; the birthday and centenary discourses upon national figures +like Washington or Lincoln, have all performed, and are still +performing, an inestimable service in stimulating popular loyalty to +the idealism of the fathers. As literature, most of this production is +derivative: we listen to eloquence about the Puritans, but we do not +read the Puritans; the description of Arthur Dimmesdale's election +sermon in _The Scarlet Letter_, moving as it may be, tempts no one to +open the stout collections of election sermons in the libraries. Yet +the original literature of mediæval chivalry is known only to a few +scholars: Tennyson's _Idylls_ outsell the _Mabinogion_ and Malory. The +actual world of literature is always shop-worn; a world chiefly of +second-hand books, of warmed-over emotions and it is not surprising +that many listeners to orations about Lincoln do not personally emulate +Lincoln, and that many of the most enthusiastic dealers in the +sentiment of the ancestral meeting-house do not themselves attend +church. + +The other ingredients of John Adams's ideal Commonwealth are no less +significant of our national disposition. Take the school-house. It was +planted in the wilderness for the training of boys and girls and for a +future "godly and learned ministry." The record of American education +is a long story of idealism which has touched literature at every turn. +The "red school-house" on the hill-top or at the cross-roads, the +"log-colleges" in forgotten hamlets, the universities founded by great +states, are all a record of the American faith--which has sometimes +been called a fetich--in education. In its origin, it was a part of the +essential programme of Calvinism to make a man able to judge for +himself upon the most momentous questions; a programme, too, of that +political democracy which lay embedded in the tenets of Calvinism, a +democracy which believes and must continue to believe that an educated +electorate can safeguard its own interests and train up its own +leaders. The poetry of the American school-house was written long ago +by Whittier, in describing Joshua Coffin's school under the big elm on +the cross-road in East Haverhill; its humor and pathos and drama have +been portrayed by innumerable story-writers and essayists. Mrs. Martha +Baker Dunn's charming sketches, entitled "Cicero in Maine" and "Virgil +in Maine," indicate the idealism once taught in the old rural +academies,--and it is taught there still. City men will stop wistfully +on the street, in the first week of September, to watch the boys and +girls go trudging off to their first day of school; men who believe in +nothing else at least believe in that! And school and college and +university remain, as in the beginning, the first garden-ground and the +last refuge of literature. + +That "town-meeting" which John Adams thought Virginia might do well to +adopt has likewise become a symbol of American idealism. Together with +the training-day, it represented the rights and duties and privileges +of free men; the machinery of self-government. It was democracy, rather +than "representative" government, under its purest aspect. Sentiments +of responsibility to the town, the political unit, and to the +Commonwealth, the group of units, were bred there. Likewise, it was a +training-school for sententious speech and weighty action; its roots, +as historians love to demonstrate, run back very far; and though the +modern drift to cities has made its machinery ineffective in the larger +communities, it remains a perpetual spring or feeding stream to the +broader currents of our national life. Without an understanding of the +town-meeting and its equivalents, our political literature loses much +of its significance. Like the school-house and meeting-house, it has +become glorified by our men of letters. John Fiske and other historians +have celebrated it in some of the most brilliant pages of our political +writing; and that citizen literature, so deeply characteristic of us, +found in the plain, forthright, and public-spirited tone of +town-meeting discussions its keynote. The spectacular debates of our +national history, the dramatic contests in the great arena of the +Senate Chamber, the discussions before huge popular audiences in the +West, have maintained the civic point of view, have developed and +dignified and enriched the prose style first employed by American +freemen in deciding their local affairs in the presence of their +neighbors. "I am a part of this people," said Lincoln proudly in one of +his famous debates of 1858; "I was raised just a little east of here"; +and this nearness to the audience, this directness and simplicity and +genuineness of our best political literature, its homely persuasiveness +and force, is an inheritance of the town-meeting. + +Bible and meeting-house, school-house and town-meeting, thus illustrate +concretely the responsiveness of the American character to idealistic +impulses. They are external symbols of a certain state of mind. It may +indeed be urged that they are primarily signs of a moral and social or +institutional trend, and are therefore non-literary evidence of +American idealism. Nevertheless, institutional as they may be deemed, +they lie close to that poetry of daily duty in which our literature has +not been poor. They are fundamentally related to that attitude of mind, +that habitual temper of the spirit, which has produced, in all +countries of settled use and wont, the literature of idealism. +Brunetière said of Flaubert's most famous woman character that poor +Emma Bovary, the prey and the victim of Romantic desires, was after all +much like the rest of us except that she lacked the intelligence to +perceive the charm and poetry of the daily task. We have already +touched upon the purely romantic side of American energy and of +American imagination, and we must shortly look more closely still at +those impulses of daring, those moods of heightened feeling, that +intensified individualism, the quest of strangeness and terror and +wild beauty, which characterize our romantic writing. But this +romanticism is, as it were, a segment of the larger circle of idealism. +It is idealism accentuated by certain factors, driven to +self-expression by the passions of scorn or of desire; it exceeds, in +one way or another, the normal range of experience and emotion. Our +romantic American literature is doubtless our greatest. And yet some of +the most characteristic tendencies of American writing are to be found +in the poetry of daily experience, in the quiet accustomed light that +falls upon one's own doorway and garden, in the immemorial charm of +going forth to one's labor and returning in the evening,--poetry old as +the world. + + * * * * * + +Let us see how this glow of idealism touches some of the more intimate +aspects of human experience. "Out of the three Reverences," says +Wilhelm Meister, "springs the highest Reverence, Reverence for +Oneself." Open the pages of Hawthorne. Moving wholly within the +framework of established institutions, with no desire to shatter the +existing scheme of social order, choosing as its heroes men of the +meeting-house, town-meeting, and training-day, how intensely +nevertheless does the imagination of this fiction-writer illuminate the +Body and the Soul! + +Take first the Body. The inheritance of English Puritanism may be +traced throughout our American writing, in its reverence for physical +purity. The result is something unique in literary history. Continental +critics, while recognizing the intellectual and artistic powers +revealed in _The Scarlet Letter_, have seldom realized the awfulness, +to the Puritan mind, of the very thought of an adulterous minister. +That a priest in southern Europe should break his vows is indeed +scandalous; but the sin is regarded as a failure of the natural man to +keep a vow requiring supernatural grace for its fulfilment; it may be +that the priest had no vocation for his sacred office; he is unfrocked, +punished, forgotten, yet a certain mantle of human charity still covers +his offence. But in the Puritan scheme (and _The Scarlet Letter_, save +for that one treacherous, warm human moment in the woodland where "all +was spoken," lies wholly within the set framework of Puritanism) there +is no forgiveness for a sin of the flesh. There is only Law, Law +stretching on into infinitude until the mind shudders at it. Hawthorne +knew his Protestant New England through and through. _The Scarlet +Letter_ is the most striking example in our national literature of that +idealization of physical purity, but hundreds of other romances and +poems, less morbid if less great, assert in unmistakable terms the same +moral conviction, the same ideal. + +Yet, in spite of its theme, there was never a less adulterous novel +than this book which plays so artistically with the letter A. The body +is branded, is consumed, is at last, perhaps, transfigured by the +intense rays of light emitted from the suffering soul. + + "The soul is form and doth the body make." + +In this intense preoccupation with the Soul, Hawthorne's romance is in +unison with the more mystical and spiritual utterances of Catholicism +as well as of Protestantism. It was in part a resultant of that early +American isolation which contributed so effectively to the artistic +setting of _The Scarlet Letter_. But in his doctrine of spiritual +integrity, in the agonized utterance, "Be true--be true!" as well as +in his reverence for purity of the body, our greatest romancer was +typical of the imaginative literature of his countrymen. The restless +artistic experiments of Poe presented the human body in many a ghastly +and terrifying aspect of illness and decay, and distorted by all +passions save one. His imagination was singularly sexless. Pathological +students have pointed out the relation between this characteristic of +Poe's writing, and his known tendencies toward opium-eating, +alcoholism, and tuberculosis. But no such explanation is at hand to +elucidate the absence of sexual passion from the novels of the +masculine-minded Fenimore Cooper. One may say, indeed, that Cooper's +novels, like Scott's, lack intensity of spiritual vision; that their +tone is consonant with the views of a sound Church of England parson in +the eighteenth century; and that the absence of physical passion, like +the absence of purely spiritual insight, betrays a certain defect in +Cooper's imaginative grasp and depth. But it is better criticism, after +all, to remember that these three pioneers in American fiction-writing +were composing for an audience in which Puritan traditions or tastes +were predominant. Not one of the three men but would have instantly +sacrificed an artistic effect, legitimate in the eyes of Fielding or +Goethe or Balzac, rather than--in the phrase so often satirized--"bring +a blush to the cheek of innocence." In other words, the presence of a +specific audience, accustomed to certain Anglo-Saxon and Puritanic +restraint of topic and of speech, has from the beginning of our +imaginative literature coöperated with the instinct of our writers. +That Victorian reticence which is so plainly seen even in such +full-bodied writers as Dickens or Thackeray--a reticence which men like +Mr. Bernard Shaw and Mr. Galsworthy and Mr. Wells think so hypocritical +and dangerous to society and which they have certainly done their +utmost to abolish--has hitherto dominated our American writing. The +contemporary influence of great Continental writers to whom reticence +is unknown, combined with the influence of a contemporary opera and +drama to which reticence would be unprofitable, are now assaulting this +dominant convention. Very possibly it is doomed. But it is only within +recent years that its rule has been questioned. + +One result of it may, I think, be fairly admitted. While very few +writers of eminence, after all, in any country, wish to bring a "blush +to the cheek of innocence," they naturally wish, as Thackeray put it in +one of the best-known of his utterances, to be permitted to depict a +man to the utmost of their power. American literary conventions, like +English conventions, have now and again laid a restraining and +compelling hand upon the legitimate exercise of this artistic instinct; +and this fact has coöperated with many social, ethical, and perhaps +physiological causes to produce a thinness or bloodlessness in our +books. They are graceful, pleasing, but pale, like one of those cool +whitish uncertain skies of an American spring. They lack "body," like +certain wines. It is not often that we can produce a real Burgundy. We +have had many distinguished fiction-writers, but none with the physical +gusto of a Fielding, a Smollett, or even a Dickens, who, idealist and +romanticist as he was, and Victorian as were his artistic preferences, +has this animal life which tingles upon every page. We must confess +that there is a certain quality of American idealism which is covertly +suspicious or openly hostile to the glories of bodily sensation. +Emerson's thin high shoulders peep up reproachfully above the desk; +Lanier is playing his reproachful flute; Longfellow reads Frémont's +Rocky Mountain experiences while lying abed, and sighs "But, ah, the +discomforts!"; Irving's _Astoria_, superb as were the possibilities of +its physical background, tastes like parlor exploration. Even Dana's +_Before the Mast_ and Parkman's _Oregon Trail_, transcripts of robust +actual experience, and admirable books, reveal a sort of physical +paleness compared with Turgenieff's _Notes of a Sportsman_ and +Tolstoï's _Sketches_ of Sebastopol and the Crimea. They are Harvard +undergraduate writing, after all! + +These facts illustrate anew that standing temptation of the critic of +American literature to palliate literary shortcomings by the plea that +we possess certain admirable non-literary qualities. The dominant +idealism of the nation has levied, or seemed to levy, a certain tax +upon our writing. Some instincts, natural to the full-blooded utterance +of Continental literature, have been starved or eliminated here. Very +well. The characteristic American retort to this assertion would be: +Better our long record and habit of idealism than a few masterpieces +more or less. As a people, we have cheerfully accepted the Puritan +restraint of speech, we have respected the shamefaced conventions of +decent and social utterance. Like the men and women described in +Locker-Lampson's verses, Americans + + "eat, and drink, and scheme, and plod,-- + They go to church on Sunday; + And many are afraid of God-- + And more of Mrs. Grundy." + +Now Mrs. Grundy is assuredly not the most desirable of literary +divinities, but the student of classical literature can easily think of +other divinities, celebrated in exquisite Greek and Roman verse, who +are distinctly less desirable still. + +"Not passion, but sentiment," said Hawthorne, in a familiar passage of +criticism of his own _Twice-Told Tales_. How often must the student of +American literature echo that half-melancholy but just verdict, as he +surveys the transition from the spiritual intensity of a few of our +earlier writers to the sentimental qualities which have brought popular +recognition to the many. Take the word "soul" itself. Calvinism +shadowed and darkened the meaning, perhaps, and yet its spiritual +passion made the word "soul" sublime. The reaction against Calvinism +has made religion more human, natural, and possibly more Christlike, +but "soul" has lost the thrilling solemnity with which Edwards +pronounced the word. Emerson and Hawthorne, far as they had escaped +from the bonds of their ancestral religion, still utter the word "soul" +with awe. But in the popular sermon and hymn and story of our +day,--with their search after the sympathetic and the sentimental, +after what is called in magazine slang "heart-interest,"--the word has +lost both its intellectual distinction and its literary magic. It will +regain neither until it is pronounced once more with spiritual passion. + +But in literature, as in other things, we must take what we can get. +The great mass of our American writing is sentimental, because it has +been produced by, and for, an excessively sentimental people. The poems +in Stedman's carefully chosen _Anthology_, the prose and verse in the +two volume Stedman-Hutchinson collection of American Literature, the +Library of Southern Literature, and similar sectional anthologies, the +school Readers and Speakers,--particularly in the half-century between +1830 and 1880,--our newspapers and magazines,--particularly the +so-called "yellow" newspapers and the illustrated magazines typified by +_Harper's Monthly_,--are all fairly dripping with sentiment. American +oratory is notoriously the most sentimental oratory of the civilized +world. The _Congressional Record_ still presents such specimens of +sentiment--delivered or given leave to be printed, it is true, for +"home consumption" rather than to affect the course of legislation--as +are inexplicable to an Englishman or a Frenchman or an Italian. + +Immigrants as we all are, and migratory as we have ever been,--so much +so that one rarely meets an American who was born in the house built by +his grandfather,--we cling with peculiar fondness to the sentiment of +"Home." The best-known American poem, for decades, was Samuel +Woodworth's "Old Oaken Bucket," the favorite popular song was Stephen +Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home," the favorite play was Denman +Thompson's "Old Homestead." Without that appealing word "mother" the +American melodrama would be robbed of its fifth act. Without pictures +of "the child" the illustrated magazines would go into bankruptcy. No +country has witnessed such a production of periodicals and books for +boys and girls: France and Germany imitate in vain _The Youth's +Companion_ and _St. Nicholas_, as they did the stories of "Oliver +Optic" and _Little Women_ and _Little Lord Fauntleroy_. + +The sentimental attitude towards women and children, which is one of +the most typical aspects of American idealism, is constantly +illustrated in our short stories. Bret Harte, disciple of Dickens as he +was, and Romantic as was his fashion of dressing up his miners and +gamblers, was accurately faithful to the American feeling towards the +"kid" and the "woman." "Tennessee's Partner," "The Luck of Roaring +Camp," "Christmas at Sandy Bar," are obvious examples. Owen Wister's +stories are equally faithful and admirable in this matter. The American +girl still does astonishing things in international novels, as she has +continued to do since the eighteen-sixties, but they are astonishing +mainly to the European eye and against the conventionalized European +background. She does the same things at home, and neither she nor her +mother sees why she should not, so universal among us is the chivalrous +interpretation of actions and situations which amaze the European +observer. The popular American literature which recognizes and +encourages this position of the "young girl" in our social structure is +a literature primarily of sentiment. The note of passion--in the +European sense of that word--jars and shatters it. The imported +"problem-play," written for an adult public in Paris or London, +introduces social facts and intellectual elements almost wholly alien +to the experience of American matinée audiences. Disillusioned +historians of our literature have instanced this unsophistication as a +proof of our national inexperience; yet it is often a sort of radiant +and triumphant unsophistication which does not lose its innocence in +parting with its ignorance. + +That sentimental idealization of classes, whether peasant, bourgeois, +or aristocratic, which has long been a feature of Continental and +English poetry and fiction, is practically absent from American +literature. Whatever the future may bring, there have hitherto been no +fixed classes in American society. Webster was guilty of no +exaggeration when he declared that the whole North was made up of +laborers, and Lincoln spoke in the same terms in his well-known +sentences about "hired laborers": "twenty-five years ago I was a hired +laborer." The relative uniformity of economic and social conditions, +which prevailed until toward the close of the nineteenth century, made, +no doubt, for the happiness of the greatest number, but it failed, +naturally, to afford that picturesqueness of class contrast and to +stimulate that sentiment of class distinction, in which European +literature is so rich. + +Very interesting, in the light of contemporary economic conditions, is +the effort made by American poets in the middle of the last century to +glorify labor. They were not so much idealizing a particular laboring +class, as endeavoring, in Whitman's words, "To teach the average man +the glory of his walk and trade." Whitman himself sketched the American +workman in almost every attitude which appealed to his own sense of the +picturesque and heroic. But years before _Leaves of Grass_ was +published, Whittier had celebrated in his _Songs of Labor_ the +glorified images of lumberman and drover, shoemaker and fisherman. Lucy +Larcom and the authors of _The Lowell Offering_ portrayed the fine +idealism of the young women--of the best American stock--who went +enthusiastically to work in the cotton-mills of Lowell and Lawrence, or +who bound shoes by their own firesides on the Essex County farms. That +glow of enthusiasm for labor was chiefly moral, but it was poetical as +well. The changes which have come over the economic and social life of +America are nowhere more sharply indicated than in that very valley of +the Merrimac where, sixty and seventy years ago, one could "hear +America singing." There are few who are singing to-day in the +cotton-mills; the operators, instead of girls from the hill-farms, are +Greeks, Lithuanians, Armenians, Italians. Whittier's drovers have gone +forever; the lumbermen and deep-sea fishermen have grown fewer, and the +men who still swing the axes and haul the frozen cod-lines are mostly +aliens. The pride that once broke into singing has turned harsh and +silent. "Labor" looms vast upon the future political and social +horizon, but the songs of labor have lost the lyric note. They have +turned into the dramas and tragedies of labor, as portrayed with the +swift and fierce insistence of the short story, illustrated by the +Kodak. In the great agricultural sections of the West and South the +old bucolic sentiment still survives,--that simple joy of seeing the +"frost upon the pumpkin" and "the fodder in the stock" which Mr. James +Whitcomb Riley has sung with such charming fidelity to the type. But +even on the Western farms toil has grown less manual. It is more a +matter of expert handling of machinery. Reaping and binding may still +have their poet, but he needs to be a Kipling rather than a Burns. + +Our literature, then, reveals few traces of idealization of a class, +and but little idealization of trades or callings. Neither class nor +calling presents anything permanent to the American imagination, or +stands for anything ultimate in American experience. On the other hand, +our writing is rich in local sentiment and sectional loyalty. The short +story, which has seized so greedily the more dramatic aspects of +American energy, has been equally true to the quiet background of rural +scenery and familiar ways. American idealism, as shown in the +transformation of the lesser loyalties of home and countryside into the +larger loyalties of state and section, and the absorption of these, in +turn, into the emotions of nationalism, is particularly illustrated in +our political verse. A striking example of the imaginative +visualization of the political units of a state is the spirited +roll-call of the counties in Whittier's "Massachusetts to Virginia." +But the burden of that fine poem, after all, is the essential unity of +Massachusetts as a sovereign state, girding herself to repel the attack +of another sovereign state, Virginia. Now the evolution of our +political history, both local and national, has tended steadily, for +half a century, to the obliteration, for purposes of the imagination, +of county lines within state lines. At the last Republican state +convention held in Massachusetts, there were no county banners +displayed, for the first time in half a century. Many a city-dweller +to-day cannot tell in what county he is living unless he has happened +to make a transfer of real estate. State lines themselves are fading +away. The federal idea has triumphed. Doubtless the majority of the +fellow citizens of John Randolph of Roanoke were all the more proud of +him because the poet could say of him, in writing an admiring and +mournful epitaph:-- + + "Beyond Virginia's border line + His patriotism perished." + +The great collections of Civil War verse, which are lying almost +unread in the libraries, are store-houses of this ancient state pride +and jealousy, which was absorbed so fatally into the larger sectional +antagonism. "Maryland, my Maryland" gave place to "Dixie," just as +Whittier's "Massachusetts to Virginia" was forgotten when marching men +began to sing "John Brown's Body" and "The Battle Hymn of the +Republic." The literature of sectionalism still lingers in its more +lovable aspect in the verse and fiction which still celebrates the +fairer side of the civilization of the Old South: its ideals of +chivalry and local loyalty, its gracious women and gallant men. Our +literature needs to cultivate this provincial affection for the past, +as an offset to the barren uniformity which the federal scheme allows. +But the ultimate imaginative victory, like the actual political victory +of the Civil War, is with the thought and feeling of Nationalism. It is +foreshadowed in that passionate lyric cry of Lowell, which sums up so +much and, like all true passion, anticipates so much:-- + + "O Beautiful! my Country!" + +The literary record of American idealism thus illustrates how deeply +the conception of Nationalism has affected the imagination of our +countrymen. The literary record of the American conception of liberty +runs further back. Some historians have allowed themselves to think +that the American notion of liberty is essentially declamatory, a sort +of futile echo of Patrick Henry's "Give me Liberty or give me Death"; +and not only declamatory, but hopelessly theoretical and abstract. They +grant that it was a trumpet-note, no doubt, for agitators against the +Stamp Act, and for pamphleteers like Thomas Paine; that it may have +been a torch for lighting dark and weary ways in the Revolutionary War; +but they believe it likewise to be a torch which gleams with the fire +caught from France and which was passed back to France in turn when her +own great bonfire was ready for lighting. The facts, however, are +inconsistent with this picturesque theory of contemporary reactionists. +It is true that the word "liberty" has been full of temptation for +generations of American orators, that it has become an idol of the +forum, and often a source of heat rather than of light. But to treat +American Liberty as if she habitually wore the red cap is to nourish a +Francophobia as absurd as Edmund Burke's. The sober truth is that the +American working theory of Liberty is singularly like St. Paul's. "Ye +have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to +the flesh." A few sentences from John Winthrop, written in 1645, are +significant: "There is a twofold liberty, natural ... and civil or +federal. The first is common to man with beasts and other creatures. By +this, man, as he stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty to do +what he lists; it is a liberty to evil as well as to good. This liberty +is incompatible and inconsistent with authority.... The other kind of +liberty I call civil or federal, it may also be termed moral.... This +liberty is the proper end and object of authority, and cannot subsist +without it; and it is a liberty to that only which is good, just, and +honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard (not only of +your goods, but) of your lives, if need be.... This liberty is +maintained and exercised in a way of subjection to authority; it is of +the same kind of liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free." + +There speaks the governor, the man of affairs, the typical citizen of +the future republic. The liberty to do as one pleases is a dream of +the Renaissance; but out of dreamland it does not work. Nobody, even in +revolutionary France, imagines that it will work. Jefferson, who is +popularly supposed to derive his notion of liberty from French +theorists, is to all practical purposes nearer to John Winthrop than he +is to Rousseau. The splendid phrases of his "Declaration" are sometimes +characterized as abstractions. They are really generalizations from +past political experience. An arbitrary king, assuming a liberty to do +as he liked, had encroached upon the long-standing customs and +authority of the colonists. Jefferson, at the bidding of the +Continental Congress, served notice of the royal trespass, and +incidentally produced (as Lincoln said) a "standard maxim for free +society." + +It is true, no doubt, that the word "liberty" became in Jefferson's +day, and later, a mere partisan or national shibboleth, standing for no +reality, degraded to a catchword, a symbol of antagonism to Great +Britain. In the political debates and the impressive prose and verse of +the anti-slavery struggle, the word became once more charged with vital +meaning; it glowed under the heat and pressure of an idea. Towards the +end of the nineteenth century it went temporarily out of fashion. The +late Colonel Higginson, an ideal type of what Europeans call an "1848" +man, attended at the close of the century some sessions of the American +Historical Association. In his own address, at the closing dinner, he +remarked that there was one word for which he had listened in vain +during the reading of the papers by the younger men. It was the word +"liberty." One of the younger school retorted promptly that since we +had the thing liberty, we had no need to glorify the word. But Colonel +Higginson, stanch adherent as he was of the "good old cause," was not +convinced. Like many another lover of American letters, he thought that +William Vaughn Moody's "Ode in Time of Hesitation" deserved a place by +the side of Lowell's "Commemoration Ode," and that when the ultimate +day of reckoning comes for the whole muddled Imperialistic business, +the standard of reckoning must be "liberty" as Winthrop and Jefferson +and Lincoln and Lowell and Vaughn Moody understood the word. + +In the mean time we must confess that the history of our literature, +with a few noble exceptions, shows a surprising defect in the passion +for freedom. Tennyson's famous lines about "Freedom broadening slowly +down from precedent to precedent" are perfectly American in their +conservative tone; while it is Englishmen like Byron and Landor and +Shelley and Swinburne who have written the most magnificent republican +poetry. The "land of the free" turns to the monarchic mother country, +after all, for the glow and thunder and splendor of the poetry of +freedom. It is one of the most curious phenomena in the history of +literature. Shall we enter the preoccupation plea once more? Enjoying +the thing liberty, have we been therefore less concerned with the idea? +Or is it simply another illustration of the defective passion of +American literature? + +Yet there is one phase of political loyalty which has been cherished by +the imagination of Americans, and which has inspired noteworthy oratory +and noble political prose. It is the sentiment of Union. In one sense, +of course, this dates back to the period of Franklin's _bon mot_ about +our all hanging together, or hanging separately. It is found in +Hamilton's pamphlets, in Paine's _Crisis_, in the _Federalist_, in +Washington's "Farewell Address." It is peculiarly associated with the +name and fame of Daniel Webster, and, to a less degree, with the career +of Henry Clay. In the stress of the debate over slavery, many a +Northerner with abolitionist convictions, like the majority of +Southerners with slave-holding convictions, forgot the splendid +peroration of Webster's "Reply to Hayne" and were willing to "let the +Union go." But in the four tragic and heroic years that followed the +firing upon the American flag at Fort Sumter the sentiment of Union was +made sacred by such sacrifices as the patriotic imagination of a Clay +or a Webster had never dreamed. A new literature resulted. A lofty +ideal of indissoluble Union was preached in pulpits, pleaded for in +editorials, sung in lyrics, and woven into the web of fiction. Edward +Everett Hale's _Man Without a Country_ became one of the most +poignantly moving of American stories. In Walt Whitman's _Drum-Taps_ +and his later poems, the "Union of these States" became transfigured +with mystical significance: no longer a mere political compact, +dissoluble at will, but a spiritual entity, a new incarnation of the +soul of man. + +We must deal later with that American instinct of fellowship which +Whitman believed to have been finally cemented by the Civil War, and +which has such import for the future of our democracy. There are +likewise communal loyalties, glowing with the new idealism which has +come with the twentieth century: ethical, municipal, industrial, and +artistic movements which are full of promise for the higher life of the +country, but which have not yet had time to express themselves +adequately in literature. There are stirrings of racial loyalty among +this and that element of our composite population,--as for instance +among the gifted younger generation of American Jews,--a racial loyalty +not antagonistic to the American current of ideas, but rather in full +unison with it. Internationalism itself furnishes motives for the +activity of the noblest imaginations, and the true literature of +internationalism has hardly yet begun. It is in the play and +counterplay of these new forces that the American literature of the +twentieth century must measure itself. Communal feelings novel to +Americans bred under the accepted individualism will doubtless assert +themselves in our prose and verse. But it is to be remembered that the +best writing thus far produced on American soil has been a result of +the old conditions: of the old "Reverences"; of the pioneer training of +mind and body; of the slow tempering of the American spirit into an +obstinate idealism. We do not know what course the ship may take in the +future, but + + "We know what Master laid thy keel, + What Workman wrought thy ribs of steel, + Who made each mast and sail and rope, + What anvil rang, what hammers beat, + In what a forge and what a heat + Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!" + + + + +IV + +Romance and Reaction + + +The characteristic attitude of the American mind, as we have seen, is +one of idealism. We may now venture to draw a smaller circle within +that larger circle of idealistic impulses, and to label the smaller +circle "romance." Here, too, as with the word "idealism," although we +are to make abundant use of literary illustrations of national +tendencies, we have no need of a severely technical definition of +terms. When we say, "Tom is an idealist" and "Lorenzo is a romantic +fellow," we convey at least one tolerably clear distinction between Tom +and Lorenzo. The idealist has a certain characteristic habit of mind or +inclination of spirit. When confronted by experience, he reacts in a +certain way. In his individual and social impulses, in the travail of +his soul, or in his commerce with his neighbors and the world, he +behaves in a more or less well-defined fashion. The romanticist, when +confronted by the same objects and experiences, exhibits another type +of behavior. Lorenzo, though he be Tom's brother, is a different +fellow; he is--in the opinion of his friends, at least--a rather more +peculiar person, a creature of more varying moods, of heightened +feelings, of stranger ways. Like Tom, he is a person of sentiment, but +his sentiment attaches itself, not so much to everyday aspects of +experience, as to that which is unusual or terrifying, lovely or far +away; he possesses, or would like to possess, bodily or spiritual +daring. He has the adventurous heart. He is of those who love to go +down to the sea in ships and do business in great waters. Lorenzo the +romanticist is made of no finer clay than Tom the idealist, but his +nerves are differently tuned. Your deep-sea fisherman, after all, is +only a fisherman at bottom. That is to say, he too is an idealist, but +he wants to catch different species of fish from those which drop into +the basket of the landsman. Precisely what he covets, perhaps he does +not know. I was once foolish enough to ask an old Alsatian soldier who +was patiently holding his rod over a most unpromising canal near +Strassburg, what kind of fish he was fishing for. "All kinds," was his +rebuking answer, and I took off my hat to the veteran romanticist. + +The words "romance" and "romanticism" have been repeated to the ears of +our generation with wearisome iteration. Not the least of the good luck +of Wordsworth and Coleridge lay in the fact that they scarcely knew +that they were "romanticists." Middle-aged readers of the present day +may congratulate themselves that in their youth they read Wordsworth +and Coleridge simply because it was Wordsworth and Coleridge and not +documents illustrating the history of the romantic movement. But the +rising generation is sophisticated. For better or worse it has been +taught to distinguish between the word "romance" on the one side, and +the word "romanticism" on the other. "Romantic" is a useful but +overworked adjective which attaches itself indiscriminately to both +"romance" and "romanticism." Professor Vaughan, for example, and a +hundred other writers, have pointed out that in the narrower and more +usual sense, the words "romance" and "romanticism" point to a love of +vivid coloring and strongly marked contrasts; to a craving for the +unfamiliar, the marvellous, and the supernatural. In the wider and +less definite sense, they signify a revolt from the purely intellectual +view of man's nature; a recognition of the instincts and the passions, +a vague intimation of sympathy between man and the world around +him,--in one word, the sense of mystery. The narrower and the broader +meanings pass into one another by imperceptible shades. They are +affected by the well-known historic conditions for romantic feeling in +the different European countries. The common factor, of course, is the +man with the romantic world set in his heart. It is Gautier with his +love of color, Victor Hugo enraptured with the sound of words, Heine +with his self-destroying romantic irony, Novalis with his blue flower, +and Maeterlinck with his _Blue Bird_. + +But these romantic men of letters, writing in epochs of romanticism, +are by no means the only children of romance. Sir Humphrey Gilbert and +Sir Walter Raleigh were as truly followers of "the gleam" as were +Spenser or Marlowe. The spirit of romance is found wherever and +whenever men say to themselves, as Don Quixote's niece said of her +uncle, that "they wish better bread than is made of wheat," or when +they look within their own hearts, and assert, as the poet Young said +in 1759, long before the English romantic movement had begun, "there is +more in the spirit of man than mere prose-reason can fathom." + +We are familiar, perhaps too remorsefully familiar, with the fact that +romance is likely to run a certain course in the individual and then to +disappear. Looking back upon it afterward, it resembles the upward and +downward zigzag of a fever chart. It has in fact often been described +as a measles, a disease of which no one can be particularly proud, +although he may have no reason to blush for it. Southey said that he +was no more ashamed of having been a republican than of having been a +boy. Well, people catch Byronism, and get over it, much as Southey got +over his republicanism. In fact Byron himself lived long enough--though +he died at thirty-six--to outgrow his purely "Byronic" phase, and to +smile at it as knowingly as we do. Coleridge's blossoming period as a +romantic poet was tragically brief. Keats and Shelley had the good +fortune to die in the fulness of their romantic glory. They did not +outlive their own poetic sense of the wonder and mystery of the world. +Yet many an old poet like Tennyson and Browning has preserved his +romance to the end. Tennyson dies at eighty-three with the full +moonlight streaming through the oriel window upon his bed, and with his +fingers clasping Shakespeare's _Cymbeline_. + +With most of us commonplace persons, however, a reaction from the +romantic is almost inevitable. The romantic temperament cannot long +keep the pitch. Poe could indeed do it, although he hovered at times +near the border of insanity. Hawthorne went for relief to his profane +sea-captains and the carnal-minded superannuated employees of the Salem +Custom House. "The weary weight of all this unintelligible world" +presses too hard on most of those who stop to think about it. The +simplest way of relief is to shrug one's shoulders and let the weight +go. That is to say, we cease being poets, we are no longer the children +of romance, although we may remain idealists. Perhaps it is external +events that change, rather than we ourselves. The restoration of the +Bourbons, the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, make and unmake romantics. +Often society catches up with the romanticist; he is no longer a +soldier of revolt; he has become a "respectable." Or, while remaining a +poet, he shifts his attention to some more familiar segment of the +idealistic circle. He sings about his wife instead of the wife of +somebody else. Like Wordsworth, he takes for his theme a Mary +Hutchinson instead of the unknown and hauntingly alluring figure of +Lucy. To put it differently, the high light, the mysterious color of +dawn or sunset disappears from his picture of human life. Or, the high +light may be diffused in a more tranquil radiance over the whole +surface of experience. Such an artist may remain a true painter or +poet, but he is not a romantic poet or painter any longer. He has, like +the aging Emerson, taken in sail; the god Terminus has said to him, "no +more." + +One must of course admit that the typical romanticist has often been +characterized by certain intellectual and moral weaknesses. But the +great romance men, like Edmund Spenser, for example, may not possess +these weaknesses at all. Robert Louis Stevenson was passionately in +love with the romantic in life and with romanticism in literature; but +it did not make him eccentric, weak, or empty. His instinct for +enduring romance was so admirably fine that it brought strength to the +sinews of his mind, light and air and fire to his soul. Among the +writers of our own day, it is Mr. Kipling who has written some of the +keenest satire upon romantic foibles, while never ceasing to salute his +real mistress, the true romance. + + "Who wast, or yet the Lights were set, + A whisper in the void, + Who shalt be sung through planets young + When this is clean destroyed." + +What are the causes of American romance, the circumstances and +qualities that have produced the romantic element in American life and +character? Precisely as with the individual artist or man of letters, +we touch first of all upon certain temperamental inclinations. It is a +question again of the national mind, of the differentiation of the race +under new climatic and physical conditions. We have to reckon with the +headiness and excitability of youth. It was young men who emigrated +hither, just as in the eighteen-sixties it was young men who filled the +Northern and the Southern armies. The first generations of American +immigration were made up chiefly of vigorous, imaginative, and daring +youth. The incapables came later. It is, I think, safe to assert that +the colonists of English stock, even as late as 1790,--when more than +ninety per cent of the population of America had in their veins the +blood of the British Isles,--were more responsive to romantic impulses +than their English cousins. For that matter, an Irishman or a Welshman +is more romantic than an Englishman to-day. + +From the very beginning of the American settlements, likewise, there +were evidences of the weaker, the over-excitable side of the romantic +temper. There were volatile men like Morton of Merrymount; there were +queer women like Anne Hutchinson, admirable woman as she was; among the +wives of the colonists there were plenty of Emily Dickinsons in the +germ. Among the men, there were schemes that came to nothing. There +were prototypes of Colonel Sellers; a temperamental tendency toward +that recklessness and extravagance which later historical conditions +stimulated and confirmed. The more completely one studies the history +of our forefathers on American soil, the more deeply does one become +conscious of the prevailing atmosphere of emotionalism. + +Furthermore, as one examines the historic conditions under which the +spirit of American romance has been preserved and heightened from time +to time, one becomes aware that although ours is rather a romance of +wonder than of beauty, the spirit of beauty is also to be found. The +first fervors of the romance of discovery were childlike in their +eagerness. Hakluyt's _Voyages_, John Smith's _True Relation of +Virginia_, Thomas Morton's _New England's Canaan_, all appeal to the +sense of the marvellous. + +Listen to Morton's description of Cape Ann. I can never read it without +thinking of Botticelli's picture of Spring, so naïvely does this +picturesque rascal suffuse his landscape with the feeling for beauty:-- + + "In the Moneth of June, Anno Salutis 1622, it was my chaunce + to arrive in the parts of New England with 30. Servants, and + provision of all sorts fit for a plantation: and whiles our + howses were building, I did indeavour to take a survey of + the Country: The more I looked, the more I liked it. And + when I had more seriously considered of the bewty of the + place, with all her faire indowments, I did not thinke that + in all the knowne world it could be paralel'd, for so many + goodly groves of trees, dainty fine round rising hillucks, + delicate faire large plaines, sweete cristall fountaines, + and cleare running streames that twine in fine meanders + through the meads, making so sweete a murmering noise to + heare as would even lull the sences with delight a sleepe, + so pleasantly doe they glide upon the pebble stones, jetting + most jocundly where they doe meete and hand in hand runne + downe to Neptunes Court, to pay the yearely tribute which + they owe to him as soveraigne Lord of all the springs. + Contained within the volume of the Land, Fowles in + abundance, Fish in multitude; and discovered, besides, + Millions of Turtledoves on the greene boughes, which sate + pecking of the full ripe pleasant grapes that were supported + by the lusty trees, whose fruitful loade did cause the armes + to bend: while here and there dispersed, you might see + Lillies and the Daphnean-tree: which made the Land to mee + seeme paradice: for in mine eie t'was Natures Masterpeece; + Her cheifest Magazine of all where lives her store: if this + Land be not rich, then is the whole world poore." + +This is the Morton who, a few years later, settled at Merrymount. Let +me condense the story of his settlement, from the narrative of the +stout-hearted Governor William Bradford's _History of Plymouth +Plantation_:-- + + "And Morton became lord of misrule, and maintained (as it + were) a schoole of Athisme. And after they had gott some good + into their hands, and gott much by trading with the Indeans, + they spent it as vainly, in quaffing & drinking both wine & + strong waters in great exsess, and, as some reported 10£. + worth in a morning. They allso set up a May-pole, drinking + and dancing aboute it many days togeather, inviting the + Indean women, for their consorts, dancing and frisking + togither, (like so many fairies, or furies rather,) and worse + practises. As if they had anew revived & celebrated the + feasts of the Roman Goddes Flora, or the beasly practieses of + the madd Bacchinalians. Morton likewise (to shew his poetrie) + composed sundry rimes & verses, some tending to + lasciviousnes, and others to the detraction & scandall of + some persons, which he affixed to this idle or idoll + May-polle. They chainged allso the name of their place, and + in stead of calling it Mounte Wollaston, they call it + Merie-mounte, as if this joylity would have lasted ever." + +But it did not last long. Bradford and other leaders of the plantations +"agreed by mutual consent" to "suppress Morton and his consorts." "In a +friendly and neighborly way" they admonished him. "Insolently he +persisted." "Upon which they saw there was no way but to take him by +force." "So they mutually resolved to proceed," and sent Captain +Standish to summon him to yield. But, says Bradford, Morton and some of +his crew came out, not to yield, but to shoot; all of them rather +drunk; Morton himself, with a carbine almost half filled with powder +and shot, had thought to have shot Captain Standish, "_but he stepped +to him and put by his piece and took him_." + +It is not too fanciful to say that with those stern words of Governor +Bradford the English Renaissance came to an end. The dream of a lawless +liberty which has been dreamed and dreamed out so many times in the +history of the world was over, for many a day. It was only a hundred +years earlier that Rabelais had written over the doors of his ideal +abbey, the motto "Do what thou wilt." It is true that Rabelais proposed +to admit to his Abbey of Thélème only such men and women as were +virtuously inclined. We do not know how many persons would have been +able and willing to go into residence there. At any rate, two hundred +years went by in New England after the fall of Morton before any +notable spirit dared to cherish once more the old Renaissance ideal. At +last, in Emerson's doctrine that all things are lawful because Nature +is good and human nature is divine, we have a curious parallel to the +doctrine of Rabelais. It was the old romance of human will under a new +form and voiced in new accents. Yet in due time the hard facts of human +nature reasserted themselves and put this romantic transcendentalism +by, even as the implacable Myles Standish put by that heavily loaded +fowling-piece of the drunken Morton. + +But men believed in miracles in the first century of colonization, and +they will continue at intervals to believe in them until human nature +is no more. The marvellous happenings recorded in Cotton Mather's +_Magnalia_ no longer excite us to any "suspension of disbelief." We +doubt the story of Pocahontas. The fresh romantic enthusiasm of a +settler like Crèvecoeur seems curiously juvenile to-day, as does the +romantic curiosity of Chateaubriand concerning the Mississippi and the +Choctaws, or the zeal of Wordsworth and Coleridge over their dream of a +"panti-Socratic" community in the unknown valley of the +musically-sounding Susquehanna. Inexperience is a perpetual feeder of +the springs of romance. John Wesley, it will be remembered, went out to +the colony of Georgia full of enthusiasm for converting the Indians; +but as he naïvely remarks in his _Journal_, he "neither found or heard +of any Indians on the continent of America, who had the least desire of +being instructed." The sense of fact, in other words, supervenes, and +the glory disappears from the face of romance. The humor of Mark +Twain's _Innocents Abroad_ turns largely upon this sense of remorseless +fact confronting romantic inexperience. + +American history, however, has been marked by certain great romantic +passions that seem endowed with indestructible vitality. The romance of +discovery, the fascination of the forest and sea, the sense of danger +and mystery once aroused by the very word "redskin," have all moulded +and will continue to mould the national imagination. How completely +the romance of discovery may be fused with the glow of humanitarian +and religious enthusiasm has been shown once for all in the brilliant +pages of Parkman's story of the Jesuit missions in Canada. Pictorial +romance can scarcely go further than this. In the crisis of +Chateaubriand's picturesque and passionate tale of the American +wilderness, no one can escape the thrilling, haunting sound of the bell +from the Jesuit chapel, as it tolls in the night and storm that were +fatal to the happiness of Atala. One scarcely need say that the romance +of missions has never faded from the American mind. I have known a +sober New England deacon aged eighty-five, who disliked to die because +he thought he should miss the monthly excitement of reading the +_Missionary Herald_. The deacon's eyes, like the eyes of many an old +sea-captain in Salem or Newburyport, were literally upon the ends of +the earth. No one can reckon how many starved souls, deprived of normal +outlet for human feeling, have found in this passionate curiosity and +concern for the souls of black and yellow men and women in the +antipodes, a constant source of beneficent excitement. + +Nor is there any diminution of interest in the mere romance of +adventure, in the stories of hunter and trapper, the journals of Lewis +and Clarke, the narratives of Boone and Crockett. In writing his superb +romances of the Northern Lakes, the prairie and the sea, Fenimore +Cooper had merely to bring to an artistic focus sentiments that lay +deep in the souls of the great mass of his American readers. Students +of our social life have pointed out again and again how deeply our +national temperament has been affected by the existence, during nearly +three hundred years, of an alien aboriginal race forever lurking upon +the borders of our civilization. "Playing Indian" has been immensely +significant, not merely in stimulating the outdoor activity of +generations of American boys, but in teaching them the perennial +importance of certain pioneer qualities of observation, +resourcefulness, courage, and endurance which date from the time when +the Indians were a daily and nightly menace. Even when the Indian has +been succeeded by the cowboy, the spirit of romance still lingers,--as +any collection of cowboy ballads will abundantly prove. And when the +cowboys pass, and the real-estate dealers take possession of the +field, one is tempted to say that romance flourishes more than ever. + +In short, things are what we make them at the moment, what we believe +them to be. In my grandfather's youth the West was in the neighborhood +of Port Byron, New York, and when he journeyed thither from +Massachusetts in the eighteen-twenties, the glory of adventure enfolded +him as completely as the boys of the preceding generation had been +glorified in the War of the Revolution, or the boys of the next +generation when they went gold-seeking in California in 1849. The West, +in short, means simply the retreating horizon, the beckoning finger of +opportunity. Like Boston, it has been not a place, but a "state of +mind." + + "We must go, go, go away from here, + On the other side the world we're overdue." + +That is the song which sings itself forever in the heart of youth. +Champlain and Cartier heard it in the sixteenth century, Bradford no +less than Morton in the seventeenth. Some Eldorado has always been +calling to the more adventurous spirits upon American soil. The +passion of the forty-niner neither began nor ended with the discovery +of gold in California. It is within us. It transmutes the harsh or +drab-colored everyday routine into tissue of fairyland. It makes our +"winning of the West" a magnificent national epic. It changes to-day +the black belt of Texas, or the wheat-fields of Dakota, into pots of +gold that lie at the end of rainbows, only that the pot of gold is +actually there. The human hunger of it all, the gorgeous dream-like +quality of it all, the boundlessness of the vast American spaces, the +sense of forest and prairie and sky, are all inexplicably blended with +our notion of the ideal America. Henry James once tried to explain the +difference between Turgenieff and a typical French novelist by saying +that the back door of the Russian's imagination was always open upon +the endless Russian steppe. No one can understand the spirit of +American romance if he is not conscious of this ever-present hinterland +in which our spirits have, from the beginning, taken refuge and found +solace. + +We have already noticed, in the chapter on idealism, how swiftly the +American imagination modifies the prosaic facts of everyday +experience. The idealistic glamour which falls upon the day's work +changes easily, in the more emotional temperaments, and at times, +indeed, in all of us, into the fervor of true romance. Then, the +prosaic buying and selling becomes the "game." A combination of buyers +and sellers becomes the "system." The place where these buyers and +sellers most do congregate and concentrate becomes "Wall Street"--a +sort of anthropomorphic monster which seems to buy and sell the bodies +and souls of men. Seen half a continent away, through the mists of +ignorance and prejudice and partisan passion, "Wall Street" has loomed +like some vast Gibraltar. To the broker's clerk who earns his weekly +salary in that street, the Nebraska notion of "Wall Street" is too +grotesque for discussion. + +How easily every phase of American business life may take on the hues +of romance is illustrated by the history of our railroads. No wonder +that Bret Harte wrote a poem about the meeting of the eastward and +westward facing engines when the two sections of the Union Pacific +Railroad at last drew near each other on the interminable plains and +the two engines could talk. Of course what they said was poetry. There +was a time when even the Erie Canal was poetic. The Panama Canal +to-day, in the eyes of most Americans, is something other than a mere +feat of engineering. We are doing more than making "the dirt fly." The +canal represents victory over hostile forces, conquest of unwilling +Nature, achievement of what had long been deemed impossible, the making +not of a ditch, but of History. + +So with all that American zest for camping, fishing, sailing, racing, +which lies deep in the Anglo-Saxon, and which succeeds to the more +primitive era of actual struggle against savage beasts or treacherous +men or mysterious forests. It is at once an outlet and a nursery for +romantic emotion. The out-of-doors movement which began with Thoreau's +hut on Walden Pond, and which has gone on broadening and deepening to +this hour, implies far more than mere variation from routine. It +furnishes, indeed, a healthful escape from the terrific pressure of +modern social and commercial exigencies. Yet its more important +function is to provide for grown-ups a chance to "play Indian" too. + +But outdoors and indoors, after all, lie in the heart and mind, rather +than in the realm of actual experience. The romantic imagination +insists upon taking its holiday, whether the man who possesses it gets +his holiday or not. I have never known a more truly romantic figure +than a certain tin-pedler in Connecticut who, in response to the +question, "Do you do a good business?" made this perfectly Stevensonian +reply: "Well, I make a living selling crockery and tinware, but my +_business_ is the propagation of truth." + +This wandering idealist may serve to remind us again of the difference +between romance and romanticism. The true romance is of the spirit. +Romanticism shifts and changes with external fortunes, with altering +emotions, with the alternate play of light and shade over the vast +landscape of human experience. The typical romanticist, as we have +seen, is a man of moods. It is only a Poe who can keep the pitch +through the whole concert of experience. But the deeper romance of the +spirit is oblivious of these changes of external fortune, this rising +or falling of the emotional temperature. The moral life of America +furnishes striking illustrations of the steadfastness with which +certain moral causes have been kept, as it were, in the focus of +intense feeling. Poetry, undefeated and unwavering poetry, has +transfigured such practical propaganda as the abolition of slavery, the +emancipation of woman, the fight against the liquor traffic, the +emancipation of the individual from the clutches of economic and +commercial despotism. Men like Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, +women like Julia Ward Howe, fought for these causes throughout their +lives. Colonel Higginson's attitude towards women was not merely +chivalric (for one may be chivalrous without any marked predisposition +to romance), but nobly romantic also. James Russell Lowell, poet as he +was, outlived that particular phase of romantic moral reform which he +had been taught by Maria White. But in other men and women bred in that +old New England of the eighteen-forties, the moral fervor knew no +restraint. Garrison, although in many respects a most unromantic +personality, was engaged in a task which gave him all the inspiration +of romance. A romantic "atmosphere," fully as highly colored as any of +the romantic atmospheres that we are accustomed to mark in literature, +surrounded as with a luminous mist the figures of the New England +transcendentalists. They, too, as Heine said of himself, were soldiers. +They felt themselves enlisted for a long but ultimately victorious +campaign. They were willing to pardon, in their comrades and in +themselves, those imaginative excesses which resemble the physical +excesses of a soldier's camp. Transcendentalism was thus a militant +philosophy and religion, with both a destructively critical and a +positively constructive creed. Channing, Parker, Alcott, Margaret +Fuller, were warrior-priests, poets and prophets of a gallant campaign +against inherited darkness and bigotry, and for the light. + +The atmosphere of that score of years in New England was now +superheated, now rarefied, thin, and cold; but it was never quite the +normal atmosphere of every day. On the purely literary side, it is +needless to say, these men and women sought inspiration in Coleridge +and Carlyle and other English and German romanticists. In fact, the +most enduring literature of New England between 1830 and 1865 was +distinctly a romantic literature. It was rooted, however, not so much +in those swift changes of historic condition, those startling +liberations of the human spirit which gave inspiration to the +romanticism of the Continent, as it was in the deep and vital fervor +with which these New Englanders envisaged the problems of the moral +life. + +Other illustrations of the American capacity for romance lie equally +close at hand. Take, for instance, the stout volume in which Mr. Burton +Stevenson has collected the _Poems of American History_. Here are +nearly seven hundred pages of closely printed patriotic verse. While +Stedman's _Anthology_ reveals no doubt national aspirations and +national sentiment, as well as the emotional fervor of individuals, Mr. +Stevenson's collection has the advantage of focussing this national +feeling upon specific events. Stedman's _Anthology_ is an enduring +document of American idealism, touching in the sincerity of its poetic +moods, pathetic in its long lists of men and women who are known by one +poem only, or who have never, for one reason or another, fulfilled +their poetic promise. The thousand poems which it contains are more +striking, in fact, for their promise than for their performance. They +are intimations of what American men and women would have liked to do +or to be. In this sense, it is a precious volume, but it is certainly +not commensurate, either in passion or in artistic perfection, with the +forces of that American life which it tries to interpret. Indeed, Mr. +Stedman, after finishing his task of compilation, remarked to more than +one of his friends that what this country needed was some "adult male +verse." + +The _Poems of American History_ collected by Mr. Stevenson are at least +vigorous and concrete. One aspect of our history which especially lends +itself to Mr. Stevenson's purpose is the romance which attaches itself +to war. It is scarcely necessary to say nowadays that all wars, even +the noblest, have had their sordid, grimy, selfish, bestial aspect; and +that the intelligence and conscience of our modern world are more and +more engaged in the task of making future wars impossible. But the +slightest acquaintance with American history reveals the immense +reservoir of romantic emotion which has been drawn upon in our national +struggles. War, of course, is an immemorial source of romantic feeling. +William James's notable essay on "A Moral Substitute for War" +endeavored to prove that our modern economic and social life, if +properly organized, would give abundant outlet and satisfaction to +those romantic impulses which formerly found their sole gratification +in battle. Many of us believe that he was right; but for the moment we +must look backward and not forward. We must remember the stern if rude +poetry inspired by our Revolutionary struggle, the romantic halo that +falls upon the youthful figure of Nathan Hale, the baleful light that +touches the pale face of Benedict Arnold, the romance of the Bennington +fight to the followers of Stark and Ethan Allen, the serene voice of +the "little captain," John Paul Jones:--"We have not struck, we have +just begun our part of the fighting." The colors of romance still drape +the Chesapeake and the Shannon, Tecumseh and Tippecanoe. The hunters of +Kentucky, the explorers of the Yellowstone and the Columbia, the +emigrants who left their bones along the old Santa Fé Trail, are our +Homeric men. + +The Mexican War affords pertinent illustration, not only of romance, +but of reaction. The earlier phases of the Texan struggle for +independence have much of the daring, the splendid rashness, the +glorious and tragic catastrophes of the great romantic adventures of +the Old World. It is not the Texans only who still "remember the +Alamo," but when those brilliant and dramatic adventures of border +warfare became drawn into the larger struggle for the extension of +slavery, the poetic reaction began. The physical and moral pretence of +warfare, the cheap splendors of epaulets and feathers, shrivelled at +the single touch of the satire of the _Biglow Papers_. Lowell, writing +at that moment with the instinct and fervor of a prophet, brought the +whole vainglorious business back to the simple issue of right and +wrong: + + "'Taint your eppyletts an' feathers + Make the thing a grain more right; + 'Taint afollerin' your bell-wethers + Will excuse ye in His sight; + Ef you take a sword an' dror it, + An' go stick a feller thru, + Guv'ment aint to answer for it, + God'll send the bill to you." + +But far more interesting is the revelation of the American capacity for +romance which was made possible by the war between the States. +Stevenson's _Poems of American History_ and Stedman's _Anthology_ give +abundant illustration of almost every aspect of that epical struggle. +The South was in a romantic mood from the very beginning. The North +drifted into it after Sumter. I have already said that no one can +examine a collection of Civil War verse without being profoundly moved +by its evidence of American idealism. In specific phases of the +struggle, in connection with certain battle-fields and certain leaders +of both North and South, this idealism is heightened into pure romance, +so that even our novelists feel that they can give no adequate picture +of the war without using the colors of poetry. Most critics, no doubt, +agree in feeling that we are still too near to that epoch-making crisis +of our national existence to do it any justice in the terms of +literature. Perhaps we must wait for the perfected romance of the years +1861-65, until the men and the events of that struggle are as remote as +the heroes of Greece and Troy. Certainly no one can pass a final +judgment upon the verse occasioned by recent struggles in arms. Any one +who has studied the English poetry inspired by the South-African War +will be painfully conscious of the emotional and moral complexity of +all such issues, of the bitter injustice which poets, as well as other +men, render to one another, of the impossibility of transmuting into +the pure gold of romance the emotions originating in the stock market, +in race-hatred, and in national vainglory. + +We have lingered too long, perhaps, over these various evidences of the +romantic temper of America. We must now glance at the forces of +reaction, the recoil to fact. What is it which contradicts, inhibits, +or negatives the romantic tendency? Among other forces, there is +certainly humor. Humor and romance often go hand in hand, but humor is +commonly fatal to romanticism. There is satire, which rebukes both +romanticism and romance, which exposes the fallacies of the one, and +punctures the exuberance of the other. More effective, perhaps, than +either humor or satire as an antiseptic against romance, is the +overmastering sense of fact. This is what Emerson called the instinct +for the milk in the pan, an instinct which Emerson himself possessed +extraordinarily on his purely Yankee side, and which a pioneer country +is forced continually to develop and to recognize. Camping, for +instance, develops both the romantic sense and the fact sense. Supper +must be cooked, even at Walden Pond. There must be hewers of wood and +drawers of water, and the dishes ought to be washed. + +On a higher plane, also, than this mere sense of physical necessity, +there are forces limiting the influence of romance. Schiller put it all +into one famous line:-- + + "Und was uns alle bändigt, das Gemeine." + +Or listen to Keats:-- + + "'T is best to remain aloof from people, and like their good + parts, without being eternally troubled with the dull process + of their everyday lives.... All I can say is that standing at + Charing Cross, and looking East, West, North and South, I can + see nothing but dullness." + +And Henry James, describing New York in his book, _The American Scene_, +speaks of "the overwhelming preponderance of the unmitigated +'business-man' face ... the consummate monotonous commonness of the +pushing male crowd, moving in its dense mass--with the confusion +carried to chaos for any intelligence, any perception; a welter of +objects and sounds in which relief, detachment, dignity, meaning, +perished utterly and lost all rights ... the universal _will to +move_--to move, move, move, as an end in itself, an appetite at any +price." + +One need not be a poet like Keats or an inveterate psychologist like +Henry James, in order to become aware how the commonplaceness of the +world rests like a fog upon the mind and heart. No one goes to his +day's work and comes home again without a consciousness of contact with +an unspiritual atmosphere, or incompletely spiritualized forces, not +merely with indifference, to what Emerson would term "the over-soul," +but with a lack of any faith in the things which are unseen. Take those +very forces which have limited the influence of Emerson throughout the +United States; they illustrate the universal forces which clip the +wings of romance. The obstacles in the path of Emerson's influence are +not merely the religious and denominational differences which Dr. +George A. Gordon portrayed in a notable article at the time of the +Emerson Centenary. The real obstacles are more serious. It is true +that Dr. Park of Andover, Dr. Bushnell of Hartford, and Dr. Hodge of +Princeton, could say in Emerson's lifetime: "We know a better, a more +Scriptural and certificated road toward the very things which Emerson +is seeking for. We do not grant that we are less idealistic than he. We +think him a dangerous guide, following wandering fires. It is better to +journey safely with us." + +But I have known at least two livery-stable keepers and many college +professors who would unite in saying: "Hodge and Park and Bushnell and +Emerson are all following after something that does not exist. One is +not much more mistaken than the others. We can get along perfectly well +in our business without any of those ideas at all. Let us stick to the +milk in the pan, the horse in the stall, the documents which you will +find in the library." + +There exists, in other words, in all classes of American society +to-day, just as there existed during the Revolution, during the +transcendental movement, or the Civil War, an immense mass of +unspiritualized, unvitalized American manhood and womanhood. No +literature comes from it and no religion, though there is much human +kindness, much material progress, and some indestructible residuum of +that idealism which lifts man above the brute. + +Yet the curious and the endlessly fascinating thing about these forces +of reaction is that they themselves shift and change. We have seen that +external romance depending upon strangeness of scene, novelty of +adventure, rich atmospheric distance of space or time, disappears with +the changes of civilization. The farm expands over the wolf's den, the +Indian becomes a blacksmith, but do the gross and material instincts +ultimately triumph? He would be a hardy prophet who should venture to +assert it. We must reckon always with the swing of the human pendulum, +with the reaction against reaction. Here, for example, during the last +decade, has been book after book written about the reaction against +democracy. All over the world, it is asserted, there are unmistakable +signs that democracy will not practically work in the face of the +modern tasks to which the world has set itself. One reads these books, +one persuades himself that the hour for democracy is passing, and then +one goes out on the street and buys a morning newspaper and discovers +that democracy has scored again. So is it with the experience of the +individual. You may fancy that the romance of the seas passes, for you, +with the passing of the square-sailed ship. If Mr. Kipling's poetry +cannot rouse you from that mood of reaction, walk down to the end of +the pier to-morrow and watch the ocean liner come up the harbor. If +there is no romance there, you do not know romance when you see it! + +Take the case of the farmer; his prosaic life is the butt of the +newspaper paragraphers from one end of the country to the other. But +does romance disappear from the farm with machinery and scientific +agriculture? There are farmers who follow Luther Burbank's experiments +with plants, with all the fascination which used to attach to alchemy +and astrology. The farmer has no longer Indians to fight or a +wilderness to subdue, but the soils of his farm are analyzed at his +state university by men who live in the daily atmosphere of the romance +of science, and who say, as a professor in the University of Chicago +said once, that "a flower is so wonderful that if you knew what was +going on within its cell-structure, you would be afraid to stay alone +with it in the dark." + +The reaction from romance, therefore, real as it is, and dead weight as +it lies upon the soul of the nation, often breeds the very forces which +destroy it. In other words, the reaction against one type of romance +produces inevitably another type of romance, other aspects of wonder, +terror, and beauty. Following the romance of adventure comes, after +never so deep a trough in the sea, the romance of science, like the +crest of another wave; and then comes what we call, for lack of a +better word, the psychological romance, the old mystery and strangeness +of the human soul, Æschylus and Job, as Victor Hugo says, in the poor +crawfish gatherer on the rocks of Brittany. + +We must remember that we are endeavoring to measure great spaces and to +take account of the "amplitude of time." The individual "fact-man," as +Coleridge called him, remains perhaps a fact-man to the end, just as +the dreamer may remain a dreamer. But no single generation is +compounded all of fact or all of dream. Longfellow felt, no doubt, that +there was an ideal United States, which Dickens did not discover +during that first visit of 1842; he would have set the Cambridge which +he knew over against the Cincinnati viewed by Mrs. Trollope; he would +have asserted that the homes characterized by refinement, by +cultivation, by pure and simple sentiment, made up the true America. +But even among Longfellow's own contemporaries there was Whitman, who +felt that the true America was something very different from that +exquisitely tempered ideal of Longfellow. There was Thoreau, who, over +in Concord, had been pushing forward the frontier of the mind and +senses, who had opened his back-yard gate, as it were, upon the +boundless and mysterious territory of Nature. There was Emerson, who +was preaching an intellectual independence of the Old World which +should correspond to the political and social independence of the +Western Hemisphere. There was Parkman, whose hatred of philanthropy, +whose lack of spirituality, is a striking illustration of the rebound +of New England idealism against itself, of the reaction into stoicism. +What different worlds these men lived in, and yet they were all +inhabitants, so to speak, of the same parish; most of them met often +around the same table! The lesson of their variety of experience and +differences of gifts as workmen in that great palace of literature +which is so variously built, is that no action and reaction in the +imaginative world is ever final. Least of all do these actions and +reactions affect the fortunes of true romance. The born dreamer may +fall from one dream into another, but he still murmurs, in the famous +line of William Ellery Channing,-- + + "If my bark sinks, 't is to another sea." + +No line in our literature is more truly American,--unless it be that +other splendid metaphor, by David Wasson, which says the same thing in +other words:-- + + "Life's gift outruns my fancies far, + And drowns the dream + In larger stream, + As morning drinks the morning-star." + + + + +V + +Humor and Satire + + +A distinguished professor in the Harvard Divinity School once began a +lecture on Comedy by saying that the study of the comic had made him +realize for the first time that a joke was one of the most solemn +things in the world. The analysis of humor is no easy matter. It is +hard to say which is the more dreary: an essay on humor illustrated by +a series of jokes, or an exposition of humor in the technical terms of +philosophy. No subject has been more constantly discussed. But it +remains difficult to decide what humor is. It is easier to declare what +seemed humorous to our ancestors, or what seems humorous to us to-day. +For humor is a shifting thing. The well-known collections of the +writings of American humorists surprise us by their revelation of the +changes in public taste. Humor--or the sense of humor--alters while we +are watching. What seemed a good joke to us yesterday seems but a poor +joke to-day. And yet it is the same joke! What is true of the +individual is all the more true of the national sense of humor. This +vast series of kaleidoscopic changes which we call America; has it +produced a humor of its own? + +Let us avoid for the moment the treacherous territory of definitions. +Let us, rather, take one concrete example: a pair of men, a knight and +his squire, who for three hundred years have ridden together down the +broad highway of the world's imagination. Everybody sees that Don +Quixote and Sancho Panza are humorous. Define them as you +will--idealist and realist, knight and commoner, dreamer and +proverb-maker--these figures represent to all the world two poles of +human experience. A Frenchman once said that all of us are Don Quixotes +on one day and Sancho Panzas on the next. Humor springs from this +contrast. It is the electric flash between the two poles of experience. + +Most philosophers who have meditated upon the nature of the comic point +out that it is closely allied with the tragic. Flaubert once compared +our human idealism to the flight of a swallow; at one moment it is +soaring toward the sunset, at the next moment some one shoots it and it +tumbles into the mud with blood upon its glistening wings. The sudden +poignant contrast between light, space, freedom, and the wounded +bleeding bird in the mud, is of the very essence of tragedy. But +something like that is always happening in comedy. There is the same +element of incongruity, without the tragic consequence. It is only the +humorist who sees things truly because he sees both the greatness and +the littleness of mortals; but even he may not know whether to laugh or +to cry at what he sees. Those collisions and contrasts out of which the +stuff of tragedy is woven, such as the clash between the higher and +lower nature of a man, between his past and his present, between one's +duties to himself and to his family or the state, between, in a word, +his character and his situation, are all illustrated in comedy as +completely as in tragedy. The countryman in the city, the city man in +the country, is in a comic situation. Here is a coward named Falstaff, +and Shakespeare puts him into battle. Here is a vain person, and +Malvolio is imprisoned and twitted by a clown. Here is an ignoramus, +and Dogberry is placed on the judge's bench. These contrasts might, +indeed, be tragic enough, but they are actually comic. Such characters +are not ruled by fate but by a sportive chance. The gods connive at +them. They are ruled, like tragic characters, by necessity and +blindness; but the blindness, instead of leading to tragic ruin, leads +only to being caught as in some harmless game of blind-man's-buff. +There is retribution, but Falstaff is only pinched by the fairies. +Comedy of intrigue and comedy of character lead to no real catastrophe. +The end of it on the stage is not death but matrimony; and "home well +pleased we go." + +A thousand definitions of humor lay stress upon this element of +incongruity. Hazlitt begins his illuminating lectures on the Comic +Writers by declaring, "Man is the only animal that laughs or weeps; for +he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what +things are and what they ought to be." James Russell Lowell took the +same ground. "Humor," he said once, "lies in the contrast of two ideas. +It is the universal disenchanter. It is the sense of comic +contradiction which arises from the perpetual comment which the +understanding makes upon the impressions received through the +imagination." If that sentence seems too abstract, all we need do is to +think of Sancho Panza, the man of understanding, talking about Don +Quixote, the man of imagination. + +We must not multiply quotations, but it is impossible not to remember +the distinction made by Carlyle in writing about Richter. "True humor," +says Carlyle, "springs not more from the head than from the heart. It +is not contempt; its essence is love." In other words, not merely the +great humorists of the world's literature--Cervantes, Rabelais, +Fielding, Thackeray, Dickens--but the writers of comic paragraphs for +to-morrow's newspaper, all regard our human incongruities with a sort +of affection. The comic spirit is essentially a social spirit. The +great figures of tragedy are solitary. The immortal figures of comedy +belong to a social group. + +No recent discussion of humor is more illuminating and more directly +applicable to the conditions of American life than that of the +contemporary French philosopher Bergson. Bergson insists throughout +his brilliant little book on _Laughter_ that laughter is a social +function. Life demands elasticity. Hence whatever is stiff, automatic, +machine-like, excites a smile. We laugh when a person gives us the +impression of being a thing,--a sort of mechanical toy. Every +inadaptation of the individual to society is potentially comic. Thus +laughter becomes a social initiation. It is a kind of hazing which we +visit upon one another. But we do not isolate the comic personage as we +do the solitary, tragic figure. The comic personage is usually a type; +he is one of an absurd group; he is a miser, a pedant, a pretentious +person, a doctor or a lawyer in whom the professional traits have +become automatic so that he thinks more of his professional behavior +than he does of human health and human justice. Of all these separatist +tendencies, laughter is the great corrective. When the individual +becomes set in his ways, obstinate, preoccupied, automatic, the rest of +us laugh him out of it if we can. Of course all that we are thinking +about at the moment is his ridiculousness. But nevertheless, by +laughing we become the saviors of society. + +No one, I think, can help observing that this conception of humor as +incongruity is particularly applicable to a new country. On the new +soil and under the new sky, in new social groupings, all the +fundamental contrasts and absurdities of our human society assume a new +value. We see them under a fresh light. They are differently focussed. +The broad humors of the camp, its swift and picturesque play of light +and shade, its farce and caricature no less than its atmosphere of +comradeship, of sentiment, and of daring, are all transferred to the +humor of the newly settled country. The very word "humor" once meant +singularity of character, "some extravagant habit, passion, or +affection," says Dryden, "particular to some one person." Every newly +opened country encourages, for a while, this oddness and incongruity of +individual character. It fosters it, and at the same moment it laughs +at it. It decides that such characters are "humorous." As the social +conditions of such a country change, the old pioneer instinct for +humor, and the pioneer forms of humor, may endure, though the actual +frontier may have moved far westward. + +There is another conception of humor scarcely less famous than the +notion of incongruity. It is the conception associated with the name of +the English philosopher Hobbes, who thought that humor turned upon a +sense of superiority. "The passion of laughter," said Hobbes, "is +nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of +some eminency in ourselves by comparison with the inferiority of +others, or with our own formerly." Too cynical a view, declare many +critics, but they usually end by admitting that there is a good deal in +it after all. I am inclined to think that Hobbes's famous definition is +more applicable to wit than it is to humor. Wit is more purely +intellectual than humor. It rejoices in its little triumphs. It +requires, as has been remarked, a good head, while humor takes a good +heart, and fun good spirits. If you take Carlyle literally when he says +that humor is love, you cannot wholly share Hobbes's conviction that +laughter turns upon a sense of superiority, and yet surely we all +experience a sense of kindly amusement which turns upon the fact that +we, the initiated, are superior, for the moment, to the unlucky person +who is just having his turn in being hazed. It may be the play of +intellect or the coarser play of animal spirits. One might venture to +make a distinction between the low comedy of the Latin races and the +low comedy of the Germanic races by pointing out that the superiority +in the Latin comedy usually turns upon quicker wits, whereas the +superiority in the Germanic farce is likely to turn upon stouter +muscles. But whether it be a play of wits or of actual cudgelling, the +element of superiority and inferiority is almost always there. + +I remember that some German, I dare say in a forgotten lecture-room, +once illustrated the humor of superiority in this way. A company of +strolling players sets up its tent in a country village. On the front +seat is a peasant, laughing at the antics of the clown. The peasant +flatters himself that he sees through those practical jokes on the +stage; the clown ought to have seen that he was about to be tripped up, +but he was too stupid. But the peasant saw that it was coming all the +time. He laughs accordingly. Just behind the peasant sits the village +shopkeeper. He has watched stage clowns many a time and he laughs, not +at the humor of the farce, but at the naïve laughter of the peasant in +front of him. He, the shopkeeper, is superior to such broad and obvious +humor as that. Behind the shopkeeper sits the schoolmaster. The +schoolmaster is a pedant; he has probably lectured to his boys on the +theory of humor, and he smiles in turn at the smile of superiority on +the face of the shopkeeper. Well, peeping in at the door of the tent is +a man of the world, who glances at the clown, then at the peasant, then +at the shopkeeper, then at the schoolmaster, each one of whom is +laughing at the others, and the man of the world laughs at them all! + +Let us take an even simpler illustration. We all know the comfortable +sense of proprietorship which we experience after a few days' sojourn +at a summer hotel. We know our place at the table; we call the head +waiter by his first name; we are not even afraid of the clerk. Now into +this hotel, where we sit throned in conscious superiority, comes a new +arrival. He has not yet learned the exits and entrances. He starts for +the kitchen door inadvertently when he should be headed for the +drawing-room. We smile at him. Why? Precisely because that was what we +did on the morning of our own arrival. We have been initiated, and it +is now his turn. + +If it is true that a newly settled country offers endless opportunities +for the humor which turns upon incongruity, it is also true that the +new country offers countless occasions for the humor which turns upon +the sudden glory of superiority. The backwoodsman is amusing to the man +of the settlements, and the backwoodsman, in turn, gets his full share +of amusement out of watching the "tenderfoot" in the woods. It is +simply the case of the old resident versus the newcomer. The +superiority need be in no sense a cruel or taunting superiority, +although it often happens to be so. The humor of the pioneers is not +very delicately polished. The joke of the frontier tavern or grocery +store is not always adapted to a drawing-room audience, but it turns in +a surprisingly large number of instances upon exactly the same +intellectual or social superiority which gives point to the _bon mots_ +of the most cultivated and artificial society in the world. + +The humor arising from incongruity, then, and the humor arising from a +sense of superiority, are both of them social in their nature. No less +social, surely, is the function of satire. It is possible that satire +may be decaying, that it is becoming, if it has not already become, a +mere splendid or odious tradition. But let us call it a great tradition +and, upon the whole, a splendid one. Even when debased to purely party +or personal uses, the verse satire of a Dryden retains its magnificent +resonance; "the ring," says Saintsbury, "as of a great bronze coin +thrown down on marble." The malignant couplets of an Alexander Pope +still gleam like malevolent jewels through the dust of two hundred +years. The cynicism, the misanthropy, the mere adolescent badness of +Byron are powerless to clip the wings of the wide-ranging, far-darting +wit and humor and irony of _Don Juan_. The homely Yankee dialect, the +provinciality, the "gnarly" flavor of the _Biglow Papers_ do not +prevent our finding in that pungent and resplendent satire the powers +of Lowell at full play; and, what is more than that, the epitome of the +American spirit in a moral crisis. + +I take the names of those four satirists, Dryden, Pope, Byron, and +Lowell, quite at random; but they serve to illustrate a significant +principle; namely, that great satire becomes ennobled as it touches +communal, not merely individual interests, as it voices social and not +merely individual ideals. Those four modern satirists were steeped in +the nationalistic political poetry of the Old Testament. They were +familiar with its war anthems, dirges, and prophecies, its concern for +the prosperity and adversity, the sin and the punishment, of a people. +Here the writers of the Golden Age of English satire found their +vocabulary and phrase-book, their grammar of politics and history, +their models of good and evil kings; and in that Biblical school of +political poetry, which has affected our literature from the +Reformation down to Mr. Kipling, there has always been a class in +satire! The satirical portraits, satirical lyrics, satirical parables +of the Old Testament prophets are only less noteworthy than their +audacity in striking high and hard. Their foes were the all-powerful: +Babylon and Assyria and Egypt loom vast and terrible upon the canvases +of Isaiah and Ezekiel; and poets of a later time have learned there the +secrets of social and political idealism, and the signs of national +doom. + +There are two familiar types of satire associated with the names of +Horace and Juvenal. Both types are abundantly illustrated in English +and American literature. When you meet a bore or a hypocrite or a plain +rascal, is it better to chastise him with laughter or to flay him with +shining fury? I shall take both horns of the dilemma and assert that +both methods are admirable and socially useful. The minor English and +American poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were never +weary of speaking of satire as a terrific weapon which they were forced +to wield as saviors of society. But whether they belonged to the urbane +school of Horace, or to the severely moralistic school of Juvenal, they +soon found themselves falling into one or the other of two modes of +writing. They addressed either the little audience or the big audience, +and they modified their styles accordingly. The great satirists of the +Renaissance, for example, like More, Erasmus, and Rabelais, wrote +simply for the persons who were qualified to understand them. More and +Erasmus wrote their immortal satires in Latin. By so doing they +addressed themselves to cultivated Europe. They ran no risk of being +misunderstood by persons for whom the joke was not intended. All +readers of Latin were like members of one club. Of course membership +was restricted to the learned, but had not Horace talked about being +content with a few readers, and was not Voltaire coming by and by with +the advice to try for the "little public"? + +The typical wit of the eighteenth century, whether in London, Paris, or +in Franklin's printing-shop in Philadelphia, had, of course, abandoned +Latin. But it still addressed itself to the "little public," to the +persons who were qualified to understand. The circulation of the +_Spectator_, which represents so perfectly the wit, humor, and satire +of the early eighteenth century in England, was only about ten thousand +copies. This limited audience smiled at the urbane delicate touches of +Mr. Steele and Mr. Addison. They understood the allusions. The fable +concerned them and not the outsiders. It was something like Oliver +Wendell Holmes reading his witty and satirical couplets to an audience +of Harvard alumni. The jokes are in the vernacular, but in a vernacular +as spoken in a certain social medium. It is all very delightful. + +But there is a very different kind of audience gathering all this while +outside the Harvard gates. These two publics for the humorist we may +call the invited and the uninvited; the inner circle and the outer +circle: first, those who have tickets for the garden party, and who +stroll over the lawn, decorously gowned and properly coated, conversing +with one another in the accepted social accents and employing the +recognized social adjectives; and second, the crowd outside the +gates,--curious, satirical, good-natured in the main, straightforward +of speech and quick to applaud a ready wit or a humor-loving eye or a +telling phrase spoken straight from the heart of the mob. + +Will an author choose to address the selected guests or the casual +crowd? Either way lies fame, if one does it well. Your uninvited men +find themselves talking to the uninvited crowd. Before they know it +they are famous too. They are fashioning another manner of speech. +Defoe is there, with his saucy ballads selling triumphantly under his +very pillory; with his _True-Born Englishman_ puncturing forever the +fiction of the honorable ancestry of the English aristocracy; with his +_Crusoe_ and _Moll Flanders_, written, as Lamb said long afterwards, +for the servant-maid and the sailor. Swift is there, with his terrific +_Drapier's Letters_, anonymous, aimed at the uneducated, with cold fury +bludgeoning a government into obedience; with his _Gulliver's Travels_, +so transparent upon the surface that a child reads the book with +delight and remains happily ignorant that it is a satire upon humanity. +And then, into the London of Defoe and Swift, and into the very centre +of the middle-class mob, steps, in 1724, the bland Benjamin Franklin in +search of a style "smooth, clear, and short," and for half a century, +with consummate skill, shapes that style to his audience. His young +friend Thomas Paine takes the style and touches it with passion, until +he becomes the perfect pamphleteer, and his _Crisis_ is worth as much +to our Revolution--men said--as the sword of Washington. After another +generation the gaunt Lincoln, speaking that same plain prose of Defoe, +Swift, Franklin, and Paine,--Lincoln who began his first Douglas +debate, not like his cultivated opponent with the conventional "Ladies +and Gentlemen," but with the ominously intimate, "My Fellow +Citizens,"--Lincoln is saying, "I am not master of language; I have not +a fine education; I am not capable of entering into a disquisition upon +dialectics, as I believe you call it; but I do not believe the +language I employed bears any such construction as Judge Douglas puts +upon it. But I don't care about a quibble in regard to words. I know +what I meant, and _I will not leave this crowd in doubt_, if I can +explain it to them, what I really meant in the use of that paragraph." + +"_I will not leave this crowd in doubt_"; that is the final accent of +our spoken prose, the prose addressed to one's fellow citizens, to the +great public. This is the prose spoken in the humor and satire of +Dickens. Dressed in a queer dialect, and put into satirical verse, it +is the language of the _Biglow Papers_. Uttered with the accent of a +Chicago Irishman, it is the prose admired by millions of the countrymen +of "Mr. Dooley." + +Satire written to the "little public" tends toward the social type; +that written to the "great public" to the political type. It is obvious +that just as a newly settled country offers constant opportunity for +the humor of incongruity and the humor arising from a sense of +superiority, it likewise affords a daily stimulus to the use of satire. +That moralizing Puritan strain of censure which lost none of its +harshness in crossing the Atlantic Ocean found full play in the +colonial satire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As the +topics for satire grew wider and more political in their scope, the +audiences increased. To-day the very oldest issues of the common life +of that queer "political animal" named man are discussed by our popular +newspaper satirists in the presence of a democratic audience that +stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific. + +Is there, then, a distinctly American type of humor and satire? I think +it would be difficult to prove that our composite American nationality +has developed a mode of humor and satire which is racially different +from the humor and satire of the Old World. All racial lines in +literature are extremely difficult to draw. If you attempt to analyze +English humor, you find that it is mostly Scotch or Irish. If you put +Scotch and Irish humor under the microscope, you discover that most of +the best Scotch and Irish jokes are as old as the Greeks and the +Egyptians. You pick up a copy of _Fliegende Blätter_ and you get keen +amusement from its revelation of German humor. But how much of this +humor, after all, is either essentially universal in its scope or else +a matter of mere stage-setting and machinery? Without the Prussian +lieutenant the _Fliegende Blätter_ would lose half its point; nor can +one imagine a _Punch_ without a picture of the English policeman. The +lieutenant and the policeman, however, are a part of the accepted +social furniture of the two countries. They belong to the decorative +background of the social drama. They heighten the effectiveness of +local humor, but it may be questioned whether they afford any evidence +of genuine racial differentiation as to the sense of the comic. + +What one can abundantly prove, however, is that the United States +afford a new national field for certain types of humor and satire. Our +English friends are never weary of writing magazine articles about +Yankee humor, in which they explain the peculiarities of the American +joke with a dogmatism which has sometimes been thought to prove that +there is such a thing as national lack of humor, whether there be such +a thing as national humor or not. One such article, I remember, +endeavored to prove that the exaggeration often found in American +humor was due to the vastness of the American continent. Our geography, +that is to say, is too much for the Yankee brain. Mr. Birrell, an +expert judge of humor, surely, thinks that the characteristic of +American humor lies in its habit of speaking of something hideous in a +tone of levity. Many Englishmen, in fact, have been as much impressed +with this minimizing trick of American humor as with the converse trick +of magnifying. Upon the Continent the characteristic trait of American +humor has often been thought to be its exuberance of phrase. Many +shrewd judges of our newspaper humor have pointed out that one of its +most favorite methods is the suppression of one link in the chain of +logical reasoning. Such generalizations as these are always +interesting, although they may not take us very far. + +Yet it is clear that certain types of humor and satire have proved to +be specially adapted to the American soil and climate. Whether or not +these types are truly indigenous one may hesitate to say, yet it +remains true that the well-known conditions of American life have +stimulated certain varieties of humor into such a richness of +manifestation as the Old World can scarcely show. + +Curiously enough, one of the most perfected types of American humor is +that urbane Horatian variety which has often been held to be the +exclusive possession of the cultivated and restricted societies of +older civilization. Yet it is precisely this kind of humor which has +been the delight of some of the most typical American minds. Benjamin +Franklin, for example, modelled his style and his sense of the humorous +on the papers of the _Spectator_. He produced humorous fables and +apologues, choice little morsels of social and political persiflage, +which were perfectly suited, not merely to the taste of London in the +so-called golden age of English satire, but to the tone of the wittiest +salons of Paris in the age when the old régime went tottering, talking, +quoting, jesting to its fall. Read Franklin's charming and wise letter +to Madame Brillon about giving too much for the whistle. It is the +perfection of well-bred humor: a humor very American, very Franklinian, +although its theme and tone and phrasing might well have been envied by +Horace or Voltaire. + +The gentle humor of Irving is marked by precisely those traits of +urbanity and restraint which characterize the parables of Franklin. +Does not the _Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_ itself presuppose the +existence of a truly cultivated society? Its tone--"As I was saying +when I was interrupted"--is the tone of the intimate circle. There was +so much genuine humanity in the gay little doctor that persons born +outside the circle of Harvard College and the North Shore and Boston +felt themselves at once initiated by the touch of his merry wand into a +humanized, kindly theory of life. The humor of George William Curtis +had a similarly mellow and ripened quality. It is a curious comment +upon that theory of Americans which represents us primarily as a +loud-voiced, assertive, headstrong people, to be thus made aware that +many of the humorists whom we have loved best are precisely those whose +writing has been marked by the most delicate restraint, whose theory of +life has been the most highly urbane and civilized, whose work is +indistinguishable in tone--though its materials are so different--from +that of other humorous writers on the other side of the Atlantic. On +its social side all this is a fresh proof of the extraordinary +adaptability of the American mind. On the literary side it is one more +evidence of the national fondness for neatness and perfection of +workmanship. + +But we are something other than a nation of mere lovers and would-be +imitators of Charles Lamb. The moralistic type of humor, the crack of +Juvenal's whip, as well as the delicate Horatian playing around the +heart-strings, has characterized our humor and satire from the +beginning. At bottom the American is serious. Beneath the surface of +his jokes there is moral earnestness, there is ethical passion. Take, +for example, some of the apothegms of "Josh Billings." He failed with +the public until he took up the trick of misspelling his words. When he +had once gained his public he sometimes delighted them with sheer +whimsical incongruity, like this:-- + + "There iz 2 things in this life for which we are never fully + prepared, and that iz twins." + +But more often the tone is really grave. It is only the spelling that +is queer. The moralizing might be by La Bruyère or La Rochefoucauld. +Take this:-- + + "Life iz short, but it iz long enuff to ruin enny man who + wants tew be ruined." + +Or this:-- + + "When a feller gits a goin doun hill, it dus seem as tho evry + thing had bin greased for the okashun." That is what writers + of tragedy have been showing, ever since the Greeks! + +Or finally, this, which has the perfect tone of the great French +moralists:-- + + "It iz a verry delicate job to forgive a man without lowering + him in his own estimashun, and yures too." + +See how the moralistic note is struck in the field of political satire. +It is 1866, and "Petroleum V. Nasby," writing from "Confedrit X Roads," +Kentucky, gives Deekin Pogram's views on education. "He didn't bleeve +in edjucashun, generally speekin. The common people was better off +without it, ez edjucashun hed a tendency to unsettle their minds. He +had seen the evil effex ov it in niggers and poor whites. So soon ez a +nigger masters the spellin book and gits into noosepapers, he becomes +dissatisfied with his condishin, and hankers after a better cabin and +more wages. He towunst begins to insist onto ownin land hisself, and +givin his children edjucashun, and, ez a nigger, for our purposes, aint +worth a soo markee." + +The single phrase, "ez a nigger," spells a whole chapter of American +history. + +That quotation from "Petroleum V. Nasby" serves also to illustrate a +species of American humor which has been of immense historical +importance and which has never been more active than it is to-day: the +humor, namely, of local, provincial, and sectional types. Much of this +falls under Bergson's conception of humor as social censure. It rebukes +the extravagance, the rigidity, the unawareness of the individual who +fails to adapt himself to his social environment. It takes the place, +in our categories of humor, of those types of class humor and satire in +which European literature is so rich. The mobility of our population, +the constant shifting of professions and callings, has prevented our +developing fixed class types of humor. We have not even the lieutenant +or the policeman as permanent members of our humorous stock company. +The policeman of to-day may be mayor or governor to-morrow. The +lieutenant may go back to his grocery wagon or on to his department +store. But whenever and wherever such an individual fails to adapt +himself to his new companions, fails to take on, as it were, the colors +of his new environment, to speak in the new social accents, to follow +the recognized patterns of behavior, then the kindly whip of the +humorist is already cracking round his ears. The humor and satire of +college undergraduate journalism turns mainly upon the recognized +ability or inability of different individuals to adapt themselves to +their changing pigeon-holes in the college organism. A freshman must +behave like a freshman, or he is laughed at. Yet he must not behave as +if he were nothing but the automaton of a freshman, or he will be +laughed at more merrily still. + +One of the first discoveries of our earlier humorists was the Down-East +Yankee. "I'm going to Portland whether or no," says Major Jack Downing, +telling the story of his boyhood; "I'll see what this world is made of +yet. So I tackled up the old horse and packed in a load of ax handles +and a few notions, and mother fried me a few doughnuts ... for I told +her I didn't know how long I should be gone,"--and off he goes to +Portland, to see what the world is made of. It is a little like Defoe, +and a good deal like the young Ulysses, bent upon knowing cities and +men and upon getting the best of bargains. + +Each generation of Americans has known something like that trip to +Portland. Each generation has had to measure its wits, its resources, +its manners, against new standards of comparison. At every stage of the +journey there are mishaps and ridiculous adventures; but everywhere, +likewise, there is zest, conquest, initiation; the heart of a boy who +"wants to know"--as the Yankees used to say; or, in more modern +phrase,-- + + "to admire and for to see, + For to behold this world so wide." + +There is the same romance of adventure in the humor concerning the +Irishman, the Negro, the Dutchman, the Dago, the farmer. Each in turn +becomes humorous through failure to adapt himself to the prevalent +type. A long-bearded Jew is not ridiculous in Russia, but he rapidly +becomes ridiculous even on the East Side of New York. Underneath all +this popular humor of the comic supplements one may catch glimpses of +the great revolving wheels which are crushing the vast majority of our +population into something like uniformity. It is a process of social +attrition. The sharp edges of individual behavior get rounded off. The +individual loses color and picturesqueness, precisely as he casts aside +the national costume of the land from which he came. His speech, his +gait, his demeanor, become as nearly as possible like the speech and +carriage of all his neighbors. If he resists, he is laughed at; and if +he does not personally heed the laughter, he may be sure that his +children do. It is the children of our immigrants who catch the sly +smiles of their school-fellows, who overhear jokes from the newspapers +and on the street corners, who bring home to their foreign-born fathers +and mothers the imperious childish demand to make themselves like unto +everybody else. + +A similar social function is performed by that well-known mode of +American humor which ridicules the inhabitants of certain states. Why +should New Jersey, for example, be more ridiculous than Delaware? In +the eyes of the newspaper paragrapher it unquestionably is, just as +Missouri has more humorous connotations than Kentucky. We may think we +understand why we smile when a man says that he comes from Kalamazoo +or Oshkosh, but the smile when he says "Philadelphia" or "Boston" or +"Brooklyn" is only a trifle more subtle. It is none the less real. Why +should the suburban dweller of every city be regarded with humorous +condescension by the man who is compelled to sleep within the city +limits? No one can say, and yet without that humor of the suburbs the +comic supplements of American newspapers would be infinitely less +entertaining,--to the people who enjoy comic supplements. + +So it is with the larger divisions of our national life. Yankee, +Southerner, Westerner, Californian, Texan, each type provokes certain +connotations of humor when viewed by any of the other types. Each type +in turn has its note of provinciality when compared with the norm of +the typical American. It is quite possible to maintain that our +literature, like our social life, has suffered by this ever-present +American sense of the ridiculous. Our social consciousness might be far +more various and richly colored, there might be more true provincial +independence of speech and custom and imagination if we had not to +reckon with this ever-present censure of laughter, this fear of +finding ourselves, our city, our section, out of touch with the +prevalent tone and temper of the country as a whole. It is one of the +forfeits we are bound to pay when we play the great absorbing game of +democracy. + +We are now ready to ask once more whether there is a truly national +type of American humor. Viewed exclusively from the standpoint of +racial characteristics, we have seen that this question as to a +national type of humor is difficult to answer. But we have seen with +equal clearness that the United States has offered a singularly rich +field for the development of the sense of humor; and furthermore that +there are certain specialized forms of humor which have flourished +luxuriantly upon our soil. Our humorists have made the most of their +native materials. Every pioneer trait of versatility, curiosity, +shrewdness, has been turned somehow to humorous account. The very +institutions of democracy, moulding day by day and generation after +generation the habits and the mental characteristics of millions of +men, have produced a social atmosphere in which humor is one of the +most indisputable elements. + +I recall a notable essay by Mr. Charles Johnston on the essence of +American humor in which he applies to the conditions of American life +one familiar distinction between humor and wit. Wit, he asserts, scores +off the other man, humor does not. Wit frequently turns upon tribal +differences, upon tribal vanity. The mordant wit of the Jew, for +example, from the literature of the Old Testament down to the raillery +of Heine, has turned largely upon the sense of racial superiority, of +intellectual and moral differences. But true humor, Mr. Johnston goes +on to argue, has always a binding, a uniting quality. Thus Huckleberry +Finn and Jim Hawkins, white man and black man, are afloat together on +the Mississippi River raft and they are made brethren by the fraternal +quality of Mark Twain's humor. Thus the levelling quality of Bret +Harte's humor bridges social and moral chasms. It creates an atmosphere +of charity and sympathy. In fact, the typical American humor, according +to the opinion of Mr. Johnston, emphasizes the broad and humane side of +our common nature. It reveals the common soul. It possesses a +surplusage of power, of buoyancy and of conquest over circumstances. +It means at its best a humanizing of our hearts. + +Some people will think that all this is too optimistic, but if you are +not optimistic enough you cannot keep up with the facts. Certain it is +that the pioneers of American national humor, the creators of what we +may call the "all-American" type of humor, have possessed precisely the +qualities which Mr. Johnston has pointed out. They are apparent in the +productions of Artemus Ward. The present generation vaguely remembers +Artemus Ward as the man who was willing to send all his wife's +relatives to the war and who, standing by the tomb of Shakespeare, +thought it "a success." But no one who turns to the almost forgotten +pages of that kindly jester can fail to be impressed by his sunny +quality, by the atmosphere of fraternal affection which glorifies his +queer spelling and his somewhat threadbare witticisms. Mark Twain, who +is universally recognized by Europeans as a representative of typical +American humor, had precisely those qualities of pioneer curiosity, +swift versatility, absolute democracy, which are characteristic of the +national temper. His lively accounts of frontier experiences in +_Roughing It_, his comments upon the old world in _Innocents Abroad_ +and _A Tramp Abroad_, his hatred of pretence and injustice, his scorn +at sentimentality coupled with his insistence upon the rights of +sentiment, in a word his persistent idealism, make Mark Twain one of +the most representative of American writers. Largeness, freedom, human +sympathy, are revealed upon every page. + +It is true that the dangers of American humor are no less in evidence +there. There is the danger of extravagance, which in Mark Twain's +earlier writings was carried to lengths of absurdity. There is the old +danger of the professional humorist of fearing to fail to score his +point, and so of underscoring it with painful reiteration. Mark Twain +is frequently grotesque. Sometimes there is evidence of imperfect +taste, or of bad taste. Sometimes there is actual vulgarity. In his +earlier books particularly there is revealed that lack of discipline +which has been such a constant accompaniment of American writing. Yet a +native of Hannibal, Missouri, trained on a river steamboat and in a +country printing-office and in mining-camps, can scarcely be expected +to exhibit the finely balanced critical sense of a Matthew Arnold. +Mark Twain was often accused in the first years of his international +reputation of a characteristically American lack of reverence. He is +often irreverent. But here again the boundaries of his irreverence are +precisely those which the national instinct itself has drawn. The joke +stops short of certain topics which the American mind holds sacred. We +all have our favorite pages in the writings of this versatile and +richly endowed humorist, but I think no one can read his description of +the coyote in _Roughing It_, and Huckleberry Finn's account of his +first visit to the circus, without realizing that in this fresh +revelation of immemorial human curiosity, this vivid perception of +incongruity and surprise, this series of lightning-like flashes from +one pole of experience to the other, we have not only masterpieces of +world humor, but a revelation of a distinctly American reaction to the +facts presented by universal experience. + +The picturesque personality and the extraordinarily successful career +of Mark Twain kept him, during the last twenty-five years of his life, +in the focus of public attention. But no one can read the pages of the +older American humorists,--or try to recall to mind the names of +paragraphers who used to write comic matter for this or that +newspaper,--without realizing how swiftly the dust of oblivion settles +upon all the makers of mere jokes. It is enough, perhaps, that they +caused a smile for the moment. Even those humorists who mark epochs in +the history of American provincial and political satire, like Seba +Smith with his _Major Jack Downing_, Newell with his _Papers of Orpheus +C. Kerr_, "Petroleum V. Nasby's" _Letters from the Confedrit X Roads_, +Shillaber's _Mrs. Partington_--all these have disappeared round the +turn of the long road. + + "Hans Breitman gife a barty-- + Vhere ish dot barty now?" + +It seems as if the conscious humorists, the professional funny writers, +had the shortest lease of literary life. They play their little comic +parts before a well-disposed but restless audience which is already +impatiently waiting for some other "turn." One of them makes a hit with +a song or story, just as a draughtsman for a Sunday colored supplement +makes a hit with his "Mutt and Jeff." For a few months everybody +smiles and then comes the long oblivion. The more permanent American +humor has commonly been written by persons who were almost unconscious, +not indeed of the fact that they were creating humorous characters, but +unconscious of the effort to provoke a laugh. The smile lasts longer +than the laugh. Perhaps that is the secret. One smiles as one reads the +delicate sketches of Miss Jewett. One smiles over the stories of Owen +Wister and of Thomas Nelson Page. The trouble, possibly, with the +enduring qualities of the brilliant humorous stories of "O. Henry" was +that they tempt the reader to laugh too much and to smile too little. +When one reads the _Legend of Sleepy Hollow_ or _Diedrich +Knickerbocker's History of New York_, it is always with this gentle +parting of the lips, this kindly feeling toward the author, his +characters and the world. A humorous page which produces that effect +for generation after generation, has the stamp of literature. One may +doubt whether even the extraordinary fantasies of Mark Twain are more +successful, judged by the mere vulgar test of concrete results, than +the delicate humor of Charles Lamb. Our current newspaper and magazine +humor is in no respect more fascinating than in its suggestion as to +the permanent effectiveness of its comic qualities. Who could say, when +he first read Mr. Finley P. Dunne's "Mr. Dooley" sketches, whether this +was something that a whole nation of readers would instantly and +instinctively rejoice over, would find a genial revelation of American +characteristics, would recognize as almost the final word of kindly +satire upon our overworked, over-excited, over-anxious, +over-self-conscious generation? + +The range of this contemporary newspaper and magazine humor is +well-nigh universal,--always saving, it is true, certain topics or +states of mind which the American public cannot regard as topics for +laughter. With these few exceptions nothing is too high or too low for +it. The paragraphers joke about the wheel-barrow, the hen, the mule, +the mother-in-law, the President of the United States. There is no +ascending or descending scale of importance. Any of the topics can +raise a laugh. If one examines a collection of American parodies, one +will find that the happy national talent for fun-making finds full +scope in the parody and burlesque of the dearest national sentiments. +But no one minds; everybody believes that the sentiments endure while +the jokes will pass. The jokes, intended as they are for an immense +audience, necessarily lack subtlety. They tend to partake of the +methods of pictorial caricature. Indeed, caricature itself, as Bergson +has pointed out, emphasizes those "automatic, mechanical-toy" traits of +character and behavior which isolate the individual and make him ill +adapted for his function in society. Our verbal wit and humor, no less +than the pencil of our caricaturists, have this constant note of +exaggeration. "These violent delights have violent ends." But during +their brief and laughing existence they serve to normalize society. +They set up, as it were, a pulpit in the street upon which the comic +spirit may mount and preach her useful sermon to all comers. + +Despite the universality of the objects of contemporary American humor, +despite, too, its prevalent method of caricature, it remains true that +its character is, on the whole, clean, easy-going, and kindly. The old +satire of hatred has lost its force. No one knows why. "Satire has +grown weak," says Mr. Chesterton, "precisely because belief has grown +weak." That is one theory. The late Henry D. Lloyd, of Chicago, +declared in one of his last books: "The world has outgrown the dialect +and temper of hatred. The style of the imprecatory psalms and the +denunciating prophets is out of date. No one knows these times if he is +not conscious of this change." That is another theory. Again, party +animosities are surely weaker than they were. Caricatures are less +personally offensive; if you doubt it, look at any of the collections +of caricatures of Napoleon, or of George the Fourth. Irony is less +often used by pamphleteers and journalists. It is a delicate rhetorical +weapon, and journalists who aim at the great public are increasingly +afraid to use it, lest the readers miss the point. In the editorials in +the Hearst newspapers, for instance, there is plenty of invective and +innuendo, but rarely irony: it might not be understood, and the crowd +must not be left in doubt. + +Possibly the old-fashioned satire has disappeared because the game is +no longer considered worth the candle. To puncture the tire of +pretence is amusing enough; but it is useless to stick tacks under the +steam road-roller: the road-roller advances remorselessly and smooths +down your mischievous little tacks and you too, indifferently. The huge +interests of politics, trade, progress, override your passionate +protest. "Shall gravitation cease when you go by?" I do not compare +Colonel Roosevelt with gravitation, but have all the satirical squibs +against our famous contemporary, from the "Alone in Cubia" to the +"Teddy-see," ever cost him, in a dozen years, a dozen votes? + +Very likely Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Chesterton are right. We are less +censorious than our ancestors were. Americans, on the whole, try to +avoid giving pain through speech. The satirists of the golden age loved +that cruel exercise of power. Perhaps we take things less seriously +than they did; undoubtedly our attention is more distracted and +dissipated. At any rate, the American public finds it easier to forgive +and forget, than to nurse its wrath to keep it warm. Our characteristic +humor of understatement, and our equally characteristic humor of +overstatement, are both likely to be cheery at bottom, though the mere +wording may be grim enough. No popular saying is more genuinely +characteristic of American humor than the familiar "Cheer up. The worst +is yet to come." + +Whatever else one may say or leave unsaid about American humor, every +one realizes that it is a fundamentally necessary reaction from the +pressure of our modern living. Perhaps it is a handicap. Perhaps we +joke when we should be praying. Perhaps we make fun when we ought to be +setting our shoulders to the wheel. But the deeper fact is that most +American shoulders are set to the wheel too often and too long, and if +they do not stop for the joke they are done for. I have always +suspected that Mr. Kipling was thinking of American humor when he wrote +in his well-known lines on "The American Spirit":-- + + "So imperturbable he rules + Unkempt, disreputable, vast-- + And in the teeth of all the schools + I--I shall save him at the last." + +That is the very secret of the American sense of humor: the conviction +that something is going to save us at the last. Otherwise there would +be no joke! It is no accident, surely, that the man who is +increasingly idolized as the most representative of all Americans, the +burden-bearer of his people, the man of sorrows and acquainted with +grief, should be our most inveterate humorist. Let Lincoln have his +story and his joke, for he had faith in the saving of the nation; and +while his Cabinet are waiting impatiently to listen to his Proclamation +of Emancipation, give him another five minutes to read aloud to them +that new chapter by Artemus Ward. + + + + +VI + +Individualism and Fellowship + + +It would be difficult to find a clearer expression of the old doctrine +of individualism than is uttered by Carlyle in his London lecture on +"The Hero as Man of Letters." Listen to the grim child of Calvinism as +he fires his "Annandale grapeshot" into that sophisticated London +audience: "Men speak too much about the world.... The world's being +saved will not save us; nor the world's being lost destroy us. We +should look to ourselves.... For the saving of the world I will trust +confidently to the Maker of the world; and look a little to my own +saving, which I am more competent to!" + +Carlyle was never more soundly Puritanic, never more perfectly within +the lines of the moral traditions of his race than in these injunctions +to let the world go and to care for the individual soul. + +We are familiar with the doctrine on this side of the Atlantic. Here is +a single phrase from Emerson's _Journal_ of September, 1833, written on +his voyage home from that memorable visit to Europe where he first made +Carlyle's acquaintance. "Back again to myself," wrote Emerson, as the +five-hundred-ton sailing ship beat her way westward for a long month +across the stormy North Atlantic:--"Back again to myself.--A man +contains all that is needful to his government within himself. He is +made a law unto himself. All real good or evil that can befall him must +be from himself.... The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man +with himself." + +In the following August he is writing:-- + + "Societies, parties, are only incipient stages, tadpole + states of men, as caterpillars are social, but the butterfly + not. The true and finished man is ever alone." + +On March 23, 1835:-- + + "Alone is wisdom. Alone is happiness. Society nowadays makes + us low-spirited, hopeless. Alone is Heaven." + +And once more:-- + + "If Æschylus is that man he is taken for, he has not yet + done his office when he has educated the learned of Europe + for a thousand years. He is now to approve himself a master + of delight to me. If he cannot do that, all his fame shall + avail him nothing. I were a fool not to sacrifice a thousand + Æschyluses to my intellectual integrity." + +These quotations have to do with the personal life. Let me next +illustrate the individualism of the eighteen-thirties by the attitude +of two famous individualists toward the prosaic question of paying +taxes to the State. Carlyle told Emerson that he should pay taxes to +the House of Hanover just as long as the House of Hanover had the +physical force to collect them,--and not a day longer. + +Henry Thoreau was even more recalcitrant. Let me quote him:-- + + "I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail + once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood + considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet + thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron + grating which strained the light, I could not help being + struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated + me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked + up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that + this was the best use it could put me to, and had never + thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw + that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my + townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or + break through before they could get to be as free as I was. I + did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a + great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all + my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to + treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In + every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for + they thought that my chief desire was to stand on the other + side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how + industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which + followed them out again without let or hindrance, and _they_ + were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach + me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if + they cannot come at some person against whom they have a + spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was + half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her + silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its + foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied + it." + +Here is Thoreau's attitude toward the problems of the inner life. The +three quotations are from his _Walden_:-- + + "Probably I should not consciously and deliberately forsake + my particular calling to do the good which society demands of + me, to save the universe from annihilation." + + "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, + to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could + not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, + discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what + was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice + resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live + deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily + and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to + cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a + corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved + to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of + it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were + sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a + true account of it in my next excursion." + + "It is said that the British Empire is very large and + respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate + power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind + every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if + he should ever harbor it in his mind." + +All of these quotations from Emerson and Thoreau are but various modes +of saying "Let the world go." Everybody knows that in later crises of +American history, both Thoreau and Emerson forgot their old preaching +of individualism, or at least merged it in the larger doctrine of +identification of the individual with the acts and emotions of the +community. And nevertheless as men of letters they habitually laid +stress upon the rights and duties of the private person. Upon a hundred +brilliant pages they preached the gospel that society is in conspiracy +against the individual manhood of every one of its members. + +They had a right to this doctrine. They came by it honestly through +long lines of ancestral heritage. The republicanism of the seventeenth +century in the American forests, as well as upon the floor of the +English House of Commons, had asserted that private persons had the +right to make and unmake kings. The republican theorists of the +eighteenth century had insisted that life, liberty, and the pursuit of +happiness were the birthright of each individual. This doctrine was +related, of course, to the doctrine of equality. If republicanism +teaches that "I am as good as others," democracy is forever hinting +"Others are as good as I." Democracy has been steadily extending the +notion of rights and duties. The first instinct, perhaps, is to ask +what is right, just, lawful, for me? Next, what is right, just, lawful +for my crowd? That is to say, my family, my clan, my race, my country. +The third instinct bids one ask what is right and just and lawful, not +merely for me, and for men like me, but for everybody. And when we get +that third question properly answered, we can afford to close +school-house and church and court-room, for this world's work will have +ended. + +We have already glanced at various phases of colonial individualism. We +have had a glimpse of Cotton Mather prostrate upon the dusty floor of +his study, agonizing now for himself and now for the countries of +Europe; we have watched Jonathan Edwards in his solitary ecstasies in +the Northampton and the Stockbridge woods; we have seen Franklin +preaching his gospel of personal thrift and of getting on in the world. +Down to the very verge of the Revolution the American pioneer spirit +was forever urging the individual to fight for his own hand. Each boy +on the old farms had his own chores to do; each head of a family had to +plan for himself. The most tragic failure of the individual in those +days was the poverty or illness which compelled him to "go on the +town." To be one of the town poor indicated that the individualistic +battle had been fought and lost. No one ever dreamed, apparently, that +a time for old-age pensions and honorable retiring funds was coming. +The feeling against any form of community assistance was like the +bitter hatred of the workhouse among English laborers of the +eighteen-forties. + +The stress upon purely personal qualities gave picturesqueness, color, +and vigor to the early life of the United States. Take the persons whom +Parkman describes in his _Oregon Trail_. They have the perfect +clearness of outline of the portraits by Walter Scott and the great +Romantic school of novelists who loved to paint pictures of interesting +individual men. There is the same stress upon individualistic +portraiture in Irving's _Astoria_; in the humorous journals of early +travellers in the Southern States. It is the secret of the curiosity +with which we observe the gamblers and miners and stage-drivers +described by Bret Harte. In the rural communities of to-day, in the +older portions of the country, and in the remoter settlements of the +West and Southwest, the individual man has a sort of picturesque, and, +as it were, artistic value, which the life of cities does not allow. +The gospel of self-reliance and of solitude is not preached more +effectively by the philosophers of Concord than it is by the +backwoodsmen, the spies, and the sailors of Fenimore Cooper. +Individualism as a doctrine of perfection for the private person and +individualism as a literary creed have thus gone hand in hand. "Produce +great persons, the rest follows," cried Walt Whitman. He was thinking +at the moment about American society and politics. But he believed that +the same law held good in poetry. Once get your great man and let him +abandon himself to poetry and the great poetry will be the result. It +was almost precisely the same teaching as in Carlyle's lecture on "The +Hero as Poet." + +Well, it is clear enough nowadays that both Whitman and Carlyle +underrated the value of discipline. The lack of discipline is the chief +obstacle to effective individualism. The private person must be well +trained, or he cannot do his work; and as civilization advances, it +becomes exceedingly difficult to train the individual without social +coöperation. A Paul or a Mahomet may discipline his own soul in the +Desert of Arabia; he may there learn the lessons that may later make +him a leader of men. But for the average man and indeed for most of the +exceptional men, the path to effectiveness lies through social and +professional discipline. Here is where the frontier stage of our +American life was necessarily weak. We have seen that our ancestors +gained something, no doubt, from their spirit of unconventionally and +freedom. But they also lost something through their dislike for +discipline, their indifference to criticism, their ineradicable +tendency, whether in business, in diplomacy, in art and letters and +education, to go "across lots." A certain degree of physical +orderliness was, indeed, imposed upon our ancestors by the conditions +of pioneer life. The natural prodigality and recklessness of frontier +existence was here and there sharply checked. Order is essential in a +camp, and the thin line of colonies was all camping. A certain instinct +for order underlay that resourcefulness which impresses every reader of +our history. Did the colonist need a tool? He learned to make it +himself. Isolation from the mother country was a stimulus to the +inventive imagination. Before long they were maintaining public order +in the same ingenious fashion in which they kept house. Appeals to +London took too much time. "We send a complaint this year," ran the +saying, "the next year they send to inquire, the third year the +ministry is changed." No wonder that resourcefulness bred independent +action, stimulated the Puritan taste for individualism, and led the way +to self-government. + +Yet who does not know that the inherent instinct for political order +may be accompanied by mental disorderliness? Even your modern +Englishman--as the saying goes--"muddles through." The minds of our +American forefathers were not always lucid. The mysticism of the New +England Calvinists sometimes bred fanaticism. The practical and the +theoretical were queerly blended. The essential unorderliness of the +American mind is admirably illustrated by that "Father of all the +Yankees," Benjamin Franklin. No student of Franklin's life fails to be +impressed by its happy casualness, its cheerful flavor of the +rogue-romance. Gil Blas himself never drifted into and out of an +adventure with a more offhand and imperturbable adroitness. Franklin +went through life with the joyous inventiveness of the amateur. He had +the amateur's enthusiasm, coupled with a clairvoyant penetration into +technical problems such as few amateurs have possessed. With all of his +wonderful patience towards other men, Franklin had in the realm of +scientific experiment something of the typical impatience of the mere +dabbler. He was inclined to lose interest in the special problem before +it was worked out. His large, tolerant intelligence was often as +unorderly as his papers and accounts. He was a wonderful colonial +Jack-of-all-trades; with a range of suggestion, a resourcefulness, a +knack of assimilation, a cosmopolitan many-sidedness, which has left us +perpetually his debtors. Under different surroundings, and disciplined +by a more severe and orderly training, Franklin might easily have +developed the very highest order of professional scientific +achievement. His natural talent for organization of men and +institutions, his "early projecting public spirit," his sense of the +lack of formal educational advantages in the colonies, made him the +founder of the Philadelphia Academy, the successful agitator for public +libraries. Academicism, even in the narrow sense, owes much to this +LL.D. of St. Andrews, D.C.L. of Oxford, and intimate associate of +French academicians. But one smiles a little, after all, to see the +bland printer in this academic company: he deserves his place there, +indeed, but he is something more and other than his associates. He is +the type of youthful, inexhaustible colonial America; reckless of +precedent, self-taught, splendidly alive; worth, to his day and +generation, a dozen born academicians; and yet suggesting by his very +imperfections, that the Americans of a later day, working under +different conditions, are bound to develop a sort of professional +skill, of steady, concentrated, ordered intellectual activity, for +which Franklin possessed the potential capacity rather than the +opportunity and the desire. + +Yet there were latent lines of order, hints and prophecies of a coming +fellowship, running deep and straight beneath the confused surface of +the preoccupied colonial consciousness. In another generation we see +the rude Western democracy asserting itself in the valley of the +Mississippi. This breed of pioneers, like their fathers on the Atlantic +coast line, could turn their hands to anything, because they must. "The +average man," says Mr. Herbert Croly, "without any special bent or +qualifications, was in the pioneer states the useful man. In that +country it was sheer waste to spend much energy upon tasks which +demanded skill, prolonged experience, high technical standards, or +exclusive devotion.... No special equipment was required. The farmer +was obliged to be all kinds of a rough mechanic. The business man was +merchant, manufacturer, and storekeeper. Almost everybody was something +of a politician. The number of parts which a man of energy played in +his time was astonishingly large. Andrew Jackson was successively a +lawyer, judge, planter, merchant, general, politician, and statesman; +and he played most of these parts with conspicuous success. In such a +society a man who persisted in one job, and who applied the most +rigorous and exacting standards to his work, was out of place and +really inefficient. His finished product did not serve its temporary +purpose much better than did the current careless and hasty product, +and his higher standards and peculiar ways constituted an implied +criticism on the easy methods of his neighbors. He interfered with the +rough good-fellowship which naturally arises among a group of men who +submit good naturedly and uncritically to current standards. It is no +wonder, consequently, that the pioneer Democracy viewed with distrust +and aversion the man with a special vocation and high standards of +achievement." + +The truth of this comment is apparent to everybody. It explains the +still lingering popular suspicion of the "academic" type of man. But we +are likely to forget that back of all that easy versatility and +reckless variety of effort there was some sound and patient and +constructive thinking. Lincoln used to describe himself humorously, +slightingly, as a "mast-fed" lawyer, one who had picked up in the woods +the scattered acorns of legal lore. It was a true enough description, +but after all, there were very few college-bred lawyers in the Eighth +Illinois Circuit or anywhere else who could hold their own, even in a +purely professional struggle, with that long-armed logician from the +backwoods. + +There was once a "mast-fed" novelist in this country, who scandalously +slighted his academic opportunities, went to sea, went into the navy, +went to farming, and then went into novel-writing to amuse himself. He +cared nothing and knew nothing about conscious literary art; his style +is diffuse, his syntax the despair of school-teachers, and many of his +characters are bores. But once let him strike the trail of a story, and +he follows it like his own Hawkeye; put him on salt water or in the +wilderness, and he knows rope and paddle, axe and rifle, sea and forest +and sky; and he knows his road home to the right ending of a story by +an instinct as sure as an Indian's. Professional novelists like Balzac, +professional critics like Sainte-Beuve, stand amazed at Fenimore +Cooper's skill and power. The true engineering and architectural lines +are there. They were not painfully plotted beforehand, like George +Eliot's. Cooper took, like Scott, "the easiest path across country," +just as a bee-hunter seems to take the easiest path through the woods. +But the bee-hunter, for all his apparent laziness, never loses sight of +the air-drawn line, marked by the homing bee; and your _Last of the +Mohicans_ will be instinctively, inevitably right, while your _Daniel +Deronda_ will be industriously wrong. + +Cooper literally builded better than he knew. Obstinately unacademic in +his temper and training, he has won the suffrages of the most +fastidious and academic judges of excellence in his profession. The +secret is, I suppose, that the lawlessness, the amateurishness, the +indifference to standards were on the surface,--apparent to +everybody,--the soundness and rightness of his practice were +unconscious. + +Franklin and Lincoln and Cooper, therefore, may be taken as striking +examples of individuals trained in the old happy-go-lucky way, and yet +with marked capacities for socialization, for fellowship. They +succeeded, even by the vulgar tests of success, in spite of their lack +of discipline. But for most men the chief obstacle to effective labor +even as individuals is the lack of thoroughgoing training. + +It is scarcely necessary to add that there are vast obstacles in the +way of individualism as a working theory of society. Carlyle's theory +of "Hero Worship" has fewer adherents than for half a century. It is +picturesque,--that conception of a great, sincere man and of a world +reverencing him and begging to be led by him. But the difficulty is +that contemporary democracy does not say to the Hero, as Carlyle +thought it must say, "Govern me! I am mad and miserable, and cannot +govern myself!" + +Democracy says to the Hero, "Thank you very much, but this is our +affair. Join us, if you like. We shall be glad of your company. But we +are not looking for governors. We propose to govern ourselves." + +Even from the point of view of literature and art,--fields of activity +where the individual performer has often been felt to be quite +independent of his audience,--it is quite evident nowadays that the old +theory of individualism breaks down. Even your lyric poet, who more +than any other artist stands or sings alone, falls easily into mere +lyric eccentricity if he is not bound to his fellows by wholesome and +normal ties. In fact, this lyric eccentricity, weakness, wistfulness, +is one of the notable defects of American poetry. We have always been +lacking in the more objective forms of literary art, like epic and +drama. Poe, and the imitators of Poe, have been regarded too often by +our people as the normal type of poet. One must not forget the silent +solitary ecstasies that have gone into the making of enduring lyric +verse, but our literature proves abundantly how soon sweetness may turn +to an Emily Dickinson strain of morbidness; how fatally the lovely +becomes transformed into the queer. The history of the American short +story furnishes many similar examples. The artistic intensity of a +Hawthorne, his ethical and moral preoccupations, are all a part of the +creed of individualistic art. But both Hawthorne and Poe would have +written,--one dare not say better stories, but at least greater and +broader and more human stories,--if they had not been forced to walk so +constantly in solitary pathways. That fellowship in artistic creation +which has characterized some of the greatest periods of art production +was something wholly absent from the experience of these gifted and +lonely men. Even Emerson and Thoreau wrote "whim" over their portals +more often than any artist has the privilege to write it. Emerson never +had any thorough training, either in philosophy, theology, or history. +He admits it upon a dozen smiling pages. Perhaps it adds to his purely +personal charm, just as Montaigne's confession of his intellectual and +moral weaknesses heightens our fondness for the Prince of Essayists. +But the deeper fact is that not only Emerson and Thoreau, Poe and +Hawthorne, but practically every American writer and artist from the +beginning has been forced to do his work without the sustaining and +heartening touch of national fellowship and pride. Emerson himself felt +the chilling poverty in the intellectual and emotional life of the +country. He betrays it in this striking passage from his _Journal_, +about the sculptor Greenough:-- + + "What interest has Greenough to make a good statue? Who cares + whether it is good? A few prosperous gentlemen and ladies; + but the Universal Yankee Nation roaring in the capitol to + approve or condemn would make his eye and hand and heart go + to a new tune." + +Those words were written in 1836, but we are still waiting for that new +national anthem, sustaining the heart and the voice of the individual +artist. Yet there are signs that it is coming. + +It is obvious that the day for the old individualism has passed. +Whether one looks at art and literature or at the general activities of +American society, it is clear that the isolated individual is +incompetent to carry on his necessary tasks. This is not saying that we +have outgrown the individual. We shall never outgrow the individual. We +need for every page of literature and for every adequate performance of +society more highly perfected individuals. Some one said of Edgar Allan +Poe that he did not know enough to be a great poet. All around us and +every day we find individuals who do not know enough for their specific +job; men who do not love enough, men in whom the power of will is too +feeble. Such men, as individuals, must know and love and will more +adequately; and this not merely to perfect their functioning as +individuals, but to fulfill their obligations to contemporary society. +A true spiritual democracy will never be reached until highly trained +individuals are united in the bonds of fraternal feeling. Every +individual defect in training, defect in aspiration, defect in passion, +becomes ultimately a defect in society. + +Let us turn, then, to those conditions of American society which have +prepared the way for, and foreshadowed, a more perfect fellowship. We +shall instantly perceive the relation of these general social +conditions to the specific performances of our men of letters. We have +repeatedly noted that our most characteristic literature is what has +been called a citizen literature. It is the sort of writing which +springs from a sense of the general needs of the community and which +has had for its object the safe-guarding or the betterment of the +community. Aside from a few masterpieces of lyric poetry, and aside +from the short story as represented by such isolated artists as Poe and +Hawthorne, our literature as a whole has this civic note. It may be +detected in the first writings of the colonists. Captain John Smith's +angry order at Jamestown, "He that will not work neither let him eat," +is one of the planks in the platform of democracy. Under the trying and +depressing conditions of that disastrous settlement at Eden in _Martin +Chuzzlewit_ it is the quick wits and the brave heart of Mark Tapley +which prove him superior to his employer. The same sermon is preached +in Mr. Barrie's play, _The Admirable Crichton_: cast away upon the +desert island, the butler proves himself a better man than his master. +This is the motive of a very modern play, but it may be illustrated a +hundred times in the history of the seventeenth and eighteenth +centuries in America. The practical experiences of the colonists +confirmed them in their republican theories. It is true that they held +to a doctrine of religious and political individualism. But the moment +these theories were put to work in the wilderness a new order of things +decreed that this individualism should be modified in the direction of +fellowship. Calvinism itself, for all of its insistence upon the value +of the individual soul, taught also the principle of the equality of +all souls before God. It was thus that the _Institutes_ of Calvin +became one of the charters of democracy. The democratic drift in the +writings of Franklin and Jefferson is too well known to need any +further comment. The triumph of the rebellious colonists of 1776 was a +triumph of democratic principles; and although a Tory reaction came +promptly, although Hamiltonianism came to stay as a beneficent check to +over-radical, populistic theories, the history of the last century and +a quarter has abundantly shown the vitality and the endurance of +democratic ideas. + +One may fairly say that the decade in which American democracy revealed +its most ugly and quarrelsome aspect was the decade of the +eighteen-thirties. That was the decade when Washington Irving and +Fenimore Cooper came home from long sojourns in Europe. They found +themselves confronted at once by sensitive, suspicious neighbors who +hated England and Europe and had a lurking or open hostility towards +anything that savored of Old World culture. Yet in that very epoch +when English visitors were passing their most harsh and censorious +verdict upon American culture, Emerson was writing in his _Journal_ +(June 18, 1834) a singular prophecy to the effect that the evils of +our democracy, so far as literature was concerned, were to be cured by +the remedy of more democracy. Is it not striking that he turns away +from the universities and the traditional culture of New England and +looks towards the Jacksonism of the new West to create a new and native +American literature? Here is the passage:-- + + "We all lean on England; scarce a verse, a page, a newspaper, + but is writ in imitation of English forms; our very manners + and conversation are traditional, and sometimes the life + seems dying out of all literature, and this enormous paper + currency of Words is accepted instead. I suppose the evil may + be cured by this rank rabble party, the Jacksonism of the + country, heedless of English and of all literature--a stone + cut out of the ground without hands;--they may root out the + hollow dilettantism of our cultivation in the coarsest way, + and the new-born may begin again to frame their own world + with greater advantage." + +From that raw epoch of the eighteen-thirties on to the Civil War, one +may constantly detect in American writing the accents of democratic +radicalism. Partly, no doubt, it was a heritage of the sentiment of the +French Revolution. "My father," said John Greenleaf Whittier, "really +believed in the Preamble of the Bill of Rights, which re-affirmed the +Declaration of Independence." So did the son! Equally clear in the +writings of those thirty years are echoes of the English radicalism +which had so much in common with the democratic movement across the +English Channel. The part which English thinkers and English agitators +played in securing for America the fruits of her own democratic +principles has never been adequately acknowledged. + +That the outcome of the Civil War meant a triumph of democratic ideas +as against aristocratic privilege, no one can doubt. There were no +stancher adherents of the democratic idea than our intellectual +aristocrats. The best Union editorials at the time of the Civil War, +says James Ford Rhodes, were written by scholars like Charles Eliot +Norton and James Russell Lowell. I think it was Lowell who once said, +in combatting the old aristocratic notion of white man supremacy, that +no gentleman is willing to accept privileges that are inaccessible to +other men. This is precisely like the famous sentence of Walt Whitman +which first arrested the attention of "Golden Rule Jones," the mayor of +Toledo, and which made him not only a Whitmaniac for the rest of his +life but one of the most useful of American citizens. The line was, "I +will accept nothing which all may not have their counterpart of on the +same terms." + +This instinct of fellowship cannot be separated, of course, from the +older instincts of righteousness and justice. It involves, however, +more than giving the other man his due. It means feeling towards him as +towards another "fellow." It involves the sentiment of partnership. +Historians of early mining life in California have noted the new phase +of social feeling in the mining-camps which followed upon the change +from the pan--held and shaken by the solitary miner--to the cradle, +which required the coöperation of at least two men. It was when the +cradle came in that the miners first began to say "partner." As the +cradle gave way to placer mining, larger and larger schemes of +coöperation came into use. In fact, Professor Royce has pointed out in +his _History of California_ that the whole lesson of California +history is precisely the lesson most necessary to be learned by the +country as a whole, namely, that the phase of individual gain-getting +and individualistic power always leads to anarchy and reaction, and +that it becomes necessary, even in the interests of effective +individualism itself, to recognize the compelling and ultimate +authority of society. + +What went on in California between 1849 and 1852 is precisely typical +of what is going on everywhere to-day. American men and women are +learning, as we say, "to get together." It is the distinctly +twentieth-century programme. We must all learn the art of getting +together, not merely to conserve the interests of literature and art +and society, but to preserve the individual himself in his just rights. +Any one who misunderstands the depth and the scope of the present +political restlessness which is manifested in every section of the +country, misunderstands the American instinct for fellowship. It is a +law of that fellowship that what is right and legitimate for me is +right and legitimate for the other fellow also. The American mind and +the American conscience are becoming socialized before our very eyes. +American art and literature must keep pace with this socialization of +the intelligence and the conscience, or they will be no longer +representative of the true America. + +Literary illustrations of this spirit of fraternalism lie close at +hand. They are to be found here and there even in the rebellious, +well-nigh anarchic, individualism of the Concord men. They are to be +found throughout the prose and verse of Whittier. No one has preached a +truer or more effective gospel of fellowship than Longfellow, whose +poetry has been one of the pervasive influences in American democracy, +although Longfellow had but little to say about politics and never +posed in a slouch hat and with his trousers tucked into his boots. +Fellowship is taught in the _Biglow Papers_ of Lowell and the stories +of Mrs. Stowe. It is wholly absent from the prose and verse of Poe, and +it imparts but a feeble warmth to the delicately written pages of +Hawthorne. But in the books written for the great common audience of +American men and women, like the novels of Winston Churchill; and in +the plays which have scored the greatest popular successes, like those +of Denman Thompson, Bronson Howard, Gillette, Augustus Thomas, the +doctrine of fellowship is everywhere to be traced. It is in the poems +of James Whitcomb Riley and of Sam Walter Foss; in the work of hundreds +of lesser known writers of verse and prose who have echoed Foss's +sentiment about living in a "house by the side of the road" and being a +"friend of man." + +To many readers the supreme literary example of the gospel of American +fellowship is to be found in Walt Whitman. One will look long before +one finds a more consistent or a nobler doctrine of fellowship than is +chanted in _Leaves of Grass_. It is based upon individualism; the +strong body and the possessed soul, sure of itself amid the whirling of +the "quicksand years"; but it sets these strong persons upon the "open +road" in comradeship; it is the sentiment of comradeship which creates +the indissoluble union of "these States"; and the States, in turn, in +spite of every "alarmist," "partialist," or "infidel," are to stretch +out unsuspicious and friendly hands of fellowship to the whole world. +Anybody has the right to call _Leaves of Grass_ poor poetry, if he +pleases; but nobody has the right to deny its magnificent Americanism. + +It is not merely in literature that this message of fellowship is +brought to our generation. Let me quote a few sentences from the recent +address of George Gray Barnard, the sculptor, in explaining the meaning +of his marble groups now placed at the entrance to the Capitol of +Pennsylvania. "I resolved," says Barnard, "that I would build such +groups as should stand at the entrance to the People's temple ... the +home of those visions of the ever-widening and broadening brotherhood +that gives to life its dignity and its meaning. Life is told in terms +of labor. It is fitting that labor, its triumphs, its message, should +be told to those who gaze upon a temple of the people. The worker is +the hope of all the future. The needs of the worker, his problems, his +hopes, his untold longings, his sacrifices, his triumphs, all of these +are the field of the art of the future. Slowly we are groping our way +towards the new brotherhood, and when that day dawns, men will enter a +world made a paradise by labor. Labor makes us kin. It is for this +reason that there has been placed at the entrance of this great +building the message of the Adam and Eve of the future, the message of +labor and of fraternity." + +That there are defects in this gospel and programme of American +fellowship, every one is aware. If the obstacle to effective +individualism is lack of discipline, the obstacles to effective +fellowship are vagueness, crankiness, inefficiency, and the relics of +primal selfishness. Nobody in our day has preached the tidings of +universal fellowship more fervidly and powerfully than Tolstoï. Yet +when one asks the great Russian, "What am I to do as a member of this +fellowship?" Tolstoï gives but a confused and impractical answer. He +applies to the complex and contradictory facts of our contemporary +civilization the highest test and standard known to him: namely, the +principles of the New Testament. But if you ask him precisely how these +principles are to be made the working programme of to-morrow, the +Russian mysticism and fanaticism settle over him like a fog. We pass +Tolstoïans on the streets of our American cities every day; they have +the eyes of dreamers, of those who would build, if they could, a new +Heaven and a new Earth. But they do not know exactly how to go about +it. Our practical Western minds seize upon some actual plan for +constructive labor. Miss Jane Addams organizes her settlements in the +slums; Booker Washington gives his race models of industrial education; +President Eliot has a theory of university reform and then struggles +successfully for forty years to put that theory into practice. Compared +with the concrete performance of such social workers as these, the +gospel according to Whitman and Tolstoï is bound to seem vague in its +outlines, and ineffective in its concrete results. That such a gospel +attracts cranks and eccentrics of all sorts is not to be wondered at. +They come and go, but the deeper conceptions of fraternalism remain. + +A further obstacle to the progress of fellowship lies in selfishness. +But let us see how even the coarser and rawer and cruder traits of the +American character may be related to the spirit of common endeavor +which is slowly transforming our society, and modifying, before our +eyes, our contemporary art and literature. + +"The West," says James Bryce, "is the most American part of America, +that is to say the part where those features which distinguish America +from Europe come out in the strongest relief." We have already noted in +our study of American romance how the call of the West represented for +a while the escape from reality. The individual, following that +retreating horizon which we name the West, found an escape from +convention and from social law. Beyond the Mississippi or beyond the +Rockies meant to him that "somewheres east of Suez" where the Ten +Commandments are no longer to be found, where the individual has free +rein. But by and by comes the inevitable reaction, the return to +reality. The pioneer sobers down; he finds that "the Ten Commandments +will not budge"; he sees the need of law and order; he organizes a +vigilance committee; he impanels a jury, even though the old Spanish +law does not recognize a jury. The new land settles to its rest. The +output of the gold mines shrinks into insignificance when compared with +the cash value of crops of hay and potatoes. The old picturesque +individualism yields to a new social order, to the conception of the +rights of the state. The story of the West is thus an epitome of the +individual human life as well as the history of the United States. + +We have been living through a period where the mind of the West has +seemed to be the typical national mind. We have been indifferent to +traditions. We have overlooked the defective training of the +individual, provided he "made good." We have often, as in the free +silver craze, turned our back upon universal experience. We have been +recklessly deaf to the teachings of history; we have spoken of the laws +of literature and art as if they were mere conventions designed to +oppress the free activity of the artist. Typical utterances of our +writers are Jack London's "I want to get away from the musty grip of +the past," and Frank Norris's "I do not want to write literature, I +want to write life." + +The soul of the West, and a good deal of the soul of America, has been +betrayed in words like those. Not to share this hopefulness of the +West, its stress upon feeling rather than thinking, its superb +confidence, is to be ignorant of the constructive forces of the nation. +The humor of the West, its democracy, its rough kindness, its faith in +the people, its generous notion of "the square deal for everybody," +its elevation of the man above the dollar, are all typical of the +American way of looking at the world. Typical also, is its social +solidarity, its swift emotionalism of the masses. It is the Western +interest in the ethical aspect of social movements that is creating +some of the moving forces in American society to-day. Experiment +stations of all kinds flourish on that soil. Chicago newspapers are +more alive to new ideas than the newspapers of New York or Boston. No +one can understand the present-day America if he does not understand +the men and women who live between the Allegheny Mountains and the +Rocky Mountains. They have worked out, more successfully than the +composite population of the East, a general theory of the relation of +the individual to society; in other words, a combination of +individualism with fellowship. + +To draw up an indictment against this typical section of our country is +to draw up an indictment against our people as a whole. And yet one who +studies the literature and art produced in the great Mississippi Valley +will see, I believe, that the needs of the West are the real needs of +America. Take that commonness of mind and tone, which friendly foreign +critics, from De Tocqueville to Bryce, have indicated as one of the +dangers of our democracy. This commonness of mind and tone is often one +of the penalties of fellowship. It may mean a levelling down instead of +a levelling up. + +Take the tyranny of the majority,--to which Mr. Bryce has devoted one +of his most suggestive chapters. You begin by recognizing the rights of +the majority. You end by believing that the majority must be right. You +cease to struggle against it. In other words, you yield to what Mr. +Bryce calls "the fatalism of the multitude." The individual has a sense +of insignificance. It is vain to oppose the general current. It is +easier to acquiesce and to submit. The sense of personal responsibility +lessens. What is the use of battling for one's own opinions when one +can already see that the multitude is on the other side? The greater +your democratic faith in the ultimate rightness of the multitude, the +less perhaps your individual power of will. The easier is it for you to +believe that everything is coming out right, whether you put your +shoulder to the wheel or not. + +The problem of overcoming these evils is nothing less than the problem +of spiritualizing democracy. There are some of our hero-worshipping +people who think that that vast result can still be accomplished by +harking back to some such programme as the "great man" theory of +Carlyle. Another theory of spiritualizing democracy, no less familiar +to the student of nineteen-century literature, is what is called "the +divine average" doctrine of Walt Whitman. The average man is to be +taught the glory of his walk and trade. Round every head there is to be +an aureole. "A common wave of thought and joy, lifting mankind again," +is to make us forget the old distinction between the individual and the +social group. We are all to be the sons of the morning. + +We must not pause to analyze or to illustrate these two theories. +Carlyle's theory seems to me to be outworn, and Whitman's theory is +premature. But it is clear that they both admit that the mass of men +are as yet incompletely spiritualized, not yet raised to their full +stature. Unquestionably, our American life is, in European eyes at +least, monotonously uniform. It is touched with self-complacency. It +is too intent upon material progress. It confuses bigness with +greatness. It is unrestful. It is marked by intellectual impatience. +Our authors are eager to write life rather than literature. But they +are so eager that they overlook the need of literary discipline. They +do not learn to write literature and therefore most of them are +incapable of interpreting life. They escape, perhaps, from "the musty +grip of the past," but in so doing they refuse to learn the inexorable +lessons of the past. Hence the fact that our books lack power, that +they are not commensurate with the living forces of the country. The +unconscious, moral, and spiritual life of the nation is not back of +them, making "eye and hand and heart go to a new tune." + +If we could have that, we should ask no more, for we believe in the +nation. I heard a doctor say, the other day, that a man's chief lesson +was to pull his brain down into his spinal cord; that is to say, to +make his activities not so much the result of conscious thought and +volition, as of unconscious, reflex action; to stop thinking and +willing, and simply _do_ what one has to do. May there not be a hint +here of the ultimate relation of the individual to the social +organism; the relation of our literature to our national character? +There is a period, no doubt, when the individual must painfully +question himself, test his powers, and acquire the sense of his own +place in the world. But there also comes a more mature period when he +takes that place unconsciously, does his work almost without thinking +about it, as if it were not his work at all. The brain has gone down +into the spinal cord; the man is functioning as apart of the organism +of society; he has ceased to question, to plan, to decide; it is +instinct that does his work for him. + +Literature and art, at their noblest, function in that instinctive way. +They become the unconscious expression of a civilization. A nation +passes out of its adolescent preoccupation with plans and with +materials. It learns to do its work, precisely as Goethe bade the +artist do his task, without talking about it. We, too, shall outgrow in +time our questioning, our self-analysis, our futile comparison of +ourselves with other nations, our self-conscious study of our own +national character. We shall not forget the distinction between "each" +and "all," but "all" will increasingly be placed at the service of +"each." With fellowship based upon individualism, and with +individualism ever leading to fellowship, America will perform its +vital tasks, and its literature will be the unconscious and beautiful +utterance of its inner life. + + +THE END. + + +The Riverside Press + +CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS + +U. S. A. + + + + + * * * * * + +Transcriber's Notes + + +Pages 53, 141: Changed the oe ligature to oe in the name Crèvecoeur: + (Settlers like Crèvecoeur), (enthusiasm of a settler like Crèvecoeur) + +Page 67: Changed compaign to campaign: + (Their compaign of "exposure," during the last decade,) + +Page 165: Retained the spaced 't is, to match original line of poetry: + ("If my bark sinks, 't is to another sea.") + +Page 222: Changed conciousness to consciousness: + (the preoccupied colonial conciousness.) + +Page 223: Changed explans to explains: + (It explans the still lingering popular suspicion) + +Page 232: Changed sojurns to sojourns: + (Fenimore Cooper came home from long sojurns in Europe.) + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The American Mind, by Bliss Perry + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AMERICAN MIND *** + +***** This file should be named 29952-8.txt or 29952-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/9/5/29952/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Diane Monico, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The American Mind + The E. T. Earl Lectures + +Author: Bliss Perry + +Release Date: September 10, 2009 [EBook #29952] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AMERICAN MIND *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Diane Monico, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + + +<h1><span class="smcap">The American Mind</span></h1> + +<p class="title"><big><i>The E. T. Earl Lectures</i></big><br /><br /> + +1912</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="bbox"> +<p class="title"><big>By the Same Author</big></p> + + + +<ul><li>The American Mind</li> +<li>Park-Street Papers</li> +<li>John Greenleaf Whittier: A Memoir</li> +<li>Walt Whitman</li> +<li>The Amateur Spirit</li> +<li>A Study of Prose Fiction</li> +<li>The Powers at Play</li> +<li>The Plated City</li> +<li>Salem Kittredge and Other Stories</li> +<li>The Broughton House</li> +</ul></div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h1>The American Mind</h1> + +<p class="title"><big>By Bliss Perry</big></p> + +<p class="figcenter" style="width: 153px;"> +<img src="images/image001.png" width="153" height="159" alt="The Riverside Press" title="" /> +</p> + +<p class="title">Boston and New York<br /> + +<big>Houghton Mifflin Company</big><br /> + +1912</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p class="center"><small>COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY BLISS PERRY</small><br /><br /> + +<small>ALL RIGHTS RESERVED</small><br /><br /> + +<i><small>Published October 1912</small></i></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p class="title">TO<br /><br /> + +<big>WALTER MORRIS HART</big></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Preface" id="Preface"></a>Preface</h2> + + +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> <i>material for this book was delivered as +the E. T. Earl Lectures for 1912 at the Pacific +Theological Seminary, Berkeley, California, and +I wish to take this opportunity to express to the +President and Faculty of that institution my appreciation +of their generous hospitality.</i></p> + +<p><i>The lectures were also given at the Lowell +Institute, Boston, the Brooklyn Institute, and +elsewhere, under the title "American Traits in +American Literature." In revising them for publication +a briefer title has seemed desirable, and +I have therefore availed myself of Jefferson's +phrase "The American Mind," as suggesting, +more accurately perhaps than the original title, +the real theme of discussion.</i></p> + +<p class="author"> +B. P. +</p> + +<p><span class="smcap"><small>Cambridge, 1912.</small></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="Contents" id="Contents"></a>Contents</h2> + + +<ol class="toc"> +<li><span class="smcap">Race, Nation, and Book</span> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></span></li> + +<li><span class="smcap">The American Mind</span> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_47">47</a></span></li> + +<li><span class="smcap">American Idealism</span> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_86">86</a></span></li> + +<li><span class="smcap">Romance and Reaction</span> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_128">128</a></span></li> + +<li><span class="smcap">Humor and Satire</span> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_166">166</a></span></li> + +<li><span class="smcap">Individualism and Fellowship</span> <span class="tocright"><a href="#Page_209">209</a></span></li> +</ol> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_AMERICAN_MIND" id="THE_AMERICAN_MIND"></a><big>THE AMERICAN MIND</big></h2> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p><hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I<br /><br /> + +Race, Nation, and Book</h2> + + +<p>Many years ago, as a student in a foreign university, +I remember attacking, with the complacency +of youth, a German history of the +English drama, in six volumes. I lost courage +long before the author reached the age of Elizabeth, +but I still recall the subject of the opening +chapter: it was devoted to the physical geography +of Great Britain. Writing, as the good German +professor did, in the triumphant hour of Taine's +theory as to the significance of place, period, +and environment in determining the character +of any literary production, what could be more +logical than to begin at the beginning? Have +not the chalk cliffs guarding the southern coast +of England, have not the fatness of the midland +counties and the soft rainy climate of a North +Atlantic island, and the proud, tenacious, self-assertive +folk that are bred there, all left their +trace upon <i>A Midsummer Night's Dream</i>, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> +<i>Every Man in his Humour</i> and <i>She Stoops to Conquer</i>? +Undoubtedly. Latitude and longitude, +soil and rainfall and food-supply, racial origins +and crossings, political and social and economic +conditions, must assuredly leave their marks +upon the mental and artistic productiveness of +a people and upon the personality of individual +writers.</p> + +<p>Taine, who delighted to point out all this, and +whose <i>English Literature</i> remains a monument +of the defects as well as of the advantages of +his method, was of course not the inventor of +the climatic theory. It is older than Aristotle, +who discusses it in his treatise on <i>Politics</i>. It +was a topic of interest to the scholars of the Renaissance. +Englishmen of the seventeenth century, +with an unction of pseudo-science added to +their natural patriotism, discovered in the English +climate one of the reasons of England's +greatness. Thomas Sprat, writing in 1667 on +the History of the Royal Society, waxes bold and +asserts: "If there can be a true character given +of the Universal Temper of any Nation under +Heaven, then certainly this must be ascribed +to our countrymen, that they have commonly +an unaffected sincerity, that they love to deliver<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> +their minds with a sound simplicity, that +they have the middle qualities between the reserved, +subtle southern and the rough, unhewn +northern people, that they are not extremely +prone to speak, that they are more concerned +what others will think of the strength than of +the fineness of what they say, and that a universal +modesty possesses them. These qualities +are so conspicuous and proper to the soil that +we often hear them objected to us by some of +our neighbor Satyrists in more disgraceful expressions.... +Even the position of our climate, +the air, the influence of the heaven, the +composition of the English blood, as well as the +embraces of the Ocean, seem to join with the +labours of the <i>Royal Society</i> to render our country +a Land of Experimental Knowledge."</p> + +<p>The excellent Sprat was the friend and executor +of the poet Cowley, who has in the Preface +to his <i>Poems</i> a charming passage about the relation +of literature to the external circumstances +in which it is written.</p> + +<p>"If <i>wit</i> be such a <i>Plant</i> that it scarce receives +heat enough to keep it alive even in the <i>summer</i> +of our cold <i>Clymate</i>, how can it choose but wither +in a long and a sharp <i>winter</i>? a warlike, various<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> +and a tragical age is best to write <i>of</i>, but worst +to write <i>in</i>." And he adds this, concerning his +own art of poetry: "There is nothing that requires +so much serenity and chearfulness of +<i>spirit</i>; it must not be either overwhelmed with +the cares of <i>Life</i>, or overcast with the <i>Clouds</i> of +<i>Melancholy</i> and <i>Sorrow</i>, or shaken and disturbed +with the storms of injurious <i>Fortune</i>; it must, +like the <i>Halcyon</i>, have fair weather to breed in. +The Soul must be filled with bright and delightful +<i>Idaeas</i>, when it undertakes to communicate +delight to others, which is the main end of <i>Poesie</i>. +One may see through the stile of <i>Ovid de +Trist.</i>, the humbled and dejected condition of +<i>Spirit</i> with which he wrote it; there scarce remains +any footstep of that <i>Genius</i>, <i>Quem nec +Jovis ira, nec ignes</i>, etc. The <i>cold</i> of the country +has strucken through all his faculties, and +benummed the very <i>feet</i> of his <i>Verses</i>."</p> + +<p>Madame de Staël's <i>Germany</i>, one of the most +famous of the "national character" books, begins +with a description of the German landscape. +But though nobody, from Ovid in exile down +to Madame de Staël, questions the general significance +of place, time, and circumstances as +affecting the nature of a literary product, when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> +we come to the exact and as it were mathematical +demonstration of the precise workings of +these physical influences, our generation is distinctly +more cautious than were the literary critics +of forty years ago. Indeed, it is a hundred +years since Fisher Ames, ridiculing the theory +that climate acts directly upon literary products, +said wittily of Greece: "The figs are as fine as +ever, but where are the Pindars?" The theory +of race, in particular, has been sharply questioned +by the experts. "Saxon" and "Norman," +for example, no longer seem to us such simple +terms as sufficed for the purpose of Scott's <i>Ivanhoe</i> +or of Thierry's <i>Norman Conquest</i>, a book +inspired by Scott's romance. The late Professor +Freeman, with characteristic bluntness, +remarked of the latter book: "Thierry says at +the end of his work that there are no longer either +Normans or Saxons except in history.... +But in Thierry's sense of the word, it would +be truer to say that there never were 'Normans' +or 'Saxons' anywhere, save in the pages +of romances like his own."</p> + +<p>There is a brutal directness about this verdict +upon a rival historian which we shall probably +persist in calling "Saxon"; but it is no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> +worse than the criticisms of Matthew Arnold's +essay on "The Celtic Spirit" made to-day by +university professors who happen to know +Old Irish at first hand, and consequently consider +Arnold's opinion on Celtic matters to be +hopelessly amateurish.</p> + +<p>The wiser scepticism of our day concerning +all hard-and-fast racial distinctions has been admirably +summed up by Josiah Royce. "A race +psychology," he declares, "is still a science for +the future to discover.... We do not scientifically +know what the true racial varieties of +mental type really are. No doubt there are such +varieties. The judgment day, or the science of +the future, may demonstrate what they are. We +are at present very ignorant regarding the whole +matter."</p> + +<p>Nowhere have the extravagances of the application +of racial theories to intellectual products +been more pronounced than in the fields +of art and literature. Audiences listen to a waltz +which the programme declares to be an adaptation +of a Hungarian folk-song, and though they +may be more ignorant of Hungary than Shakespeare +was of Bohemia, they have no hesitation +in exclaiming: "How truly Hungarian this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> +is!" Or, it may be, how truly "Japanese" is +this vase which was made in Japan—perhaps +for the American market; or how intensely +"Russian" is this melancholy tale by Turgenieff. +This prompt deduction of racial qualities +from works of art which themselves give the +critic all the information he possesses about the +races in question,—or, in other words, the enthusiastic +assertion that a thing is like itself,—is +one of the familiar notes of amateur criticism. +It is travelling in a circle, and the corregiosity +of Corregio is the next station.</p> + +<p>Blood tells, no doubt, and a masterpiece usually +betrays some token of the place and hour +of its birth. A knowledge of the condition of +political parties in Athens in 416 <span class="smcap">B.C.</span> adds immensely +to the enjoyment of the readers of Aristophanes; +the fun becomes funnier and the daring +even more splendid than before. Molière's +training as an actor does affect the dramaturgic +quality of his comedies. All this is demonstrable, +and to the prevalent consciousness of it our +generation is deeply indebted to Taine and his +pupils. But before displaying dogmatically the +inevitable brandings of racial and national traits +on a national literature, before pointing to this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> +and that unmistakable evidence of local or temporal +influence on the form or spirit of a masterpiece, +we are now inclined to make some distinct +reservations. These reservations are not without +bearing upon our own literature in America.</p> + +<p>There are, for instance, certain artists who +seem to escape the influences of the time-spirit. +The most familiar example is that of Keats. He +can no doubt be assigned to the George the +Fourth period by a critical examination of his +vocabulary, but the characteristic political and +social movements of that epoch in England left +him almost untouched. Edgar Allan Poe might +have written some of his tales in the seventeenth +century or in the twentieth; he might, like +Robert Louis Stevenson, have written in Samoa +rather than in the Baltimore, Philadelphia, or +New York of his day; his description of the +Ragged Mountains of Virginia, within very +sight of the university which he attended, was +borrowed, in the good old convenient fashion, +from Macaulay; in fact, it requires something +of Poe's own ingenuity to find in Poe, who is +one of the indubitable assets of American literature, +anything distinctly American.</p> + +<p>Wholly aside from such spiritual insulation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> +of the single writer, there is the obvious fact +that none of the arts, not even literature, and +not all of them together, can furnish a wholly +adequate representation of racial or national +characteristics. It is well known to-day that the +so-called "classic" examples of Greek art, most +of which were brought to light and discoursed +upon by critics from two to four centuries ago, +represent but a single phase of Greek feeling; +and that the Greeks, even in what we choose to +call their most characteristic period, had a distinctly +"romantic" tendency which their more +recently discovered plastic art betrays. But even +if we had all the lost statues, plays, poems, and +orations, all the Greek paintings about which +we know so little, and the Greek music about +which we know still less, does anybody suppose +that this wealth of artistic expression would furnish +a wholly satisfactory notion of the racial +and psychological traits of the Greek people?</p> + +<p>One may go even further. Does a truly +national art exist anywhere,—an art, that is to +say, which conveys a trustworthy and adequate +expression of the national temper as a whole? +We have but to reflect upon the European and +American judgments, during the last thirty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> +years, concerning the representative quality of +the art of Japan, and to observe how many of +those facile generalizations about the Japanese +character, deduced from vases and prints and +enamel, were smashed to pieces by the Russo-Japanese +War. This may illustrate the blunders +of foreign criticism, perhaps, rather than +any inadequacy in the racially representative +character of Japanese art. But it is impossible +that critics, and artists themselves, should not +err, in the conscious endeavor to pronounce +upon the infinitely complex materials with which +they are called upon to deal. We must confess +that the expression of racial and national characteristics, +by means of only one art, such as literature, +or by all the arts together, is at best imperfect, +and is always likely to be misleading +unless corroborated by other evidence.</p> + +<p>For it is to be remembered that in literature, +as in the other fields of artistic activity, we are +dealing with the question of form; of securing +a concrete and pleasurable embodiment of certain +emotions. It may well happen that literature +not merely fails to give an adequate report +of the racial or national or personal emotions +felt during a given epoch, but that it fails to report<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> +these emotions at all. Not only the "old, +unhappy, far-off" things of racial experience, +but the new and delight-giving experiences of +the hour, may lack their poet. Widespread +moods of public elation or wistfulness or depression +have passed without leaving a shadow +upon the mirror of art. There was no one to +hold the mirror or even to fashion it. No note +of Renaissance criticism, whether in Italy, +France, or England, is more striking, and in a +way more touching, than the universal feeling +that in the rediscovery of the classics men had +found at last the "terms of art," the rules and +methods of a game which they had long wished +to be playing. Englishmen and Frenchmen of +the sixteenth century will not allow that their +powers are less virile, their emotions less eager, +than those of the Greeks and Romans. Only, +lacking the very terms of art, they had not been +able to arrive at fit expression; the soul had +found no body wherewith to clothe itself into +beauty. As they avowed in all simplicity, they +needed schoolmasters; the discipline of Aristotle +and Horace and Virgil; a body of critical +doctrine, to teach them how to express the +France and England or Italy of their day, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> +thus give permanence to their fleeting vision of +the world. Naïve as may have been the Renaissance +expression of this need of formal training, +blind as it frequently was to the beauty which +we recognize in the undisciplined vernacular literatures +of mediæval Europe, those groping +scholars were essentially right. No one can +paint or compose by nature. One must slowly +master an art of expression.</p> + +<p>Now through long periods of time, and over +many vast stretches of territory, as our own +American writing abundantly witnesses, the +whole formal side of expression may be neglected. +"Literature," in its narrower sense, +may not exist. In that restricted and higher +meaning of the term, literature has always been +uncommon enough, even in Athens or Florence. +It demands not merely personal distinction +or power, not merely some uncommon +height or depth or breadth of capacity and insight, +but a purely artistic training, which in the +very nature of the case is rare. Millions of Russians, +perhaps, have felt about the general problems +of life much as Turgenieff felt, but they +lacked the sheer literary art with which the +<i>Notes of a Sportsman</i> was written. Thousands of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> +frontier lawyers and politicians shared Lincoln's +hard and varied and admirable training in the +mastery of speech, but in his hands alone was +the weapon wrought to such perfection of temper +and weight and edge that he spoke and +wrote literature without knowing it.</p> + +<p>Such considerations belong, I am aware, to +the accepted commonplaces,—perhaps to what +William James used to call "the unprofitable +delineation of the obvious." Everybody recognizes +that literary gifts imply an exceptionally +rich development of general human capacities, +together with a professional aptitude and training +of which but few men are capable. There is +but one lumberman in camp who can play the +fiddle, though the whole camp can dance. Thus +the great book, we are forever saying, is truly +representative of myriads of minds in a certain +degree of culture, although but one man could +have written it. The writing member of a family +is often the one who acquires notoriety and +a bank account, but he is likely to have candid +friends who admit, though not always in his +presence, that, aside from this one professional +gift and practice, he is not intellectually or emotionally +or spiritually superior to his brothers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> +and sisters. Waldo Emerson thought himself +the intellectual inferior of his brother +Charles; and good observers loved to maintain +that John Holmes was wittier than Oliver +Wendell, and Ezekiel Webster a better lawyer +than Daniel.</p> + +<p>Applied to the literary history of a race, this +principle is suggestive. We must be slow to affirm +that, because certain ideas and feelings did +not attain, in this or that age or place, to purely +literary expression, they were therefore not in +existence. The men and women of the colonial +period in our own country, for instance, have +been pretty uniformly declared to have been +deficient in the sense of beauty. What is the evidence? +It is mostly negative. They produced +no poetry, fiction, painting, sculpture, or music +worthy of the name. They were predominantly +Puritan, and the whole world has been informed +that English Puritanism was hostile to Art. +They were preoccupied with material and moral +concerns. Even if they had remained in England, +Professor Trent affirms, these contemporaries +of Milton and Bunyan would have produced +no art or literature. Now it is quite true +that for nearly two hundred years after the date<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> +of the first settlement of the American colonists, +opportunities for cultivating the arts did not +exist. But that the sense of beauty was wholly +atrophied, I, for one, do not believe. The passionate +eagerness with which the forefathers absorbed +the noblest of all poetry and prose in the +pages of their one book, the Bible; the unwearied +curiosity and care with which those farmers and +fishermen and woodsmen read the signs of the +sky; their awe of the dark wilderness and their +familiar traffic with the great deep; the silences +of lonely places; the opulence of primeval +meadows by the clear streams; the English +flowers that were made to bloom again in farmhouse +windows and along garden walks; the +inner visions, more lovely still, of duty and of +moral law; the spirit of sacrifice; the daily walk +with God, whether by green pastures of the +spirit or through ways that were dark and terrible;—is +there in all this no discipline of the +soul in moral beauty, and no training of the eye +to perceive the exquisite harmonies of the visible +earth? It is true that the Puritans had no +professional men of letters; it is true that doctrinal +sermons provided their chief intellectual +sustenance; true that their lives were stern, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> +that many of the softer emotions were repressed. +But beauty may still be traced in the fragments +of their recorded speech, in their diaries and +letters and phrases of devotion. You will search +the eighteenth century of old England in vain +for such ecstasies of wonder at the glorious +beauty of the universe as were penned by Jonathan +Edwards in his youthful <i>Diary</i>. There is +every presumption, from what we know of the +two men, that Whittier's father and grandfather +were peculiarly sensitive to the emotions of +home and neighborhood and domesticity which +their gifted descendant—too physically frail +to be absorbed in the rude labor of the farm—has +embodied in <i>Snow-Bound</i>. The Quaker +poet knew that he surpassed his forefathers in +facility in verse-making, but he would have been +amused (as his <i>Margaret Smith's Journal</i> proves) +at the notion that his ancestors were without a +sense of beauty or that they lacked responsiveness +to the chords of fireside sentiment. He +was simply the only Whittier, except his sister +Elizabeth, who had ever found leisure, as old-fashioned +correspondents used to say, "to take +his pen in hand." This leisure developed in him +the sense—latent no doubt in his ancestors—of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> +the beauty of words, and the excitement +of rhythm. Emerson's <i>Journal</i> in the eighteen-thirties +glows with a Dionysiac rapture over +what he calls "delicious days"; but did the +seven generations of clergymen from whom +Emerson descended have no delicious and +haughty and tender days that passed unrecorded? +Formal literature perpetuates and +glorifies many aspects of individual and national +experience; but how much eludes it wholly, or +is told, if at all, in broken syllables, in Pentecostal +tongues that seem to be our own and yet +are unutterably strange!</p> + +<p>To confess thus that literature, in the proper +sense of the word, represents but a narrow segment +of personal or racial experience, is very +far from a denial of the genuineness and the +significance of the affirmations which literature +makes. We recognize instinctively that Whittier's +<i>Snow-Bound</i> is a truthful report, not merely +of a certain farmhouse kitchen in East Haverhill, +Massachusetts, during the early nineteenth +century, but of a mode of thinking and feeling +which is widely diffused wherever the Anglo-Saxon +race has wandered. Perhaps <i>Snow-Bound</i> +lacks a certain universality of suggestiveness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> +which belongs to a still more famous poem, <i>The +Cotter's Saturday Night</i> of Burns, but both of +these portrayals of rustic simplicity and peace +owe their celebrity to their truly representative +character. They are evidence furnished by a +single art, as to a certain mode and coloring of +human existence; but every corroboration of +that evidence heightens our admiration for the +artistic sincerity and insight of the poet. To +draw an illustration from a more splendid epoch, +let us remind ourselves that the literature of +the "spacious times of great Elizabeth"—a +period of strong national excitement, and one +deeply representative of the very noblest and +most permanent traits of English national character—was +produced within startlingly few +years and in a local territory extremely limited. +The very language in which that literature is +clothed was spoken only by the court, by a couple +of counties, and at the two universities. Its +prose and verse were frankly experimental. It +is true that such was the emotional ferment of +the score of years preceding the Armada, that +great captains and voyagers who scarcely wrote +a line were hailed as kings of the realm of imagination, +and that Puttenham, in phrases which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> +that generation could not have found extravagant, +inscribes his book on Poetry to Queen +Elizabeth as the "most excellent Poet" of the +age. Well, the glorified political images may +grow dim or tawdry with time, but the poetry +has endured, and it is everywhere felt to be a +truly national, a deeply racial product. Its time +and place and hour were all local; but the Canadian +and the American, the South African +and Australasian Englishman feels that that +Elizabethan poetry is his poetry still.</p> + +<p>When we pass, therefore, as we must shortly +do, to the consideration of this and that literary +product of America, and to the scrutiny of the +really representative character of our books, we +must bear in mind that the questions concerning +the race, the place, the hour, the man,—questions +so familiar to modern criticism,—remain +valid and indeed essential; but that in applying +them to American writing there are certain +allowances, qualifications, adjustments of +the scale of values, which are no less important +to an intelligent perception of the quality of our +literature. This task is less simple than the critical +assessment of a typical German or French +or Scandinavian writer, where the strain of blood<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> +is unmixed, the continuity of literary tradition +unbroken, the precise impact of historical and +personal influences more easy to estimate. I +open, for example, any one of half a dozen +French studies of Balzac. Here is a many-sided +man, a multifarious writer, a personality that +makes ridiculous the merely formal pigeon-holing +and labelling processes of professional +criticism. And yet with what perfect precision +of method and certainty of touch do Le Breton, +for example, or Brunetière, in their books on +Balzac, proceed to indicate those impulses of +race and period and environment which affected +the character of Balzac's novels! The fact that +he was born in Tours in 1799 results in the inevitable +and inevitably expert paragraphs about +Gallic blood, and the physical exuberance of the +Touraine surroundings of his youth, and the +post-revolutionary tendency to disillusion and +analysis. And so with Balzac's education, his +removal to Paris in the Restoration period, his +ventures in business and his affairs of love, his +admiration for Shakespeare and for Fenimore +Cooper; his mingled Romanticism and Realism; +his Titanism and his childishness; his stupendous +outline for the Human Comedy; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> +his scarcely less astounding actual achievement. +All this is discussed by his biographers with the +professional dexterity of critics trained intellectually +in the Latin traditions and instinctively +aware of the claims of race, biographers familiar +with every page of French history, and profoundly +interested, like their readers, in every +aspect of French life. Alas, we may say, in +despairing admiration of such workmanship, +"they order these things better in France." +And they do; but racial unity, and long lines of +national literary tradition, make these things +easier to order than they are with us. The +intellectual distinction of American critical +biographies like Lounsbury's <i>Cooper</i> or Woodberry's +<i>Hawthorne</i> is all the more notable because +we possess such a slender body of truly +critical doctrine native to our own soil; because +our national literary tradition as to available +material and methods is hardly formed; because +the very word "American" has a less precise +connotation than the word "New Zealander."</p> + +<p>Let us suppose, for instance, that like Professor +Woodberry a few years ago, we were +asked to furnish a critical study of Hawthorne. +The author of <i>The Scarlet Letter</i> is one of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> +most justly famous of American writers. But +precisely what national traits are to be discovered +in this eminent fellow-countryman of ours? +We turn, like loyal disciples of Taine and Sainte-Beuve, +to his ancestral stock. We find that it +is English as far back as it can be traced; as +purely English as the ancestry of Dickens or +Thackeray, and more purely English than the +ancestry of Browning or Burke or His Majesty +George the Fifth. Was Hawthorne, then, simply +an Englishman living in America? He +himself did not think so,—as his <i>English Note-Books</i> +abundantly prove. But just what subtle +racial differentiation had been at work, since +William Hawthorne migrated to Massachusetts +with Winthrop in 1630? Here we face, unless +I am mistaken, that troublesome but fascinating +question of Physical Geography. Climate, +soil, food, occupation, religious or moral preoccupation, +social environment, Salem witchcraft +and Salem seafaring had all laid their invisible +hands upon the physical and intellectual +endowment of the child born in 1804. Does +this make Nathaniel Hawthorne merely an +"Englishman with a difference," as Mr. Kipling, +born in India, is an "Englishman with a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> +difference"? Hawthorne would have smiled, +or, more probably, he would have sworn, at such +a question. He considered himself an American +Democrat; in fact a <i>contra mundum</i> Democrat, +for good or for ill. Is it, then, a political +theory, first put into full operation in this +country a scant generation before Hawthorne's +birth, which made him un-English? We must +walk warily here. Our Canadian neighbors of +English stock have much the same climate, soil, +occupations, and preoccupations as the inhabitants +of the northern territory of the United +States. They have much the same courts, +churches, and legislatures. They read the same +books and magazines. They even prefer baseball +to cricket. They are loyal adherents of a +monarchy, but they are precisely as free, as self-governing, +and—in the social sense of the +word—as "democratic"—in spite of the absence +of a republican form of government—as +the citizens of that "land of the free and home +of the brave" which lies to the south of them. +Yet Canadian literature, one may venture to +affirm, has remained to this hour a "colonial" +literature, or, if one prefers the phrase, a literature +of "Greater Britain." Was Hawthorne<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> +possibly right in his instinct that politics did +make a difference, and that in writing <i>The +Marble Faun</i>,—the scene of which is laid in +Rome,—or <i>The House of the Seven Gables</i>,—which +is a story of Salem,—he was consistently +engaged in producing, not "colonial" +or "Greater-British" but distinctly American +literature? We need not answer this question +prematurely, if we wish to reserve our judgment, +but it is assuredly one of the questions +which the biographers and critics of our men +of letters must ultimately face and answer.</p> + +<p>Furthermore, the student of literature produced +in the United States of America must +face other questions almost as complicated as +this of race. In fact, when we choose Hawthorne +as a typical case in which to observe the American +refashioning of the English temper into +something not English, we are selecting a very +simple problem compared with the complexities +which have resulted from the mingling of +various European stocks upon American soil. +But take, for the moment, the mere obvious +matter of expanse of territory. We are obliged +to reckon, not with a compact province such as +those in which many Old World literatures<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> +have been produced, but with what our grandfathers +considered a "boundless continent." +This vast national domain was long ago "organized" +for political purposes: but so far as +literature is concerned it remains unorganized +to-day. We have, as has been constantly observed, +no literary capital, like London or Paris, +to serve as the seat of centralized authority; +no code of literary procedure and conduct; no +"lawgivers of Parnassus"; no supreme court of +letters, whose judgments are recognized and +obeyed. American public opinion asserts itself +with singular unanimity and promptness in the +field of politics. In literary matters we remain +in the stage of anarchic individualism, liable to +be stampeded from time to time by mob-excitement +over a popular novel or moralistic +tract, and then disintegrating, as before, into +an incoherent mass of individually intelligent +readers.</p> + +<p>The reader who has some personal acquaintance +with the variations of type in different sections +of this immense territory of ours finds his +curiosity constantly stimulated by the presence +of sectional and local characteristics. There are +sharply cut provincial peculiarities, of course,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> +in Great Britain and in Germany, in Italy and +Spain, and in all of the countries a corresponding +"regional" literature has been developed. +Our provincial variations of accent and vocabulary, +in passing from North to South or East +to West, are less striking, on the whole, than +the dialectical differences found in the various +English counties. But our general uniformity +of grammar and the comparatively slight variations +in spoken accent cover an extraordinary +variety of local and sectional modes of thinking +and feeling. The reader of American short +stories and lyrics must constantly ask himself: +Is this truth to local type consistent with the +main trend of American production? Is this +merely a bit of Virginia or Texas or California, +or does it, while remaining no less Southern or +Western in its local coloring, suggest also the +ampler light, the wide generous air of the United +States of America?</p> + +<p>The observer of this relationship between +local and national types will find some American +communities where all the speech or habitual +thought is of the future. Foreigners usually +consider such communities the most typically +"American," as doubtless they are; but there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> +are other sections, still more faithfully exploited +by local writers, where the mood is wistful and +habitually regards the past. America, too, like +the Old World,—and in New England more +than elsewhere,—has her note of decadence, +of disillusion, of autumnal brightness and transiency. +Some sections of the country, and notably +the slave-holding states in the forty years +preceding the Civil War, have suffered widespread +intellectual blight. The best talent of +the South, for a generation, went into politics, +in the passionately loyal endeavor to prop up +a doomed economic and social system; and the +loss to the intellectual life of the country cannot +be reckoned. Over vast sections of our +prosperous and intelligent people of the Mississippi +Basin to-day the very genius of commonplaceness +seems to hover. Take the great +State of Iowa, with its well-to-do and homogeneous +population, its fortunate absence of +perplexing city-problems, its general air of prosperity +and content. It is a typical state of the +most typically American portion of the country; +but it breeds no books. Yet in Indiana, another +state of the same general conditions as to population +and prosperity, and only one generation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> +further removed than Iowa from primitive pioneer +conditions, books are produced at a rate +which provokes a universal American smile. +I do not affirm that the literary critic is bound +to answer all such local puzzles as this. But he +is bound at least to reflect upon them, and to +demand of every local literary product throughout +this varied expanse of states: Is the root of +the "All-American" plant growing here, or is +it not?</p> + +<p>Furthermore, the critic must pursue this investigation +of national traits in our writing, not +only over a wide and variegated territory, but +through a very considerable sweep of time. +American literature is often described as "callow," +as the revelation of "national inexperience," +and in other similar terms. It is true that +we had no professional men of letters before +Irving and that the blossoming time of the notable +New England group of writers did not +come until nearly the middle of the nineteenth +century. But we have had time enough, after +all, to show what we wish to be and what we are. +There have been European books about +America ever since the days of Columbus; it is +three hundred years since the first books were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> +written in America. Modern English prose, +the language of journalism, of science, of social +intercourse, came into being only in the early +eighteenth century, in the age of Queen Anne. +But Cotton Mather's <i>Magnalia</i>, a vast book +dealing with the past history of New England, +was printed in 1702, only a year later than Defoe's +<i>True-Born Englishman</i>. For more than two +centuries the development of English speech +and English writing on this side of the Atlantic +has kept measurable pace—now slower, now +swifter—with the speech of the mother country. +When we recall the scanty term of years within +which was produced the literature of the age of +Elizabeth, it seems like special pleading to insist +that America has not yet had time to learn +or recite her bookish lessons.</p> + +<p>This is not saying that we have had a continuous +or adequate development, either of +the intellectual life, or of literary expression. +There are certain periods of strong intellectual +movement, of heightened emotion, alike in the +colonial epoch and since the adoption of our +present form of government, in which it is natural +to search for revelations of those qualities +which we now feel to be essential to our national<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> +character. Certain epochs of our history, in +other words, have been peculiarly "American," +and have furnished the most ideal expression +of national tendencies.</p> + +<p>If asked to select the three periods of our +history which in this sense have been most significant, +most of us, I imagine, would choose +the first vigorous epoch of New England Puritanism, +say from 1630 to 1676; then, the epoch +of the great Virginians, say from 1766 to 1789; +and finally the epoch of distinctly national feeling, +in which New England and the West were +leaders, between 1830 and 1865. Those three +generations have been the most notable in the +three hundred years since the permanent settlements +began. Each of them has revealed, in a +noble fashion, the political, ethical, and emotional +traits of our people; and although the +first two of the three periods concerned themselves +but little with literary expression of the +deep-lying characteristics of our stock, the +expression is not lacking. Thomas Hooker's +sermon on the "Foundation of Political Authority," +John Winthrop's grave advice on the +"Nature of Liberty," Jefferson's "Declaration," +Webster's "Reply to Hayne," Lincoln's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> +"Inaugurals," are all fundamentally American. +They are political in their immediate purpose, +but, like the speeches of Edmund Burke, they +are no less literature because they are concerned +with the common needs and the common destiny. +Hooker and Winthrop wrote before our +formal national existence began; Jefferson, at +the hour of the nation's birth; and Lincoln, in +the day of its sharpest trial. Yet, though separated +from one another by long intervals of +time, the representative figures of the three +epochs, English in blood and American in feeling, +are not so unlike as one might think. A +thorough grasp of our literature thus requires—and +in scarcely less a degree than the mastery +of one of the literatures of Europe—a survey +of a long period, the search below the baffling +or contradictory surface of national experience +for the main drift of that experience, and the +selection of the writers, of one generation after +another, who have given the most fit and permanent +and personalized expression to the underlying +forces of the national life.</p> + +<p>There is another preliminary word which +needs no less to be said. It concerns the question +of international influences upon national<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> +literature. Our own generation has been taught +by many events that no race or country can +any longer live "to itself." Internationalism +is in the very atmosphere: and not merely as +regards politics in the narrowed sense, but with +reference to questions of economics, sociology, +art, and letters. The period of international isolation +of the United States, we are rather too +fond of saying, closed with the Spanish-American +War. It would be nearer the truth to say +that so far as the things of the mind and the +spirit are concerned, there has never been any +absolute isolation. The Middle West, from +the days of Jackson to Lincoln, that raw West +described by Dickens and Mrs. Trollope, comes +nearer isolation than any other place or time. +The period of the most eloquent assertions of +American independence in artistic and literary +matters was the epoch of New England Transcendentalism, +which was itself singularly cosmopolitan +in its literary appetites. The letters +and journals of Emerson, Whitman, and Thoreau +show the strong European meat on which +these men fed, just before their robust declarations +of our self-sufficiency. But there is no +real self-sufficiency, and Emerson and Whitman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> +themselves, in other moods, have written +most suggestive passages upon our European +inheritances and affiliations.</p> + +<p>The fortunes of the early New England colonies, +in fact, were followed by Protestant Europe +with the keen solicitude and affection of +kinsmen. Oliver Cromwell signs his letter +to John Cotton in 1651, "Your affectionate +friend to serve you." The settlements were regarded +as outposts of European ideas. Their +Calvinism, so cheaply derided and so superficially +understood, even to-day, was the intellectual +platform of that portion of Europe +which was mentally and morally awake to the +vast issues involved in individual responsibility +and self-government. Contemporary +European democracy is hardly yet aware that +Calvin's <i>Institutes</i> is one of its great charters. +Continental Protestantism of the seventeenth +century, like the militant Republicanism of +the English Commonwealth, thus perused with +fraternal interest the letters from Massachusetts +Bay. And if Europe watched America +in those days, it was no less true that America +was watching Europe. Towards the end of +the century, Cotton Mather, "prostrate in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> +dust" before the Lord, as his newly published +<i>Diary</i> tells us, is wrestling "on the behalf of +whole nations." He receives a "strong Persuasion +that very overturning Dispensations of +Heaven will quickly befal the French Empire"; +he "lifts up his Cries for a mighty and +speedy Revolution" there. "I spread before the +Lord the Condition of His Church abroad ... especially +in Great Britain and in France. And I +prayed that the poor Vaudois may not be ruined +by the Peace now made between France and +Savoy. I prayed likewise for further Mortifications +upon the Turkish Empire." Here +surely was one colonial who was trying, in Cecil +Rhodes's words, to "think continentally!"</p> + +<p>Furthermore, the leaders of those early colonies +were in large measure university men, +disciplined in the classics, fit representatives of +European culture. It has been reckoned that +between the years 1630 and 1690 there were +in New England as many graduates of Cambridge +and Oxford as could be found in any +population of similar size in the mother country. +At one time during those years there was +in Massachusetts and Connecticut alone a +Cambridge graduate for every two hundred and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> +fifty inhabitants. Like the exiled Greeks in +Matthew Arnold's poem, they "undid their +corded bales"—of learning, it is true, rather +than of merchandise—upon these strange and +inhospitable shores: and the traditions of +Greek and Hebrew and Latin scholarship were +maintained with no loss of continuity. To the +lover of letters there will always be something +fine in the thought of that narrow seaboard +fringe of faith in the classics, widening slowly +as the wilderness gave way, making its invisible +road up the rivers, across the mountains, +into the great interior basin, and only after the +Civil War finding an enduring home in the +magnificent state universities of the West. +Lovers of Greek and Roman literature may +perhaps always feel themselves pilgrims and +exiles in this vast industrial democracy of ours, +but they have at least secured for us, and that +from the very first day of the colonies, some +of the best fruitage of internationalism. For +that matter, what was, and is, that one Book—to +the eyes of the Protestant seventeenth +century infallible and inexpressively sacred—but +the most potent and universal commerce +of ideas and spirit, passing from the Orient,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> +through Greek and Roman civilization, into +the mind and heart of Western Europe and +America?</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, East is East, and West is West,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And never the twain shall meet,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>declares a confident poet of to-day. But East +and West met long ago in the matchless phrases +translated from Hebrew and Greek and Latin +into the English Bible; and the heart of the +East there answers to the heart of the West as +in water face answereth to face. That the colonizing +Englishmen of the seventeenth century +were Hebrews in spiritual culture, and heirs of +Greece and Rome without ceasing to be Anglo-Saxon +in blood, is one of the marvels of the history +of civilization, and it is one of the basal +facts in the intellectual life of the United States +of to-day.</p> + +<p>Yet that life, as I have already hinted, is not +so simple in its terms as it might be if we had to +reckon merely with the men of a single stock, +albeit with imaginations quickened by contact +with an Oriental religion, and minds disciplined, +directly or indirectly, by the methods and the +literatures which the Revival of Learning imposed +upon modern Europe. American formal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> +culture is, and has been, from the beginning, predominantly +English. Yet it has been colored by +the influences of other strains of race, and by +alien intellectual traditions. Such international +influences as have reached us through German +and Scandinavian, Celtic and Italian, Russian +and Jewish immigration, are well marked in +certain localities, although their traces may be +difficult to follow in the main trend of American +writing. The presence of Negro, Irishman, Jew, +and German, has affected our popular humor +and satire, and is everywhere to be marked in +the vocabulary and tone of our newspapers. +The cosmopolitan character of the population +of such cities as New York and Chicago strikes +every foreign observer. Each one of the manifold +races now transplanted here and in process +of Americanization has for a while its own newspapers +and churches and social life carried on in +a foreign dialect. But this stage of evolution +passes swiftly. The assimilative forces of American +schools, industry, commerce, politics, are +too strong for the foreign immigrant to resist. +The Italian or Greek fruit pedler soon prefers +to talk English, and his children can be made +to talk nothing else. This extraordinary amalgamating<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> +power of English culture explains, +no doubt, why German and Scandinavian immigration—to +take examples from two of the +most intelligent and educated races that have +contributed to the up-building of the country—have +left so little trace, as yet, upon our +more permanent literature.</p> + +<p>But blood will have its say sooner or later. +No one knows how profoundly the strong +mentality of the Jew, already evident enough +in the fields of manufacturing and finance, will +mould the intellectual life of the United States. +The mere presence, to say nothing of the rapid +absorption, of these millions upon millions of +aliens, as the children of the Puritans regard +them, is a constant evidence of the subtle ways +in which internationalism is playing its part in +the fashioning of the American temper. The +moulding hand of the German university has +been laid upon our higher institutions of learning +for seventy years, although no one can +demonstrate in set terms whether the influence +of Goethe, read now by three generations of +American scholars and studied by millions of +youth in the schools, has left any real mark upon +our literature. Abraham Lincoln, in his store-keeping<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> +days, used to sit under a tree outside +the grocery store of Lincoln and Berry, reading +Voltaire. One would like to think that he +then and there assimilated something of the incomparable +lucidity of style of the great Frenchman. +But Voltaire's influence upon Lincoln's +style cannot be proved, any more than Rousseau's +direct influence upon Jefferson. Tolstoï +and Ibsen have, indeed, left unmistakable traces +upon American imaginative writing during the +last quarter of a century. Frank Norris was indebted +to Zola for the scheme of that uncompleted +trilogy, the prose epic of the Wheat; and +Owen Wister has revealed a not uncommon experience +of our younger writing men in confessing +that the impulse toward writing his Western +stories came to him after reading the delightful +pages of a French romancer. But all this tells +us merely what we knew well enough before: +that from colonial days to the present hour the +Atlantic has been no insuperable barrier between +the thought of Europe and the mind of +America; that no one race bears aloft all the +torches of intellectual progress; and that a really +vital writer of any country finds a home in the +spiritual life of every other country, even though<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> +it may be difficult to find his name in the local +directory.</p> + +<p>Finally, we must bear in mind that purely +literary evidence as to the existence of certain +national traits needs corroboration from many +non-literary sources. If it is dangerous to judge +modern Japan by the characteristics of a piece +of pottery, it is only less misleading to select +half a dozen excellent New England writers of +fifty years ago as sole witnesses to the qualities +of contemporary America. We must broaden +the range of evidence. The historians of American +literature must ultimately reckon with all +those sources of mental and emotional quickening +which have yielded to our pioneer people +a substitute for purely literary pleasures: +they must do justice to the immense mass of +letters, diaries, sermons, editorials, speeches, +which have served as the grammar and phrase-book +of national feeling. A history of our literature +must be flexible enough, as I have said +elsewhere, to include "the social and economic +and geographical background of American life; +the zest of the explorer, the humor of the pioneer; +the passion of old political battles; the +yearning after spiritual truth and social readjustment;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> +the baffled quest of beauty. Such a +history must be broad enough for the <i>Federalist</i> +and for Webster's oratory, for Beecher's sermons +and Greeley's editorials, and the Lincoln-Douglas +debates. It must picture the daily +existence of our citizens from the beginning; +their working ideas, their phrases and shibboleths +and all their idols of the forum and the +cave. It should portray the misspelled ideals +of a profoundly idealistic people who have been +usually immersed in material things."</p> + +<p>Our most characteristic American writing, +as must be pointed out again and again, is not +the self-conscious literary performance of a Poe +or a Hawthorne. It is civic writing; a citizen +literature, produced, like the <i>Federalist</i>, and +Garrison's editorials and Grant's <i>Memoirs</i>, without +any stylistic consciousness whatever; a sort +of writing which has been incidental to the accomplishment +of some political, social, or moral +purpose, and which scarcely regards itself as +literature at all. The supreme example of it is +the "Gettysburg Address." Homeliness, simplicity, +directness, preoccupation with moral +issues, have here been but the instrument of +beauty; phrase and thought and feeling have a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> +noble fitness to the national theme. "Nothing +of Europe here," we may instinctively exclaim, +and yet the profounder lesson of this citizen +literature of ours is in the universality of the +fundamental questions which our literature presents. +The "Gettysburg Address" would not +to-day have a secure fame in Europe if it spoke +nothing to the ear and the heart of Europe. +And this brings us back to our main theme. +Lincoln, like Franklin, like many another +lesser master of our citizen literature, is a typical +American. In the writing produced by such +men, there cannot but be a revelation of American +characteristics. We are now to attempt an +analysis of these national traits, as they have +been expressed by our representative writers.</p> + +<p>Simple as the problem seems, when thus +stated, its adequate performance calls for a +constant sensitiveness to the conditions prevalent, +during a long period, in English and Continental +society and literature. The most rudimentary +biographical sketch of such eminent +contemporary American authors as Mr. Henry +James and Mr. Howells shows that Europe +is an essential factor in the intellectual life and +in the artistic procedure of these writers. Yet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> +in their racial and national relationships they +are indubitably American. In their local variations +from type they demand from the critic +an understanding of the culture of the Ohio +Valley, and of Boston and New York. The +analysis of the mingled racial, psychological, +social, and professional traits in these masters of +contemporary American fiction presents to the +critic a problem as fascinating as, and I think +more complex than, a corresponding study of +Meredith or Hardy, of Daudet or D'Annunzio. +In the three hundred years that have +elapsed since Englishmen who were trained +under Queen Elizabeth settled at Jamestown, +Virginia, we have bred upon this soil many a +master of speech. They have been men of +varied gifts: now of clear intelligence, now of +commanding power; men of rugged simplicity +and of tantalizing subtlety; poets, novelists, +orators, essayists, and publicists, who have interpreted +the soul of America to the mind of +the world. Our task is to exhibit the essential +Americanism of these spokesmen of ours, to +point out the traits which make them most +truly representative of the instincts of the +tongue-tied millions who work and plan and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> +pass from sight without the gift and art of +utterance; to find, in short, among the books +which are recognized as constituting our American +literature, some vital and illuminating illustrations +of our national characteristics. For +a truly "American" book—like an American +national game, or an American city—is that +which reveals, consciously or unconsciously, +the American mind.</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p><hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II<br /><br /> + +The American Mind</h2> + + +<p>The origin of the phrase, "the American +mind," was political. Shortly after the middle +of the eighteenth century, there began to be a +distinctly American way of regarding the debatable +question of British Imperial control. +During the period of the Stamp Act agitation +our colonial-bred politicians and statesmen +made the discovery that there was a mode of +thinking and feeling which was native—or +had by that time become a second nature—to +all the colonists. Jefferson, for example, +employs those resonant and useful words "the +American mind" to indicate that throughout +the American colonies an essential unity of +opinion had been developed as regards the +chief political question of the day.</p> + +<p>It is one of the most striking characteristics +of the present United States that this instinct of +political unity should have endured, triumphing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> +over every temporary motive of division. The +inhabitants of the United States belong to a +single political type. There is scarcely a news-stand +in any country of Continental Europe +where one may not purchase a newspaper +openly or secretly opposed to the government,—not +merely attacking an unpopular administration +or minister or ruler,—but desiring +and plotting the overthrow of the entire political +system of the country. It is very difficult +to find such a newspaper anywhere in the +United States. I myself have never seen one. +The opening sentence of President Butler's +admirable little book, <i>The American as He +Is</i>, originally delivered as lectures before the +University of Copenhagen, runs as follows:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"The most impressive fact in American life +is the substantial unity of view in regard to +the fundamental questions of government and +of conduct among a population so large, distributed +over an area so wide, recruited from +sources so many and so diverse, living under +conditions so widely different."</p></blockquote> + +<p>But the American type of mind is evident +in many other fields than that of politics. +The stimulating book from which I have just<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> +quoted, attempts in its closing paragraph, after +touching upon the more salient features of our +national activity, to define the typical American +in these words:—</p> + +<blockquote><p>"The typical American is he who, whether +rich or poor, whether dwelling in the North, +South, East, or West, whether scholar, professional +man, merchant, manufacturer, farmer, +or skilled worker for wages, lives the life of a +good citizen and good neighbor; who believes +loyally and with all his heart in his country's +institutions, and in the underlying principles +on which these institutions are built; who +directs both his private and his public life by +sound principles; who cherishes high ideals; +and who aims to train his children for a useful +life and for their country's service."</p></blockquote> + +<p>This modest and sensible statement indicates +the existence of a national point of view. We +have developed in the course of time, as a result +of certain racial inheritances and historic experiences, +a national "temper" or "ethos"; a +more or less settled way of considering intellectual, +moral, and social problems; in short, a +peculiarly national attitude toward the universal +human questions.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p> + +<p>In a narrower sense, "the American mind" +may mean the characteristics of the American intelligence, +as it has been studied by Mr. Bryce, +De Tocqueville, and other trained observers +of our methods of thinking. It may mean the +specific achievements of the American intelligence +in fields like science and scholarship and +history. In all these particular departments of +intellectual activity the methods and the results +of American workers have recently received expert +and by no means uniformly favorable assessment +from investigators upon both sides of +the Atlantic. But the observer of literary processes +and productions must necessarily take a +somewhat broader survey of national tendencies. +He must study what Nathaniel Hawthorne, +with the instinct of a romance writer, +preferred to call the "heart" as distinguished +from the mere intellect. He must watch the +moral and social and imaginative impulses of +the individual; the desire for beauty; the hunger +for self-expression; the conscious as well as the +unconscious revelation of personality; and he +must bring all this into relation—if he can, +and knowing that the finer secrets are sure to +elude him!—with the age-long impulses of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> +race and with the mysterious tides of feeling +that flood or ebb with the changing fortunes of +the nation.</p> + +<p>One way to begin to understand the typical +American is to take a look at him in Europe. +It does not require a professional beggar or +a licensed guide to identify him. Not that the +American in Europe need recall in any particular +the familiar pictorial caricature of "Uncle +Sam." He need not bear any outward resemblances +to such stage types as that presented in +"The Man From Home." He need not even +suggest, by peculiarities of speech or manner, +that he has escaped from the pages of those +novels of international observation in which +Mr. James and Mr. Howells long ago attained +an unmatched artistry. Our "American +Abroad," at the present hour, may be studied +without the aid of any literary recollections +whatever. There he is, with his wife and daughters, +and one may stare at him with all the +frankness of a compatriot. He is obviously +well-to-do,—else he would not be there at +all,—and the wife and daughters seem very +well-to-do indeed. He is kindly; considerate—sometimes +effusively considerate—of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> +fellow travellers; patient with the ladies of his +family, who in turn are noticeably patient with +him. He is genial—very willing to talk with +polyglot headwaiters and chauffeurs; in fact +the wife and daughters are also practised conversationalists, +although their most loyal admirers +must admit that their voices <i>are</i> a trifle +sharp or flat. These ladies are more widely +read than "papa." He has not had much leisure +for Ruskin and Symonds and Ferrero. +His lack of historical training limits his curiosity +concerning certain phases of his European +surroundings; but he uses his eyes well upon +such general objects as trains, hotel-service, +and Englishmen. In spite of his habitual geniality, +he is rather critical of foreign ways, +although this is partly due to his lack of acquaintance +with them. Intellectually, he is +really more modest and self-distrustful than +his conversation or perhaps his general bearing +would imply; in fact, his wife and daughters, +emboldened very likely by the training of their +women's clubs, have a more commendable +daring in assaulting new intellectual positions.</p> + +<p>Yet the American does not lack quickness, +either of wits or emotion. His humor and sentiment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> +make him an entertaining companion. +Even when his spirits run low, his patriotism +is sure to mount in proportion, and he can always +tell you with enthusiasm in just how many +days he expects to be back again in what he +calls "God's country."</p> + +<p>This, or something like this, is the "American" +whom the European regards with curiosity, +contempt, admiration, or envy, as the case +may be, but who is incontestably modifying +Western Europe, even if he is not, as many +journalists and globe-trotters are fond of asserting, +"Americanizing" the world. Interesting +as it is to glance at him against that European +background which adds picturesqueness to his +qualities, the "Man from Home" is still more +interesting in his native habitat. There he has +been visited by hundreds of curious and observant +foreigners, who have left on record a whole +literature of bewildered and bewildering, irritating +and flattering and amusing testimony concerning +the Americans. Settlers like Crèvecœur +in the glowing dawn of the Republic, poets like +Tom Moore, novelists like Charles Dickens,—other +novelists like Mr. Arnold Bennett,—professional +travellers like Captain Basil Hall,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> +students of contemporary sociology like Paul +Bourget and Mr. H. G. Wells, French journalists, +German professors, Italian admirers of +Colonel Roosevelt, political theorists like De +Tocqueville, profound and friendly observers +like Mr. Bryce, have had, and will continue to +have, their say.</p> + +<p>The reader who tries to take all this testimony +at its face value, and to reconcile its contradictions, +will be a candidate for the insane +asylum. Yet the testimony is too amusing to +be neglected and some of it is far too important +to be ignored. Mr. John Graham Brooks, after +long familiarity with these foreign opinions of +America, has gathered some of the most representative +of them into a delightful and stimulating +volume entitled <i>As Others See Us</i>. There +one may find examples of what the foreigner +has seen, or imagined he has seen, during his +sojourn in America, and what he has said +about it afterwards. Mr. Brooks is too charitable +to our visitors to quote the most fantastic +and highly colored of their observations; +but what remains is sufficiently bizarre.</p> + +<p>The real service of such a volume is to train +us in discounting the remarks made about us in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> +a particular period like the eighteen-thirties, or +from observations made in a special place, like +Newport, or under special circumstances, like a +Bishop's private car. It helps us to make allowances +for the inevitable angle of nationality, the +equally inevitable personal equation. A recent +ambitious book on America, by a Washington +journalist of long residence here, although of +foreign birth, declares that "the chief trait of +the American people is the love of gain and the +desire of wealth acquired through commerce." +That is the opinion of an expert observer, who +has had extraordinary chances for seeing precisely +what he has seen. I think it, notwithstanding, +a preposterous opinion, fully as preposterous +as Professor Muensterberg's notion +that America has latterly grown more monarchical +in its tendencies,—but I must remember +that, in my own case, as in that of the journalist +under consideration, there are allowances to be +made for race, and training, and natural idiosyncracy +of vision.</p> + +<p>The native American, it may be well to remember, +is something of an observer himself. +If his observations upon the characteristics +of his countrymen are less piquant than the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> +foreigner's, it is chiefly because the American +writes, upon the whole, less incisively than he +talks. But incisive native writing about American +traits is not lacking. If a missionary, say in +South Africa, has read the New York <i>Nation</i> +every week for the past forty years, he has had +an extraordinary "moving picture" of American +tendencies, as interpreted by independent, +trenchant, and high-minded criticism. +That a file of the <i>Nation</i> will convey precisely +the same impression of American tendencies +as a file of the <i>Sun</i>, for instance, or the <i>Boston +Evening Transcript</i>, is not to be affirmed. The +humor of the London <i>Punch</i> and the New +York <i>Life</i> does not differ more radically than +the aspects of American civilization as viewed +by two rival journals in Newspaper Row. The +complexity of the material now collected and +presented in daily journalism is so great that +adequate editorial interpretation is obviously +impossible. All the more insistently does this +heterogeneous picture of American life demand +the impartial interpretation of the historian, the +imaginative transcription of the novelist. Humorist +and moralist, preacher and mob orator +and social essayist, shop-talk and talk over the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> +tea-cup or over the pipe, and the far more illuminating +instruction of events, are fashioning +day by day the infinitely delicate processes of +our national self-assessment. Scholars like Mr. +Henry Adams or Mr. James Ford Rhodes will +explain to us American life as it was during the +administrations of Jefferson or in the eighteen-fifties. +Professor Turner will expound the significance +of the frontier in American history. +Mr. Henry James will portray with unrivalled +psychological insight the Europeanized American +of the eighteen-seventies and eighties. Literary +critics like Professor Wendell or Professor +Trent will deduce from our literature itself evidence +concerning this or that national quality; +and all this mass of American expert testimony, +itself a result and a proof of national self-awareness +and self-respect, must be put into the scales +to balance, to confirm, or to outweigh the reports +furnished by foreigners.</p> + +<p>I do not pretend to be able, like an expert +accountant, to draw up a balance-sheet of national +qualities, to credit or debit the American +character with this or that precise quantity +of excellence or defect. But having turned the +pages of many books about the United States,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> +and listened to many conversations about its +inhabitants in many states of the Union, I venture +to collect a brief list of the qualities which +have been assigned to us, together with a few, +but not, I trust, too many, of our admitted +national defects.</p> + +<p>Like that excellent German who wrote the +History of the English Drama in six volumes, +I begin with Physical Geography. The differentiation +of the physical characteristics of our +branch of the English race is admittedly due, +in part, to climate. In spite of the immense +range of climatic variations as one passes from +New England to New Orleans, from the Mississippi +Valley to the high plains of the Far +West, or from the rainy Oregon belt southward +to San Diego, the settlers of English +stock find a prevalent atmospheric condition, +as a result of which they begin, in a generation +or two, to change in physique. They grow +thinner and more nervous, they "lean forward," +as has been admirably said of them, +while the Englishman "leans back"; they are +less heavy and less steady; their voices are +higher, sharper; their athletes get more easily +"on edge"; they respond, in short, to an excessively<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> +stimulating climate. An old-fashioned +sea-captain put it all into a sentence when he +said that he could drink a bottle of wine with +his dinner in Liverpool and only a half a bottle +in New York. Explain the cause as we may, +the fact seems to be that the body of John +Bull changes, in the United States, into the +body of Uncle Sam.</p> + +<p>There are mental differences no less pronounced. +No adjective has been more frequently +applied to the Anglo-Saxon than the +word "dull." The American mind has been +accused of ignorance, superficiality, levity, commonplaceness, +and dozens of other defects, but +"dulness" is not one of them. "Smartness," +rather, is the preferred epithet of derogation; +or, to rise a little in the scale of valuation, it is +the word "cleverness," used with that lurking +contempt for cleverness which is truly English +and which long survived in the dialect of New +England, where the village ne'er-do-well or +Jack-of-all-trades used to be pronounced a +"clever" fellow. The variety of employments +to which the American pioneers were obliged +to betake themselves has done something, no +doubt, to produce a national versatility, a quick<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> +assimilation of new methods and notions, a +ready adaptability to novel emergencies. An +invaluable pioneer trait is curiosity; the settler +in a new country, like Moses in the wilderness +of Arabia, must "turn aside to see"; he must +look into things, learn to read signs,—or else +the Indians or frost or freshet will soon put an +end to his pioneering. That curiosity concerning +strangers which so much irritated Dickens +and Mrs. Trollope was natural to the children +of Western emigrants to whom the difference +between Sioux and Pawnee had once meant +life or death. "What's your business, stranger, +in these parts?" was an instinctive, because it +had once been a vital, question. That it degenerates +into mere inquisitiveness is true enough; +just as the "acuteness," the "awareness," essential +to the existence of one generation becomes +only "cuteness," the typical tin-pedler's +habit of mind, in the generation following.</p> + +<p>American inexperience, the national rawness +and unsophistication which has impressed so +many observers, has likewise its double significance +when viewed historically. We have +exhibited, no doubt, the amateurishness and +recklessness which spring from relative isolation,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> +from ignorance as to how they manage +elsewhere this particular sort of thing,—the +conservation of forests, let us say, or the government +of colonial dependencies. National +smugness and conceit, the impatience crystallized +in the phrase, "What have we got to do +with abroad?" have jarred upon the nerves of +many cultivated Americans. But it is no less +true that a nation of pioneers and settlers, like +the isolated individual, learns certain rough-and-ready +Robinson Crusoe ways of getting +things done. A California mining-camp is sure +to establish law and order in due time, though +never, perhaps, a law and order quite according +to Blackstone. In the most trying crises of +American political history, it was not, after all, +a question of profiting by European experience. +Washington and Lincoln, in their sorest +struggles, had nothing to do with "abroad"; +the problem had first to be thought through, +and then fought through, in American and not +in European terms. Not a half-dozen Englishmen +understood the bearings of the Kansas-Nebraska +Bill, or, if they did, we were little the +wiser. We had to wait until a slow-minded +frontier lawyer mastered it in all its implications,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> +and then patiently explained it to the +farmers of Illinois, to the United States, and +to the world.</p> + +<p>It is true that the unsophisticated mode of +procedure may turn out to be sheer folly,—a +"sixteen to one" triumph of provincial barbarism. +But sometimes it is the secret of freshness +and of force. Your cross-country runner +scorns the highway, but that is because he has +confidence in his legs and loins, and he likes +to take the fences. Fenimore Cooper, when +he began to write stories, knew nothing about +the art of novel-making as practised in Europe, +but he possessed something infinitely +better for him, namely, instinct, and he took +the right road to the climax of a narrative as +unerringly as the homing bee follows its viewless +trail.</p> + +<p>No one can be unaware how easily this +superb American confidence may turn to over-confidence, +to sheer recklessness. We love to +run past the signals, in our railroading and in +our thinking. Emerson will "plunge" on a +new idea as serenely as any stock-gambler ever +"plunged" in Wall Street, and a pretty school-teacher +will tell you that she has become an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> +advocate of the "New Thought" as complacently +as an old financier will boast of having +bought Calumet and Hecla when it was selling +at 25. (Perhaps the school-teacher may get +as good a bargain. I cannot say.) Upon the +whole, Americans back individual guesswork +and pay cheerfully when they lose. A great +many of them, as it happens, have guessed +right. Even those who continue to guess +wrong, like Colonel Sellers, have the indefeasible +romantic appetite for guessing again. The +American temperament and the chances of +American history have brought constant temptation +to speculation, and plenty of our people +prefer to gamble upon what they love to call +a "proposition," rather than to go to the +bottom of the facts. They would rather speculate +than know.</p> + +<p>Doubtless there are purely physical causes +that have encouraged this mental attitude, +such as the apparently inexhaustible resources +of a newly opened country, the consciousness +of youthful energy, the feeling that any +very radical mistake in pitching camp to-day +can easily be rectified when we pitch camp +to-morrow. The habit of exaggeration which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> +was so particularly annoying to English visitors +in the middle of the last century—annoying +even to Charles Dickens, who was himself +something of an expert in exuberance—is +a physical and moral no less than a mental +quality. That monstrous braggadocio which +Dickens properly satirized in <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> +was partly, of course, the product of +provincial ignorance. Doubtless there were, +and there are still, plenty of Pograms who are +convinced that Henry Clay and Daniel Webster +overtop all the intellectual giants of the +Old World. But that youthful bragging, and +perhaps some of the later bragging as well, has +its social side. It is a perverted idealism. It +springs from group loyalty, from sectional +fidelity. The settlement of "Eden" may be +precisely what Dickens drew it: a miasmatic +mud-hole. Yet we who are interested in the +new town do not intend, as the popular phrase +has it, "to give ourselves away." We back +our own "proposition," so that to this day +Chicago cannot tell the truth to St. Louis, nor +Harvard to Yale. Braggadocio thus gets glorified +through its rootage in loyalty; and likewise +extravagance—surely one of the worst<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> +of American mental vices—is often based +upon a romantic confidence in individual opinion +or in the righteousness of some specific +cause. Convince a blue-blooded American like +Wendell Phillips that the abolition of slavery +is right, and, straightway, words and even facts +become to him mere weapons in a splendid +warfare. His statements grow rhetorical, reckless, +virulent. Proof seems to him, as it did to +the contemporary Transcendentalist philosophers, +an impertinence. The sole question is, +"Are you on the Lord's side?" i.e., on the +side of Wendell Phillips.</p> + +<p>Excuse as we may the faults of a gifted +combatant in a moral crisis like the abolition +controversy, the fact remains that the intellectual +dangers of the oratorical temperament +are typically American. What is commonly +called our "Fourth of July" period has +indeed passed away. It has few apologists, +perhaps fewer than it really deserves. It is +possible to regret the disappearance of that +old-fashioned assertion of patriotism and pride, +and to question whether historical pageants +and a "noiseless Fourth" will develop any +better citizens than the fathers were. But on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> +the purely intellectual side, the influence of +that spread-eagle oratory was disastrous. +Throughout wide-extended regions of the +country, and particularly in the South and +West, the "orator" grew to be, in the popular +mind, the normal representative of intellectual +ability. Words, rather than things, +climbed into the saddle. Popular assemblies +were taught the vocabulary and the logic of +passion, rather than of sober, lucid reasoning. +The "stump" grew more potent than school-house +and church and bench; and it taught +its reckless and passionate ways to more than +one generation. The intellectual leaders of the +newer South have more than once suffered +ostracism for protesting against this glorification +of mere oratory. But it is not the South +alone that has suffered. Wherever a mob can +gather, there are still the dangers of the old +demagogic vocabulary and rhetoric. The mob +state of mind is lurking still in the excitable +American temperament.</p> + +<p>The intellectual temptations of that temperament +are revealed no less in our popular journalism. +This journalism, it is needless to say, +is extremely able, but it is reckless to the last<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> +degree. The extravagance of its head-lines and +the over-statements of its news columns are +direct sources of profit, since they increase the +circulation and it is circulation which wins +advertising space. I think it is fair to say that +the American people, as a whole, like precisely +the sort of journalism which they get. The +tastes of the dwellers in cities control, more +and more, the character of our newspapers. +The journals of New York, Chicago, and San +Francisco are steadily gaining in circulation, in +resourcefulness, and in public spirit, but they +are, for the most part, unscrupulous in attack, +sophistical, and passionate. They outvie the +popular pulpit in sentimentality. They play +with fire.</p> + +<p>The note of exaggeration which is heard in +American oratory and journalism is struck +again in the popular magazines. Their campaign +of "exposure," during the last decade, +has been careless of individual and corporate +rights and reputations. Even the magazine +sketches and short stories are keyed up to a +hysteric pitch. So universally is this characteristic +national tension displayed in our periodical +literature that no one is much surprised to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> +read in his morning paper that some one has +called the President of the United States a liar,—or +that some one has been called a liar by +the President of the United States.</p> + +<p>For an explanation of these defects, shall we +fall back upon a convenient maxim of De +Tocqueville's and admit with him that "a democracy +is unsuited to meditation"? We are +forced to do so. But then comes the inevitable +second thought that a democracy must needs +have other things than meditation to attend to. +Athenian and Florentine and Versailles types +of political despotism have all proved highly +favorable to the lucubrations of philosophers +and men of letters who enjoyed the despot's +approbation. For that matter, no scheme of +life was ever better suited to meditation than +an Indian reservation in the eighteen-seventies, +with a Great Father in Washington to furnish +blankets, flour, and tobacco. Yet that is +not quite the American ideal of existence, and +it even failed to produce the peaceable fruits +of meditation in the Indian himself.</p> + +<p>One may freely admit the shortcomings of +the American intelligence; the "commonness +of mind and tone" which Mr. Bryce believes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> +to be inseparable from the presence of such +masses of men associated under modern democratic +government; the frivolity and extravagance +which represent the gasconading of the +romantic temper in face of the grey practicalities +of everyday routine; the provincial boastfulness +and bad taste which have resulted from +intellectual isolation; the lack, in short, of a +code, whether for thought or speech or behavior. +And nevertheless, one's instinctive Americanism +replies, May it not be better, after +all, to have gone without a code for a while, to +have lacked that orderly and methodized and +socialized European intelligence, and to have +had the glorious sense of bringing things to +pass in spite of it? There is just one thing that +would have been fatal to our democracy. It is +the feeling expressed in La Bruyère's famous +book: "Everything has been said, everything +has been written, everything has been done." +Here in America everything was to do; we +were forced to conjugate our verbs in the future +tense. No doubt our existence has been, +in some respects, one of barbarism, but it has +been the barbarism of life and not of death. A +rawboned baby sprawling on the mud floor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> +of a Kentucky log cabin is a more hopeful +spectacle than a wholly civilized funeral.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps it is," rejoins the European critic, +somewhat impatiently, "but you are confusing +the issue. We find certain grave defects in the +American mind, defects which, if you had not +had what Thomas Carlyle called 'a great deal +of land for a very few people,' would long ago +have involved you in disaster. You admit the +mental defects, but you promptly shift the +question to one of moral qualities, of practical +energy, of subduing your wilderness, and so +forth. You have too often absented yourself +from the wedding banquet, from the European +symposium of wit and philosophy, from the +polished and orderly and delightful play and +interplay of civilized mind,—and your excuse +is the old one: that you are trying your yoke +of oxen and cannot come. We charge you with +intellectual sins, and you enter the plea of +moral preoccupation. If you will permit personal +examples, you Americans have made ere +now your national heroes out of men whose +reasoning powers remained those of a college +sophomore, who were unable to state an opponent's +position with fairness, who lacked wholly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> +the judicial quality, who were vainglorious and +extravagant, who had, in short, the mind of an +exuberant barbarian; but you instantly forget +their intellectual defects in the presence of their +abounding physical and moral energy, their +freedom from any taint of personal corruption, +their whole-souled desire and effort for the +public good. Were not such heroes, impossible +as they would have been in any other civilized +country, perfectly illuminative of your +national state of mind?"</p> + +<p>For one, I confess that I do not know what +reply to make to my imaginary European critic. +I suspect that he is right. At any rate, we stand +here at the fork of the road. If we do not wish to +linger any longer over a catalogue of intellectual +sins, let us turn frankly to our moral preoccupations, +comforting ourselves, if we like, as we +abandon the field of purely intellectual rivalry +with Europe, in the reflection that it is the +muddle-headed Anglo-Saxon, after all, who is +the dominant force in the modern world.</p> + +<p>The moral temper of the American people +has been analyzed no less frequently than their +mental traits. Foreign and native observers are +alike agreed in their recognition of the extraordinary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> +American energy. The sheer power +of the American bodily machine, driven by the +American will, is magnificent. It is often driven +too hard, and with reckless disregard of anything +save immediate results. It wears out more +quickly than the bodily machine of the Englishman. +It is typical that the best distance runners +of Great Britain usually beat ours, while we beat +them in the sprints. Our public men are frequently—as +the athletes say—"all in" at +sixty. Their energy is exhausted at just the time +that many an English statesman begins his best +public service. But after making every allowance +for wasteful excess, for the restless and impatient +consumption of nervous forces which +nature intended that we should hold in reserve, +the fact remains that American history has demonstrated +the existence of a dynamic national +energy, physical and moral, which is still unabated. +Immigration has turned hitherward the +feet of millions upon millions of young men +from the hardiest stocks of Europe. They replenish +the slackening streams of vigor. When +the northern New Englander cannot make a +living on the old farm, the French Canadian +takes it off his hands, and not only improves<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> +the farm, but raises big crops of boys. So with +Italians, Swedes, Germans, Irish, Jews, and +Portuguese, and all the rest. We are a nation +of immigrants, a digging, hewing, building, +breeding, bettering race, of mixed blood and +varying creeds, but of fundamental faith in the +wages of going on; a race compounded of materials +crude but potent; raw, but with blood +that is red and bones that are big; a race that is +accomplishing its vital tasks, and, little by little, +transmuting brute forces and material energies +into the finer play of mind and spirit.</p> + +<p>From the very beginning, the American +people have been characterized by idealism. It +was the inner light of Pilgrim and Quaker colonists; +it gleams no less in the faces of the children +of Russian Jew immigrants to-day. American +irreverence has been noted by many a foreign +critic, but there are certain subjects in +whose presence our reckless or cynical speech +is hushed. Compared with current Continental +humor, our characteristic American humor is +peculiarly reverent. The purity of woman and +the reality of religion are not considered topics +for jocosity. Cleanness of body and of mind are +held by our young men to be not only desirable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> +but attainable virtues. There is among us, in +comparison with France or Germany, a defective +reverence for the State as such; and a +positive irreverence towards the laws of the +Commonwealth, and towards the occupants of +high political positions. Mayor, Judge, Governor, +Senator, or even President, may be the +butt of such indecorous ridicule as shocks or +disgusts the foreigner; but nevertheless the +personal joke stops short of certain topics which +Puritan tradition disapproves. The United +States is properly called a Christian nation, +not merely because the Supreme Court has so +affirmed it, but because the phrase "a Christian +nation" expresses the historical form which +the religious idealism of the country has made +its own. The Bible is still considered, by the +mass of the people, a sacred book; oaths in +courts of law, oaths of persons elected to great +office, are administered upon it. American +faith in education, as all the world knows, has +from the beginning gone hand in hand with +faith in religion; the school-house was almost +as sacred a symbol as the meeting-house; and +the munificence of American private benefactions +to the cause of education furnishes to-day<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> +one of the most striking instances of idealism +in the history of civilization.</p> + +<p>The ideal passions of patriotism, of liberty, +of loyalty to home and section, of humanitarian +and missionary effort, have all burned with a +clear flame in the United States. The optimism +which lies so deeply embedded in the +American character is one phase of the national +mind. Charles Eliot Norton once said +to me, with his dry humor, that there was an +infallible test of the American authorship of +any anonymous article or essay: "Does it contain +the phrase 'After all, we need not despair'? +If it does, it was written by an American." +In spite of all that is said about the +practicality of the American, his love of gain +and his absorption in material interests, those +who really know him are aware how habitually +he confronts his practical tasks in a spirit of +romantic enthusiasm. He marches downtown +to his prosaic day's job and calls it "playing +the game"; to work as hard as he can is to +"get into the game," and to work as long as +he can is to "stay in the game"; he loves to +win fully as much as the Jew and he hates to +lose fully as much as the Englishman, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> +losing or winning, he carries into his business +activity the mood of the idealist.</p> + +<p>It is easy to think of all this as self-deception +as the emotional effusiveness of the +American temperament; but to refuse to see +its idealism is to mistake fundamentally the +character of the American man. No doubt he +does deceive himself often as to his real motives: +he is a mystic and a bargain-hunter by +turns. Divided aims, confused ideals, have +struggled for the mastery among us, ever since +Challon's <i>Voyage</i>, in 1606, announced that the +purpose of the first colonists to Virginia was +"both to seek to convert the savages, as also +to seek out what benefits or commodities +might be had in those parts." How that +"both"—"as also" keeps echoing in American +history: "both" to christianize the Negro +and work him at a profit, "both" duty and +advantage in retaining the Philippines; "both" +international good will and increased armaments; +"both" Sunday morning precepts and +Monday morning practice; "both" horns of +a dilemma; "both God and mammon"; did +ever a nation possess a more marvellous +water-tight compartment method of believing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> +and honoring opposites! But in all this unconscious +hypocrisy the American is perhaps +not worse—though he may be more absurd!—than +other men.</p> + +<p>Another aspect of the American mind is +found in our radicalism. "To be an American," +it has been declared, "is to be a radical." +That statement needs qualification. Intellectually +the American is inclined to radical views; +he is willing to push certain social theories +very far; he will found a new religion, a new +philosophy, a new socialistic community, at +the slightest notice or provocation; but he has +at bottom a fund of moral and political conservatism. +Thomas Jefferson, one of the greatest +of our radical idealists, had a good deal of +the English squire in him after all. Jeffersonianism +endures, not merely because it is a radical +theory of human nature, but because it +expresses certain facts of human nature. The +American mind looks forward, not back; but +in practical details of land, taxes, and governmental +machinery we are instinctively cautious +of change. The State of Connecticut knows +that her constitution is ill adapted to the present +conditions of her population, but the difficulty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> +is to persuade the rural legislators to +amend it. Yet everybody admits that amendment +will come "some day." This admission +is a characteristic note of American feeling; +and every now and then come what we call +"uplift" movements, when radicalism is in +the very air, and a thousand good "causes" +take fresh vigor.</p> + +<p>One such period was in the New England +of the eighteen-forties. We are moving in a +similar—only this time a national—current +of radicalism, to-day. But a change in the +weather or the crops has before now turned +many of our citizens from radicalism into conservatism. +There is, in fact, conservatism in +our blood and radicalism in our brains, and +now one and now the other rules. Very typical +of American radicalism is that story of the +old sea-captain who was ignorant, as was supposed, +of the science of navigation, and who +cheerfully defended himself by saying that he +could work his vessel down to Boston Light +without knowing any navigation, and after that +he could go where he "dum pleased." I suspect +the old fellow pulled his sextant and +chronometer out of his chest as soon as he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> +really needed them. American radicalism is +not always as innocent of the world's experience +as it looks. In fact, one of the most +interesting phases of this twentieth century +"uplift" movement is its respect and even +glorification of expert opinion. A German expert +in city-planning electrifies an audience of +Chicago club-women by talking to them about +drains, ash-carts, and flower-beds. A hundred +other experts, in sanitation, hygiene, chemistry, +conservation of natural resources, government +by commission, tariffs, arbitration treaties, +are talking quite as busily; and they have +the attention of a national audience that is +listening with genuine modesty, and with a real +desire to refashion American life on wiser and +nobler plans. In this national forward movement +in which we are living, radicalism has +shown its beneficent aspect of constructive +idealism.</p> + +<p>No catalogue of American qualities and defects +can exclude the trait of individualism. +We exalt character over institutions, says Mr. +Brownell; we like our institutions because they +suit us, and not because we admire institutions. +"Produce great persons," declares Walt Whitman,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> +"the rest follows." Whether the rest follows +or not, there can be no question that +Americans, from the beginning, have laid singular +stress upon personal qualities. The religion +and philosophy of the Puritans were in +this respect at one with the gospel of the frontier. +It was the principle of "every man for +himself"; solitary confrontation of his God, +solitary struggle with the wilderness. "He +that will not work," declared John Smith after +that first disastrous winter at Jamestown, +"neither let him eat." The pioneer must +clear his own land, harvest his own crops, +defend his own fireside; his temporal and +eternal salvation were strictly his own affair. +He asked, and expected, no aid from the community; +he could at most "change works" +in time of harvest, with a neighbor, if he had +one. It was the sternest school of self-reliance, +from babyhood to the grave, that human +society is ever likely to witness. It bred heroes +and cranks and hermits; its glories and +its eccentricities are written in the pages of +Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman; they are +written more permanently still in the instinctive +American faith in individual manhood.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> +Our democracy idolizes a few individuals; it +ignores their defective training, or, it may be, +their defective culture; it likes to think of an +Andrew Jackson who was a "lawyer, judge, +planter, merchant, general, and politician," before +he became President; it asks only that the +man shall not change his individual character +in passing from one occupation or position to +another; in fact, it is amused and proud to +think of Grant hauling cordwood to market, of +Lincoln keeping store or Roosevelt rounding-up +cattle. The one essential question was +put by Hawthorne into the mouth of Holgrave +in the <i>House of the Seven Gables</i>. Holgrave had +been by turns a schoolmaster, clerk in a store, +editor, pedler, lecturer on Mesmerism, and +daguerreotypist, but "amid all these personal +vicissitudes," says Hawthorne, "he had never +lost his identity.... He had never violated +the innermost man, but had carried his conscience +along with him." There speaks the +local accent of Puritanism, but the voice insisting +upon the moral integrity of the individual +is the undertone of America.</p> + +<p>Finally, and surely not the least notable of +American traits, is public spirit. Triumphant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> +individualism checks itself, or is rudely checked +in spite of itself, by considerations of the general +good. How often have French critics confessed, +with humiliation, that in spite of the +superior socialization of the French intelligence, +France has yet to learn from America the art +and habit of devoting individual fortunes to +the good of the community. Our American +literature, as has been already pointed out, is +characteristically a citizen literature, responsive +to the civic note, the production of men who, +like the writers of the <i>Federalist</i>, applied a vigorous +practical intelligence, a robust common +sense, to questions affecting the interest of +everybody. The spirit of fair play in our free +democracy has led Americans to ask not merely +what is right and just for one, the individual, +but what are righteousness and justice and fair +play for all. Democracy, as embodied in such +a leader as Lincoln, has meant Fellowship. +Nothing finer can be said of a representative +American than to say of him, as Mr. Norton +said of Mr. Lowell, that he had a "most public +soul."</p> + +<p>No one can present such a catalogue of +American qualities as I have attempted without<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> +realizing how much escapes his classification. +Conscious criticism and assessment of national +characteristics is essential to an understanding +of them; but one feels somehow that the net is +not holding. The analysis of English racial inheritances, +as modified by historical conditions, +yields much, no doubt; but what are we to say +of such magnificent embodiments of the American +spirit as are revealed in the Swiss immigrant +Agassiz, the German exile Carl Schurz, +the native-born mulatto Booker Washington? +The Americanism of representative Americans +is something which must be felt; it is to be +reached by imaginative perception and sympathy, +no less than by the process of formal +analysis. It would puzzle the experts in racial +tendencies to find arithmetically the common +denominator of such American figures as Franklin, +Washington, Jackson, Webster, Lee, Lincoln, +Emerson, and "Mark Twain"; yet the +countrymen of those typical Americans instinctively +recognize in them a sort of largeness, +genuineness, naturalness, kindliness, humor, +effectiveness, idealism, which are indubitably +and fundamentally American.</p> + +<p>There are certain sentiments of which we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> +ourselves are conscious, though we can scarcely +translate them into words, and these vaguely +felt emotions of admiration, of effort, of fellowship +and social faith are the invisible America. +Take, for a single example, the national admiration +for what we call a "self-made" man: here +is a boy selling candy and newspapers on a +Michigan Central train; he makes up his mind +to be a lawyer; in twelve years from that day +he is general counsel for the Michigan Central +road; he enters the Senate of the United States +and becomes one of its leading figures. The instinctive +flush of sympathy and pride with which +Americans listen to such a story is far more +deeply based than any vulgar admiration for +money-making abilities. No one cares whether +such a man is rich or poor. He has vindicated +anew the possibilities of manhood under American +conditions of opportunity; the miracle of +our faith has in him come true once more.</p> + +<p>No one can understand America with his +brains. It is too big, too puzzling. It tempts, +and it deceives. But many an illiterate immigrant +has felt the true America in his pulses +before he ever crossed the Atlantic. The descendant +of the Pilgrims still remains ignorant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> +of our national life if he does not respond to its +glorious zest, its throbbing energy, its forward +urge, its uncomprehending belief in the future, +its sense of the fresh and mighty world just +beyond to-day's horizon. Whitman's "Pioneers, +O Pioneers" is one of the truest of +American poems because it beats with the pulse +of this onward movement, because it is full of +this laughing and conquering fellowship and +of undefeated faith.</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p><hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III<br /><br /> + +American Idealism</h2> + + +<p>Our endeavor to state the general characteristics +of the American mind has already given +us some indication of what Americans really +care for. The things or the qualities which +they like, the objects of their conscious or unconscious +striving, are their ideals. "There +is what I call the American idea," said Theodore +Parker in the Anti-Slavery Convention +of 1850. "This idea demands, as the proximate +organization thereof, a democracy—that +is, a government of all the people, by all the +people, for all the people; of course, a government +on the principle of eternal justice, the +unchanging law of God; for shortness' sake, I +will call it the idea of Freedom." That is one +of a thousand definitions of American idealism. +Books devoted to the "Spirit of America"—like +the volume by Henry van Dyke which +bears that very title—give a programme of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> +national accomplishments and aspirations. But +our immediate task is more specific. It is to +point out how adequately this idealistic side of +the national temperament has been expressed +in American writing. Has our literature kept +equal pace with our thinking and feeling?</p> + +<p>We do not need, in attempting to answer +this question, any definition of idealism, in its +philosophical or in its more purely literary +sense. There are certain fundamental human +sentiments which lift men above brutes, Frenchmen +above "frog-eaters," and Englishmen +above "shop-keepers." These ennobling sentiments +or ideals, while universal in their essential +nature, assume in each civilized nation a +somewhat specific coloring. The national literature +reveals the myriad shades and hues of +private and public feeling, and the more truthful +this literary record, the more delicate and +noble become the harmonies of local and national +thought or emotion with the universal +instincts and passions of mankind. On the +other hand, when the literature of Spain, for +instance, or of Italy, fails, within a given period, +in range and depth of human interest, we are +compelled to believe either that the Spain or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> +Italy of that age was wanting in the nobler +ideals, or that it lacked literary interpretation.</p> + +<p>In the case of America we are confronted by +a similar dilemma. Since the beginning of the +seventeenth century this country has been, in +a peculiar sense, the home of idealism; but our +literature has remained through long periods +thin and provincial, barren in cosmopolitan +significance; and the hard fact faces us to-day +that only three or four of our writers have +aroused any strong interest in the cultivated +readers of continental Europe. Evidently, then, +either the torch of American idealism does not +burn as brightly as we think, or else our writers, +with but few exceptions, have not hitherto +possessed the height and reach and grasp to +hold up the torch so that the world could see +it. Let us look first at the flame, and then at +the torch-bearers.</p> + +<p>Readers of Carlyle have often been touched +by the humility with which that disinherited +child of Calvinism speaks of Goethe's doctrine +of the "Three Reverences," as set forth in <i>Wilhelm +Meister</i>. Again and again, in his correspondence +and his essays, does Carlyle recur +to that teaching of the threefold Reverence:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> +Reverence for what is above us, for what is +around us and for what is under us; that is to +say, the ethnic religion which frees us from debasing +fear, the philosophical religion which +unites us with our comrades, and the Christian +religion which recognizes humility and poverty +and suffering as divine.</p> + +<p>"To which of these religions do you specially +adhere?" inquired Wilhelm.</p> + +<p>"To all the three," replied the sages; "for +in their union they produce what may properly +be called the true Religion. Out of those three +Reverences springs the highest Reverence, +Reverence for Oneself."</p> + +<p>An admirable symbolism, surely; vaguer, +no doubt, than the old symbols which Carlyle +had learned in the Kirk at Ecclefechan, but +less vague, in turn, than that doctrine of reverence +for the Oversoul, which was soon to be +taught at Concord.</p> + +<p>As one meditates upon the idealism of the +first colonists in America, one is tempted to ask +what their "reverences" were. Toward what +tangible symbols of the invisible did their eyes +instinctively turn?</p> + +<p>For New England, at least, the answer is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> +relatively simple. One form of it is contained +in John Adams's well-known prescription for +Virginia, as recorded in his <i>Diary</i> for July 21, +1786. "Major Langbourne dined with us +again. He was lamenting the difference of character +between Virginia and New England. I +offered to give him a receipt for making a New +England in Virginia. He desired it; and I recommended +to him town-meetings, training-days, +town-schools, and ministers."</p> + +<p>The "ministers," it will be noticed, come +last on the Adams list. But the order of precedence +is unimportant.</p> + +<p>Here are four symbols, or, if you like, "reverences." +Might not the Virginia planters, +loyal to their own specific symbol of the "gentleman,"—no +unworthy ideal, surely; one +that had been glorified in European literature +ever since Castiligione wrote his <i>Courtier</i>, and +one that had been transplanted from England +to Virginia as soon as Sir Walter Raleigh's men +set foot on the soil which took its name from +the Virgin Queen,—might not the Virginia +gentlemen have pondered to their profit over +the blunt suggestion of the Massachusetts commoner? +No doubt; and yet how much picturesqueness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> +and nobility—and tragedy, too—we +should have missed, if our history had not +been full of these varying symbols, clashing +ideals, different Reverences!</p> + +<p>One Reverence, at least, was common to the +Englishman of Virginia and to the Englishman +of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. They +were joint heirs of the Reformation, children of +that waxing and puissant England which was a +nation of one book, the Bible; a book whose +phrases color alike the <i>Faerie Queen</i> of Spenser +and the essays of Francis Bacon; a book +rich beyond all others in human experience; +full of poetry, history, drama; the test of conduct; +the manual of devotion; and above all, +and blinding all other considerations by the +very splendor of the thought, a book believed +to be the veritable Word of the unseen God. +For these colonists in the wilderness, as for the +Protestant Europe which they had left irrevocably +behind them, the Bible was the plainest +of all symbols of idealism: it was the first of +the "Reverences."</p> + +<p>The Church was a symbol likewise, but to +the greater portion of colonial America the +Church meant chiefly the tangible band of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> +militant believers within the limits of a certain +township or parish, rather than the mystical +Bride of Christ. Except in Maryland and Virginia, +whither the older forms of Church worship +were early transplanted, there was scanty +reverence for the Establishment. There was +neither clergyman nor minister on board the +Mayflower. In Rufus Choate's oration on the +Pilgrims before the New England Society of +New York in 1843, occurred the famous sentence +about "a church without a bishop and a +state without a King"; to which Dr. Wainwright, +rector of St. John's, replied wittily at +the dinner following the oration that there +"can be no church without a bishop." This is +perhaps a question for experts; but Thomas +Hooker, Thomas Shepard, and John Cotton +would have sided with Rufus Choate. The awe +which had once been paid to the Establishment +was transferred, in the seventeenth-century +New England, to the minister. The minister +imposed himself upon the popular imagination, +partly through sheer force of personal ascendency, +and partly as a symbol of the theocracy,—the +actual governing of the Commonwealth +by the laws and spirit of the sterner Scriptures.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> +The minister dwelt apart as upon an awful +Sinai. It was no mere romantic fancy of Hawthorne +that shadowed his countenance with a +black veil. The church organization, too,—though +it may have lacked its bishop,—had +a despotic power over its communicants; to be +cast out of its fellowship involved social and +political consequences comparable to those following +excommunication by the Church of +Rome. Hawthorne and Whittier and Longfellow—all +of them sound antiquarians, +though none of them in sympathy with the +theology of Puritanism—have described in +fit terms the bareness of the New England +meeting-house. What intellectual severity and +strain was there; what prodigality of learning; +what blazing intensity of devotion; what pathos +of women's patience, and of children, prematurely +old, stretched upon the rack of insoluble +problems! What dramas of the soul were +played through to the end in those barn-like +buildings, where the musket, perhaps, stood in +the corner of the pew! "How aweful is this +place!" must have been murmured by the +lips of all; though there were many who have +added, "This is the gate of Heaven."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p> + +<p>The gentler side of colonial religion is winningly +portrayed in Whittier's <i>Pennsylvania +Pilgrim</i> and in his imaginary journal of Margaret +Smith. There were sunnier slopes, warmer +exposures for the ripening of the human spirit, +in the Southern colonies. Even in New England +there was sporadic revolt from the beginning. +The number of non-church-members increased +rapidly after 1700; Franklin as a youth +in Boston admired Cotton Mather's ability, but +he did not go to church, "Sunday being my +studying day." Doubtless there were always +humorous sceptics like Mrs. Stowe's delightful +Sam Lawson in <i>Oldtown Folks</i>. Lawson's +comment on Parson Simpson's service epitomizes +two centuries of New England thinking. +"Wal," said Sam, "Parson Simpson's a smart +man; but I tell ye, it's kind o' discouragin'. +Why, he said our state and condition by natur +was just like this. We was clear down in a well +fifty feet deep, and the sides all round nothin' +but glare ice; but we was under immediate obligations +to get out, 'cause we was free, voluntary +agents. But nobody ever had got out, and +nobody would, unless the Lord reached down +and took 'em. And whether he would or not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> +nobody could tell; it was all sovereignty. He +said there wan't one in a hundred, not one in +a thousand,—not one in ten thousand,—that +would be saved. Lordy massy, says I to myself, +ef that's so they're any of 'em welcome to my +chance. <i>And so I kind o' ris up and come out.</i>"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Stowe's novel is fairly representative +of a great mass of derivative literature which +draws its materials from the meeting-house +period of American history. But the direct literature +of that period has passed almost wholly +into oblivion. Jonathan Edwards had one of +the finest minds of his century; no European +standard of comparison is too high for him; he +belongs with Pascal, with Augustine, if you like, +with Dante. But his great treatises written in +the Stockbridge woods are known only to a few +technical students of philosophy. One terrible +sermon, preached at Enfield in 1741, is still +read by the curious; but scarcely anybody knows +of the ineffable tenderness, dignity, and pathos +of his farewell sermon to his flock at Northampton: +and the Yale Library possesses nearly +twelve hundred of Edwards's sermons which +have never been printed at all. Nor does anybody, +save here and there an antiquarian, read<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> +Shepard and Hooker and Mayhew. And yet +these preachers and their successors furnished +the emotional equivalents of great prose and +verse to generations of men. "That is poetry," +says Professor Saintsbury (in a dangerous latitudinarianism, +perhaps!), "which gives the +reader the feeling of poetry." Here we touch +one of the fundamental characteristics of our +national state of mind, in its relation to literature. +We are careless of form and type, yet we +crave the emotional stimulus. Milton, greatest +of Puritan poets, was read and quoted all too +seldom in the Puritan colonies, and yet those +colonists were no strangers to the emotions of +sublimity and awe and beauty. They found +them in the meeting-house instead of in a book; +precisely as, in a later day, millions of Americans +experienced what was for them the emotional +equivalent of poetry in the sermons of +Henry Ward Beecher and Phillips Brooks. +French pulpit oratory of the seventeenth century +wins recognition as a distinct type of literature; +its great practitioners, like Massillon, +Bourdaloue, Bossuet, are appraised in all the +histories of the national literature and in books +devoted to the evolution of literary species. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> +the American colonies the great preachers performed +the functions of men of letters without +knowing it. They have been treated with too +scant respect in the histories of American literature. +It is one of the penalties of Protestantism +that the audiences, after a while, outgrow +the preacher. The development of the +historic sense, of criticism, of science, makes an +impassable gulf between Jonathan Edwards +and the American churches of the twentieth +century. A sense of profound changes in theology +has left our contemporaries indifferent to +the literature in which the old theology was +clothed.</p> + +<p>There is one department of American literary +production, of which Bossuet's famous sermon +on Queen Henrietta Maria of England +may serve to remind us, which illustrates significantly +the national idealism. I mean the +commemorative oration. The addresses upon +the Pilgrim Fathers by such orators as Everett, +Webster, and Choate; the countless orations +before such organizations as the New England +Society of New York and the Phi Beta Kappa; +the papers read before historical and patriotic +societies; the birthday and centenary discourses<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> +upon national figures like Washington or Lincoln, +have all performed, and are still performing, +an inestimable service in stimulating popular +loyalty to the idealism of the fathers. As +literature, most of this production is derivative: +we listen to eloquence about the Puritans, but +we do not read the Puritans; the description +of Arthur Dimmesdale's election sermon in +<i>The Scarlet Letter</i>, moving as it may be, tempts +no one to open the stout collections of election +sermons in the libraries. Yet the original literature +of mediæval chivalry is known only to +a few scholars: Tennyson's <i>Idylls</i> outsell the +<i>Mabinogion</i> and Malory. The actual world of +literature is always shop-worn; a world chiefly +of second-hand books, of warmed-over emotions +and it is not surprising that many listeners +to orations about Lincoln do not personally +emulate Lincoln, and that many of the most +enthusiastic dealers in the sentiment of the ancestral +meeting-house do not themselves attend +church.</p> + +<p>The other ingredients of John Adams's ideal +Commonwealth are no less significant of our +national disposition. Take the school-house. +It was planted in the wilderness for the training<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> +of boys and girls and for a future "godly and +learned ministry." The record of American +education is a long story of idealism which has +touched literature at every turn. The "red +school-house" on the hill-top or at the cross-roads, +the "log-colleges" in forgotten hamlets, +the universities founded by great states, are all +a record of the American faith—which has +sometimes been called a fetich—in education. +In its origin, it was a part of the essential programme +of Calvinism to make a man able to +judge for himself upon the most momentous +questions; a programme, too, of that political +democracy which lay embedded in the tenets +of Calvinism, a democracy which believes and +must continue to believe that an educated electorate +can safeguard its own interests and train +up its own leaders. The poetry of the American +school-house was written long ago by Whittier, +in describing Joshua Coffin's school under +the big elm on the cross-road in East Haverhill; +its humor and pathos and drama have been +portrayed by innumerable story-writers and essayists. +Mrs. Martha Baker Dunn's charming +sketches, entitled "Cicero in Maine" and "Virgil +in Maine," indicate the idealism once taught<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> +in the old rural academies,—and it is taught +there still. City men will stop wistfully on the +street, in the first week of September, to watch +the boys and girls go trudging off to their first +day of school; men who believe in nothing else +at least believe in that! And school and college +and university remain, as in the beginning, the +first garden-ground and the last refuge of literature.</p> + +<p>That "town-meeting" which John Adams +thought Virginia might do well to adopt has +likewise become a symbol of American idealism. +Together with the training-day, it represented +the rights and duties and privileges of +free men; the machinery of self-government. +It was democracy, rather than "representative" +government, under its purest aspect. Sentiments +of responsibility to the town, the political unit, +and to the Commonwealth, the group of units, +were bred there. Likewise, it was a training-school +for sententious speech and weighty +action; its roots, as historians love to demonstrate, +run back very far; and though the modern +drift to cities has made its machinery ineffective +in the larger communities, it remains a perpetual +spring or feeding stream to the broader currents<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> +of our national life. Without an understanding +of the town-meeting and its equivalents, +our political literature loses much of its +significance. Like the school-house and meeting-house, +it has become glorified by our men +of letters. John Fiske and other historians +have celebrated it in some of the most brilliant +pages of our political writing; and that +citizen literature, so deeply characteristic of us, +found in the plain, forthright, and public-spirited +tone of town-meeting discussions its keynote. +The spectacular debates of our national +history, the dramatic contests in the great arena +of the Senate Chamber, the discussions before +huge popular audiences in the West, have maintained +the civic point of view, have developed +and dignified and enriched the prose style first +employed by American freemen in deciding +their local affairs in the presence of their neighbors. +"I am a part of this people," said Lincoln +proudly in one of his famous debates of +1858; "I was raised just a little east of here"; +and this nearness to the audience, this directness +and simplicity and genuineness of our best political +literature, its homely persuasiveness and +force, is an inheritance of the town-meeting.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p> + +<p>Bible and meeting-house, school-house and +town-meeting, thus illustrate concretely the +responsiveness of the American character to +idealistic impulses. They are external symbols +of a certain state of mind. It may indeed be +urged that they are primarily signs of a moral +and social or institutional trend, and are therefore +non-literary evidence of American idealism. +Nevertheless, institutional as they may be +deemed, they lie close to that poetry of daily +duty in which our literature has not been poor. +They are fundamentally related to that attitude +of mind, that habitual temper of the spirit, +which has produced, in all countries of settled +use and wont, the literature of idealism. Brunetière +said of Flaubert's most famous woman +character that poor Emma Bovary, the prey +and the victim of Romantic desires, was after +all much like the rest of us except that she +lacked the intelligence to perceive the charm +and poetry of the daily task. We have already +touched upon the purely romantic side of +American energy and of American imagination, +and we must shortly look more closely +still at those impulses of daring, those moods +of heightened feeling, that intensified individualism,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> +the quest of strangeness and terror and +wild beauty, which characterize our romantic +writing. But this romanticism is, as it were, a +segment of the larger circle of idealism. It is +idealism accentuated by certain factors, driven +to self-expression by the passions of scorn or +of desire; it exceeds, in one way or another, +the normal range of experience and emotion. +Our romantic American literature is doubtless +our greatest. And yet some of the most characteristic +tendencies of American writing are to +be found in the poetry of daily experience, in +the quiet accustomed light that falls upon one's +own doorway and garden, in the immemorial +charm of going forth to one's labor and returning +in the evening,—poetry old as the world.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Let us see how this glow of idealism touches +some of the more intimate aspects of human experience. +"Out of the three Reverences," says +Wilhelm Meister, "springs the highest Reverence, +Reverence for Oneself." Open the +pages of Hawthorne. Moving wholly within +the framework of established institutions, with +no desire to shatter the existing scheme of +social order, choosing as its heroes men of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> +meeting-house, town-meeting, and training-day, +how intensely nevertheless does the imagination +of this fiction-writer illuminate the Body +and the Soul!</p> + +<p>Take first the Body. The inheritance of +English Puritanism may be traced throughout +our American writing, in its reverence for physical +purity. The result is something unique in +literary history. Continental critics, while recognizing +the intellectual and artistic powers +revealed in <i>The Scarlet Letter</i>, have seldom +realized the awfulness, to the Puritan mind, +of the very thought of an adulterous minister. +That a priest in southern Europe should break +his vows is indeed scandalous; but the sin is regarded +as a failure of the natural man to keep +a vow requiring supernatural grace for its fulfilment; +it may be that the priest had no vocation +for his sacred office; he is unfrocked, punished, +forgotten, yet a certain mantle of human +charity still covers his offence. But in the Puritan +scheme (and <i>The Scarlet Letter</i>, save for +that one treacherous, warm human moment in +the woodland where "all was spoken," lies +wholly within the set framework of Puritanism) +there is no forgiveness for a sin of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> +flesh. There is only Law, Law stretching on +into infinitude until the mind shudders at it. +Hawthorne knew his Protestant New England +through and through. <i>The Scarlet Letter</i> is the +most striking example in our national literature +of that idealization of physical purity, but hundreds +of other romances and poems, less morbid +if less great, assert in unmistakable terms +the same moral conviction, the same ideal.</p> + +<p>Yet, in spite of its theme, there was never a +less adulterous novel than this book which plays +so artistically with the letter A. The body is +branded, is consumed, is at last, perhaps, transfigured +by the intense rays of light emitted from +the suffering soul.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"The soul is form and doth the body make."</p></blockquote> + +<p>In this intense preoccupation with the Soul, +Hawthorne's romance is in unison with the +more mystical and spiritual utterances of Catholicism +as well as of Protestantism. It was in +part a resultant of that early American isolation +which contributed so effectively to the artistic +setting of <i>The Scarlet Letter</i>. But in his +doctrine of spiritual integrity, in the agonized +utterance, "Be true—be true!" as well as in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> +his reverence for purity of the body, our greatest +romancer was typical of the imaginative literature +of his countrymen. The restless artistic +experiments of Poe presented the human body +in many a ghastly and terrifying aspect of illness +and decay, and distorted by all passions +save one. His imagination was singularly sexless. +Pathological students have pointed out +the relation between this characteristic of Poe's +writing, and his known tendencies toward opium-eating, +alcoholism, and tuberculosis. But +no such explanation is at hand to elucidate the +absence of sexual passion from the novels of +the masculine-minded Fenimore Cooper. One +may say, indeed, that Cooper's novels, like +Scott's, lack intensity of spiritual vision; that +their tone is consonant with the views of a sound +Church of England parson in the eighteenth +century; and that the absence of physical passion, +like the absence of purely spiritual insight, +betrays a certain defect in Cooper's imaginative +grasp and depth. But it is better criticism, after +all, to remember that these three pioneers in +American fiction-writing were composing for +an audience in which Puritan traditions or tastes +were predominant. Not one of the three men<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> +but would have instantly sacrificed an artistic +effect, legitimate in the eyes of Fielding or +Goethe or Balzac, rather than—in the phrase +so often satirized—"bring a blush to the cheek +of innocence." In other words, the presence +of a specific audience, accustomed to certain +Anglo-Saxon and Puritanic restraint of topic +and of speech, has from the beginning of our +imaginative literature coöperated with the instinct +of our writers. That Victorian reticence +which is so plainly seen even in such full-bodied +writers as Dickens or Thackeray—a reticence +which men like Mr. Bernard Shaw and Mr. +Galsworthy and Mr. Wells think so hypocritical +and dangerous to society and which they +have certainly done their utmost to abolish—has +hitherto dominated our American writing. +The contemporary influence of great Continental +writers to whom reticence is unknown, +combined with the influence of a contemporary +opera and drama to which reticence would be +unprofitable, are now assaulting this dominant +convention. Very possibly it is doomed. But +it is only within recent years that its rule has +been questioned.</p> + +<p>One result of it may, I think, be fairly admitted.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> +While very few writers of eminence, +after all, in any country, wish to bring a "blush +to the cheek of innocence," they naturally wish, +as Thackeray put it in one of the best-known +of his utterances, to be permitted to depict a +man to the utmost of their power. American +literary conventions, like English conventions, +have now and again laid a restraining and compelling +hand upon the legitimate exercise of this +artistic instinct; and this fact has coöperated +with many social, ethical, and perhaps physiological +causes to produce a thinness or bloodlessness +in our books. They are graceful, pleasing, +but pale, like one of those cool whitish +uncertain skies of an American spring. They +lack "body," like certain wines. It is not often +that we can produce a real Burgundy. We have +had many distinguished fiction-writers, but none +with the physical gusto of a Fielding, a Smollett, +or even a Dickens, who, idealist and romanticist +as he was, and Victorian as were his +artistic preferences, has this animal life which +tingles upon every page. We must confess that +there is a certain quality of American idealism +which is covertly suspicious or openly hostile to +the glories of bodily sensation. Emerson's thin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> +high shoulders peep up reproachfully above the +desk; Lanier is playing his reproachful flute; +Longfellow reads Frémont's Rocky Mountain +experiences while lying abed, and sighs "But, ah, +the discomforts!"; Irving's <i>Astoria</i>, superb as +were the possibilities of its physical background, +tastes like parlor exploration. Even Dana's +<i>Before the Mast</i> and Parkman's <i>Oregon Trail</i>, +transcripts of robust actual experience, and admirable +books, reveal a sort of physical paleness +compared with Turgenieff's <i>Notes of a Sportsman</i> +and Tolstoï's <i>Sketches</i> of Sebastopol and +the Crimea. They are Harvard undergraduate +writing, after all!</p> + +<p>These facts illustrate anew that standing +temptation of the critic of American literature to +palliate literary shortcomings by the plea that we +possess certain admirable non-literary qualities. +The dominant idealism of the nation has levied, +or seemed to levy, a certain tax upon our writing. +Some instincts, natural to the full-blooded +utterance of Continental literature, have been +starved or eliminated here. Very well. The characteristic +American retort to this assertion would +be: Better our long record and habit of idealism +than a few masterpieces more or less. As a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> +people, we have cheerfully accepted the Puritan +restraint of speech, we have respected the shamefaced +conventions of decent and social utterance. +Like the men and women described in Locker-Lampson's +verses, Americans</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"eat, and drink, and scheme, and plod,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They go to church on Sunday;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And many are afraid of God—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And more of Mrs. Grundy."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Now Mrs. Grundy is assuredly not the most desirable +of literary divinities, but the student of +classical literature can easily think of other divinities, +celebrated in exquisite Greek and Roman +verse, who are distinctly less desirable still.</p> + +<p>"Not passion, but sentiment," said Hawthorne, +in a familiar passage of criticism of +his own <i>Twice-Told Tales</i>. How often must the +student of American literature echo that half-melancholy +but just verdict, as he surveys the +transition from the spiritual intensity of a few of +our earlier writers to the sentimental qualities +which have brought popular recognition to the +many. Take the word "soul" itself. Calvinism +shadowed and darkened the meaning, perhaps, +and yet its spiritual passion made the word +"soul" sublime. The reaction against Calvinism<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> +has made religion more human, natural, +and possibly more Christlike, but "soul" has +lost the thrilling solemnity with which Edwards +pronounced the word. Emerson and Hawthorne, +far as they had escaped from the bonds +of their ancestral religion, still utter the word +"soul" with awe. But in the popular sermon +and hymn and story of our day,—with +their search after the sympathetic and the sentimental, +after what is called in magazine slang +"heart-interest,"—the word has lost both its +intellectual distinction and its literary magic. +It will regain neither until it is pronounced +once more with spiritual passion.</p> + +<p>But in literature, as in other things, we must +take what we can get. The great mass of our +American writing is sentimental, because it has +been produced by, and for, an excessively sentimental +people. The poems in Stedman's carefully +chosen <i>Anthology</i>, the prose and verse +in the two volume Stedman-Hutchinson collection +of American Literature, the Library of +Southern Literature, and similar sectional anthologies, +the school Readers and Speakers,—particularly +in the half-century between +1830 and 1880,—our newspapers and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> magazines,—particularly +the so-called "yellow" +newspapers and the illustrated magazines typified +by <i>Harper's Monthly</i>,—are all fairly dripping +with sentiment. American oratory is notoriously +the most sentimental oratory of the +civilized world. The <i>Congressional Record</i> still +presents such specimens of sentiment—delivered +or given leave to be printed, it is true, +for "home consumption" rather than to affect +the course of legislation—as are inexplicable to +an Englishman or a Frenchman or an Italian.</p> + +<p>Immigrants as we all are, and migratory as +we have ever been,—so much so that one +rarely meets an American who was born in +the house built by his grandfather,—we cling +with peculiar fondness to the sentiment of +"Home." The best-known American poem, +for decades, was Samuel Woodworth's "Old +Oaken Bucket," the favorite popular song was +Stephen Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home," +the favorite play was Denman Thompson's +"Old Homestead." Without that appealing +word "mother" the American melodrama would +be robbed of its fifth act. Without pictures of +"the child" the illustrated magazines would go +into bankruptcy. No country has witnessed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> +such a production of periodicals and books for +boys and girls: France and Germany imitate +in vain <i>The Youth's Companion</i> and <i>St. Nicholas</i>, +as they did the stories of "Oliver Optic" and +<i>Little Women</i> and <i>Little Lord Fauntleroy</i>.</p> + +<p>The sentimental attitude towards women and +children, which is one of the most typical aspects +of American idealism, is constantly illustrated +in our short stories. Bret Harte, disciple +of Dickens as he was, and Romantic as was +his fashion of dressing up his miners and gamblers, +was accurately faithful to the American +feeling towards the "kid" and the "woman." +"Tennessee's Partner," "The Luck of Roaring +Camp," "Christmas at Sandy Bar," are obvious +examples. Owen Wister's stories are +equally faithful and admirable in this matter. +The American girl still does astonishing things +in international novels, as she has continued +to do since the eighteen-sixties, but they are +astonishing mainly to the European eye and +against the conventionalized European background. +She does the same things at home, +and neither she nor her mother sees why she +should not, so universal among us is the chivalrous +interpretation of actions and situations<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> +which amaze the European observer. The popular +American literature which recognizes and +encourages this position of the "young girl" +in our social structure is a literature primarily +of sentiment. The note of passion—in the European +sense of that word—jars and shatters +it. The imported "problem-play," written for +an adult public in Paris or London, introduces +social facts and intellectual elements almost +wholly alien to the experience of American +matinée audiences. Disillusioned historians of +our literature have instanced this unsophistication +as a proof of our national inexperience; +yet it is often a sort of radiant and triumphant +unsophistication which does not lose its innocence +in parting with its ignorance.</p> + +<p>That sentimental idealization of classes, +whether peasant, bourgeois, or aristocratic, +which has long been a feature of Continental +and English poetry and fiction, is practically +absent from American literature. Whatever the +future may bring, there have hitherto been no +fixed classes in American society. Webster was +guilty of no exaggeration when he declared that +the whole North was made up of laborers, +and Lincoln spoke in the same terms in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> +well-known sentences about "hired laborers": +"twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer." +The relative uniformity of economic and social +conditions, which prevailed until toward the +close of the nineteenth century, made, no +doubt, for the happiness of the greatest number, +but it failed, naturally, to afford that picturesqueness +of class contrast and to stimulate +that sentiment of class distinction, in which +European literature is so rich.</p> + +<p>Very interesting, in the light of contemporary +economic conditions, is the effort made by +American poets in the middle of the last century +to glorify labor. They were not so much +idealizing a particular laboring class, as endeavoring, +in Whitman's words, "To teach the +average man the glory of his walk and trade." +Whitman himself sketched the American workman +in almost every attitude which appealed +to his own sense of the picturesque and heroic. +But years before <i>Leaves of Grass</i> was published, +Whittier had celebrated in his <i>Songs of Labor</i> +the glorified images of lumberman and drover, +shoemaker and fisherman. Lucy Larcom and +the authors of <i>The Lowell Offering</i> portrayed +the fine idealism of the young women—of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> +best American stock—who went enthusiastically +to work in the cotton-mills of Lowell and +Lawrence, or who bound shoes by their own +firesides on the Essex County farms. That glow +of enthusiasm for labor was chiefly moral, but +it was poetical as well. The changes which have +come over the economic and social life of America +are nowhere more sharply indicated than in +that very valley of the Merrimac where, sixty +and seventy years ago, one could "hear America +singing." There are few who are singing to-day +in the cotton-mills; the operators, instead +of girls from the hill-farms, are Greeks, Lithuanians, +Armenians, Italians. Whittier's drovers +have gone forever; the lumbermen and deep-sea +fishermen have grown fewer, and the men +who still swing the axes and haul the frozen +cod-lines are mostly aliens. The pride that once +broke into singing has turned harsh and silent. +"Labor" looms vast upon the future political +and social horizon, but the songs of labor have +lost the lyric note. They have turned into the +dramas and tragedies of labor, as portrayed +with the swift and fierce insistence of the short +story, illustrated by the Kodak. In the great +agricultural sections of the West and South the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> +old bucolic sentiment still survives,—that simple +joy of seeing the "frost upon the pumpkin" +and "the fodder in the stock" which Mr. James +Whitcomb Riley has sung with such charming +fidelity to the type. But even on the Western +farms toil has grown less manual. It is more a +matter of expert handling of machinery. Reaping +and binding may still have their poet, but +he needs to be a Kipling rather than a Burns.</p> + +<p>Our literature, then, reveals few traces of +idealization of a class, and but little idealization +of trades or callings. Neither class nor calling +presents anything permanent to the American +imagination, or stands for anything ultimate in +American experience. On the other hand, our +writing is rich in local sentiment and sectional +loyalty. The short story, which has seized so +greedily the more dramatic aspects of American +energy, has been equally true to the quiet +background of rural scenery and familiar ways. +American idealism, as shown in the transformation +of the lesser loyalties of home and countryside +into the larger loyalties of state and +section, and the absorption of these, in turn, +into the emotions of nationalism, is particularly +illustrated in our political verse. A striking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> +example of the imaginative visualization of the +political units of a state is the spirited roll-call +of the counties in Whittier's "Massachusetts +to Virginia." But the burden of that fine poem, +after all, is the essential unity of Massachusetts +as a sovereign state, girding herself to repel the +attack of another sovereign state, Virginia. Now +the evolution of our political history, both local +and national, has tended steadily, for half a +century, to the obliteration, for purposes of the +imagination, of county lines within state lines. +At the last Republican state convention held +in Massachusetts, there were no county banners +displayed, for the first time in half a century. +Many a city-dweller to-day cannot tell in what +county he is living unless he has happened to +make a transfer of real estate. State lines themselves +are fading away. The federal idea has +triumphed. Doubtless the majority of the fellow +citizens of John Randolph of Roanoke were +all the more proud of him because the poet +could say of him, in writing an admiring and +mournful epitaph:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Beyond Virginia's border line<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His patriotism perished."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The great collections of Civil War verse, which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> +are lying almost unread in the libraries, are store-houses +of this ancient state pride and jealousy, +which was absorbed so fatally into the larger +sectional antagonism. "Maryland, my Maryland" +gave place to "Dixie," just as Whittier's +"Massachusetts to Virginia" was forgotten +when marching men began to sing "John +Brown's Body" and "The Battle Hymn of the +Republic." The literature of sectionalism still +lingers in its more lovable aspect in the verse +and fiction which still celebrates the fairer side +of the civilization of the Old South: its ideals +of chivalry and local loyalty, its gracious women +and gallant men. Our literature needs to cultivate +this provincial affection for the past, as an +offset to the barren uniformity which the federal +scheme allows. But the ultimate imaginative +victory, like the actual political victory of +the Civil War, is with the thought and feeling +of Nationalism. It is foreshadowed in that passionate +lyric cry of Lowell, which sums up so +much and, like all true passion, anticipates so +much:—</p> + +<blockquote><p>"O Beautiful! my Country!"</p></blockquote> + +<p>The literary record of American idealism +thus illustrates how deeply the conception of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> +Nationalism has affected the imagination of +our countrymen. The literary record of the +American conception of liberty runs further +back. Some historians have allowed themselves +to think that the American notion of +liberty is essentially declamatory, a sort of futile +echo of Patrick Henry's "Give me Liberty +or give me Death"; and not only declamatory, +but hopelessly theoretical and abstract. They +grant that it was a trumpet-note, no doubt, for +agitators against the Stamp Act, and for pamphleteers +like Thomas Paine; that it may have +been a torch for lighting dark and weary ways +in the Revolutionary War; but they believe it +likewise to be a torch which gleams with the +fire caught from France and which was passed +back to France in turn when her own great +bonfire was ready for lighting. The facts, however, +are inconsistent with this picturesque +theory of contemporary reactionists. It is true +that the word "liberty" has been full of temptation +for generations of American orators, that +it has become an idol of the forum, and often +a source of heat rather than of light. But to +treat American Liberty as if she habitually wore +the red cap is to nourish a Francophobia as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> +absurd as Edmund Burke's. The sober truth +is that the American working theory of Liberty +is singularly like St. Paul's. "Ye have been +called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an +occasion to the flesh." A few sentences from +John Winthrop, written in 1645, are significant: +"There is a twofold liberty, natural ... and +civil or federal. The first is common to +man with beasts and other creatures. By this, +man, as he stands in relation to man simply, +hath liberty to do what he lists; it is a liberty +to evil as well as to good. This liberty is incompatible +and inconsistent with authority.... +The other kind of liberty I call civil or federal, +it may also be termed moral.... This liberty +is the proper end and object of authority, and +cannot subsist without it; and it is a liberty to +that only which is good, just, and honest. This +liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard +(not only of your goods, but) of your lives, if +need be.... This liberty is maintained and +exercised in a way of subjection to authority; +it is of the same kind of liberty wherewith +Christ hath made us free."</p> + +<p>There speaks the governor, the man of affairs, +the typical citizen of the future republic. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> +liberty to do as one pleases is a dream of the +Renaissance; but out of dreamland it does not +work. Nobody, even in revolutionary France, +imagines that it will work. Jefferson, who is popularly +supposed to derive his notion of liberty +from French theorists, is to all practical purposes +nearer to John Winthrop than he is to +Rousseau. The splendid phrases of his "Declaration" +are sometimes characterized as abstractions. +They are really generalizations from past +political experience. An arbitrary king, assuming +a liberty to do as he liked, had encroached +upon the long-standing customs and authority +of the colonists. Jefferson, at the bidding of the +Continental Congress, served notice of the royal +trespass, and incidentally produced (as Lincoln +said) a "standard maxim for free society."</p> + +<p>It is true, no doubt, that the word "liberty" +became in Jefferson's day, and later, a mere partisan +or national shibboleth, standing for no +reality, degraded to a catchword, a symbol of +antagonism to Great Britain. In the political +debates and the impressive prose and verse of +the anti-slavery struggle, the word became once +more charged with vital meaning; it glowed +under the heat and pressure of an idea. Towards<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> +the end of the nineteenth century it went temporarily +out of fashion. The late Colonel Higginson, +an ideal type of what Europeans call an +"1848" man, attended at the close of the century +some sessions of the American Historical +Association. In his own address, at the closing +dinner, he remarked that there was one word for +which he had listened in vain during the reading +of the papers by the younger men. It was +the word "liberty." One of the younger school +retorted promptly that since we had the thing +liberty, we had no need to glorify the word. +But Colonel Higginson, stanch adherent as he +was of the "good old cause," was not convinced. +Like many another lover of American letters, +he thought that William Vaughn Moody's +"Ode in Time of Hesitation" deserved a place +by the side of Lowell's "Commemoration +Ode," and that when the ultimate day of reckoning +comes for the whole muddled Imperialistic +business, the standard of reckoning must +be "liberty" as Winthrop and Jefferson and +Lincoln and Lowell and Vaughn Moody understood +the word.</p> + +<p>In the mean time we must confess that the +history of our literature, with a few noble exceptions,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> +shows a surprising defect in the passion for +freedom. Tennyson's famous lines about "Freedom +broadening slowly down from precedent +to precedent" are perfectly American in their +conservative tone; while it is Englishmen like +Byron and Landor and Shelley and Swinburne +who have written the most magnificent republican +poetry. The "land of the free" turns to +the monarchic mother country, after all, for the +glow and thunder and splendor of the poetry +of freedom. It is one of the most curious phenomena +in the history of literature. Shall we +enter the preoccupation plea once more? Enjoying +the thing liberty, have we been therefore +less concerned with the idea? Or is it simply +another illustration of the defective passion of +American literature?</p> + +<p>Yet there is one phase of political loyalty +which has been cherished by the imagination of +Americans, and which has inspired noteworthy +oratory and noble political prose. It is the sentiment +of Union. In one sense, of course, this +dates back to the period of Franklin's <i>bon mot</i> +about our all hanging together, or hanging separately. +It is found in Hamilton's pamphlets, +in Paine's <i>Crisis</i>, in the <i>Federalist</i>, in Washington's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> +"Farewell Address." It is peculiarly associated +with the name and fame of Daniel Webster, +and, to a less degree, with the career of +Henry Clay. In the stress of the debate over +slavery, many a Northerner with abolitionist +convictions, like the majority of Southerners +with slave-holding convictions, forgot the splendid +peroration of Webster's "Reply to Hayne" +and were willing to "let the Union go." But +in the four tragic and heroic years that followed +the firing upon the American flag at Fort Sumter +the sentiment of Union was made sacred by +such sacrifices as the patriotic imagination of +a Clay or a Webster had never dreamed. A new +literature resulted. A lofty ideal of indissoluble +Union was preached in pulpits, pleaded +for in editorials, sung in lyrics, and woven +into the web of fiction. Edward Everett Hale's +<i>Man Without a Country</i> became one of the +most poignantly moving of American stories. +In Walt Whitman's <i>Drum-Taps</i> and his later +poems, the "Union of these States" became +transfigured with mystical significance: no longer +a mere political compact, dissoluble at will, +but a spiritual entity, a new incarnation of the +soul of man.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p> + +<p>We must deal later with that American instinct +of fellowship which Whitman believed to +have been finally cemented by the Civil War, +and which has such import for the future of our +democracy. There are likewise communal loyalties, +glowing with the new idealism which has +come with the twentieth century: ethical, municipal, +industrial, and artistic movements which +are full of promise for the higher life of the country, +but which have not yet had time to express +themselves adequately in literature. There are +stirrings of racial loyalty among this and that +element of our composite population,—as for +instance among the gifted younger generation +of American Jews,—a racial loyalty not antagonistic +to the American current of ideas, but +rather in full unison with it. Internationalism +itself furnishes motives for the activity of the +noblest imaginations, and the true literature of +internationalism has hardly yet begun. It is in +the play and counterplay of these new forces +that the American literature of the twentieth +century must measure itself. Communal feelings +novel to Americans bred under the accepted +individualism will doubtless assert themselves +in our prose and verse. But it is to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> +remembered that the best writing thus far produced +on American soil has been a result of the +old conditions: of the old "Reverences"; of the +pioneer training of mind and body; of the slow +tempering of the American spirit into an obstinate +idealism. We do not know what course the +ship may take in the future, but</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"We know what Master laid thy keel,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What Workman wrought thy ribs of steel,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who made each mast and sail and rope,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What anvil rang, what hammers beat,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In what a forge and what a heat<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p><hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV<br /><br /> + +Romance and Reaction</h2> + + +<p>The characteristic attitude of the American +mind, as we have seen, is one of idealism. We +may now venture to draw a smaller circle within +that larger circle of idealistic impulses, and +to label the smaller circle "romance." Here, +too, as with the word "idealism," although we +are to make abundant use of literary illustrations +of national tendencies, we have no need of a severely +technical definition of terms. When we +say, "Tom is an idealist" and "Lorenzo is a +romantic fellow," we convey at least one tolerably +clear distinction between Tom and Lorenzo. +The idealist has a certain characteristic +habit of mind or inclination of spirit. When +confronted by experience, he reacts in a certain +way. In his individual and social impulses, in +the travail of his soul, or in his commerce with +his neighbors and the world, he behaves in a +more or less well-defined fashion. The romanticist,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> +when confronted by the same objects and +experiences, exhibits another type of behavior. +Lorenzo, though he be Tom's brother, is a +different fellow; he is—in the opinion of his +friends, at least—a rather more peculiar person, +a creature of more varying moods, of heightened +feelings, of stranger ways. Like Tom, he +is a person of sentiment, but his sentiment attaches +itself, not so much to everyday aspects +of experience, as to that which is unusual or terrifying, +lovely or far away; he possesses, or would +like to possess, bodily or spiritual daring. He +has the adventurous heart. He is of those who +love to go down to the sea in ships and do business +in great waters. Lorenzo the romanticist +is made of no finer clay than Tom the idealist, +but his nerves are differently tuned. Your deep-sea +fisherman, after all, is only a fisherman at bottom. +That is to say, he too is an idealist, but +he wants to catch different species of fish from +those which drop into the basket of the landsman. +Precisely what he covets, perhaps he does +not know. I was once foolish enough to ask an +old Alsatian soldier who was patiently holding +his rod over a most unpromising canal near +Strassburg, what kind of fish he was fishing for.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> +"All kinds," was his rebuking answer, and I +took off my hat to the veteran romanticist.</p> + +<p>The words "romance" and "romanticism" +have been repeated to the ears of our generation +with wearisome iteration. Not the least of +the good luck of Wordsworth and Coleridge lay +in the fact that they scarcely knew that they +were "romanticists." Middle-aged readers of +the present day may congratulate themselves +that in their youth they read Wordsworth and +Coleridge simply because it was Wordsworth +and Coleridge and not documents illustrating +the history of the romantic movement. But the +rising generation is sophisticated. For better or +worse it has been taught to distinguish between +the word "romance" on the one side, and the +word "romanticism" on the other. "Romantic" +is a useful but overworked adjective which +attaches itself indiscriminately to both "romance" +and "romanticism." Professor Vaughan, +for example, and a hundred other writers, have +pointed out that in the narrower and more usual +sense, the words "romance" and "romanticism" +point to a love of vivid coloring and strongly +marked contrasts; to a craving for the unfamiliar, +the marvellous, and the supernatural. In the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> +wider and less definite sense, they signify a revolt +from the purely intellectual view of man's nature; +a recognition of the instincts and the passions, +a vague intimation of sympathy between +man and the world around him,—in one word, +the sense of mystery. The narrower and the +broader meanings pass into one another by imperceptible +shades. They are affected by the +well-known historic conditions for romantic +feeling in the different European countries. The +common factor, of course, is the man with the +romantic world set in his heart. It is Gautier +with his love of color, Victor Hugo enraptured +with the sound of words, Heine with his self-destroying +romantic irony, Novalis with his +blue flower, and Maeterlinck with his <i>Blue Bird</i>.</p> + +<p>But these romantic men of letters, writing +in epochs of romanticism, are by no means +the only children of romance. Sir Humphrey +Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh were as truly +followers of "the gleam" as were Spenser or +Marlowe. The spirit of romance is found wherever +and whenever men say to themselves, as +Don Quixote's niece said of her uncle, that +"they wish better bread than is made of wheat," +or when they look within their own hearts, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> +assert, as the poet Young said in 1759, long +before the English romantic movement had +begun, "there is more in the spirit of man than +mere prose-reason can fathom."</p> + +<p>We are familiar, perhaps too remorsefully +familiar, with the fact that romance is likely to +run a certain course in the individual and then +to disappear. Looking back upon it afterward, +it resembles the upward and downward zigzag +of a fever chart. It has in fact often been described +as a measles, a disease of which no one +can be particularly proud, although he may +have no reason to blush for it. Southey said +that he was no more ashamed of having been +a republican than of having been a boy. Well, +people catch Byronism, and get over it, much +as Southey got over his republicanism. In fact +Byron himself lived long enough—though +he died at thirty-six—to outgrow his purely +"Byronic" phase, and to smile at it as knowingly +as we do. Coleridge's blossoming period +as a romantic poet was tragically brief. Keats +and Shelley had the good fortune to die in the +fulness of their romantic glory. They did not +outlive their own poetic sense of the wonder +and mystery of the world. Yet many an old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> +poet like Tennyson and Browning has preserved +his romance to the end. Tennyson dies +at eighty-three with the full moonlight streaming +through the oriel window upon his bed, +and with his fingers clasping Shakespeare's +<i>Cymbeline</i>.</p> + +<p>With most of us commonplace persons, however, +a reaction from the romantic is almost +inevitable. The romantic temperament cannot +long keep the pitch. Poe could indeed do it, +although he hovered at times near the border +of insanity. Hawthorne went for relief to his +profane sea-captains and the carnal-minded superannuated +employees of the Salem Custom +House. "The weary weight of all this unintelligible +world" presses too hard on most of +those who stop to think about it. The simplest +way of relief is to shrug one's shoulders +and let the weight go. That is to say, we cease +being poets, we are no longer the children of +romance, although we may remain idealists. +Perhaps it is external events that change, rather +than we ourselves. The restoration of the Bourbons, +the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, make +and unmake romantics. Often society catches +up with the romanticist; he is no longer a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> +soldier of revolt; he has become a "respectable." +Or, while remaining a poet, he shifts his attention +to some more familiar segment of the idealistic +circle. He sings about his wife instead of +the wife of somebody else. Like Wordsworth, +he takes for his theme a Mary Hutchinson instead +of the unknown and hauntingly alluring +figure of Lucy. To put it differently, the high +light, the mysterious color of dawn or sunset +disappears from his picture of human life. Or, +the high light may be diffused in a more tranquil +radiance over the whole surface of experience. +Such an artist may remain a true painter +or poet, but he is not a romantic poet or painter +any longer. He has, like the aging Emerson, +taken in sail; the god Terminus has said to him, +"no more."</p> + +<p>One must of course admit that the typical +romanticist has often been characterized by certain +intellectual and moral weaknesses. But the +great romance men, like Edmund Spenser, for +example, may not possess these weaknesses at +all. Robert Louis Stevenson was passionately +in love with the romantic in life and with romanticism +in literature; but it did not make him +eccentric, weak, or empty. His instinct for enduring<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> +romance was so admirably fine that it +brought strength to the sinews of his mind, +light and air and fire to his soul. Among the +writers of our own day, it is Mr. Kipling who +has written some of the keenest satire upon +romantic foibles, while never ceasing to salute +his real mistress, the true romance.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Who wast, or yet the Lights were set,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A whisper in the void,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who shalt be sung through planets young<br /></span> +<span class="i2">When this is clean destroyed."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>What are the causes of American romance, +the circumstances and qualities that have produced +the romantic element in American life +and character? Precisely as with the individual +artist or man of letters, we touch first of all +upon certain temperamental inclinations. It is +a question again of the national mind, of the +differentiation of the race under new climatic +and physical conditions. We have to reckon +with the headiness and excitability of youth. +It was young men who emigrated hither, just as +in the eighteen-sixties it was young men who +filled the Northern and the Southern armies. +The first generations of American immigration +were made up chiefly of vigorous, imaginative,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> +and daring youth. The incapables came later. +It is, I think, safe to assert that the colonists +of English stock, even as late as 1790,—when +more than ninety per cent of the population +of America had in their veins the blood of the +British Isles,—were more responsive to romantic +impulses than their English cousins. +For that matter, an Irishman or a Welshman is +more romantic than an Englishman to-day.</p> + +<p>From the very beginning of the American +settlements, likewise, there were evidences of the +weaker, the over-excitable side of the romantic +temper. There were volatile men like Morton +of Merrymount; there were queer women like +Anne Hutchinson, admirable woman as she +was; among the wives of the colonists there +were plenty of Emily Dickinsons in the germ. +Among the men, there were schemes that came +to nothing. There were prototypes of Colonel +Sellers; a temperamental tendency toward that +recklessness and extravagance which later historical +conditions stimulated and confirmed. +The more completely one studies the history +of our forefathers on American soil, the more +deeply does one become conscious of the prevailing +atmosphere of emotionalism.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p> + +<p>Furthermore, as one examines the historic +conditions under which the spirit of American +romance has been preserved and heightened +from time to time, one becomes aware that although +ours is rather a romance of wonder than +of beauty, the spirit of beauty is also to be found. +The first fervors of the romance of discovery +were childlike in their eagerness. Hakluyt's +<i>Voyages</i>, John Smith's <i>True Relation of Virginia</i>, +Thomas Morton's <i>New England's Canaan</i>, all +appeal to the sense of the marvellous.</p> + +<p>Listen to Morton's description of Cape Ann. +I can never read it without thinking of Botticelli's +picture of Spring, so naïvely does this +picturesque rascal suffuse his landscape with the +feeling for beauty:—</p> + +<blockquote><p>"In the Moneth of June, Anno Salutis 1622, +it was my chaunce to arrive in the parts of New +England with 30. Servants, and provision of +all sorts fit for a plantation: and whiles our +howses were building, I did indeavour to take +a survey of the Country: The more I looked, +the more I liked it. And when I had more seriously +considered of the bewty of the place, with +all her faire indowments, I did not thinke that +in all the knowne world it could be paralel'd,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> +for so many goodly groves of trees, dainty fine +round rising hillucks, delicate faire large plaines, +sweete cristall fountaines, and cleare running +streames that twine in fine meanders through +the meads, making so sweete a murmering noise +to heare as would even lull the sences with delight +a sleepe, so pleasantly doe they glide upon +the pebble stones, jetting most jocundly where +they doe meete and hand in hand runne downe +to Neptunes Court, to pay the yearely tribute +which they owe to him as soveraigne Lord of all +the springs. Contained within the volume of +the Land, Fowles in abundance, Fish in multitude; +and discovered, besides, Millions of +Turtledoves on the greene boughes, which sate +pecking of the full ripe pleasant grapes that were +supported by the lusty trees, whose fruitful +loade did cause the armes to bend: while here +and there dispersed, you might see Lillies and +the Daphnean-tree: which made the Land to +mee seeme paradice: for in mine eie t'was Natures +Masterpeece; Her cheifest Magazine of +all where lives her store: if this Land be not +rich, then is the whole world poore."</p></blockquote> + +<p>This is the Morton who, a few years later, +settled at Merrymount. Let me condense the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> +story of his settlement, from the narrative of +the stout-hearted Governor William Bradford's +<i>History of Plymouth Plantation</i>:—</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p> +<blockquote><p>"And Morton became lord of misrule, and +maintained (as it were) a schoole of Athisme. +And after they had gott some good into their +hands, and gott much by trading with the Indeans, +they spent it as vainly, in quaffing & drinking +both wine & strong waters in great exsess, +and, as some reported 10£. worth in a morning. +They allso set up a May-pole, drinking and +dancing aboute it many days togeather, inviting +the Indean women, for their consorts, dancing +and frisking togither, (like so many fairies, or +furies rather,) and worse practises. As if they +had anew revived & celebrated the feasts of the +Roman Goddes Flora, or the beasly practieses +of the madd Bacchinalians. Morton likewise +(to shew his poetrie) composed sundry rimes +& verses, some tending to lasciviousnes, and +others to the detraction & scandall of some persons, +which he affixed to this idle or idoll May-polle. +They chainged allso the name of their +place, and in stead of calling it Mounte Wollaston, +they call it Merie-mounte, as if this +joylity would have lasted ever."</p></blockquote> + +<p>But it did not last long. Bradford and other +leaders of the plantations "agreed by mutual +consent" to "suppress Morton and his consorts." +"In a friendly and neighborly way" +they admonished him. "Insolently he persisted." +"Upon which they saw there was no +way but to take him by force." "So they mutually +resolved to proceed," and sent Captain +Standish to summon him to yield. But, says +Bradford, Morton and some of his crew came +out, not to yield, but to shoot; all of them +rather drunk; Morton himself, with a carbine +almost half filled with powder and shot, had +thought to have shot Captain Standish, "<i>but he +stepped to him and put by his piece and took him</i>."</p> + +<p>It is not too fanciful to say that with those +stern words of Governor Bradford the English +Renaissance came to an end. The dream of a +lawless liberty which has been dreamed and +dreamed out so many times in the history of +the world was over, for many a day. It was +only a hundred years earlier that Rabelais had +written over the doors of his ideal abbey, the +motto "Do what thou wilt." It is true that +Rabelais proposed to admit to his Abbey of +Thélème only such men and women as were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> +virtuously inclined. We do not know how +many persons would have been able and willing +to go into residence there. At any rate, two +hundred years went by in New England after +the fall of Morton before any notable spirit +dared to cherish once more the old Renaissance +ideal. At last, in Emerson's doctrine that all +things are lawful because Nature is good and +human nature is divine, we have a curious parallel +to the doctrine of Rabelais. It was the +old romance of human will under a new form +and voiced in new accents. Yet in due time the +hard facts of human nature reasserted themselves +and put this romantic transcendentalism +by, even as the implacable Myles Standish put +by that heavily loaded fowling-piece of the +drunken Morton.</p> + +<p>But men believed in miracles in the first century +of colonization, and they will continue at +intervals to believe in them until human nature +is no more. The marvellous happenings recorded +in Cotton Mather's <i>Magnalia</i> no longer +excite us to any "suspension of disbelief." +We doubt the story of Pocahontas. The fresh +romantic enthusiasm of a settler like Crèvecœur +seems curiously juvenile to-day, as does<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> +the romantic curiosity of Chateaubriand concerning +the Mississippi and the Choctaws, or +the zeal of Wordsworth and Coleridge over +their dream of a "panti-Socratic" community +in the unknown valley of the musically-sounding +Susquehanna. Inexperience is a perpetual +feeder of the springs of romance. John Wesley, +it will be remembered, went out to the colony +of Georgia full of enthusiasm for converting +the Indians; but as he naïvely remarks in his +<i>Journal</i>, he "neither found or heard of any Indians +on the continent of America, who had the +least desire of being instructed." The sense of +fact, in other words, supervenes, and the glory +disappears from the face of romance. The humor +of Mark Twain's <i>Innocents Abroad</i> turns +largely upon this sense of remorseless fact confronting +romantic inexperience.</p> + +<p>American history, however, has been marked +by certain great romantic passions that seem +endowed with indestructible vitality. The romance +of discovery, the fascination of the forest +and sea, the sense of danger and mystery +once aroused by the very word "redskin," have +all moulded and will continue to mould the +national imagination. How completely the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> +romance of discovery may be fused with the +glow of humanitarian and religious enthusiasm +has been shown once for all in the brilliant +pages of Parkman's story of the Jesuit missions +in Canada. Pictorial romance can scarcely go +further than this. In the crisis of Chateaubriand's +picturesque and passionate tale of the +American wilderness, no one can escape the +thrilling, haunting sound of the bell from the +Jesuit chapel, as it tolls in the night and storm +that were fatal to the happiness of Atala. One +scarcely need say that the romance of missions +has never faded from the American mind. I +have known a sober New England deacon aged +eighty-five, who disliked to die because he +thought he should miss the monthly excitement +of reading the <i>Missionary Herald</i>. The +deacon's eyes, like the eyes of many an old sea-captain +in Salem or Newburyport, were literally +upon the ends of the earth. No one can +reckon how many starved souls, deprived of +normal outlet for human feeling, have found +in this passionate curiosity and concern for the +souls of black and yellow men and women in +the antipodes, a constant source of beneficent +excitement.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p> + +<p>Nor is there any diminution of interest in the +mere romance of adventure, in the stories of +hunter and trapper, the journals of Lewis and +Clarke, the narratives of Boone and Crockett. +In writing his superb romances of the Northern +Lakes, the prairie and the sea, Fenimore +Cooper had merely to bring to an artistic focus +sentiments that lay deep in the souls of the +great mass of his American readers. Students +of our social life have pointed out again and +again how deeply our national temperament +has been affected by the existence, during +nearly three hundred years, of an alien aboriginal +race forever lurking upon the borders of +our civilization. "Playing Indian" has been +immensely significant, not merely in stimulating +the outdoor activity of generations of +American boys, but in teaching them the perennial +importance of certain pioneer qualities +of observation, resourcefulness, courage, and +endurance which date from the time when the +Indians were a daily and nightly menace. Even +when the Indian has been succeeded by the +cowboy, the spirit of romance still lingers,—as +any collection of cowboy ballads will abundantly +prove. And when the cowboys pass,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> +and the real-estate dealers take possession of +the field, one is tempted to say that romance +flourishes more than ever.</p> + +<p>In short, things are what we make them at +the moment, what we believe them to be. In +my grandfather's youth the West was in the +neighborhood of Port Byron, New York, and +when he journeyed thither from Massachusetts +in the eighteen-twenties, the glory of adventure +enfolded him as completely as the boys +of the preceding generation had been glorified +in the War of the Revolution, or the boys of +the next generation when they went gold-seeking +in California in 1849. The West, in short, +means simply the retreating horizon, the beckoning +finger of opportunity. Like Boston, it +has been not a place, but a "state of mind."</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"We must go, go, go away from here,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On the other side the world we're overdue."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That is the song which sings itself forever +in the heart of youth. Champlain and Cartier +heard it in the sixteenth century, Bradford no +less than Morton in the seventeenth. Some +Eldorado has always been calling to the more +adventurous spirits upon American soil. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> +passion of the forty-niner neither began nor +ended with the discovery of gold in California. +It is within us. It transmutes the harsh or +drab-colored everyday routine into tissue of +fairyland. It makes our "winning of the +West" a magnificent national epic. It changes +to-day the black belt of Texas, or the wheat-fields +of Dakota, into pots of gold that lie at +the end of rainbows, only that the pot of gold +is actually there. The human hunger of it all, +the gorgeous dream-like quality of it all, the +boundlessness of the vast American spaces, the +sense of forest and prairie and sky, are all inexplicably +blended with our notion of the ideal +America. Henry James once tried to explain +the difference between Turgenieff and a typical +French novelist by saying that the back door +of the Russian's imagination was always open +upon the endless Russian steppe. No one can +understand the spirit of American romance if +he is not conscious of this ever-present hinterland +in which our spirits have, from the beginning, +taken refuge and found solace.</p> + +<p>We have already noticed, in the chapter on +idealism, how swiftly the American imagination +modifies the prosaic facts of everyday<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> +experience. The idealistic glamour which falls +upon the day's work changes easily, in the +more emotional temperaments, and at times, +indeed, in all of us, into the fervor of true romance. +Then, the prosaic buying and selling +becomes the "game." A combination of buyers +and sellers becomes the "system." The +place where these buyers and sellers most do +congregate and concentrate becomes "Wall +Street"—a sort of anthropomorphic monster +which seems to buy and sell the bodies and souls +of men. Seen half a continent away, through the +mists of ignorance and prejudice and partisan +passion, "Wall Street" has loomed like some +vast Gibraltar. To the broker's clerk who earns +his weekly salary in that street, the Nebraska +notion of "Wall Street" is too grotesque for +discussion.</p> + +<p>How easily every phase of American business +life may take on the hues of romance is +illustrated by the history of our railroads. No +wonder that Bret Harte wrote a poem about +the meeting of the eastward and westward facing +engines when the two sections of the Union +Pacific Railroad at last drew near each other +on the interminable plains and the two engines<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> +could talk. Of course what they said was +poetry. There was a time when even the Erie +Canal was poetic. The Panama Canal to-day, in +the eyes of most Americans, is something other +than a mere feat of engineering. We are doing +more than making "the dirt fly." The canal +represents victory over hostile forces, conquest +of unwilling Nature, achievement of what had +long been deemed impossible, the making not +of a ditch, but of History.</p> + +<p>So with all that American zest for camping, +fishing, sailing, racing, which lies deep in the +Anglo-Saxon, and which succeeds to the more +primitive era of actual struggle against savage +beasts or treacherous men or mysterious forests. +It is at once an outlet and a nursery for +romantic emotion. The out-of-doors movement +which began with Thoreau's hut on Walden +Pond, and which has gone on broadening +and deepening to this hour, implies far more +than mere variation from routine. It furnishes, +indeed, a healthful escape from the terrific pressure +of modern social and commercial exigencies. +Yet its more important function is to provide +for grown-ups a chance to "play Indian" +too.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p> + +<p>But outdoors and indoors, after all, lie in the +heart and mind, rather than in the realm of +actual experience. The romantic imagination +insists upon taking its holiday, whether the +man who possesses it gets his holiday or not. +I have never known a more truly romantic +figure than a certain tin-pedler in Connecticut +who, in response to the question, "Do you do +a good business?" made this perfectly Stevensonian +reply: "Well, I make a living selling +crockery and tinware, but my <i>business</i> is the +propagation of truth."</p> + +<p>This wandering idealist may serve to remind +us again of the difference between romance and +romanticism. The true romance is of the spirit. +Romanticism shifts and changes with external +fortunes, with altering emotions, with the alternate +play of light and shade over the vast landscape +of human experience. The typical romanticist, +as we have seen, is a man of moods. +It is only a Poe who can keep the pitch through +the whole concert of experience. But the deeper +romance of the spirit is oblivious of these changes +of external fortune, this rising or falling of +the emotional temperature. The moral life of +America furnishes striking illustrations of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> +steadfastness with which certain moral causes +have been kept, as it were, in the focus of intense +feeling. Poetry, undefeated and unwavering +poetry, has transfigured such practical +propaganda as the abolition of slavery, the +emancipation of woman, the fight against the +liquor traffic, the emancipation of the individual +from the clutches of economic and commercial +despotism. Men like Colonel Thomas Wentworth +Higginson, women like Julia Ward +Howe, fought for these causes throughout their +lives. Colonel Higginson's attitude towards +women was not merely chivalric (for one may +be chivalrous without any marked predisposition +to romance), but nobly romantic also. +James Russell Lowell, poet as he was, outlived +that particular phase of romantic moral reform +which he had been taught by Maria White. But +in other men and women bred in that old New +England of the eighteen-forties, the moral fervor +knew no restraint. Garrison, although in +many respects a most unromantic personality, +was engaged in a task which gave him all the +inspiration of romance. A romantic "atmosphere," +fully as highly colored as any of the +romantic atmospheres that we are accustomed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> +to mark in literature, surrounded as with a +luminous mist the figures of the New England +transcendentalists. They, too, as Heine said of +himself, were soldiers. They felt themselves +enlisted for a long but ultimately victorious +campaign. They were willing to pardon, in +their comrades and in themselves, those imaginative +excesses which resemble the physical +excesses of a soldier's camp. Transcendentalism +was thus a militant philosophy and religion, +with both a destructively critical and a positively +constructive creed. Channing, Parker, +Alcott, Margaret Fuller, were warrior-priests, +poets and prophets of a gallant campaign +against inherited darkness and bigotry, and for +the light.</p> + +<p>The atmosphere of that score of years in +New England was now superheated, now +rarefied, thin, and cold; but it was never +quite the normal atmosphere of every day. On +the purely literary side, it is needless to say, +these men and women sought inspiration in +Coleridge and Carlyle and other English and +German romanticists. In fact, the most enduring +literature of New England between 1830 +and 1865 was distinctly a romantic literature.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> +It was rooted, however, not so much in those +swift changes of historic condition, those startling +liberations of the human spirit which gave +inspiration to the romanticism of the Continent, +as it was in the deep and vital fervor with +which these New Englanders envisaged the +problems of the moral life.</p> + +<p>Other illustrations of the American capacity +for romance lie equally close at hand. Take, for +instance, the stout volume in which Mr. Burton +Stevenson has collected the <i>Poems of American +History</i>. Here are nearly seven hundred +pages of closely printed patriotic verse. While +Stedman's <i>Anthology</i> reveals no doubt national +aspirations and national sentiment, as well as +the emotional fervor of individuals, Mr. Stevenson's +collection has the advantage of focussing +this national feeling upon specific events. +Stedman's <i>Anthology</i> is an enduring document +of American idealism, touching in the sincerity +of its poetic moods, pathetic in its long lists +of men and women who are known by one +poem only, or who have never, for one reason +or another, fulfilled their poetic promise. The +thousand poems which it contains are more +striking, in fact, for their promise than for their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> +performance. They are intimations of what +American men and women would have liked +to do or to be. In this sense, it is a precious +volume, but it is certainly not commensurate, +either in passion or in artistic perfection, with +the forces of that American life which it tries +to interpret. Indeed, Mr. Stedman, after finishing +his task of compilation, remarked to +more than one of his friends that what this +country needed was some "adult male verse."</p> + +<p>The <i>Poems of American History</i> collected by +Mr. Stevenson are at least vigorous and concrete. +One aspect of our history which especially +lends itself to Mr. Stevenson's purpose +is the romance which attaches itself to war. It +is scarcely necessary to say nowadays that all +wars, even the noblest, have had their sordid, +grimy, selfish, bestial aspect; and that the intelligence +and conscience of our modern world +are more and more engaged in the task of making +future wars impossible. But the slightest +acquaintance with American history reveals +the immense reservoir of romantic emotion +which has been drawn upon in our national +struggles. War, of course, is an immemorial +source of romantic feeling. William James's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> +notable essay on "A Moral Substitute for +War" endeavored to prove that our modern +economic and social life, if properly organized, +would give abundant outlet and satisfaction to +those romantic impulses which formerly found +their sole gratification in battle. Many of us +believe that he was right; but for the moment +we must look backward and not forward. We +must remember the stern if rude poetry inspired +by our Revolutionary struggle, the romantic +halo that falls upon the youthful figure +of Nathan Hale, the baleful light that touches +the pale face of Benedict Arnold, the romance +of the Bennington fight to the followers of +Stark and Ethan Allen, the serene voice of +the "little captain," John Paul Jones:—"We +have not struck, we have just begun our part +of the fighting." The colors of romance still +drape the Chesapeake and the Shannon, Tecumseh +and Tippecanoe. The hunters of Kentucky, +the explorers of the Yellowstone and the +Columbia, the emigrants who left their bones +along the old Santa Fé Trail, are our Homeric +men.</p> + +<p>The Mexican War affords pertinent illustration, +not only of romance, but of reaction. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> +earlier phases of the Texan struggle for independence +have much of the daring, the splendid +rashness, the glorious and tragic catastrophes +of the great romantic adventures of the Old +World. It is not the Texans only who still +"remember the Alamo," but when those brilliant +and dramatic adventures of border warfare +became drawn into the larger struggle for +the extension of slavery, the poetic reaction began. +The physical and moral pretence of warfare, +the cheap splendors of epaulets and feathers, +shrivelled at the single touch of the satire +of the <i>Biglow Papers</i>. Lowell, writing at that +moment with the instinct and fervor of a prophet, +brought the whole vainglorious business +back to the simple issue of right and wrong:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Taint your eppyletts an' feathers<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Make the thing a grain more right;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Taint afollerin' your bell-wethers<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Will excuse ye in His sight;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ef you take a sword an' dror it,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">An' go stick a feller thru,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Guv'ment aint to answer for it,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">God'll send the bill to you."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But far more interesting is the revelation of +the American capacity for romance which was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> +made possible by the war between the States. +Stevenson's <i>Poems of American History</i> and +Stedman's <i>Anthology</i> give abundant illustration +of almost every aspect of that epical struggle. +The South was in a romantic mood from the +very beginning. The North drifted into it after +Sumter. I have already said that no one can +examine a collection of Civil War verse without +being profoundly moved by its evidence +of American idealism. In specific phases of the +struggle, in connection with certain battle-fields +and certain leaders of both North and South, +this idealism is heightened into pure romance, +so that even our novelists feel that they can +give no adequate picture of the war without +using the colors of poetry. Most critics, no +doubt, agree in feeling that we are still too +near to that epoch-making crisis of our national +existence to do it any justice in the terms of +literature. Perhaps we must wait for the perfected +romance of the years 1861-65, until the +men and the events of that struggle are as +remote as the heroes of Greece and Troy. Certainly +no one can pass a final judgment upon +the verse occasioned by recent struggles in +arms. Any one who has studied the English<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> +poetry inspired by the South-African War will +be painfully conscious of the emotional and +moral complexity of all such issues, of the bitter +injustice which poets, as well as other men, +render to one another, of the impossibility of +transmuting into the pure gold of romance the +emotions originating in the stock market, in +race-hatred, and in national vainglory.</p> + +<p>We have lingered too long, perhaps, over +these various evidences of the romantic temper +of America. We must now glance at the +forces of reaction, the recoil to fact. What +is it which contradicts, inhibits, or negatives +the romantic tendency? Among other forces, +there is certainly humor. Humor and romance +often go hand in hand, but humor is commonly +fatal to romanticism. There is satire, which rebukes +both romanticism and romance, which +exposes the fallacies of the one, and punctures +the exuberance of the other. More effective, +perhaps, than either humor or satire as an antiseptic +against romance, is the overmastering +sense of fact. This is what Emerson called the +instinct for the milk in the pan, an instinct +which Emerson himself possessed extraordinarily +on his purely Yankee side, and which a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> +pioneer country is forced continually to develop +and to recognize. Camping, for instance, develops +both the romantic sense and the fact +sense. Supper must be cooked, even at Walden +Pond. There must be hewers of wood and +drawers of water, and the dishes ought to be +washed.</p> + +<p>On a higher plane, also, than this mere +sense of physical necessity, there are forces +limiting the influence of romance. Schiller put +it all into one famous line:—</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Und was uns alle bändigt, das Gemeine."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Or listen to Keats:—</p> + +<blockquote><p>"'T is best to remain aloof from people, and +like their good parts, without being eternally +troubled with the dull process of their everyday +lives.... All I can say is that standing at +Charing Cross, and looking East, West, North +and South, I can see nothing but dullness."</p></blockquote> + +<p>And Henry James, describing New York in +his book, <i>The American Scene</i>, speaks of "the +overwhelming preponderance of the unmitigated +'business-man' face ... the consummate +monotonous commonness of the pushing +male crowd, moving in its dense mass—with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> +the confusion carried to chaos for any intelligence, +any perception; a welter of objects and +sounds in which relief, detachment, dignity, +meaning, perished utterly and lost all rights +... the universal <i>will to move</i>—to move, +move, move, as an end in itself, an appetite at +any price."</p> + +<p>One need not be a poet like Keats or an inveterate +psychologist like Henry James, in order +to become aware how the commonplaceness +of the world rests like a fog upon the mind and +heart. No one goes to his day's work and +comes home again without a consciousness of +contact with an unspiritual atmosphere, or incompletely +spiritualized forces, not merely with +indifference, to what Emerson would term +"the over-soul," but with a lack of any faith +in the things which are unseen. Take those +very forces which have limited the influence of +Emerson throughout the United States; they +illustrate the universal forces which clip the +wings of romance. The obstacles in the path +of Emerson's influence are not merely the religious +and denominational differences which +Dr. George A. Gordon portrayed in a notable +article at the time of the Emerson Centenary.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> +The real obstacles are more serious. It is true +that Dr. Park of Andover, Dr. Bushnell of +Hartford, and Dr. Hodge of Princeton, could +say in Emerson's lifetime: "We know a better, +a more Scriptural and certificated road toward +the very things which Emerson is seeking +for. We do not grant that we are less idealistic +than he. We think him a dangerous guide, following +wandering fires. It is better to journey +safely with us."</p> + +<p>But I have known at least two livery-stable +keepers and many college professors who would +unite in saying: "Hodge and Park and Bushnell +and Emerson are all following after something +that does not exist. One is not much +more mistaken than the others. We can get +along perfectly well in our business without any +of those ideas at all. Let us stick to the milk +in the pan, the horse in the stall, the documents +which you will find in the library."</p> + +<p>There exists, in other words, in all classes +of American society to-day, just as there existed +during the Revolution, during the transcendental +movement, or the Civil War, an immense +mass of unspiritualized, unvitalized American +manhood and womanhood. No literature<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> +comes from it and no religion, though there is +much human kindness, much material progress, +and some indestructible residuum of that idealism +which lifts man above the brute.</p> + +<p>Yet the curious and the endlessly fascinating +thing about these forces of reaction is that they +themselves shift and change. We have seen +that external romance depending upon strangeness +of scene, novelty of adventure, rich atmospheric +distance of space or time, disappears +with the changes of civilization. The farm expands +over the wolf's den, the Indian becomes +a blacksmith, but do the gross and material +instincts ultimately triumph? He would be a +hardy prophet who should venture to assert it. +We must reckon always with the swing of the +human pendulum, with the reaction against reaction. +Here, for example, during the last decade, +has been book after book written about +the reaction against democracy. All over the +world, it is asserted, there are unmistakable signs +that democracy will not practically work in the +face of the modern tasks to which the world +has set itself. One reads these books, one persuades +himself that the hour for democracy is +passing, and then one goes out on the street<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> +and buys a morning newspaper and discovers +that democracy has scored again. So is it with +the experience of the individual. You may +fancy that the romance of the seas passes, for +you, with the passing of the square-sailed ship. +If Mr. Kipling's poetry cannot rouse you from +that mood of reaction, walk down to the end +of the pier to-morrow and watch the ocean +liner come up the harbor. If there is no romance +there, you do not know romance when +you see it!</p> + +<p>Take the case of the farmer; his prosaic life +is the butt of the newspaper paragraphers from +one end of the country to the other. But does +romance disappear from the farm with machinery +and scientific agriculture? There are farmers +who follow Luther Burbank's experiments +with plants, with all the fascination +which used to attach to alchemy and astrology. +The farmer has no longer Indians to fight or +a wilderness to subdue, but the soils of his +farm are analyzed at his state university by +men who live in the daily atmosphere of the +romance of science, and who say, as a professor +in the University of Chicago said once, +that "a flower is so wonderful that if you knew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> +what was going on within its cell-structure, +you would be afraid to stay alone with it in +the dark."</p> + +<p>The reaction from romance, therefore, real +as it is, and dead weight as it lies upon the +soul of the nation, often breeds the very forces +which destroy it. In other words, the reaction +against one type of romance produces inevitably +another type of romance, other aspects of +wonder, terror, and beauty. Following the romance +of adventure comes, after never so deep +a trough in the sea, the romance of science, like +the crest of another wave; and then comes what +we call, for lack of a better word, the psychological +romance, the old mystery and strangeness +of the human soul, Æschylus and Job, as +Victor Hugo says, in the poor crawfish gatherer +on the rocks of Brittany.</p> + +<p>We must remember that we are endeavoring +to measure great spaces and to take account +of the "amplitude of time." The individual +"fact-man," as Coleridge called him, remains +perhaps a fact-man to the end, just as the +dreamer may remain a dreamer. But no single +generation is compounded all of fact or all of +dream. Longfellow felt, no doubt, that there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> +was an ideal United States, which Dickens did +not discover during that first visit of 1842; he +would have set the Cambridge which he knew +over against the Cincinnati viewed by Mrs. +Trollope; he would have asserted that the +homes characterized by refinement, by cultivation, +by pure and simple sentiment, made up +the true America. But even among Longfellow's +own contemporaries there was Whitman, +who felt that the true America was something +very different from that exquisitely tempered +ideal of Longfellow. There was Thoreau, who, +over in Concord, had been pushing forward +the frontier of the mind and senses, who had +opened his back-yard gate, as it were, upon the +boundless and mysterious territory of Nature. +There was Emerson, who was preaching an +intellectual independence of the Old World +which should correspond to the political and +social independence of the Western Hemisphere. +There was Parkman, whose hatred of +philanthropy, whose lack of spirituality, is a +striking illustration of the rebound of New +England idealism against itself, of the reaction +into stoicism. What different worlds these men +lived in, and yet they were all inhabitants, so to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> +speak, of the same parish; most of them met +often around the same table! The lesson of +their variety of experience and differences of +gifts as workmen in that great palace of literature +which is so variously built, is that no action +and reaction in the imaginative world is ever +final. Least of all do these actions and reactions +affect the fortunes of true romance. The born +dreamer may fall from one dream into another, +but he still murmurs, in the famous line of +William Ellery Channing,—</p> + +<blockquote><p>"If my bark sinks, 't is to another sea."</p></blockquote> + +<p>No line in our literature is more truly American,—unless +it be that other splendid metaphor, +by David Wasson, which says the same +thing in other words:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Life's gift outruns my fancies far,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And drowns the dream<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In larger stream,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As morning drinks the morning-star."<br /></span> +</div></div> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p><hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V<br /><br /> + +Humor and Satire</h2> + + +<p>A distinguished professor in the Harvard +Divinity School once began a lecture on Comedy +by saying that the study of the comic had +made him realize for the first time that a joke +was one of the most solemn things in the world. +The analysis of humor is no easy matter. It is +hard to say which is the more dreary: an essay +on humor illustrated by a series of jokes, +or an exposition of humor in the technical +terms of philosophy. No subject has been more +constantly discussed. But it remains difficult to +decide what humor is. It is easier to declare +what seemed humorous to our ancestors, or +what seems humorous to us to-day. For humor +is a shifting thing. The well-known collections +of the writings of American humorists surprise +us by their revelation of the changes in public +taste. Humor—or the sense of humor—alters +while we are watching. What seemed a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> +good joke to us yesterday seems but a poor +joke to-day. And yet it is the same joke! +What is true of the individual is all the more +true of the national sense of humor. This vast +series of kaleidoscopic changes which we call +America; has it produced a humor of its own?</p> + +<p>Let us avoid for the moment the treacherous +territory of definitions. Let us, rather, take +one concrete example: a pair of men, a knight +and his squire, who for three hundred years +have ridden together down the broad highway +of the world's imagination. Everybody sees +that Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are humorous. +Define them as you will—idealist +and realist, knight and commoner, dreamer +and proverb-maker—these figures represent +to all the world two poles of human experience. +A Frenchman once said that all of us are +Don Quixotes on one day and Sancho Panzas +on the next. Humor springs from this contrast. +It is the electric flash between the two +poles of experience.</p> + +<p>Most philosophers who have meditated +upon the nature of the comic point out that it +is closely allied with the tragic. Flaubert once +compared our human idealism to the flight of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> +a swallow; at one moment it is soaring toward +the sunset, at the next moment some one +shoots it and it tumbles into the mud with +blood upon its glistening wings. The sudden +poignant contrast between light, space, freedom, +and the wounded bleeding bird in the +mud, is of the very essence of tragedy. But +something like that is always happening in comedy. +There is the same element of incongruity, +without the tragic consequence. It is only the +humorist who sees things truly because he sees +both the greatness and the littleness of mortals; +but even he may not know whether to +laugh or to cry at what he sees. Those collisions +and contrasts out of which the stuff of +tragedy is woven, such as the clash between the +higher and lower nature of a man, between his +past and his present, between one's duties to +himself and to his family or the state, between, +in a word, his character and his situation, are +all illustrated in comedy as completely as in +tragedy. The countryman in the city, the city +man in the country, is in a comic situation. +Here is a coward named Falstaff, and Shakespeare +puts him into battle. Here is a vain person, and +Malvolio is imprisoned and twitted by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> +a clown. Here is an ignoramus, and Dogberry +is placed on the judge's bench. These contrasts +might, indeed, be tragic enough, but they are +actually comic. Such characters are not ruled +by fate but by a sportive chance. The gods +connive at them. They are ruled, like tragic +characters, by necessity and blindness; but the +blindness, instead of leading to tragic ruin, +leads only to being caught as in some harmless +game of blind-man's-buff. There is retribution, +but Falstaff is only pinched by the fairies. Comedy +of intrigue and comedy of character lead +to no real catastrophe. The end of it on the +stage is not death but matrimony; and "home +well pleased we go."</p> + +<p>A thousand definitions of humor lay stress +upon this element of incongruity. Hazlitt begins +his illuminating lectures on the Comic +Writers by declaring, "Man is the only animal +that laughs or weeps; for he is the only +animal that is struck with the difference between +what things are and what they ought to be." +James Russell Lowell took the same ground. +"Humor," he said once, "lies in the contrast +of two ideas. It is the universal disenchanter. +It is the sense of comic contradiction which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> +arises from the perpetual comment which the +understanding makes upon the impressions received +through the imagination." If that sentence +seems too abstract, all we need do is to +think of Sancho Panza, the man of understanding, +talking about Don Quixote, the man of +imagination.</p> + +<p>We must not multiply quotations, but it is +impossible not to remember the distinction +made by Carlyle in writing about Richter. +"True humor," says Carlyle, "springs not +more from the head than from the heart. It is +not contempt; its essence is love." In other +words, not merely the great humorists of the +world's literature—Cervantes, Rabelais, Fielding, +Thackeray, Dickens—but the writers of +comic paragraphs for to-morrow's newspaper, +all regard our human incongruities with a sort +of affection. The comic spirit is essentially a +social spirit. The great figures of tragedy are +solitary. The immortal figures of comedy belong +to a social group.</p> + +<p>No recent discussion of humor is more illuminating +and more directly applicable to the +conditions of American life than that of the +contemporary French philosopher Bergson.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> +Bergson insists throughout his brilliant little +book on <i>Laughter</i> that laughter is a social function. +Life demands elasticity. Hence whatever +is stiff, automatic, machine-like, excites a smile. +We laugh when a person gives us the impression +of being a thing,—a sort of mechanical toy. +Every inadaptation of the individual to society +is potentially comic. Thus laughter becomes +a social initiation. It is a kind of hazing which +we visit upon one another. But we do not isolate +the comic personage as we do the solitary, +tragic figure. The comic personage is usually +a type; he is one of an absurd group; he is a +miser, a pedant, a pretentious person, a doctor +or a lawyer in whom the professional traits +have become automatic so that he thinks more +of his professional behavior than he does of +human health and human justice. Of all these +separatist tendencies, laughter is the great corrective. +When the individual becomes set in +his ways, obstinate, preoccupied, automatic, +the rest of us laugh him out of it if we can. +Of course all that we are thinking about at +the moment is his ridiculousness. But nevertheless, +by laughing we become the saviors of +society.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p> + +<p>No one, I think, can help observing that +this conception of humor as incongruity is particularly +applicable to a new country. On the +new soil and under the new sky, in new social +groupings, all the fundamental contrasts and +absurdities of our human society assume a new +value. We see them under a fresh light. They +are differently focussed. The broad humors +of the camp, its swift and picturesque play of +light and shade, its farce and caricature no less +than its atmosphere of comradeship, of sentiment, +and of daring, are all transferred to the +humor of the newly settled country. The very +word "humor" once meant singularity of character, +"some extravagant habit, passion, or affection," +says Dryden, "particular to some one +person." Every newly opened country encourages, +for a while, this oddness and incongruity +of individual character. It fosters it, +and at the same moment it laughs at it. It decides +that such characters are "humorous." As +the social conditions of such a country change, +the old pioneer instinct for humor, and the +pioneer forms of humor, may endure, though +the actual frontier may have moved far westward.</p> + +<p>There is another conception of humor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> +scarcely less famous than the notion of incongruity. +It is the conception associated with the +name of the English philosopher Hobbes, who +thought that humor turned upon a sense of +superiority. "The passion of laughter," said +Hobbes, "is nothing else but sudden glory +arising from some sudden conception of some +eminency in ourselves by comparison with the +inferiority of others, or with our own formerly." +Too cynical a view, declare many critics, but +they usually end by admitting that there is a +good deal in it after all. I am inclined to think +that Hobbes's famous definition is more applicable +to wit than it is to humor. Wit is more +purely intellectual than humor. It rejoices in +its little triumphs. It requires, as has been remarked, +a good head, while humor takes a +good heart, and fun good spirits. If you take +Carlyle literally when he says that humor is +love, you cannot wholly share Hobbes's conviction +that laughter turns upon a sense of +superiority, and yet surely we all experience a +sense of kindly amusement which turns upon +the fact that we, the initiated, are superior, for +the moment, to the unlucky person who is just +having his turn in being hazed. It may be the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> +play of intellect or the coarser play of animal +spirits. One might venture to make a distinction +between the low comedy of the Latin races +and the low comedy of the Germanic races +by pointing out that the superiority in the +Latin comedy usually turns upon quicker wits, +whereas the superiority in the Germanic farce +is likely to turn upon stouter muscles. But +whether it be a play of wits or of actual cudgelling, +the element of superiority and inferiority +is almost always there.</p> + +<p>I remember that some German, I dare say +in a forgotten lecture-room, once illustrated the +humor of superiority in this way. A company +of strolling players sets up its tent in a country +village. On the front seat is a peasant, +laughing at the antics of the clown. The peasant +flatters himself that he sees through those +practical jokes on the stage; the clown ought +to have seen that he was about to be tripped +up, but he was too stupid. But the peasant +saw that it was coming all the time. He laughs +accordingly. Just behind the peasant sits the +village shopkeeper. He has watched stage +clowns many a time and he laughs, not at the +humor of the farce, but at the naïve laughter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> +of the peasant in front of him. He, the shopkeeper, +is superior to such broad and obvious +humor as that. Behind the shopkeeper sits the +schoolmaster. The schoolmaster is a pedant; +he has probably lectured to his boys on the +theory of humor, and he smiles in turn at the +smile of superiority on the face of the shopkeeper. +Well, peeping in at the door of the tent +is a man of the world, who glances at the clown, +then at the peasant, then at the shopkeeper, +then at the schoolmaster, each one of whom +is laughing at the others, and the man of the +world laughs at them all!</p> + +<p>Let us take an even simpler illustration. We +all know the comfortable sense of proprietorship +which we experience after a few days' sojourn +at a summer hotel. We know our place +at the table; we call the head waiter by his first +name; we are not even afraid of the clerk. Now +into this hotel, where we sit throned in conscious +superiority, comes a new arrival. He has +not yet learned the exits and entrances. He +starts for the kitchen door inadvertently when +he should be headed for the drawing-room. +We smile at him. Why? Precisely because +that was what we did on the morning of our<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> +own arrival. We have been initiated, and it is +now his turn.</p> + +<p>If it is true that a newly settled country +offers endless opportunities for the humor +which turns upon incongruity, it is also true +that the new country offers countless occasions +for the humor which turns upon the sudden +glory of superiority. The backwoodsman is +amusing to the man of the settlements, and the +backwoodsman, in turn, gets his full share of +amusement out of watching the "tenderfoot" +in the woods. It is simply the case of the old +resident versus the newcomer. The superiority +need be in no sense a cruel or taunting superiority, +although it often happens to be so. +The humor of the pioneers is not very delicately +polished. The joke of the frontier tavern +or grocery store is not always adapted to a +drawing-room audience, but it turns in a surprisingly +large number of instances upon exactly +the same intellectual or social superiority +which gives point to the <i>bon mots</i> of the most +cultivated and artificial society in the world.</p> + +<p>The humor arising from incongruity, then, +and the humor arising from a sense of superiority, +are both of them social in their nature.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> +No less social, surely, is the function of satire. +It is possible that satire may be decaying, that +it is becoming, if it has not already become, a +mere splendid or odious tradition. But let us +call it a great tradition and, upon the whole, a +splendid one. Even when debased to purely +party or personal uses, the verse satire of a +Dryden retains its magnificent resonance; "the +ring," says Saintsbury, "as of a great bronze +coin thrown down on marble." The malignant +couplets of an Alexander Pope still gleam like +malevolent jewels through the dust of two hundred +years. The cynicism, the misanthropy, +the mere adolescent badness of Byron are powerless +to clip the wings of the wide-ranging, far-darting +wit and humor and irony of <i>Don Juan</i>. +The homely Yankee dialect, the provinciality, +the "gnarly" flavor of the <i>Biglow Papers</i> do +not prevent our finding in that pungent and +resplendent satire the powers of Lowell at full +play; and, what is more than that, the epitome +of the American spirit in a moral crisis.</p> + +<p>I take the names of those four satirists, Dryden, +Pope, Byron, and Lowell, quite at random; +but they serve to illustrate a significant principle; +namely, that great satire becomes ennobled as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> +it touches communal, not merely individual +interests, as it voices social and not merely individual +ideals. Those four modern satirists +were steeped in the nationalistic political poetry +of the Old Testament. They were familiar with +its war anthems, dirges, and prophecies, its concern +for the prosperity and adversity, the sin +and the punishment, of a people. Here the +writers of the Golden Age of English satire +found their vocabulary and phrase-book, their +grammar of politics and history, their models +of good and evil kings; and in that Biblical +school of political poetry, which has affected our +literature from the Reformation down to Mr. +Kipling, there has always been a class in satire! +The satirical portraits, satirical lyrics, satirical +parables of the Old Testament prophets are +only less noteworthy than their audacity in +striking high and hard. Their foes were the all-powerful: +Babylon and Assyria and Egypt +loom vast and terrible upon the canvases of +Isaiah and Ezekiel; and poets of a later time +have learned there the secrets of social and political +idealism, and the signs of national doom.</p> + +<p>There are two familiar types of satire associated +with the names of Horace and Juvenal.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> +Both types are abundantly illustrated in English +and American literature. When you meet +a bore or a hypocrite or a plain rascal, is it better +to chastise him with laughter or to flay him +with shining fury? I shall take both horns of the +dilemma and assert that both methods are admirable +and socially useful. The minor English +and American poets of the seventeenth and +eighteenth centuries were never weary of speaking +of satire as a terrific weapon which they +were forced to wield as saviors of society. But +whether they belonged to the urbane school of +Horace, or to the severely moralistic school of +Juvenal, they soon found themselves falling +into one or the other of two modes of writing. +They addressed either the little audience or the +big audience, and they modified their styles accordingly. +The great satirists of the Renaissance, +for example, like More, Erasmus, and +Rabelais, wrote simply for the persons who +were qualified to understand them. More and +Erasmus wrote their immortal satires in Latin. +By so doing they addressed themselves to +cultivated Europe. They ran no risk of being +misunderstood by persons for whom the joke +was not intended. All readers of Latin were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> +like members of one club. Of course membership +was restricted to the learned, but had not +Horace talked about being content with a few +readers, and was not Voltaire coming by and by +with the advice to try for the "little public"?</p> + +<p>The typical wit of the eighteenth century, +whether in London, Paris, or in Franklin's +printing-shop in Philadelphia, had, of course, +abandoned Latin. But it still addressed itself +to the "little public," to the persons who were +qualified to understand. The circulation of the +<i>Spectator</i>, which represents so perfectly the wit, +humor, and satire of the early eighteenth century +in England, was only about ten thousand +copies. This limited audience smiled at the urbane +delicate touches of Mr. Steele and Mr. +Addison. They understood the allusions. The +fable concerned them and not the outsiders. It +was something like Oliver Wendell Holmes +reading his witty and satirical couplets to an +audience of Harvard alumni. The jokes are in +the vernacular, but in a vernacular as spoken +in a certain social medium. It is all very delightful.</p> + +<p>But there is a very different kind of audience +gathering all this while outside the Harvard<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> +gates. These two publics for the humorist we +may call the invited and the uninvited; the inner +circle and the outer circle: first, those who +have tickets for the garden party, and who +stroll over the lawn, decorously gowned and +properly coated, conversing with one another +in the accepted social accents and employing +the recognized social adjectives; and second, +the crowd outside the gates,—curious, satirical, +good-natured in the main, straightforward +of speech and quick to applaud a ready wit or +a humor-loving eye or a telling phrase spoken +straight from the heart of the mob.</p> + +<p>Will an author choose to address the selected +guests or the casual crowd? Either way lies +fame, if one does it well. Your uninvited men +find themselves talking to the uninvited crowd. +Before they know it they are famous too. They +are fashioning another manner of speech. Defoe +is there, with his saucy ballads selling triumphantly +under his very pillory; with his <i>True-Born +Englishman</i> puncturing forever the fiction +of the honorable ancestry of the English aristocracy; +with his <i>Crusoe</i> and <i>Moll Flanders</i>, +written, as Lamb said long afterwards, for the +servant-maid and the sailor. Swift is there, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> +his terrific <i>Drapier's Letters</i>, anonymous, aimed +at the uneducated, with cold fury bludgeoning +a government into obedience; with his <i>Gulliver's +Travels</i>, so transparent upon the surface +that a child reads the book with delight and +remains happily ignorant that it is a satire upon +humanity. And then, into the London of Defoe +and Swift, and into the very centre of the middle-class +mob, steps, in 1724, the bland Benjamin +Franklin in search of a style "smooth, clear, +and short," and for half a century, with consummate +skill, shapes that style to his audience. +His young friend Thomas Paine takes the style +and touches it with passion, until he becomes +the perfect pamphleteer, and his <i>Crisis</i> is worth +as much to our Revolution—men said—as +the sword of Washington. After another generation +the gaunt Lincoln, speaking that same +plain prose of Defoe, Swift, Franklin, and Paine,—Lincoln +who began his first Douglas debate, +not like his cultivated opponent with the conventional +"Ladies and Gentlemen," but with +the ominously intimate, "My Fellow Citizens,"—Lincoln +is saying, "I am not master of language; +I have not a fine education; I am not +capable of entering into a disquisition upon dialectics,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> +as I believe you call it; but I do not +believe the language I employed bears any such +construction as Judge Douglas puts upon it. +But I don't care about a quibble in regard to +words. I know what I meant, and <i>I will not +leave this crowd in doubt</i>, if I can explain it to +them, what I really meant in the use of that +paragraph."</p> + +<p>"<i>I will not leave this crowd in doubt</i>"; that is +the final accent of our spoken prose, the prose +addressed to one's fellow citizens, to the great +public. This is the prose spoken in the humor +and satire of Dickens. Dressed in a queer dialect, +and put into satirical verse, it is the language +of the <i>Biglow Papers</i>. Uttered with the +accent of a Chicago Irishman, it is the prose +admired by millions of the countrymen of +"Mr. Dooley."</p> + +<p>Satire written to the "little public" tends +toward the social type; that written to the +"great public" to the political type. It is obvious +that just as a newly settled country offers +constant opportunity for the humor of incongruity +and the humor arising from a sense of +superiority, it likewise affords a daily stimulus +to the use of satire. That moralizing Puritan<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> +strain of censure which lost none of its harshness +in crossing the Atlantic Ocean found full +play in the colonial satire of the seventeenth +and eighteenth centuries. As the topics for satire +grew wider and more political in their scope, +the audiences increased. To-day the very oldest +issues of the common life of that queer +"political animal" named man are discussed +by our popular newspaper satirists in the presence +of a democratic audience that stretches +from the Atlantic to the Pacific.</p> + +<p>Is there, then, a distinctly American type of +humor and satire? I think it would be difficult +to prove that our composite American nationality +has developed a mode of humor and satire +which is racially different from the humor +and satire of the Old World. All racial lines +in literature are extremely difficult to draw. If +you attempt to analyze English humor, you +find that it is mostly Scotch or Irish. If you +put Scotch and Irish humor under the microscope, +you discover that most of the best +Scotch and Irish jokes are as old as the Greeks +and the Egyptians. You pick up a copy of +<i>Fliegende Blätter</i> and you get keen amusement +from its revelation of German humor. But how<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> +much of this humor, after all, is either essentially +universal in its scope or else a matter of +mere stage-setting and machinery? Without +the Prussian lieutenant the <i>Fliegende Blätter</i> +would lose half its point; nor can one imagine +a <i>Punch</i> without a picture of the English policeman. +The lieutenant and the policeman, +however, are a part of the accepted social furniture +of the two countries. They belong to the +decorative background of the social drama. +They heighten the effectiveness of local humor, +but it may be questioned whether they afford +any evidence of genuine racial differentiation as +to the sense of the comic.</p> + +<p>What one can abundantly prove, however, +is that the United States afford a new national +field for certain types of humor and satire. Our +English friends are never weary of writing magazine +articles about Yankee humor, in which +they explain the peculiarities of the American +joke with a dogmatism which has sometimes +been thought to prove that there is such a +thing as national lack of humor, whether there +be such a thing as national humor or not. One +such article, I remember, endeavored to prove +that the exaggeration often found in American<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> +humor was due to the vastness of the American +continent. Our geography, that is to say, +is too much for the Yankee brain. Mr. Birrell, +an expert judge of humor, surely, thinks +that the characteristic of American humor lies +in its habit of speaking of something hideous +in a tone of levity. Many Englishmen, in fact, +have been as much impressed with this minimizing +trick of American humor as with the +converse trick of magnifying. Upon the Continent +the characteristic trait of American +humor has often been thought to be its exuberance +of phrase. Many shrewd judges of +our newspaper humor have pointed out that +one of its most favorite methods is the suppression +of one link in the chain of logical +reasoning. Such generalizations as these are +always interesting, although they may not take +us very far.</p> + +<p>Yet it is clear that certain types of humor +and satire have proved to be specially adapted +to the American soil and climate. Whether or +not these types are truly indigenous one may +hesitate to say, yet it remains true that the well-known +conditions of American life have stimulated +certain varieties of humor into such a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> +richness of manifestation as the Old World can +scarcely show.</p> + +<p>Curiously enough, one of the most perfected +types of American humor is that urbane Horatian +variety which has often been held to be +the exclusive possession of the cultivated and +restricted societies of older civilization. Yet it +is precisely this kind of humor which has been +the delight of some of the most typical American +minds. Benjamin Franklin, for example, +modelled his style and his sense of the humorous +on the papers of the <i>Spectator</i>. He produced +humorous fables and apologues, choice +little morsels of social and political persiflage, +which were perfectly suited, not merely to the +taste of London in the so-called golden age of +English satire, but to the tone of the wittiest +salons of Paris in the age when the old régime +went tottering, talking, quoting, jesting to its +fall. Read Franklin's charming and wise letter +to Madame Brillon about giving too much +for the whistle. It is the perfection of well-bred +humor: a humor very American, very +Franklinian, although its theme and tone and +phrasing might well have been envied by Horace +or Voltaire.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p> + +<p>The gentle humor of Irving is marked by +precisely those traits of urbanity and restraint +which characterize the parables of Franklin. +Does not the <i>Autocrat of the Breakfast Table</i> +itself presuppose the existence of a truly cultivated +society? Its tone—"As I was saying +when I was interrupted"—is the tone of the intimate +circle. There was so much genuine humanity +in the gay little doctor that persons born +outside the circle of Harvard College and the +North Shore and Boston felt themselves at once +initiated by the touch of his merry wand into +a humanized, kindly theory of life. The humor +of George William Curtis had a similarly +mellow and ripened quality. It is a curious +comment upon that theory of Americans which +represents us primarily as a loud-voiced, assertive, +headstrong people, to be thus made +aware that many of the humorists whom we +have loved best are precisely those whose writing +has been marked by the most delicate restraint, +whose theory of life has been the most +highly urbane and civilized, whose work is indistinguishable +in tone—though its materials +are so different—from that of other humorous +writers on the other side of the Atlantic. On<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> +its social side all this is a fresh proof of the extraordinary +adaptability of the American mind. +On the literary side it is one more evidence +of the national fondness for neatness and perfection +of workmanship.</p> + +<p>But we are something other than a nation of +mere lovers and would-be imitators of Charles +Lamb. The moralistic type of humor, the crack +of Juvenal's whip, as well as the delicate Horatian +playing around the heart-strings, has +characterized our humor and satire from the +beginning. At bottom the American is serious. +Beneath the surface of his jokes there is moral +earnestness, there is ethical passion. Take, for +example, some of the apothegms of "Josh +Billings." He failed with the public until he +took up the trick of misspelling his words. +When he had once gained his public he sometimes +delighted them with sheer whimsical incongruity, +like this:—</p> + +<blockquote><p>"There iz 2 things in this life for which we +are never fully prepared, and that iz twins."</p></blockquote> + +<p>But more often the tone is really grave. It +is only the spelling that is queer. The moralizing +might be by La Bruyère or La Rochefoucauld. +Take this:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>—</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Life iz short, but it iz long enuff to ruin +enny man who wants tew be ruined."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Or this:—</p> + +<blockquote><p>"When a feller gits a goin doun hill, it dus +seem as tho evry thing had bin greased for the +okashun." That is what writers of tragedy +have been showing, ever since the Greeks!</p></blockquote> + +<p>Or finally, this, which has the perfect tone +of the great French moralists:—</p> + +<blockquote><p>"It iz a verry delicate job to forgive a man +without lowering him in his own estimashun, +and yures too."</p></blockquote> + +<p>See how the moralistic note is struck in the +field of political satire. It is 1866, and "Petroleum +V. Nasby," writing from "Confedrit +X Roads," Kentucky, gives Deekin Pogram's +views on education. "He didn't bleeve in +edjucashun, generally speekin. The common +people was better off without it, ez edjucashun +hed a tendency to unsettle their minds. He +had seen the evil effex ov it in niggers and poor +whites. So soon ez a nigger masters the spellin +book and gits into noosepapers, he becomes +dissatisfied with his condishin, and hankers +after a better cabin and more wages. He towunst +begins to insist onto ownin land hisself,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> +and givin his children edjucashun, and, ez a nigger, +for our purposes, aint worth a soo markee."</p> + +<p>The single phrase, "ez a nigger," spells +a whole chapter of American history.</p> + +<p>That quotation from "Petroleum V. Nasby" +serves also to illustrate a species of American +humor which has been of immense historical +importance and which has never been more +active than it is to-day: the humor, namely, of +local, provincial, and sectional types. Much of +this falls under Bergson's conception of humor +as social censure. It rebukes the extravagance, +the rigidity, the unawareness of the individual +who fails to adapt himself to his social environment. +It takes the place, in our categories of +humor, of those types of class humor and +satire in which European literature is so rich. +The mobility of our population, the constant +shifting of professions and callings, has prevented +our developing fixed class types of +humor. We have not even the lieutenant or +the policeman as permanent members of our +humorous stock company. The policeman of +to-day may be mayor or governor to-morrow. +The lieutenant may go back to his grocery +wagon or on to his department store. But<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> +whenever and wherever such an individual fails +to adapt himself to his new companions, fails +to take on, as it were, the colors of his new +environment, to speak in the new social accents, +to follow the recognized patterns of behavior, +then the kindly whip of the humorist is already +cracking round his ears. The humor and satire +of college undergraduate journalism turns +mainly upon the recognized ability or inability +of different individuals to adapt themselves to +their changing pigeon-holes in the college organism. +A freshman must behave like a freshman, +or he is laughed at. Yet he must not behave +as if he were nothing but the automaton +of a freshman, or he will be laughed at more +merrily still.</p> + +<p>One of the first discoveries of our earlier +humorists was the Down-East Yankee. "I'm +going to Portland whether or no," says Major +Jack Downing, telling the story of his boyhood; +"I'll see what this world is made of yet. +So I tackled up the old horse and packed in a +load of ax handles and a few notions, and mother +fried me a few doughnuts ... for I told +her I didn't know how long I should be gone,"—and +off he goes to Portland, to see what the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> +world is made of. It is a little like Defoe, and +a good deal like the young Ulysses, bent upon +knowing cities and men and upon getting the +best of bargains.</p> + +<p>Each generation of Americans has known +something like that trip to Portland. Each +generation has had to measure its wits, its resources, +its manners, against new standards of +comparison. At every stage of the journey +there are mishaps and ridiculous adventures; +but everywhere, likewise, there is zest, conquest, +initiation; the heart of a boy who "wants +to know"—as the Yankees used to say; or, +in more modern phrase,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"to admire and for to see,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For to behold this world so wide."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There is the same romance of adventure in +the humor concerning the Irishman, the Negro, +the Dutchman, the Dago, the farmer. Each in +turn becomes humorous through failure to +adapt himself to the prevalent type. A long-bearded +Jew is not ridiculous in Russia, but he +rapidly becomes ridiculous even on the East +Side of New York. Underneath all this popular +humor of the comic supplements one may +catch glimpses of the great revolving wheels<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> +which are crushing the vast majority of our +population into something like uniformity. It +is a process of social attrition. The sharp edges +of individual behavior get rounded off. The +individual loses color and picturesqueness, precisely +as he casts aside the national costume of +the land from which he came. His speech, his +gait, his demeanor, become as nearly as possible +like the speech and carriage of all his +neighbors. If he resists, he is laughed at; and if +he does not personally heed the laughter, he +may be sure that his children do. It is the children +of our immigrants who catch the sly smiles +of their school-fellows, who overhear jokes +from the newspapers and on the street corners, +who bring home to their foreign-born fathers +and mothers the imperious childish demand to +make themselves like unto everybody else.</p> + +<p>A similar social function is performed by that +well-known mode of American humor which +ridicules the inhabitants of certain states. Why +should New Jersey, for example, be more ridiculous +than Delaware? In the eyes of the newspaper +paragrapher it unquestionably is, just as +Missouri has more humorous connotations than +Kentucky. We may think we understand why<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> +we smile when a man says that he comes from +Kalamazoo or Oshkosh, but the smile when he +says "Philadelphia" or "Boston" or "Brooklyn" +is only a trifle more subtle. It is none the +less real. Why should the suburban dweller of +every city be regarded with humorous condescension +by the man who is compelled to sleep +within the city limits? No one can say, and yet +without that humor of the suburbs the comic +supplements of American newspapers would +be infinitely less entertaining,—to the people +who enjoy comic supplements.</p> + +<p>So it is with the larger divisions of our national +life. Yankee, Southerner, Westerner, +Californian, Texan, each type provokes certain +connotations of humor when viewed by any of +the other types. Each type in turn has its note +of provinciality when compared with the norm +of the typical American. It is quite possible to +maintain that our literature, like our social life, +has suffered by this ever-present American sense +of the ridiculous. Our social consciousness +might be far more various and richly colored, +there might be more true provincial independence +of speech and custom and imagination if +we had not to reckon with this ever-present censure<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> +of laughter, this fear of finding ourselves, +our city, our section, out of touch with the prevalent +tone and temper of the country as a +whole. It is one of the forfeits we are bound to +pay when we play the great absorbing game of +democracy.</p> + +<p>We are now ready to ask once more whether +there is a truly national type of American humor. +Viewed exclusively from the standpoint +of racial characteristics, we have seen that this +question as to a national type of humor is difficult +to answer. But we have seen with equal +clearness that the United States has offered a +singularly rich field for the development of the +sense of humor; and furthermore that there +are certain specialized forms of humor which +have flourished luxuriantly upon our soil. Our +humorists have made the most of their native +materials. Every pioneer trait of versatility, +curiosity, shrewdness, has been turned somehow +to humorous account. The very institutions +of democracy, moulding day by day and +generation after generation the habits and the +mental characteristics of millions of men, have +produced a social atmosphere in which humor +is one of the most indisputable elements.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p> + +<p>I recall a notable essay by Mr. Charles Johnston +on the essence of American humor in which +he applies to the conditions of American life +one familiar distinction between humor and wit. +Wit, he asserts, scores off the other man, humor +does not. Wit frequently turns upon tribal +differences, upon tribal vanity. The mordant +wit of the Jew, for example, from the +literature of the Old Testament down to the +raillery of Heine, has turned largely upon the +sense of racial superiority, of intellectual and +moral differences. But true humor, Mr. Johnston +goes on to argue, has always a binding, a +uniting quality. Thus Huckleberry Finn and +Jim Hawkins, white man and black man, are +afloat together on the Mississippi River raft and +they are made brethren by the fraternal quality +of Mark Twain's humor. Thus the levelling +quality of Bret Harte's humor bridges social +and moral chasms. It creates an atmosphere +of charity and sympathy. In fact, the typical +American humor, according to the opinion of +Mr. Johnston, emphasizes the broad and humane +side of our common nature. It reveals +the common soul. It possesses a surplusage of +power, of buoyancy and of conquest over circumstances.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> +It means at its best a humanizing +of our hearts.</p> + +<p>Some people will think that all this is too +optimistic, but if you are not optimistic enough +you cannot keep up with the facts. Certain it +is that the pioneers of American national humor, +the creators of what we may call the "all-American" +type of humor, have possessed precisely +the qualities which Mr. Johnston has +pointed out. They are apparent in the productions +of Artemus Ward. The present generation +vaguely remembers Artemus Ward as +the man who was willing to send all his wife's +relatives to the war and who, standing by the +tomb of Shakespeare, thought it "a success." +But no one who turns to the almost forgotten +pages of that kindly jester can fail to be impressed +by his sunny quality, by the atmosphere +of fraternal affection which glorifies his queer +spelling and his somewhat threadbare witticisms. +Mark Twain, who is universally recognized +by Europeans as a representative of +typical American humor, had precisely those +qualities of pioneer curiosity, swift versatility, +absolute democracy, which are characteristic +of the national temper. His lively accounts of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> +frontier experiences in <i>Roughing It</i>, his comments +upon the old world in <i>Innocents Abroad</i> +and <i>A Tramp Abroad</i>, his hatred of pretence +and injustice, his scorn at sentimentality coupled +with his insistence upon the rights of sentiment, +in a word his persistent idealism, make Mark +Twain one of the most representative of American +writers. Largeness, freedom, human sympathy, +are revealed upon every page.</p> + +<p>It is true that the dangers of American humor +are no less in evidence there. There is the +danger of extravagance, which in Mark Twain's +earlier writings was carried to lengths of absurdity. +There is the old danger of the professional +humorist of fearing to fail to score his +point, and so of underscoring it with painful +reiteration. Mark Twain is frequently grotesque. +Sometimes there is evidence of imperfect +taste, or of bad taste. Sometimes there is +actual vulgarity. In his earlier books particularly +there is revealed that lack of discipline +which has been such a constant accompaniment +of American writing. Yet a native of Hannibal, +Missouri, trained on a river steamboat and +in a country printing-office and in mining-camps, +can scarcely be expected to exhibit the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> +finely balanced critical sense of a Matthew Arnold. +Mark Twain was often accused in the +first years of his international reputation of a +characteristically American lack of reverence. +He is often irreverent. But here again the +boundaries of his irreverence are precisely those +which the national instinct itself has drawn. +The joke stops short of certain topics which the +American mind holds sacred. We all have our +favorite pages in the writings of this versatile +and richly endowed humorist, but I think no +one can read his description of the coyote in +<i>Roughing It</i>, and Huckleberry Finn's account +of his first visit to the circus, without realizing +that in this fresh revelation of immemorial +human curiosity, this vivid perception of incongruity +and surprise, this series of lightning-like +flashes from one pole of experience to the +other, we have not only masterpieces of world +humor, but a revelation of a distinctly American +reaction to the facts presented by universal +experience.</p> + +<p>The picturesque personality and the extraordinarily +successful career of Mark Twain +kept him, during the last twenty-five years of +his life, in the focus of public attention. But<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> +no one can read the pages of the older American +humorists,—or try to recall to mind the +names of paragraphers who used to write comic +matter for this or that newspaper,—without +realizing how swiftly the dust of oblivion settles +upon all the makers of mere jokes. It is +enough, perhaps, that they caused a smile for +the moment. Even those humorists who mark +epochs in the history of American provincial +and political satire, like Seba Smith with his +<i>Major Jack Downing</i>, Newell with his <i>Papers +of Orpheus C. Kerr</i>, "Petroleum V. Nasby's" +<i>Letters from the Confedrit X Roads</i>, Shillaber's +<i>Mrs. Partington</i>—all these have disappeared +round the turn of the long road.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Hans Breitman gife a barty—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Vhere ish dot barty now?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It seems as if the conscious humorists, the +professional funny writers, had the shortest +lease of literary life. They play their little comic +parts before a well-disposed but restless audience +which is already impatiently waiting for +some other "turn." One of them makes a hit +with a song or story, just as a draughtsman for +a Sunday colored supplement makes a hit with +his "Mutt and Jeff." For a few months everybody<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> +smiles and then comes the long oblivion. +The more permanent American humor has +commonly been written by persons who were +almost unconscious, not indeed of the fact that +they were creating humorous characters, but +unconscious of the effort to provoke a laugh. +The smile lasts longer than the laugh. Perhaps +that is the secret. One smiles as one reads the +delicate sketches of Miss Jewett. One smiles +over the stories of Owen Wister and of Thomas +Nelson Page. The trouble, possibly, with the +enduring qualities of the brilliant humorous +stories of "O. Henry" was that they tempt +the reader to laugh too much and to smile too +little. When one reads the <i>Legend of Sleepy +Hollow</i> or <i>Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of +New York</i>, it is always with this gentle parting +of the lips, this kindly feeling toward the +author, his characters and the world. A humorous +page which produces that effect for generation +after generation, has the stamp of literature. +One may doubt whether even the extraordinary +fantasies of Mark Twain are more successful, +judged by the mere vulgar test of concrete +results, than the delicate humor of Charles +Lamb. Our current newspaper and magazine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> +humor is in no respect more fascinating than +in its suggestion as to the permanent effectiveness +of its comic qualities. Who could say, +when he first read Mr. Finley P. Dunne's +"Mr. Dooley" sketches, whether this was +something that a whole nation of readers would +instantly and instinctively rejoice over, would +find a genial revelation of American characteristics, +would recognize as almost the final word +of kindly satire upon our overworked, over-excited, +over-anxious, over-self-conscious generation?</p> + +<p>The range of this contemporary newspaper +and magazine humor is well-nigh universal,—always +saving, it is true, certain topics or states +of mind which the American public cannot +regard as topics for laughter. With these few +exceptions nothing is too high or too low for +it. The paragraphers joke about the wheel-barrow, +the hen, the mule, the mother-in-law, +the President of the United States. There is +no ascending or descending scale of importance. +Any of the topics can raise a laugh. If +one examines a collection of American parodies, +one will find that the happy national talent +for fun-making finds full scope in the parody<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> +and burlesque of the dearest national sentiments. +But no one minds; everybody believes +that the sentiments endure while the jokes will +pass. The jokes, intended as they are for an +immense audience, necessarily lack subtlety. +They tend to partake of the methods of pictorial +caricature. Indeed, caricature itself, as +Bergson has pointed out, emphasizes those +"automatic, mechanical-toy" traits of character +and behavior which isolate the individual +and make him ill adapted for his function in +society. Our verbal wit and humor, no less +than the pencil of our caricaturists, have this +constant note of exaggeration. "These violent +delights have violent ends." But during +their brief and laughing existence they serve +to normalize society. They set up, as it were, +a pulpit in the street upon which the comic +spirit may mount and preach her useful sermon +to all comers.</p> + +<p>Despite the universality of the objects of +contemporary American humor, despite, too, +its prevalent method of caricature, it remains +true that its character is, on the whole, clean, +easy-going, and kindly. The old satire of hatred +has lost its force. No one knows why. "Satire<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> +has grown weak," says Mr. Chesterton, "precisely +because belief has grown weak." That +is one theory. The late Henry D. Lloyd, of +Chicago, declared in one of his last books: +"The world has outgrown the dialect and temper +of hatred. The style of the imprecatory +psalms and the denunciating prophets is out of +date. No one knows these times if he is not +conscious of this change." That is another +theory. Again, party animosities are surely +weaker than they were. Caricatures are less personally +offensive; if you doubt it, look at any +of the collections of caricatures of Napoleon, +or of George the Fourth. Irony is less often +used by pamphleteers and journalists. It is a +delicate rhetorical weapon, and journalists who +aim at the great public are increasingly afraid +to use it, lest the readers miss the point. In +the editorials in the Hearst newspapers, for +instance, there is plenty of invective and innuendo, +but rarely irony: it might not be understood, +and the crowd must not be left in +doubt.</p> + +<p>Possibly the old-fashioned satire has disappeared +because the game is no longer considered +worth the candle. To puncture the tire of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> +pretence is amusing enough; but it is useless to +stick tacks under the steam road-roller: the +road-roller advances remorselessly and smooths +down your mischievous little tacks and you +too, indifferently. The huge interests of politics, +trade, progress, override your passionate +protest. "Shall gravitation cease when you +go by?" I do not compare Colonel Roosevelt +with gravitation, but have all the satirical squibs +against our famous contemporary, from the +"Alone in Cubia" to the "Teddy-see," ever +cost him, in a dozen years, a dozen votes?</p> + +<p>Very likely Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Chesterton +are right. We are less censorious than our ancestors +were. Americans, on the whole, try to +avoid giving pain through speech. The satirists +of the golden age loved that cruel exercise +of power. Perhaps we take things less +seriously than they did; undoubtedly our attention +is more distracted and dissipated. At +any rate, the American public finds it easier to +forgive and forget, than to nurse its wrath to +keep it warm. Our characteristic humor of +understatement, and our equally characteristic +humor of overstatement, are both likely to be +cheery at bottom, though the mere wording<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> +may be grim enough. No popular saying is +more genuinely characteristic of American humor +than the familiar "Cheer up. The worst +is yet to come."</p> + +<p>Whatever else one may say or leave unsaid +about American humor, every one realizes that +it is a fundamentally necessary reaction from +the pressure of our modern living. Perhaps it +is a handicap. Perhaps we joke when we should +be praying. Perhaps we make fun when we +ought to be setting our shoulders to the wheel. +But the deeper fact is that most American +shoulders are set to the wheel too often and +too long, and if they do not stop for the joke +they are done for. I have always suspected +that Mr. Kipling was thinking of American +humor when he wrote in his well-known lines +on "The American Spirit":—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"So imperturbable he rules<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Unkempt, disreputable, vast—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And in the teeth of all the schools<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I—I shall save him at the last."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That is the very secret of the American sense +of humor: the conviction that something is +going to save us at the last. Otherwise there +would be no joke! It is no accident, surely,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> +that the man who is increasingly idolized as the +most representative of all Americans, the burden-bearer +of his people, the man of sorrows +and acquainted with grief, should be our most +inveterate humorist. Let Lincoln have his story +and his joke, for he had faith in the saving of +the nation; and while his Cabinet are waiting +impatiently to listen to his Proclamation of +Emancipation, give him another five minutes +to read aloud to them that new chapter by +Artemus Ward.</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p><hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI<br /><br /> + +Individualism and Fellowship</h2> + + +<p>It would be difficult to find a clearer expression +of the old doctrine of individualism than +is uttered by Carlyle in his London lecture on +"The Hero as Man of Letters." Listen to the +grim child of Calvinism as he fires his "Annandale +grapeshot" into that sophisticated London +audience: "Men speak too much about the +world.... The world's being saved will not +save us; nor the world's being lost destroy us. +We should look to ourselves.... For the +saving of the world I will trust confidently to +the Maker of the world; and look a little to my +own saving, which I am more competent to!"</p> + +<p>Carlyle was never more soundly Puritanic, +never more perfectly within the lines of the +moral traditions of his race than in these injunctions +to let the world go and to care for +the individual soul.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p> + +<p>We are familiar with the doctrine on this +side of the Atlantic. Here is a single phrase +from Emerson's <i>Journal</i> of September, 1833, +written on his voyage home from that memorable +visit to Europe where he first made +Carlyle's acquaintance. "Back again to myself," +wrote Emerson, as the five-hundred-ton +sailing ship beat her way westward for a long +month across the stormy North Atlantic:—"Back +again to myself.—A man contains all +that is needful to his government within himself. +He is made a law unto himself. All real +good or evil that can befall him must be from +himself.... The purpose of life seems to be +to acquaint a man with himself."</p> + +<p>In the following August he is writing:—</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Societies, parties, are only incipient stages, +tadpole states of men, as caterpillars are social, +but the butterfly not. The true and finished +man is ever alone."</p></blockquote> + +<p>On March 23, 1835:—</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Alone is wisdom. Alone is happiness. +Society nowadays makes us low-spirited, +hopeless. Alone is Heaven."</p></blockquote> + +<p>And once more:—</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p><blockquote><p>"If Æschylus is that man he is taken for, +he has not yet done his office when he has educated +the learned of Europe for a thousand +years. He is now to approve himself a master +of delight to me. If he cannot do that, all his +fame shall avail him nothing. I were a fool not +to sacrifice a thousand Æschyluses to my intellectual +integrity."</p></blockquote> + +<p>These quotations have to do with the personal +life. Let me next illustrate the individualism +of the eighteen-thirties by the attitude +of two famous individualists toward the prosaic +question of paying taxes to the State. Carlyle +told Emerson that he should pay taxes to the +House of Hanover just as long as the House +of Hanover had the physical force to collect +them,—and not a day longer.</p> + +<p>Henry Thoreau was even more recalcitrant. +Let me quote him:—</p> + +<blockquote><p>"I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was +put into a jail once on this account, for one +night; and, as I stood considering the walls of +solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door +of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron +grating which strained the light, I could not +help being struck with the foolishness of that +institution which treated me as if I were mere<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> +flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I +wondered that it should have concluded at +length that this was the best use it could put +me to, and had never thought to avail itself of +my services in some way. I saw that, if there +was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, +there was a still more difficult one to climb +or break through before they could get to be as +free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, +and the walls seemed a great waste of stone +and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen +had paid my tax. They plainly did not +know how to treat me, but behaved like persons +who are underbred. In every threat and +in every compliment there was a blunder; for +they thought that my chief desire was to stand +on the other side of that stone wall. I could not +but smile to see how industriously they locked +the door on my meditations, which followed +them out again without let or hindrance, and +<i>they</i> were really all that was dangerous. As they +could not reach me, they had resolved to punish +my body; just as boys, if they cannot come +at some person against whom they have a spite, +will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was +half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> +with her silver spoons, and that it did not know +its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining +respect for it, and pitied it."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Here is Thoreau's attitude toward the problems +of the inner life. The three quotations +are from his <i>Walden</i>:—</p> + +<p>"Probably I should not consciously and deliberately +forsake my particular calling to do +the good which society demands of me, to save +the universe from annihilation."</p> + +<p>"I went to the woods because I wished to +live deliberately, to front only the essential +facts of life, and see if I could not learn what +it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, +discover that I had not lived. I did not wish +to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor +did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was +quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck +out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily +and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was +not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, +to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its +lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why +then to get the whole and genuine meanness +of it, and publish its meanness to the world; +or if it were sublime, to know it by experience,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> +and be able to give a true account of it in my +next excursion."</p> + +<p>"It is said that the British Empire is very +large and respectable, and that the United States +are a first-rate power. We do not believe that +a tide rises and falls behind every man which +can float the British Empire like a chip, if he +should ever harbor it in his mind."</p> + +<p>All of these quotations from Emerson and +Thoreau are but various modes of saying "Let +the world go." Everybody knows that in later +crises of American history, both Thoreau and +Emerson forgot their old preaching of individualism, +or at least merged it in the larger +doctrine of identification of the individual with +the acts and emotions of the community. And +nevertheless as men of letters they habitually +laid stress upon the rights and duties of the +private person. Upon a hundred brilliant pages +they preached the gospel that society is in conspiracy +against the individual manhood of every +one of its members.</p> + +<p>They had a right to this doctrine. They came +by it honestly through long lines of ancestral +heritage. The republicanism of the seventeenth +century in the American forests, as well as upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> +the floor of the English House of Commons, +had asserted that private persons had the right +to make and unmake kings. The republican +theorists of the eighteenth century had insisted +that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness +were the birthright of each individual. This +doctrine was related, of course, to the doctrine +of equality. If republicanism teaches that "I +am as good as others," democracy is forever +hinting "Others are as good as I." Democracy +has been steadily extending the notion of rights +and duties. The first instinct, perhaps, is to +ask what is right, just, lawful, for me? Next, +what is right, just, lawful for my crowd? That +is to say, my family, my clan, my race, my country. +The third instinct bids one ask what is +right and just and lawful, not merely for me, +and for men like me, but for everybody. And +when we get that third question properly answered, +we can afford to close school-house and +church and court-room, for this world's work +will have ended.</p> + +<p>We have already glanced at various phases +of colonial individualism. We have had a +glimpse of Cotton Mather prostrate upon the +dusty floor of his study, agonizing now for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> +himself and now for the countries of Europe; +we have watched Jonathan Edwards in his +solitary ecstasies in the Northampton and the +Stockbridge woods; we have seen Franklin +preaching his gospel of personal thrift and of +getting on in the world. Down to the very +verge of the Revolution the American pioneer +spirit was forever urging the individual to fight +for his own hand. Each boy on the old farms +had his own chores to do; each head of a family +had to plan for himself. The most tragic +failure of the individual in those days was the +poverty or illness which compelled him to "go +on the town." To be one of the town poor indicated +that the individualistic battle had been +fought and lost. No one ever dreamed, apparently, +that a time for old-age pensions and +honorable retiring funds was coming. The feeling +against any form of community assistance +was like the bitter hatred of the workhouse +among English laborers of the eighteen-forties.</p> + +<p>The stress upon purely personal qualities +gave picturesqueness, color, and vigor to the +early life of the United States. Take the persons +whom Parkman describes in his <i>Oregon +Trail</i>. They have the perfect clearness of outline<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> +of the portraits by Walter Scott and the +great Romantic school of novelists who loved +to paint pictures of interesting individual men. +There is the same stress upon individualistic +portraiture in Irving's <i>Astoria</i>; in the humorous +journals of early travellers in the Southern +States. It is the secret of the curiosity with +which we observe the gamblers and miners and +stage-drivers described by Bret Harte. In the +rural communities of to-day, in the older portions +of the country, and in the remoter settlements +of the West and Southwest, the individual +man has a sort of picturesque, and, as it +were, artistic value, which the life of cities does +not allow. The gospel of self-reliance and of +solitude is not preached more effectively by +the philosophers of Concord than it is by the +backwoodsmen, the spies, and the sailors of +Fenimore Cooper. Individualism as a doctrine +of perfection for the private person and individualism +as a literary creed have thus gone +hand in hand. "Produce great persons, the rest +follows," cried Walt Whitman. He was thinking +at the moment about American society and +politics. But he believed that the same law held +good in poetry. Once get your great man and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> +let him abandon himself to poetry and the +great poetry will be the result. It was almost +precisely the same teaching as in Carlyle's lecture +on "The Hero as Poet."</p> + +<p>Well, it is clear enough nowadays that both +Whitman and Carlyle underrated the value of +discipline. The lack of discipline is the chief +obstacle to effective individualism. The private +person must be well trained, or he cannot +do his work; and as civilization advances, it +becomes exceedingly difficult to train the individual +without social coöperation. A Paul or a +Mahomet may discipline his own soul in the +Desert of Arabia; he may there learn the lessons +that may later make him a leader of men. +But for the average man and indeed for most +of the exceptional men, the path to effectiveness +lies through social and professional discipline. +Here is where the frontier stage of our +American life was necessarily weak. We have +seen that our ancestors gained something, no +doubt, from their spirit of unconventionally +and freedom. But they also lost something +through their dislike for discipline, their indifference +to criticism, their ineradicable tendency, +whether in business, in diplomacy, in art and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> +letters and education, to go "across lots." A +certain degree of physical orderliness was, indeed, +imposed upon our ancestors by the conditions +of pioneer life. The natural prodigality +and recklessness of frontier existence was here +and there sharply checked. Order is essential +in a camp, and the thin line of colonies was +all camping. A certain instinct for order underlay +that resourcefulness which impresses every +reader of our history. Did the colonist need a +tool? He learned to make it himself. Isolation +from the mother country was a stimulus +to the inventive imagination. Before long they +were maintaining public order in the same +ingenious fashion in which they kept house. +Appeals to London took too much time. "We +send a complaint this year," ran the saying, +"the next year they send to inquire, the third +year the ministry is changed." No wonder that +resourcefulness bred independent action, stimulated +the Puritan taste for individualism, and +led the way to self-government.</p> + +<p>Yet who does not know that the inherent +instinct for political order may be accompanied +by mental disorderliness? Even your modern +Englishman—as the saying goes—"muddles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> +through." The minds of our American forefathers +were not always lucid. The mysticism +of the New England Calvinists sometimes bred +fanaticism. The practical and the theoretical +were queerly blended. The essential unorderliness +of the American mind is admirably illustrated +by that "Father of all the Yankees," +Benjamin Franklin. No student of Franklin's +life fails to be impressed by its happy casualness, +its cheerful flavor of the rogue-romance. +Gil Blas himself never drifted into and out of +an adventure with a more offhand and imperturbable +adroitness. Franklin went through life +with the joyous inventiveness of the amateur. +He had the amateur's enthusiasm, coupled with +a clairvoyant penetration into technical problems +such as few amateurs have possessed. With +all of his wonderful patience towards other men, +Franklin had in the realm of scientific experiment +something of the typical impatience of +the mere dabbler. He was inclined to lose interest +in the special problem before it was worked +out. His large, tolerant intelligence was often +as unorderly as his papers and accounts. He +was a wonderful colonial Jack-of-all-trades; +with a range of suggestion, a resourcefulness,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> +a knack of assimilation, a cosmopolitan many-sidedness, +which has left us perpetually his debtors. +Under different surroundings, and disciplined +by a more severe and orderly training, +Franklin might easily have developed the very +highest order of professional scientific achievement. +His natural talent for organization of +men and institutions, his "early projecting public +spirit," his sense of the lack of formal educational +advantages in the colonies, made him +the founder of the Philadelphia Academy, the +successful agitator for public libraries. Academicism, +even in the narrow sense, owes much to +this LL.D. of St. Andrews, D.C.L. of Oxford, +and intimate associate of French academicians. +But one smiles a little, after all, to see the bland +printer in this academic company: he deserves +his place there, indeed, but he is something +more and other than his associates. He is the +type of youthful, inexhaustible colonial America; +reckless of precedent, self-taught, splendidly +alive; worth, to his day and generation, a +dozen born academicians; and yet suggesting +by his very imperfections, that the Americans +of a later day, working under different conditions, +are bound to develop a sort of professional<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> +skill, of steady, concentrated, ordered intellectual +activity, for which Franklin possessed +the potential capacity rather than the opportunity +and the desire.</p> + +<p>Yet there were latent lines of order, hints and +prophecies of a coming fellowship, running +deep and straight beneath the confused surface +of the preoccupied colonial consciousness. In another +generation we see the rude Western democracy +asserting itself in the valley of the Mississippi. +This breed of pioneers, like their +fathers on the Atlantic coast line, could turn +their hands to anything, because they must. +"The average man," says Mr. Herbert Croly, +"without any special bent or qualifications, was +in the pioneer states the useful man. In that +country it was sheer waste to spend much energy +upon tasks which demanded skill, prolonged +experience, high technical standards, or +exclusive devotion.... No special equipment +was required. The farmer was obliged to be all +kinds of a rough mechanic. The business man +was merchant, manufacturer, and storekeeper. +Almost everybody was something of a politician. +The number of parts which a man of +energy played in his time was astonishingly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> +large. Andrew Jackson was successively a lawyer, +judge, planter, merchant, general, politician, +and statesman; and he played most of these +parts with conspicuous success. In such a society +a man who persisted in one job, and who +applied the most rigorous and exacting standards +to his work, was out of place and really inefficient. +His finished product did not serve its +temporary purpose much better than did the +current careless and hasty product, and his +higher standards and peculiar ways constituted +an implied criticism on the easy methods of his +neighbors. He interfered with the rough good-fellowship +which naturally arises among a group +of men who submit good naturedly and uncritically +to current standards. It is no wonder, consequently, +that the pioneer Democracy viewed +with distrust and aversion the man with a special +vocation and high standards of achievement."</p> + +<p>The truth of this comment is apparent to +everybody. It explains the still lingering popular +suspicion of the "academic" type of man. +But we are likely to forget that back of all that +easy versatility and reckless variety of effort +there was some sound and patient and constructive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> +thinking. Lincoln used to describe himself +humorously, slightingly, as a "mast-fed" lawyer, +one who had picked up in the woods the +scattered acorns of legal lore. It was a true +enough description, but after all, there were +very few college-bred lawyers in the Eighth Illinois +Circuit or anywhere else who could hold +their own, even in a purely professional struggle, +with that long-armed logician from the +backwoods.</p> + +<p>There was once a "mast-fed" novelist in +this country, who scandalously slighted his +academic opportunities, went to sea, went into +the navy, went to farming, and then went into +novel-writing to amuse himself. He cared nothing +and knew nothing about conscious literary +art; his style is diffuse, his syntax the +despair of school-teachers, and many of his +characters are bores. But once let him strike +the trail of a story, and he follows it like his +own Hawkeye; put him on salt water or in the +wilderness, and he knows rope and paddle, axe +and rifle, sea and forest and sky; and he knows +his road home to the right ending of a story +by an instinct as sure as an Indian's. Professional +novelists like Balzac, professional critics<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> +like Sainte-Beuve, stand amazed at Fenimore +Cooper's skill and power. The true engineering +and architectural lines are there. They +were not painfully plotted beforehand, like +George Eliot's. Cooper took, like Scott, "the +easiest path across country," just as a bee-hunter +seems to take the easiest path through +the woods. But the bee-hunter, for all his apparent +laziness, never loses sight of the air-drawn +line, marked by the homing bee; and +your <i>Last of the Mohicans</i> will be instinctively, +inevitably right, while your <i>Daniel Deronda</i> +will be industriously wrong.</p> + +<p>Cooper literally builded better than he knew. +Obstinately unacademic in his temper and +training, he has won the suffrages of the most +fastidious and academic judges of excellence in +his profession. The secret is, I suppose, that +the lawlessness, the amateurishness, the indifference +to standards were on the surface,—apparent +to everybody,—the soundness and +rightness of his practice were unconscious.</p> + +<p>Franklin and Lincoln and Cooper, therefore, +may be taken as striking examples of individuals +trained in the old happy-go-lucky +way, and yet with marked capacities for socialization,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> +for fellowship. They succeeded, even +by the vulgar tests of success, in spite of their +lack of discipline. But for most men the chief +obstacle to effective labor even as individuals +is the lack of thoroughgoing training.</p> + +<p>It is scarcely necessary to add that there are +vast obstacles in the way of individualism as a +working theory of society. Carlyle's theory of +"Hero Worship" has fewer adherents than +for half a century. It is picturesque,—that +conception of a great, sincere man and of a +world reverencing him and begging to be led +by him. But the difficulty is that contemporary +democracy does not say to the Hero, as +Carlyle thought it must say, "Govern me! I am +mad and miserable, and cannot govern myself!"</p> + +<p>Democracy says to the Hero, "Thank you +very much, but this is our affair. Join us, if +you like. We shall be glad of your company. +But we are not looking for governors. We +propose to govern ourselves."</p> + +<p>Even from the point of view of literature +and art,—fields of activity where the individual +performer has often been felt to be quite +independent of his audience,—it is quite evident +nowadays that the old theory of individualism<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> +breaks down. Even your lyric poet, +who more than any other artist stands or sings +alone, falls easily into mere lyric eccentricity +if he is not bound to his fellows by wholesome +and normal ties. In fact, this lyric eccentricity, +weakness, wistfulness, is one of the notable defects +of American poetry. We have always been +lacking in the more objective forms of literary +art, like epic and drama. Poe, and the imitators +of Poe, have been regarded too often by +our people as the normal type of poet. One +must not forget the silent solitary ecstasies +that have gone into the making of enduring +lyric verse, but our literature proves abundantly +how soon sweetness may turn to an +Emily Dickinson strain of morbidness; how +fatally the lovely becomes transformed into the +queer. The history of the American short +story furnishes many similar examples. The +artistic intensity of a Hawthorne, his ethical +and moral preoccupations, are all a part of the +creed of individualistic art. But both Hawthorne +and Poe would have written,—one dare +not say better stories, but at least greater and +broader and more human stories,—if they +had not been forced to walk so constantly in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> +solitary pathways. That fellowship in artistic +creation which has characterized some of the +greatest periods of art production was something +wholly absent from the experience of +these gifted and lonely men. Even Emerson +and Thoreau wrote "whim" over their portals +more often than any artist has the privilege to +write it. Emerson never had any thorough +training, either in philosophy, theology, or +history. He admits it upon a dozen smiling +pages. Perhaps it adds to his purely personal +charm, just as Montaigne's confession of his intellectual +and moral weaknesses heightens our +fondness for the Prince of Essayists. But the +deeper fact is that not only Emerson and Thoreau, +Poe and Hawthorne, but practically every +American writer and artist from the beginning +has been forced to do his work without the sustaining +and heartening touch of national fellowship +and pride. Emerson himself felt the +chilling poverty in the intellectual and emotional +life of the country. He betrays it in this +striking passage from his <i>Journal</i>, about the +sculptor Greenough:—</p> + +<blockquote><p>"What interest has Greenough to make a +good statue? Who cares whether it is good?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> +A few prosperous gentlemen and ladies; but +the Universal Yankee Nation roaring in the +capitol to approve or condemn would make his +eye and hand and heart go to a new tune."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Those words were written in 1836, but we +are still waiting for that new national anthem, +sustaining the heart and the voice of the individual +artist. Yet there are signs that it is coming.</p> + +<p>It is obvious that the day for the old individualism +has passed. Whether one looks at +art and literature or at the general activities of +American society, it is clear that the isolated individual +is incompetent to carry on his necessary +tasks. This is not saying that we have +outgrown the individual. We shall never outgrow +the individual. We need for every page +of literature and for every adequate performance +of society more highly perfected individuals. +Some one said of Edgar Allan Poe that +he did not know enough to be a great poet. +All around us and every day we find individuals +who do not know enough for their specific +job; men who do not love enough, men in +whom the power of will is too feeble. Such +men, as individuals, must know and love and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> +will more adequately; and this not merely to +perfect their functioning as individuals, but to +fulfill their obligations to contemporary society. +A true spiritual democracy will never be +reached until highly trained individuals are +united in the bonds of fraternal feeling. Every +individual defect in training, defect in aspiration, +defect in passion, becomes ultimately a +defect in society.</p> + +<p>Let us turn, then, to those conditions of +American society which have prepared the way +for, and foreshadowed, a more perfect fellowship. +We shall instantly perceive the relation +of these general social conditions to the specific +performances of our men of letters. We have +repeatedly noted that our most characteristic +literature is what has been called a citizen literature. +It is the sort of writing which springs +from a sense of the general needs of the community +and which has had for its object the safe-guarding +or the betterment of the community. +Aside from a few masterpieces of lyric poetry, +and aside from the short story as represented +by such isolated artists as Poe and Hawthorne, +our literature as a whole has this civic note. It +may be detected in the first writings of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> +colonists. Captain John Smith's angry order +at Jamestown, "He that will not work neither +let him eat," is one of the planks in the platform +of democracy. Under the trying and depressing +conditions of that disastrous settlement +at Eden in <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> it is the +quick wits and the brave heart of Mark Tapley +which prove him superior to his employer. +The same sermon is preached in Mr. Barrie's +play, <i>The Admirable Crichton</i>: cast away upon +the desert island, the butler proves himself a +better man than his master. This is the motive +of a very modern play, but it may be illustrated +a hundred times in the history of the +seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in America. +The practical experiences of the colonists +confirmed them in their republican theories. It +is true that they held to a doctrine of religious +and political individualism. But the moment +these theories were put to work in the wilderness +a new order of things decreed that this individualism +should be modified in the direction +of fellowship. Calvinism itself, for all of its insistence +upon the value of the individual soul, +taught also the principle of the equality of all +souls before God. It was thus that the <i>Institutes</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> +of Calvin became one of the charters of +democracy. The democratic drift in the writings +of Franklin and Jefferson is too well known +to need any further comment. The triumph +of the rebellious colonists of 1776 was a triumph +of democratic principles; and although +a Tory reaction came promptly, although Hamiltonianism +came to stay as a beneficent check +to over-radical, populistic theories, the history +of the last century and a quarter has abundantly +shown the vitality and the endurance of democratic +ideas.</p> + +<p>One may fairly say that the decade in which +American democracy revealed its most ugly +and quarrelsome aspect was the decade of the +eighteen-thirties. That was the decade when +Washington Irving and Fenimore Cooper came +home from long sojourns in Europe. They +found themselves confronted at once by sensitive, +suspicious neighbors who hated England +and Europe and had a lurking or open hostility +towards anything that savored of Old World +culture. Yet in that very epoch when English +visitors were passing their most harsh and censorious +verdict upon American culture, Emerson +was writing in his <i>Journal</i> (June 18, 1834)<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> +a singular prophecy to the effect that the evils +of our democracy, so far as literature was concerned, +were to be cured by the remedy of +more democracy. Is it not striking that he turns +away from the universities and the traditional +culture of New England and looks towards the +Jacksonism of the new West to create a new +and native American literature? Here is the +passage:—</p> + +<blockquote><p>"We all lean on England; scarce a verse, +a page, a newspaper, but is writ in imitation of +English forms; our very manners and conversation +are traditional, and sometimes the life +seems dying out of all literature, and this +enormous paper currency of Words is accepted +instead. I suppose the evil may be cured by +this rank rabble party, the Jacksonism of the +country, heedless of English and of all literature—a +stone cut out of the ground without +hands;—they may root out the hollow dilettantism +of our cultivation in the coarsest way, +and the new-born may begin again to frame +their own world with greater advantage."</p></blockquote> + +<p>From that raw epoch of the eighteen-thirties +on to the Civil War, one may constantly detect +in American writing the accents of democratic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> +radicalism. Partly, no doubt, it was a heritage +of the sentiment of the French Revolution. +"My father," said John Greenleaf Whittier, +"really believed in the Preamble of the Bill of +Rights, which re-affirmed the Declaration of +Independence." So did the son! Equally clear +in the writings of those thirty years are echoes +of the English radicalism which had so much +in common with the democratic movement +across the English Channel. The part which +English thinkers and English agitators played +in securing for America the fruits of her own +democratic principles has never been adequately +acknowledged.</p> + +<p>That the outcome of the Civil War meant +a triumph of democratic ideas as against aristocratic +privilege, no one can doubt. There were +no stancher adherents of the democratic idea +than our intellectual aristocrats. The best +Union editorials at the time of the Civil War, +says James Ford Rhodes, were written by scholars +like Charles Eliot Norton and James Russell +Lowell. I think it was Lowell who once said, +in combatting the old aristocratic notion of +white man supremacy, that no gentleman is +willing to accept privileges that are inaccessible<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> +to other men. This is precisely like the famous +sentence of Walt Whitman which first arrested +the attention of "Golden Rule Jones," the +mayor of Toledo, and which made him not +only a Whitmaniac for the rest of his life but +one of the most useful of American citizens. +The line was, "I will accept nothing which all +may not have their counterpart of on the same +terms."</p> + +<p>This instinct of fellowship cannot be separated, +of course, from the older instincts of +righteousness and justice. It involves, however, +more than giving the other man his due. +It means feeling towards him as towards another +"fellow." It involves the sentiment of +partnership. Historians of early mining life in +California have noted the new phase of social +feeling in the mining-camps which followed +upon the change from the pan—held and +shaken by the solitary miner—to the cradle, +which required the coöperation of at least two +men. It was when the cradle came in that the +miners first began to say "partner." As the +cradle gave way to placer mining, larger and +larger schemes of coöperation came into use. +In fact, Professor Royce has pointed out in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> +<i>History of California</i> that the whole lesson of +California history is precisely the lesson most +necessary to be learned by the country as a +whole, namely, that the phase of individual +gain-getting and individualistic power always +leads to anarchy and reaction, and that it +becomes necessary, even in the interests of +effective individualism itself, to recognize the +compelling and ultimate authority of society.</p> + +<p>What went on in California between 1849 +and 1852 is precisely typical of what is going +on everywhere to-day. American men and +women are learning, as we say, "to get together." +It is the distinctly twentieth-century +programme. We must all learn the art of getting +together, not merely to conserve the interests +of literature and art and society, but +to preserve the individual himself in his just +rights. Any one who misunderstands the depth +and the scope of the present political restlessness +which is manifested in every section of the +country, misunderstands the American instinct +for fellowship. It is a law of that fellowship +that what is right and legitimate for me is right +and legitimate for the other fellow also. The +American mind and the American conscience<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> +are becoming socialized before our very eyes. +American art and literature must keep pace +with this socialization of the intelligence and +the conscience, or they will be no longer representative +of the true America.</p> + +<p>Literary illustrations of this spirit of fraternalism +lie close at hand. They are to be found +here and there even in the rebellious, well-nigh +anarchic, individualism of the Concord men. +They are to be found throughout the prose +and verse of Whittier. No one has preached +a truer or more effective gospel of fellowship +than Longfellow, whose poetry has been one +of the pervasive influences in American democracy, +although Longfellow had but little to +say about politics and never posed in a slouch +hat and with his trousers tucked into his boots. +Fellowship is taught in the <i>Biglow Papers</i> of +Lowell and the stories of Mrs. Stowe. It is +wholly absent from the prose and verse of Poe, +and it imparts but a feeble warmth to the delicately +written pages of Hawthorne. But in the +books written for the great common audience +of American men and women, like the novels +of Winston Churchill; and in the plays which +have scored the greatest popular successes, like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> +those of Denman Thompson, Bronson Howard, +Gillette, Augustus Thomas, the doctrine of +fellowship is everywhere to be traced. It is in +the poems of James Whitcomb Riley and of +Sam Walter Foss; in the work of hundreds of +lesser known writers of verse and prose who +have echoed Foss's sentiment about living in +a "house by the side of the road" and being +a "friend of man."</p> + +<p>To many readers the supreme literary example +of the gospel of American fellowship +is to be found in Walt Whitman. One will +look long before one finds a more consistent +or a nobler doctrine of fellowship than is +chanted in <i>Leaves of Grass</i>. It is based upon +individualism; the strong body and the possessed +soul, sure of itself amid the whirling of +the "quicksand years"; but it sets these strong +persons upon the "open road" in comradeship; +it is the sentiment of comradeship which +creates the indissoluble union of "these States"; +and the States, in turn, in spite of every +"alarmist," "partialist," or "infidel," are to +stretch out unsuspicious and friendly hands of +fellowship to the whole world. Anybody has +the right to call <i>Leaves of Grass</i> poor poetry,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> +if he pleases; but nobody has the right to deny +its magnificent Americanism.</p> + +<p>It is not merely in literature that this message +of fellowship is brought to our generation. +Let me quote a few sentences from the recent +address of George Gray Barnard, the sculptor, +in explaining the meaning of his marble groups +now placed at the entrance to the Capitol +of Pennsylvania. "I resolved," says Barnard, +"that I would build such groups as should +stand at the entrance to the People's temple +... the home of those visions of the ever-widening +and broadening brotherhood that gives +to life its dignity and its meaning. Life is told +in terms of labor. It is fitting that labor, its triumphs, +its message, should be told to those +who gaze upon a temple of the people. The +worker is the hope of all the future. The needs +of the worker, his problems, his hopes, his untold +longings, his sacrifices, his triumphs, all +of these are the field of the art of the future. +Slowly we are groping our way towards the new +brotherhood, and when that day dawns, men +will enter a world made a paradise by labor. +Labor makes us kin. It is for this reason that +there has been placed at the entrance of this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> +great building the message of the Adam and +Eve of the future, the message of labor and of +fraternity."</p> + +<p>That there are defects in this gospel and +programme of American fellowship, every one +is aware. If the obstacle to effective individualism +is lack of discipline, the obstacles to effective +fellowship are vagueness, crankiness, inefficiency, +and the relics of primal selfishness. +Nobody in our day has preached the tidings +of universal fellowship more fervidly and powerfully +than Tolstoï. Yet when one asks the +great Russian, "What am I to do as a member +of this fellowship?" Tolstoï gives but a confused +and impractical answer. He applies to +the complex and contradictory facts of our +contemporary civilization the highest test and +standard known to him: namely, the principles +of the New Testament. But if you ask +him precisely how these principles are to be +made the working programme of to-morrow, +the Russian mysticism and fanaticism settle +over him like a fog. We pass Tolstoïans on +the streets of our American cities every day; +they have the eyes of dreamers, of those who +would build, if they could, a new Heaven and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> +a new Earth. But they do not know exactly +how to go about it. Our practical Western +minds seize upon some actual plan for constructive +labor. Miss Jane Addams organizes +her settlements in the slums; Booker Washington +gives his race models of industrial education; +President Eliot has a theory of university +reform and then struggles successfully for +forty years to put that theory into practice. +Compared with the concrete performance of +such social workers as these, the gospel according +to Whitman and Tolstoï is bound to seem +vague in its outlines, and ineffective in its concrete +results. That such a gospel attracts cranks +and eccentrics of all sorts is not to be wondered +at. They come and go, but the deeper conceptions +of fraternalism remain.</p> + +<p>A further obstacle to the progress of fellowship +lies in selfishness. But let us see how even +the coarser and rawer and cruder traits of the +American character may be related to the +spirit of common endeavor which is slowly +transforming our society, and modifying, before +our eyes, our contemporary art and literature.</p> + +<p>"The West," says James Bryce, "is the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> +most American part of America, that is to say +the part where those features which distinguish +America from Europe come out in the strongest +relief." We have already noted in our study +of American romance how the call of the West +represented for a while the escape from reality. +The individual, following that retreating horizon +which we name the West, found an escape +from convention and from social law. Beyond +the Mississippi or beyond the Rockies meant +to him that "somewheres east of Suez" where +the Ten Commandments are no longer to be +found, where the individual has free rein. But +by and by comes the inevitable reaction, the +return to reality. The pioneer sobers down; +he finds that "the Ten Commandments will not +budge"; he sees the need of law and order; he +organizes a vigilance committee; he impanels +a jury, even though the old Spanish law does +not recognize a jury. The new land settles to +its rest. The output of the gold mines shrinks +into insignificance when compared with the cash +value of crops of hay and potatoes. The old +picturesque individualism yields to a new social +order, to the conception of the rights of +the state. The story of the West is thus an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> +epitome of the individual human life as well as +the history of the United States.</p> + +<p>We have been living through a period where +the mind of the West has seemed to be the +typical national mind. We have been indifferent +to traditions. We have overlooked the defective +training of the individual, provided he +"made good." We have often, as in the free +silver craze, turned our back upon universal +experience. We have been recklessly deaf to +the teachings of history; we have spoken of the +laws of literature and art as if they were mere +conventions designed to oppress the free activity +of the artist. Typical utterances of our +writers are Jack London's "I want to get away +from the musty grip of the past," and Frank +Norris's "I do not want to write literature, I +want to write life."</p> + +<p>The soul of the West, and a good deal of +the soul of America, has been betrayed in words +like those. Not to share this hopefulness of the +West, its stress upon feeling rather than thinking, +its superb confidence, is to be ignorant of +the constructive forces of the nation. The humor +of the West, its democracy, its rough kindness, +its faith in the people, its generous notion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> +of "the square deal for everybody," its elevation +of the man above the dollar, are all typical +of the American way of looking at the world. +Typical also, is its social solidarity, its swift +emotionalism of the masses. It is the Western +interest in the ethical aspect of social movements +that is creating some of the moving forces +in American society to-day. Experiment stations +of all kinds flourish on that soil. Chicago +newspapers are more alive to new ideas than +the newspapers of New York or Boston. No +one can understand the present-day America +if he does not understand the men and women +who live between the Allegheny Mountains +and the Rocky Mountains. They have worked +out, more successfully than the composite population +of the East, a general theory of the +relation of the individual to society; in other +words, a combination of individualism with +fellowship.</p> + +<p>To draw up an indictment against this typical +section of our country is to draw up an indictment +against our people as a whole. And +yet one who studies the literature and art produced +in the great Mississippi Valley will see, +I believe, that the needs of the West are the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> +real needs of America. Take that commonness +of mind and tone, which friendly foreign critics, +from De Tocqueville to Bryce, have indicated +as one of the dangers of our democracy. This +commonness of mind and tone is often one of +the penalties of fellowship. It may mean a +levelling down instead of a levelling up.</p> + +<p>Take the tyranny of the majority,—to which +Mr. Bryce has devoted one of his most suggestive +chapters. You begin by recognizing the +rights of the majority. You end by believing +that the majority must be right. You cease to +struggle against it. In other words, you yield +to what Mr. Bryce calls "the fatalism of the +multitude." The individual has a sense of insignificance. +It is vain to oppose the general +current. It is easier to acquiesce and to submit. +The sense of personal responsibility lessens. +What is the use of battling for one's own opinions +when one can already see that the multitude +is on the other side? The greater your +democratic faith in the ultimate rightness of +the multitude, the less perhaps your individual +power of will. The easier is it for you to believe +that everything is coming out right, whether +you put your shoulder to the wheel or not.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p> + +<p>The problem of overcoming these evils is +nothing less than the problem of spiritualizing +democracy. There are some of our hero-worshipping +people who think that that vast result +can still be accomplished by harking back to +some such programme as the "great man" +theory of Carlyle. Another theory of spiritualizing +democracy, no less familiar to the student +of nineteen-century literature, is what is +called "the divine average" doctrine of Walt +Whitman. The average man is to be taught +the glory of his walk and trade. Round every +head there is to be an aureole. "A common +wave of thought and joy, lifting mankind +again," is to make us forget the old distinction +between the individual and the social group. +We are all to be the sons of the morning.</p> + +<p>We must not pause to analyze or to illustrate +these two theories. Carlyle's theory seems +to me to be outworn, and Whitman's theory +is premature. But it is clear that they both +admit that the mass of men are as yet incompletely +spiritualized, not yet raised to their full +stature. Unquestionably, our American life is, +in European eyes at least, monotonously uniform. +It is touched with self-complacency. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> +is too intent upon material progress. It confuses +bigness with greatness. It is unrestful. It is +marked by intellectual impatience. Our authors +are eager to write life rather than literature. But +they are so eager that they overlook the need +of literary discipline. They do not learn to +write literature and therefore most of them are +incapable of interpreting life. They escape, perhaps, +from "the musty grip of the past," but +in so doing they refuse to learn the inexorable +lessons of the past. Hence the fact that our +books lack power, that they are not commensurate +with the living forces of the country. +The unconscious, moral, and spiritual life of +the nation is not back of them, making "eye +and hand and heart go to a new tune."</p> + +<p>If we could have that, we should ask no +more, for we believe in the nation. I heard a +doctor say, the other day, that a man's chief lesson +was to pull his brain down into his spinal +cord; that is to say, to make his activities not +so much the result of conscious thought and +volition, as of unconscious, reflex action; to +stop thinking and willing, and simply <i>do</i> what +one has to do. May there not be a hint here +of the ultimate relation of the individual to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> +social organism; the relation of our literature +to our national character? There is a period, +no doubt, when the individual must painfully +question himself, test his powers, and acquire +the sense of his own place in the world. But +there also comes a more mature period when he +takes that place unconsciously, does his work +almost without thinking about it, as if it were +not his work at all. The brain has gone down +into the spinal cord; the man is functioning as +apart of the organism of society; he has ceased +to question, to plan, to decide; it is instinct +that does his work for him.</p> + +<p>Literature and art, at their noblest, function +in that instinctive way. They become the unconscious +expression of a civilization. A nation +passes out of its adolescent preoccupation +with plans and with materials. It learns to do +its work, precisely as Goethe bade the artist do +his task, without talking about it. We, too, +shall outgrow in time our questioning, our self-analysis, +our futile comparison of ourselves +with other nations, our self-conscious study of +our own national character. We shall not forget +the distinction between "each" and "all," +but "all" will increasingly be placed at the service<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> +of "each." With fellowship based upon +individualism, and with individualism ever +leading to fellowship, America will perform +its vital tasks, and its literature will be the +unconscious and beautiful utterance of its +inner life.</p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">THE END.</span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250"></a></span></p> +<p class="center"><small>The Riverside Press</small><br /><br /> + +<small>CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS</small><br /><br /> + +<small>U. S. A.</small></p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3>Transcriber's Notes</h3> + + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_67">67</a>: Changed compaign to campaign:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(Their compaign of "exposure," during the last decade,)</span><br /> +<br /> +Pages <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>: Retained spaced 'T is and 't is to match original text:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">("'T is best to remain aloof from people,)</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">("If my bark sinks, 't is to another sea.")</span><br /> +<br /> +Page <a href="#Page_222">222</a>: Changed conciousness to consciousness:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(the preoccupied colonial conciousness.)</span><br /> +<br /> +Page <a href="#Page_223">223</a>: Changed explans to explains:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(It explans the still lingering popular suspicion)</span><br /> +<br /> +Page <a href="#Page_232">232</a>: Changed sojurns to sojourns:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(Fenimore Cooper came home from long sojurns in Europe.)</span><br /> +</p> + + + + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The American Mind, by Bliss Perry + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AMERICAN MIND *** + +***** This file should be named 29952-h.htm or 29952-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/9/5/29952/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Diane Monico, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The American Mind + The E. T. Earl Lectures + +Author: Bliss Perry + +Release Date: September 10, 2009 [EBook #29952] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AMERICAN MIND *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Diane Monico, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + + +THE AMERICAN MIND + +_The E. T. Earl Lectures_ + +1912 + + + + +By the Same Author + + +The American Mind +Park-Street Papers +John Greenleaf Whittier: A Memoir +Walt Whitman +The Amateur Spirit +A Study of Prose Fiction +The Powers at Play +The Plated City +Salem Kittredge and Other Stories +The Broughton House + + + + +The American Mind + +By Bliss Perry + +[Illustration: The Riverside Press] + +Boston and New York + +Houghton Mifflin Company + +1912 + + + + +COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY BLISS PERRY + +ALL RIGHTS RESERVED + +_Published October 1912_ + + + + +TO + +WALTER MORRIS HART + + + + +Preface + + +_The material for this book was delivered as the E. T. Earl Lectures +for 1912 at the Pacific Theological Seminary, Berkeley, California, and +I wish to take this opportunity to express to the President and Faculty +of that institution my appreciation of their generous hospitality._ + +_The lectures were also given at the Lowell Institute, Boston, the +Brooklyn Institute, and elsewhere, under the title "American Traits in +American Literature." In revising them for publication a briefer title +has seemed desirable, and I have therefore availed myself of +Jefferson's phrase "The American Mind," as suggesting, more accurately +perhaps than the original title, the real theme of discussion._ + + B. P. + +CAMBRIDGE, 1912. + + + + +Contents + + +I. RACE, NATION, AND BOOK 3 + +II. THE AMERICAN MIND 47 + +III. AMERICAN IDEALISM 86 + +IV. ROMANCE AND REACTION 128 + +V. HUMOR AND SATIRE 166 + +VI. INDIVIDUALISM AND FELLOWSHIP 209 + + + + +THE AMERICAN MIND + + + + +I + +Race, Nation, and Book + + +Many years ago, as a student in a foreign university, I remember +attacking, with the complacency of youth, a German history of the +English drama, in six volumes. I lost courage long before the author +reached the age of Elizabeth, but I still recall the subject of the +opening chapter: it was devoted to the physical geography of Great +Britain. Writing, as the good German professor did, in the triumphant +hour of Taine's theory as to the significance of place, period, and +environment in determining the character of any literary production, +what could be more logical than to begin at the beginning? Have not the +chalk cliffs guarding the southern coast of England, have not the +fatness of the midland counties and the soft rainy climate of a North +Atlantic island, and the proud, tenacious, self-assertive folk that are +bred there, all left their trace upon _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, and +_Every Man in his Humour_ and _She Stoops to Conquer_? Undoubtedly. +Latitude and longitude, soil and rainfall and food-supply, racial +origins and crossings, political and social and economic conditions, +must assuredly leave their marks upon the mental and artistic +productiveness of a people and upon the personality of individual +writers. + +Taine, who delighted to point out all this, and whose _English +Literature_ remains a monument of the defects as well as of the +advantages of his method, was of course not the inventor of the +climatic theory. It is older than Aristotle, who discusses it in his +treatise on _Politics_. It was a topic of interest to the scholars of +the Renaissance. Englishmen of the seventeenth century, with an unction +of pseudo-science added to their natural patriotism, discovered in the +English climate one of the reasons of England's greatness. Thomas +Sprat, writing in 1667 on the History of the Royal Society, waxes bold +and asserts: "If there can be a true character given of the Universal +Temper of any Nation under Heaven, then certainly this must be ascribed +to our countrymen, that they have commonly an unaffected sincerity, +that they love to deliver their minds with a sound simplicity, that +they have the middle qualities between the reserved, subtle southern +and the rough, unhewn northern people, that they are not extremely +prone to speak, that they are more concerned what others will think of +the strength than of the fineness of what they say, and that a +universal modesty possesses them. These qualities are so conspicuous +and proper to the soil that we often hear them objected to us by some +of our neighbor Satyrists in more disgraceful expressions.... Even the +position of our climate, the air, the influence of the heaven, the +composition of the English blood, as well as the embraces of the Ocean, +seem to join with the labours of the _Royal Society_ to render our +country a Land of Experimental Knowledge." + +The excellent Sprat was the friend and executor of the poet Cowley, who +has in the Preface to his _Poems_ a charming passage about the relation +of literature to the external circumstances in which it is written. + +"If _wit_ be such a _Plant_ that it scarce receives heat enough to keep +it alive even in the _summer_ of our cold _Clymate_, how can it choose +but wither in a long and a sharp _winter_? a warlike, various and a +tragical age is best to write _of_, but worst to write _in_." And he +adds this, concerning his own art of poetry: "There is nothing that +requires so much serenity and chearfulness of _spirit_; it must not be +either overwhelmed with the cares of _Life_, or overcast with the +_Clouds_ of _Melancholy_ and _Sorrow_, or shaken and disturbed with the +storms of injurious _Fortune_; it must, like the _Halcyon_, have fair +weather to breed in. The Soul must be filled with bright and delightful +_Idaeas_, when it undertakes to communicate delight to others, which is +the main end of _Poesie_. One may see through the stile of _Ovid de +Trist._, the humbled and dejected condition of _Spirit_ with which he +wrote it; there scarce remains any footstep of that _Genius_, _Quem nec +Jovis ira, nec ignes_, etc. The _cold_ of the country has strucken +through all his faculties, and benummed the very _feet_ of his +_Verses_." + +Madame de Stael's _Germany_, one of the most famous of the "national +character" books, begins with a description of the German landscape. +But though nobody, from Ovid in exile down to Madame de Stael, +questions the general significance of place, time, and circumstances as +affecting the nature of a literary product, when we come to the exact +and as it were mathematical demonstration of the precise workings of +these physical influences, our generation is distinctly more cautious +than were the literary critics of forty years ago. Indeed, it is a +hundred years since Fisher Ames, ridiculing the theory that climate +acts directly upon literary products, said wittily of Greece: "The figs +are as fine as ever, but where are the Pindars?" The theory of race, in +particular, has been sharply questioned by the experts. "Saxon" and +"Norman," for example, no longer seem to us such simple terms as +sufficed for the purpose of Scott's _Ivanhoe_ or of Thierry's _Norman +Conquest_, a book inspired by Scott's romance. The late Professor +Freeman, with characteristic bluntness, remarked of the latter book: +"Thierry says at the end of his work that there are no longer either +Normans or Saxons except in history.... But in Thierry's sense of the +word, it would be truer to say that there never were 'Normans' or +'Saxons' anywhere, save in the pages of romances like his own." + +There is a brutal directness about this verdict upon a rival historian +which we shall probably persist in calling "Saxon"; but it is no worse +than the criticisms of Matthew Arnold's essay on "The Celtic Spirit" +made to-day by university professors who happen to know Old Irish at +first hand, and consequently consider Arnold's opinion on Celtic +matters to be hopelessly amateurish. + +The wiser scepticism of our day concerning all hard-and-fast racial +distinctions has been admirably summed up by Josiah Royce. "A race +psychology," he declares, "is still a science for the future to +discover.... We do not scientifically know what the true racial +varieties of mental type really are. No doubt there are such varieties. +The judgment day, or the science of the future, may demonstrate what +they are. We are at present very ignorant regarding the whole matter." + +Nowhere have the extravagances of the application of racial theories to +intellectual products been more pronounced than in the fields of art +and literature. Audiences listen to a waltz which the programme +declares to be an adaptation of a Hungarian folk-song, and though they +may be more ignorant of Hungary than Shakespeare was of Bohemia, they +have no hesitation in exclaiming: "How truly Hungarian this is!" Or, +it may be, how truly "Japanese" is this vase which was made in +Japan--perhaps for the American market; or how intensely "Russian" is +this melancholy tale by Turgenieff. This prompt deduction of racial +qualities from works of art which themselves give the critic all the +information he possesses about the races in question,--or, in other +words, the enthusiastic assertion that a thing is like itself,--is one +of the familiar notes of amateur criticism. It is travelling in a +circle, and the corregiosity of Corregio is the next station. + +Blood tells, no doubt, and a masterpiece usually betrays some token of +the place and hour of its birth. A knowledge of the condition of +political parties in Athens in 416 B.C. adds immensely to the enjoyment +of the readers of Aristophanes; the fun becomes funnier and the daring +even more splendid than before. Moliere's training as an actor does +affect the dramaturgic quality of his comedies. All this is +demonstrable, and to the prevalent consciousness of it our generation +is deeply indebted to Taine and his pupils. But before displaying +dogmatically the inevitable brandings of racial and national traits on +a national literature, before pointing to this and that unmistakable +evidence of local or temporal influence on the form or spirit of a +masterpiece, we are now inclined to make some distinct reservations. +These reservations are not without bearing upon our own literature in +America. + +There are, for instance, certain artists who seem to escape the +influences of the time-spirit. The most familiar example is that of +Keats. He can no doubt be assigned to the George the Fourth period by a +critical examination of his vocabulary, but the characteristic +political and social movements of that epoch in England left him almost +untouched. Edgar Allan Poe might have written some of his tales in the +seventeenth century or in the twentieth; he might, like Robert Louis +Stevenson, have written in Samoa rather than in the Baltimore, +Philadelphia, or New York of his day; his description of the Ragged +Mountains of Virginia, within very sight of the university which he +attended, was borrowed, in the good old convenient fashion, from +Macaulay; in fact, it requires something of Poe's own ingenuity to find +in Poe, who is one of the indubitable assets of American literature, +anything distinctly American. + +Wholly aside from such spiritual insulation of the single writer, +there is the obvious fact that none of the arts, not even literature, +and not all of them together, can furnish a wholly adequate +representation of racial or national characteristics. It is well known +to-day that the so-called "classic" examples of Greek art, most of +which were brought to light and discoursed upon by critics from two to +four centuries ago, represent but a single phase of Greek feeling; and +that the Greeks, even in what we choose to call their most +characteristic period, had a distinctly "romantic" tendency which their +more recently discovered plastic art betrays. But even if we had all +the lost statues, plays, poems, and orations, all the Greek paintings +about which we know so little, and the Greek music about which we know +still less, does anybody suppose that this wealth of artistic +expression would furnish a wholly satisfactory notion of the racial and +psychological traits of the Greek people? + +One may go even further. Does a truly national art exist anywhere,--an +art, that is to say, which conveys a trustworthy and adequate +expression of the national temper as a whole? We have but to reflect +upon the European and American judgments, during the last thirty +years, concerning the representative quality of the art of Japan, and +to observe how many of those facile generalizations about the Japanese +character, deduced from vases and prints and enamel, were smashed to +pieces by the Russo-Japanese War. This may illustrate the blunders of +foreign criticism, perhaps, rather than any inadequacy in the racially +representative character of Japanese art. But it is impossible that +critics, and artists themselves, should not err, in the conscious +endeavor to pronounce upon the infinitely complex materials with which +they are called upon to deal. We must confess that the expression of +racial and national characteristics, by means of only one art, such as +literature, or by all the arts together, is at best imperfect, and is +always likely to be misleading unless corroborated by other evidence. + +For it is to be remembered that in literature, as in the other fields +of artistic activity, we are dealing with the question of form; of +securing a concrete and pleasurable embodiment of certain emotions. It +may well happen that literature not merely fails to give an adequate +report of the racial or national or personal emotions felt during a +given epoch, but that it fails to report these emotions at all. Not +only the "old, unhappy, far-off" things of racial experience, but the +new and delight-giving experiences of the hour, may lack their poet. +Widespread moods of public elation or wistfulness or depression have +passed without leaving a shadow upon the mirror of art. There was no +one to hold the mirror or even to fashion it. No note of Renaissance +criticism, whether in Italy, France, or England, is more striking, and +in a way more touching, than the universal feeling that in the +rediscovery of the classics men had found at last the "terms of art," +the rules and methods of a game which they had long wished to be +playing. Englishmen and Frenchmen of the sixteenth century will not +allow that their powers are less virile, their emotions less eager, +than those of the Greeks and Romans. Only, lacking the very terms of +art, they had not been able to arrive at fit expression; the soul had +found no body wherewith to clothe itself into beauty. As they avowed in +all simplicity, they needed schoolmasters; the discipline of Aristotle +and Horace and Virgil; a body of critical doctrine, to teach them how +to express the France and England or Italy of their day, and thus give +permanence to their fleeting vision of the world. Naive as may have +been the Renaissance expression of this need of formal training, blind +as it frequently was to the beauty which we recognize in the +undisciplined vernacular literatures of mediaeval Europe, those groping +scholars were essentially right. No one can paint or compose by nature. +One must slowly master an art of expression. + +Now through long periods of time, and over many vast stretches of +territory, as our own American writing abundantly witnesses, the whole +formal side of expression may be neglected. "Literature," in its +narrower sense, may not exist. In that restricted and higher meaning of +the term, literature has always been uncommon enough, even in Athens or +Florence. It demands not merely personal distinction or power, not +merely some uncommon height or depth or breadth of capacity and +insight, but a purely artistic training, which in the very nature of +the case is rare. Millions of Russians, perhaps, have felt about the +general problems of life much as Turgenieff felt, but they lacked the +sheer literary art with which the _Notes of a Sportsman_ was written. +Thousands of frontier lawyers and politicians shared Lincoln's hard +and varied and admirable training in the mastery of speech, but in his +hands alone was the weapon wrought to such perfection of temper and +weight and edge that he spoke and wrote literature without knowing it. + +Such considerations belong, I am aware, to the accepted +commonplaces,--perhaps to what William James used to call "the +unprofitable delineation of the obvious." Everybody recognizes that +literary gifts imply an exceptionally rich development of general human +capacities, together with a professional aptitude and training of which +but few men are capable. There is but one lumberman in camp who can +play the fiddle, though the whole camp can dance. Thus the great book, +we are forever saying, is truly representative of myriads of minds in a +certain degree of culture, although but one man could have written it. +The writing member of a family is often the one who acquires notoriety +and a bank account, but he is likely to have candid friends who admit, +though not always in his presence, that, aside from this one +professional gift and practice, he is not intellectually or emotionally +or spiritually superior to his brothers and sisters. Waldo Emerson +thought himself the intellectual inferior of his brother Charles; and +good observers loved to maintain that John Holmes was wittier than +Oliver Wendell, and Ezekiel Webster a better lawyer than Daniel. + +Applied to the literary history of a race, this principle is +suggestive. We must be slow to affirm that, because certain ideas and +feelings did not attain, in this or that age or place, to purely +literary expression, they were therefore not in existence. The men and +women of the colonial period in our own country, for instance, have +been pretty uniformly declared to have been deficient in the sense of +beauty. What is the evidence? It is mostly negative. They produced no +poetry, fiction, painting, sculpture, or music worthy of the name. They +were predominantly Puritan, and the whole world has been informed that +English Puritanism was hostile to Art. They were preoccupied with +material and moral concerns. Even if they had remained in England, +Professor Trent affirms, these contemporaries of Milton and Bunyan +would have produced no art or literature. Now it is quite true that for +nearly two hundred years after the date of the first settlement of the +American colonists, opportunities for cultivating the arts did not +exist. But that the sense of beauty was wholly atrophied, I, for one, +do not believe. The passionate eagerness with which the forefathers +absorbed the noblest of all poetry and prose in the pages of their one +book, the Bible; the unwearied curiosity and care with which those +farmers and fishermen and woodsmen read the signs of the sky; their awe +of the dark wilderness and their familiar traffic with the great deep; +the silences of lonely places; the opulence of primeval meadows by the +clear streams; the English flowers that were made to bloom again in +farmhouse windows and along garden walks; the inner visions, more +lovely still, of duty and of moral law; the spirit of sacrifice; the +daily walk with God, whether by green pastures of the spirit or through +ways that were dark and terrible;--is there in all this no discipline +of the soul in moral beauty, and no training of the eye to perceive the +exquisite harmonies of the visible earth? It is true that the Puritans +had no professional men of letters; it is true that doctrinal sermons +provided their chief intellectual sustenance; true that their lives +were stern, and that many of the softer emotions were repressed. But +beauty may still be traced in the fragments of their recorded speech, +in their diaries and letters and phrases of devotion. You will search +the eighteenth century of old England in vain for such ecstasies of +wonder at the glorious beauty of the universe as were penned by +Jonathan Edwards in his youthful _Diary_. There is every presumption, +from what we know of the two men, that Whittier's father and +grandfather were peculiarly sensitive to the emotions of home and +neighborhood and domesticity which their gifted descendant--too +physically frail to be absorbed in the rude labor of the farm--has +embodied in _Snow-Bound_. The Quaker poet knew that he surpassed his +forefathers in facility in verse-making, but he would have been amused +(as his _Margaret Smith's Journal_ proves) at the notion that his +ancestors were without a sense of beauty or that they lacked +responsiveness to the chords of fireside sentiment. He was simply the +only Whittier, except his sister Elizabeth, who had ever found leisure, +as old-fashioned correspondents used to say, "to take his pen in hand." +This leisure developed in him the sense--latent no doubt in his +ancestors--of the beauty of words, and the excitement of rhythm. +Emerson's _Journal_ in the eighteen-thirties glows with a Dionysiac +rapture over what he calls "delicious days"; but did the seven +generations of clergymen from whom Emerson descended have no delicious +and haughty and tender days that passed unrecorded? Formal literature +perpetuates and glorifies many aspects of individual and national +experience; but how much eludes it wholly, or is told, if at all, in +broken syllables, in Pentecostal tongues that seem to be our own and +yet are unutterably strange! + +To confess thus that literature, in the proper sense of the word, +represents but a narrow segment of personal or racial experience, is +very far from a denial of the genuineness and the significance of the +affirmations which literature makes. We recognize instinctively that +Whittier's _Snow-Bound_ is a truthful report, not merely of a certain +farmhouse kitchen in East Haverhill, Massachusetts, during the early +nineteenth century, but of a mode of thinking and feeling which is +widely diffused wherever the Anglo-Saxon race has wandered. Perhaps +_Snow-Bound_ lacks a certain universality of suggestiveness which +belongs to a still more famous poem, _The Cotter's Saturday Night_ of +Burns, but both of these portrayals of rustic simplicity and peace owe +their celebrity to their truly representative character. They are +evidence furnished by a single art, as to a certain mode and coloring +of human existence; but every corroboration of that evidence heightens +our admiration for the artistic sincerity and insight of the poet. To +draw an illustration from a more splendid epoch, let us remind +ourselves that the literature of the "spacious times of great +Elizabeth"--a period of strong national excitement, and one deeply +representative of the very noblest and most permanent traits of English +national character--was produced within startlingly few years and in a +local territory extremely limited. The very language in which that +literature is clothed was spoken only by the court, by a couple of +counties, and at the two universities. Its prose and verse were frankly +experimental. It is true that such was the emotional ferment of the +score of years preceding the Armada, that great captains and voyagers +who scarcely wrote a line were hailed as kings of the realm of +imagination, and that Puttenham, in phrases which that generation +could not have found extravagant, inscribes his book on Poetry to Queen +Elizabeth as the "most excellent Poet" of the age. Well, the glorified +political images may grow dim or tawdry with time, but the poetry has +endured, and it is everywhere felt to be a truly national, a deeply +racial product. Its time and place and hour were all local; but the +Canadian and the American, the South African and Australasian +Englishman feels that that Elizabethan poetry is his poetry still. + +When we pass, therefore, as we must shortly do, to the consideration of +this and that literary product of America, and to the scrutiny of the +really representative character of our books, we must bear in mind that +the questions concerning the race, the place, the hour, the +man,--questions so familiar to modern criticism,--remain valid and +indeed essential; but that in applying them to American writing there +are certain allowances, qualifications, adjustments of the scale of +values, which are no less important to an intelligent perception of the +quality of our literature. This task is less simple than the critical +assessment of a typical German or French or Scandinavian writer, where +the strain of blood is unmixed, the continuity of literary tradition +unbroken, the precise impact of historical and personal influences more +easy to estimate. I open, for example, any one of half a dozen French +studies of Balzac. Here is a many-sided man, a multifarious writer, a +personality that makes ridiculous the merely formal pigeon-holing and +labelling processes of professional criticism. And yet with what +perfect precision of method and certainty of touch do Le Breton, for +example, or Brunetiere, in their books on Balzac, proceed to indicate +those impulses of race and period and environment which affected the +character of Balzac's novels! The fact that he was born in Tours in +1799 results in the inevitable and inevitably expert paragraphs about +Gallic blood, and the physical exuberance of the Touraine surroundings +of his youth, and the post-revolutionary tendency to disillusion and +analysis. And so with Balzac's education, his removal to Paris in the +Restoration period, his ventures in business and his affairs of love, +his admiration for Shakespeare and for Fenimore Cooper; his mingled +Romanticism and Realism; his Titanism and his childishness; his +stupendous outline for the Human Comedy; and his scarcely less +astounding actual achievement. All this is discussed by his biographers +with the professional dexterity of critics trained intellectually in +the Latin traditions and instinctively aware of the claims of race, +biographers familiar with every page of French history, and profoundly +interested, like their readers, in every aspect of French life. Alas, +we may say, in despairing admiration of such workmanship, "they order +these things better in France." And they do; but racial unity, and long +lines of national literary tradition, make these things easier to order +than they are with us. The intellectual distinction of American +critical biographies like Lounsbury's _Cooper_ or Woodberry's +_Hawthorne_ is all the more notable because we possess such a slender +body of truly critical doctrine native to our own soil; because our +national literary tradition as to available material and methods is +hardly formed; because the very word "American" has a less precise +connotation than the word "New Zealander." + +Let us suppose, for instance, that like Professor Woodberry a few years +ago, we were asked to furnish a critical study of Hawthorne. The author +of _The Scarlet Letter_ is one of the most justly famous of American +writers. But precisely what national traits are to be discovered in +this eminent fellow-countryman of ours? We turn, like loyal disciples +of Taine and Sainte-Beuve, to his ancestral stock. We find that it is +English as far back as it can be traced; as purely English as the +ancestry of Dickens or Thackeray, and more purely English than the +ancestry of Browning or Burke or His Majesty George the Fifth. Was +Hawthorne, then, simply an Englishman living in America? He himself did +not think so,--as his _English Note-Books_ abundantly prove. But just +what subtle racial differentiation had been at work, since William +Hawthorne migrated to Massachusetts with Winthrop in 1630? Here we +face, unless I am mistaken, that troublesome but fascinating question +of Physical Geography. Climate, soil, food, occupation, religious or +moral preoccupation, social environment, Salem witchcraft and Salem +seafaring had all laid their invisible hands upon the physical and +intellectual endowment of the child born in 1804. Does this make +Nathaniel Hawthorne merely an "Englishman with a difference," as Mr. +Kipling, born in India, is an "Englishman with a difference"? +Hawthorne would have smiled, or, more probably, he would have sworn, at +such a question. He considered himself an American Democrat; in fact a +_contra mundum_ Democrat, for good or for ill. Is it, then, a political +theory, first put into full operation in this country a scant +generation before Hawthorne's birth, which made him un-English? We must +walk warily here. Our Canadian neighbors of English stock have much the +same climate, soil, occupations, and preoccupations as the inhabitants +of the northern territory of the United States. They have much the same +courts, churches, and legislatures. They read the same books and +magazines. They even prefer baseball to cricket. They are loyal +adherents of a monarchy, but they are precisely as free, as +self-governing, and--in the social sense of the word--as +"democratic"--in spite of the absence of a republican form of +government--as the citizens of that "land of the free and home of the +brave" which lies to the south of them. Yet Canadian literature, one +may venture to affirm, has remained to this hour a "colonial" +literature, or, if one prefers the phrase, a literature of "Greater +Britain." Was Hawthorne possibly right in his instinct that politics +did make a difference, and that in writing _The Marble Faun_,--the +scene of which is laid in Rome,--or _The House of the Seven +Gables_,--which is a story of Salem,--he was consistently engaged in +producing, not "colonial" or "Greater-British" but distinctly American +literature? We need not answer this question prematurely, if we wish to +reserve our judgment, but it is assuredly one of the questions which +the biographers and critics of our men of letters must ultimately face +and answer. + +Furthermore, the student of literature produced in the United States of +America must face other questions almost as complicated as this of +race. In fact, when we choose Hawthorne as a typical case in which to +observe the American refashioning of the English temper into something +not English, we are selecting a very simple problem compared with the +complexities which have resulted from the mingling of various European +stocks upon American soil. But take, for the moment, the mere obvious +matter of expanse of territory. We are obliged to reckon, not with a +compact province such as those in which many Old World literatures +have been produced, but with what our grandfathers considered a +"boundless continent." This vast national domain was long ago +"organized" for political purposes: but so far as literature is +concerned it remains unorganized to-day. We have, as has been +constantly observed, no literary capital, like London or Paris, to +serve as the seat of centralized authority; no code of literary +procedure and conduct; no "lawgivers of Parnassus"; no supreme court of +letters, whose judgments are recognized and obeyed. American public +opinion asserts itself with singular unanimity and promptness in the +field of politics. In literary matters we remain in the stage of +anarchic individualism, liable to be stampeded from time to time by +mob-excitement over a popular novel or moralistic tract, and then +disintegrating, as before, into an incoherent mass of individually +intelligent readers. + +The reader who has some personal acquaintance with the variations of +type in different sections of this immense territory of ours finds his +curiosity constantly stimulated by the presence of sectional and local +characteristics. There are sharply cut provincial peculiarities, of +course, in Great Britain and in Germany, in Italy and Spain, and in +all of the countries a corresponding "regional" literature has been +developed. Our provincial variations of accent and vocabulary, in +passing from North to South or East to West, are less striking, on the +whole, than the dialectical differences found in the various English +counties. But our general uniformity of grammar and the comparatively +slight variations in spoken accent cover an extraordinary variety of +local and sectional modes of thinking and feeling. The reader of +American short stories and lyrics must constantly ask himself: Is this +truth to local type consistent with the main trend of American +production? Is this merely a bit of Virginia or Texas or California, or +does it, while remaining no less Southern or Western in its local +coloring, suggest also the ampler light, the wide generous air of the +United States of America? + +The observer of this relationship between local and national types will +find some American communities where all the speech or habitual thought +is of the future. Foreigners usually consider such communities the most +typically "American," as doubtless they are; but there are other +sections, still more faithfully exploited by local writers, where the +mood is wistful and habitually regards the past. America, too, like the +Old World,--and in New England more than elsewhere,--has her note of +decadence, of disillusion, of autumnal brightness and transiency. Some +sections of the country, and notably the slave-holding states in the +forty years preceding the Civil War, have suffered widespread +intellectual blight. The best talent of the South, for a generation, +went into politics, in the passionately loyal endeavor to prop up a +doomed economic and social system; and the loss to the intellectual +life of the country cannot be reckoned. Over vast sections of our +prosperous and intelligent people of the Mississippi Basin to-day the +very genius of commonplaceness seems to hover. Take the great State of +Iowa, with its well-to-do and homogeneous population, its fortunate +absence of perplexing city-problems, its general air of prosperity and +content. It is a typical state of the most typically American portion +of the country; but it breeds no books. Yet in Indiana, another state +of the same general conditions as to population and prosperity, and +only one generation further removed than Iowa from primitive pioneer +conditions, books are produced at a rate which provokes a universal +American smile. I do not affirm that the literary critic is bound to +answer all such local puzzles as this. But he is bound at least to +reflect upon them, and to demand of every local literary product +throughout this varied expanse of states: Is the root of the +"All-American" plant growing here, or is it not? + +Furthermore, the critic must pursue this investigation of national +traits in our writing, not only over a wide and variegated territory, +but through a very considerable sweep of time. American literature is +often described as "callow," as the revelation of "national +inexperience," and in other similar terms. It is true that we had no +professional men of letters before Irving and that the blossoming time +of the notable New England group of writers did not come until nearly +the middle of the nineteenth century. But we have had time enough, +after all, to show what we wish to be and what we are. There have been +European books about America ever since the days of Columbus; it is +three hundred years since the first books were written in America. +Modern English prose, the language of journalism, of science, of social +intercourse, came into being only in the early eighteenth century, in +the age of Queen Anne. But Cotton Mather's _Magnalia_, a vast book +dealing with the past history of New England, was printed in 1702, only +a year later than Defoe's _True-Born Englishman_. For more than two +centuries the development of English speech and English writing on this +side of the Atlantic has kept measurable pace--now slower, now +swifter--with the speech of the mother country. When we recall the +scanty term of years within which was produced the literature of the +age of Elizabeth, it seems like special pleading to insist that America +has not yet had time to learn or recite her bookish lessons. + +This is not saying that we have had a continuous or adequate +development, either of the intellectual life, or of literary +expression. There are certain periods of strong intellectual movement, +of heightened emotion, alike in the colonial epoch and since the +adoption of our present form of government, in which it is natural to +search for revelations of those qualities which we now feel to be +essential to our national character. Certain epochs of our history, in +other words, have been peculiarly "American," and have furnished the +most ideal expression of national tendencies. + +If asked to select the three periods of our history which in this sense +have been most significant, most of us, I imagine, would choose the +first vigorous epoch of New England Puritanism, say from 1630 to 1676; +then, the epoch of the great Virginians, say from 1766 to 1789; and +finally the epoch of distinctly national feeling, in which New England +and the West were leaders, between 1830 and 1865. Those three +generations have been the most notable in the three hundred years since +the permanent settlements began. Each of them has revealed, in a noble +fashion, the political, ethical, and emotional traits of our people; +and although the first two of the three periods concerned themselves +but little with literary expression of the deep-lying characteristics +of our stock, the expression is not lacking. Thomas Hooker's sermon on +the "Foundation of Political Authority," John Winthrop's grave advice +on the "Nature of Liberty," Jefferson's "Declaration," Webster's "Reply +to Hayne," Lincoln's "Inaugurals," are all fundamentally American. +They are political in their immediate purpose, but, like the speeches +of Edmund Burke, they are no less literature because they are concerned +with the common needs and the common destiny. Hooker and Winthrop wrote +before our formal national existence began; Jefferson, at the hour of +the nation's birth; and Lincoln, in the day of its sharpest trial. Yet, +though separated from one another by long intervals of time, the +representative figures of the three epochs, English in blood and +American in feeling, are not so unlike as one might think. A thorough +grasp of our literature thus requires--and in scarcely less a degree +than the mastery of one of the literatures of Europe--a survey of a +long period, the search below the baffling or contradictory surface of +national experience for the main drift of that experience, and the +selection of the writers, of one generation after another, who have +given the most fit and permanent and personalized expression to the +underlying forces of the national life. + +There is another preliminary word which needs no less to be said. It +concerns the question of international influences upon national +literature. Our own generation has been taught by many events that no +race or country can any longer live "to itself." Internationalism is in +the very atmosphere: and not merely as regards politics in the narrowed +sense, but with reference to questions of economics, sociology, art, +and letters. The period of international isolation of the United +States, we are rather too fond of saying, closed with the +Spanish-American War. It would be nearer the truth to say that so far +as the things of the mind and the spirit are concerned, there has never +been any absolute isolation. The Middle West, from the days of Jackson +to Lincoln, that raw West described by Dickens and Mrs. Trollope, comes +nearer isolation than any other place or time. The period of the most +eloquent assertions of American independence in artistic and literary +matters was the epoch of New England Transcendentalism, which was +itself singularly cosmopolitan in its literary appetites. The letters +and journals of Emerson, Whitman, and Thoreau show the strong European +meat on which these men fed, just before their robust declarations of +our self-sufficiency. But there is no real self-sufficiency, and +Emerson and Whitman themselves, in other moods, have written most +suggestive passages upon our European inheritances and affiliations. + +The fortunes of the early New England colonies, in fact, were followed +by Protestant Europe with the keen solicitude and affection of kinsmen. +Oliver Cromwell signs his letter to John Cotton in 1651, "Your +affectionate friend to serve you." The settlements were regarded as +outposts of European ideas. Their Calvinism, so cheaply derided and so +superficially understood, even to-day, was the intellectual platform of +that portion of Europe which was mentally and morally awake to the vast +issues involved in individual responsibility and self-government. +Contemporary European democracy is hardly yet aware that Calvin's +_Institutes_ is one of its great charters. Continental Protestantism of +the seventeenth century, like the militant Republicanism of the English +Commonwealth, thus perused with fraternal interest the letters from +Massachusetts Bay. And if Europe watched America in those days, it was +no less true that America was watching Europe. Towards the end of the +century, Cotton Mather, "prostrate in the dust" before the Lord, as +his newly published _Diary_ tells us, is wrestling "on the behalf of +whole nations." He receives a "strong Persuasion that very overturning +Dispensations of Heaven will quickly befal the French Empire"; he +"lifts up his Cries for a mighty and speedy Revolution" there. "I +spread before the Lord the Condition of His Church abroad ... +especially in Great Britain and in France. And I prayed that the poor +Vaudois may not be ruined by the Peace now made between France and +Savoy. I prayed likewise for further Mortifications upon the Turkish +Empire." Here surely was one colonial who was trying, in Cecil Rhodes's +words, to "think continentally!" + +Furthermore, the leaders of those early colonies were in large measure +university men, disciplined in the classics, fit representatives of +European culture. It has been reckoned that between the years 1630 and +1690 there were in New England as many graduates of Cambridge and +Oxford as could be found in any population of similar size in the +mother country. At one time during those years there was in +Massachusetts and Connecticut alone a Cambridge graduate for every two +hundred and fifty inhabitants. Like the exiled Greeks in Matthew +Arnold's poem, they "undid their corded bales"--of learning, it is +true, rather than of merchandise--upon these strange and inhospitable +shores: and the traditions of Greek and Hebrew and Latin scholarship +were maintained with no loss of continuity. To the lover of letters +there will always be something fine in the thought of that narrow +seaboard fringe of faith in the classics, widening slowly as the +wilderness gave way, making its invisible road up the rivers, across +the mountains, into the great interior basin, and only after the Civil +War finding an enduring home in the magnificent state universities of +the West. Lovers of Greek and Roman literature may perhaps always feel +themselves pilgrims and exiles in this vast industrial democracy of +ours, but they have at least secured for us, and that from the very +first day of the colonies, some of the best fruitage of +internationalism. For that matter, what was, and is, that one Book--to +the eyes of the Protestant seventeenth century infallible and +inexpressively sacred--but the most potent and universal commerce of +ideas and spirit, passing from the Orient, through Greek and Roman +civilization, into the mind and heart of Western Europe and America? + + "Oh, East is East, and West is West, + And never the twain shall meet," + +declares a confident poet of to-day. But East and West met long ago in +the matchless phrases translated from Hebrew and Greek and Latin into +the English Bible; and the heart of the East there answers to the heart +of the West as in water face answereth to face. That the colonizing +Englishmen of the seventeenth century were Hebrews in spiritual +culture, and heirs of Greece and Rome without ceasing to be Anglo-Saxon +in blood, is one of the marvels of the history of civilization, and it +is one of the basal facts in the intellectual life of the United States +of to-day. + +Yet that life, as I have already hinted, is not so simple in its terms +as it might be if we had to reckon merely with the men of a single +stock, albeit with imaginations quickened by contact with an Oriental +religion, and minds disciplined, directly or indirectly, by the methods +and the literatures which the Revival of Learning imposed upon modern +Europe. American formal culture is, and has been, from the beginning, +predominantly English. Yet it has been colored by the influences of +other strains of race, and by alien intellectual traditions. Such +international influences as have reached us through German and +Scandinavian, Celtic and Italian, Russian and Jewish immigration, are +well marked in certain localities, although their traces may be +difficult to follow in the main trend of American writing. The presence +of Negro, Irishman, Jew, and German, has affected our popular humor and +satire, and is everywhere to be marked in the vocabulary and tone of +our newspapers. The cosmopolitan character of the population of such +cities as New York and Chicago strikes every foreign observer. Each one +of the manifold races now transplanted here and in process of +Americanization has for a while its own newspapers and churches and +social life carried on in a foreign dialect. But this stage of +evolution passes swiftly. The assimilative forces of American schools, +industry, commerce, politics, are too strong for the foreign immigrant +to resist. The Italian or Greek fruit pedler soon prefers to talk +English, and his children can be made to talk nothing else. This +extraordinary amalgamating power of English culture explains, no +doubt, why German and Scandinavian immigration--to take examples from +two of the most intelligent and educated races that have contributed to +the up-building of the country--have left so little trace, as yet, upon +our more permanent literature. + +But blood will have its say sooner or later. No one knows how +profoundly the strong mentality of the Jew, already evident enough in +the fields of manufacturing and finance, will mould the intellectual +life of the United States. The mere presence, to say nothing of the +rapid absorption, of these millions upon millions of aliens, as the +children of the Puritans regard them, is a constant evidence of the +subtle ways in which internationalism is playing its part in the +fashioning of the American temper. The moulding hand of the German +university has been laid upon our higher institutions of learning for +seventy years, although no one can demonstrate in set terms whether the +influence of Goethe, read now by three generations of American scholars +and studied by millions of youth in the schools, has left any real mark +upon our literature. Abraham Lincoln, in his store-keeping days, used +to sit under a tree outside the grocery store of Lincoln and Berry, +reading Voltaire. One would like to think that he then and there +assimilated something of the incomparable lucidity of style of the +great Frenchman. But Voltaire's influence upon Lincoln's style cannot +be proved, any more than Rousseau's direct influence upon Jefferson. +Tolstoi and Ibsen have, indeed, left unmistakable traces upon American +imaginative writing during the last quarter of a century. Frank Norris +was indebted to Zola for the scheme of that uncompleted trilogy, the +prose epic of the Wheat; and Owen Wister has revealed a not uncommon +experience of our younger writing men in confessing that the impulse +toward writing his Western stories came to him after reading the +delightful pages of a French romancer. But all this tells us merely +what we knew well enough before: that from colonial days to the present +hour the Atlantic has been no insuperable barrier between the thought +of Europe and the mind of America; that no one race bears aloft all the +torches of intellectual progress; and that a really vital writer of any +country finds a home in the spiritual life of every other country, even +though it may be difficult to find his name in the local directory. + +Finally, we must bear in mind that purely literary evidence as to the +existence of certain national traits needs corroboration from many +non-literary sources. If it is dangerous to judge modern Japan by the +characteristics of a piece of pottery, it is only less misleading to +select half a dozen excellent New England writers of fifty years ago as +sole witnesses to the qualities of contemporary America. We must +broaden the range of evidence. The historians of American literature +must ultimately reckon with all those sources of mental and emotional +quickening which have yielded to our pioneer people a substitute for +purely literary pleasures: they must do justice to the immense mass of +letters, diaries, sermons, editorials, speeches, which have served as +the grammar and phrase-book of national feeling. A history of our +literature must be flexible enough, as I have said elsewhere, to +include "the social and economic and geographical background of +American life; the zest of the explorer, the humor of the pioneer; the +passion of old political battles; the yearning after spiritual truth +and social readjustment; the baffled quest of beauty. Such a history +must be broad enough for the _Federalist_ and for Webster's oratory, +for Beecher's sermons and Greeley's editorials, and the Lincoln-Douglas +debates. It must picture the daily existence of our citizens from the +beginning; their working ideas, their phrases and shibboleths and all +their idols of the forum and the cave. It should portray the misspelled +ideals of a profoundly idealistic people who have been usually immersed +in material things." + +Our most characteristic American writing, as must be pointed out again +and again, is not the self-conscious literary performance of a Poe or a +Hawthorne. It is civic writing; a citizen literature, produced, like +the _Federalist_, and Garrison's editorials and Grant's _Memoirs_, +without any stylistic consciousness whatever; a sort of writing which +has been incidental to the accomplishment of some political, social, or +moral purpose, and which scarcely regards itself as literature at all. +The supreme example of it is the "Gettysburg Address." Homeliness, +simplicity, directness, preoccupation with moral issues, have here been +but the instrument of beauty; phrase and thought and feeling have a +noble fitness to the national theme. "Nothing of Europe here," we may +instinctively exclaim, and yet the profounder lesson of this citizen +literature of ours is in the universality of the fundamental questions +which our literature presents. The "Gettysburg Address" would not +to-day have a secure fame in Europe if it spoke nothing to the ear and +the heart of Europe. And this brings us back to our main theme. +Lincoln, like Franklin, like many another lesser master of our citizen +literature, is a typical American. In the writing produced by such men, +there cannot but be a revelation of American characteristics. We are +now to attempt an analysis of these national traits, as they have been +expressed by our representative writers. + +Simple as the problem seems, when thus stated, its adequate performance +calls for a constant sensitiveness to the conditions prevalent, during +a long period, in English and Continental society and literature. The +most rudimentary biographical sketch of such eminent contemporary +American authors as Mr. Henry James and Mr. Howells shows that Europe +is an essential factor in the intellectual life and in the artistic +procedure of these writers. Yet in their racial and national +relationships they are indubitably American. In their local variations +from type they demand from the critic an understanding of the culture +of the Ohio Valley, and of Boston and New York. The analysis of the +mingled racial, psychological, social, and professional traits in these +masters of contemporary American fiction presents to the critic a +problem as fascinating as, and I think more complex than, a +corresponding study of Meredith or Hardy, of Daudet or D'Annunzio. In +the three hundred years that have elapsed since Englishmen who were +trained under Queen Elizabeth settled at Jamestown, Virginia, we have +bred upon this soil many a master of speech. They have been men of +varied gifts: now of clear intelligence, now of commanding power; men +of rugged simplicity and of tantalizing subtlety; poets, novelists, +orators, essayists, and publicists, who have interpreted the soul of +America to the mind of the world. Our task is to exhibit the essential +Americanism of these spokesmen of ours, to point out the traits which +make them most truly representative of the instincts of the tongue-tied +millions who work and plan and pass from sight without the gift and +art of utterance; to find, in short, among the books which are +recognized as constituting our American literature, some vital and +illuminating illustrations of our national characteristics. For a truly +"American" book--like an American national game, or an American +city--is that which reveals, consciously or unconsciously, the American +mind. + + + + +II + +The American Mind + + +The origin of the phrase, "the American mind," was political. Shortly +after the middle of the eighteenth century, there began to be a +distinctly American way of regarding the debatable question of British +Imperial control. During the period of the Stamp Act agitation our +colonial-bred politicians and statesmen made the discovery that there +was a mode of thinking and feeling which was native--or had by that +time become a second nature--to all the colonists. Jefferson, for +example, employs those resonant and useful words "the American mind" to +indicate that throughout the American colonies an essential unity of +opinion had been developed as regards the chief political question of +the day. + +It is one of the most striking characteristics of the present United +States that this instinct of political unity should have endured, +triumphing over every temporary motive of division. The inhabitants of +the United States belong to a single political type. There is scarcely +a news-stand in any country of Continental Europe where one may not +purchase a newspaper openly or secretly opposed to the government,--not +merely attacking an unpopular administration or minister or ruler,--but +desiring and plotting the overthrow of the entire political system of +the country. It is very difficult to find such a newspaper anywhere in +the United States. I myself have never seen one. The opening sentence +of President Butler's admirable little book, _The American as He Is_, +originally delivered as lectures before the University of Copenhagen, +runs as follows: + + "The most impressive fact in American life is the substantial + unity of view in regard to the fundamental questions of + government and of conduct among a population so large, + distributed over an area so wide, recruited from sources so + many and so diverse, living under conditions so widely + different." + +But the American type of mind is evident in many other fields than that +of politics. The stimulating book from which I have just quoted, +attempts in its closing paragraph, after touching upon the more salient +features of our national activity, to define the typical American in +these words:-- + + "The typical American is he who, whether rich or poor, + whether dwelling in the North, South, East, or West, whether + scholar, professional man, merchant, manufacturer, farmer, or + skilled worker for wages, lives the life of a good citizen + and good neighbor; who believes loyally and with all his + heart in his country's institutions, and in the underlying + principles on which these institutions are built; who directs + both his private and his public life by sound principles; who + cherishes high ideals; and who aims to train his children for + a useful life and for their country's service." + +This modest and sensible statement indicates the existence of a +national point of view. We have developed in the course of time, as a +result of certain racial inheritances and historic experiences, a +national "temper" or "ethos"; a more or less settled way of considering +intellectual, moral, and social problems; in short, a peculiarly +national attitude toward the universal human questions. + +In a narrower sense, "the American mind" may mean the characteristics +of the American intelligence, as it has been studied by Mr. Bryce, De +Tocqueville, and other trained observers of our methods of thinking. It +may mean the specific achievements of the American intelligence in +fields like science and scholarship and history. In all these +particular departments of intellectual activity the methods and the +results of American workers have recently received expert and by no +means uniformly favorable assessment from investigators upon both sides +of the Atlantic. But the observer of literary processes and productions +must necessarily take a somewhat broader survey of national tendencies. +He must study what Nathaniel Hawthorne, with the instinct of a romance +writer, preferred to call the "heart" as distinguished from the mere +intellect. He must watch the moral and social and imaginative impulses +of the individual; the desire for beauty; the hunger for +self-expression; the conscious as well as the unconscious revelation of +personality; and he must bring all this into relation--if he can, and +knowing that the finer secrets are sure to elude him!--with the +age-long impulses of the race and with the mysterious tides of feeling +that flood or ebb with the changing fortunes of the nation. + +One way to begin to understand the typical American is to take a look +at him in Europe. It does not require a professional beggar or a +licensed guide to identify him. Not that the American in Europe need +recall in any particular the familiar pictorial caricature of "Uncle +Sam." He need not bear any outward resemblances to such stage types as +that presented in "The Man From Home." He need not even suggest, by +peculiarities of speech or manner, that he has escaped from the pages +of those novels of international observation in which Mr. James and Mr. +Howells long ago attained an unmatched artistry. Our "American Abroad," +at the present hour, may be studied without the aid of any literary +recollections whatever. There he is, with his wife and daughters, and +one may stare at him with all the frankness of a compatriot. He is +obviously well-to-do,--else he would not be there at all,--and the wife +and daughters seem very well-to-do indeed. He is kindly; +considerate--sometimes effusively considerate--of his fellow +travellers; patient with the ladies of his family, who in turn are +noticeably patient with him. He is genial--very willing to talk with +polyglot headwaiters and chauffeurs; in fact the wife and daughters are +also practised conversationalists, although their most loyal admirers +must admit that their voices _are_ a trifle sharp or flat. These ladies +are more widely read than "papa." He has not had much leisure for +Ruskin and Symonds and Ferrero. His lack of historical training limits +his curiosity concerning certain phases of his European surroundings; +but he uses his eyes well upon such general objects as trains, +hotel-service, and Englishmen. In spite of his habitual geniality, he +is rather critical of foreign ways, although this is partly due to his +lack of acquaintance with them. Intellectually, he is really more +modest and self-distrustful than his conversation or perhaps his +general bearing would imply; in fact, his wife and daughters, +emboldened very likely by the training of their women's clubs, have a +more commendable daring in assaulting new intellectual positions. + +Yet the American does not lack quickness, either of wits or emotion. +His humor and sentiment make him an entertaining companion. Even when +his spirits run low, his patriotism is sure to mount in proportion, and +he can always tell you with enthusiasm in just how many days he expects +to be back again in what he calls "God's country." + +This, or something like this, is the "American" whom the European +regards with curiosity, contempt, admiration, or envy, as the case may +be, but who is incontestably modifying Western Europe, even if he is +not, as many journalists and globe-trotters are fond of asserting, +"Americanizing" the world. Interesting as it is to glance at him +against that European background which adds picturesqueness to his +qualities, the "Man from Home" is still more interesting in his native +habitat. There he has been visited by hundreds of curious and observant +foreigners, who have left on record a whole literature of bewildered +and bewildering, irritating and flattering and amusing testimony +concerning the Americans. Settlers like Crevecoeur in the glowing dawn +of the Republic, poets like Tom Moore, novelists like Charles +Dickens,--other novelists like Mr. Arnold Bennett,--professional +travellers like Captain Basil Hall, students of contemporary sociology +like Paul Bourget and Mr. H. G. Wells, French journalists, German +professors, Italian admirers of Colonel Roosevelt, political theorists +like De Tocqueville, profound and friendly observers like Mr. Bryce, +have had, and will continue to have, their say. + +The reader who tries to take all this testimony at its face value, and +to reconcile its contradictions, will be a candidate for the insane +asylum. Yet the testimony is too amusing to be neglected and some of it +is far too important to be ignored. Mr. John Graham Brooks, after long +familiarity with these foreign opinions of America, has gathered some +of the most representative of them into a delightful and stimulating +volume entitled _As Others See Us_. There one may find examples of what +the foreigner has seen, or imagined he has seen, during his sojourn in +America, and what he has said about it afterwards. Mr. Brooks is too +charitable to our visitors to quote the most fantastic and highly +colored of their observations; but what remains is sufficiently +bizarre. + +The real service of such a volume is to train us in discounting the +remarks made about us in a particular period like the +eighteen-thirties, or from observations made in a special place, like +Newport, or under special circumstances, like a Bishop's private car. +It helps us to make allowances for the inevitable angle of nationality, +the equally inevitable personal equation. A recent ambitious book on +America, by a Washington journalist of long residence here, although of +foreign birth, declares that "the chief trait of the American people is +the love of gain and the desire of wealth acquired through commerce." +That is the opinion of an expert observer, who has had extraordinary +chances for seeing precisely what he has seen. I think it, +notwithstanding, a preposterous opinion, fully as preposterous as +Professor Muensterberg's notion that America has latterly grown more +monarchical in its tendencies,--but I must remember that, in my own +case, as in that of the journalist under consideration, there are +allowances to be made for race, and training, and natural idiosyncracy +of vision. + +The native American, it may be well to remember, is something of an +observer himself. If his observations upon the characteristics of his +countrymen are less piquant than the foreigner's, it is chiefly +because the American writes, upon the whole, less incisively than he +talks. But incisive native writing about American traits is not +lacking. If a missionary, say in South Africa, has read the New York +_Nation_ every week for the past forty years, he has had an +extraordinary "moving picture" of American tendencies, as interpreted +by independent, trenchant, and high-minded criticism. That a file of +the _Nation_ will convey precisely the same impression of American +tendencies as a file of the _Sun_, for instance, or the _Boston Evening +Transcript_, is not to be affirmed. The humor of the London _Punch_ and +the New York _Life_ does not differ more radically than the aspects of +American civilization as viewed by two rival journals in Newspaper Row. +The complexity of the material now collected and presented in daily +journalism is so great that adequate editorial interpretation is +obviously impossible. All the more insistently does this heterogeneous +picture of American life demand the impartial interpretation of the +historian, the imaginative transcription of the novelist. Humorist and +moralist, preacher and mob orator and social essayist, shop-talk and +talk over the tea-cup or over the pipe, and the far more illuminating +instruction of events, are fashioning day by day the infinitely +delicate processes of our national self-assessment. Scholars like Mr. +Henry Adams or Mr. James Ford Rhodes will explain to us American life +as it was during the administrations of Jefferson or in the +eighteen-fifties. Professor Turner will expound the significance of the +frontier in American history. Mr. Henry James will portray with +unrivalled psychological insight the Europeanized American of the +eighteen-seventies and eighties. Literary critics like Professor +Wendell or Professor Trent will deduce from our literature itself +evidence concerning this or that national quality; and all this mass of +American expert testimony, itself a result and a proof of national +self-awareness and self-respect, must be put into the scales to +balance, to confirm, or to outweigh the reports furnished by +foreigners. + +I do not pretend to be able, like an expert accountant, to draw up a +balance-sheet of national qualities, to credit or debit the American +character with this or that precise quantity of excellence or defect. +But having turned the pages of many books about the United States, and +listened to many conversations about its inhabitants in many states of +the Union, I venture to collect a brief list of the qualities which +have been assigned to us, together with a few, but not, I trust, too +many, of our admitted national defects. + +Like that excellent German who wrote the History of the English Drama +in six volumes, I begin with Physical Geography. The differentiation of +the physical characteristics of our branch of the English race is +admittedly due, in part, to climate. In spite of the immense range of +climatic variations as one passes from New England to New Orleans, from +the Mississippi Valley to the high plains of the Far West, or from the +rainy Oregon belt southward to San Diego, the settlers of English stock +find a prevalent atmospheric condition, as a result of which they +begin, in a generation or two, to change in physique. They grow thinner +and more nervous, they "lean forward," as has been admirably said of +them, while the Englishman "leans back"; they are less heavy and less +steady; their voices are higher, sharper; their athletes get more +easily "on edge"; they respond, in short, to an excessively +stimulating climate. An old-fashioned sea-captain put it all into a +sentence when he said that he could drink a bottle of wine with his +dinner in Liverpool and only a half a bottle in New York. Explain the +cause as we may, the fact seems to be that the body of John Bull +changes, in the United States, into the body of Uncle Sam. + +There are mental differences no less pronounced. No adjective has been +more frequently applied to the Anglo-Saxon than the word "dull." The +American mind has been accused of ignorance, superficiality, levity, +commonplaceness, and dozens of other defects, but "dulness" is not one +of them. "Smartness," rather, is the preferred epithet of derogation; +or, to rise a little in the scale of valuation, it is the word +"cleverness," used with that lurking contempt for cleverness which is +truly English and which long survived in the dialect of New England, +where the village ne'er-do-well or Jack-of-all-trades used to be +pronounced a "clever" fellow. The variety of employments to which the +American pioneers were obliged to betake themselves has done something, +no doubt, to produce a national versatility, a quick assimilation of +new methods and notions, a ready adaptability to novel emergencies. An +invaluable pioneer trait is curiosity; the settler in a new country, +like Moses in the wilderness of Arabia, must "turn aside to see"; he +must look into things, learn to read signs,--or else the Indians or +frost or freshet will soon put an end to his pioneering. That curiosity +concerning strangers which so much irritated Dickens and Mrs. Trollope +was natural to the children of Western emigrants to whom the difference +between Sioux and Pawnee had once meant life or death. "What's your +business, stranger, in these parts?" was an instinctive, because it had +once been a vital, question. That it degenerates into mere +inquisitiveness is true enough; just as the "acuteness," the +"awareness," essential to the existence of one generation becomes only +"cuteness," the typical tin-pedler's habit of mind, in the generation +following. + +American inexperience, the national rawness and unsophistication which +has impressed so many observers, has likewise its double significance +when viewed historically. We have exhibited, no doubt, the +amateurishness and recklessness which spring from relative isolation, +from ignorance as to how they manage elsewhere this particular sort of +thing,--the conservation of forests, let us say, or the government of +colonial dependencies. National smugness and conceit, the impatience +crystallized in the phrase, "What have we got to do with abroad?" have +jarred upon the nerves of many cultivated Americans. But it is no less +true that a nation of pioneers and settlers, like the isolated +individual, learns certain rough-and-ready Robinson Crusoe ways of +getting things done. A California mining-camp is sure to establish law +and order in due time, though never, perhaps, a law and order quite +according to Blackstone. In the most trying crises of American +political history, it was not, after all, a question of profiting by +European experience. Washington and Lincoln, in their sorest struggles, +had nothing to do with "abroad"; the problem had first to be thought +through, and then fought through, in American and not in European +terms. Not a half-dozen Englishmen understood the bearings of the +Kansas-Nebraska Bill, or, if they did, we were little the wiser. We had +to wait until a slow-minded frontier lawyer mastered it in all its +implications, and then patiently explained it to the farmers of +Illinois, to the United States, and to the world. + +It is true that the unsophisticated mode of procedure may turn out to +be sheer folly,--a "sixteen to one" triumph of provincial barbarism. +But sometimes it is the secret of freshness and of force. Your +cross-country runner scorns the highway, but that is because he has +confidence in his legs and loins, and he likes to take the fences. +Fenimore Cooper, when he began to write stories, knew nothing about the +art of novel-making as practised in Europe, but he possessed something +infinitely better for him, namely, instinct, and he took the right road +to the climax of a narrative as unerringly as the homing bee follows +its viewless trail. + +No one can be unaware how easily this superb American confidence may +turn to over-confidence, to sheer recklessness. We love to run past the +signals, in our railroading and in our thinking. Emerson will "plunge" +on a new idea as serenely as any stock-gambler ever "plunged" in Wall +Street, and a pretty school-teacher will tell you that she has become +an advocate of the "New Thought" as complacently as an old financier +will boast of having bought Calumet and Hecla when it was selling at +25. (Perhaps the school-teacher may get as good a bargain. I cannot +say.) Upon the whole, Americans back individual guesswork and pay +cheerfully when they lose. A great many of them, as it happens, have +guessed right. Even those who continue to guess wrong, like Colonel +Sellers, have the indefeasible romantic appetite for guessing again. +The American temperament and the chances of American history have +brought constant temptation to speculation, and plenty of our people +prefer to gamble upon what they love to call a "proposition," rather +than to go to the bottom of the facts. They would rather speculate than +know. + +Doubtless there are purely physical causes that have encouraged this +mental attitude, such as the apparently inexhaustible resources of a +newly opened country, the consciousness of youthful energy, the feeling +that any very radical mistake in pitching camp to-day can easily be +rectified when we pitch camp to-morrow. The habit of exaggeration +which was so particularly annoying to English visitors in the middle +of the last century--annoying even to Charles Dickens, who was himself +something of an expert in exuberance--is a physical and moral no less +than a mental quality. That monstrous braggadocio which Dickens +properly satirized in _Martin Chuzzlewit_ was partly, of course, the +product of provincial ignorance. Doubtless there were, and there are +still, plenty of Pograms who are convinced that Henry Clay and Daniel +Webster overtop all the intellectual giants of the Old World. But that +youthful bragging, and perhaps some of the later bragging as well, has +its social side. It is a perverted idealism. It springs from group +loyalty, from sectional fidelity. The settlement of "Eden" may be +precisely what Dickens drew it: a miasmatic mud-hole. Yet we who are +interested in the new town do not intend, as the popular phrase has it, +"to give ourselves away." We back our own "proposition," so that to +this day Chicago cannot tell the truth to St. Louis, nor Harvard to +Yale. Braggadocio thus gets glorified through its rootage in loyalty; +and likewise extravagance--surely one of the worst of American mental +vices--is often based upon a romantic confidence in individual opinion +or in the righteousness of some specific cause. Convince a blue-blooded +American like Wendell Phillips that the abolition of slavery is right, +and, straightway, words and even facts become to him mere weapons in a +splendid warfare. His statements grow rhetorical, reckless, virulent. +Proof seems to him, as it did to the contemporary Transcendentalist +philosophers, an impertinence. The sole question is, "Are you on the +Lord's side?" i.e., on the side of Wendell Phillips. + +Excuse as we may the faults of a gifted combatant in a moral crisis +like the abolition controversy, the fact remains that the intellectual +dangers of the oratorical temperament are typically American. What is +commonly called our "Fourth of July" period has indeed passed away. It +has few apologists, perhaps fewer than it really deserves. It is +possible to regret the disappearance of that old-fashioned assertion of +patriotism and pride, and to question whether historical pageants and a +"noiseless Fourth" will develop any better citizens than the fathers +were. But on the purely intellectual side, the influence of that +spread-eagle oratory was disastrous. Throughout wide-extended regions +of the country, and particularly in the South and West, the "orator" +grew to be, in the popular mind, the normal representative of +intellectual ability. Words, rather than things, climbed into the +saddle. Popular assemblies were taught the vocabulary and the logic of +passion, rather than of sober, lucid reasoning. The "stump" grew more +potent than school-house and church and bench; and it taught its +reckless and passionate ways to more than one generation. The +intellectual leaders of the newer South have more than once suffered +ostracism for protesting against this glorification of mere oratory. +But it is not the South alone that has suffered. Wherever a mob can +gather, there are still the dangers of the old demagogic vocabulary and +rhetoric. The mob state of mind is lurking still in the excitable +American temperament. + +The intellectual temptations of that temperament are revealed no less +in our popular journalism. This journalism, it is needless to say, is +extremely able, but it is reckless to the last degree. The +extravagance of its head-lines and the over-statements of its news +columns are direct sources of profit, since they increase the +circulation and it is circulation which wins advertising space. I think +it is fair to say that the American people, as a whole, like precisely +the sort of journalism which they get. The tastes of the dwellers in +cities control, more and more, the character of our newspapers. The +journals of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco are steadily gaining +in circulation, in resourcefulness, and in public spirit, but they are, +for the most part, unscrupulous in attack, sophistical, and passionate. +They outvie the popular pulpit in sentimentality. They play with fire. + +The note of exaggeration which is heard in American oratory and +journalism is struck again in the popular magazines. Their campaign of +"exposure," during the last decade, has been careless of individual and +corporate rights and reputations. Even the magazine sketches and short +stories are keyed up to a hysteric pitch. So universally is this +characteristic national tension displayed in our periodical literature +that no one is much surprised to read in his morning paper that some +one has called the President of the United States a liar,--or that some +one has been called a liar by the President of the United States. + +For an explanation of these defects, shall we fall back upon a +convenient maxim of De Tocqueville's and admit with him that "a +democracy is unsuited to meditation"? We are forced to do so. But then +comes the inevitable second thought that a democracy must needs have +other things than meditation to attend to. Athenian and Florentine and +Versailles types of political despotism have all proved highly +favorable to the lucubrations of philosophers and men of letters who +enjoyed the despot's approbation. For that matter, no scheme of life +was ever better suited to meditation than an Indian reservation in the +eighteen-seventies, with a Great Father in Washington to furnish +blankets, flour, and tobacco. Yet that is not quite the American ideal +of existence, and it even failed to produce the peaceable fruits of +meditation in the Indian himself. + +One may freely admit the shortcomings of the American intelligence; the +"commonness of mind and tone" which Mr. Bryce believes to be +inseparable from the presence of such masses of men associated under +modern democratic government; the frivolity and extravagance which +represent the gasconading of the romantic temper in face of the grey +practicalities of everyday routine; the provincial boastfulness and bad +taste which have resulted from intellectual isolation; the lack, in +short, of a code, whether for thought or speech or behavior. And +nevertheless, one's instinctive Americanism replies, May it not be +better, after all, to have gone without a code for a while, to have +lacked that orderly and methodized and socialized European +intelligence, and to have had the glorious sense of bringing things to +pass in spite of it? There is just one thing that would have been fatal +to our democracy. It is the feeling expressed in La Bruyere's famous +book: "Everything has been said, everything has been written, +everything has been done." Here in America everything was to do; we +were forced to conjugate our verbs in the future tense. No doubt our +existence has been, in some respects, one of barbarism, but it has been +the barbarism of life and not of death. A rawboned baby sprawling on +the mud floor of a Kentucky log cabin is a more hopeful spectacle than +a wholly civilized funeral. + +"Perhaps it is," rejoins the European critic, somewhat impatiently, +"but you are confusing the issue. We find certain grave defects in the +American mind, defects which, if you had not had what Thomas Carlyle +called 'a great deal of land for a very few people,' would long ago +have involved you in disaster. You admit the mental defects, but you +promptly shift the question to one of moral qualities, of practical +energy, of subduing your wilderness, and so forth. You have too often +absented yourself from the wedding banquet, from the European symposium +of wit and philosophy, from the polished and orderly and delightful +play and interplay of civilized mind,--and your excuse is the old one: +that you are trying your yoke of oxen and cannot come. We charge you +with intellectual sins, and you enter the plea of moral preoccupation. +If you will permit personal examples, you Americans have made ere now +your national heroes out of men whose reasoning powers remained those +of a college sophomore, who were unable to state an opponent's position +with fairness, who lacked wholly the judicial quality, who were +vainglorious and extravagant, who had, in short, the mind of an +exuberant barbarian; but you instantly forget their intellectual +defects in the presence of their abounding physical and moral energy, +their freedom from any taint of personal corruption, their whole-souled +desire and effort for the public good. Were not such heroes, impossible +as they would have been in any other civilized country, perfectly +illuminative of your national state of mind?" + +For one, I confess that I do not know what reply to make to my +imaginary European critic. I suspect that he is right. At any rate, we +stand here at the fork of the road. If we do not wish to linger any +longer over a catalogue of intellectual sins, let us turn frankly to +our moral preoccupations, comforting ourselves, if we like, as we +abandon the field of purely intellectual rivalry with Europe, in the +reflection that it is the muddle-headed Anglo-Saxon, after all, who is +the dominant force in the modern world. + +The moral temper of the American people has been analyzed no less +frequently than their mental traits. Foreign and native observers are +alike agreed in their recognition of the extraordinary American +energy. The sheer power of the American bodily machine, driven by the +American will, is magnificent. It is often driven too hard, and with +reckless disregard of anything save immediate results. It wears out +more quickly than the bodily machine of the Englishman. It is typical +that the best distance runners of Great Britain usually beat ours, +while we beat them in the sprints. Our public men are frequently--as +the athletes say--"all in" at sixty. Their energy is exhausted at just +the time that many an English statesman begins his best public service. +But after making every allowance for wasteful excess, for the restless +and impatient consumption of nervous forces which nature intended that +we should hold in reserve, the fact remains that American history has +demonstrated the existence of a dynamic national energy, physical and +moral, which is still unabated. Immigration has turned hitherward the +feet of millions upon millions of young men from the hardiest stocks of +Europe. They replenish the slackening streams of vigor. When the +northern New Englander cannot make a living on the old farm, the French +Canadian takes it off his hands, and not only improves the farm, but +raises big crops of boys. So with Italians, Swedes, Germans, Irish, +Jews, and Portuguese, and all the rest. We are a nation of immigrants, +a digging, hewing, building, breeding, bettering race, of mixed blood +and varying creeds, but of fundamental faith in the wages of going on; +a race compounded of materials crude but potent; raw, but with blood +that is red and bones that are big; a race that is accomplishing its +vital tasks, and, little by little, transmuting brute forces and +material energies into the finer play of mind and spirit. + +From the very beginning, the American people have been characterized by +idealism. It was the inner light of Pilgrim and Quaker colonists; it +gleams no less in the faces of the children of Russian Jew immigrants +to-day. American irreverence has been noted by many a foreign critic, +but there are certain subjects in whose presence our reckless or +cynical speech is hushed. Compared with current Continental humor, our +characteristic American humor is peculiarly reverent. The purity of +woman and the reality of religion are not considered topics for +jocosity. Cleanness of body and of mind are held by our young men to be +not only desirable but attainable virtues. There is among us, in +comparison with France or Germany, a defective reverence for the State +as such; and a positive irreverence towards the laws of the +Commonwealth, and towards the occupants of high political positions. +Mayor, Judge, Governor, Senator, or even President, may be the butt of +such indecorous ridicule as shocks or disgusts the foreigner; but +nevertheless the personal joke stops short of certain topics which +Puritan tradition disapproves. The United States is properly called a +Christian nation, not merely because the Supreme Court has so affirmed +it, but because the phrase "a Christian nation" expresses the +historical form which the religious idealism of the country has made +its own. The Bible is still considered, by the mass of the people, a +sacred book; oaths in courts of law, oaths of persons elected to great +office, are administered upon it. American faith in education, as all +the world knows, has from the beginning gone hand in hand with faith in +religion; the school-house was almost as sacred a symbol as the +meeting-house; and the munificence of American private benefactions to +the cause of education furnishes to-day one of the most striking +instances of idealism in the history of civilization. + +The ideal passions of patriotism, of liberty, of loyalty to home and +section, of humanitarian and missionary effort, have all burned with a +clear flame in the United States. The optimism which lies so deeply +embedded in the American character is one phase of the national mind. +Charles Eliot Norton once said to me, with his dry humor, that there +was an infallible test of the American authorship of any anonymous +article or essay: "Does it contain the phrase 'After all, we need not +despair'? If it does, it was written by an American." In spite of all +that is said about the practicality of the American, his love of gain +and his absorption in material interests, those who really know him are +aware how habitually he confronts his practical tasks in a spirit of +romantic enthusiasm. He marches downtown to his prosaic day's job and +calls it "playing the game"; to work as hard as he can is to "get into +the game," and to work as long as he can is to "stay in the game"; he +loves to win fully as much as the Jew and he hates to lose fully as +much as the Englishman, but losing or winning, he carries into his +business activity the mood of the idealist. + +It is easy to think of all this as self-deception as the emotional +effusiveness of the American temperament; but to refuse to see its +idealism is to mistake fundamentally the character of the American man. +No doubt he does deceive himself often as to his real motives: he is a +mystic and a bargain-hunter by turns. Divided aims, confused ideals, +have struggled for the mastery among us, ever since Challon's _Voyage_, +in 1606, announced that the purpose of the first colonists to Virginia +was "both to seek to convert the savages, as also to seek out what +benefits or commodities might be had in those parts." How that +"both"--"as also" keeps echoing in American history: "both" to +christianize the Negro and work him at a profit, "both" duty and +advantage in retaining the Philippines; "both" international good will +and increased armaments; "both" Sunday morning precepts and Monday +morning practice; "both" horns of a dilemma; "both God and mammon"; did +ever a nation possess a more marvellous water-tight compartment method +of believing and honoring opposites! But in all this unconscious +hypocrisy the American is perhaps not worse--though he may be more +absurd!--than other men. + +Another aspect of the American mind is found in our radicalism. "To be +an American," it has been declared, "is to be a radical." That +statement needs qualification. Intellectually the American is inclined +to radical views; he is willing to push certain social theories very +far; he will found a new religion, a new philosophy, a new socialistic +community, at the slightest notice or provocation; but he has at bottom +a fund of moral and political conservatism. Thomas Jefferson, one of +the greatest of our radical idealists, had a good deal of the English +squire in him after all. Jeffersonianism endures, not merely because it +is a radical theory of human nature, but because it expresses certain +facts of human nature. The American mind looks forward, not back; but +in practical details of land, taxes, and governmental machinery we are +instinctively cautious of change. The State of Connecticut knows that +her constitution is ill adapted to the present conditions of her +population, but the difficulty is to persuade the rural legislators to +amend it. Yet everybody admits that amendment will come "some day." +This admission is a characteristic note of American feeling; and every +now and then come what we call "uplift" movements, when radicalism is +in the very air, and a thousand good "causes" take fresh vigor. + +One such period was in the New England of the eighteen-forties. We are +moving in a similar--only this time a national--current of radicalism, +to-day. But a change in the weather or the crops has before now turned +many of our citizens from radicalism into conservatism. There is, in +fact, conservatism in our blood and radicalism in our brains, and now +one and now the other rules. Very typical of American radicalism is +that story of the old sea-captain who was ignorant, as was supposed, of +the science of navigation, and who cheerfully defended himself by +saying that he could work his vessel down to Boston Light without +knowing any navigation, and after that he could go where he "dum +pleased." I suspect the old fellow pulled his sextant and chronometer +out of his chest as soon as he really needed them. American radicalism +is not always as innocent of the world's experience as it looks. In +fact, one of the most interesting phases of this twentieth century +"uplift" movement is its respect and even glorification of expert +opinion. A German expert in city-planning electrifies an audience of +Chicago club-women by talking to them about drains, ash-carts, and +flower-beds. A hundred other experts, in sanitation, hygiene, +chemistry, conservation of natural resources, government by commission, +tariffs, arbitration treaties, are talking quite as busily; and they +have the attention of a national audience that is listening with +genuine modesty, and with a real desire to refashion American life on +wiser and nobler plans. In this national forward movement in which we +are living, radicalism has shown its beneficent aspect of constructive +idealism. + +No catalogue of American qualities and defects can exclude the trait of +individualism. We exalt character over institutions, says Mr. Brownell; +we like our institutions because they suit us, and not because we +admire institutions. "Produce great persons," declares Walt Whitman, +"the rest follows." Whether the rest follows or not, there can be no +question that Americans, from the beginning, have laid singular stress +upon personal qualities. The religion and philosophy of the Puritans +were in this respect at one with the gospel of the frontier. It was the +principle of "every man for himself"; solitary confrontation of his +God, solitary struggle with the wilderness. "He that will not work," +declared John Smith after that first disastrous winter at Jamestown, +"neither let him eat." The pioneer must clear his own land, harvest his +own crops, defend his own fireside; his temporal and eternal salvation +were strictly his own affair. He asked, and expected, no aid from the +community; he could at most "change works" in time of harvest, with a +neighbor, if he had one. It was the sternest school of self-reliance, +from babyhood to the grave, that human society is ever likely to +witness. It bred heroes and cranks and hermits; its glories and its +eccentricities are written in the pages of Emerson, Thoreau, and +Whitman; they are written more permanently still in the instinctive +American faith in individual manhood. Our democracy idolizes a few +individuals; it ignores their defective training, or, it may be, their +defective culture; it likes to think of an Andrew Jackson who was a +"lawyer, judge, planter, merchant, general, and politician," before he +became President; it asks only that the man shall not change his +individual character in passing from one occupation or position to +another; in fact, it is amused and proud to think of Grant hauling +cordwood to market, of Lincoln keeping store or Roosevelt rounding-up +cattle. The one essential question was put by Hawthorne into the mouth +of Holgrave in the _House of the Seven Gables_. Holgrave had been by +turns a schoolmaster, clerk in a store, editor, pedler, lecturer on +Mesmerism, and daguerreotypist, but "amid all these personal +vicissitudes," says Hawthorne, "he had never lost his identity.... He +had never violated the innermost man, but had carried his conscience +along with him." There speaks the local accent of Puritanism, but the +voice insisting upon the moral integrity of the individual is the +undertone of America. + +Finally, and surely not the least notable of American traits, is public +spirit. Triumphant individualism checks itself, or is rudely checked +in spite of itself, by considerations of the general good. How often +have French critics confessed, with humiliation, that in spite of the +superior socialization of the French intelligence, France has yet to +learn from America the art and habit of devoting individual fortunes to +the good of the community. Our American literature, as has been already +pointed out, is characteristically a citizen literature, responsive to +the civic note, the production of men who, like the writers of the +_Federalist_, applied a vigorous practical intelligence, a robust +common sense, to questions affecting the interest of everybody. The +spirit of fair play in our free democracy has led Americans to ask not +merely what is right and just for one, the individual, but what are +righteousness and justice and fair play for all. Democracy, as embodied +in such a leader as Lincoln, has meant Fellowship. Nothing finer can be +said of a representative American than to say of him, as Mr. Norton +said of Mr. Lowell, that he had a "most public soul." + +No one can present such a catalogue of American qualities as I have +attempted without realizing how much escapes his classification. +Conscious criticism and assessment of national characteristics is +essential to an understanding of them; but one feels somehow that the +net is not holding. The analysis of English racial inheritances, as +modified by historical conditions, yields much, no doubt; but what are +we to say of such magnificent embodiments of the American spirit as are +revealed in the Swiss immigrant Agassiz, the German exile Carl Schurz, +the native-born mulatto Booker Washington? The Americanism of +representative Americans is something which must be felt; it is to be +reached by imaginative perception and sympathy, no less than by the +process of formal analysis. It would puzzle the experts in racial +tendencies to find arithmetically the common denominator of such +American figures as Franklin, Washington, Jackson, Webster, Lee, +Lincoln, Emerson, and "Mark Twain"; yet the countrymen of those typical +Americans instinctively recognize in them a sort of largeness, +genuineness, naturalness, kindliness, humor, effectiveness, idealism, +which are indubitably and fundamentally American. + +There are certain sentiments of which we ourselves are conscious, +though we can scarcely translate them into words, and these vaguely +felt emotions of admiration, of effort, of fellowship and social faith +are the invisible America. Take, for a single example, the national +admiration for what we call a "self-made" man: here is a boy selling +candy and newspapers on a Michigan Central train; he makes up his mind +to be a lawyer; in twelve years from that day he is general counsel for +the Michigan Central road; he enters the Senate of the United States +and becomes one of its leading figures. The instinctive flush of +sympathy and pride with which Americans listen to such a story is far +more deeply based than any vulgar admiration for money-making +abilities. No one cares whether such a man is rich or poor. He has +vindicated anew the possibilities of manhood under American conditions +of opportunity; the miracle of our faith has in him come true once +more. + +No one can understand America with his brains. It is too big, too +puzzling. It tempts, and it deceives. But many an illiterate immigrant +has felt the true America in his pulses before he ever crossed the +Atlantic. The descendant of the Pilgrims still remains ignorant of our +national life if he does not respond to its glorious zest, its +throbbing energy, its forward urge, its uncomprehending belief in the +future, its sense of the fresh and mighty world just beyond to-day's +horizon. Whitman's "Pioneers, O Pioneers" is one of the truest of +American poems because it beats with the pulse of this onward movement, +because it is full of this laughing and conquering fellowship and of +undefeated faith. + + + + +III + +American Idealism + + +Our endeavor to state the general characteristics of the American mind +has already given us some indication of what Americans really care for. +The things or the qualities which they like, the objects of their +conscious or unconscious striving, are their ideals. "There is what I +call the American idea," said Theodore Parker in the Anti-Slavery +Convention of 1850. "This idea demands, as the proximate organization +thereof, a democracy--that is, a government of all the people, by all +the people, for all the people; of course, a government on the +principle of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness' +sake, I will call it the idea of Freedom." That is one of a thousand +definitions of American idealism. Books devoted to the "Spirit of +America"--like the volume by Henry van Dyke which bears that very +title--give a programme of national accomplishments and aspirations. +But our immediate task is more specific. It is to point out how +adequately this idealistic side of the national temperament has been +expressed in American writing. Has our literature kept equal pace with +our thinking and feeling? + +We do not need, in attempting to answer this question, any definition +of idealism, in its philosophical or in its more purely literary sense. +There are certain fundamental human sentiments which lift men above +brutes, Frenchmen above "frog-eaters," and Englishmen above +"shop-keepers." These ennobling sentiments or ideals, while universal +in their essential nature, assume in each civilized nation a somewhat +specific coloring. The national literature reveals the myriad shades +and hues of private and public feeling, and the more truthful this +literary record, the more delicate and noble become the harmonies of +local and national thought or emotion with the universal instincts and +passions of mankind. On the other hand, when the literature of Spain, +for instance, or of Italy, fails, within a given period, in range and +depth of human interest, we are compelled to believe either that the +Spain or Italy of that age was wanting in the nobler ideals, or that +it lacked literary interpretation. + +In the case of America we are confronted by a similar dilemma. Since +the beginning of the seventeenth century this country has been, in a +peculiar sense, the home of idealism; but our literature has remained +through long periods thin and provincial, barren in cosmopolitan +significance; and the hard fact faces us to-day that only three or four +of our writers have aroused any strong interest in the cultivated +readers of continental Europe. Evidently, then, either the torch of +American idealism does not burn as brightly as we think, or else our +writers, with but few exceptions, have not hitherto possessed the +height and reach and grasp to hold up the torch so that the world could +see it. Let us look first at the flame, and then at the torch-bearers. + +Readers of Carlyle have often been touched by the humility with which +that disinherited child of Calvinism speaks of Goethe's doctrine of the +"Three Reverences," as set forth in _Wilhelm Meister_. Again and again, +in his correspondence and his essays, does Carlyle recur to that +teaching of the threefold Reverence: Reverence for what is above us, +for what is around us and for what is under us; that is to say, the +ethnic religion which frees us from debasing fear, the philosophical +religion which unites us with our comrades, and the Christian religion +which recognizes humility and poverty and suffering as divine. + +"To which of these religions do you specially adhere?" inquired +Wilhelm. + +"To all the three," replied the sages; "for in their union they produce +what may properly be called the true Religion. Out of those three +Reverences springs the highest Reverence, Reverence for Oneself." + +An admirable symbolism, surely; vaguer, no doubt, than the old symbols +which Carlyle had learned in the Kirk at Ecclefechan, but less vague, +in turn, than that doctrine of reverence for the Oversoul, which was +soon to be taught at Concord. + +As one meditates upon the idealism of the first colonists in America, +one is tempted to ask what their "reverences" were. Toward what +tangible symbols of the invisible did their eyes instinctively turn? + +For New England, at least, the answer is relatively simple. One form +of it is contained in John Adams's well-known prescription for +Virginia, as recorded in his _Diary_ for July 21, 1786. "Major +Langbourne dined with us again. He was lamenting the difference of +character between Virginia and New England. I offered to give him a +receipt for making a New England in Virginia. He desired it; and I +recommended to him town-meetings, training-days, town-schools, and +ministers." + +The "ministers," it will be noticed, come last on the Adams list. But +the order of precedence is unimportant. + +Here are four symbols, or, if you like, "reverences." Might not the +Virginia planters, loyal to their own specific symbol of the +"gentleman,"--no unworthy ideal, surely; one that had been glorified in +European literature ever since Castiligione wrote his _Courtier_, and +one that had been transplanted from England to Virginia as soon as Sir +Walter Raleigh's men set foot on the soil which took its name from the +Virgin Queen,--might not the Virginia gentlemen have pondered to their +profit over the blunt suggestion of the Massachusetts commoner? No +doubt; and yet how much picturesqueness and nobility--and tragedy, +too--we should have missed, if our history had not been full of these +varying symbols, clashing ideals, different Reverences! + +One Reverence, at least, was common to the Englishman of Virginia and +to the Englishman of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. They were joint +heirs of the Reformation, children of that waxing and puissant England +which was a nation of one book, the Bible; a book whose phrases color +alike the _Faerie Queen_ of Spenser and the essays of Francis Bacon; a +book rich beyond all others in human experience; full of poetry, +history, drama; the test of conduct; the manual of devotion; and above +all, and blinding all other considerations by the very splendor of the +thought, a book believed to be the veritable Word of the unseen God. +For these colonists in the wilderness, as for the Protestant Europe +which they had left irrevocably behind them, the Bible was the plainest +of all symbols of idealism: it was the first of the "Reverences." + +The Church was a symbol likewise, but to the greater portion of +colonial America the Church meant chiefly the tangible band of +militant believers within the limits of a certain township or parish, +rather than the mystical Bride of Christ. Except in Maryland and +Virginia, whither the older forms of Church worship were early +transplanted, there was scanty reverence for the Establishment. There +was neither clergyman nor minister on board the Mayflower. In Rufus +Choate's oration on the Pilgrims before the New England Society of New +York in 1843, occurred the famous sentence about "a church without a +bishop and a state without a King"; to which Dr. Wainwright, rector of +St. John's, replied wittily at the dinner following the oration that +there "can be no church without a bishop." This is perhaps a question +for experts; but Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, and John Cotton would +have sided with Rufus Choate. The awe which had once been paid to the +Establishment was transferred, in the seventeenth-century New England, +to the minister. The minister imposed himself upon the popular +imagination, partly through sheer force of personal ascendency, and +partly as a symbol of the theocracy,--the actual governing of the +Commonwealth by the laws and spirit of the sterner Scriptures. The +minister dwelt apart as upon an awful Sinai. It was no mere romantic +fancy of Hawthorne that shadowed his countenance with a black veil. The +church organization, too,--though it may have lacked its bishop,--had a +despotic power over its communicants; to be cast out of its fellowship +involved social and political consequences comparable to those +following excommunication by the Church of Rome. Hawthorne and Whittier +and Longfellow--all of them sound antiquarians, though none of them in +sympathy with the theology of Puritanism--have described in fit terms +the bareness of the New England meeting-house. What intellectual +severity and strain was there; what prodigality of learning; what +blazing intensity of devotion; what pathos of women's patience, and of +children, prematurely old, stretched upon the rack of insoluble +problems! What dramas of the soul were played through to the end in +those barn-like buildings, where the musket, perhaps, stood in the +corner of the pew! "How aweful is this place!" must have been murmured +by the lips of all; though there were many who have added, "This is the +gate of Heaven." + +The gentler side of colonial religion is winningly portrayed in +Whittier's _Pennsylvania Pilgrim_ and in his imaginary journal of +Margaret Smith. There were sunnier slopes, warmer exposures for the +ripening of the human spirit, in the Southern colonies. Even in New +England there was sporadic revolt from the beginning. The number of +non-church-members increased rapidly after 1700; Franklin as a youth in +Boston admired Cotton Mather's ability, but he did not go to church, +"Sunday being my studying day." Doubtless there were always humorous +sceptics like Mrs. Stowe's delightful Sam Lawson in _Oldtown Folks_. +Lawson's comment on Parson Simpson's service epitomizes two centuries +of New England thinking. "Wal," said Sam, "Parson Simpson's a smart +man; but I tell ye, it's kind o' discouragin'. Why, he said our state +and condition by natur was just like this. We was clear down in a well +fifty feet deep, and the sides all round nothin' but glare ice; but we +was under immediate obligations to get out, 'cause we was free, +voluntary agents. But nobody ever had got out, and nobody would, unless +the Lord reached down and took 'em. And whether he would or not nobody +could tell; it was all sovereignty. He said there wan't one in a +hundred, not one in a thousand,--not one in ten thousand,--that would +be saved. Lordy massy, says I to myself, ef that's so they're any of +'em welcome to my chance. _And so I kind o' ris up and come out._" + +Mrs. Stowe's novel is fairly representative of a great mass of +derivative literature which draws its materials from the meeting-house +period of American history. But the direct literature of that period +has passed almost wholly into oblivion. Jonathan Edwards had one of the +finest minds of his century; no European standard of comparison is too +high for him; he belongs with Pascal, with Augustine, if you like, with +Dante. But his great treatises written in the Stockbridge woods are +known only to a few technical students of philosophy. One terrible +sermon, preached at Enfield in 1741, is still read by the curious; but +scarcely anybody knows of the ineffable tenderness, dignity, and pathos +of his farewell sermon to his flock at Northampton: and the Yale +Library possesses nearly twelve hundred of Edwards's sermons which have +never been printed at all. Nor does anybody, save here and there an +antiquarian, read Shepard and Hooker and Mayhew. And yet these +preachers and their successors furnished the emotional equivalents of +great prose and verse to generations of men. "That is poetry," says +Professor Saintsbury (in a dangerous latitudinarianism, perhaps!), +"which gives the reader the feeling of poetry." Here we touch one of +the fundamental characteristics of our national state of mind, in its +relation to literature. We are careless of form and type, yet we crave +the emotional stimulus. Milton, greatest of Puritan poets, was read and +quoted all too seldom in the Puritan colonies, and yet those colonists +were no strangers to the emotions of sublimity and awe and beauty. They +found them in the meeting-house instead of in a book; precisely as, in +a later day, millions of Americans experienced what was for them the +emotional equivalent of poetry in the sermons of Henry Ward Beecher and +Phillips Brooks. French pulpit oratory of the seventeenth century wins +recognition as a distinct type of literature; its great practitioners, +like Massillon, Bourdaloue, Bossuet, are appraised in all the histories +of the national literature and in books devoted to the evolution of +literary species. In the American colonies the great preachers +performed the functions of men of letters without knowing it. They have +been treated with too scant respect in the histories of American +literature. It is one of the penalties of Protestantism that the +audiences, after a while, outgrow the preacher. The development of the +historic sense, of criticism, of science, makes an impassable gulf +between Jonathan Edwards and the American churches of the twentieth +century. A sense of profound changes in theology has left our +contemporaries indifferent to the literature in which the old theology +was clothed. + +There is one department of American literary production, of which +Bossuet's famous sermon on Queen Henrietta Maria of England may serve +to remind us, which illustrates significantly the national idealism. I +mean the commemorative oration. The addresses upon the Pilgrim Fathers +by such orators as Everett, Webster, and Choate; the countless orations +before such organizations as the New England Society of New York and +the Phi Beta Kappa; the papers read before historical and patriotic +societies; the birthday and centenary discourses upon national figures +like Washington or Lincoln, have all performed, and are still +performing, an inestimable service in stimulating popular loyalty to +the idealism of the fathers. As literature, most of this production is +derivative: we listen to eloquence about the Puritans, but we do not +read the Puritans; the description of Arthur Dimmesdale's election +sermon in _The Scarlet Letter_, moving as it may be, tempts no one to +open the stout collections of election sermons in the libraries. Yet +the original literature of mediaeval chivalry is known only to a few +scholars: Tennyson's _Idylls_ outsell the _Mabinogion_ and Malory. The +actual world of literature is always shop-worn; a world chiefly of +second-hand books, of warmed-over emotions and it is not surprising +that many listeners to orations about Lincoln do not personally emulate +Lincoln, and that many of the most enthusiastic dealers in the +sentiment of the ancestral meeting-house do not themselves attend +church. + +The other ingredients of John Adams's ideal Commonwealth are no less +significant of our national disposition. Take the school-house. It was +planted in the wilderness for the training of boys and girls and for a +future "godly and learned ministry." The record of American education +is a long story of idealism which has touched literature at every turn. +The "red school-house" on the hill-top or at the cross-roads, the +"log-colleges" in forgotten hamlets, the universities founded by great +states, are all a record of the American faith--which has sometimes +been called a fetich--in education. In its origin, it was a part of the +essential programme of Calvinism to make a man able to judge for +himself upon the most momentous questions; a programme, too, of that +political democracy which lay embedded in the tenets of Calvinism, a +democracy which believes and must continue to believe that an educated +electorate can safeguard its own interests and train up its own +leaders. The poetry of the American school-house was written long ago +by Whittier, in describing Joshua Coffin's school under the big elm on +the cross-road in East Haverhill; its humor and pathos and drama have +been portrayed by innumerable story-writers and essayists. Mrs. Martha +Baker Dunn's charming sketches, entitled "Cicero in Maine" and "Virgil +in Maine," indicate the idealism once taught in the old rural +academies,--and it is taught there still. City men will stop wistfully +on the street, in the first week of September, to watch the boys and +girls go trudging off to their first day of school; men who believe in +nothing else at least believe in that! And school and college and +university remain, as in the beginning, the first garden-ground and the +last refuge of literature. + +That "town-meeting" which John Adams thought Virginia might do well to +adopt has likewise become a symbol of American idealism. Together with +the training-day, it represented the rights and duties and privileges +of free men; the machinery of self-government. It was democracy, rather +than "representative" government, under its purest aspect. Sentiments +of responsibility to the town, the political unit, and to the +Commonwealth, the group of units, were bred there. Likewise, it was a +training-school for sententious speech and weighty action; its roots, +as historians love to demonstrate, run back very far; and though the +modern drift to cities has made its machinery ineffective in the larger +communities, it remains a perpetual spring or feeding stream to the +broader currents of our national life. Without an understanding of the +town-meeting and its equivalents, our political literature loses much +of its significance. Like the school-house and meeting-house, it has +become glorified by our men of letters. John Fiske and other historians +have celebrated it in some of the most brilliant pages of our political +writing; and that citizen literature, so deeply characteristic of us, +found in the plain, forthright, and public-spirited tone of +town-meeting discussions its keynote. The spectacular debates of our +national history, the dramatic contests in the great arena of the +Senate Chamber, the discussions before huge popular audiences in the +West, have maintained the civic point of view, have developed and +dignified and enriched the prose style first employed by American +freemen in deciding their local affairs in the presence of their +neighbors. "I am a part of this people," said Lincoln proudly in one of +his famous debates of 1858; "I was raised just a little east of here"; +and this nearness to the audience, this directness and simplicity and +genuineness of our best political literature, its homely persuasiveness +and force, is an inheritance of the town-meeting. + +Bible and meeting-house, school-house and town-meeting, thus illustrate +concretely the responsiveness of the American character to idealistic +impulses. They are external symbols of a certain state of mind. It may +indeed be urged that they are primarily signs of a moral and social or +institutional trend, and are therefore non-literary evidence of +American idealism. Nevertheless, institutional as they may be deemed, +they lie close to that poetry of daily duty in which our literature has +not been poor. They are fundamentally related to that attitude of mind, +that habitual temper of the spirit, which has produced, in all +countries of settled use and wont, the literature of idealism. +Brunetiere said of Flaubert's most famous woman character that poor +Emma Bovary, the prey and the victim of Romantic desires, was after all +much like the rest of us except that she lacked the intelligence to +perceive the charm and poetry of the daily task. We have already +touched upon the purely romantic side of American energy and of +American imagination, and we must shortly look more closely still at +those impulses of daring, those moods of heightened feeling, that +intensified individualism, the quest of strangeness and terror and +wild beauty, which characterize our romantic writing. But this +romanticism is, as it were, a segment of the larger circle of idealism. +It is idealism accentuated by certain factors, driven to +self-expression by the passions of scorn or of desire; it exceeds, in +one way or another, the normal range of experience and emotion. Our +romantic American literature is doubtless our greatest. And yet some of +the most characteristic tendencies of American writing are to be found +in the poetry of daily experience, in the quiet accustomed light that +falls upon one's own doorway and garden, in the immemorial charm of +going forth to one's labor and returning in the evening,--poetry old as +the world. + + * * * * * + +Let us see how this glow of idealism touches some of the more intimate +aspects of human experience. "Out of the three Reverences," says +Wilhelm Meister, "springs the highest Reverence, Reverence for +Oneself." Open the pages of Hawthorne. Moving wholly within the +framework of established institutions, with no desire to shatter the +existing scheme of social order, choosing as its heroes men of the +meeting-house, town-meeting, and training-day, how intensely +nevertheless does the imagination of this fiction-writer illuminate the +Body and the Soul! + +Take first the Body. The inheritance of English Puritanism may be +traced throughout our American writing, in its reverence for physical +purity. The result is something unique in literary history. Continental +critics, while recognizing the intellectual and artistic powers +revealed in _The Scarlet Letter_, have seldom realized the awfulness, +to the Puritan mind, of the very thought of an adulterous minister. +That a priest in southern Europe should break his vows is indeed +scandalous; but the sin is regarded as a failure of the natural man to +keep a vow requiring supernatural grace for its fulfilment; it may be +that the priest had no vocation for his sacred office; he is unfrocked, +punished, forgotten, yet a certain mantle of human charity still covers +his offence. But in the Puritan scheme (and _The Scarlet Letter_, save +for that one treacherous, warm human moment in the woodland where "all +was spoken," lies wholly within the set framework of Puritanism) there +is no forgiveness for a sin of the flesh. There is only Law, Law +stretching on into infinitude until the mind shudders at it. Hawthorne +knew his Protestant New England through and through. _The Scarlet +Letter_ is the most striking example in our national literature of that +idealization of physical purity, but hundreds of other romances and +poems, less morbid if less great, assert in unmistakable terms the same +moral conviction, the same ideal. + +Yet, in spite of its theme, there was never a less adulterous novel +than this book which plays so artistically with the letter A. The body +is branded, is consumed, is at last, perhaps, transfigured by the +intense rays of light emitted from the suffering soul. + + "The soul is form and doth the body make." + +In this intense preoccupation with the Soul, Hawthorne's romance is in +unison with the more mystical and spiritual utterances of Catholicism +as well as of Protestantism. It was in part a resultant of that early +American isolation which contributed so effectively to the artistic +setting of _The Scarlet Letter_. But in his doctrine of spiritual +integrity, in the agonized utterance, "Be true--be true!" as well as +in his reverence for purity of the body, our greatest romancer was +typical of the imaginative literature of his countrymen. The restless +artistic experiments of Poe presented the human body in many a ghastly +and terrifying aspect of illness and decay, and distorted by all +passions save one. His imagination was singularly sexless. Pathological +students have pointed out the relation between this characteristic of +Poe's writing, and his known tendencies toward opium-eating, +alcoholism, and tuberculosis. But no such explanation is at hand to +elucidate the absence of sexual passion from the novels of the +masculine-minded Fenimore Cooper. One may say, indeed, that Cooper's +novels, like Scott's, lack intensity of spiritual vision; that their +tone is consonant with the views of a sound Church of England parson in +the eighteenth century; and that the absence of physical passion, like +the absence of purely spiritual insight, betrays a certain defect in +Cooper's imaginative grasp and depth. But it is better criticism, after +all, to remember that these three pioneers in American fiction-writing +were composing for an audience in which Puritan traditions or tastes +were predominant. Not one of the three men but would have instantly +sacrificed an artistic effect, legitimate in the eyes of Fielding or +Goethe or Balzac, rather than--in the phrase so often satirized--"bring +a blush to the cheek of innocence." In other words, the presence of a +specific audience, accustomed to certain Anglo-Saxon and Puritanic +restraint of topic and of speech, has from the beginning of our +imaginative literature cooperated with the instinct of our writers. +That Victorian reticence which is so plainly seen even in such +full-bodied writers as Dickens or Thackeray--a reticence which men like +Mr. Bernard Shaw and Mr. Galsworthy and Mr. Wells think so hypocritical +and dangerous to society and which they have certainly done their +utmost to abolish--has hitherto dominated our American writing. The +contemporary influence of great Continental writers to whom reticence +is unknown, combined with the influence of a contemporary opera and +drama to which reticence would be unprofitable, are now assaulting this +dominant convention. Very possibly it is doomed. But it is only within +recent years that its rule has been questioned. + +One result of it may, I think, be fairly admitted. While very few +writers of eminence, after all, in any country, wish to bring a "blush +to the cheek of innocence," they naturally wish, as Thackeray put it in +one of the best-known of his utterances, to be permitted to depict a +man to the utmost of their power. American literary conventions, like +English conventions, have now and again laid a restraining and +compelling hand upon the legitimate exercise of this artistic instinct; +and this fact has cooperated with many social, ethical, and perhaps +physiological causes to produce a thinness or bloodlessness in our +books. They are graceful, pleasing, but pale, like one of those cool +whitish uncertain skies of an American spring. They lack "body," like +certain wines. It is not often that we can produce a real Burgundy. We +have had many distinguished fiction-writers, but none with the physical +gusto of a Fielding, a Smollett, or even a Dickens, who, idealist and +romanticist as he was, and Victorian as were his artistic preferences, +has this animal life which tingles upon every page. We must confess +that there is a certain quality of American idealism which is covertly +suspicious or openly hostile to the glories of bodily sensation. +Emerson's thin high shoulders peep up reproachfully above the desk; +Lanier is playing his reproachful flute; Longfellow reads Fremont's +Rocky Mountain experiences while lying abed, and sighs "But, ah, the +discomforts!"; Irving's _Astoria_, superb as were the possibilities of +its physical background, tastes like parlor exploration. Even Dana's +_Before the Mast_ and Parkman's _Oregon Trail_, transcripts of robust +actual experience, and admirable books, reveal a sort of physical +paleness compared with Turgenieff's _Notes of a Sportsman_ and +Tolstoi's _Sketches_ of Sebastopol and the Crimea. They are Harvard +undergraduate writing, after all! + +These facts illustrate anew that standing temptation of the critic of +American literature to palliate literary shortcomings by the plea that +we possess certain admirable non-literary qualities. The dominant +idealism of the nation has levied, or seemed to levy, a certain tax +upon our writing. Some instincts, natural to the full-blooded utterance +of Continental literature, have been starved or eliminated here. Very +well. The characteristic American retort to this assertion would be: +Better our long record and habit of idealism than a few masterpieces +more or less. As a people, we have cheerfully accepted the Puritan +restraint of speech, we have respected the shamefaced conventions of +decent and social utterance. Like the men and women described in +Locker-Lampson's verses, Americans + + "eat, and drink, and scheme, and plod,-- + They go to church on Sunday; + And many are afraid of God-- + And more of Mrs. Grundy." + +Now Mrs. Grundy is assuredly not the most desirable of literary +divinities, but the student of classical literature can easily think of +other divinities, celebrated in exquisite Greek and Roman verse, who +are distinctly less desirable still. + +"Not passion, but sentiment," said Hawthorne, in a familiar passage of +criticism of his own _Twice-Told Tales_. How often must the student of +American literature echo that half-melancholy but just verdict, as he +surveys the transition from the spiritual intensity of a few of our +earlier writers to the sentimental qualities which have brought popular +recognition to the many. Take the word "soul" itself. Calvinism +shadowed and darkened the meaning, perhaps, and yet its spiritual +passion made the word "soul" sublime. The reaction against Calvinism +has made religion more human, natural, and possibly more Christlike, +but "soul" has lost the thrilling solemnity with which Edwards +pronounced the word. Emerson and Hawthorne, far as they had escaped +from the bonds of their ancestral religion, still utter the word "soul" +with awe. But in the popular sermon and hymn and story of our +day,--with their search after the sympathetic and the sentimental, +after what is called in magazine slang "heart-interest,"--the word has +lost both its intellectual distinction and its literary magic. It will +regain neither until it is pronounced once more with spiritual passion. + +But in literature, as in other things, we must take what we can get. +The great mass of our American writing is sentimental, because it has +been produced by, and for, an excessively sentimental people. The poems +in Stedman's carefully chosen _Anthology_, the prose and verse in the +two volume Stedman-Hutchinson collection of American Literature, the +Library of Southern Literature, and similar sectional anthologies, the +school Readers and Speakers,--particularly in the half-century between +1830 and 1880,--our newspapers and magazines,--particularly the +so-called "yellow" newspapers and the illustrated magazines typified by +_Harper's Monthly_,--are all fairly dripping with sentiment. American +oratory is notoriously the most sentimental oratory of the civilized +world. The _Congressional Record_ still presents such specimens of +sentiment--delivered or given leave to be printed, it is true, for +"home consumption" rather than to affect the course of legislation--as +are inexplicable to an Englishman or a Frenchman or an Italian. + +Immigrants as we all are, and migratory as we have ever been,--so much +so that one rarely meets an American who was born in the house built by +his grandfather,--we cling with peculiar fondness to the sentiment of +"Home." The best-known American poem, for decades, was Samuel +Woodworth's "Old Oaken Bucket," the favorite popular song was Stephen +Foster's "My Old Kentucky Home," the favorite play was Denman +Thompson's "Old Homestead." Without that appealing word "mother" the +American melodrama would be robbed of its fifth act. Without pictures +of "the child" the illustrated magazines would go into bankruptcy. No +country has witnessed such a production of periodicals and books for +boys and girls: France and Germany imitate in vain _The Youth's +Companion_ and _St. Nicholas_, as they did the stories of "Oliver +Optic" and _Little Women_ and _Little Lord Fauntleroy_. + +The sentimental attitude towards women and children, which is one of +the most typical aspects of American idealism, is constantly +illustrated in our short stories. Bret Harte, disciple of Dickens as he +was, and Romantic as was his fashion of dressing up his miners and +gamblers, was accurately faithful to the American feeling towards the +"kid" and the "woman." "Tennessee's Partner," "The Luck of Roaring +Camp," "Christmas at Sandy Bar," are obvious examples. Owen Wister's +stories are equally faithful and admirable in this matter. The American +girl still does astonishing things in international novels, as she has +continued to do since the eighteen-sixties, but they are astonishing +mainly to the European eye and against the conventionalized European +background. She does the same things at home, and neither she nor her +mother sees why she should not, so universal among us is the chivalrous +interpretation of actions and situations which amaze the European +observer. The popular American literature which recognizes and +encourages this position of the "young girl" in our social structure is +a literature primarily of sentiment. The note of passion--in the +European sense of that word--jars and shatters it. The imported +"problem-play," written for an adult public in Paris or London, +introduces social facts and intellectual elements almost wholly alien +to the experience of American matinee audiences. Disillusioned +historians of our literature have instanced this unsophistication as a +proof of our national inexperience; yet it is often a sort of radiant +and triumphant unsophistication which does not lose its innocence in +parting with its ignorance. + +That sentimental idealization of classes, whether peasant, bourgeois, +or aristocratic, which has long been a feature of Continental and +English poetry and fiction, is practically absent from American +literature. Whatever the future may bring, there have hitherto been no +fixed classes in American society. Webster was guilty of no +exaggeration when he declared that the whole North was made up of +laborers, and Lincoln spoke in the same terms in his well-known +sentences about "hired laborers": "twenty-five years ago I was a hired +laborer." The relative uniformity of economic and social conditions, +which prevailed until toward the close of the nineteenth century, made, +no doubt, for the happiness of the greatest number, but it failed, +naturally, to afford that picturesqueness of class contrast and to +stimulate that sentiment of class distinction, in which European +literature is so rich. + +Very interesting, in the light of contemporary economic conditions, is +the effort made by American poets in the middle of the last century to +glorify labor. They were not so much idealizing a particular laboring +class, as endeavoring, in Whitman's words, "To teach the average man +the glory of his walk and trade." Whitman himself sketched the American +workman in almost every attitude which appealed to his own sense of the +picturesque and heroic. But years before _Leaves of Grass_ was +published, Whittier had celebrated in his _Songs of Labor_ the +glorified images of lumberman and drover, shoemaker and fisherman. Lucy +Larcom and the authors of _The Lowell Offering_ portrayed the fine +idealism of the young women--of the best American stock--who went +enthusiastically to work in the cotton-mills of Lowell and Lawrence, or +who bound shoes by their own firesides on the Essex County farms. That +glow of enthusiasm for labor was chiefly moral, but it was poetical as +well. The changes which have come over the economic and social life of +America are nowhere more sharply indicated than in that very valley of +the Merrimac where, sixty and seventy years ago, one could "hear +America singing." There are few who are singing to-day in the +cotton-mills; the operators, instead of girls from the hill-farms, are +Greeks, Lithuanians, Armenians, Italians. Whittier's drovers have gone +forever; the lumbermen and deep-sea fishermen have grown fewer, and the +men who still swing the axes and haul the frozen cod-lines are mostly +aliens. The pride that once broke into singing has turned harsh and +silent. "Labor" looms vast upon the future political and social +horizon, but the songs of labor have lost the lyric note. They have +turned into the dramas and tragedies of labor, as portrayed with the +swift and fierce insistence of the short story, illustrated by the +Kodak. In the great agricultural sections of the West and South the +old bucolic sentiment still survives,--that simple joy of seeing the +"frost upon the pumpkin" and "the fodder in the stock" which Mr. James +Whitcomb Riley has sung with such charming fidelity to the type. But +even on the Western farms toil has grown less manual. It is more a +matter of expert handling of machinery. Reaping and binding may still +have their poet, but he needs to be a Kipling rather than a Burns. + +Our literature, then, reveals few traces of idealization of a class, +and but little idealization of trades or callings. Neither class nor +calling presents anything permanent to the American imagination, or +stands for anything ultimate in American experience. On the other hand, +our writing is rich in local sentiment and sectional loyalty. The short +story, which has seized so greedily the more dramatic aspects of +American energy, has been equally true to the quiet background of rural +scenery and familiar ways. American idealism, as shown in the +transformation of the lesser loyalties of home and countryside into the +larger loyalties of state and section, and the absorption of these, in +turn, into the emotions of nationalism, is particularly illustrated in +our political verse. A striking example of the imaginative +visualization of the political units of a state is the spirited +roll-call of the counties in Whittier's "Massachusetts to Virginia." +But the burden of that fine poem, after all, is the essential unity of +Massachusetts as a sovereign state, girding herself to repel the attack +of another sovereign state, Virginia. Now the evolution of our +political history, both local and national, has tended steadily, for +half a century, to the obliteration, for purposes of the imagination, +of county lines within state lines. At the last Republican state +convention held in Massachusetts, there were no county banners +displayed, for the first time in half a century. Many a city-dweller +to-day cannot tell in what county he is living unless he has happened +to make a transfer of real estate. State lines themselves are fading +away. The federal idea has triumphed. Doubtless the majority of the +fellow citizens of John Randolph of Roanoke were all the more proud of +him because the poet could say of him, in writing an admiring and +mournful epitaph:-- + + "Beyond Virginia's border line + His patriotism perished." + +The great collections of Civil War verse, which are lying almost +unread in the libraries, are store-houses of this ancient state pride +and jealousy, which was absorbed so fatally into the larger sectional +antagonism. "Maryland, my Maryland" gave place to "Dixie," just as +Whittier's "Massachusetts to Virginia" was forgotten when marching men +began to sing "John Brown's Body" and "The Battle Hymn of the +Republic." The literature of sectionalism still lingers in its more +lovable aspect in the verse and fiction which still celebrates the +fairer side of the civilization of the Old South: its ideals of +chivalry and local loyalty, its gracious women and gallant men. Our +literature needs to cultivate this provincial affection for the past, +as an offset to the barren uniformity which the federal scheme allows. +But the ultimate imaginative victory, like the actual political victory +of the Civil War, is with the thought and feeling of Nationalism. It is +foreshadowed in that passionate lyric cry of Lowell, which sums up so +much and, like all true passion, anticipates so much:-- + + "O Beautiful! my Country!" + +The literary record of American idealism thus illustrates how deeply +the conception of Nationalism has affected the imagination of our +countrymen. The literary record of the American conception of liberty +runs further back. Some historians have allowed themselves to think +that the American notion of liberty is essentially declamatory, a sort +of futile echo of Patrick Henry's "Give me Liberty or give me Death"; +and not only declamatory, but hopelessly theoretical and abstract. They +grant that it was a trumpet-note, no doubt, for agitators against the +Stamp Act, and for pamphleteers like Thomas Paine; that it may have +been a torch for lighting dark and weary ways in the Revolutionary War; +but they believe it likewise to be a torch which gleams with the fire +caught from France and which was passed back to France in turn when her +own great bonfire was ready for lighting. The facts, however, are +inconsistent with this picturesque theory of contemporary reactionists. +It is true that the word "liberty" has been full of temptation for +generations of American orators, that it has become an idol of the +forum, and often a source of heat rather than of light. But to treat +American Liberty as if she habitually wore the red cap is to nourish a +Francophobia as absurd as Edmund Burke's. The sober truth is that the +American working theory of Liberty is singularly like St. Paul's. "Ye +have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to +the flesh." A few sentences from John Winthrop, written in 1645, are +significant: "There is a twofold liberty, natural ... and civil or +federal. The first is common to man with beasts and other creatures. By +this, man, as he stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty to do +what he lists; it is a liberty to evil as well as to good. This liberty +is incompatible and inconsistent with authority.... The other kind of +liberty I call civil or federal, it may also be termed moral.... This +liberty is the proper end and object of authority, and cannot subsist +without it; and it is a liberty to that only which is good, just, and +honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard (not only of +your goods, but) of your lives, if need be.... This liberty is +maintained and exercised in a way of subjection to authority; it is of +the same kind of liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free." + +There speaks the governor, the man of affairs, the typical citizen of +the future republic. The liberty to do as one pleases is a dream of +the Renaissance; but out of dreamland it does not work. Nobody, even in +revolutionary France, imagines that it will work. Jefferson, who is +popularly supposed to derive his notion of liberty from French +theorists, is to all practical purposes nearer to John Winthrop than he +is to Rousseau. The splendid phrases of his "Declaration" are sometimes +characterized as abstractions. They are really generalizations from +past political experience. An arbitrary king, assuming a liberty to do +as he liked, had encroached upon the long-standing customs and +authority of the colonists. Jefferson, at the bidding of the +Continental Congress, served notice of the royal trespass, and +incidentally produced (as Lincoln said) a "standard maxim for free +society." + +It is true, no doubt, that the word "liberty" became in Jefferson's +day, and later, a mere partisan or national shibboleth, standing for no +reality, degraded to a catchword, a symbol of antagonism to Great +Britain. In the political debates and the impressive prose and verse of +the anti-slavery struggle, the word became once more charged with vital +meaning; it glowed under the heat and pressure of an idea. Towards the +end of the nineteenth century it went temporarily out of fashion. The +late Colonel Higginson, an ideal type of what Europeans call an "1848" +man, attended at the close of the century some sessions of the American +Historical Association. In his own address, at the closing dinner, he +remarked that there was one word for which he had listened in vain +during the reading of the papers by the younger men. It was the word +"liberty." One of the younger school retorted promptly that since we +had the thing liberty, we had no need to glorify the word. But Colonel +Higginson, stanch adherent as he was of the "good old cause," was not +convinced. Like many another lover of American letters, he thought that +William Vaughn Moody's "Ode in Time of Hesitation" deserved a place by +the side of Lowell's "Commemoration Ode," and that when the ultimate +day of reckoning comes for the whole muddled Imperialistic business, +the standard of reckoning must be "liberty" as Winthrop and Jefferson +and Lincoln and Lowell and Vaughn Moody understood the word. + +In the mean time we must confess that the history of our literature, +with a few noble exceptions, shows a surprising defect in the passion +for freedom. Tennyson's famous lines about "Freedom broadening slowly +down from precedent to precedent" are perfectly American in their +conservative tone; while it is Englishmen like Byron and Landor and +Shelley and Swinburne who have written the most magnificent republican +poetry. The "land of the free" turns to the monarchic mother country, +after all, for the glow and thunder and splendor of the poetry of +freedom. It is one of the most curious phenomena in the history of +literature. Shall we enter the preoccupation plea once more? Enjoying +the thing liberty, have we been therefore less concerned with the idea? +Or is it simply another illustration of the defective passion of +American literature? + +Yet there is one phase of political loyalty which has been cherished by +the imagination of Americans, and which has inspired noteworthy oratory +and noble political prose. It is the sentiment of Union. In one sense, +of course, this dates back to the period of Franklin's _bon mot_ about +our all hanging together, or hanging separately. It is found in +Hamilton's pamphlets, in Paine's _Crisis_, in the _Federalist_, in +Washington's "Farewell Address." It is peculiarly associated with the +name and fame of Daniel Webster, and, to a less degree, with the career +of Henry Clay. In the stress of the debate over slavery, many a +Northerner with abolitionist convictions, like the majority of +Southerners with slave-holding convictions, forgot the splendid +peroration of Webster's "Reply to Hayne" and were willing to "let the +Union go." But in the four tragic and heroic years that followed the +firing upon the American flag at Fort Sumter the sentiment of Union was +made sacred by such sacrifices as the patriotic imagination of a Clay +or a Webster had never dreamed. A new literature resulted. A lofty +ideal of indissoluble Union was preached in pulpits, pleaded for in +editorials, sung in lyrics, and woven into the web of fiction. Edward +Everett Hale's _Man Without a Country_ became one of the most +poignantly moving of American stories. In Walt Whitman's _Drum-Taps_ +and his later poems, the "Union of these States" became transfigured +with mystical significance: no longer a mere political compact, +dissoluble at will, but a spiritual entity, a new incarnation of the +soul of man. + +We must deal later with that American instinct of fellowship which +Whitman believed to have been finally cemented by the Civil War, and +which has such import for the future of our democracy. There are +likewise communal loyalties, glowing with the new idealism which has +come with the twentieth century: ethical, municipal, industrial, and +artistic movements which are full of promise for the higher life of the +country, but which have not yet had time to express themselves +adequately in literature. There are stirrings of racial loyalty among +this and that element of our composite population,--as for instance +among the gifted younger generation of American Jews,--a racial loyalty +not antagonistic to the American current of ideas, but rather in full +unison with it. Internationalism itself furnishes motives for the +activity of the noblest imaginations, and the true literature of +internationalism has hardly yet begun. It is in the play and +counterplay of these new forces that the American literature of the +twentieth century must measure itself. Communal feelings novel to +Americans bred under the accepted individualism will doubtless assert +themselves in our prose and verse. But it is to be remembered that the +best writing thus far produced on American soil has been a result of +the old conditions: of the old "Reverences"; of the pioneer training of +mind and body; of the slow tempering of the American spirit into an +obstinate idealism. We do not know what course the ship may take in the +future, but + + "We know what Master laid thy keel, + What Workman wrought thy ribs of steel, + Who made each mast and sail and rope, + What anvil rang, what hammers beat, + In what a forge and what a heat + Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!" + + + + +IV + +Romance and Reaction + + +The characteristic attitude of the American mind, as we have seen, is +one of idealism. We may now venture to draw a smaller circle within +that larger circle of idealistic impulses, and to label the smaller +circle "romance." Here, too, as with the word "idealism," although we +are to make abundant use of literary illustrations of national +tendencies, we have no need of a severely technical definition of +terms. When we say, "Tom is an idealist" and "Lorenzo is a romantic +fellow," we convey at least one tolerably clear distinction between Tom +and Lorenzo. The idealist has a certain characteristic habit of mind or +inclination of spirit. When confronted by experience, he reacts in a +certain way. In his individual and social impulses, in the travail of +his soul, or in his commerce with his neighbors and the world, he +behaves in a more or less well-defined fashion. The romanticist, when +confronted by the same objects and experiences, exhibits another type +of behavior. Lorenzo, though he be Tom's brother, is a different +fellow; he is--in the opinion of his friends, at least--a rather more +peculiar person, a creature of more varying moods, of heightened +feelings, of stranger ways. Like Tom, he is a person of sentiment, but +his sentiment attaches itself, not so much to everyday aspects of +experience, as to that which is unusual or terrifying, lovely or far +away; he possesses, or would like to possess, bodily or spiritual +daring. He has the adventurous heart. He is of those who love to go +down to the sea in ships and do business in great waters. Lorenzo the +romanticist is made of no finer clay than Tom the idealist, but his +nerves are differently tuned. Your deep-sea fisherman, after all, is +only a fisherman at bottom. That is to say, he too is an idealist, but +he wants to catch different species of fish from those which drop into +the basket of the landsman. Precisely what he covets, perhaps he does +not know. I was once foolish enough to ask an old Alsatian soldier who +was patiently holding his rod over a most unpromising canal near +Strassburg, what kind of fish he was fishing for. "All kinds," was his +rebuking answer, and I took off my hat to the veteran romanticist. + +The words "romance" and "romanticism" have been repeated to the ears of +our generation with wearisome iteration. Not the least of the good luck +of Wordsworth and Coleridge lay in the fact that they scarcely knew +that they were "romanticists." Middle-aged readers of the present day +may congratulate themselves that in their youth they read Wordsworth +and Coleridge simply because it was Wordsworth and Coleridge and not +documents illustrating the history of the romantic movement. But the +rising generation is sophisticated. For better or worse it has been +taught to distinguish between the word "romance" on the one side, and +the word "romanticism" on the other. "Romantic" is a useful but +overworked adjective which attaches itself indiscriminately to both +"romance" and "romanticism." Professor Vaughan, for example, and a +hundred other writers, have pointed out that in the narrower and more +usual sense, the words "romance" and "romanticism" point to a love of +vivid coloring and strongly marked contrasts; to a craving for the +unfamiliar, the marvellous, and the supernatural. In the wider and +less definite sense, they signify a revolt from the purely intellectual +view of man's nature; a recognition of the instincts and the passions, +a vague intimation of sympathy between man and the world around +him,--in one word, the sense of mystery. The narrower and the broader +meanings pass into one another by imperceptible shades. They are +affected by the well-known historic conditions for romantic feeling in +the different European countries. The common factor, of course, is the +man with the romantic world set in his heart. It is Gautier with his +love of color, Victor Hugo enraptured with the sound of words, Heine +with his self-destroying romantic irony, Novalis with his blue flower, +and Maeterlinck with his _Blue Bird_. + +But these romantic men of letters, writing in epochs of romanticism, +are by no means the only children of romance. Sir Humphrey Gilbert and +Sir Walter Raleigh were as truly followers of "the gleam" as were +Spenser or Marlowe. The spirit of romance is found wherever and +whenever men say to themselves, as Don Quixote's niece said of her +uncle, that "they wish better bread than is made of wheat," or when +they look within their own hearts, and assert, as the poet Young said +in 1759, long before the English romantic movement had begun, "there is +more in the spirit of man than mere prose-reason can fathom." + +We are familiar, perhaps too remorsefully familiar, with the fact that +romance is likely to run a certain course in the individual and then to +disappear. Looking back upon it afterward, it resembles the upward and +downward zigzag of a fever chart. It has in fact often been described +as a measles, a disease of which no one can be particularly proud, +although he may have no reason to blush for it. Southey said that he +was no more ashamed of having been a republican than of having been a +boy. Well, people catch Byronism, and get over it, much as Southey got +over his republicanism. In fact Byron himself lived long enough--though +he died at thirty-six--to outgrow his purely "Byronic" phase, and to +smile at it as knowingly as we do. Coleridge's blossoming period as a +romantic poet was tragically brief. Keats and Shelley had the good +fortune to die in the fulness of their romantic glory. They did not +outlive their own poetic sense of the wonder and mystery of the world. +Yet many an old poet like Tennyson and Browning has preserved his +romance to the end. Tennyson dies at eighty-three with the full +moonlight streaming through the oriel window upon his bed, and with his +fingers clasping Shakespeare's _Cymbeline_. + +With most of us commonplace persons, however, a reaction from the +romantic is almost inevitable. The romantic temperament cannot long +keep the pitch. Poe could indeed do it, although he hovered at times +near the border of insanity. Hawthorne went for relief to his profane +sea-captains and the carnal-minded superannuated employees of the Salem +Custom House. "The weary weight of all this unintelligible world" +presses too hard on most of those who stop to think about it. The +simplest way of relief is to shrug one's shoulders and let the weight +go. That is to say, we cease being poets, we are no longer the children +of romance, although we may remain idealists. Perhaps it is external +events that change, rather than we ourselves. The restoration of the +Bourbons, the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, make and unmake romantics. +Often society catches up with the romanticist; he is no longer a +soldier of revolt; he has become a "respectable." Or, while remaining a +poet, he shifts his attention to some more familiar segment of the +idealistic circle. He sings about his wife instead of the wife of +somebody else. Like Wordsworth, he takes for his theme a Mary +Hutchinson instead of the unknown and hauntingly alluring figure of +Lucy. To put it differently, the high light, the mysterious color of +dawn or sunset disappears from his picture of human life. Or, the high +light may be diffused in a more tranquil radiance over the whole +surface of experience. Such an artist may remain a true painter or +poet, but he is not a romantic poet or painter any longer. He has, like +the aging Emerson, taken in sail; the god Terminus has said to him, "no +more." + +One must of course admit that the typical romanticist has often been +characterized by certain intellectual and moral weaknesses. But the +great romance men, like Edmund Spenser, for example, may not possess +these weaknesses at all. Robert Louis Stevenson was passionately in +love with the romantic in life and with romanticism in literature; but +it did not make him eccentric, weak, or empty. His instinct for +enduring romance was so admirably fine that it brought strength to the +sinews of his mind, light and air and fire to his soul. Among the +writers of our own day, it is Mr. Kipling who has written some of the +keenest satire upon romantic foibles, while never ceasing to salute his +real mistress, the true romance. + + "Who wast, or yet the Lights were set, + A whisper in the void, + Who shalt be sung through planets young + When this is clean destroyed." + +What are the causes of American romance, the circumstances and +qualities that have produced the romantic element in American life and +character? Precisely as with the individual artist or man of letters, +we touch first of all upon certain temperamental inclinations. It is a +question again of the national mind, of the differentiation of the race +under new climatic and physical conditions. We have to reckon with the +headiness and excitability of youth. It was young men who emigrated +hither, just as in the eighteen-sixties it was young men who filled the +Northern and the Southern armies. The first generations of American +immigration were made up chiefly of vigorous, imaginative, and daring +youth. The incapables came later. It is, I think, safe to assert that +the colonists of English stock, even as late as 1790,--when more than +ninety per cent of the population of America had in their veins the +blood of the British Isles,--were more responsive to romantic impulses +than their English cousins. For that matter, an Irishman or a Welshman +is more romantic than an Englishman to-day. + +From the very beginning of the American settlements, likewise, there +were evidences of the weaker, the over-excitable side of the romantic +temper. There were volatile men like Morton of Merrymount; there were +queer women like Anne Hutchinson, admirable woman as she was; among the +wives of the colonists there were plenty of Emily Dickinsons in the +germ. Among the men, there were schemes that came to nothing. There +were prototypes of Colonel Sellers; a temperamental tendency toward +that recklessness and extravagance which later historical conditions +stimulated and confirmed. The more completely one studies the history +of our forefathers on American soil, the more deeply does one become +conscious of the prevailing atmosphere of emotionalism. + +Furthermore, as one examines the historic conditions under which the +spirit of American romance has been preserved and heightened from time +to time, one becomes aware that although ours is rather a romance of +wonder than of beauty, the spirit of beauty is also to be found. The +first fervors of the romance of discovery were childlike in their +eagerness. Hakluyt's _Voyages_, John Smith's _True Relation of +Virginia_, Thomas Morton's _New England's Canaan_, all appeal to the +sense of the marvellous. + +Listen to Morton's description of Cape Ann. I can never read it without +thinking of Botticelli's picture of Spring, so naively does this +picturesque rascal suffuse his landscape with the feeling for beauty:-- + + "In the Moneth of June, Anno Salutis 1622, it was my chaunce + to arrive in the parts of New England with 30. Servants, and + provision of all sorts fit for a plantation: and whiles our + howses were building, I did indeavour to take a survey of + the Country: The more I looked, the more I liked it. And + when I had more seriously considered of the bewty of the + place, with all her faire indowments, I did not thinke that + in all the knowne world it could be paralel'd, for so many + goodly groves of trees, dainty fine round rising hillucks, + delicate faire large plaines, sweete cristall fountaines, + and cleare running streames that twine in fine meanders + through the meads, making so sweete a murmering noise to + heare as would even lull the sences with delight a sleepe, + so pleasantly doe they glide upon the pebble stones, jetting + most jocundly where they doe meete and hand in hand runne + downe to Neptunes Court, to pay the yearely tribute which + they owe to him as soveraigne Lord of all the springs. + Contained within the volume of the Land, Fowles in + abundance, Fish in multitude; and discovered, besides, + Millions of Turtledoves on the greene boughes, which sate + pecking of the full ripe pleasant grapes that were supported + by the lusty trees, whose fruitful loade did cause the armes + to bend: while here and there dispersed, you might see + Lillies and the Daphnean-tree: which made the Land to mee + seeme paradice: for in mine eie t'was Natures Masterpeece; + Her cheifest Magazine of all where lives her store: if this + Land be not rich, then is the whole world poore." + +This is the Morton who, a few years later, settled at Merrymount. Let +me condense the story of his settlement, from the narrative of the +stout-hearted Governor William Bradford's _History of Plymouth +Plantation_:-- + + "And Morton became lord of misrule, and maintained (as it + were) a schoole of Athisme. And after they had gott some good + into their hands, and gott much by trading with the Indeans, + they spent it as vainly, in quaffing & drinking both wine & + strong waters in great exsess, and, as some reported 10L. + worth in a morning. They allso set up a May-pole, drinking + and dancing aboute it many days togeather, inviting the + Indean women, for their consorts, dancing and frisking + togither, (like so many fairies, or furies rather,) and worse + practises. As if they had anew revived & celebrated the + feasts of the Roman Goddes Flora, or the beasly practieses of + the madd Bacchinalians. Morton likewise (to shew his poetrie) + composed sundry rimes & verses, some tending to + lasciviousnes, and others to the detraction & scandall of + some persons, which he affixed to this idle or idoll + May-polle. They chainged allso the name of their place, and + in stead of calling it Mounte Wollaston, they call it + Merie-mounte, as if this joylity would have lasted ever." + +But it did not last long. Bradford and other leaders of the plantations +"agreed by mutual consent" to "suppress Morton and his consorts." "In a +friendly and neighborly way" they admonished him. "Insolently he +persisted." "Upon which they saw there was no way but to take him by +force." "So they mutually resolved to proceed," and sent Captain +Standish to summon him to yield. But, says Bradford, Morton and some of +his crew came out, not to yield, but to shoot; all of them rather +drunk; Morton himself, with a carbine almost half filled with powder +and shot, had thought to have shot Captain Standish, "_but he stepped +to him and put by his piece and took him_." + +It is not too fanciful to say that with those stern words of Governor +Bradford the English Renaissance came to an end. The dream of a lawless +liberty which has been dreamed and dreamed out so many times in the +history of the world was over, for many a day. It was only a hundred +years earlier that Rabelais had written over the doors of his ideal +abbey, the motto "Do what thou wilt." It is true that Rabelais proposed +to admit to his Abbey of Theleme only such men and women as were +virtuously inclined. We do not know how many persons would have been +able and willing to go into residence there. At any rate, two hundred +years went by in New England after the fall of Morton before any +notable spirit dared to cherish once more the old Renaissance ideal. At +last, in Emerson's doctrine that all things are lawful because Nature +is good and human nature is divine, we have a curious parallel to the +doctrine of Rabelais. It was the old romance of human will under a new +form and voiced in new accents. Yet in due time the hard facts of human +nature reasserted themselves and put this romantic transcendentalism +by, even as the implacable Myles Standish put by that heavily loaded +fowling-piece of the drunken Morton. + +But men believed in miracles in the first century of colonization, and +they will continue at intervals to believe in them until human nature +is no more. The marvellous happenings recorded in Cotton Mather's +_Magnalia_ no longer excite us to any "suspension of disbelief." We +doubt the story of Pocahontas. The fresh romantic enthusiasm of a +settler like Crevecoeur seems curiously juvenile to-day, as does the +romantic curiosity of Chateaubriand concerning the Mississippi and the +Choctaws, or the zeal of Wordsworth and Coleridge over their dream of a +"panti-Socratic" community in the unknown valley of the +musically-sounding Susquehanna. Inexperience is a perpetual feeder of +the springs of romance. John Wesley, it will be remembered, went out to +the colony of Georgia full of enthusiasm for converting the Indians; +but as he naively remarks in his _Journal_, he "neither found or heard +of any Indians on the continent of America, who had the least desire of +being instructed." The sense of fact, in other words, supervenes, and +the glory disappears from the face of romance. The humor of Mark +Twain's _Innocents Abroad_ turns largely upon this sense of remorseless +fact confronting romantic inexperience. + +American history, however, has been marked by certain great romantic +passions that seem endowed with indestructible vitality. The romance of +discovery, the fascination of the forest and sea, the sense of danger +and mystery once aroused by the very word "redskin," have all moulded +and will continue to mould the national imagination. How completely +the romance of discovery may be fused with the glow of humanitarian +and religious enthusiasm has been shown once for all in the brilliant +pages of Parkman's story of the Jesuit missions in Canada. Pictorial +romance can scarcely go further than this. In the crisis of +Chateaubriand's picturesque and passionate tale of the American +wilderness, no one can escape the thrilling, haunting sound of the bell +from the Jesuit chapel, as it tolls in the night and storm that were +fatal to the happiness of Atala. One scarcely need say that the romance +of missions has never faded from the American mind. I have known a +sober New England deacon aged eighty-five, who disliked to die because +he thought he should miss the monthly excitement of reading the +_Missionary Herald_. The deacon's eyes, like the eyes of many an old +sea-captain in Salem or Newburyport, were literally upon the ends of +the earth. No one can reckon how many starved souls, deprived of normal +outlet for human feeling, have found in this passionate curiosity and +concern for the souls of black and yellow men and women in the +antipodes, a constant source of beneficent excitement. + +Nor is there any diminution of interest in the mere romance of +adventure, in the stories of hunter and trapper, the journals of Lewis +and Clarke, the narratives of Boone and Crockett. In writing his superb +romances of the Northern Lakes, the prairie and the sea, Fenimore +Cooper had merely to bring to an artistic focus sentiments that lay +deep in the souls of the great mass of his American readers. Students +of our social life have pointed out again and again how deeply our +national temperament has been affected by the existence, during nearly +three hundred years, of an alien aboriginal race forever lurking upon +the borders of our civilization. "Playing Indian" has been immensely +significant, not merely in stimulating the outdoor activity of +generations of American boys, but in teaching them the perennial +importance of certain pioneer qualities of observation, +resourcefulness, courage, and endurance which date from the time when +the Indians were a daily and nightly menace. Even when the Indian has +been succeeded by the cowboy, the spirit of romance still lingers,--as +any collection of cowboy ballads will abundantly prove. And when the +cowboys pass, and the real-estate dealers take possession of the +field, one is tempted to say that romance flourishes more than ever. + +In short, things are what we make them at the moment, what we believe +them to be. In my grandfather's youth the West was in the neighborhood +of Port Byron, New York, and when he journeyed thither from +Massachusetts in the eighteen-twenties, the glory of adventure enfolded +him as completely as the boys of the preceding generation had been +glorified in the War of the Revolution, or the boys of the next +generation when they went gold-seeking in California in 1849. The West, +in short, means simply the retreating horizon, the beckoning finger of +opportunity. Like Boston, it has been not a place, but a "state of +mind." + + "We must go, go, go away from here, + On the other side the world we're overdue." + +That is the song which sings itself forever in the heart of youth. +Champlain and Cartier heard it in the sixteenth century, Bradford no +less than Morton in the seventeenth. Some Eldorado has always been +calling to the more adventurous spirits upon American soil. The +passion of the forty-niner neither began nor ended with the discovery +of gold in California. It is within us. It transmutes the harsh or +drab-colored everyday routine into tissue of fairyland. It makes our +"winning of the West" a magnificent national epic. It changes to-day +the black belt of Texas, or the wheat-fields of Dakota, into pots of +gold that lie at the end of rainbows, only that the pot of gold is +actually there. The human hunger of it all, the gorgeous dream-like +quality of it all, the boundlessness of the vast American spaces, the +sense of forest and prairie and sky, are all inexplicably blended with +our notion of the ideal America. Henry James once tried to explain the +difference between Turgenieff and a typical French novelist by saying +that the back door of the Russian's imagination was always open upon +the endless Russian steppe. No one can understand the spirit of +American romance if he is not conscious of this ever-present hinterland +in which our spirits have, from the beginning, taken refuge and found +solace. + +We have already noticed, in the chapter on idealism, how swiftly the +American imagination modifies the prosaic facts of everyday +experience. The idealistic glamour which falls upon the day's work +changes easily, in the more emotional temperaments, and at times, +indeed, in all of us, into the fervor of true romance. Then, the +prosaic buying and selling becomes the "game." A combination of buyers +and sellers becomes the "system." The place where these buyers and +sellers most do congregate and concentrate becomes "Wall Street"--a +sort of anthropomorphic monster which seems to buy and sell the bodies +and souls of men. Seen half a continent away, through the mists of +ignorance and prejudice and partisan passion, "Wall Street" has loomed +like some vast Gibraltar. To the broker's clerk who earns his weekly +salary in that street, the Nebraska notion of "Wall Street" is too +grotesque for discussion. + +How easily every phase of American business life may take on the hues +of romance is illustrated by the history of our railroads. No wonder +that Bret Harte wrote a poem about the meeting of the eastward and +westward facing engines when the two sections of the Union Pacific +Railroad at last drew near each other on the interminable plains and +the two engines could talk. Of course what they said was poetry. There +was a time when even the Erie Canal was poetic. The Panama Canal +to-day, in the eyes of most Americans, is something other than a mere +feat of engineering. We are doing more than making "the dirt fly." The +canal represents victory over hostile forces, conquest of unwilling +Nature, achievement of what had long been deemed impossible, the making +not of a ditch, but of History. + +So with all that American zest for camping, fishing, sailing, racing, +which lies deep in the Anglo-Saxon, and which succeeds to the more +primitive era of actual struggle against savage beasts or treacherous +men or mysterious forests. It is at once an outlet and a nursery for +romantic emotion. The out-of-doors movement which began with Thoreau's +hut on Walden Pond, and which has gone on broadening and deepening to +this hour, implies far more than mere variation from routine. It +furnishes, indeed, a healthful escape from the terrific pressure of +modern social and commercial exigencies. Yet its more important +function is to provide for grown-ups a chance to "play Indian" too. + +But outdoors and indoors, after all, lie in the heart and mind, rather +than in the realm of actual experience. The romantic imagination +insists upon taking its holiday, whether the man who possesses it gets +his holiday or not. I have never known a more truly romantic figure +than a certain tin-pedler in Connecticut who, in response to the +question, "Do you do a good business?" made this perfectly Stevensonian +reply: "Well, I make a living selling crockery and tinware, but my +_business_ is the propagation of truth." + +This wandering idealist may serve to remind us again of the difference +between romance and romanticism. The true romance is of the spirit. +Romanticism shifts and changes with external fortunes, with altering +emotions, with the alternate play of light and shade over the vast +landscape of human experience. The typical romanticist, as we have +seen, is a man of moods. It is only a Poe who can keep the pitch +through the whole concert of experience. But the deeper romance of the +spirit is oblivious of these changes of external fortune, this rising +or falling of the emotional temperature. The moral life of America +furnishes striking illustrations of the steadfastness with which +certain moral causes have been kept, as it were, in the focus of +intense feeling. Poetry, undefeated and unwavering poetry, has +transfigured such practical propaganda as the abolition of slavery, the +emancipation of woman, the fight against the liquor traffic, the +emancipation of the individual from the clutches of economic and +commercial despotism. Men like Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, +women like Julia Ward Howe, fought for these causes throughout their +lives. Colonel Higginson's attitude towards women was not merely +chivalric (for one may be chivalrous without any marked predisposition +to romance), but nobly romantic also. James Russell Lowell, poet as he +was, outlived that particular phase of romantic moral reform which he +had been taught by Maria White. But in other men and women bred in that +old New England of the eighteen-forties, the moral fervor knew no +restraint. Garrison, although in many respects a most unromantic +personality, was engaged in a task which gave him all the inspiration +of romance. A romantic "atmosphere," fully as highly colored as any of +the romantic atmospheres that we are accustomed to mark in literature, +surrounded as with a luminous mist the figures of the New England +transcendentalists. They, too, as Heine said of himself, were soldiers. +They felt themselves enlisted for a long but ultimately victorious +campaign. They were willing to pardon, in their comrades and in +themselves, those imaginative excesses which resemble the physical +excesses of a soldier's camp. Transcendentalism was thus a militant +philosophy and religion, with both a destructively critical and a +positively constructive creed. Channing, Parker, Alcott, Margaret +Fuller, were warrior-priests, poets and prophets of a gallant campaign +against inherited darkness and bigotry, and for the light. + +The atmosphere of that score of years in New England was now +superheated, now rarefied, thin, and cold; but it was never quite the +normal atmosphere of every day. On the purely literary side, it is +needless to say, these men and women sought inspiration in Coleridge +and Carlyle and other English and German romanticists. In fact, the +most enduring literature of New England between 1830 and 1865 was +distinctly a romantic literature. It was rooted, however, not so much +in those swift changes of historic condition, those startling +liberations of the human spirit which gave inspiration to the +romanticism of the Continent, as it was in the deep and vital fervor +with which these New Englanders envisaged the problems of the moral +life. + +Other illustrations of the American capacity for romance lie equally +close at hand. Take, for instance, the stout volume in which Mr. Burton +Stevenson has collected the _Poems of American History_. Here are +nearly seven hundred pages of closely printed patriotic verse. While +Stedman's _Anthology_ reveals no doubt national aspirations and +national sentiment, as well as the emotional fervor of individuals, Mr. +Stevenson's collection has the advantage of focussing this national +feeling upon specific events. Stedman's _Anthology_ is an enduring +document of American idealism, touching in the sincerity of its poetic +moods, pathetic in its long lists of men and women who are known by one +poem only, or who have never, for one reason or another, fulfilled +their poetic promise. The thousand poems which it contains are more +striking, in fact, for their promise than for their performance. They +are intimations of what American men and women would have liked to do +or to be. In this sense, it is a precious volume, but it is certainly +not commensurate, either in passion or in artistic perfection, with the +forces of that American life which it tries to interpret. Indeed, Mr. +Stedman, after finishing his task of compilation, remarked to more than +one of his friends that what this country needed was some "adult male +verse." + +The _Poems of American History_ collected by Mr. Stevenson are at least +vigorous and concrete. One aspect of our history which especially lends +itself to Mr. Stevenson's purpose is the romance which attaches itself +to war. It is scarcely necessary to say nowadays that all wars, even +the noblest, have had their sordid, grimy, selfish, bestial aspect; and +that the intelligence and conscience of our modern world are more and +more engaged in the task of making future wars impossible. But the +slightest acquaintance with American history reveals the immense +reservoir of romantic emotion which has been drawn upon in our national +struggles. War, of course, is an immemorial source of romantic feeling. +William James's notable essay on "A Moral Substitute for War" +endeavored to prove that our modern economic and social life, if +properly organized, would give abundant outlet and satisfaction to +those romantic impulses which formerly found their sole gratification +in battle. Many of us believe that he was right; but for the moment we +must look backward and not forward. We must remember the stern if rude +poetry inspired by our Revolutionary struggle, the romantic halo that +falls upon the youthful figure of Nathan Hale, the baleful light that +touches the pale face of Benedict Arnold, the romance of the Bennington +fight to the followers of Stark and Ethan Allen, the serene voice of +the "little captain," John Paul Jones:--"We have not struck, we have +just begun our part of the fighting." The colors of romance still drape +the Chesapeake and the Shannon, Tecumseh and Tippecanoe. The hunters of +Kentucky, the explorers of the Yellowstone and the Columbia, the +emigrants who left their bones along the old Santa Fe Trail, are our +Homeric men. + +The Mexican War affords pertinent illustration, not only of romance, +but of reaction. The earlier phases of the Texan struggle for +independence have much of the daring, the splendid rashness, the +glorious and tragic catastrophes of the great romantic adventures of +the Old World. It is not the Texans only who still "remember the +Alamo," but when those brilliant and dramatic adventures of border +warfare became drawn into the larger struggle for the extension of +slavery, the poetic reaction began. The physical and moral pretence of +warfare, the cheap splendors of epaulets and feathers, shrivelled at +the single touch of the satire of the _Biglow Papers_. Lowell, writing +at that moment with the instinct and fervor of a prophet, brought the +whole vainglorious business back to the simple issue of right and +wrong: + + "'Taint your eppyletts an' feathers + Make the thing a grain more right; + 'Taint afollerin' your bell-wethers + Will excuse ye in His sight; + Ef you take a sword an' dror it, + An' go stick a feller thru, + Guv'ment aint to answer for it, + God'll send the bill to you." + +But far more interesting is the revelation of the American capacity for +romance which was made possible by the war between the States. +Stevenson's _Poems of American History_ and Stedman's _Anthology_ give +abundant illustration of almost every aspect of that epical struggle. +The South was in a romantic mood from the very beginning. The North +drifted into it after Sumter. I have already said that no one can +examine a collection of Civil War verse without being profoundly moved +by its evidence of American idealism. In specific phases of the +struggle, in connection with certain battle-fields and certain leaders +of both North and South, this idealism is heightened into pure romance, +so that even our novelists feel that they can give no adequate picture +of the war without using the colors of poetry. Most critics, no doubt, +agree in feeling that we are still too near to that epoch-making crisis +of our national existence to do it any justice in the terms of +literature. Perhaps we must wait for the perfected romance of the years +1861-65, until the men and the events of that struggle are as remote as +the heroes of Greece and Troy. Certainly no one can pass a final +judgment upon the verse occasioned by recent struggles in arms. Any one +who has studied the English poetry inspired by the South-African War +will be painfully conscious of the emotional and moral complexity of +all such issues, of the bitter injustice which poets, as well as other +men, render to one another, of the impossibility of transmuting into +the pure gold of romance the emotions originating in the stock market, +in race-hatred, and in national vainglory. + +We have lingered too long, perhaps, over these various evidences of the +romantic temper of America. We must now glance at the forces of +reaction, the recoil to fact. What is it which contradicts, inhibits, +or negatives the romantic tendency? Among other forces, there is +certainly humor. Humor and romance often go hand in hand, but humor is +commonly fatal to romanticism. There is satire, which rebukes both +romanticism and romance, which exposes the fallacies of the one, and +punctures the exuberance of the other. More effective, perhaps, than +either humor or satire as an antiseptic against romance, is the +overmastering sense of fact. This is what Emerson called the instinct +for the milk in the pan, an instinct which Emerson himself possessed +extraordinarily on his purely Yankee side, and which a pioneer country +is forced continually to develop and to recognize. Camping, for +instance, develops both the romantic sense and the fact sense. Supper +must be cooked, even at Walden Pond. There must be hewers of wood and +drawers of water, and the dishes ought to be washed. + +On a higher plane, also, than this mere sense of physical necessity, +there are forces limiting the influence of romance. Schiller put it all +into one famous line:-- + + "Und was uns alle bandigt, das Gemeine." + +Or listen to Keats:-- + + "'T is best to remain aloof from people, and like their good + parts, without being eternally troubled with the dull process + of their everyday lives.... All I can say is that standing at + Charing Cross, and looking East, West, North and South, I can + see nothing but dullness." + +And Henry James, describing New York in his book, _The American Scene_, +speaks of "the overwhelming preponderance of the unmitigated +'business-man' face ... the consummate monotonous commonness of the +pushing male crowd, moving in its dense mass--with the confusion +carried to chaos for any intelligence, any perception; a welter of +objects and sounds in which relief, detachment, dignity, meaning, +perished utterly and lost all rights ... the universal _will to +move_--to move, move, move, as an end in itself, an appetite at any +price." + +One need not be a poet like Keats or an inveterate psychologist like +Henry James, in order to become aware how the commonplaceness of the +world rests like a fog upon the mind and heart. No one goes to his +day's work and comes home again without a consciousness of contact with +an unspiritual atmosphere, or incompletely spiritualized forces, not +merely with indifference, to what Emerson would term "the over-soul," +but with a lack of any faith in the things which are unseen. Take those +very forces which have limited the influence of Emerson throughout the +United States; they illustrate the universal forces which clip the +wings of romance. The obstacles in the path of Emerson's influence are +not merely the religious and denominational differences which Dr. +George A. Gordon portrayed in a notable article at the time of the +Emerson Centenary. The real obstacles are more serious. It is true +that Dr. Park of Andover, Dr. Bushnell of Hartford, and Dr. Hodge of +Princeton, could say in Emerson's lifetime: "We know a better, a more +Scriptural and certificated road toward the very things which Emerson +is seeking for. We do not grant that we are less idealistic than he. We +think him a dangerous guide, following wandering fires. It is better to +journey safely with us." + +But I have known at least two livery-stable keepers and many college +professors who would unite in saying: "Hodge and Park and Bushnell and +Emerson are all following after something that does not exist. One is +not much more mistaken than the others. We can get along perfectly well +in our business without any of those ideas at all. Let us stick to the +milk in the pan, the horse in the stall, the documents which you will +find in the library." + +There exists, in other words, in all classes of American society +to-day, just as there existed during the Revolution, during the +transcendental movement, or the Civil War, an immense mass of +unspiritualized, unvitalized American manhood and womanhood. No +literature comes from it and no religion, though there is much human +kindness, much material progress, and some indestructible residuum of +that idealism which lifts man above the brute. + +Yet the curious and the endlessly fascinating thing about these forces +of reaction is that they themselves shift and change. We have seen that +external romance depending upon strangeness of scene, novelty of +adventure, rich atmospheric distance of space or time, disappears with +the changes of civilization. The farm expands over the wolf's den, the +Indian becomes a blacksmith, but do the gross and material instincts +ultimately triumph? He would be a hardy prophet who should venture to +assert it. We must reckon always with the swing of the human pendulum, +with the reaction against reaction. Here, for example, during the last +decade, has been book after book written about the reaction against +democracy. All over the world, it is asserted, there are unmistakable +signs that democracy will not practically work in the face of the +modern tasks to which the world has set itself. One reads these books, +one persuades himself that the hour for democracy is passing, and then +one goes out on the street and buys a morning newspaper and discovers +that democracy has scored again. So is it with the experience of the +individual. You may fancy that the romance of the seas passes, for you, +with the passing of the square-sailed ship. If Mr. Kipling's poetry +cannot rouse you from that mood of reaction, walk down to the end of +the pier to-morrow and watch the ocean liner come up the harbor. If +there is no romance there, you do not know romance when you see it! + +Take the case of the farmer; his prosaic life is the butt of the +newspaper paragraphers from one end of the country to the other. But +does romance disappear from the farm with machinery and scientific +agriculture? There are farmers who follow Luther Burbank's experiments +with plants, with all the fascination which used to attach to alchemy +and astrology. The farmer has no longer Indians to fight or a +wilderness to subdue, but the soils of his farm are analyzed at his +state university by men who live in the daily atmosphere of the romance +of science, and who say, as a professor in the University of Chicago +said once, that "a flower is so wonderful that if you knew what was +going on within its cell-structure, you would be afraid to stay alone +with it in the dark." + +The reaction from romance, therefore, real as it is, and dead weight as +it lies upon the soul of the nation, often breeds the very forces which +destroy it. In other words, the reaction against one type of romance +produces inevitably another type of romance, other aspects of wonder, +terror, and beauty. Following the romance of adventure comes, after +never so deep a trough in the sea, the romance of science, like the +crest of another wave; and then comes what we call, for lack of a +better word, the psychological romance, the old mystery and strangeness +of the human soul, AEschylus and Job, as Victor Hugo says, in the poor +crawfish gatherer on the rocks of Brittany. + +We must remember that we are endeavoring to measure great spaces and to +take account of the "amplitude of time." The individual "fact-man," as +Coleridge called him, remains perhaps a fact-man to the end, just as +the dreamer may remain a dreamer. But no single generation is +compounded all of fact or all of dream. Longfellow felt, no doubt, that +there was an ideal United States, which Dickens did not discover +during that first visit of 1842; he would have set the Cambridge which +he knew over against the Cincinnati viewed by Mrs. Trollope; he would +have asserted that the homes characterized by refinement, by +cultivation, by pure and simple sentiment, made up the true America. +But even among Longfellow's own contemporaries there was Whitman, who +felt that the true America was something very different from that +exquisitely tempered ideal of Longfellow. There was Thoreau, who, over +in Concord, had been pushing forward the frontier of the mind and +senses, who had opened his back-yard gate, as it were, upon the +boundless and mysterious territory of Nature. There was Emerson, who +was preaching an intellectual independence of the Old World which +should correspond to the political and social independence of the +Western Hemisphere. There was Parkman, whose hatred of philanthropy, +whose lack of spirituality, is a striking illustration of the rebound +of New England idealism against itself, of the reaction into stoicism. +What different worlds these men lived in, and yet they were all +inhabitants, so to speak, of the same parish; most of them met often +around the same table! The lesson of their variety of experience and +differences of gifts as workmen in that great palace of literature +which is so variously built, is that no action and reaction in the +imaginative world is ever final. Least of all do these actions and +reactions affect the fortunes of true romance. The born dreamer may +fall from one dream into another, but he still murmurs, in the famous +line of William Ellery Channing,-- + + "If my bark sinks, 't is to another sea." + +No line in our literature is more truly American,--unless it be that +other splendid metaphor, by David Wasson, which says the same thing in +other words:-- + + "Life's gift outruns my fancies far, + And drowns the dream + In larger stream, + As morning drinks the morning-star." + + + + +V + +Humor and Satire + + +A distinguished professor in the Harvard Divinity School once began a +lecture on Comedy by saying that the study of the comic had made him +realize for the first time that a joke was one of the most solemn +things in the world. The analysis of humor is no easy matter. It is +hard to say which is the more dreary: an essay on humor illustrated by +a series of jokes, or an exposition of humor in the technical terms of +philosophy. No subject has been more constantly discussed. But it +remains difficult to decide what humor is. It is easier to declare what +seemed humorous to our ancestors, or what seems humorous to us to-day. +For humor is a shifting thing. The well-known collections of the +writings of American humorists surprise us by their revelation of the +changes in public taste. Humor--or the sense of humor--alters while we +are watching. What seemed a good joke to us yesterday seems but a poor +joke to-day. And yet it is the same joke! What is true of the +individual is all the more true of the national sense of humor. This +vast series of kaleidoscopic changes which we call America; has it +produced a humor of its own? + +Let us avoid for the moment the treacherous territory of definitions. +Let us, rather, take one concrete example: a pair of men, a knight and +his squire, who for three hundred years have ridden together down the +broad highway of the world's imagination. Everybody sees that Don +Quixote and Sancho Panza are humorous. Define them as you +will--idealist and realist, knight and commoner, dreamer and +proverb-maker--these figures represent to all the world two poles of +human experience. A Frenchman once said that all of us are Don Quixotes +on one day and Sancho Panzas on the next. Humor springs from this +contrast. It is the electric flash between the two poles of experience. + +Most philosophers who have meditated upon the nature of the comic point +out that it is closely allied with the tragic. Flaubert once compared +our human idealism to the flight of a swallow; at one moment it is +soaring toward the sunset, at the next moment some one shoots it and it +tumbles into the mud with blood upon its glistening wings. The sudden +poignant contrast between light, space, freedom, and the wounded +bleeding bird in the mud, is of the very essence of tragedy. But +something like that is always happening in comedy. There is the same +element of incongruity, without the tragic consequence. It is only the +humorist who sees things truly because he sees both the greatness and +the littleness of mortals; but even he may not know whether to laugh or +to cry at what he sees. Those collisions and contrasts out of which the +stuff of tragedy is woven, such as the clash between the higher and +lower nature of a man, between his past and his present, between one's +duties to himself and to his family or the state, between, in a word, +his character and his situation, are all illustrated in comedy as +completely as in tragedy. The countryman in the city, the city man in +the country, is in a comic situation. Here is a coward named Falstaff, +and Shakespeare puts him into battle. Here is a vain person, and +Malvolio is imprisoned and twitted by a clown. Here is an ignoramus, +and Dogberry is placed on the judge's bench. These contrasts might, +indeed, be tragic enough, but they are actually comic. Such characters +are not ruled by fate but by a sportive chance. The gods connive at +them. They are ruled, like tragic characters, by necessity and +blindness; but the blindness, instead of leading to tragic ruin, leads +only to being caught as in some harmless game of blind-man's-buff. +There is retribution, but Falstaff is only pinched by the fairies. +Comedy of intrigue and comedy of character lead to no real catastrophe. +The end of it on the stage is not death but matrimony; and "home well +pleased we go." + +A thousand definitions of humor lay stress upon this element of +incongruity. Hazlitt begins his illuminating lectures on the Comic +Writers by declaring, "Man is the only animal that laughs or weeps; for +he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what +things are and what they ought to be." James Russell Lowell took the +same ground. "Humor," he said once, "lies in the contrast of two ideas. +It is the universal disenchanter. It is the sense of comic +contradiction which arises from the perpetual comment which the +understanding makes upon the impressions received through the +imagination." If that sentence seems too abstract, all we need do is to +think of Sancho Panza, the man of understanding, talking about Don +Quixote, the man of imagination. + +We must not multiply quotations, but it is impossible not to remember +the distinction made by Carlyle in writing about Richter. "True humor," +says Carlyle, "springs not more from the head than from the heart. It +is not contempt; its essence is love." In other words, not merely the +great humorists of the world's literature--Cervantes, Rabelais, +Fielding, Thackeray, Dickens--but the writers of comic paragraphs for +to-morrow's newspaper, all regard our human incongruities with a sort +of affection. The comic spirit is essentially a social spirit. The +great figures of tragedy are solitary. The immortal figures of comedy +belong to a social group. + +No recent discussion of humor is more illuminating and more directly +applicable to the conditions of American life than that of the +contemporary French philosopher Bergson. Bergson insists throughout +his brilliant little book on _Laughter_ that laughter is a social +function. Life demands elasticity. Hence whatever is stiff, automatic, +machine-like, excites a smile. We laugh when a person gives us the +impression of being a thing,--a sort of mechanical toy. Every +inadaptation of the individual to society is potentially comic. Thus +laughter becomes a social initiation. It is a kind of hazing which we +visit upon one another. But we do not isolate the comic personage as we +do the solitary, tragic figure. The comic personage is usually a type; +he is one of an absurd group; he is a miser, a pedant, a pretentious +person, a doctor or a lawyer in whom the professional traits have +become automatic so that he thinks more of his professional behavior +than he does of human health and human justice. Of all these separatist +tendencies, laughter is the great corrective. When the individual +becomes set in his ways, obstinate, preoccupied, automatic, the rest of +us laugh him out of it if we can. Of course all that we are thinking +about at the moment is his ridiculousness. But nevertheless, by +laughing we become the saviors of society. + +No one, I think, can help observing that this conception of humor as +incongruity is particularly applicable to a new country. On the new +soil and under the new sky, in new social groupings, all the +fundamental contrasts and absurdities of our human society assume a new +value. We see them under a fresh light. They are differently focussed. +The broad humors of the camp, its swift and picturesque play of light +and shade, its farce and caricature no less than its atmosphere of +comradeship, of sentiment, and of daring, are all transferred to the +humor of the newly settled country. The very word "humor" once meant +singularity of character, "some extravagant habit, passion, or +affection," says Dryden, "particular to some one person." Every newly +opened country encourages, for a while, this oddness and incongruity of +individual character. It fosters it, and at the same moment it laughs +at it. It decides that such characters are "humorous." As the social +conditions of such a country change, the old pioneer instinct for +humor, and the pioneer forms of humor, may endure, though the actual +frontier may have moved far westward. + +There is another conception of humor scarcely less famous than the +notion of incongruity. It is the conception associated with the name of +the English philosopher Hobbes, who thought that humor turned upon a +sense of superiority. "The passion of laughter," said Hobbes, "is +nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of +some eminency in ourselves by comparison with the inferiority of +others, or with our own formerly." Too cynical a view, declare many +critics, but they usually end by admitting that there is a good deal in +it after all. I am inclined to think that Hobbes's famous definition is +more applicable to wit than it is to humor. Wit is more purely +intellectual than humor. It rejoices in its little triumphs. It +requires, as has been remarked, a good head, while humor takes a good +heart, and fun good spirits. If you take Carlyle literally when he says +that humor is love, you cannot wholly share Hobbes's conviction that +laughter turns upon a sense of superiority, and yet surely we all +experience a sense of kindly amusement which turns upon the fact that +we, the initiated, are superior, for the moment, to the unlucky person +who is just having his turn in being hazed. It may be the play of +intellect or the coarser play of animal spirits. One might venture to +make a distinction between the low comedy of the Latin races and the +low comedy of the Germanic races by pointing out that the superiority +in the Latin comedy usually turns upon quicker wits, whereas the +superiority in the Germanic farce is likely to turn upon stouter +muscles. But whether it be a play of wits or of actual cudgelling, the +element of superiority and inferiority is almost always there. + +I remember that some German, I dare say in a forgotten lecture-room, +once illustrated the humor of superiority in this way. A company of +strolling players sets up its tent in a country village. On the front +seat is a peasant, laughing at the antics of the clown. The peasant +flatters himself that he sees through those practical jokes on the +stage; the clown ought to have seen that he was about to be tripped up, +but he was too stupid. But the peasant saw that it was coming all the +time. He laughs accordingly. Just behind the peasant sits the village +shopkeeper. He has watched stage clowns many a time and he laughs, not +at the humor of the farce, but at the naive laughter of the peasant in +front of him. He, the shopkeeper, is superior to such broad and obvious +humor as that. Behind the shopkeeper sits the schoolmaster. The +schoolmaster is a pedant; he has probably lectured to his boys on the +theory of humor, and he smiles in turn at the smile of superiority on +the face of the shopkeeper. Well, peeping in at the door of the tent is +a man of the world, who glances at the clown, then at the peasant, then +at the shopkeeper, then at the schoolmaster, each one of whom is +laughing at the others, and the man of the world laughs at them all! + +Let us take an even simpler illustration. We all know the comfortable +sense of proprietorship which we experience after a few days' sojourn +at a summer hotel. We know our place at the table; we call the head +waiter by his first name; we are not even afraid of the clerk. Now into +this hotel, where we sit throned in conscious superiority, comes a new +arrival. He has not yet learned the exits and entrances. He starts for +the kitchen door inadvertently when he should be headed for the +drawing-room. We smile at him. Why? Precisely because that was what we +did on the morning of our own arrival. We have been initiated, and it +is now his turn. + +If it is true that a newly settled country offers endless opportunities +for the humor which turns upon incongruity, it is also true that the +new country offers countless occasions for the humor which turns upon +the sudden glory of superiority. The backwoodsman is amusing to the man +of the settlements, and the backwoodsman, in turn, gets his full share +of amusement out of watching the "tenderfoot" in the woods. It is +simply the case of the old resident versus the newcomer. The +superiority need be in no sense a cruel or taunting superiority, +although it often happens to be so. The humor of the pioneers is not +very delicately polished. The joke of the frontier tavern or grocery +store is not always adapted to a drawing-room audience, but it turns in +a surprisingly large number of instances upon exactly the same +intellectual or social superiority which gives point to the _bon mots_ +of the most cultivated and artificial society in the world. + +The humor arising from incongruity, then, and the humor arising from a +sense of superiority, are both of them social in their nature. No less +social, surely, is the function of satire. It is possible that satire +may be decaying, that it is becoming, if it has not already become, a +mere splendid or odious tradition. But let us call it a great tradition +and, upon the whole, a splendid one. Even when debased to purely party +or personal uses, the verse satire of a Dryden retains its magnificent +resonance; "the ring," says Saintsbury, "as of a great bronze coin +thrown down on marble." The malignant couplets of an Alexander Pope +still gleam like malevolent jewels through the dust of two hundred +years. The cynicism, the misanthropy, the mere adolescent badness of +Byron are powerless to clip the wings of the wide-ranging, far-darting +wit and humor and irony of _Don Juan_. The homely Yankee dialect, the +provinciality, the "gnarly" flavor of the _Biglow Papers_ do not +prevent our finding in that pungent and resplendent satire the powers +of Lowell at full play; and, what is more than that, the epitome of the +American spirit in a moral crisis. + +I take the names of those four satirists, Dryden, Pope, Byron, and +Lowell, quite at random; but they serve to illustrate a significant +principle; namely, that great satire becomes ennobled as it touches +communal, not merely individual interests, as it voices social and not +merely individual ideals. Those four modern satirists were steeped in +the nationalistic political poetry of the Old Testament. They were +familiar with its war anthems, dirges, and prophecies, its concern for +the prosperity and adversity, the sin and the punishment, of a people. +Here the writers of the Golden Age of English satire found their +vocabulary and phrase-book, their grammar of politics and history, +their models of good and evil kings; and in that Biblical school of +political poetry, which has affected our literature from the +Reformation down to Mr. Kipling, there has always been a class in +satire! The satirical portraits, satirical lyrics, satirical parables +of the Old Testament prophets are only less noteworthy than their +audacity in striking high and hard. Their foes were the all-powerful: +Babylon and Assyria and Egypt loom vast and terrible upon the canvases +of Isaiah and Ezekiel; and poets of a later time have learned there the +secrets of social and political idealism, and the signs of national +doom. + +There are two familiar types of satire associated with the names of +Horace and Juvenal. Both types are abundantly illustrated in English +and American literature. When you meet a bore or a hypocrite or a plain +rascal, is it better to chastise him with laughter or to flay him with +shining fury? I shall take both horns of the dilemma and assert that +both methods are admirable and socially useful. The minor English and +American poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were never +weary of speaking of satire as a terrific weapon which they were forced +to wield as saviors of society. But whether they belonged to the urbane +school of Horace, or to the severely moralistic school of Juvenal, they +soon found themselves falling into one or the other of two modes of +writing. They addressed either the little audience or the big audience, +and they modified their styles accordingly. The great satirists of the +Renaissance, for example, like More, Erasmus, and Rabelais, wrote +simply for the persons who were qualified to understand them. More and +Erasmus wrote their immortal satires in Latin. By so doing they +addressed themselves to cultivated Europe. They ran no risk of being +misunderstood by persons for whom the joke was not intended. All +readers of Latin were like members of one club. Of course membership +was restricted to the learned, but had not Horace talked about being +content with a few readers, and was not Voltaire coming by and by with +the advice to try for the "little public"? + +The typical wit of the eighteenth century, whether in London, Paris, or +in Franklin's printing-shop in Philadelphia, had, of course, abandoned +Latin. But it still addressed itself to the "little public," to the +persons who were qualified to understand. The circulation of the +_Spectator_, which represents so perfectly the wit, humor, and satire +of the early eighteenth century in England, was only about ten thousand +copies. This limited audience smiled at the urbane delicate touches of +Mr. Steele and Mr. Addison. They understood the allusions. The fable +concerned them and not the outsiders. It was something like Oliver +Wendell Holmes reading his witty and satirical couplets to an audience +of Harvard alumni. The jokes are in the vernacular, but in a vernacular +as spoken in a certain social medium. It is all very delightful. + +But there is a very different kind of audience gathering all this while +outside the Harvard gates. These two publics for the humorist we may +call the invited and the uninvited; the inner circle and the outer +circle: first, those who have tickets for the garden party, and who +stroll over the lawn, decorously gowned and properly coated, conversing +with one another in the accepted social accents and employing the +recognized social adjectives; and second, the crowd outside the +gates,--curious, satirical, good-natured in the main, straightforward +of speech and quick to applaud a ready wit or a humor-loving eye or a +telling phrase spoken straight from the heart of the mob. + +Will an author choose to address the selected guests or the casual +crowd? Either way lies fame, if one does it well. Your uninvited men +find themselves talking to the uninvited crowd. Before they know it +they are famous too. They are fashioning another manner of speech. +Defoe is there, with his saucy ballads selling triumphantly under his +very pillory; with his _True-Born Englishman_ puncturing forever the +fiction of the honorable ancestry of the English aristocracy; with his +_Crusoe_ and _Moll Flanders_, written, as Lamb said long afterwards, +for the servant-maid and the sailor. Swift is there, with his terrific +_Drapier's Letters_, anonymous, aimed at the uneducated, with cold fury +bludgeoning a government into obedience; with his _Gulliver's Travels_, +so transparent upon the surface that a child reads the book with +delight and remains happily ignorant that it is a satire upon humanity. +And then, into the London of Defoe and Swift, and into the very centre +of the middle-class mob, steps, in 1724, the bland Benjamin Franklin in +search of a style "smooth, clear, and short," and for half a century, +with consummate skill, shapes that style to his audience. His young +friend Thomas Paine takes the style and touches it with passion, until +he becomes the perfect pamphleteer, and his _Crisis_ is worth as much +to our Revolution--men said--as the sword of Washington. After another +generation the gaunt Lincoln, speaking that same plain prose of Defoe, +Swift, Franklin, and Paine,--Lincoln who began his first Douglas +debate, not like his cultivated opponent with the conventional "Ladies +and Gentlemen," but with the ominously intimate, "My Fellow +Citizens,"--Lincoln is saying, "I am not master of language; I have not +a fine education; I am not capable of entering into a disquisition upon +dialectics, as I believe you call it; but I do not believe the +language I employed bears any such construction as Judge Douglas puts +upon it. But I don't care about a quibble in regard to words. I know +what I meant, and _I will not leave this crowd in doubt_, if I can +explain it to them, what I really meant in the use of that paragraph." + +"_I will not leave this crowd in doubt_"; that is the final accent of +our spoken prose, the prose addressed to one's fellow citizens, to the +great public. This is the prose spoken in the humor and satire of +Dickens. Dressed in a queer dialect, and put into satirical verse, it +is the language of the _Biglow Papers_. Uttered with the accent of a +Chicago Irishman, it is the prose admired by millions of the countrymen +of "Mr. Dooley." + +Satire written to the "little public" tends toward the social type; +that written to the "great public" to the political type. It is obvious +that just as a newly settled country offers constant opportunity for +the humor of incongruity and the humor arising from a sense of +superiority, it likewise affords a daily stimulus to the use of satire. +That moralizing Puritan strain of censure which lost none of its +harshness in crossing the Atlantic Ocean found full play in the +colonial satire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As the +topics for satire grew wider and more political in their scope, the +audiences increased. To-day the very oldest issues of the common life +of that queer "political animal" named man are discussed by our popular +newspaper satirists in the presence of a democratic audience that +stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific. + +Is there, then, a distinctly American type of humor and satire? I think +it would be difficult to prove that our composite American nationality +has developed a mode of humor and satire which is racially different +from the humor and satire of the Old World. All racial lines in +literature are extremely difficult to draw. If you attempt to analyze +English humor, you find that it is mostly Scotch or Irish. If you put +Scotch and Irish humor under the microscope, you discover that most of +the best Scotch and Irish jokes are as old as the Greeks and the +Egyptians. You pick up a copy of _Fliegende Blatter_ and you get keen +amusement from its revelation of German humor. But how much of this +humor, after all, is either essentially universal in its scope or else +a matter of mere stage-setting and machinery? Without the Prussian +lieutenant the _Fliegende Blatter_ would lose half its point; nor can +one imagine a _Punch_ without a picture of the English policeman. The +lieutenant and the policeman, however, are a part of the accepted +social furniture of the two countries. They belong to the decorative +background of the social drama. They heighten the effectiveness of +local humor, but it may be questioned whether they afford any evidence +of genuine racial differentiation as to the sense of the comic. + +What one can abundantly prove, however, is that the United States +afford a new national field for certain types of humor and satire. Our +English friends are never weary of writing magazine articles about +Yankee humor, in which they explain the peculiarities of the American +joke with a dogmatism which has sometimes been thought to prove that +there is such a thing as national lack of humor, whether there be such +a thing as national humor or not. One such article, I remember, +endeavored to prove that the exaggeration often found in American +humor was due to the vastness of the American continent. Our geography, +that is to say, is too much for the Yankee brain. Mr. Birrell, an +expert judge of humor, surely, thinks that the characteristic of +American humor lies in its habit of speaking of something hideous in a +tone of levity. Many Englishmen, in fact, have been as much impressed +with this minimizing trick of American humor as with the converse trick +of magnifying. Upon the Continent the characteristic trait of American +humor has often been thought to be its exuberance of phrase. Many +shrewd judges of our newspaper humor have pointed out that one of its +most favorite methods is the suppression of one link in the chain of +logical reasoning. Such generalizations as these are always +interesting, although they may not take us very far. + +Yet it is clear that certain types of humor and satire have proved to +be specially adapted to the American soil and climate. Whether or not +these types are truly indigenous one may hesitate to say, yet it +remains true that the well-known conditions of American life have +stimulated certain varieties of humor into such a richness of +manifestation as the Old World can scarcely show. + +Curiously enough, one of the most perfected types of American humor is +that urbane Horatian variety which has often been held to be the +exclusive possession of the cultivated and restricted societies of +older civilization. Yet it is precisely this kind of humor which has +been the delight of some of the most typical American minds. Benjamin +Franklin, for example, modelled his style and his sense of the humorous +on the papers of the _Spectator_. He produced humorous fables and +apologues, choice little morsels of social and political persiflage, +which were perfectly suited, not merely to the taste of London in the +so-called golden age of English satire, but to the tone of the wittiest +salons of Paris in the age when the old regime went tottering, talking, +quoting, jesting to its fall. Read Franklin's charming and wise letter +to Madame Brillon about giving too much for the whistle. It is the +perfection of well-bred humor: a humor very American, very Franklinian, +although its theme and tone and phrasing might well have been envied by +Horace or Voltaire. + +The gentle humor of Irving is marked by precisely those traits of +urbanity and restraint which characterize the parables of Franklin. +Does not the _Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_ itself presuppose the +existence of a truly cultivated society? Its tone--"As I was saying +when I was interrupted"--is the tone of the intimate circle. There was +so much genuine humanity in the gay little doctor that persons born +outside the circle of Harvard College and the North Shore and Boston +felt themselves at once initiated by the touch of his merry wand into a +humanized, kindly theory of life. The humor of George William Curtis +had a similarly mellow and ripened quality. It is a curious comment +upon that theory of Americans which represents us primarily as a +loud-voiced, assertive, headstrong people, to be thus made aware that +many of the humorists whom we have loved best are precisely those whose +writing has been marked by the most delicate restraint, whose theory of +life has been the most highly urbane and civilized, whose work is +indistinguishable in tone--though its materials are so different--from +that of other humorous writers on the other side of the Atlantic. On +its social side all this is a fresh proof of the extraordinary +adaptability of the American mind. On the literary side it is one more +evidence of the national fondness for neatness and perfection of +workmanship. + +But we are something other than a nation of mere lovers and would-be +imitators of Charles Lamb. The moralistic type of humor, the crack of +Juvenal's whip, as well as the delicate Horatian playing around the +heart-strings, has characterized our humor and satire from the +beginning. At bottom the American is serious. Beneath the surface of +his jokes there is moral earnestness, there is ethical passion. Take, +for example, some of the apothegms of "Josh Billings." He failed with +the public until he took up the trick of misspelling his words. When he +had once gained his public he sometimes delighted them with sheer +whimsical incongruity, like this:-- + + "There iz 2 things in this life for which we are never fully + prepared, and that iz twins." + +But more often the tone is really grave. It is only the spelling that +is queer. The moralizing might be by La Bruyere or La Rochefoucauld. +Take this:-- + + "Life iz short, but it iz long enuff to ruin enny man who + wants tew be ruined." + +Or this:-- + + "When a feller gits a goin doun hill, it dus seem as tho evry + thing had bin greased for the okashun." That is what writers + of tragedy have been showing, ever since the Greeks! + +Or finally, this, which has the perfect tone of the great French +moralists:-- + + "It iz a verry delicate job to forgive a man without lowering + him in his own estimashun, and yures too." + +See how the moralistic note is struck in the field of political satire. +It is 1866, and "Petroleum V. Nasby," writing from "Confedrit X Roads," +Kentucky, gives Deekin Pogram's views on education. "He didn't bleeve +in edjucashun, generally speekin. The common people was better off +without it, ez edjucashun hed a tendency to unsettle their minds. He +had seen the evil effex ov it in niggers and poor whites. So soon ez a +nigger masters the spellin book and gits into noosepapers, he becomes +dissatisfied with his condishin, and hankers after a better cabin and +more wages. He towunst begins to insist onto ownin land hisself, and +givin his children edjucashun, and, ez a nigger, for our purposes, aint +worth a soo markee." + +The single phrase, "ez a nigger," spells a whole chapter of American +history. + +That quotation from "Petroleum V. Nasby" serves also to illustrate a +species of American humor which has been of immense historical +importance and which has never been more active than it is to-day: the +humor, namely, of local, provincial, and sectional types. Much of this +falls under Bergson's conception of humor as social censure. It rebukes +the extravagance, the rigidity, the unawareness of the individual who +fails to adapt himself to his social environment. It takes the place, +in our categories of humor, of those types of class humor and satire in +which European literature is so rich. The mobility of our population, +the constant shifting of professions and callings, has prevented our +developing fixed class types of humor. We have not even the lieutenant +or the policeman as permanent members of our humorous stock company. +The policeman of to-day may be mayor or governor to-morrow. The +lieutenant may go back to his grocery wagon or on to his department +store. But whenever and wherever such an individual fails to adapt +himself to his new companions, fails to take on, as it were, the colors +of his new environment, to speak in the new social accents, to follow +the recognized patterns of behavior, then the kindly whip of the +humorist is already cracking round his ears. The humor and satire of +college undergraduate journalism turns mainly upon the recognized +ability or inability of different individuals to adapt themselves to +their changing pigeon-holes in the college organism. A freshman must +behave like a freshman, or he is laughed at. Yet he must not behave as +if he were nothing but the automaton of a freshman, or he will be +laughed at more merrily still. + +One of the first discoveries of our earlier humorists was the Down-East +Yankee. "I'm going to Portland whether or no," says Major Jack Downing, +telling the story of his boyhood; "I'll see what this world is made of +yet. So I tackled up the old horse and packed in a load of ax handles +and a few notions, and mother fried me a few doughnuts ... for I told +her I didn't know how long I should be gone,"--and off he goes to +Portland, to see what the world is made of. It is a little like Defoe, +and a good deal like the young Ulysses, bent upon knowing cities and +men and upon getting the best of bargains. + +Each generation of Americans has known something like that trip to +Portland. Each generation has had to measure its wits, its resources, +its manners, against new standards of comparison. At every stage of the +journey there are mishaps and ridiculous adventures; but everywhere, +likewise, there is zest, conquest, initiation; the heart of a boy who +"wants to know"--as the Yankees used to say; or, in more modern +phrase,-- + + "to admire and for to see, + For to behold this world so wide." + +There is the same romance of adventure in the humor concerning the +Irishman, the Negro, the Dutchman, the Dago, the farmer. Each in turn +becomes humorous through failure to adapt himself to the prevalent +type. A long-bearded Jew is not ridiculous in Russia, but he rapidly +becomes ridiculous even on the East Side of New York. Underneath all +this popular humor of the comic supplements one may catch glimpses of +the great revolving wheels which are crushing the vast majority of our +population into something like uniformity. It is a process of social +attrition. The sharp edges of individual behavior get rounded off. The +individual loses color and picturesqueness, precisely as he casts aside +the national costume of the land from which he came. His speech, his +gait, his demeanor, become as nearly as possible like the speech and +carriage of all his neighbors. If he resists, he is laughed at; and if +he does not personally heed the laughter, he may be sure that his +children do. It is the children of our immigrants who catch the sly +smiles of their school-fellows, who overhear jokes from the newspapers +and on the street corners, who bring home to their foreign-born fathers +and mothers the imperious childish demand to make themselves like unto +everybody else. + +A similar social function is performed by that well-known mode of +American humor which ridicules the inhabitants of certain states. Why +should New Jersey, for example, be more ridiculous than Delaware? In +the eyes of the newspaper paragrapher it unquestionably is, just as +Missouri has more humorous connotations than Kentucky. We may think we +understand why we smile when a man says that he comes from Kalamazoo +or Oshkosh, but the smile when he says "Philadelphia" or "Boston" or +"Brooklyn" is only a trifle more subtle. It is none the less real. Why +should the suburban dweller of every city be regarded with humorous +condescension by the man who is compelled to sleep within the city +limits? No one can say, and yet without that humor of the suburbs the +comic supplements of American newspapers would be infinitely less +entertaining,--to the people who enjoy comic supplements. + +So it is with the larger divisions of our national life. Yankee, +Southerner, Westerner, Californian, Texan, each type provokes certain +connotations of humor when viewed by any of the other types. Each type +in turn has its note of provinciality when compared with the norm of +the typical American. It is quite possible to maintain that our +literature, like our social life, has suffered by this ever-present +American sense of the ridiculous. Our social consciousness might be far +more various and richly colored, there might be more true provincial +independence of speech and custom and imagination if we had not to +reckon with this ever-present censure of laughter, this fear of +finding ourselves, our city, our section, out of touch with the +prevalent tone and temper of the country as a whole. It is one of the +forfeits we are bound to pay when we play the great absorbing game of +democracy. + +We are now ready to ask once more whether there is a truly national +type of American humor. Viewed exclusively from the standpoint of +racial characteristics, we have seen that this question as to a +national type of humor is difficult to answer. But we have seen with +equal clearness that the United States has offered a singularly rich +field for the development of the sense of humor; and furthermore that +there are certain specialized forms of humor which have flourished +luxuriantly upon our soil. Our humorists have made the most of their +native materials. Every pioneer trait of versatility, curiosity, +shrewdness, has been turned somehow to humorous account. The very +institutions of democracy, moulding day by day and generation after +generation the habits and the mental characteristics of millions of +men, have produced a social atmosphere in which humor is one of the +most indisputable elements. + +I recall a notable essay by Mr. Charles Johnston on the essence of +American humor in which he applies to the conditions of American life +one familiar distinction between humor and wit. Wit, he asserts, scores +off the other man, humor does not. Wit frequently turns upon tribal +differences, upon tribal vanity. The mordant wit of the Jew, for +example, from the literature of the Old Testament down to the raillery +of Heine, has turned largely upon the sense of racial superiority, of +intellectual and moral differences. But true humor, Mr. Johnston goes +on to argue, has always a binding, a uniting quality. Thus Huckleberry +Finn and Jim Hawkins, white man and black man, are afloat together on +the Mississippi River raft and they are made brethren by the fraternal +quality of Mark Twain's humor. Thus the levelling quality of Bret +Harte's humor bridges social and moral chasms. It creates an atmosphere +of charity and sympathy. In fact, the typical American humor, according +to the opinion of Mr. Johnston, emphasizes the broad and humane side of +our common nature. It reveals the common soul. It possesses a +surplusage of power, of buoyancy and of conquest over circumstances. +It means at its best a humanizing of our hearts. + +Some people will think that all this is too optimistic, but if you are +not optimistic enough you cannot keep up with the facts. Certain it is +that the pioneers of American national humor, the creators of what we +may call the "all-American" type of humor, have possessed precisely the +qualities which Mr. Johnston has pointed out. They are apparent in the +productions of Artemus Ward. The present generation vaguely remembers +Artemus Ward as the man who was willing to send all his wife's +relatives to the war and who, standing by the tomb of Shakespeare, +thought it "a success." But no one who turns to the almost forgotten +pages of that kindly jester can fail to be impressed by his sunny +quality, by the atmosphere of fraternal affection which glorifies his +queer spelling and his somewhat threadbare witticisms. Mark Twain, who +is universally recognized by Europeans as a representative of typical +American humor, had precisely those qualities of pioneer curiosity, +swift versatility, absolute democracy, which are characteristic of the +national temper. His lively accounts of frontier experiences in +_Roughing It_, his comments upon the old world in _Innocents Abroad_ +and _A Tramp Abroad_, his hatred of pretence and injustice, his scorn +at sentimentality coupled with his insistence upon the rights of +sentiment, in a word his persistent idealism, make Mark Twain one of +the most representative of American writers. Largeness, freedom, human +sympathy, are revealed upon every page. + +It is true that the dangers of American humor are no less in evidence +there. There is the danger of extravagance, which in Mark Twain's +earlier writings was carried to lengths of absurdity. There is the old +danger of the professional humorist of fearing to fail to score his +point, and so of underscoring it with painful reiteration. Mark Twain +is frequently grotesque. Sometimes there is evidence of imperfect +taste, or of bad taste. Sometimes there is actual vulgarity. In his +earlier books particularly there is revealed that lack of discipline +which has been such a constant accompaniment of American writing. Yet a +native of Hannibal, Missouri, trained on a river steamboat and in a +country printing-office and in mining-camps, can scarcely be expected +to exhibit the finely balanced critical sense of a Matthew Arnold. +Mark Twain was often accused in the first years of his international +reputation of a characteristically American lack of reverence. He is +often irreverent. But here again the boundaries of his irreverence are +precisely those which the national instinct itself has drawn. The joke +stops short of certain topics which the American mind holds sacred. We +all have our favorite pages in the writings of this versatile and +richly endowed humorist, but I think no one can read his description of +the coyote in _Roughing It_, and Huckleberry Finn's account of his +first visit to the circus, without realizing that in this fresh +revelation of immemorial human curiosity, this vivid perception of +incongruity and surprise, this series of lightning-like flashes from +one pole of experience to the other, we have not only masterpieces of +world humor, but a revelation of a distinctly American reaction to the +facts presented by universal experience. + +The picturesque personality and the extraordinarily successful career +of Mark Twain kept him, during the last twenty-five years of his life, +in the focus of public attention. But no one can read the pages of the +older American humorists,--or try to recall to mind the names of +paragraphers who used to write comic matter for this or that +newspaper,--without realizing how swiftly the dust of oblivion settles +upon all the makers of mere jokes. It is enough, perhaps, that they +caused a smile for the moment. Even those humorists who mark epochs in +the history of American provincial and political satire, like Seba +Smith with his _Major Jack Downing_, Newell with his _Papers of Orpheus +C. Kerr_, "Petroleum V. Nasby's" _Letters from the Confedrit X Roads_, +Shillaber's _Mrs. Partington_--all these have disappeared round the +turn of the long road. + + "Hans Breitman gife a barty-- + Vhere ish dot barty now?" + +It seems as if the conscious humorists, the professional funny writers, +had the shortest lease of literary life. They play their little comic +parts before a well-disposed but restless audience which is already +impatiently waiting for some other "turn." One of them makes a hit with +a song or story, just as a draughtsman for a Sunday colored supplement +makes a hit with his "Mutt and Jeff." For a few months everybody +smiles and then comes the long oblivion. The more permanent American +humor has commonly been written by persons who were almost unconscious, +not indeed of the fact that they were creating humorous characters, but +unconscious of the effort to provoke a laugh. The smile lasts longer +than the laugh. Perhaps that is the secret. One smiles as one reads the +delicate sketches of Miss Jewett. One smiles over the stories of Owen +Wister and of Thomas Nelson Page. The trouble, possibly, with the +enduring qualities of the brilliant humorous stories of "O. Henry" was +that they tempt the reader to laugh too much and to smile too little. +When one reads the _Legend of Sleepy Hollow_ or _Diedrich +Knickerbocker's History of New York_, it is always with this gentle +parting of the lips, this kindly feeling toward the author, his +characters and the world. A humorous page which produces that effect +for generation after generation, has the stamp of literature. One may +doubt whether even the extraordinary fantasies of Mark Twain are more +successful, judged by the mere vulgar test of concrete results, than +the delicate humor of Charles Lamb. Our current newspaper and magazine +humor is in no respect more fascinating than in its suggestion as to +the permanent effectiveness of its comic qualities. Who could say, when +he first read Mr. Finley P. Dunne's "Mr. Dooley" sketches, whether this +was something that a whole nation of readers would instantly and +instinctively rejoice over, would find a genial revelation of American +characteristics, would recognize as almost the final word of kindly +satire upon our overworked, over-excited, over-anxious, +over-self-conscious generation? + +The range of this contemporary newspaper and magazine humor is +well-nigh universal,--always saving, it is true, certain topics or +states of mind which the American public cannot regard as topics for +laughter. With these few exceptions nothing is too high or too low for +it. The paragraphers joke about the wheel-barrow, the hen, the mule, +the mother-in-law, the President of the United States. There is no +ascending or descending scale of importance. Any of the topics can +raise a laugh. If one examines a collection of American parodies, one +will find that the happy national talent for fun-making finds full +scope in the parody and burlesque of the dearest national sentiments. +But no one minds; everybody believes that the sentiments endure while +the jokes will pass. The jokes, intended as they are for an immense +audience, necessarily lack subtlety. They tend to partake of the +methods of pictorial caricature. Indeed, caricature itself, as Bergson +has pointed out, emphasizes those "automatic, mechanical-toy" traits of +character and behavior which isolate the individual and make him ill +adapted for his function in society. Our verbal wit and humor, no less +than the pencil of our caricaturists, have this constant note of +exaggeration. "These violent delights have violent ends." But during +their brief and laughing existence they serve to normalize society. +They set up, as it were, a pulpit in the street upon which the comic +spirit may mount and preach her useful sermon to all comers. + +Despite the universality of the objects of contemporary American humor, +despite, too, its prevalent method of caricature, it remains true that +its character is, on the whole, clean, easy-going, and kindly. The old +satire of hatred has lost its force. No one knows why. "Satire has +grown weak," says Mr. Chesterton, "precisely because belief has grown +weak." That is one theory. The late Henry D. Lloyd, of Chicago, +declared in one of his last books: "The world has outgrown the dialect +and temper of hatred. The style of the imprecatory psalms and the +denunciating prophets is out of date. No one knows these times if he is +not conscious of this change." That is another theory. Again, party +animosities are surely weaker than they were. Caricatures are less +personally offensive; if you doubt it, look at any of the collections +of caricatures of Napoleon, or of George the Fourth. Irony is less +often used by pamphleteers and journalists. It is a delicate rhetorical +weapon, and journalists who aim at the great public are increasingly +afraid to use it, lest the readers miss the point. In the editorials in +the Hearst newspapers, for instance, there is plenty of invective and +innuendo, but rarely irony: it might not be understood, and the crowd +must not be left in doubt. + +Possibly the old-fashioned satire has disappeared because the game is +no longer considered worth the candle. To puncture the tire of +pretence is amusing enough; but it is useless to stick tacks under the +steam road-roller: the road-roller advances remorselessly and smooths +down your mischievous little tacks and you too, indifferently. The huge +interests of politics, trade, progress, override your passionate +protest. "Shall gravitation cease when you go by?" I do not compare +Colonel Roosevelt with gravitation, but have all the satirical squibs +against our famous contemporary, from the "Alone in Cubia" to the +"Teddy-see," ever cost him, in a dozen years, a dozen votes? + +Very likely Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Chesterton are right. We are less +censorious than our ancestors were. Americans, on the whole, try to +avoid giving pain through speech. The satirists of the golden age loved +that cruel exercise of power. Perhaps we take things less seriously +than they did; undoubtedly our attention is more distracted and +dissipated. At any rate, the American public finds it easier to forgive +and forget, than to nurse its wrath to keep it warm. Our characteristic +humor of understatement, and our equally characteristic humor of +overstatement, are both likely to be cheery at bottom, though the mere +wording may be grim enough. No popular saying is more genuinely +characteristic of American humor than the familiar "Cheer up. The worst +is yet to come." + +Whatever else one may say or leave unsaid about American humor, every +one realizes that it is a fundamentally necessary reaction from the +pressure of our modern living. Perhaps it is a handicap. Perhaps we +joke when we should be praying. Perhaps we make fun when we ought to be +setting our shoulders to the wheel. But the deeper fact is that most +American shoulders are set to the wheel too often and too long, and if +they do not stop for the joke they are done for. I have always +suspected that Mr. Kipling was thinking of American humor when he wrote +in his well-known lines on "The American Spirit":-- + + "So imperturbable he rules + Unkempt, disreputable, vast-- + And in the teeth of all the schools + I--I shall save him at the last." + +That is the very secret of the American sense of humor: the conviction +that something is going to save us at the last. Otherwise there would +be no joke! It is no accident, surely, that the man who is +increasingly idolized as the most representative of all Americans, the +burden-bearer of his people, the man of sorrows and acquainted with +grief, should be our most inveterate humorist. Let Lincoln have his +story and his joke, for he had faith in the saving of the nation; and +while his Cabinet are waiting impatiently to listen to his Proclamation +of Emancipation, give him another five minutes to read aloud to them +that new chapter by Artemus Ward. + + + + +VI + +Individualism and Fellowship + + +It would be difficult to find a clearer expression of the old doctrine +of individualism than is uttered by Carlyle in his London lecture on +"The Hero as Man of Letters." Listen to the grim child of Calvinism as +he fires his "Annandale grapeshot" into that sophisticated London +audience: "Men speak too much about the world.... The world's being +saved will not save us; nor the world's being lost destroy us. We +should look to ourselves.... For the saving of the world I will trust +confidently to the Maker of the world; and look a little to my own +saving, which I am more competent to!" + +Carlyle was never more soundly Puritanic, never more perfectly within +the lines of the moral traditions of his race than in these injunctions +to let the world go and to care for the individual soul. + +We are familiar with the doctrine on this side of the Atlantic. Here is +a single phrase from Emerson's _Journal_ of September, 1833, written on +his voyage home from that memorable visit to Europe where he first made +Carlyle's acquaintance. "Back again to myself," wrote Emerson, as the +five-hundred-ton sailing ship beat her way westward for a long month +across the stormy North Atlantic:--"Back again to myself.--A man +contains all that is needful to his government within himself. He is +made a law unto himself. All real good or evil that can befall him must +be from himself.... The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man +with himself." + +In the following August he is writing:-- + + "Societies, parties, are only incipient stages, tadpole + states of men, as caterpillars are social, but the butterfly + not. The true and finished man is ever alone." + +On March 23, 1835:-- + + "Alone is wisdom. Alone is happiness. Society nowadays makes + us low-spirited, hopeless. Alone is Heaven." + +And once more:-- + + "If AEschylus is that man he is taken for, he has not yet + done his office when he has educated the learned of Europe + for a thousand years. He is now to approve himself a master + of delight to me. If he cannot do that, all his fame shall + avail him nothing. I were a fool not to sacrifice a thousand + AEschyluses to my intellectual integrity." + +These quotations have to do with the personal life. Let me next +illustrate the individualism of the eighteen-thirties by the attitude +of two famous individualists toward the prosaic question of paying +taxes to the State. Carlyle told Emerson that he should pay taxes to +the House of Hanover just as long as the House of Hanover had the +physical force to collect them,--and not a day longer. + +Henry Thoreau was even more recalcitrant. Let me quote him:-- + + "I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail + once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood + considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet + thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron + grating which strained the light, I could not help being + struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated + me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked + up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that + this was the best use it could put me to, and had never + thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw + that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my + townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or + break through before they could get to be as free as I was. I + did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a + great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all + my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to + treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In + every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for + they thought that my chief desire was to stand on the other + side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how + industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which + followed them out again without let or hindrance, and _they_ + were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach + me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if + they cannot come at some person against whom they have a + spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was + half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her + silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its + foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied + it." + +Here is Thoreau's attitude toward the problems of the inner life. The +three quotations are from his _Walden_:-- + + "Probably I should not consciously and deliberately forsake + my particular calling to do the good which society demands of + me, to save the universe from annihilation." + + "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, + to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could + not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, + discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what + was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice + resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live + deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily + and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to + cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a + corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved + to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of + it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were + sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a + true account of it in my next excursion." + + "It is said that the British Empire is very large and + respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate + power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind + every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if + he should ever harbor it in his mind." + +All of these quotations from Emerson and Thoreau are but various modes +of saying "Let the world go." Everybody knows that in later crises of +American history, both Thoreau and Emerson forgot their old preaching +of individualism, or at least merged it in the larger doctrine of +identification of the individual with the acts and emotions of the +community. And nevertheless as men of letters they habitually laid +stress upon the rights and duties of the private person. Upon a hundred +brilliant pages they preached the gospel that society is in conspiracy +against the individual manhood of every one of its members. + +They had a right to this doctrine. They came by it honestly through +long lines of ancestral heritage. The republicanism of the seventeenth +century in the American forests, as well as upon the floor of the +English House of Commons, had asserted that private persons had the +right to make and unmake kings. The republican theorists of the +eighteenth century had insisted that life, liberty, and the pursuit of +happiness were the birthright of each individual. This doctrine was +related, of course, to the doctrine of equality. If republicanism +teaches that "I am as good as others," democracy is forever hinting +"Others are as good as I." Democracy has been steadily extending the +notion of rights and duties. The first instinct, perhaps, is to ask +what is right, just, lawful, for me? Next, what is right, just, lawful +for my crowd? That is to say, my family, my clan, my race, my country. +The third instinct bids one ask what is right and just and lawful, not +merely for me, and for men like me, but for everybody. And when we get +that third question properly answered, we can afford to close +school-house and church and court-room, for this world's work will have +ended. + +We have already glanced at various phases of colonial individualism. We +have had a glimpse of Cotton Mather prostrate upon the dusty floor of +his study, agonizing now for himself and now for the countries of +Europe; we have watched Jonathan Edwards in his solitary ecstasies in +the Northampton and the Stockbridge woods; we have seen Franklin +preaching his gospel of personal thrift and of getting on in the world. +Down to the very verge of the Revolution the American pioneer spirit +was forever urging the individual to fight for his own hand. Each boy +on the old farms had his own chores to do; each head of a family had to +plan for himself. The most tragic failure of the individual in those +days was the poverty or illness which compelled him to "go on the +town." To be one of the town poor indicated that the individualistic +battle had been fought and lost. No one ever dreamed, apparently, that +a time for old-age pensions and honorable retiring funds was coming. +The feeling against any form of community assistance was like the +bitter hatred of the workhouse among English laborers of the +eighteen-forties. + +The stress upon purely personal qualities gave picturesqueness, color, +and vigor to the early life of the United States. Take the persons whom +Parkman describes in his _Oregon Trail_. They have the perfect +clearness of outline of the portraits by Walter Scott and the great +Romantic school of novelists who loved to paint pictures of interesting +individual men. There is the same stress upon individualistic +portraiture in Irving's _Astoria_; in the humorous journals of early +travellers in the Southern States. It is the secret of the curiosity +with which we observe the gamblers and miners and stage-drivers +described by Bret Harte. In the rural communities of to-day, in the +older portions of the country, and in the remoter settlements of the +West and Southwest, the individual man has a sort of picturesque, and, +as it were, artistic value, which the life of cities does not allow. +The gospel of self-reliance and of solitude is not preached more +effectively by the philosophers of Concord than it is by the +backwoodsmen, the spies, and the sailors of Fenimore Cooper. +Individualism as a doctrine of perfection for the private person and +individualism as a literary creed have thus gone hand in hand. "Produce +great persons, the rest follows," cried Walt Whitman. He was thinking +at the moment about American society and politics. But he believed that +the same law held good in poetry. Once get your great man and let him +abandon himself to poetry and the great poetry will be the result. It +was almost precisely the same teaching as in Carlyle's lecture on "The +Hero as Poet." + +Well, it is clear enough nowadays that both Whitman and Carlyle +underrated the value of discipline. The lack of discipline is the chief +obstacle to effective individualism. The private person must be well +trained, or he cannot do his work; and as civilization advances, it +becomes exceedingly difficult to train the individual without social +cooperation. A Paul or a Mahomet may discipline his own soul in the +Desert of Arabia; he may there learn the lessons that may later make +him a leader of men. But for the average man and indeed for most of the +exceptional men, the path to effectiveness lies through social and +professional discipline. Here is where the frontier stage of our +American life was necessarily weak. We have seen that our ancestors +gained something, no doubt, from their spirit of unconventionally and +freedom. But they also lost something through their dislike for +discipline, their indifference to criticism, their ineradicable +tendency, whether in business, in diplomacy, in art and letters and +education, to go "across lots." A certain degree of physical +orderliness was, indeed, imposed upon our ancestors by the conditions +of pioneer life. The natural prodigality and recklessness of frontier +existence was here and there sharply checked. Order is essential in a +camp, and the thin line of colonies was all camping. A certain instinct +for order underlay that resourcefulness which impresses every reader of +our history. Did the colonist need a tool? He learned to make it +himself. Isolation from the mother country was a stimulus to the +inventive imagination. Before long they were maintaining public order +in the same ingenious fashion in which they kept house. Appeals to +London took too much time. "We send a complaint this year," ran the +saying, "the next year they send to inquire, the third year the +ministry is changed." No wonder that resourcefulness bred independent +action, stimulated the Puritan taste for individualism, and led the way +to self-government. + +Yet who does not know that the inherent instinct for political order +may be accompanied by mental disorderliness? Even your modern +Englishman--as the saying goes--"muddles through." The minds of our +American forefathers were not always lucid. The mysticism of the New +England Calvinists sometimes bred fanaticism. The practical and the +theoretical were queerly blended. The essential unorderliness of the +American mind is admirably illustrated by that "Father of all the +Yankees," Benjamin Franklin. No student of Franklin's life fails to be +impressed by its happy casualness, its cheerful flavor of the +rogue-romance. Gil Blas himself never drifted into and out of an +adventure with a more offhand and imperturbable adroitness. Franklin +went through life with the joyous inventiveness of the amateur. He had +the amateur's enthusiasm, coupled with a clairvoyant penetration into +technical problems such as few amateurs have possessed. With all of his +wonderful patience towards other men, Franklin had in the realm of +scientific experiment something of the typical impatience of the mere +dabbler. He was inclined to lose interest in the special problem before +it was worked out. His large, tolerant intelligence was often as +unorderly as his papers and accounts. He was a wonderful colonial +Jack-of-all-trades; with a range of suggestion, a resourcefulness, a +knack of assimilation, a cosmopolitan many-sidedness, which has left us +perpetually his debtors. Under different surroundings, and disciplined +by a more severe and orderly training, Franklin might easily have +developed the very highest order of professional scientific +achievement. His natural talent for organization of men and +institutions, his "early projecting public spirit," his sense of the +lack of formal educational advantages in the colonies, made him the +founder of the Philadelphia Academy, the successful agitator for public +libraries. Academicism, even in the narrow sense, owes much to this +LL.D. of St. Andrews, D.C.L. of Oxford, and intimate associate of +French academicians. But one smiles a little, after all, to see the +bland printer in this academic company: he deserves his place there, +indeed, but he is something more and other than his associates. He is +the type of youthful, inexhaustible colonial America; reckless of +precedent, self-taught, splendidly alive; worth, to his day and +generation, a dozen born academicians; and yet suggesting by his very +imperfections, that the Americans of a later day, working under +different conditions, are bound to develop a sort of professional +skill, of steady, concentrated, ordered intellectual activity, for +which Franklin possessed the potential capacity rather than the +opportunity and the desire. + +Yet there were latent lines of order, hints and prophecies of a coming +fellowship, running deep and straight beneath the confused surface of +the preoccupied colonial consciousness. In another generation we see +the rude Western democracy asserting itself in the valley of the +Mississippi. This breed of pioneers, like their fathers on the Atlantic +coast line, could turn their hands to anything, because they must. "The +average man," says Mr. Herbert Croly, "without any special bent or +qualifications, was in the pioneer states the useful man. In that +country it was sheer waste to spend much energy upon tasks which +demanded skill, prolonged experience, high technical standards, or +exclusive devotion.... No special equipment was required. The farmer +was obliged to be all kinds of a rough mechanic. The business man was +merchant, manufacturer, and storekeeper. Almost everybody was something +of a politician. The number of parts which a man of energy played in +his time was astonishingly large. Andrew Jackson was successively a +lawyer, judge, planter, merchant, general, politician, and statesman; +and he played most of these parts with conspicuous success. In such a +society a man who persisted in one job, and who applied the most +rigorous and exacting standards to his work, was out of place and +really inefficient. His finished product did not serve its temporary +purpose much better than did the current careless and hasty product, +and his higher standards and peculiar ways constituted an implied +criticism on the easy methods of his neighbors. He interfered with the +rough good-fellowship which naturally arises among a group of men who +submit good naturedly and uncritically to current standards. It is no +wonder, consequently, that the pioneer Democracy viewed with distrust +and aversion the man with a special vocation and high standards of +achievement." + +The truth of this comment is apparent to everybody. It explains the +still lingering popular suspicion of the "academic" type of man. But we +are likely to forget that back of all that easy versatility and +reckless variety of effort there was some sound and patient and +constructive thinking. Lincoln used to describe himself humorously, +slightingly, as a "mast-fed" lawyer, one who had picked up in the woods +the scattered acorns of legal lore. It was a true enough description, +but after all, there were very few college-bred lawyers in the Eighth +Illinois Circuit or anywhere else who could hold their own, even in a +purely professional struggle, with that long-armed logician from the +backwoods. + +There was once a "mast-fed" novelist in this country, who scandalously +slighted his academic opportunities, went to sea, went into the navy, +went to farming, and then went into novel-writing to amuse himself. He +cared nothing and knew nothing about conscious literary art; his style +is diffuse, his syntax the despair of school-teachers, and many of his +characters are bores. But once let him strike the trail of a story, and +he follows it like his own Hawkeye; put him on salt water or in the +wilderness, and he knows rope and paddle, axe and rifle, sea and forest +and sky; and he knows his road home to the right ending of a story by +an instinct as sure as an Indian's. Professional novelists like Balzac, +professional critics like Sainte-Beuve, stand amazed at Fenimore +Cooper's skill and power. The true engineering and architectural lines +are there. They were not painfully plotted beforehand, like George +Eliot's. Cooper took, like Scott, "the easiest path across country," +just as a bee-hunter seems to take the easiest path through the woods. +But the bee-hunter, for all his apparent laziness, never loses sight of +the air-drawn line, marked by the homing bee; and your _Last of the +Mohicans_ will be instinctively, inevitably right, while your _Daniel +Deronda_ will be industriously wrong. + +Cooper literally builded better than he knew. Obstinately unacademic in +his temper and training, he has won the suffrages of the most +fastidious and academic judges of excellence in his profession. The +secret is, I suppose, that the lawlessness, the amateurishness, the +indifference to standards were on the surface,--apparent to +everybody,--the soundness and rightness of his practice were +unconscious. + +Franklin and Lincoln and Cooper, therefore, may be taken as striking +examples of individuals trained in the old happy-go-lucky way, and yet +with marked capacities for socialization, for fellowship. They +succeeded, even by the vulgar tests of success, in spite of their lack +of discipline. But for most men the chief obstacle to effective labor +even as individuals is the lack of thoroughgoing training. + +It is scarcely necessary to add that there are vast obstacles in the +way of individualism as a working theory of society. Carlyle's theory +of "Hero Worship" has fewer adherents than for half a century. It is +picturesque,--that conception of a great, sincere man and of a world +reverencing him and begging to be led by him. But the difficulty is +that contemporary democracy does not say to the Hero, as Carlyle +thought it must say, "Govern me! I am mad and miserable, and cannot +govern myself!" + +Democracy says to the Hero, "Thank you very much, but this is our +affair. Join us, if you like. We shall be glad of your company. But we +are not looking for governors. We propose to govern ourselves." + +Even from the point of view of literature and art,--fields of activity +where the individual performer has often been felt to be quite +independent of his audience,--it is quite evident nowadays that the old +theory of individualism breaks down. Even your lyric poet, who more +than any other artist stands or sings alone, falls easily into mere +lyric eccentricity if he is not bound to his fellows by wholesome and +normal ties. In fact, this lyric eccentricity, weakness, wistfulness, +is one of the notable defects of American poetry. We have always been +lacking in the more objective forms of literary art, like epic and +drama. Poe, and the imitators of Poe, have been regarded too often by +our people as the normal type of poet. One must not forget the silent +solitary ecstasies that have gone into the making of enduring lyric +verse, but our literature proves abundantly how soon sweetness may turn +to an Emily Dickinson strain of morbidness; how fatally the lovely +becomes transformed into the queer. The history of the American short +story furnishes many similar examples. The artistic intensity of a +Hawthorne, his ethical and moral preoccupations, are all a part of the +creed of individualistic art. But both Hawthorne and Poe would have +written,--one dare not say better stories, but at least greater and +broader and more human stories,--if they had not been forced to walk so +constantly in solitary pathways. That fellowship in artistic creation +which has characterized some of the greatest periods of art production +was something wholly absent from the experience of these gifted and +lonely men. Even Emerson and Thoreau wrote "whim" over their portals +more often than any artist has the privilege to write it. Emerson never +had any thorough training, either in philosophy, theology, or history. +He admits it upon a dozen smiling pages. Perhaps it adds to his purely +personal charm, just as Montaigne's confession of his intellectual and +moral weaknesses heightens our fondness for the Prince of Essayists. +But the deeper fact is that not only Emerson and Thoreau, Poe and +Hawthorne, but practically every American writer and artist from the +beginning has been forced to do his work without the sustaining and +heartening touch of national fellowship and pride. Emerson himself felt +the chilling poverty in the intellectual and emotional life of the +country. He betrays it in this striking passage from his _Journal_, +about the sculptor Greenough:-- + + "What interest has Greenough to make a good statue? Who cares + whether it is good? A few prosperous gentlemen and ladies; + but the Universal Yankee Nation roaring in the capitol to + approve or condemn would make his eye and hand and heart go + to a new tune." + +Those words were written in 1836, but we are still waiting for that new +national anthem, sustaining the heart and the voice of the individual +artist. Yet there are signs that it is coming. + +It is obvious that the day for the old individualism has passed. +Whether one looks at art and literature or at the general activities of +American society, it is clear that the isolated individual is +incompetent to carry on his necessary tasks. This is not saying that we +have outgrown the individual. We shall never outgrow the individual. We +need for every page of literature and for every adequate performance of +society more highly perfected individuals. Some one said of Edgar Allan +Poe that he did not know enough to be a great poet. All around us and +every day we find individuals who do not know enough for their specific +job; men who do not love enough, men in whom the power of will is too +feeble. Such men, as individuals, must know and love and will more +adequately; and this not merely to perfect their functioning as +individuals, but to fulfill their obligations to contemporary society. +A true spiritual democracy will never be reached until highly trained +individuals are united in the bonds of fraternal feeling. Every +individual defect in training, defect in aspiration, defect in passion, +becomes ultimately a defect in society. + +Let us turn, then, to those conditions of American society which have +prepared the way for, and foreshadowed, a more perfect fellowship. We +shall instantly perceive the relation of these general social +conditions to the specific performances of our men of letters. We have +repeatedly noted that our most characteristic literature is what has +been called a citizen literature. It is the sort of writing which +springs from a sense of the general needs of the community and which +has had for its object the safe-guarding or the betterment of the +community. Aside from a few masterpieces of lyric poetry, and aside +from the short story as represented by such isolated artists as Poe and +Hawthorne, our literature as a whole has this civic note. It may be +detected in the first writings of the colonists. Captain John Smith's +angry order at Jamestown, "He that will not work neither let him eat," +is one of the planks in the platform of democracy. Under the trying and +depressing conditions of that disastrous settlement at Eden in _Martin +Chuzzlewit_ it is the quick wits and the brave heart of Mark Tapley +which prove him superior to his employer. The same sermon is preached +in Mr. Barrie's play, _The Admirable Crichton_: cast away upon the +desert island, the butler proves himself a better man than his master. +This is the motive of a very modern play, but it may be illustrated a +hundred times in the history of the seventeenth and eighteenth +centuries in America. The practical experiences of the colonists +confirmed them in their republican theories. It is true that they held +to a doctrine of religious and political individualism. But the moment +these theories were put to work in the wilderness a new order of things +decreed that this individualism should be modified in the direction of +fellowship. Calvinism itself, for all of its insistence upon the value +of the individual soul, taught also the principle of the equality of +all souls before God. It was thus that the _Institutes_ of Calvin +became one of the charters of democracy. The democratic drift in the +writings of Franklin and Jefferson is too well known to need any +further comment. The triumph of the rebellious colonists of 1776 was a +triumph of democratic principles; and although a Tory reaction came +promptly, although Hamiltonianism came to stay as a beneficent check to +over-radical, populistic theories, the history of the last century and +a quarter has abundantly shown the vitality and the endurance of +democratic ideas. + +One may fairly say that the decade in which American democracy revealed +its most ugly and quarrelsome aspect was the decade of the +eighteen-thirties. That was the decade when Washington Irving and +Fenimore Cooper came home from long sojourns in Europe. They found +themselves confronted at once by sensitive, suspicious neighbors who +hated England and Europe and had a lurking or open hostility towards +anything that savored of Old World culture. Yet in that very epoch +when English visitors were passing their most harsh and censorious +verdict upon American culture, Emerson was writing in his _Journal_ +(June 18, 1834) a singular prophecy to the effect that the evils of +our democracy, so far as literature was concerned, were to be cured by +the remedy of more democracy. Is it not striking that he turns away +from the universities and the traditional culture of New England and +looks towards the Jacksonism of the new West to create a new and native +American literature? Here is the passage:-- + + "We all lean on England; scarce a verse, a page, a newspaper, + but is writ in imitation of English forms; our very manners + and conversation are traditional, and sometimes the life + seems dying out of all literature, and this enormous paper + currency of Words is accepted instead. I suppose the evil may + be cured by this rank rabble party, the Jacksonism of the + country, heedless of English and of all literature--a stone + cut out of the ground without hands;--they may root out the + hollow dilettantism of our cultivation in the coarsest way, + and the new-born may begin again to frame their own world + with greater advantage." + +From that raw epoch of the eighteen-thirties on to the Civil War, one +may constantly detect in American writing the accents of democratic +radicalism. Partly, no doubt, it was a heritage of the sentiment of the +French Revolution. "My father," said John Greenleaf Whittier, "really +believed in the Preamble of the Bill of Rights, which re-affirmed the +Declaration of Independence." So did the son! Equally clear in the +writings of those thirty years are echoes of the English radicalism +which had so much in common with the democratic movement across the +English Channel. The part which English thinkers and English agitators +played in securing for America the fruits of her own democratic +principles has never been adequately acknowledged. + +That the outcome of the Civil War meant a triumph of democratic ideas +as against aristocratic privilege, no one can doubt. There were no +stancher adherents of the democratic idea than our intellectual +aristocrats. The best Union editorials at the time of the Civil War, +says James Ford Rhodes, were written by scholars like Charles Eliot +Norton and James Russell Lowell. I think it was Lowell who once said, +in combatting the old aristocratic notion of white man supremacy, that +no gentleman is willing to accept privileges that are inaccessible to +other men. This is precisely like the famous sentence of Walt Whitman +which first arrested the attention of "Golden Rule Jones," the mayor of +Toledo, and which made him not only a Whitmaniac for the rest of his +life but one of the most useful of American citizens. The line was, "I +will accept nothing which all may not have their counterpart of on the +same terms." + +This instinct of fellowship cannot be separated, of course, from the +older instincts of righteousness and justice. It involves, however, +more than giving the other man his due. It means feeling towards him as +towards another "fellow." It involves the sentiment of partnership. +Historians of early mining life in California have noted the new phase +of social feeling in the mining-camps which followed upon the change +from the pan--held and shaken by the solitary miner--to the cradle, +which required the cooperation of at least two men. It was when the +cradle came in that the miners first began to say "partner." As the +cradle gave way to placer mining, larger and larger schemes of +cooperation came into use. In fact, Professor Royce has pointed out in +his _History of California_ that the whole lesson of California +history is precisely the lesson most necessary to be learned by the +country as a whole, namely, that the phase of individual gain-getting +and individualistic power always leads to anarchy and reaction, and +that it becomes necessary, even in the interests of effective +individualism itself, to recognize the compelling and ultimate +authority of society. + +What went on in California between 1849 and 1852 is precisely typical +of what is going on everywhere to-day. American men and women are +learning, as we say, "to get together." It is the distinctly +twentieth-century programme. We must all learn the art of getting +together, not merely to conserve the interests of literature and art +and society, but to preserve the individual himself in his just rights. +Any one who misunderstands the depth and the scope of the present +political restlessness which is manifested in every section of the +country, misunderstands the American instinct for fellowship. It is a +law of that fellowship that what is right and legitimate for me is +right and legitimate for the other fellow also. The American mind and +the American conscience are becoming socialized before our very eyes. +American art and literature must keep pace with this socialization of +the intelligence and the conscience, or they will be no longer +representative of the true America. + +Literary illustrations of this spirit of fraternalism lie close at +hand. They are to be found here and there even in the rebellious, +well-nigh anarchic, individualism of the Concord men. They are to be +found throughout the prose and verse of Whittier. No one has preached a +truer or more effective gospel of fellowship than Longfellow, whose +poetry has been one of the pervasive influences in American democracy, +although Longfellow had but little to say about politics and never +posed in a slouch hat and with his trousers tucked into his boots. +Fellowship is taught in the _Biglow Papers_ of Lowell and the stories +of Mrs. Stowe. It is wholly absent from the prose and verse of Poe, and +it imparts but a feeble warmth to the delicately written pages of +Hawthorne. But in the books written for the great common audience of +American men and women, like the novels of Winston Churchill; and in +the plays which have scored the greatest popular successes, like those +of Denman Thompson, Bronson Howard, Gillette, Augustus Thomas, the +doctrine of fellowship is everywhere to be traced. It is in the poems +of James Whitcomb Riley and of Sam Walter Foss; in the work of hundreds +of lesser known writers of verse and prose who have echoed Foss's +sentiment about living in a "house by the side of the road" and being a +"friend of man." + +To many readers the supreme literary example of the gospel of American +fellowship is to be found in Walt Whitman. One will look long before +one finds a more consistent or a nobler doctrine of fellowship than is +chanted in _Leaves of Grass_. It is based upon individualism; the +strong body and the possessed soul, sure of itself amid the whirling of +the "quicksand years"; but it sets these strong persons upon the "open +road" in comradeship; it is the sentiment of comradeship which creates +the indissoluble union of "these States"; and the States, in turn, in +spite of every "alarmist," "partialist," or "infidel," are to stretch +out unsuspicious and friendly hands of fellowship to the whole world. +Anybody has the right to call _Leaves of Grass_ poor poetry, if he +pleases; but nobody has the right to deny its magnificent Americanism. + +It is not merely in literature that this message of fellowship is +brought to our generation. Let me quote a few sentences from the recent +address of George Gray Barnard, the sculptor, in explaining the meaning +of his marble groups now placed at the entrance to the Capitol of +Pennsylvania. "I resolved," says Barnard, "that I would build such +groups as should stand at the entrance to the People's temple ... the +home of those visions of the ever-widening and broadening brotherhood +that gives to life its dignity and its meaning. Life is told in terms +of labor. It is fitting that labor, its triumphs, its message, should +be told to those who gaze upon a temple of the people. The worker is +the hope of all the future. The needs of the worker, his problems, his +hopes, his untold longings, his sacrifices, his triumphs, all of these +are the field of the art of the future. Slowly we are groping our way +towards the new brotherhood, and when that day dawns, men will enter a +world made a paradise by labor. Labor makes us kin. It is for this +reason that there has been placed at the entrance of this great +building the message of the Adam and Eve of the future, the message of +labor and of fraternity." + +That there are defects in this gospel and programme of American +fellowship, every one is aware. If the obstacle to effective +individualism is lack of discipline, the obstacles to effective +fellowship are vagueness, crankiness, inefficiency, and the relics of +primal selfishness. Nobody in our day has preached the tidings of +universal fellowship more fervidly and powerfully than Tolstoi. Yet +when one asks the great Russian, "What am I to do as a member of this +fellowship?" Tolstoi gives but a confused and impractical answer. He +applies to the complex and contradictory facts of our contemporary +civilization the highest test and standard known to him: namely, the +principles of the New Testament. But if you ask him precisely how these +principles are to be made the working programme of to-morrow, the +Russian mysticism and fanaticism settle over him like a fog. We pass +Tolstoians on the streets of our American cities every day; they have +the eyes of dreamers, of those who would build, if they could, a new +Heaven and a new Earth. But they do not know exactly how to go about +it. Our practical Western minds seize upon some actual plan for +constructive labor. Miss Jane Addams organizes her settlements in the +slums; Booker Washington gives his race models of industrial education; +President Eliot has a theory of university reform and then struggles +successfully for forty years to put that theory into practice. Compared +with the concrete performance of such social workers as these, the +gospel according to Whitman and Tolstoi is bound to seem vague in its +outlines, and ineffective in its concrete results. That such a gospel +attracts cranks and eccentrics of all sorts is not to be wondered at. +They come and go, but the deeper conceptions of fraternalism remain. + +A further obstacle to the progress of fellowship lies in selfishness. +But let us see how even the coarser and rawer and cruder traits of the +American character may be related to the spirit of common endeavor +which is slowly transforming our society, and modifying, before our +eyes, our contemporary art and literature. + +"The West," says James Bryce, "is the most American part of America, +that is to say the part where those features which distinguish America +from Europe come out in the strongest relief." We have already noted in +our study of American romance how the call of the West represented for +a while the escape from reality. The individual, following that +retreating horizon which we name the West, found an escape from +convention and from social law. Beyond the Mississippi or beyond the +Rockies meant to him that "somewheres east of Suez" where the Ten +Commandments are no longer to be found, where the individual has free +rein. But by and by comes the inevitable reaction, the return to +reality. The pioneer sobers down; he finds that "the Ten Commandments +will not budge"; he sees the need of law and order; he organizes a +vigilance committee; he impanels a jury, even though the old Spanish +law does not recognize a jury. The new land settles to its rest. The +output of the gold mines shrinks into insignificance when compared with +the cash value of crops of hay and potatoes. The old picturesque +individualism yields to a new social order, to the conception of the +rights of the state. The story of the West is thus an epitome of the +individual human life as well as the history of the United States. + +We have been living through a period where the mind of the West has +seemed to be the typical national mind. We have been indifferent to +traditions. We have overlooked the defective training of the +individual, provided he "made good." We have often, as in the free +silver craze, turned our back upon universal experience. We have been +recklessly deaf to the teachings of history; we have spoken of the laws +of literature and art as if they were mere conventions designed to +oppress the free activity of the artist. Typical utterances of our +writers are Jack London's "I want to get away from the musty grip of +the past," and Frank Norris's "I do not want to write literature, I +want to write life." + +The soul of the West, and a good deal of the soul of America, has been +betrayed in words like those. Not to share this hopefulness of the +West, its stress upon feeling rather than thinking, its superb +confidence, is to be ignorant of the constructive forces of the nation. +The humor of the West, its democracy, its rough kindness, its faith in +the people, its generous notion of "the square deal for everybody," +its elevation of the man above the dollar, are all typical of the +American way of looking at the world. Typical also, is its social +solidarity, its swift emotionalism of the masses. It is the Western +interest in the ethical aspect of social movements that is creating +some of the moving forces in American society to-day. Experiment +stations of all kinds flourish on that soil. Chicago newspapers are +more alive to new ideas than the newspapers of New York or Boston. No +one can understand the present-day America if he does not understand +the men and women who live between the Allegheny Mountains and the +Rocky Mountains. They have worked out, more successfully than the +composite population of the East, a general theory of the relation of +the individual to society; in other words, a combination of +individualism with fellowship. + +To draw up an indictment against this typical section of our country is +to draw up an indictment against our people as a whole. And yet one who +studies the literature and art produced in the great Mississippi Valley +will see, I believe, that the needs of the West are the real needs of +America. Take that commonness of mind and tone, which friendly foreign +critics, from De Tocqueville to Bryce, have indicated as one of the +dangers of our democracy. This commonness of mind and tone is often one +of the penalties of fellowship. It may mean a levelling down instead of +a levelling up. + +Take the tyranny of the majority,--to which Mr. Bryce has devoted one +of his most suggestive chapters. You begin by recognizing the rights of +the majority. You end by believing that the majority must be right. You +cease to struggle against it. In other words, you yield to what Mr. +Bryce calls "the fatalism of the multitude." The individual has a sense +of insignificance. It is vain to oppose the general current. It is +easier to acquiesce and to submit. The sense of personal responsibility +lessens. What is the use of battling for one's own opinions when one +can already see that the multitude is on the other side? The greater +your democratic faith in the ultimate rightness of the multitude, the +less perhaps your individual power of will. The easier is it for you to +believe that everything is coming out right, whether you put your +shoulder to the wheel or not. + +The problem of overcoming these evils is nothing less than the problem +of spiritualizing democracy. There are some of our hero-worshipping +people who think that that vast result can still be accomplished by +harking back to some such programme as the "great man" theory of +Carlyle. Another theory of spiritualizing democracy, no less familiar +to the student of nineteen-century literature, is what is called "the +divine average" doctrine of Walt Whitman. The average man is to be +taught the glory of his walk and trade. Round every head there is to be +an aureole. "A common wave of thought and joy, lifting mankind again," +is to make us forget the old distinction between the individual and the +social group. We are all to be the sons of the morning. + +We must not pause to analyze or to illustrate these two theories. +Carlyle's theory seems to me to be outworn, and Whitman's theory is +premature. But it is clear that they both admit that the mass of men +are as yet incompletely spiritualized, not yet raised to their full +stature. Unquestionably, our American life is, in European eyes at +least, monotonously uniform. It is touched with self-complacency. It +is too intent upon material progress. It confuses bigness with +greatness. It is unrestful. It is marked by intellectual impatience. +Our authors are eager to write life rather than literature. But they +are so eager that they overlook the need of literary discipline. They +do not learn to write literature and therefore most of them are +incapable of interpreting life. They escape, perhaps, from "the musty +grip of the past," but in so doing they refuse to learn the inexorable +lessons of the past. Hence the fact that our books lack power, that +they are not commensurate with the living forces of the country. The +unconscious, moral, and spiritual life of the nation is not back of +them, making "eye and hand and heart go to a new tune." + +If we could have that, we should ask no more, for we believe in the +nation. I heard a doctor say, the other day, that a man's chief lesson +was to pull his brain down into his spinal cord; that is to say, to +make his activities not so much the result of conscious thought and +volition, as of unconscious, reflex action; to stop thinking and +willing, and simply _do_ what one has to do. May there not be a hint +here of the ultimate relation of the individual to the social +organism; the relation of our literature to our national character? +There is a period, no doubt, when the individual must painfully +question himself, test his powers, and acquire the sense of his own +place in the world. But there also comes a more mature period when he +takes that place unconsciously, does his work almost without thinking +about it, as if it were not his work at all. The brain has gone down +into the spinal cord; the man is functioning as apart of the organism +of society; he has ceased to question, to plan, to decide; it is +instinct that does his work for him. + +Literature and art, at their noblest, function in that instinctive way. +They become the unconscious expression of a civilization. A nation +passes out of its adolescent preoccupation with plans and with +materials. It learns to do its work, precisely as Goethe bade the +artist do his task, without talking about it. We, too, shall outgrow in +time our questioning, our self-analysis, our futile comparison of +ourselves with other nations, our self-conscious study of our own +national character. We shall not forget the distinction between "each" +and "all," but "all" will increasingly be placed at the service of +"each." With fellowship based upon individualism, and with +individualism ever leading to fellowship, America will perform its +vital tasks, and its literature will be the unconscious and beautiful +utterance of its inner life. + + +THE END. + + +The Riverside Press + +CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS + +U. S. A. + + + + + * * * * * + +Transcriber's Notes + + +Pages 53, 141: Changed the oe ligature to oe in the name Crevecoeur: + (Settlers like Crevecoeur), (enthusiasm of a settler like Crevecoeur) + +Page 67: Changed compaign to campaign: + (Their compaign of "exposure," during the last decade,) + +Page 165: Retained the spaced 't is, to match original line of poetry: + ("If my bark sinks, 't is to another sea.") + +Page 222: Changed conciousness to consciousness: + (the preoccupied colonial conciousness.) + +Page 223: Changed explans to explains: + (It explans the still lingering popular suspicion) + +Page 232: Changed sojurns to sojourns: + (Fenimore Cooper came home from long sojurns in Europe.) + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The American Mind, by Bliss Perry + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AMERICAN MIND *** + +***** This file should be named 29952.txt or 29952.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/9/9/5/29952/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Diane Monico, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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