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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ecedd73 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #63090 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63090) diff --git a/old/63090-0.txt b/old/63090-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 5a67e38..0000000 --- a/old/63090-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3377 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, Everyday Americans, by Henry Seidel Canby - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: Everyday Americans - - -Author: Henry Seidel Canby - - - -Release Date: August 31, 2020 [eBook #63090] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVERYDAY AMERICANS*** - - -E-text prepared by David E. Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading -Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by -Internet Archive (https://archive.org) - - - -Note: Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - https://archive.org/details/everydayamerican01canb - - -Transcriber’s note: - - Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. - - - - - -EVERYDAY AMERICANS - -by - -HENRY SEIDEL CANBY - -Author of “College Sons and College Fathers,” -“Our House,” “Education by -Violence,” etc. - - -[Illustration] - - - - - - -New York -The Century Co. -1920 - -Copyright, 1919, 1920, by -The Century Co. - - - - -PREFACE - - -This is emphatically not a war book; and yet the chapters that follow, -in one sense, are the fruits of the war, inasmuch as they represent -reflections upon his own people by one returning to a familiar -environment after active contact with English, Scottish, Irish, and -French in the turbulent, intimate days of 1918. They are complementary, -in a way, to a volume of essays which sprang from that experience and -was published in 1919 under the title “Education by Violence.” But -though representing in its inception the fresher view of familiar -America of one returning from abroad, this book in its completed form -is tendered as a modest attempt to depict an American type that was -sharpened perhaps, but certainly not created by the war. The “old -Americans” came to racial consciousness many years ago, although their -sense of nationality has been immeasurably strengthened by the events -of the last few years. It is no picture of all America, no survey of -our complete social being that I attempt in the following pages; but -rather a highly personal study of the typical, the everyday American -mind, as it is manifested in the American of the old stock. It is a -study of what that typical American product, the college and high -school graduate, has become in the generation which must carry on after -the war. - - New Haven, Connecticut, - June 4, 1920. - - - - -CONTENTS - - -CHAPTER PAGE - - I THE AMERICAN MIND 3 - - II CONSERVATIVE AMERICA 29 - - III RADICAL AMERICA 61 - - IV AMERICAN IDEALISM 91 - - V RELIGION IN AMERICA 120 - - VI LITERATURE IN AMERICA 149 - - VII THE BOURGEOIS AMERICAN 175 - - - - -EVERYDAY AMERICANS - - - - -EVERYDAY AMERICANS - - - - -CHAPTER I - -THE AMERICAN MIND - - -In England there developed long ago, perhaps as far back as the days of -Shakespeare, who was aristocratic in his tastes and democratic in his -sympathies, a curious political animal called the radical-conservative. -The radical-conservative, as Lord Fitzmaurice once said, is a man who -would have been a radical outright if radicals had not been dissenters; -by which he clearly meant that the species agreed with radical -principles, but objected to radicals because they did not have good -manners, seldom played cricket, and never belonged to the best clubs. -Therefore the radical-conservative stays in his own more congenial -class while working for social justice toward all other classes. He is -willing to vote with the conservative party in return for concessions -in labor laws, inheritance taxes, or the safeguarding of public health. - -Thence arises the curious circumstance, most mystifying to foreigners, -that a good share of the really progressive legislation in Great -Britain of the last half-century has been led by young gentlemen from -Oxford and Cambridge who have no more intention of becoming part of the -proletariate than of leaving off their collars and going without baths. -Bismarck was an out-and-out conservative who for his own nefarious -ends furthered what a Rhode Island Republican or an Ulster Tory would -call radical measures. But Lord Robert Cecil in our own day is a -convinced aristocrat, as befits a son of Lord Salisbury, who is more -sincerely effective than many Liberals in various movements which we -are accustomed to call reform. - -The conservative-liberal is quite a different animal and far commoner, -far more familiar to Americans, even if they have never called him -by that name. His habitat is America, and thanks to the populousness -of this country, he is beginning to have a very important influence -outside of his habitat. To define him is difficult, but for purposes of -rough classification he may be said to be the man whose native liberal -instincts have been crystallized by a combination of interesting -circumstances--and sometimes petrified. He is the man who was born a -liberal in a liberal country and intends to remain as he was born. He -is the man who will fight for the freedom proclaimed by the Declaration -of Independence against any later manifestation of the revolutionary -spirit. He believes in conserving in unaltered purity the principles of -life, government, and industry that his forefathers rightly believed -to be liberal. In brief, he is a revolutionary turned policeman, a -progressive who stands pat upon his progress, a conservative-liberal. -I believe that he is our closest approximation to a typical American -mind. - -Whether familiar or not, the effects of this political disease--for -it is a disease, a hardening of the arteries of the mind--are easily -observable all about us in the America of to-day. Indeed, we see them -so frequently that they awaken no surprise, are scarcely seen at all in -any intellectual sense of the word. They are like our clear atmosphere, -our mixture of races, our hurried steps--things we scarcely notice -until an outsider speaks of them. I am not an outsider. I am so much a -part of America that I find it difficult to detach myself from a mood -that is mine in common with many other Americans. And yet, once one -sees it plainly, the educated conservatism of liberal America becomes -portentous, a unique political phenomenon. - -I think that this peculiarity of our political thinking first became -evident to me on an ocean voyage in war-time. There were a score or -so of Americans on board, members, most of them, of various government -missions, picked business men, picked professional men, thoroughly -intelligent, intensely practical, and entirely American. They were -democratic, too, as we use the word in America; that is, good “mixers,” -free from snobbery, and nothing new in action was alien to their -sympathies. They could remold you a business or a legal practice in -half an hour’s conversation; tear down an organization and build -it up again between cigars. Their committee meetings went off like -machine-guns, whereas the English officers and trade diplomats, when -they got together, snarled themselves in set speeches and motions and -took an afternoon to get anywhere. The English, indeed, seemed puzzled -and a little dazed by the ease with which the Americans seized upon and -put through reorganization of any kind. They seemed positively to leap -at change, so long as basic ideas were not involved. “Nothing,” said -an Indian colonel, “is sacred to them. They would scrap the empire and -build a new one--on paper--at sixty miles an hour.” - -He was quite wrong. The system my countrymen lived by permitted change, -urged change, up to a certain point. They would demolish a ten-story -building to erect one of twenty or scrap thousands of machines in -order to adopt a better process, but when it came to principles and -institutions they were conservative. The founders of their social and -political order had been almost a century ahead of the times. The -instruments of life and of government they had provided had served with -slight modifications for the free-moving America of the nineteenth -century. It had been a game for Americans, and a splendid one, to -realize the liberality and democracy possible under the Constitution, -to work out the independence available for the common man in a rich and -undeveloped country in which his political power guaranteed him every -advantage that could be gained in a capitalistic system, including the -acquisition of capital. It had been a splendid game, and our wits had -been sharpened, our faculties strengthened, our prosperity fortified, -our self-confidence enormously increased in playing it. Given our -rules, we could play the game more resourcefully than any other people -on earth. And they were wise rules, which provided for growth, but not -for a different kind of contest. We were so sure that America stood for -freedom, independence, and liberality in general that we could not take -seriously people who did not believe in democracy, nor conceive that -there might be an idea of democracy different from our own. - -Indeed, on board that ship, a curious experience came to all of us, -Englishmen, Americans, and I, the humble observer, when in the course -of argument or conference the theories of life upon which we were -variously living came momentarily into view. The Americans, it was -clear, were certain that they were the most progressive people in the -world. This certainty was like the fixed dogma of a Roman Catholic; -it gave them elasticity and daring. Being sure of their principles, -so sure as to be almost unaware of them, they ignored precedents, and -solved or dismissed problems with equal ease. They made plans for a -league of nations, they approved of a temporary autocracy for the -President, they put the labor question on a business basis, and so -disposed of it; they were afraid of nothing but a failure to act and -act quickly. Nevertheless, as they talked and worked with the English, -it became increasingly evident that their road ended in a wall. - -There were walls on the English road, too--walls of caste thinking and -social privilege that seemed as ridiculous as a moat around an office -building. Our wall was invisible to most of us, and as a body we never -tried to pass it at all. It was the end wall of our liberal ideas, -beyond which, if we thought of it at all, presumably lay socialism, -anarchy, chaos. - -Just that far the American mind, like some light tank, ran, surmounting -everything, taking to the fields if the road was blocked, turning, -backing, doing everything but stop; only to halt dead at the invisible -barrier, and zigzag away again. By such a free-moving process within -the limits of law we had scrambled across a continent in turbulent, -individualistic exploitation, and yet had built a sound political -system carefully and well. And there we had stopped, convinced that -we had solved the problem of democracy and equal opportunity for all. -This explains why America is twenty years behind the best of Europe in -social and economic reform. (To be sure, Europe needed reform more than -we did). This is what it is to be a conservative-liberal. - -The Englishman is different. He is much more likely to be an obstinate -Tory, blocking all advance, and living, as far as he is able, by -a system as antiquated as feudalism; or if not a Tory, then an -out-and-out radical eager for a legal revolution. But in either case he -knows what different-minded men are thinking; and if there is a wall on -his road, he looks over it. If he is a Tory, he understands radicalism -and fights it because he prefers an inequality that favors him to a -more logical system that might be personally disagreeable. If he is a -radical, he understands Toryism. But the American conservative-liberal -acknowledges no opinion except his own. He insists, in the words of a -contemporary statesman, that the American system, as founded by our -forefathers, is the best in the world, and he is not interested in -others. There are a thousand proofs that it is not the best possible -system even for America, and plenty of them are in print--proofs -advanced by capitalists as well as labor leaders, by Catholics as well -as socialists; but they do not trouble him, because he neither hears -nor reads them. It is easier to call the writer a crank or a Bolshevik. - -This is the liberal-conservative mind that will not look beyond its own -fixed principles and refuses to understand those who differ from it; -that suffers a kind of paralysis when confronted by genuine radicalism. -The American college undergraduate has it to perfection. Bubbling over -with energy, ready for anything in the practical world of struggle -or adventure, he is as confident and as careful of the ideas he has -inherited as a girl of her reputation. He is armored against new -thinking. The American business man fairly professes it. He speculates -in material things with an abandon that makes a Frenchman pale; but new -principles in the relations of trade to general welfare, questions of -unearned increment, first bore and then, if pressed home, frighten him. - -And yet the college undergraduates, after hatching, and the American -business man have made for us a very comfortable America, just now -the safest place in the world to live in, the most prosperous country -in the world, the most cheerful. The liberal-conservative way of doing -things has its great advantages. America is its product, and the ranter -who describes the United States as the home of super-capitalism, a sink -of cheaply exploited labor, a dull stretch of bourgeois mediocrity, -does not seem to be able to persuade even himself that the United -States is not the best of all countries for a permanent residence. - -And the great Americans of the past have nearly all been -conservative-liberals. Washington was a great republican; he was also -essentially an aristocrat in social and economic relations, who kept -slaves and did not believe in universal suffrage. Lincoln, politically, -was the greatest of English-speaking democrats, but he let the -privileged classes exploit the working-man and the soldier, partly in -order to win the war, chiefly because problems of wages and unearned -increments and economic privilege generally did not enter into his -scheme of democracy. Roosevelt fought a good fight for the square deal -in public and private life, but hesitated and at last turned back when -it became evident that a deal that was completely square meant the -overturning of social life as he knew and loved it in America. - -And these men we feel were right. Their duty was to make possible -a good government and a stable society, and they worked not with -theories only, but also with facts as they were. The Germans have -argued that the first duty of the state is self-preservation, and that -rights of individual men and other states may properly be crushed in -order to preserve it. We have crushed the Germans and, one hopes, -their philosophy. But no one doubts that it is a duty of society to -preserve itself. No one believes that universal suffrage for all, -negroes included, would have been advisable in Washington’s day, when -republicanism was still an experiment. No one believes, I fancy, that -the minimum wage, the inheritance tax, and coöperative management -should have had first place, or indeed any place, in the mind of the -Lincoln of 1863. Few suppose that Roosevelt as a socialist would have -been as useful to the United States as Roosevelt the Progressive with -a back-throw toward the ideals of the aristocratic state; as Roosevelt -the conservative-liberal. - -But too great reliance on even a great tradition has its disadvantages. -I know an American preparatory school that for many college generations -has entered its students at a famous university with the highest of -examination records, and a reputation for courtesy and cleanness of -mind and soundness of body scarcely paralleled elsewhere. I have -watched these boys with much interest, and I have seen them in -surprising numbers gradually decline from their position of superiority -as they faced the rapid changes of college life, as they settled into -a new environment with different demands and more complex standards. -They leaned too heavily upon their admirable schooling; they were too -confident of the strength and worth of their tradition; they looked -backward instead of forward, and stood still while less favored men -went on. Their fault was the fault of American liberalism, which stands -pat with Washington and Roosevelt and Lincoln. - -Perhaps the greatest teacher in nineteenth-century American -universities was William Graham Sumner. In his day he was called a -radical, and unsuccessful efforts were made to oust him from his -professorship because of his advocacy of free trade. Now I hear him -cited as a conservative by those who quote his support of individualism -against socialism, his distrust of coöperation against the league of -nations. His friends forget that an honest radical in one age would -be an honest radical in another; and that the facts available having -changed, it is certain that his opinions would change also, although -just what he would advocate, just how decide, we cannot certainly know. -Is it probable that Dante, the great advocate of imperial control in a -particularistic medieval world, would have been a pro-German in 1914? -The American liberal who proclaims himself of the party of Lincoln, and -is content with that definition, might have an unpleasant shock if that -great reader of the heart of the common man could resume his short-cut -life. - -Indeed, an inherited liberalism has the same disadvantages as inherited -money: all the owner has to do is to learn how to keep it; in other -words, to become a conservative. That is what is going on in America. -While we were pioneers in liberty and individualism, wealth and -opportunity and independence were showered upon us, and although wealth -for the average man is harder to come by, and opportunity is more and -more limited to the fortunate, and independence belongs only to good -incomes, nevertheless the conservative-liberal keeps the pioneer’s -optimism, and is satisfied to take ready-made a system that his -ancestors wrought by painful and open-minded experiment. In practice he -is still full of initiative and invention; in principle he can conceive -of only one dispensation, the ideas of political democracy which were -the radicalism of 1861 and 1840 and 1789 and 1776. - -Suppose that he could conceive of industrial democracy, of a system -where every man began with an equal share of worldly privilege as he -begins now with an equal share of worldly rights. Would he not work it -out, with his still keen practicality, and test its value precisely as -he tests a new factory method or an advertising scheme? But he cannot -conceive of it. It lies beyond his dispensation. His liberalism turns -conservative at the thought. It was different with political democracy -and With religious toleration. The first cannot even now be said to be -precisely a perfect system, and the second has left us perilously near -to having no religion at all. Nevertheless, the liberal ancestor of our -American never doubted that they were _his_ problems, to be worked out -to some solution. He followed boldly where they led. - -What has happened to the political and economic thinking of many an -American much resembles what has happened to his religion. He learns -at church a number of ethical principles which would make him very -uneasy if put into practice. He learns the virtue of poverty, the duty -of self-sacrifice, the necessity of love for his fellow-man. Now, -saintly poverty has not become an ideal in America--certainly not in -New York or Iowa or Atlantic City--nor is self-sacrifice common among -corporations, or love a familiar attribute of the practice of law. -Does the American therefore eschew the ethics of Christianity? On the -contrary. Religion is accepted at its traditional value. The church -grows richer and more influential--within limits. The plain man keeps -all his respects for religion as an ideal; but he regards it precisely -as an ideal, a formula beautiful in its perfection, not to be sullied -by too close an application, not to be worked out into new terms to fit -a new life. - -And that is just what the conservative-liberal does with the vigorous -liberalism of his forefathers. He buries it in his garden, and expects -to dig it up after many days, a bond with coupons attached. He has -accepted it as the irrevocable word of Jehovah establishing the metes -and bounds wherein he shall think. It is his creed; and like the creeds -of the church, the further one gets from its origins, the greater the -repugnance to change. He stands by the declaration of his forefathers; -stands pat, and begs to be relieved of further abstract discussion. -Business is pressing; controversy is bad for business; ideas are bad -for business; change is bad for business: let well enough alone. - -But by all odds the most important fact as regards this -conservative-liberal mind of which I have been writing remains to be -stated, and that is its success, for it is now the prevailing mind -in America. As our soldiers in France, though bearing Italian names, -Irish names, Hebrew, Polish, German names, yet in helmet and uniform -looked all, or nearly all, like the physical type we call American, -so in this confusing country of ours, immigrant-settled, polylingual, -built upon fragments of the empires of England and Spain and Russia -and France, there is indubitably a mental type which we may call with -some confidence American, a mind liberal in its principles, but in its -instincts conservative. - -Indeed it is arguable and perhaps demonstrable that this American -mental type is the most definite national entity to be found anywhere -in the Western world. I know that this sounds paradoxical. We have -heard much for several years now of the lack of homogeneity in America. -We felt in 1914 our German-Americans cleave away from us (to be sure, -they came back); we saw in 1918 and 1919 the radical socialist and the -I. W. W. and the vehement intellectual manifest symptoms that were -certainly not American as the ’nineties knew America. We began to -realize that the immigrant changes his language more quickly than his -_mores_, and frequently changes neither. All this is true. And yet, in -spite of it, this conservative-liberal way of looking at things which -we know so well in America comes nearer to being a definite national -psychology that acts in expected fashions, has qualities that you can -describe as I have been describing them, and characteristics common -to all varieties of it, than either the “British mind” or the “French -mind” of which we write glibly. - -For the British mind includes the Irish, which is as different from the -English as a broncho from a dray-horse. It includes the Tory mind and -the Liberal mind, which in England are as dissimilar as were Jefferson -Davis and Abraham Lincoln. It includes, if we use it loosely, Sir -Edward Carson and Mr. Asquith and H. G. Wells, each of whom represents -a considerable British constituency. And they could no more think alike -on any topic on the earth below or the heavens above than a Turk, a -Greek, and a Jew. Certain fundamental attitudes would unite all three -of these latter if they were civilized: they would all eat with knives -and forks. And in the same fashion certain definite racial traits unite -the Britons aforementioned. But the differences imposed by social caste -or diverging political and social philosophies are far greater than -anything to be found in everyday America, which latter I define as -lying between the fringe of recent immigrants on the one hand and the -excrescences of Boston intellectual aristocrats or New York radical -intellectuals on the other. - -Is there a “French mind”? Intellectually and esthetically, perhaps -yes. Politically and socially, to a less degree of uniformity than -can be found in America. From the simple homogeneity of France, as -we casuals see it, has crystallized out the aristocracy and much of -the church, whose respective parties differ not merely as regards the -policy of the Government, but are still opposed to that Government -itself. - -The United States, far more heterogeneous in race, far less fixed -in national character, threatened by its masses of aliens, who are -in every sense unabsorbed, is yet much more homogeneous in its -thinking. In America weekly magazines for men and women spread -everywhere and through every class but the lowest, and so does this -conservative-liberalism in politics and social life which I have tried -to define. In Connecticut and Kansas and Arizona it is displayed -in every conversation, as our best known national weekly (itself -conservative-liberal) is displayed on every news-stand. Irrespective -of racial or financial differences, everywhere in America, between -the boundaries I have already indicated--the alien immigrant on one -hand, the advanced intellectual on the other--nine out of ten of us -are conservative-liberals; everywhere, indeed, throughout the American -bourgeoisie, which with us includes skilled laborer and farmer, -professional man and millionaire. - -And the mental habits of this contemporary American are of more than -local importance. We who are just now so afraid of internationalism -are more likely than any other single agency to bring it about. Our -habits of travel, our traverse of class lines, our American way of -doing things, are perhaps the nearest approximation of what the world -seems likely to adopt as a modern habit if the old aristocracies break -down everywhere, if easy transportation becomes general, if there is -wide-spread education, if Bolshevism does not first turn our whole -Western system upside down. Already in newspapers and books, in -theaters and politics, in social intercourse and in forms of music and -language, one sees all through Western Europe (and, they say, also -in the East) the American mode creeping in, to be welcomed or cursed -according to circumstances. And those great international levelers, the -movies, are American in plot and scene and idea and manners from one -end to the other of a film that stretches round the world. - -Thus the American mind is worth troubling about; and if politically, -socially, economically the spirit that we and the foreigners call -American has become stagnant in its liberalism, it is time to awake. -In liberalism inheres our vitality, our initiative, our strength. Its -stagnation, its inertia, its blindness to the new waves of freedom -sweeping upward from the masses and on in broken and muddy torrents -through the world are poignant dangers. We must open eyes; we must -change our ground; we must fight the evil in the new revolution, but -welcome the good. Our own revolution lies before the deluge; it is -no longer enough to go on; it is not now the sufficing document of a -political philosophy. We must not stop with Washington and Lincoln. We -must go on where the conservative Washington and the radical Lincoln -would lead if they were our contemporaries. Radical-conservatism -is good, and Toryism or radicalism have their uses; but -conservative-liberalism, preserved, desiccated, museum liberalism, long -continued in, is death to the minds that maintain it. - - - - -CHAPTER II - -CONSERVATIVE AMERICA - - -There is one experience that conservative-liberal America--bourgeois -America, the pushing America that gets what it wants on this side of -the ocean--possesses in common, and that is its education. We of the -vast American middle class have all been to high school, or we have -lived with high school graduates; we have all been to college, or we -have worked with college graduates. Our education, when viewed with any -detachment, is astoundingly homogeneous. In a given generation most of -us have studied the same textbooks in mathematics and geography and -history, read the same selections in literature, been inoculated with -the same ethical principles from the Bible and the moralists. Ask us a -question as to what makes right or wrong, as the President did in his -war messages, and we will respond with a universal roar, like factory -whistles when a button is punched on some celebration day. - -This general American experience is largely responsible for the -tenacity with which we of this generation blindly conserve the liberal -principles of our ancestors, even while we keep them, like the tables -of the ten commandments, safe from the rude touch of practical -experience. Education such as ours seldom fails to influence men’s -ways of thinking even when their actions pass beyond its control. The -influence, however, is too often ineffectual, bloodless. That is a -lesson we need to ponder in America. - -Education in these colonies in the eighteenth century was bent toward -theology. All but the lower schools, if, indeed, they could be -excepted, were contrived to find and to train the pastor, the minister -to the people. For him those studies that influence opinion--history, -ethics--were chiefly taught. For his purposes, the languages of the -classics were chiefly studied. It was the pastor that emerged as -prime product of academies and colleges. And therefore theology, that -arduous intellectual exercise for which he prepared, set its mark upon -all intellects down to the humblest. We wonder at the obsession with -religious thinking that the letters and diaries of farmers, merchants, -and lawyers of our eighteenth century display to the amazement of -their very untheological descendants. We should rather wonder at the -intellectual energy expended in wrestling with a difficult and abstract -subject. They entered, as we of the twentieth-century bourgeois do not, -into the field of scholarship; they partook of disputes that were as -international as Christendom; and shared with the chosen ones for whom -all this education was made, Jonathan Edwards and his co-professionals, -an interest in problems far broader than their strip of Atlantic -clearings. That the experience, whatever we may think of the value of -the theology, was good for them does not, I think, permit of argument. -There have never been abler Americans than at the end of the eighteenth -century. - -But nineteenth-century America was a different world. Interest in -theology abated for reasons that need not here be discussed. More and -more the United States diverged intellectually from our colonial unity -with Europe; our own problems engrossed us; and these were problems -of material development, of local statecraft, of that elementary -education which a democracy must necessarily take as its chief concern. -What had been a professional training by which God’s ministers were -to be selected became relatively unprofessional, a so-called “liberal -education,” the object of which was to illumine and make pliable and -broad the minds of laymen. The high purpose of the teacher was not -now to choose the leaders of the spirit. It was rather to preserve -in a new world of crude physical endeavor the arts and sciences that -civilize the mind. - -American life in the nineteenth century had many of the characteristics -that we are accustomed to associate with heroic barbarism. It had -the same insecurity--insecurity of life on the border, insecurity of -fortune where life was safe. It had the same frequency of hazardous -toil against wild nature; the same accompaniments of cold and -privation; the same vast and shadowy enterprises, usually collapsing; -the same intensity of physical sensation; the same ardor of emotional -experience in the spiritual realm. And always education mitigated -extravagance, restrained excess, directed effort. Through education our -ancestral Europe restrained and guided us. Education kept us white. - -But never, perhaps, has the divergence between life as it had to be -lived and the civilities taught us in school been greater. Never -has the ideal world, which, after all, it is the chief business of -education to mirror, been more different from the facts of experience -than in America. The ridiculous scientist of Cooper’s “Prairie” who -mistakes his donkey for a new monster and thinks it more important -to call the buffalo the bison than to eat when hungry of its hump, -is a symbol of the contrast between what we learned and what we did -in America. In the eighteenth century, education for most Americans -was practical preparation for a knowledge of God’s ways with man. In -the nineteenth it had become not a preparation for life so much as an -antiseptic against the demoralizations of a purely material struggle -to open up a continent. The results have been of grave political -importance. - -For the divergence between theory and practice explains the curiously -traditional character of our schooling as we knew it in youth, as our -grandfathers knew it in youth. I am not now speaking of the wearisome -controversies over Latin and Greek and classic English literature, -the so-called traditional subjects which make up a large part of -education. It is not the letter, but the spirit, that makes the thing -taught traditional. And ever since democracy began, the teacher has -had to be the priest and guardian of tradition in America. He has been -an anxious parent stretching the coverlet of racial culture over the -restless limbs of little immigrants. He has taught reading, writing, -and arithmetic as a means of holding fast to our tradition. He has -taught literature and history and “moral ethics” and “natural science” -as the containers of that tradition. We have almost forgotten that for -a time in the early nineteenth century it seemed quite possible that -the frontier would become Indian rather than European in its culture. -We see clearly now how possible it would have been for whole regions -of the South to relapse into negro semi-barbarism. We may guess that -save for the teacher and his grinding in of tradition the white races -of North America might have slipped backward, as too clearly have the -white races in many parts of Latin America. - -One element in this education by tradition was specially important. -Liberalism, the principle upon which this republic was founded, -education took up as soon as it dropped theology, if not earlier. -American education became impregnated with liberalism, made liberalism -its chief tradition. What we study in school and college stays by -us, overlaid perhaps, scarcely vital any more, yet packed close to -the roots of our conscious being. And the compost they gave us in -America was liberalism. History enshrined the republican ideals of -our founders and the democratic ideals of our nineteenth-century -development. Sometimes it was taught in college classes with “sources” -duly ticketed. Sometimes it trickled through commencement speeches -or primers thumbed on back-row benches. The results were the same. -In literature, whether English or American, the same ideas were -predominant, or at least were made to seem so by careful selection. -Democracy and the rights of man blow through the reading of the -American school-boy, somewhat aridly it must be admitted; but still -they blow. Civics and government and the social sciences in these -latter days, as they are taught in America, advance the same standard. - -Not less definite and persuasive was the influence of the men who -taught us. Many of them have been aristocratic in taste and in their -misprision of the stupidities of the common man, but their text also -was of liberalism and democracy whenever the subject or the occasion -permitted. Even geography and spelling were presented as the means -whereby the child of the laboring man had been given his chance to -rise in the world and perhaps become President. Properly considered, -the things we have been taught, the men who taught us, the very -organization of our school and college system, have been one vast -engine for shaping the minds of young America in the turn and mold of -liberalism. - -But this liberalism, like most of our education, was highly -traditional. Our subjects and the men who taught them looked -prevailingly backward for inspiration, recalled us to the past, warned -us of the future. The urge was always the old Roman one--preserve the -piety of your ancestors. Preparation for new conditions, for a possible -new liberty in industry or politics, for a possible new democracy in -wealth, there was, we must confess, very little. We were linked to -tradition; we were made profoundly and sincerely liberal, at least in -our theories of life; we were implored to stand pat. - -And though education, as the art was practised here in America, -has perhaps kept us liberal, it has certainly given to liberalism -that faint shadow of unreality, that sacrosanctity which belongs to -all traditional beliefs. It is the traditional quality of American -education that more than any other single agency has petrified -American liberalism. - -We plain Americans in our little red school-houses and our big brick -high schools and our spreading universities have learned republicanism -and the rights of man and the not-to-be-questioned opportunity of every -person to go to the top of the ladder if he wished and were able. This -we were taught explicitly and implicitly. And we believed these things -because we were made to think that all right-thinking men everywhere -believed them: and therefore we recited Gladstone and Lincoln and -Toussaint L’Ouverture and passages from Carlyle’s “French Revolution” -and Mrs. Browning on the freeing of Italy with confident hearts. -Furthermore, we felt that these principles were sincere, because, no -matter how poor or how stupid, we found educational opportunities -opened on every side. There was no discrimination in the quantity of -American education, and but little in its quality. Until we left the -school or the campus, our liberal tradition fitted us like a garment. -It never occurred to us that it might not always fit. - -Yet as soon as we moved out into America, crossing that bridge from -theory to practice, from ideas to application, which in all countries -is long and in new countries longest of all, strange contradiction -began to be apparent. Republicanism, it appeared, worked out in -practice, at least in our town, into boss control and domination by -party leaders, acting usually for vested interests. The rights of man, -we discovered, had a curious sound when discussed by labor-unions or -the unemployed. Opportunities, it became clear, could not be freely -offered to the man without capital unless we were prepared to change -radically an industrial system which our common sense taught us was -better--at least for us--than the visionary industrial democracies -that radicals without business experience wished to set up. Were -these precious ideals of ours merely buncombe, then, held only in -theory, in practice to be disregarded? Or was democracy good as a -half-way measure, but false as a general principle? Was our education a -tradition to be reverenced--and disregarded? - -Not a few reached the indicated conclusion, though they kept, as a -rule, their opinions to themselves. Perhaps as many swung to the other -extreme, believed that only more democracy would cure us, and also kept -out of print, for fear of being associated with radical aliens who -held much the same opinions in politics and social affairs, but very -different conceptions of cleanliness, morals, and polite conversation. -These were our right and left wings merely. The great mass of us, the -everyday Americans, took things as they were with a kind of shrewd -childish good sense, and pushed ahead, being as democratic as was -convenient in this unequal world, but taking no nonsense from people -who would interfere with business in order to make us more so. And that -is where we are now--at the end of the war, in the midst of a world -revolution so great that no one knows whether it has just begun or is -just ending. - -But a revolution drives men back upon their principles, makes them -scan willingly or unwillingly the things they live by--the prejudices, -enlightenments, interpretations, convictions that in the largest sense -_are_ their education. And this is true not only of rapid revolutions, -like the French and the Russian, but of slow ones, such as that -revolution which has been slowly gathering headway in English-speaking -countries for three decades or more, that revolution of social and -industrial conditions now rapidly accelerating. And what have Americans -thought of their education? - -I think they have found it a brake, a stabilizer, a deterrent alike -from violent reaction and dangerous experiment. I think also that -they have found it what it is--traditional. They have felt it as -a taboo, good on Sundays, but on week-days not to be too closely -regarded. Where it has preached restraint to the more radical, -they have listened, but grown restless. Was it not John Bright who -said that England would be ruined if the hours for labor should be -shortened? Did not Cooper, who wrote the epic of frontier freedom, -sharpen his pen to defend the unearned increment of the landlord? -Where it speaks of liberty and equality to the more conservative, they -have listened, but not taken it too seriously. After all, the world -must be governed and dividends paid. While the rights of the citizen -should be safeguarded, business is business nevertheless, and politics -politics. The Declaration of Independence, they felt, should be kept in -its place, which was the Fourth of July. Theory--by which they meant -education--has little place in practical affairs. They were liberals -of course, but plain and prosperous Americans first of all, and the -latter, at least, they intended to remain. - -And thus, in its noble attempt to shape the minds of Americans to a -similitude of their full-blooded ancestors who dared to be radical, -American education itself has acquired the sanctity, the reverence, the -ghostliness of the dead. Like the dead, it is most influential upon -spirits sensitive to the past, and operates through love and veneration -and mere habit rather than through immediate compulsion. Like them, -it visits the minds of the living only in glimpses of the moon, and -its influence, though wide-spread, is partial and easily forgotten in -the noonday glare of active, practical life. Americans respect their -education, but too seldom do they live by it. - -It is a good tradition, this American ideal of noble and sturdy -liberalism. The only detraction to be made is precisely that the -education which embodies it is felt to be merely traditional. But this -is much the same as to say that last year’s hat is a good hat, the only -trouble being that when we wear it we invariably remember that it is -last year’s hat. And at least one unhappy consequence follows. - -American minds have been coddled in school and college for at least -a generation. There are two kinds of mental coddling. The first -belongs to the public schools, and is one of the defects of our -educational system that we abuse privately and largely keep out of -print. It is democratic coddling. I mean, of course, the failure to -hold up standards, the willingness to let youth wobble upward, knowing -little and that inaccurately, passing nothing well, graduating with -an education that hits and misses like an old type-writer with a -torn ribbon. America is full of “sloppy thinking,” of inaccuracy, -of half-baked misinformation, of sentimentalism, especially -sentimentalism, as a result of coddling by schools that cater to an -easy-going democracy. Only fifty-six per cent of a group of girls, -graduates of the public schools, whose records I once examined, could -do simple addition, only twenty-nine per cent simple multiplication -correctly; a deplorable percentage had a very inaccurate knowledge of -elementary American geography. - -A dozen causes are responsible for this condition, and among them, I -suspect, one, which if not major, at least deserves careful pondering. -The teacher and the taught have somehow drifted apart. His function -in the large has been to teach an ideal, a tradition. He is content, -he has to be content, with partial results. It is not for life as it -is, it is for what life ought to be, that he is preparing even in -arithmetic; he has allowed the faint unreality of a priestcraft to numb -him. In the mind of the student a dim conception has entered, that this -education--all education--is a garment merely, to be doffed for the -struggle with realities. The will is dulled. Interest slackens. - -But it is in aristocratic coddling that the effects of our educational -attitude gleam out to the least observant understanding. This is -the coddling of the preparatory schools and the colleges, and it is -more serious for it is a defect that cannot be explained away by -the hundred difficulties that beset good teaching in a public-school -system, nation-wide, and conducted for the young of every race in the -American menagerie. The teaching in the best American preparatory -schools and colleges is as careful and as conscientious as any in -the world. That one gladly asserts. Indeed, an American boy in a -good boarding-school is handled like a rare microbe in a research -laboratory. He is ticketed; every instant of his time is planned and -scrutinized; he is dieted with brain food, predigested, and weighed -before application. I sometimes wonder if a moron could not be made -into an Abraham Lincoln by such a system--if the system were sound. - -It is not sound. The boys and girls, especially the boys, are coddled -for entrance examinations, coddled through freshman year, coddled -oftentimes for graduation. And they too frequently go out into the -world fireproof against anything but intellectual coddling. Such -men and women can read only writing especially prepared for brains -that will take only selected ideas, simply put. They can think only -on simple lines, not too far extended. They can live happily only -in a life where ideas never exceed the college sixty per cent of -complexity, and where no intellectual or esthetic experience lies too -far outside the range of their curriculum. A world where one reads the -news and skips the editorials; goes to musical comedies, but omits -the plays; looks at illustrated magazines, but seldom at books; talks -business, sports, and politics, but never economics, social welfare, -and statesmanship--that is the world for which we coddle the best of -our youth. Many indeed escape the evil effects by their own innate -originality; more bear the marks to the grave. - -The process is simple, and one can see it in the English public -schools (where it is being attacked vivaciously) quite as commonly as -here. You take your boy out of his family and his world. You isolate -him except for companionship with other nursery transplantings and -teachers themselves isolated. And then you feed him, nay, you cram -him, with good traditional education, filling up the odd hours with -the excellent, but negative, passion of sport. Then you subject him to -a special cramming and send him to college, where sometimes he breaks -through the net of convention woven about him, and sees the real world -as it should appear to the student before he becomes part of it; but -more frequently wraps himself deep and more deeply in conventional -opinion, conventional practice, until, the limbs of his intellect bound -tightly, he stumbles into the outer world. - -And there, in the swirl and the vivid practicalities of American life, -is the net loosened? I think not. I think rather that the youth learns -to swim clumsily despite his encumbrances of lethargic thinking and -tangled idealism. But if they are cut? If he goes on the sharp rocks -of experience, finds that hardness, shrewdness, selfish individualism -pay best in American life, what has he in his spirit to meet this -disillusion? Of what use has been his education in the liberal, -idealistic traditions of America? Of some use, undoubtedly, for habit, -even a dull habit, is strong; but whether useful enough, whether -powerful enough, to save America, to keep us “white” in the newer and -more colloquial sense, the future will test and test quickly. - -Why do we coddle our aristocracy, who can pay for the best and most -effective education? I think that the explanation again is to be -sought in the traditionalism of American education. If our chief, our -ultimate, duty to the boy that we teach is to make him an “American -gentleman,” and if by this is meant that we are to instil the essence -of the Americanism which made Washington and Lincoln and Roosevelt, and -let it go at that, and if all our education hovers about this central -purpose--why, the stage is set for a problem play that may become -tragedy or farce. It is not thinking we teach then so much as what has -been taught. It is not life, but what has been lived; not American -liberalism, but a conservatism that never has been characteristically -American. The tradition is not at fault, nor the thought of the past, -nor the lives of our ancestors; it is when all these things are taught -as dead idealism unrelated to the facts of the present that they become -merely traditional. - -And the boy and girl are not deceived. They take all that is given -them--no youth in the world are so pliable, so receptive as ours--and -retain and respect and cherish what they remember of it. But it is -clear that for them it is tradition, it is unreal in comparison with -their sports, their social aspirations. It will be unreal in comparison -with their business and their politics and their household affairs. It -will be a venerated tradition of liberal thinking for them of which -they will be highly conservative. But it will not function in their -lives--not more at least than the sixty per cent that they sought for -in order to get that degree of bachelor of arts which certified that -they were versed in the thought of their forefathers. And so they merge -in the common American mind that I have called conservative-liberal. - -I know of no better proof of the truth of what I have just written than -the history of our college undergraduates in war-time. - -Here is such a demonstration as comes only once in a generation. Of -all unpreparedness, the unpreparedness of the undergraduate for war -was apparently chief. He knew little about the war, its causes, its -manifestations, for he is not an ardent reader of current events -outside his college world, nor does he hear much of the talk of the -market-place. He knew little about war. The R. O. T. C. had spread -some ideas of drill and discipline and the technic of fighting; but he -was neither drilled nor disciplined in 1917. And as for the training -in accurate obedience and in exact thinking which war is supposed -to demand, he simply did not have it, or so we thought. Nor had his -particularistic fashion of following his own little contests to the -exclusion of loyalties to the world outside, and his indifference to -politics beyond fraternity elections, or economics beyond the cost of -theater-tickets and beer, led us to assume a ready response to a great -moral emergency in national affairs. - -We were utterly deceived. The response of the American undergraduate -was immediate and magnificent. He crowded into the most dangerous -military professions, and was eminent in the most difficult branches of -organization and experiment. He did not, it is true, think very broadly -about the war, but he thought intensely. He did not learn accuracy, -steadiness, independence overnight, but he learned them. He was wholly -admirable. And the women, who in ways not yet sufficiently celebrated -made it possible for the country to stiffen to the crisis, were as -eager to serve as the men. - -And the reason, I believe, was that for the time the education of the -undergraduate ceased being traditional and became a moving force in his -experience. The dim liberal idealism in which his mind had been moving -for many years suddenly took on color and became fire. Every impulse -of his mental training urged him to do just what was asked of him, to -struggle for democracy, for justice, for a square deal; to believe in -the rights of man and the permanence of right and the supremacy of a -righteous idealism. And his habits of hard, earnest play, where rules -were obeyed and victory went to the best player, also were the very -stuff the world wanted, also transformed miraculously into the very -apparatus of war. His traditional education, with its extra-curriculum -of games that also were traditional in their neglect of the new and -special qualities required for success in modern life, precisely -fitted the clamorous need of the hour. And the undergraduate for a -little while silenced his critics, amazed his friends, and was in many -respects happier than in those years of peace when he was trying to -bridge the gap between his education and life as it was being lived in -America. - -And with peace he relapses--the American in general relapses into the -old discontinuity. The crisis of self-defense over, our ideals once -more begin to seem impractical, traditionary. As long as the patriotism -lit by the war and danger crackled under the pot, our liberalism -bubbled ardently; but peace chills the brew. For peace means that we -drop our ardors and face again the insistent reachings of the democracy -for a greater share in wealth, for a greater control over productivity, -for representation in industry as well as in politics. Peace means -that we must face not war, with its romantic thrills and its common -enemy, but the prosaic causes of war that hide among friends as well -as enemies, that for cure demand self-criticism, self-denial, and -humbleness of spirit, a struggle in which the Croix de Guerre is likely -to be reproach and contumely. - -The break between our education and the life we are living again -widens, and it is this break which emasculates our liberalism. Viewed -alone, the fine ideals of our education are easily defensible; the -hustling vigor of our life is also defensible. The trouble is that -in ordinary times they fail somehow or another to connect. Education -grows bloodless. Life becomes aimless or merely self-regarding. What we -believe grows pallid and fades before it transmutes into what we do. -Indeed, I would go further and say that Americans, and especially the -graduates of universities, are somewhat weakened by their education. -They go out into life with an enormous appetite for living and a set -of ideals like a row of preserved vegetables canned and hermetically -sealed for future contingencies. In 1917 and 1918 we opened some of -those jars and found the contents good for a special emergency. But -ordinarily the lids are tight, while we go about our business proud of -our stores of education, but inwardly uncertain, like the housewife, -as to whether or not those ideas that seemed so good when our teachers -packed them away in the season of youth will not be sour to the taste -of practical modernity. - -The clamor for vocational education is a protest against this -ineffectiveness of the merely traditional. But the cure does not lie -in such a medicining. Vocational education is well enough, and we -need more of it, but training of the hands and of the brain to purely -material accomplishments will never save liberalism in America. The -strength of vocational education is that it looks forward and prepares -for things as they are. Its weakness, when administered alone, is that -it neglects the directing mind. In any large sense it is aimless, or, -rather, it aims at successful slavery quite as much as at successful -freedom. Liberal education also must look forward, must put its -traditions to work, must germinate, and become alive in the mind of the -American, and then teach him by old principles to attack new problems. - -We must either live by our education or live without it. The -alternatives are desiccation and anarchy. If we live by it, education -itself stays alive, grows, sloughs off dead matter, adapts itself -like an organism to environment. If we live without and beyond and in -neglect of education, as many “practical” Americans have always done -once they left school or college, education decays, and sooner or later -the man decivilizes, drifts toward that mere acceleration of busyness, -which is the modern equivalent of barbarism. - -Once before, and far more seriously, a civilization was threatened -because its education became merely traditional and ceased to function -in practical life. The society of Appolinaris Sidonius in the fifth -century, as Dill describes it, was faced with economic disruption, with -hordes of aliens, with a rampant individualism that put the acquisition -of a secure fortune above everything else. The leaders failed to lead. -“Their academic training only deepened and intensified the deadening -conservatism of unassailable wealth.” “Faith in Rome had killed all -faith in a wider future for humanity....” There was an “apparent -inability to imagine, even in the presence of tremendous forces of -disruption, that society should ever cease to move along the ancient -lines.” Roman imperialism divorced itself from Roman thought and became -a deadening tyranny. Roman thought divorced itself from Roman life and -became an empty philosophy. And the sixth century and disaster followed. - -The historical analogy is imperfect. Our civilization is still vigorous -where the Roman was tired and weak. No outer barbarians threaten us. -Science safeguards us from economic breakdown. - -And yet, like the skeptic who does not believe in God, but refuses to -take chances on his death-bed, I should not scoff at the parallel. -Stale imperialism, shaken religions, a liberalism become an article of -faith not an instrument of practice--all these are potential of decay, -of explosion. We must look to our education. If it does not grip our -life, we must change education. If life is not gripped, our life needs -reforming. And the thing is so extraordinarily difficult that it is -high time we ceased praising for a while the virtues of our forefathers -or the wealth of our compatriots, and began the task. After all, it -means no more than to teach the next generation not merely to preserve, -but also to carry on, the traditions of America. - - - - -CHAPTER III - -RADICAL AMERICA - - -It is with no intention to be paradoxical that I call America a radical -nation. I know well by experience, sometimes galling, what an English -labor leader or a French socialist thinks of America, as he understands -it. A mere congestion of capital, a spawning-ground of the bourgeoisie, -the birthplace of trusts, where even the labor-unions are capitalistic. -If the world is to be saved for democracy, he says, it will not be by -America. - -I am not so sure. Being one of those who doubted whether the successful -termination of the war would forever make safe democratic ideals, I -feel at liberty to doubt whether the triumph of a European proletariate -will give us what we want. It depends much upon what one means by -democracy. And correspondingly, whether America is fundamentally -radical or conservative depends much upon what one means by radicalism. -If, like Louis XIV or Napoleon, I had a leash of writers and scholars -at my command, I would have them produce nothing but definitions while -these critical years of transition lasted. I would make them into an -academy whose fiat in general definition would be as valid as the -French Academy’s in the meaning of a word. I would make it a legal -offense for two men to quarrel over socialism when one means communism -and the other state control of the post-office. I would, like the -early Quakers, require arbitration for all disputants, especially -in politics, knowing that a clear head would quickly discover that -arguers on democracy conceivably meant anything from a standard collar -for every one to nationalization of women. But the good old days of -literary dictatorship are past. The most a writer upon the mind of -the everyday American can do is to endeavor honestly to make his own -definitions as he goes; and I believe that American radicalism needs a -good deal of defining. - -It is not the doctrines of Babeuf or Marx or Lenine that have made -what seems to be the indigenous variety of American radicalism. Their -beliefs, and especially those of Marx, have found acceptance here. -There are moments in intellectual or industrial development when men’s -minds become seeding-grounds for ideas blown from without. There were -centuries when the mystical ideas of the Christian East were sown and -rooted in the barbarian brains of the West. There were the years when -the liberal ideas of the French Revolution were blown across Italy, -Germany, and the Low Countries. And much that we call radical in -America is simply foreign seed, growing vigorously in our soil, but not -yet acclimated, as it is growing also in Russia and New Zealand. And -much is not American in any sense, but rather the purely alien ideas -of immigrants--individual men among us. It is not for nothing that -Trotzky was here, and the Marxists, the syndicalists, the nihilists, -and the communists of half Europe. We have been exposed to every germ -of radicalism ever hatched in the Old World; yet neither the young -professor, lecturing on the redistribution of wealth, nor the Russian -stevedore, who in lower New York awaits the proletariate revolution, -truly represents American radicalism. These are the ideas and these the -men our restless youth are borrowing from, but they are not yet, they -may never be, American. - -It is fortunately not yet difficult to separate foreign from indigenous -radicalism. There is that in both our heredity and our environment -which makes the American mind bad soil for the seed of foreign -ideologies. They rain upon us, they germinate; but they do not make -a crop. We are too self-reliant, too concrete; our New World has -kept us too cheerfully busy; the heavens of opportunity have leaned -too low over this blessed America for discontent which leads to -dreaming, oppression which makes revolt, to be common among us. We -“old Americans,” at least of this generation, are poor material for -Bolshevism; even as socialists we are never more than half convinced. -Our radicalism has been of a different breed. - -Indeed, radicalism, like religion and sea-water, takes color from the -atmosphere in which it is found. The French radical possesses the -lucidity and the self-regarding spirit of the modern French mind. He -lends ideas, but does not propagate them. The English radical seeks his -ends by direct political action in good English fashion. And the native -American has his own way also. That its essential quality of radicalism -has often been overlooked, while the term has been bandied among -soapbox orators and devotees of the bomb, is natural, but unfortunate -for clear thinking. - -Our home-bred radicalism has been physical and moral, not intellectual. -It has been a genuine attempt to tear down and rebuild, but it has not -ordinarily been called radicalism, which term has been usually applied -to radical thinking, to the intellectual radicalism of revolutionary -organizations and protestants against the social order. Our effective -radicals have been the leaders, not the opponents, of American -society. They have been business men, philanthropists, educators, not -strike-leaders, social workers, and philosophers. - -I talked recently to the head of a great manufacturing plant where -technical skill both of hand and of brain was exercised upon wood and -brass and steel. The modern world, according to his viewing (which -was very obviously from the angle of business) is divided into two -categories, executives and engineers. Executives are the men who -organize and control. They are the ones chiefly rewarded. Engineers -invent and carry out. They are the experts. It is the executives who -lead; the experts supply ideas, work out methods, but follow. - -This statement may be disputable, and it is certainly a painfully -narrow bed in which to tuck American life and American ideals. -Nevertheless, it has at least one element of profound truth. In the -world of physical endeavor and physical organization it is executive -business men who have changed, broken up, reorganized, developed the -material world of America. They have fearlessly scrapped the whole -machinery of production, transportation, and trade as it existed in the -last generation, and in many respects improved upon, or destroyed by -competition, the parallel order in the Old World. They have been true -radicals of the physical category, and their achievements have been as -truly radicalism as the experiments of Lenine in government ownership. -That it is a physical radicalism, dealing with material values chiefly -and without reference to some of the greatest needs of the human -spirit, does not mean that intellect of a high, if not the highest, -order may not have been required for its successful accomplishment. - -Our other native radicals, the philanthropists and the educators, -have also been chiefly executives. Their work has been inspired by -the stored-up moral force of America, especially puritan America. But -their great achievements, like those of the business men, have been in -organization and development rather than in thought. - -In earlier generations our moral radicals were such men as Emerson -and Whitman. To-day they are college presidents, organizers of -junior high-school systems, or heads of the Rockefeller and Carnegie -foundations--prime movers all of them in systems of educational or -philanthropic practice that uplift millions at a turn of a jack-screw. -And these men in any true sense of the word are radicals--so radical in -their thorough-going attempts to transform society by making it more -intelligent, healthier, more productive that all Europe is protesting -or imitating them. Who is exercising a greater pressure for durable -change upon the largest number, who is digging most strenuously about -the roots of the old order, John Rockefeller, Jr. and his co-workers or -Trotzky? It is not easy to say. - -This essay is not propaganda, and I am not particularly concerned -as to whether or no the reader accepts my broadening of the term -“radicalism.” Time may force him to do so, for no one can tell in -a given age just what actions and what theories will lead to the -tearing up of old institutions and the planting of a new order. Those -absolutist kings, Philip Augustus and his successors, who crushed -together the provinces of France, were, we see now, radicals, though -power and privilege were their motives. I, however, am interested in -men rather than in categories, and the philanthropist radicals, the -business radicals, and the educational pioneers of America already -interest the world strangely. - -What they are in essence is of course more important than the name we -give them. And first of all I believe that in a genuine, if narrow, -sense they have been idealistic; indeed, that their American idealism -has made them radical. If America at present is actively, practically -idealistic (something Europe and the world in general would like to -have determined) it is due to them. - -Idealism is not a negative virtue. It is not mysticism. It is not -meditation, though it may be its fruit. Whatever idealism may be in -philosophical definition, in life it is the desire and the attempt -to put into practice conceptions of what ought theoretically to be -accomplished in this imperfect world; and the quality of the idealism -depends upon the quality of the idealist. - -In this sense--a true sense for America, however inapplicable to the -Middle Ages--who can doubt that such Americans as I have described are -idealistic? Nowhere in the world are there more visible evidences of -the desires of men wreaking themselves upon earth and stone and metal, -upon customs and government and morals, than in this new continent. -And these desires are predominantly for betterment, for perfection--a -low perfection sometimes, it is true--for the “uplift,” physically, -morally, intellectually of humanity. - -Of course the quality of American idealism is mixed. Beside the pure -ambition of a St. Francis to make men brothers, beside the aspiring -hope of the cathedral builders to make faith lovely to the eye, the -ideal of a chain of five-and-ten cent stores, or a railroad system, -or even a democratic method of education, is not a luminous, not a -spiritual, idealism. But a working ideal for the benefit of the race it -may be, and often is. - -The truth of this has not seemed obvious to Europeans or to most -Americans. Our individualism has been so intense and often so -self-seeking, our preoccupation since the Civil War so dominantly with -matter rather than with mind or spirit, that it is easy for foreigners -to call us mere money-grubbers. Yet no one who has ever talked with -a “captain of industry” or the director of a great philanthropic -enterprise feels doubt as to the unsoundness of this description. -Unfair, narrow, material-minded we may have been, but our enterprises -have had vision behind them, dreams, perhaps, imposed upon us by the -circumstances of a new, raw, continent, by wealth for the seeking, -by opportunities for the making, by vast battles with nature to be -organized and won. - -Furthermore, behind and beneath all our striving, sets of moral ideas -have been active. America has never been blasé or cynical. We have -never relinquished the ethics of puritanism, which are the ethics -of the Bible. Even the greedy capitalist has disgorged at last, and -devoted his winnings to the improvement of the society he preyed upon. -But most American capitalists have not been greedy. They themselves -have been devoured by a consuming desire to accomplish, to build up, -to put through. When they have broken laws, it is because the laws -have held them back from what seemed to them necessary, inevitable -development for the greater good of all--because, in a word, they were -radical. - -One night in war-time, at a base port in Scotland far from our own -environment and our native prejudices, I heard the self-told tale -of an arch-enemy of American “interests,” a pugnacious man who had -fought and won, with a price on his head, sent millionaires to jail, -been calumniated, been trapped by infamous conspiracies, and escaped -them--a man better hated, better loved than is the fortune of most of -us. My other companion was another American, a young, but celebrated, -preacher, a moralist of the breed of the Beechers and the Spurgeons. -And the same question rose to our lips when the story was finished. -These enemies, these magnates who had been jailed and defeated, and -yet still fought and often successfully, were they mere self-seekers, -rascals, by any fair definition? And neither of us was satisfied with -that answer, nor was the hero of the story. Two of us at least agreed -that it was rather a case of “enterprise” _versus_ “social justice,” -of individualistic effort _versus_ the rights of a community. The zeal -of the capitalists had burned in their hearts until they broke through -morality in an effort to make good. - -But of course most of our American radicals have not been even -illegal in their idealism. Their zeal has encountered only obstinacy, -stupidity, and the intractable conservatism of ordinary life. These -men have built up great industries that made life more facile, or -extended great educational and health enterprises over States and -beyond seas, with little harm to any man and much good to most, unless -the source of the wealth expended be questioned, or the effect of a -zealot’s ideas enforced upon millions. - -Indeed, if strength of purpose, if energy, if a burning desire to -change, to better the minds, the bodies, or the tools of men, were all -that could be asked of radicalism, then we might well rest content -with the achievements of the American idealist-radical. But more has -been asked of the reformer, even of the reformer of business methods, -than energy and will. The radicalism I have described, based upon -common sense and inspired by restless virility, has not always been -adequate. The pioneering days are ended when a good shot could always -get game, a strong arm always find plowlands. It is time to take -thought. And if one compares the uprooting energy of Americans with -the intellectual radicalism of Europe or with the new radicalism of -the incoming American generation, a curious difference appears. Our -old radicalism was perhaps healthier, certainly more productive of -immediate betterment to those who profited by it; but it is harder to -define, harder to follow into a probable future, because, when all is -said, it is relatively aimless. - -Where do our vast business enterprises lead? Toward a greater -production of this world’s goods, toward an accumulation of wealth -in the hands of the sturdy organizers; but equally toward a vast -corporate machine in which the individual man becomes a particle lost -in the mass, toward a society which produces wealth without learning -to distribute or employ it for the purposes of civilization. I do not -say that this latter port is our destination. I say that our business -leaders are steering a course which is just as likely to land us there -as anywhere. Or, rather, they are stoking the engines and letting the -rudder go free. - -And is our vast educational enterprise any more definitely aimed? -Perhaps so, for the increase of intelligence is an end in itself. -Nevertheless, for what, let us say, is the American high school -preparing, a new social order, or the stabilization of the old one? -When the aristocrats and the burghers of Europe began to be educated, -they tore themselves apart in furious wars over religion. When the -Western proletariate becomes educated, will it not tear our social -fabric in class wars also? Are we educating for this or against it? For -what kind of society are we educating? The socialist has his answer. -Can American school boards say? - -And our organized philanthropists, combating hookworm, tuberculosis, -lynching, child labor, liquor, slums, and preventable crime? The -medieval church, hampered by its lack of science and the waywardness -of its world, engaged in such a struggle, and from a thousand -monasteries, built, like our modern foundations, upon the profits of -exploitation, strove to uplift Europe. Its aim and end were clear: to -practise charity that the souls of workers and donors might be saved; -to clothe the naked and feed the hungry that love might be felt to -govern the world. And the church succeeded in its measure until, on -the somewhat specious plea that not love, but justice, was demanded, -rapacious governments seized the capital of the ecclesiastical -corporations and sold the abbeys for building stone and lead. - -Our great organizations are more efficient than the church, because -they are more scientific. Whether they are more successful depends -upon one’s estimate of success. The modern man, for whom they care, -is a cleaner, brighter, more long-lived person than his medieval -ancestor. He is probably better material for civilization, because, if -more vulgarized, he is more intelligent. That he is happier is not -so certain. The church inspired a confidence (not always justified) -in the friendliness of destiny which the Rockefeller Foundation has -so far failed to equal. Nevertheless, scientific philanthropy, though -it promises less, achieves what it does promise more thoroughly -and without those terrible by-products of the ecclesiastical -system--servility, pauperism, bigotry, and superstition. But what is -its aim? - -With little more regard to the source of their wealth than the church, -the philanthropies of to-day have far less regard for the final results -of their benefactions. As with the educators, it is enough for them, so -to speak, to improve the breed. The apparent philosophy behind their -program is that when the proletariate is bathed, educated, and made -healthy, it will be civilized, and therefore competent to take over the -world (including universities and steel mills, railroads and hospitals) -and run it. But the executives of these great organizations would -probably protest against this reading of their expectations almost as -quickly as the donors of the funds; certainly they show no readiness to -meet the proletariate half-way on its upward path. Clearly, you cannot -wash, teach, and invigorate society without powerfully affecting the -whole social fabric. The feeble experiments of the nineteenth century -in universal education have already proved that. Some transformation -the great endowments of our age are laboring to bring about. For the -creating of a new race they have a plan, but not for its salvation, -even on this side of heaven. Indeed, as the German experience shows, -they may even become instruments by which the common man is made -a mere tool firmly grasped by the hand of authority. Common sense -alone governs them. Their vision is bent upon the immediate, not the -ultimate, future. - -A little vague these criticisms may seem to the practical mind; and -vague, when philosophically considered, are the aims of American -radicalism. Very different, indeed, they are from the clean-cut -programs of the European radical. There is little vagueness in -socialism, little vagueness in syndicalism, the very opposite of -vagueness, despite the efforts of the American press, in Bolshevism. -In all these systems the past is condemned, the present reconstructed, -and the future made visible with a lucidity that betrays their origin -in efforts of the pure reason. That, of course, is the difficulty--at -least to American and most British intelligences. The aim of Bolshevism -is so definite as to be almost mathematical. Society as a whole is -considered economically, and a program deduced that will fill the most -mouths with the least labor. To be sure, stomach-filling is not the -sole purpose of Lenine and his followers. They argue, and with more -right than our easy-going bourgeois civilization is willing to concede, -that idleness, unrest, and crime are more often the result than the -cause of poverty. Nevertheless, the type radical of the European -variety does unquestionably rest his case upon the premise that man -is merely a tool-using animal. Ask a Bolshevik where civilization is -going, and he will answer you with ease and explicitness. Ask the -average American, and he will either reply in vague platitudes or deny -both knowledge and responsibility. Of the two men he is less likely to -be wrong. - -And note well that our domesticated socialists and intelligentzia, -though far more inclined to consider the human factor than the -Bolsheviki, have the same advantage of clarity of aim, and the same -tendency to confuse ideas with facts. Common sense--not the highest -virtue, not the virtue which will save our souls, or even our bodies, -in a crisis like war or a turmoil of the spirit--is often lacking in -the socialist. Good humor--again not a quality that wins heaven’s -gates, but a saving grace, nevertheless--is noticeably absent from -the columns of our radical weeklies. An admirable service they are -rendering in clarifying the American mind, in forcing it, or some of -it, to face issues, to think things through, to be intelligent as -well as sensible; but the logical rigidity of their program inhibits -that sense of proportion which recognizes the _Falstaffs_ and the -_Micawbers_ of this world, smiles sometimes over miscarriages of -idealism, sympathizes with feeble, humorous man, does not always scold. - -And yet the American who dislikes scolding should beware of -superciliousness. It is much easier for genial folks to chide the -critics with programs than to be critical of themselves. The normal -American is a product of American education, with its insistence upon -liberal progress, upon acceleration toward the vaguest of goals. It has -not taught him to be critical of others in any thorough-going fashion, -it has not taught him to be critical of himself. The confidence that -has carried our business to a maximum, that has flung our schools -broadcast, and swept our philanthropies over the world, spelled -differently is self-assurance. Nothing disturbs us so much as to be -told to stop and think. Nothing angers the business world so much as -legislation that “halts business.” Nothing infuriates an educational -organizer more than to question the quality, not the quantity, of his -product. We have seen clearly what we wished to do with iron and coal -and food. We have felt, in education and philanthropy, sure of our -moral bases. Our energy has been concentrated on going ahead. To be -radical intellectually, to think it all out in terms of a possible -relation of labor and capital, of a possible education, of a possible -society for the future--that has not appealed to us. We have shunned -philosophical programs by instinct, and wilfully built for to-day -instead of tomorrow. The American radical has done too little thinking; -the European, perhaps too much. - -But the infection of thought is spreading. I do not believe that the -youths who will make the coming generation--the youths that fought the -war--are going to be radicals in the sense that I have called European. -If the ideas of Marx and Lenine ever take root in America, it will be -because social injustice such as we have not yet been cursed with makes -a soil for them. If they take root, they transform in the growing, like -foreign plants in California weather. But the new generation is not -like the old. It is more sensitive to the winds of doctrine. It is less -empirical, less optimistic, less self-assured. - -Already one can divide into two classes the undergraduates as one -finds them in American colleges. The smaller group their elders would -call radical. But they are not socialists, not anarchists, not even -consistently liberal. More truly, they are critics of things as they -are. Their minds are restless; they are ever seeking for definitions, -for solutions, for a cause to enroll under. They are restless under -the push of common sense America that drives them into activity without -explanation. They are painfully aware of the difference between their -ideas and the conditions of life in modern society, and are determined -to test one by the other. Their native idealism has become intellectual. - -The other group is far larger, but, if less restless, is no more -static. Most of its members are indifferent to the new ideas -scintillating all over the world, if indeed they are not ignorant of -them. Nevertheless, their faith in society as it was is curiously -weak. If few of them are likely to become socialists, few also will be -inspired by the physical and moral idealism of their fathers. The naïve -enthusiasm of those fathers for “movements,” “ideals,” “progress” is -not (unless I miss my guess) common among them. They are not likely -to overturn America a second time in order to make great fortunes; -philanthropy does not interest them; education as a missionary -endeavor does not seem to attract them. Their moral foundations are -less solid than in old days; their energies less boundless; aimless -endeavor for the sake of doing something is no longer a lure. Either -they will find a program of their own to excite them, or stand pat upon -the fortune they expect to inherit. If their future is to be narrowed -to a choice between pleasure and mere productivity, why, then these -men would rather run motor-cars than make them. There is a very real -danger that rather than hustle for the sake of hustling, they will -prefer to “lie down” on their job. And thanks to the homogeneity of the -current American mind, this analysis, if it is true at all, is true of -thousands. - -The American radical in the future, I take it, will still be idealist, -but not Bolshevik. That generalization from the needs of poverty is -at the same time too material to suit his temper, which is still -fundamentally moral, and too rash economically to sit with his -practical common sense. He will remain an idealist; but a sharpening -of his intellect will give teeth to his idealism, and the practical -common sense he will carry over from the days when his kind were -pioneers in a new world will steady him. What he will want is not yet -clear, except that it will certainly not be the world of Marx or the -kaiser (himself in many respects a radical). What he will do I cannot -venture to guess. But if one dare not prophesy, one may at least hope. - -And my hope is that a principle now visibly at work among many -Americans may guide him also. Principles, if they are sound, have a -way of making themselves felt through the padding of mental habit and -convention, like knobs in a chair-seat. - -The principle I have in mind is merely this: that a man’s character -and the ideas upon which, so to speak, he operates must be appraised -separately. Tenacity of will, honesty of spirit, tenderness of -heart--such elements of character make a man neither conservative nor -radical, but they cannot be left out of political accounting. - -And my hope is that the new generation is going to be forced toward -such a weighing and discrimination of character and policies. Their -mental padding has worn thin in war-time. The moral conventions that we -have accepted almost unhesitatingly here in America no longer protect -the youth with certainty from the shrewd blows of rationalism or -superstition. - -Therefore ideas and character are both likely to be more closely -inspected in the days that are coming. The conservative minded, as -in the past, will emphasize character; and as that is a much better -platform to stand on than mere obstinacy or self-interest, they will -presumably be better conservatives, provided that the intellectual -unrest of the times forces them to think. The radicals will search for -ideas that may transform the future, and if the abundance of ideas in -relation to the paucity of accomplishment causes them to put a higher -value upon character, why, so much for the better radicalism. - -No future in the history of the world has been so interesting as is the -immediate future of America. Our next great political leader, who may -be conservative, but is probably radical, is now in college or has but -lately been graduated--unless, indeed, he has just been admitted to -a labor-union. And he is studying, one hopes, the men who dealt most -heavily in character, the amiable McKinley, the fiercely instinctive -Roosevelt; he is studying the careers of the men who have been -dominated chiefly by ideas, the moral idealist Wilson, the ruthless -thinker Lenine. He is learning, one hopes, when and why each and all -failed, each and all in their measure succeeded. Whether he profits, -and we profit, from their experience, time alone will discover. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -AMERICAN IDEALISM - - -Is American idealism a virtue, a disease, or an illusion? The question -cannot be answered in an essay. It is like the inquiry with which -Tennyson threatened the flower in the crannied wall--what man is, and -what God is? But it can be turned and twisted; it can be made ready -for answering. The writer, and perhaps the reader, can seek an answer -to it; and that is better than the inner feeling of many an American -just now, who, weary of five years of idealistic oratory, profoundly -believes that American idealism is first of all a nuisance. - -Yet it was never so easy to make a case for the virtue of idealism as -in retrospect of the years 1914-18. What many have never grasped in -the confusion of the times is that exactly the same idealistic prime -motive made us join hearts from the first with Great Britain and -France, kept us out of war for two years and a half, and brought us -in on that April of 1917. There is always a complex of motives behind -every war, but there is also, with few exceptions, a _primum mobile_, -and with us it was the distrust, the fear, the hatred that were the -reactions of our idealism against arbitrary violence. The invasion of -Belgium settled our will for Belgium and her allies. Our distrust of -war, especially European war, as a means by which we could bring about -justice and peace, kept us out of the struggle despite clamorous, and -perhaps far-sighted, minorities. Our final conviction that violence was -a fire loose in the world, which must be stamped out, drove us from -easy neutrality into war. And if in the last of these three stages -dread of the future and the need of immediate self-defense had their -large part, they did no more than sharpen the angle of our resolve. -Idealism kept us out of war, and idealism drove us into it. - -The fume and spume of idealism is oratory, sermonizing, talk about -morality, duty, patriotism, rights, and noble purposes. All such -gushing rhetoric is no more the thing itself than foam is the ocean. -But, like smoke, there is seldom much of it without cause. Men and -women who were abroad in 1918 must reflect curiously on the, shall -we say, wearisome prevalence of the moralistic, idealistic note in -American speech and writing in contrast to its restraint and frequent -absence in France and England. When an Englishman orated upon the war -to stop war he was usually talking for American consumption. This does -not mean that Great Britain and France were sordid, we sincere; on the -contrary, it is proof of a tincture of the sentimental in our idealism, -to which I shall later return. But it is additional testimony to the -quantity and the popularity of American idealism in those months. The -tone of the press at that crucial time was evidence of the tone of -the people that read and responded. And while many a sounding speech -and impassioned editorial are now, as one reads them, a little faded, -faintly absurd, like tattered war posters on a rural bill-board, yet no -one can doubt the flood of patriotic idealism that created them, few -will doubt that our war idealism was a virtue in 1914-1918. - -It seemed a virtue then, but was it not already diseased? When we -entered the war, the vast majority of Americans publicly and privately -committed themselves to certain general principles, and, whatever -else they fought for, believed that they were fighting for them. A -square deal all around was one, the consent of the governed to their -government was another, a third was the substitution, at all costs, of -justice for violence in the ruling of the world. We all assented to -these principles, most of us assumed them voluntarily as an article -of faith, and the average man took them as seriously as he is able to -take abstractions. Peace came, the armistice, the stages of the treaty. -Nothing could be clearer or more to be expected than that sometimes in -spirit, often in detail, and most seriously in ultimate purpose, the -treaty in scores of instances ran counter to the faiths we had accepted -and made commonplaces of speech and thinking. - -I am neither criticizing nor justifying the treaty and its included -covenant. No one, I suppose, but a sentimental optimist could -have expected a work of logical art in exact conformity with the -principles and conditions of a new epoch that has scarcely begun, no -one at least who had ever read history, or studied the politics of -Sonnino, Clemenceau, and the Unionist party. It was bound to have -inconsistencies; to reflect as many views as there were strong minds -in the conference, to be experimental, to be a compromise. This is not -what is astonishing; it is the attitude of the typical American mind -toward the treaty negotiations. - -In the winter and spring of 1919, while the world was burning, while -the principles we had shouted for were at last in actual settlement, -this enormous American idealism slept, forgot its fine phrases, -forgot its pledges to see the thing through, was bored because some -Americans felt that it was our duty to see the thing through. We are an -uncritical nation despite our occasional vehemence of criticism, but -we have never been so uncritical of major issues as in 1919, when the -terms of world settlement were of acute interest to all but Americans. -We are an easy-going nation, but we have never been so easy-going as -in 1919, when not one man in a thousand as much as read the abstract -of the treaty to see whether the things he had said he fought for were -safeguarded in it. The only real fire-spitting fervor struck out in -this country since the armistice has been in defense of our right to -let Europe stew in her own juice, and our privilege to tell general -principles to go hang. And this is an emotion almost too narrow to be -attributed, even by the generous minded, to idealism. - -One answers, of course, that such a decline from overheated virtue -into indifferentism is only human nature at its old tricks, the -collapse after the New Year’s resolution, the weariness of being too -good, symptoms, in short, of content with having “licked the Hun,” -and a desire to get back to work. And the reply is, of course this is -true. But Europe is not thus functioning. There has been a striking -contrast in the years since the war between British and American -attitudes toward treaty negotiations. In England, exhausted by war as -we never were, deep in the lassitude of rest after struggle, men and -women have leaped into criticism and defense of the ideals embodied -in the settlement. Peace has seemed to them as vital a battle-ground -of ideas as war. By and large, the plodding mass of us who make money -and public opinion have been cold to the contest, uninterested. The -press of Great Britain has fiercely attacked and fiercely defended -the morale of the treaty; ours has reported it with little real -criticism and little interest except where the league was concerned. -Their universities have supplied men and parties to fight through the -principles for which we fought; ours have been intent upon how much -scholastic credit should be given returned soldiers and who should -get an honorary degree. They forced an easy-going premier to stand -for a victory that was more than conquest; we grudged our President -the attempt to carry through in Paris what in 1917 we were all agreed -upon; let our dislike of his methods outweigh our deep interest in his -ends. If it had not been for the great issue of the League of Nations, -which, forcing Americans to act, forced them to remember (some with -difficulty) what they had believed in and what they had learned in -1917 of the dangers of selfish aloofness from world problems, if it -had not been for the fight over the league, the politics of 1919 would -have been as local, as trivial, as wearisome, as in the year after a -Presidential election. Some scholar in the next decade will place side -by side the files of a New York daily in its moral-idealistic stage -of 1917 and its cynical back-to-business mood of 1919; will compare -the fantastic pledges never again to trade with Germany, which were -circulating in 1918, with the export statistics of 1919; will marvel, -and perhaps draw conclusions. - -And one wonders, meeting everywhere an interest in world affairs that -seems dying, a national morale that is forgetting its moral impulses, a -hatred of the professional idealist, a weariness of general principles, -and a cynical distrust of ideas--one wonders whether this flaming -American idealism so-called was not even in 1918 flushed with disease, -a virtue already dying. - -Were we indeed ever really idealistic? Consider the case of the -ablest of our manufacturers, who, when the emotional fit was on him, -proposed to increase the production of idealism until every American -home should own an ideal of the latest model. He gives the order, draws -the checks, and, naïvely surprised at the discovery that you cannot -make ideals without understanding them, hangs up philosophy, and goes -back to the motor business. Consider the case of our radical papers who -fought our entrance into a war where American ideals were not properly -safeguarded, and then preferred to risk a treaty without the League -of Nations, to a league which, though it expressed American idealism, -was not perfect by their judging. Consider the flaming desire to make -the universe and one’s home safe for democracy, in contrast with the -current contempt for the ideals of industrial democracy. Perforce one -wonders whether American idealism, healthy or diseased, is not a mere -emotion, easily roused, never lasting; whether, as a valuable part of -our national character, it is not an illusion. - -So much needs to be said by way of charge and speculation in order -to clear the air. If I write with some excitement, it is no more -than the sight of the tumble from great-worded, great deeded 1918 -to the indifferent, self-regarding, and a little cynical present -may account for. Certainly in our national past idealism has not -been an illusion, although it was often emotional. Nor, in sober -fact, do I doubt the essential idealism of the normal American mind, -especially that American mind which inherits the optimism and the -liberal instincts of our forefathers. I am merely curious as to the -exact nature of that idealism as it exists, and plays strange tricks, -to-day. It seems to be a quality more resembling energy than a moral -characteristic like virtue or vice. It seems, as one thinks over these -recent manifestations, to be a blend of physical virility and nervous -sensitiveness, good or bad, active or inactive, according to the -condition and environment of the patient. Stir him, and it becomes -active, beneficent, altruistic. Stir him further, and it may become -sentimental, with symptoms of hysteria. Relax the pressure, and it -drops into desuetude. These are the habits of American idealism, and -I doubt whether more can be said of them except by way of further -description. But there must be some thoughts, some ideas behind to -account for these vagaries. There must be reasons why Americans -idealize more readily than other nations, and why, just now at least, -they so easily tire of their idealizing. - -Neither the scope of these pages nor my knowledge permits me to trace -the history of American thinking and feeling, to say, as the historians -some day must, what elements came from Europe, what modifications are -due to pioneer environment, racial mixture, and centuries of unchecked -material development. But tentatively, and with all modesty, one may -at least seek for light. I find that two great figures of our national -youth and the ways of thinking they represented most help me to -understand the strengths and the weaknesses of American idealism, help -to an understanding of the phenomena of 1917-20. - -The first is Jonathan Edwards, theologian of international importance, -leader of the great spiritual revival of mid-eighteenth century New -England, missionary to the Indians, president of Princeton, author of -works so widely read that even now no farm-house garret in New England -but will yield a sermon or two, a treatise on original sin, or his -epochal essay on the freedom of the will. - -Alas for human reputation! This tireless thinker, whose logic built -up in entirety an impregnable argument worthy of Aquinas, is now -chiefly remembered as a preacher of infant damnation and a thunderer of -hell-fire over frightened Northampton congregations. But, as all wiser -critics know, the influence of a great mind is distinct and often -different from its reputation. What it does, works on and on after -death, transmuting, transforming; what it was in popular repute, soon -becomes legend and supposed historical fact. Compare the reputation -of Machiavelli with his achievements and influence as described in -Macaulay’s famous essay. - -In actual achievement Edwards, whose mind was of unusual lucidity and -endurance, crystallized for Americans the Calvinistic ethics of life -which were the backbone of Puritan civilization. Man, by the unarguable -might of God, is born with a will whose nature may be either bad or -good. Henceforth his reason is free, his choice is free, within the -limits that his character permits. It becomes therefore supremely -important that he shall choose and reason virtuously, for there is no -way to be sure that he has a good will, that he is among the “elect” -except by virtuous action leading to a sense of salvation. Thus in -every condition of life, without excuse or palliation, the Christian -must daily, hourly strive to _prove_ that he is one of the elect of -God, saved from hell-fire by the character God has given him. Good -intentions count for nothing. Good works, if unaccompanied by the sense -of spiritual salvation, count for nothing. God, Himself blameless, has -willed sin and sinful men. It is for us to prove that we are not among -the damned. - -That the system is incredible most moderns now believe; that it is -logical, more logical perhaps than any later attempt to justify the -ways of God to man, the student must admit. My desire is naturally not -to argue, but to emphasize, what can never be too much emphasized, the -effect of such thinking upon the intellectual life of America. It was -believed in powerfully and well understood by perhaps a majority of one -formative generation. Later it was not believed in so powerfully, and -it was but little understood, especially outside of New England. But -a conviction of the infinite necessity of willing the right became a -mental habit in American morality that persists and becomes a trait and -a chief factor, as any reader may see, in so-called American idealism. - -Benjamin Franklin was almost the exact contemporary of Jonathan -Edwards, but he had the inestimable advantage of living longer and -seeing more; two continents and two ages, in fact, were his familiars, -and learned from him as well as taught him. Franklin, it is clear, was -strongly influenced by that French eighteenth century which he loved, -with its praise of reason and its trust in common sense. But he was -even more a product of the new America. America, as Edwards and Cotton -Mather saw it, was an experiment in godliness. When the Puritan scheme -should have proved its efficacy by an abnormal increase in the number -of earthly saints, the colonies would have served their chief end, and -would, so Mather thought, decline. The hell-breathing vehemence of -Edwards was chiefly due to his fear that the scheme was failing. He -was fighting a spiritual decline. - -But Franklin was a member of the worldly, not the spiritual, body of -America; he was a citizen of a country visibly growing in wealth and -population. He looked outward, not inward; forward, not backward. -Like Edwards, he hated sin; but sin for him was not sin because it -was forbidden, but forbidden because it was sin. Franklin’s was a -practical morality, which was cut to fit life, not to compress it. His -firm character and the clarity of his reason kept his morals high. -His ethics were admirable, but they were based upon the principle -that honesty is the best policy, not upon the fear of God. To be -“reasonable” was his highest good. “So convenient it is to be a -reasonable creature,” he remarks whimsically, “since it enables one to -find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.” As long -as one is a Franklin, with the will to virtue, honesty, industry, and -thrift that is bred from a good inheritance, in a new and developing -country, such ethics make for idealism. No one was more idealistic in -his day than the practical Franklin, who wished to form a league of -virtue of all nations to be governed by rules, and supported by the -reason of virtuous mankind. - -And here is another palpable strain of Americanism, differing from -that necessity which Edwards trumpeted, but, like it, a stiffener -of idealistic impulses. Here one places the love of a square deal, -the desire to do what is right because it is “fair,” the sense of -the reasonableness of justice that freed the slaves, gave Cuba -self-government, determined our policy toward the Philippines, and was -horror-struck by the invasion of Belgium. It is the idealism of good -common sense, and together with the mental habit of willing the right -has been a main cause of American idealism. - -Both of these American characteristics are operative to-day. Both are -now factors and dangerous factors in our idealism, for the strong will -of the Calvinists to do right has become erratic and perverted, and the -common sense of Franklin’s school has degenerated. Here, as I shall -endeavor to show, are two chief causes for the vagaries of the American -mind in the years that ended the war. - -The mental discipline which the Puritans learned from the fear of -a wrathful God remained a discipline long after it had lost its -theological basis, and is responsible in no small measure for the -disciplined will of nineteenth-century America to succeed in material -endeavors as well as in philanthropic or moral purpose. But, divorced -from the belief in a speedy damnation which had given it cause, it -was bound to become, and it did become, a mere mental habit, a kind -of aimless necessity of being virtuous. Bolted no longer to a belief -in a revengeful God who demanded virtue, loosed, like an engine from -its flywheel, this ancestral sense of necessity whirled on by its -own momentum. It became will without thinking behind it, which was -driven by material circumstance instead of religious belief. It became -a restless energy whose aim, as a foreign observer has said, seemed -to be “mere acceleration.” It became unreasonable, often absurd, -sometimes hysterical. I find its manifestations in the insistence that -America must always be described as sweet, lovely, and virtuous in -disregard of the facts, in our “boosting” of prosperity and success -by proclaiming them. I find them in the determination to be good and -happy and prosperous immediately and without regard to circumstance -which has created the American magazine story and brought about -national prohibition by constitutional amendment. This hand-me-down -will is responsible for much progress, good and bad, in America; it is -also responsible for American sentimentalism. It has been a driving -force in our idealism; but because it is not so much reasoned purpose -as a mental habit inherited, it has run wild, become hysterical and -erratic. It led us to propose to reform the world and to advertise -our intention before our brains were ready for the task. It makes our -idealism feverish and uncertain. - -As for Franklin’s rule of common sense, it has become a positive -deterrent to idealism. His idea of conduct reasonably shaped according -to the needs of environment was, and is to-day, the most solid trait -of Americans. It is the ethics of modern business, and American -business has become, and for a little while yet will remain, the -fundamental America. Nevertheless, every candid observer will admit, -no matter how great his faith in the future of his country, that the -reasonable good sense of the Franklin tradition suffered a progressive -dilution or degeneration throughout the nineteenth century. Rational -ethics became for the most of us materialistic rationalism, still -reasonable, still ethical in its way, still backed and restrained -by common sense (our profiteers have also been philanthropists), -but an enemy, nevertheless, to all idealism that could not be made -from steel, brick, rubber, or oil. We have been too reasonable to be -sordid; too materialistic to remain in the best sense reasonable. Far -from advocating a league of the virtues, our business common sense -has been fighting a League of Nations. The contrast between our moral -code and our business code has already been overwritten in muck-raking -literature. Nevertheless, despite exaggeration, it exists. Our national -life is dual. We can stand on our moral foot and our business foot, but -usually we alternate. In 1918 we rested entirely on one; in 1919 we -swung with relief to the other. Franklin’s rule of common sense as a -stimulus to idealism has broken down. - -What reasonable sense of proportion I myself possess as a descendant -of the compatriots of Franklin urges me to protest instantly that all -this is not to be taken as a picture of contemporary America. Rather -it is a plucking out merely of two strains of experience that all -must recognize. But these are perilously interwoven in our national -character. They affect the validity of our idealism. - -The hysterical will drives us into professions of virtue we cannot make -good. It drove us to “boost” the war; and then, being a restless energy -sprung from habit rather than from conviction, left us exhausted in -spirit and cynical in mind when the moral profits were ready for the -gathering. It stirred a passion for the League of Nations, rights of -small countries, democracy, justice, and the rest, and then collapsed -like the second day of “clean-up” week. It set the will going and left -the brain unmoved. - -And our common sense, diluted through millions, obsessed by the -problems of manufacture and construction, is in ever greater danger -of losing that basis of character and enlightened reason that alone -can make common sense anything but common. It dreads ideas, distrusts -theories, is made uncomfortable by altruism that extends beyond the -home. As a nation, we have not degenerated, for our virile energy, our -will, our adaptiveness are all as strong as ever, stronger perhaps -than elsewhere in the world. But, as compared with Franklin’s, our -common sense has lost character. It pulled back in the great moral -and intellectual problems of the war; it did not lead. As manifested -in the present struggle over international policies, it falls below -the ethical standards of the nation, whether you tap it in clubs and -offices or in Congress. In a time of crisis it rallies to encounter -material problems and is invaluable; but morally and intellectually its -vision is short, its endurance weak. - -The trouble with the American reformer, as has often been said, is that -he has more energy than reason; and this is because he incarnates the -instinctive, irrational will of which I have been writing. The trouble -with the American materialist is that he has kept his common sense -while losing his vision. - -Both, in short, lack an adequate spiritual and moral basis; and so does -the American idealism that is functioning nobly, but so irregularly, -to-day. With an irresponsible will driving it forward and a -matter-of-fact common sense holding it back, it suffers too frequently -from the weakness of all qualities that spring from custom rather than -from conviction. Its leafage has spread; its roots have contracted. - -I am not so unhumorous as to propose that the remedy is once again to -believe in Jonathan Edwards’s God and infant damnation; but we must -go deeper than habit and tradition for the springs of our action. Not -since the Civil War have we as a nation explored our souls, sought the -channels of our being, tested our ultimate faith. This war has been no -test. Its issues were clear. They appealed to principles that we held -firmly because we had inherited them. It was easier to go in than to -stay out. Even our material prosperity, apparently, stood to gain, not -to lose, by entering the conflict. We made the right choice, but it -was not hard to make it. To be idealistic was easy. - -I do not believe that our inheritance either of virtuous will or of -practical common sense will serve us long without renewal. The first -is vehement in propaganda, prohibition, and hysteric excess, but -flags when a load of stern duty, national or international, is put -upon it. The second has no end and aim but the making of a prosperous -America where the grubber and the grabber have much and others -little. It is useful, nay, indispensable, to the economic state, but -beyond economics--and so much is beyond economics!--there is little -health in it. If our idealism is to remain as robust as our material -prosperity, it must gain what Franklin would have described as a basis -of enlightened reason, or suffer what Edwards would have called a -conversion--and, preferably, both. - -Samuel’s mother was a fine, but somewhat rigorous, woman who brought -him up in the conviction that he had to do right (by which she meant -being honest and moral, and going to church on Sundays) or shame -would come upon him. His father was a man whose “word was as good as -his bond.” He taught his boy that working hard and saving money were -probably the most important things in life, and that if you paid your -bills, were true to your word, and kept an eye upon shifty neighbors, -you were sure to be happy and successful. - -At the age of fifty the father died from hardening of the arteries, -the result of too few vacations, and the mother became a rather morose -member of the W. C. T. U. Samuel found himself now possessed of half a -million dollars and a prosperous shoe factory. - -As for the factory, he discovered within a year that since the death -of his father its success had been due to a new system of piece work, -which “speeded up” the worker and gave the profits to the proprietor. -But there seemed no way of changing the system without ruining -the business. As for his wealth, it brought him new and pleasing -associates who were more polished and intelligent than he, and whose -life was so much more cheerful, instructive, and interesting than his -early experience that he could only wish to be like them; especially -when he saw that they were far better citizens than his father, who, -to tell the truth, lived very much for his own narrow interests. And -yet their ideas of pleasure and even of morality were quite different -from what he had been led to suppose were the only proper principles on -which to conduct one’s life, and they never went to church. He wanted -to be honest, he wanted to be good; but neither how to be honest in his -factory nor how to be good and yet a “good fellow” were explained by -the teachings of his youth. - -For an unhappy year or two he tried to act like his father, believe -as his mother, and be like his neighbors. In addition, in order to -satisfy a somewhat uneasy conscience, he prepared to enter politics on -a platform of straight Americanism and the full dinner-pail. Then in -one eventful week his workmen struck for an eight-hour day and shop -committees, his mother announced her intention of bequeathing her share -of the estate to the Anti-tobacco League, his best girl refused to -marry him unless he should become an Episcopalian, and he was invited -by the local boss to subscribe to a “slush” fund or give up politics. - -Samuel went to the Maine woods to catch trout and think over the -situation. What he did finally is not told in the story. What he -decided is, however, of some significance. For, brooding over a dark -pool in the spruces, he concluded that each generation must search -out the foundations for its own morality, and determine for itself -the worth and power of the ideals it proclaims. And so perhaps will -America. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -RELIGION IN AMERICA - - -The rarest experience in America is a discussion of morals. You can -hear morals preached about, but that is not a discussion. You can read -about morals in arguments disguised as essays, but these seldom cause -discussion. Fully a third of successful American plays and stories turn -upon a moral axiom, but one that we accept without argument, like rain -in April and the August drouth. One hears very little real discussion -of moral questions here because “old Americans,” at least, agree in -their moral standards as remarkably as did the Victorians. - -In this respect we are, indeed, still Victorians, though in others -already a century beyond them. Some of us may (or did) get drunk, -but we do not believe in hard drinking; not even the saloon-keepers -believed in hard drinking. Some of us make license of our liberty in -sex relations; but the public disapproval of promiscuity is, to fall -into the current phrase, nation wide. Some of us steal in a large and -generous fashion, taking from him who hath not business ability for the -benefit of him who hath shrewdness and its fruits. But if these actions -can be described in terms of theft or misappropriation, every one will -agree that they are wicked, even stock-holders and profiteers. You -cannot get up a decent argument on moral questions in America, because, -as with small boys in war-time, no one will take the unpopular side. -The ethics of America are as definite as a code. - -This accepted and not unlofty moral code, with its extension to justice -and the rights of individuals, is the force behind our idealism that -has made it an international factor to be reckoned with from the days -of Jeffersonian ideology to our own. Like the dissenters’ vote in -England, it is a dangerous force to oppose. Despite occasional hysteria -and sentimentalism, despite its frequent betrayals by an unlovely -common sense, it is strong because it has the momentum of tradition -and the tenacity of prejudice. Of its worth I am American enough to -be convinced. Of its intelligence one cannot be so certain. But what -really concerns all lovers of our hard-built civilization is how -durable under stress is this moral idealism, under such stress as the -approaching change in our social order is sure to bring to morals and -morale, as well as to railroad stocks and the Constitution. - -Indeed, the inner fire, the spirit, is not easily discoverable in this -American idealism with its moral causes. Historically, it is easy to -explain it; habit has carried it on, and common sense must usually -approve a moral investment that has been profitable; but, nevertheless, -it is hard to see a continuing _raison d’être_ for such idealism in -America. It seems, as I have suggested in an earlier chapter, to lack -a definable spiritual basis. Its persistence, its weaknesses, its -dangers, raise constantly the question as to the status of religion in -America. - -I remember hearing Graham Wallas--who will not be suspected of bias -in this matter--remark that England would not pass out of clouds and -darkness until she had made for herself a new and felt interpretation -of religion. America, founded by a curious partnership of the religious -instinct and economic need and brought up on the moral and material -profits of the union, cannot be supposed to be less in need of a -fundamental spiritual readjustment. Every socialist and communist, -every corporation president and ex-Secretary, every professional -intellectual and amateur prophet, is declaring his mind on the one -thing needful to save the world and America. I do not know why we, -whose profession it is to teach, whose duty it is to interpret and to -sympathize with every motion of the American mind, should hesitate -to speak out also in this matter. It is, I think, demonstrable that -America needs religion as much as steel and automobiles, as much as a -better distribution of wealth and cheaper bread and meat. - -The status of religion in America has been as peculiar as the status -of politics. Our religious attitudes have been profoundly affected and -from early periods by the separation of church and state. Struggle -against a vested institution, dissent from traditional power, -conciliation with sacred authority, have been burning points in the -modern history of Europe. They have made great literature in England -from Shelley through Tennyson and Arnold and Swinburne. Our first -battle against the tyrannical in tradition wherever found was won in -the Revolution; our second, in the defeat of the Federalist party in -1800. - -In those contests we were freed, perhaps too early and too easily, from -the menace of the church as a function of government. Since then we -have been, and we still are, freer than the European to seek religion -wherever it may be found. Our great religious literature is creative, -not protestant. Woolman of the Quakers was a seeker; Emerson, in -greater measure, was a seeker, seeking spirituality for Americans, and, -like Woolman, fanning their moral enthusiasms. Hawthorne and Thoreau -were searchers for a new morality; Whitman and William James, in their -fashion, searchers also. - -Emerson in his religious attitude belongs a century later than Matthew -Arnold. Fed from almost identical intellectual sources, he is the -liberated mind seeking new allegiances, Arnold, the rebel not yet free. -And in general American religion, without reference to its quality, has -had, like American politics, a status some generations ahead of the -rest of the world. Hamilton and Jefferson and Lincoln were prophets -for Europe. The independent sects of America, none established, all -respectable, and the free seekers after new truth which sprang from -them, seem to have prefigured a condition that is common in a world -growing democratic. - -In truth, we old Americans, who with all our faults still best -represent America, gained freedom of conscience at the expense of -shattering the ideal of a church universal. Religion for us came in -general to be a personal matter because the church, separated from the -state, lost the visible authority that made it easy--or necessary--to -trust to an institution the responsibility for one’s soul. We felt, as -was to be expected, the need of new authority, new sanctions for our -religion. And we were free, freer than others, to seek and to find a -religion for democracy. What has been the result? - -The results in bourgeois America, which goes to the theater, wears -the commonly advertised collars, sends its children to college, and -keeps out of the slums and the police-court, are clearly visible and -highly significant. Four classes, interlocking, but distinct enough -for definition, may be readily described; and though they do not -include the recent immigrant or the fire-new sophists of radicalism, -the strongest brains, the most characteristic emotions, and the best -character in America belong there with the mass of the mediocre -undistinguished who are public opinion and the ultimate America. - -There are, first, the militant advance-guards of our idealism, the -ethical enthusiasts who carry on the moral fervor of America. They -range, like colors of the spectrum, from the rarer violet of the -philosophical moralists, inheritors of the New England ethics or the -Virginia ideology, through the solid blue of the organizers of great -movements in social reform, to the blatant red of the prohibitionists -and the Anti-tobacco League. I do not mean to be flippant. The irony, -if there is irony, is bred of the sardonic humor aroused by so various -an army all certain that by stopping this and beginning that the world -can be saved. - -It is their certainty that makes them impressive--the same certainty -which drove our colonials toward republican government and our pioneers -to the conquest of a wilderness. Sneers at their banner, “Progress,” -satisfy none but the reactionary. Progress where? Who knows. Progress -for whom? It is hard to tell. But only the man who honestly believes -in civilization for the benefit of the few can doubt the advance that -has been made. I should have preferred the twelfth century to the -twentieth if I could have lived in the right Benedictine monastery or -been a count in Provence. I should have enjoyed the Elizabethan age -more than my own if I could have voyaged--in the cabin--with Raleigh, -been Shakespeare’s patron, or possessed a manor neither too near nor -too far from London. I still think that life in a good English college, -with a taste for letters and the proper port, is superior to any mental -or physical luxury we can offer in America. Yet all this is aside -from the point. Provençal poetry and perfect social intercourse, high -adventure, the intellectual life in an appropriate physical setting, -and even good port, may come again somewhere on the line along which -our progress is marching. In the meantime, though the war has been -a cooling card to optimism, the ethical enthusiasms of the age have -made the opportunities of the average man for most good things in life -better, have made him, in the most accurate sense of the word, not -nobler, but more civilized, and particularly in America, where the fire -of opportunity was first set burning. - -The moral enthusiasts whose religion has been transformed into ethical -idealism are safe from ridicule. Religious persecution, slavery, the -tyranny of disease and ignorance, they have already reformed out of the -brighter parts of the world, and perhaps alcoholism and poverty are to -follow. We can well afford to risk their mistakes and their excesses, -their blind trust in works, so long as they are propelled by a sincere -energy of will to make the world better. But what lies behind this -will? What keeps it from decaying? For these men are seldom religious -in the sense that their reforming zeal springs from a deep spiritual -need. A part of their energy is moral habit; a part is exactly -identical with the energy that builds up a great industrial plant in -order to satisfy a craving for laudable action. If the certainty that -the community must be bettered, can be bettered, should slacken, where -would it find revival? In faith, hope, and charity? But can hope endure -and charity be permanent without faith? And what is their faith? - -The faith of our moral idealists is as strong, I suppose, as that which -supported the Stoics or the clear-sighted reformers of the eighteenth -century. They believe in the perfectability of man and the pragmatic -value of right-doing. This, for a strong man, may be enough; but it is -not a religion. It is questionable whether it would stand adversity. -It was not shaken in the war, but it is shaking now. If the enthusiasm -of the reformers should be spent or exhausted, they would have little -to fall back upon. Their idealism has already shown signs of hysteria, -spots of sentimentalism, evidences of a basis in habit and impulse as -much as in deep spiritual conviction. - -It has become almost a commonplace to say that the spiritual seekers, -the second of our observable classes--more numerous, I believe, in -America than elsewhere in the white world since the seventeenth -century--are products of reaction against the dry moral will that -seeks its satisfaction in works, not faith. Yet their importance has -not always been grasped. Commercial America has not only been the home -of the greatest of modern philanthropies, but also the source of the -only powerful religious sect created in the nineteenth century, as -well as one of the few new strains in idealistic philosophy. They are -not happy in our commercialism or content with ethical reform, those -more sensitive spirits whose numbers and weight in bourgeois America -are evident whenever an emotional crisis arrives. And the freedom from -ecclesiastical restraint which was won for them by their ancestors has -left them free to construct new religions. - -But as it was the earnestness of the moral enthusiasts that seemed more -valuable than any reason they had for goodness, so it is the spiritual -craving of American seekers that is more impressive than anything they -have found. I do not undervalue the hopeful idealism of Emerson or the -strong protest of the Christian Scientists against surrender to petty -worry and pain. Yet in so far as we may generalize in so vast a matter, -the seekers of spirituality have been singularly out of harmony with -the needs of a democracy. They have found religions that solace the -optimistic temperament when it has been duly intellectualized; they -have found medicine for the ills of prosperous people; but the breadth -and often the depth of appeal that must characterize a religion for -all men they have missed or failed to seek. The Friends, later called -Quakers, began with the will that all the world should become Friends; -it was only in later stages that they regarded themselves as a peculiar -people with whom only those fitted by temperament should join. But it -is with such an exclusiveness that the seekers of to-day who promulgate -religion commence. One can prophesy in advance who will or will not -be Christian Scientists. And beyond the bounds of sects the spiritual -adventure exhausts itself in emotional vagaries, or rises into regions -of pure mysticism where, no matter how noble or how satisfying it may -be for individual persons, we shall never find the religion for a -democracy. - -The third group is again a result of that early freeing of America -from ecclesiastical control; but its members are those whom such -unchartered freedom tires. The reactionaries, if I may call them by -that name without offense intended, are the lovers of tradition, whose -modern craving for the sanctions of religion leads them back into -dependence upon the old rites, the old theologies, the old authority, -which many, indeed, never have left. They, in our history, are the -Federalists of religion. - -And, like the seekers, they, also, have put restrictions of temperament -upon their faith. For many Americans of the old stock the breach with -authority made by the Reformation is permanent. They could not go back -without an intellectual debasement that would be degradation, not -humility. For many others the scientific revolution of the nineteenth -century has still further unfitted minds for harmony with the forms and -pressures of the ecclesiastical past. Sheer scientific materialism as -an explanation of God and the universe has broken down. The need for -religion emerges from the controversy more palpitating than before. -Nevertheless, the science of theology has suffered from the science of -inductive research. Tradition carries many a man to the door of past -beauty, decorum, and harmonious faith, and he longs to enter. But his -way is barred. He leans upon and loves the past. He cannot enter it. -The traditionalist, to give him a better and more lovely name, has -been a bringer of joy to many; but, like the seeker, his help has been -partial only. He is a chaplain attendant upon the regiments of his own -faith. - -But by far the most significant product of our precocious religiosity -in America and our early emancipation from ecclesiastical control -has been indifferentism--that American indifferentism which has -been easy because of our willingness to be responsible for our own -evils, wide-spread because of our necessary obsession with material -development, defensible in our century of good luck and the easy -optimism that accompanies it. - -Here lies the group by all odds the largest, and certainly worthy of -the most anxious study. Here belongs the mass of everyday Americans -upon whom rests the outcome of the immediate future. What lies -beneath the seeming religious indifference of the American who is not -ritualist, reformer, or seeker for spiritual consolation, who is, in -short, the average American of office, mill, and law-court? That is the -crux of the problem. - -Indifferentism, of course, is the fashion of the age, and fashions are -always delusive. In a Pullman smoker, watching the faces that, like -a day of south wind in July, are soggy, unillumined, one despairs of -one’s America. The human product of too much selling and buying has -never been attractive; our half-education and the semi-intelligence -that accompanies it have but defined the ill features, like careful -breeding of pig or goat. It was a novel principle of primitive -Christianity that lowliness and poverty might hide the noblest soul. If -you followed these men home, saw their minds freed from the pressure -of competition and out of the atmosphere of distrust, would your -opinion alter? Are their religious instincts hidden by the mask of -American commercialism, inactive merely because suppressed by custom -and fashion? Are they lying fallow? Or are they like seed too long -dormant and decaying? - -If only we knew by what ingenious statistics these men might be -classified, prophecy would not be difficult. If only we knew how many -have become mere traffickers in bodily comfort, sensualists in fact, -whatever they may be in name. If only we knew how many in their hearts -were dumb seekers for some spiritual satisfactions that would raise -the heart in adversity, lift the mind above the necessity for safety, -pleasure, success, so that all might be pursued, all enjoyed, without -flatness and disillusion. But no answer is ready; for there has been no -test of the latent religion of America. - -It is true that in the mass of American indifferentism the suppressed -religious instinct exhibits itself by queer shoots of emotional -enthusiasm for high things whether in war or in peace. It shows itself, -or rather its suppression, by unexpected sentimentalism in hard places. -It touches with melancholy many a typical American face in which one -would expect to find self-satisfaction or arrogance. We struggle with -our religious emotions in youth, suppress them in the middle years; in -old age, deep buried like a hidden disease, they torment us. Old age is -proverbially restless in America. - -Nevertheless, the test that will reveal how much religion is latent in -our democracy has not come yet; nor have our moral enthusiasms, our -spiritual adventures, our reachings for tradition, been in our day -really tested for the spirit behind them. There is reason to believe -that the time is approaching. In a normal evolution of the bourgeois -society that has made America, some clear revelation must have come -of the religious spirit that as a race and a nation we are developing. -Doubtless we would slowly have found our way to an expression more -true to our nature than any of the partial modes so far allowed us. -But there will be no normal, or at least no slow, evolution in the -religious emotions of the old Americans. A factor from without, a -sudden emergency, calls for an immediate reckoning of our spiritual -assets. All, in every class, who are responsible for the American -inheritance of ideals and morale and character are challenged, but -especially the indifferents. Those neutrals in the conflict between -spirit and matter can stay neutral no longer. - -Bourgeois America, which means most of America, is, as every one sees, -on the verge of a revolution like the political-social revolution -of 1800. For a century we have pursued economics, and now economics -is pursuing us. A new class is coming to the front, and yet that, -perhaps, is of minor importance in America, where money and a little -education extinguish distinctions between classes in two decades. What -is coming with more significance is a new social system, wherein a new -control of industry and a more equitable distribution of the products -thereof is to be substituted for competitive individualism. Many are -skeptical of the proposed practices by which this revolution is to be -accomplished; few now doubt that its theory is correct and will some -day be demonstrated. - -But there has never been a revolution of any kind in world history -that did not bring with it a revolution of all that tradition had -established and custom made familiar. And this revolution, peaceful or -otherwise, that is upon us differs from earlier examples in that its -economic nature is clearly distinguished and, therefore, its challenge -to all that we term esthetic, cultural, spiritual, religious, doubly -sharp and direct. Food, clothing, and recreation, not religious or -political liberty, are its legitimate, but also its only expressed, -objects. If it gains these at the expense of the soul--of what we all -understand by the soul in the ancient warning, “What is a man profited, -if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”--if it gains -material welfare and material welfare only, it will fail; and if it -fails, we all go down with it. - -In western Europe, one guesses, the struggle between a socialism always -threatening to become purely materialistic and our own imperfect order -will be differently conducted. There, and, especially in France and -Great Britain, church organizations are powerful politically, socially, -and in their grip upon the popular imagination. They will sharpen the -conflict and confuse the issues, making the struggle seem to resemble -many earlier combats between church and anti-church. But in bourgeois -America no such easy and fallacious division will be possible. Here -the question as to whether the new order is to satisfy the religious -and moral, as well as the economic, needs of society will rest -squarely upon the individual person. No church can speak for America, -for no church ever has held or ever can hold Americans together. The -responsibility here, and ultimately in Europe, must be personal. It -will come to the question of how much religion is possessed by the -normal American. When he is aroused by a struggle that sweeps into far -wider questions than the tariff or the income tax, when his method -of working, his method of living, his method of thinking, are all -challenged by a new and militant social order, more dormant idealism, -more latent cynicisms, intenser passions, will be aroused than one -would ever have suspected in that shrewd and easy-going face in the -Pullman smoker. Will religion be aroused also? - -It is essential that we should bring about a better distribution of -wealth; that we should give every child the equal opportunity that -Jefferson had in mind when he wrote the vague, but magnificent, -phrases of the Declaration of Independence. Democracy cannot be said to -have been tried until we have made an economic democracy, and we are -too far on the road of democratic experiment to stop half-way. But it -is even more essential that we should carry on into the new community -our moral enthusiasm, our ideals, and also that reverence for the -shaping power, and love for its manifestations that lie behind them, -and constitute the religious emotion which I shall not here attempt -otherwise to define. Many fear that the nice taste, the trained mind, -which have been borne upon the crest of civilization, will go down -in the welter of indistinguishable breakers. There is little danger -of this, since already it is the intellectuals who direct, and will -direct, the new movement; and the professional man stands to gain as -much as the laborer by a peaceful revolution. But in a socialistic -world, built on the recovery of the unearned increment, standardized -by wages, whose _raison d’être_ is the distribution of wealth, it is -the religious instinct, with all that its free development implies for -democracy, that is in the gravest danger. If we all become relatively -rich--and this is an idea of the earthly paradise that socialism -undoubtedly encourages--how many will crawl through the eye of the -needle? - -The labor party is not immediately responsible for the saving or -the freeing of the religious instinct. Its first objectives are the -comforts and material opportunities of civilization; and until these -are reached we have no right to expect religious leadership from -the proletariat. If any one is responsible, it is the old American, -the bourgeois American. He has inherited the spiritual tradition of -his ancestors; he has profited by emancipation from superstition -and institutional tyranny; he has lived in a comfortable world with -opportunities to illumine the spirit by literature and the arts -and education. He is not going to be crushed or driven out of his -inheritance; there are too many of him, and he too closely resembles -in everything but habit of life the proletariat that is rising. Upon -this American rests the burden of spiritualizing as well as educating -his new masters--upon the moral enthusiasts, the traditionalists, the -seekers, most of all. It is such a task as the church faced in the dark -ages, when barbarians had to be not only spiritualized, but civilized -as well. It is a lesser task, for our new invaders are not barbarians, -and their leaders are intellectually the equal of ours. Whether the -outlook for success is greater, depends upon the spirit we bring to the -enterprise. Our knowledge is greater; is our will that man should make -more than a market of his time, sleeping and feeding, as great as the -great wills of earlier centuries? - -No one can answer; but of this we can be assured, that the solution -rests in American indifferentism. If the commercial American is as -material as he looks, if common sense is his only good, if his idealism -is merely inherited habit, if he responds to two impulses only, -restlessness and sentimentality, then he will go over to socialism -in its most mechanical phase and, instead of saving the new party, -he will ruin it. Potentially the most ardent supporters of a purely -materialistic socialism, in which the individual person counts for -nothing aside from his appetites, are precisely the “practical” -business men who now curse the new order most loudly because it -threatens their accumulations. For them it is civil war between seekers -for the dollar; and civil war is always the bitterest, and the soonest -healed. Such men have been our leaders. Is the army behind them? - -I think that the rank and file of bourgeois America are less concerned -with wealth and the struggle for wealth than we suppose. I think that -they are not so much dazzled by millions as in the ’nineties; more -anxious for simplicity of heart, which spells content, and worthiness -of aim, which satisfies conscience, than one would guess from Wall -Street or Broadway or public life in the Middle West. I think -that, while distrusting the economic paradise of the more material -socialists, they are closer in sympathy to a thoughtful laborer than -to a cynical capitalist. If the religious instinct among them emerges -as a disgust for petty emotions, as a passionate interest in humanity, -as a willingness to sacrifice privilege and prejudice for a fuller -life more generously shared, if the religion of our democracy finds -no more expression than this, the crisis will pass. If even thus far -indifferentism should yield to active spiritual faith, the bourgeoisie -would cease being bourgeois, and we could cease to fear the triumph of -the proletariate, since, if there was anything good in our old stock, -we could convert them to it. - -But if the American has lost his religious instincts, if behind -his practical common sense and his vigorous idealism and his eager -experiments in spirituality there is nothing but a restless energy -working upon the momentum of convictions long dead, then let the new -Americans absorb us quickly, for we are worn out. - -With all humbleness, with a full realization of the trivialities of -hustle and bustle in which we have sunk our religion, with concern for -our escape from easy-going optimism and skeptical content, I, for one, -feel too sure of the depth of our racial legacy of reverence, and the -fundamental religiosity of the American character at its truest, to -admit for a moment that conclusion of despair. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -LITERATURE IN AMERICA - - “Fix’t in sublimest thought behold them rise - World after world unfolding to their eyes, - Lead, light, allure them thro’ the total plan - And give new guidance to the paths of man.” - - -These were the modest aspirations for American genius, and especially -American literary genius, expressed by Joel Barlow, the once famous -author, in his “Columbiad” of 1807. - -It was not a democratic literature, as we understand the term, that -Barlow, and hundreds of others on both sides of the Atlantic, hoped -and expected to see arise in the new republic. It was not a literature -that would interpret the homely, though vigorous, personality of a new -nation. Nothing so concrete and so commonplace as this would have -raised their ardor to such a pitch. The excitable critics of that -day were concerned with the absolute, the ideal, and the abstract. -Liberty, not equality, had at last found a dwelling-place, and the -free spirit of man was to expand in an illimitable continent as never -before, and create the poetry of freedom and the epic of liberated -mankind. But their vast expectations were based upon a misconception -and surrounded by fallacies. They have not been realized; and this is -one reason for the prevailing idea that literary America has been a -disappointment, that the life of the mind in America has lagged behind -its opportunities, that we are a backward race in literature and the -arts. We seem children to-day beside the dreams of our ancestors. - -It is easy enough to see now that a race which had to construct a -nation in a continent in large part scarcely habitable was not ready -to sing the epic of freedom. Freedom had been won, but whether it -would be possible to possess and enjoy it depended not upon lyrical -interpretation, but upon statecraft, the broadax, toil, transportation, -and the rifle. And when the pioneering days were over, political -freedom, freedom of conscience and the individual man, belonged as -truly to other great nations who were equally entitled to create the -literature of the free mind. To expect the ideals of liberty to appear -in American literature was legitimate, but to look for a great poetic -outburst in nineteenth-century America just because this republic first -established a new political order was no more reasonable than to demand -a new style in architecture from the erectors of the first capitol in -the trans-Alleghany wilderness. - -What should have been asked of us, at least after the defeat of the -Federalist party had made certain, what before was only probable, that -America would become a democracy, was a literature which should express -the ideals pervading our particular brand of democratic life, a -literature which should describe a society in which social distinctions -were elastic, opportunity was superabundant, and, for the first time -in the modern world, the common people become more powerful than the -uncommon. A democratic literature could rightly have been expected from -America. But such a literature would never have been termed “sublimest -thought” by our early enthusiasts. It would have to suffer from the -tawdriness of the masses, and develop as slowly as they develop. It -would have to be more prose than poetry, for American life outwardly -was prosaic except upon its borders, and often gross and barbarous -there. It would have to struggle upward like a flapping heron, not soar -like the eagle of our dreams. And in the earlier period, perhaps in -most periods of the republic, few literary dreamers even wished that -America should become a democracy. - -In many respects we got, and got very soon, such a literature, and -much of it has endured. The prose or poetry that took upon itself -to let the eagle scream for liberty has quite generally gone into -oblivion, and with reason; it is either crude and blatant, or solemn -and hackneyed pretentiousness, like Barlow’s “Columbiad” and much -of Dwight’s “Conquest of Canaan.” The “less enraptured” strains of -Irving and Hawthorne and Clemens and Holmes and Bret Harte, in which -the hopes, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies, and the passions of a -nascent civilization were expressed in prose as well as poetry, and in -humor more frequently than in epic grandeur, have had a thousand times -more virility. They have sprung from a social and esthetic need, not -a romantic conception, and though not an epoch-making celebration of -freedom finally brought to earth, they have been a solid contribution -to the literature of the world and a beginning of the literature of the -American democracy. - -The real issue of course was not Freedom and Liberty and the other -capitalizations of the abstract, but we, the Americans. And the real -question is whether American literature has met its proper, not its -assumed, specifications. If one considers the past, the answer inclines -toward the affirmative. - -There have been two chief strains in American literature, not always -distinct, but in origin different. In the first belong those writers -whose dominant purpose has been to appeal to the best in the many; and -by the best I mean the finest or the deepest emotions, and by the many -I mean the accessible minds of the democracy. Emerson belongs primarily -here, and Hawthorne, and, though he would have denied it, Whitman. -Henry James in his earlier stories is a lovable example; and when he -pursued his magical art into realms where only the trained appreciation -could follow, Mrs. Wharton put on the mantle. In the second have been -the more numerous writers whose chief purpose, not always a conscious -one, has been to touch and interest and arouse not so much the best -as the commonest, the most universal emotions. Cooper is the most -excellent example of great writing in this group. Mark Twain when not -misanthropic, Bret Harte in all moods, Whittier and Longfellow, Riley -and 0. Henry, and a host of the less distinguished, also belong there. - -But far more important than this division in purpose, which, after -all, is hard to make and harder still to keep, is the fact, if one may -speak of high esthetic matters in a biological fashion, of constant -cross-fertilization between these strains, and especially in the men we -call great. Americans who felt impelled to write of the ideal best have -not forgotten the needs of a nation slowly moving toward democracy. -Those who wrote to amuse and interest the populace have felt in a -curious fashion their responsibility for what they considered American -ideals. Tribute has been paid by both sides, though each in its own -fashion, to democracy; and this makes an unexpected congruity between -appeals to the best and satisfactions for the many, between Emerson -and popular fiction. The scholar presents his idealistic optimism -as an attempt to explain where the eager swarm ought to be winging. -The story-teller, though inspired not by ideas, but by the chance to -interest an energetic society absorbed in the conquest of nature and -hot-blooded with the taste of success, yet feels bound to urge what he -feels to be American morality and American idealism. - -This common sympathy with democracy is the hope of American literature -in the sharp tests of our nationality now almost upon us. Emerson and -Cooper, Hawthorne and Mark Twain, are examples of what once it could do. - -Emerson was a man who never courted or obtained popularity, who hitched -his readers to a star instead of a plot or a sensation, who wrote -always for minds that may have been democratic, but certainly could -not have been common. Cooper, like Shakespeare, was an aristocrat in -tastes, a democrat by sympathy and conviction, whose stories, even -his bad stories, contained that essential adventure, that rapid and -unexpected and successful action, which satisfies the universal craving -for struggle well ended, stories so popular that his enemies were -entranced by them even while they abused him. - -The contrast is sharp. And yet, if the greatness of Emerson is the airy -strength of his ideology, his permanence in the history of American -civilization is determined by the expression he gave to the moral -optimism of the typical American. And if the popularity of Cooper was -due to the unflagging interest of his adventure and the romance of his -actors and his scenes, nevertheless what makes him more than a good -story-teller and gives him great place in the social history of America -is his incarnation of the ideals and the morality of a native democracy -in Deerslayer, whom all Americans could understand and admire. - -Or consider Hawthorne and Mark Twain. Hawthorne was a moralist romancer -whose austere talents forced admiration and a somewhat doubtful -popularity. Twain touched the universal note of humorous exaggeration -so early and so readily that his stern moral basis went unremarked. Men -read him for humor as they read Cooper for romance, absorbing the ideas -of each as unconsciously as the child takes medicine in a sugared glass. - -Nevertheless, if in Hawthorne the burden of lofty moral ideals is more -evident than any appeal to the masses, yet the most careless reader -feels that his warnings are for a new world that has broken with -tradition and must face its problems of sin and sex in a democracy of -conscience. And if Mark Twain writes obviously to amuse the democracy, -yet he seldom fails to preach to them also. “Huckleberry Finn,” to -the loving, thoughtful reader, is among other things an epic of the -injustice, the inconsistency of sophisticated man and his social -system, seen through the eyes of the new world on the Mississippi, -where tradition, in the fresh, crude light, showed its seams of decay. -There is a tract upon slavery in “Huckleberry Finn,” and another -upon dueling, and a third on social distinctions, and a fourth upon -conventionalized religion. And readers of Clemens will not forget how -the bones of his acrid philosophy wore through the skin of his humor -in those later books, especially in “The Mysterious Stranger,” where -a hatred of social injustice and the melancholy foreboding which has -always accompanied the optimism of American democracy had such full -escape that the publishers were led to print it as a fairytale for -children that it might be enjoyed by minds too unobservant to trouble -with its warnings. - -I do not wish to seem to be docketing all American literature in these -brief comparisons. What I desire is to point to this common interest -of our writers in the needs of democracy. Whitman, who wrote always -for the most vigorous and sometimes for the best emotions of the many, -might continue the argument. Howells, whose zest for the familiar -experience kept his penetrating intellect busy with problems important -for democracy, is another example. Poe, and Henry James in his later -years, fall without both groups, being as indifferent to democracy as -they are solicitous for art. That is their distinction. Indeed, it is -by such men that the writers who sway the masses are trained in the -technique of their craft. - -In short, by and large, our literature is remarkable for its -substructure of what might be called democratic idealism--idealism -applied to the needs of a growing democracy. If the reader doubts, let -him compare Emerson with Carlyle, Cooper with Scott, Hawthorne with -Tennyson, Whitman with Browning, and answer whether our writers have -not been formed by the social needs of America. - -That this is true of so many men, and has led to the -cross-fertilization between popular writers and intellectuals of -which I have written above, is perhaps more readily explained when -one considers how homogeneous our society has been, how few and how -slight its mental cleavages. Conservative and radical, traditionalist -and anti-traditionalist, democrat and aristocrat--such clefts have -not gone so deep with us as with other nations. Except for times of -stress, as in the decade between 1765 and 1775, or in the years just -before the Civil War, it would be hard to group, for example, our -writers by fundamental differences in their philosophy of living. -Whitman one could classify, and Poe and Irving, but the difficulty -rapidly increases as the list lengthens. We have been homogeneous by -a common tradition of liberalism, by a common environment varying not -too greatly between Boston and the newer West. And our literature has -resembled us. - -And now, when at last our literature, like our politics and our -economics, must at last challenge world scrutiny, this national -character, and all that represents it, has come suddenly to seem of -vast importance. We have become vividly aware of it, and we realize -that we are in dire need of self-expression--of self-expression by -new literature. The self-consciousness of Americans throughout the -nineteenth century, which showed itself keenly in their restlessness -under foreign criticism and their irrepressible desire to talk about -God’s country, was of a different kind. It was due to a nervous -uncertainty as to the success of the American experiment. We were -more concerned with what others thought of our qualities than with -what we were or had been. But three things have altered our situation -radically, and made us think more of character and less of reputation. - -The first is the absolute success, as success is measured by the -world’s finger, of this American experiment. The hope of the founders -to establish a stable and prosperous republican government where life, -property, conscience, and opinion were safe has been realized. - -The second and more sensational change came from the Great War, which -gave us that quiet confidence in our national strength that comes when -recognition from without confirms the fact and makes self-assertion -unnecessary. - -The third, and probably the most important, has been the rise to -intellectual influence and cultural and social power of aliens--Irish, -German, most of all Jews--who, unlike the earlier immigrants, do -not cherish as their chief wish the desire to become in every sense -American. Such phenomena as an Alexander Hamilton or Thomas Paine, -becoming almost from the day of their landing more native than the -natives, are becoming rarer and rarer. More and more we must count -upon cosmopolitans of brains and ability among us who know not Israel, -though they may love the traditions of their home lands even less. It -is this new America, heterogeneous, brilliant, useful, but disturbing, -that has more than anything else sharpened the self-consciousness -of America, turned us toward introspection, made us sensible of our -homogeneity, and the new alignments inevitable for the future. - -And just as at the turn of the eighteenth century enthusiasts were -clamoring for a new literature from America, in which freedom and -liberty should have their apotheosis, so now the awakened consciousness -of Americans of the older stock is clamoring for the expression of -what they vaguely denominate, and still more vaguely describe, as -Americanism. Like all such terms called forth by a crisis and displayed -like a flag or a button, the term is at the same time indefinite and -full of significance. Ten men and women will in ten different ways -define it. And yet none can doubt that vast feeling lies behind the -word, and would crystallize, if power were given it, into an expression -of our national experience and aspirations and ideals as we have lived -with them and seen them develop for a century. - -And opposed to this clamor for a literature of Americanism is -another call, not loud yet, but rising--a demand for a different -literature, mordant, sophisticated, cosmopolitan, which will cut at -the sentimentalities in which our idealism has involved us, strike -at the moribund liberalism which we still regard as our basis of -action, take issue with the moral standards that have been received -as irrevocable because they were American. Keenly aware of the need -for a more honest and more vigorous expression of what America means -to-day, and sensitive to these caustic attacks upon all that we have -called American, the thoughtful mind finds little to console it in -the clever, sentimental writing which, with sewing machines, dental -pastes, ready-made clothes, and cheap motor-cars, has become one of the -standardized products of America. - -There has been one response already to the awakening national -consciousness, and this, curiously enough, has been almost identical -with the reaction of the new republic a century and more ago to its -responsibilities. Then the first writing which commanded attention here -and abroad was to be found in so-called state papers, declarations -of Congress and legislatures, pamphlets by Adams and Hamilton and -Jefferson. And the first response to our modern clamor for Americanism -has also been in state papers, beginning perhaps with Roosevelt’s -administration and continuing through Wilson’s messages and the many -documents on the war. The worth and significance of many of these -public utterances have commanded world-wide respect, and possible -permanence in literature. - -Yet it is rarely that state papers can satisfy a national need for -literature. They are too restricted in their interests and too -occasional in their provenance. It is only once in a century that a -Gettysburg Address sums up the political and moral philosophy of -millions or a discourse on the needs and obligations of democracy -unites public opinion in America and Europe. The emotions of the -race seek outlet and interpretation in pure literature, and here the -American response is more doubtful. - -None of the more popular brands of contemporary writing seems to -satisfy the craving for national self-expression. It is true that we -are going in for universals. Our books reach the hundred thousands, and -our magazines the millions. The successful writer of plays, stories, or -special articles trades in the thoughts that circulate through a vast -community of common education, experience, and environment. The result -is to spread and perpetuate the ideals and the liberal hopes that we -call American, but also to stereotype and thus weaken their influence. -They become counters in a game, or, better still, standardized foods -for the imagination, whose popularity is certain until the fashion -wears out. The writer of adventurous fiction to-day uses the same -formulas as did Cooper, because he writes for a people still true to -the mold of that America which they have inherited directly in family -life, or indirectly in the schools. But his idealism is faint beside -Cooper’s; his “strong, simple Americans” too often mere fabrications -when compared with Deerslayer, or crude, vulgarized approximations, -like sculptures of the decadent fourth century. Vulgarization is the -menace of democratic literature--vulgarization by smart and cheap -short stories, by plays where the wit is raw, the sentiment mushy, the -characters, like their language, cheap and mean. Slang can be racy; -colloquialism belongs to a literature of the people; to be homely is -often to be lovable and true: but a literature, no matter how moral, -which in its lack of clarity and sweetness is like a glass of dirty -water, is a heavy price to pay for mere circulation. The appeal to -universals is essential in a democracy, but unless clarified by love -and hope and conviction, it leads toward universal vulgarity. - -Nor does the prospect cheer if one looks to the contemporary Brahmins, -who seek not the universal, but the particular; who write for the -best, not the broadest, emotions of democracy. Lowells and Emersons -have not yet reappeared in our society. No Emerson has philosophized -the reactions of America to international obligation; no Lowell -assailed militarist and pacifist alike in the war; no Whitman even has -sung commonplace America become momentarily heroic in the cause of a -half-understood democracy. We have had an abundance of writing directed -to fine minds and fine souls, but it has lacked the authentic note of -national inspiration. - -Perhaps the coldness of our intellectual literature has been due to the -specialization of the age. A Lowell, an Emerson, even a Longfellow, -has been difficult for the last three decades. Learned men, like -these, have been driven by the public opinion of their world toward -investigation and scientific research. They have been weighted with -a frightful responsibility for facts; they have been better scholars -than their predecessors, but less effective citizens. The tool-cutter -nowadays knows only his own operation. The scholar and philosopher have -a lifetime of labor assigned them, with no time to become acquainted -with their United States. In nineteenth-century America there was -little place for the scholar. He was driven into the world, and if -scholarship lost, we profited. Now his corner is built for him, and he -has gone into it. - -As a result of all this we face a very real danger. American -literature, with its burden of ideals and experience, being cheapened -by writers for the mob and deserted by the academician, may lose its -virility and pale before a new literature of cosmopolitanism, which -could find no better breeding-place than Chicago or New York. - -Artistically, this might be no calamity. Such a society as a great -American city presents has never before been seen in the world, not -even in Rome, and the international democracy which it forecasts is -worthy already of a great literature, has, indeed, already begun one. -But we old Americans, even though our age is of only two generations, -are not yet ready for international democracy. Our own racial character -has not received its final stamp, come to full self-expression, -established itself as the permanent influence upon the world’s -development which our career and our opportunities should make it. To -rush into literary internationalism before the long American experience -has ripened into a national democracy would be to skip a step. It is -to commit again the error of our forefathers, who proposed an epic -of liberty before we had freed ourselves from the burden of economic -development. - -And what we need is precisely such a cross-fertilization between the -mind that reaches for the best and the imagination which feels for -the many, as one finds in varying measures in Mark Twain and Holmes, -in Cooper and Whitman and Emerson. It must be a different and perhaps -a more mature product, but nothing else can make American ideals worth -saving in literature, for nothing else can grasp the shrewd native -quality of this people, which is still pervasive through all our alien -swarms. - -For three centuries now we have been at our experiment in democracy. We -have been sordid and we have been magnificent. We have been timorous -and we have set examples for hardihood in man. We have stumbled blindly -on our road, and we have had great moments of illumination. We have not -made a perfect democracy, but perhaps more men, women, and children -have been happy in America than elsewhere in world history. And on -the whole our course has been consistently onward. No purpose of the -founders has failed to continue; no valuable element of character has -yet been lost by the way. We are no worse men, by and large, than our -forefathers. And either this great experiment is worth something or it -is not. - -If it is worth something, it must pass into literature, and find men to -make it pass. And these men and women must be lovers of what we have -done here and what we are, as the young poets of England at war were -above all lovers of their blessed England. They cannot be scoffers at -our loose-held ideals and our nervous commercialism, who scold, which -is easy, a great, though uneven, nation, but do not search out the -cause of its greatness and proclaim its hope. Nor can they be recluses -contemptuous of that public in whose progressive refinement lies the -only chance for democracy. Nor mere buyers and sellers of emotion who -have learned the speech of the great beast, as Hamilton called the -common people, only to make profit by it. - -But you cannot summon a literature from the vasty deep by calling for -it in oratorical vein. Perhaps, even now as I write, some wise youth, -who takes his task more seriously than himself, has begun in humor a -poem that is meant for some newspaper column, but will become a better -description than an essay can give of the American who has been doing -so much, but thinking also, who still knows how to grin at misfortune, -and is not yet ready to declare himself bankrupt in ideas, deficient -in character, or pallid in imaginative faith. As a nation we did our -boasting early and got it out of our system; but the confidence and the -strength and the hope that inspired that boasting remain, and approach -fruition. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -THE BOURGEOIS AMERICAN - - -In the preceding chapters there has been much said of conservatism and -radicalism, of idealism and the religious instinct, of literature that -expresses the soul of a race. Nevertheless, when we look about in this -our America, it is painfully clear that not these absolutes but man who -makes and possesses them must chiefly concern us. It is the American -who will make or break his religion, his literature, his politics. He -is the entity. He is our destiny. - -And therefore one comes back after a survey of American traits, their -strengths, and their weaknesses, to the man himself. Can we name him in -this hive of millions? Can we find an everyday American that will be -accepted here as typical, and be recognized abroad? If there is such -a type, it will be among the middle class, the bourgeois Americans, -that we shall discover it. The landholding aristocracy has passed. The -moneyed aristocracy is in the best (and sometimes in the worst) sense -bourgeois. Cosmopolitans are few. The intellectual aristocracy is but -half emerged, like a statue of Rodin’s, from the common clay. - -What we find now is the middle class incarnate. What we may expect -soon is the finished product of bourgeois life in America. For it is -clear that this life is now in full career. We exult in it, and its -characteristic virtues. We deprecate aristocracy. We heap scorn upon -the proletariat and persecute its prophets. Better evidence still, no -sooner does a new group rise to security in our social system than -it becomes visibly bourgeois, and, what is more important, mentally -bourgeois. This has been true of the railway employees, the carpenters, -the plumbers, the tenant farmers, and many others. It has been also -true of the “aristocracy” in the old sense of the word, whether native -or European. They have come into the fold, sometimes reluctantly, -sometimes at a run with poverty barking behind them. All these groups -have been captured by the dominant class. And if the nature of our -industrial system still keeps them in alignment against the capitalist -(who is the soul of bourgeoisie) or dependent upon him, nevertheless -they think as he does on all questions not involving work and wages, -and especially in religion, politics, and morality. They act as he -does; and the labor groups are coming to fight as he does, and for the -same ends. - -All major influences in our American life seem to be directed toward -this consummation, which is triumphant, or dismal, according to your -point of view. The racial factor may seem to be an exception, but is -not. It is true that as the old American assimilates more and more -non-Teutonic and non-Latin races to his way of living, his psychology -alters, and his habits are likely to follow. It is also true that the -immigrant belongs prevailingly to the peasantry or the proletariat. But -the immigrant has substantially no influence upon the dominant class -until he is Americanized. And he is not Americanized in any true sense -until he leaves his quarter and begins to read the papers, go to the -theatres, eat the food, talk the talk, and think the thoughts of the -American; in a word, until he becomes bourgeois. And in the majority of -cases this takes at least one generation. - -Economic conditions, on the other hand, favor this triumph of the -bourgeoisie. We seem to be entering upon a period when a vastly greater -number of men and women will have reasonable security of moderate -income. But security of a moderate income, which means a guaranteed -mediocrity, is the mainstay, is almost the cause, of the bourgeois -spirit, just as privilege was the support of the aristocracy. And if -in the next generation ten times as many families can count on a cost -plus basis of living, this will but increase the middle class. It will -make, to be sure, more education, more refinement, and perhaps more -cerebration possible; but such a circumstance will not radically affect -the character of the typical American. - -Culturally, we already see the results of the many influences which -are making the United States bourgeois in warp and woof. Our traits -are not the fine exclusiveness, the discrimination, the selfishness of -an aristocracy. Nor are they the social solidarity, the intellectual -democracy, the intolerance of a proletariat. One finds rather -individualism in opinion and unity in thought. One finds conservatism -in institutions and radicalism in personal ambitions. One finds a -solid, though dull morality, a distrust of ideas, a plentiful lack of -taste, an abundance of the homely virtues of industry, truth telling, -optimism, idealism, and charity, which, in an age that suits such -talents, make a man healthy, wealthy, and, in his own generation, -wise. Such a cultural level, and such a national character are becoming -more and more familiar in America. - -There must be some peak ahead; some top of the curve when the bourgeois -spirit, even in the United States, will have reached the climax of -its power, and the height of its vigor, and will begin to lose its -sharpness of outline, and to give way to the spirit of the next age, be -that what it may. - -This peak is perhaps nearer than we suppose. What will happen -afterwards lies in darkness, but must depend in some measure upon the -temper of the bourgeoisie; and as America bids fair to be the capital -of Bourgeoisia, upon the temper of America. The question may be posed -this way. Are we, who are no longer the middle class, since there is no -power other than spiritual or intellectual above us, are we proposing -to imperialize, or to federalize the world which we dominate? - -Is the bourgeois conception of security for all, and superiority -(other than economic) for none, to be forced upon the years ahead? Is -our democracy, as Brooks Adams thinks, a democracy of degradation, a -level to which all must be either lifted, or lowered? Will we hold -back, as long as our power lasts, the proletariat, feeding them, -clothing them, converting them, but suppressing them, so that we may -be secure? Will we tyrannize the exceptional in art, in literature, in -statesmanship, in pure thinking, freezing it by distrust, or exploiting -it for sensation and reducing its fruits to vulgarity? Will we resolve -religion into a social emotion and poetry to rhythmic prose? Must the -poor fragments of the privileged classes that still remain, and the -little shopkeepers, and the teachers with their hankerings after an -intellectual aristocracy, and the skilled workman with the feverish -zeal of a new convert to security still upon him--must they all unite -with the industrial magnate in a holy alliance of things as they are -to crush into uniformity a humanity where only rebels against our -authority and the uncivilized remain? - -This would be the imperialism of the bourgeoisie. And neither our -churches, which are rigidly bourgeois, nor our universities, which are -ponderously bourgeois, and both trading in security, offer leadership -that guarantees escape. - -Or will we attempt to federalize this world that apparently we have -conquered, allowing autonomy for races of ideas, nations of customs, -and room enough for plantations of new desires in our fat fields? -Will we tolerate fineness, encourage variety, permit heresy, prepare -for change? It is said by way of compliment that here in America we -have neither aristocrats nor peasants. Will we preserve, or destroy, -the peasant virtues, the ideas of the aristocrat, the desires of the -intellectual. Will we make possible a nation where to be average is not -the highest good? - -I have no answer, naturally. There is no reply that can now be -formulated. But the solution is already present in the problem itself. -It is to be found in men and women, in boys and girls especially, who -will belong to the new order and who will answer in their time. If you -wish to speculate upon what will become of the post-bellum American, -whose traits as they exist to-day have been the subject of this book, -study, on the one hand, the younger leaders in the labor parties, and -on the other, the college undergraduates. In them lies the future. - - - - - * * * * * * - - - - -Transcriber’s note: - - Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. - - Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. - - Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original. - - The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber and - is entered into the public domain. - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVERYDAY AMERICANS*** - - -******* This file should be named 63090-0.txt or 63090-0.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/3/0/9/63090 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law 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 <a -href="http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you are not -located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this ebook.</p> -<p>Title: Everyday Americans</p> -<p>Author: Henry Seidel Canby</p> -<p>Release Date: August 31, 2020 [eBook #63090]</p> -<p>Language: English</p> -<p>Character set encoding: UTF-8</p> -<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVERYDAY AMERICANS***</p> -<p> </p> -<h4 class="pgx" title="">E-text prepared by David E. Brown<br /> - and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> - (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br /> - from page images generously made available by<br /> - Internet Archive<br /> - (<a href="https://archive.org">https://archive.org</a>)</h4> -<p> </p> -<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10"> - <tr> - <td valign="top"> - Note: - </td> - <td> - Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - <a href="https://archive.org/details/everydayamerican01canb"> - https://archive.org/details/everydayamerican01canb</a> - </td> - </tr> -</table> -<p> </p> -<hr class="pgx" /> -<p> </p> -<p> </p> -<p> </p> - -<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" width="50%" alt="" /></div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - - -<h1>EVERYDAY AMERICANS</h1> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_title.jpg" alt="" /></div> - -<hr class="tb" /> - -<div class="titlepage"> - -<p><span class="xxlarge">EVERYDAY AMERICANS</span></p> - - -<p>BY<br /> -<span class="xlarge">HENRY SEIDEL CANBY</span><br /> -<br /> -Author of “College Sons and College Fathers,”<br /> -“Our House,” “Education by<br /> -Violence,” etc.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_titlelogo.jpg" alt="" /></div> - -<p><span class="large">NEW YORK<br /> -THE CENTURY CO.<br /> -1920</span></p></div> - -<hr class="chap" /> - - -<p class="center"> -Copyright, 1919, 1920, by<br /> -<span class="smcap">The Century Co.</span></p> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_v"></a>[v]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak">PREFACE</h2> -</div> - - -<p>This is emphatically not a war book; and yet -the chapters that follow, in one sense, are the -fruits of the war, inasmuch as they represent -reflections upon his own people by one returning -to a familiar environment after active contact -with English, Scottish, Irish, and French -in the turbulent, intimate days of 1918. They -are complementary, in a way, to a volume of -essays which sprang from that experience and -was published in 1919 under the title “Education -by Violence.” But though representing -in its inception the fresher view of familiar -America of one returning from abroad, this -book in its completed form is tendered as a -modest attempt to depict an American type -that was sharpened perhaps, but certainly not -created by the war. The “old Americans” -came to racial consciousness many years ago,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vi"></a>[vi]</span> -although their sense of nationality has been immeasurably -strengthened by the events of the -last few years. It is no picture of all America, -no survey of our complete social being that I -attempt in the following pages; but rather a -highly personal study of the typical, the everyday -American mind, as it is manifested in the -American of the old stock. It is a study of -what that typical American product, the college -and high school graduate, has become in -the generation which must carry on after the -war.</p> - -<p>New Haven, Connecticut,<br /> - June 4, 1920.</p> - - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vii"></a>[vii]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2> -</div> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" summary="table"> - -<tr><td class="tdr"><small>CHAPTER</small></td><td> </td><td class="tdr"> <small>PAGE</small></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">I</td><td> <span class="smcap">The American Mind</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_3"> 3</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">II</td><td> <span class="smcap">Conservative America</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_29"> 29</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">III</td><td> <span class="smcap">Radical America</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_61"> 61</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">IV</td><td> <span class="smcap">American Idealism</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_91"> 91</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">V</td><td> <span class="smcap">Religion in America</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_120"> 120</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">VI</td><td> <span class="smcap">Literature in America</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_149"> 149</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr">VII</td><td> <span class="smcap">The Bourgeois American</span></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_175"> 175</a></td></tr> -</table> - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> - -<p class="ph1">EVERYDAY AMERICANS</p> -</div> - - -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>[3]</span> -<p class="ph2">EVERYDAY AMERICANS</p></div> - - - - -<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER I<br /> - - -<small>THE AMERICAN MIND</small></h2> - - -<p class="drop-cap">IN England there developed long ago, perhaps -as far back as the days of Shakespeare, -who was aristocratic in his tastes and -democratic in his sympathies, a curious political -animal called the radical-conservative. The -radical-conservative, as Lord Fitzmaurice once -said, is a man who would have been a radical -outright if radicals had not been dissenters; by -which he clearly meant that the species agreed -with radical principles, but objected to radicals -because they did not have good manners, seldom -played cricket, and never belonged to the -best clubs. Therefore the radical-conservative -stays in his own more congenial class while<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4"></a>[4]</span> -working for social justice toward all other -classes. He is willing to vote with the conservative -party in return for concessions in -labor laws, inheritance taxes, or the safeguarding -of public health.</p> - -<p>Thence arises the curious circumstance, most -mystifying to foreigners, that a good share of -the really progressive legislation in Great Britain -of the last half-century has been led by -young gentlemen from Oxford and Cambridge -who have no more intention of becoming -part of the proletariate than of leaving off -their collars and going without baths. Bismarck -was an out-and-out conservative who -for his own nefarious ends furthered what a -Rhode Island Republican or an Ulster Tory -would call radical measures. But Lord Robert -Cecil in our own day is a convinced aristocrat, -as befits a son of Lord Salisbury, who -is more sincerely effective than many Liberals -in various movements which we are accustomed -to call reform.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5"></a>[5]</span>The conservative-liberal is quite a different -animal and far commoner, far more familiar to -Americans, even if they have never called him -by that name. His habitat is America, and -thanks to the populousness of this country, he -is beginning to have a very important influence -outside of his habitat. To define him is difficult, -but for purposes of rough classification he -may be said to be the man whose native liberal -instincts have been crystallized by a combination -of interesting circumstances—and sometimes -petrified. He is the man who was born -a liberal in a liberal country and intends to -remain as he was born. He is the man who -will fight for the freedom proclaimed by the -Declaration of Independence against any later -manifestation of the revolutionary spirit. He -believes in conserving in unaltered purity the -principles of life, government, and industry -that his forefathers rightly believed to be liberal. -In brief, he is a revolutionary turned -policeman, a progressive who stands pat upon<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6"></a>[6]</span> -his progress, a conservative-liberal. I believe -that he is our closest approximation to a typical -American mind.</p> - -<p>Whether familiar or not, the effects of this -political disease—for it is a disease, a hardening -of the arteries of the mind—are easily observable -all about us in the America of to-day. -Indeed, we see them so frequently that they -awaken no surprise, are scarcely seen at all in -any intellectual sense of the word. They are -like our clear atmosphere, our mixture of races, -our hurried steps—things we scarcely notice -until an outsider speaks of them. I am not an -outsider. I am so much a part of America -that I find it difficult to detach myself from a -mood that is mine in common with many other -Americans. And yet, once one sees it plainly, -the educated conservatism of liberal America -becomes portentous, a unique political phenomenon.</p> - -<p>I think that this peculiarity of our political -thinking first became evident to me on an ocean<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7"></a>[7]</span> -voyage in war-time. There were a score or so -of Americans on board, members, most of -them, of various government missions, picked -business men, picked professional men, thoroughly -intelligent, intensely practical, and entirely -American. They were democratic, too, -as we use the word in America; that is, good -“mixers,” free from snobbery, and nothing new -in action was alien to their sympathies. They -could remold you a business or a legal practice -in half an hour’s conversation; tear down -an organization and build it up again between -cigars. Their committee meetings went off -like machine-guns, whereas the English officers -and trade diplomats, when they got together, -snarled themselves in set speeches and -motions and took an afternoon to get anywhere. -The English, indeed, seemed puzzled and a -little dazed by the ease with which the Americans -seized upon and put through reorganization -of any kind. They seemed positively to -leap at change, so long as basic ideas were not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a>[8]</span> -involved. “Nothing,” said an Indian colonel, -“is sacred to them. They would scrap the empire -and build a new one—on paper—at sixty -miles an hour.”</p> - -<p>He was quite wrong. The system my countrymen -lived by permitted change, urged -change, up to a certain point. They would -demolish a ten-story building to erect one of -twenty or scrap thousands of machines in order -to adopt a better process, but when it came to -principles and institutions they were conservative. -The founders of their social and political -order had been almost a century ahead of -the times. The instruments of life and of -government they had provided had served with -slight modifications for the free-moving -America of the nineteenth century. It had -been a game for Americans, and a splendid one, -to realize the liberality and democracy possible -under the Constitution, to work out the independence -available for the common man in a -rich and undeveloped country in which his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9"></a>[9]</span> -political power guaranteed him every advantage -that could be gained in a capitalistic system, -including the acquisition of capital. It -had been a splendid game, and our wits had -been sharpened, our faculties strengthened, -our prosperity fortified, our self-confidence -enormously increased in playing it. Given our -rules, we could play the game more resourcefully -than any other people on earth. And -they were wise rules, which provided for -growth, but not for a different kind of contest. -We were so sure that America stood for freedom, -independence, and liberality in general -that we could not take seriously people who -did not believe in democracy, nor conceive that -there might be an idea of democracy different -from our own.</p> - -<p>Indeed, on board that ship, a curious experience -came to all of us, Englishmen, Americans, -and I, the humble observer, when in the -course of argument or conference the theories -of life upon which we were variously living<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10"></a>[10]</span> -came momentarily into view. The Americans, -it was clear, were certain that they were -the most progressive people in the world. This -certainty was like the fixed dogma of a Roman -Catholic; it gave them elasticity and daring. -Being sure of their principles, so sure as to be -almost unaware of them, they ignored precedents, -and solved or dismissed problems with -equal ease. They made plans for a league of -nations, they approved of a temporary autocracy -for the President, they put the labor -question on a business basis, and so disposed -of it; they were afraid of nothing but a failure -to act and act quickly. Nevertheless, as they -talked and worked with the English, it became -increasingly evident that their road ended in -a wall.</p> - -<p>There were walls on the English road, too—walls -of caste thinking and social privilege that -seemed as ridiculous as a moat around an office -building. Our wall was invisible to most -of us, and as a body we never tried to pass it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11"></a>[11]</span> -at all. It was the end wall of our liberal ideas, -beyond which, if we thought of it at all, presumably -lay socialism, anarchy, chaos.</p> - -<p>Just that far the American mind, like some -light tank, ran, surmounting everything, taking -to the fields if the road was blocked, turning, -backing, doing everything but stop; only to -halt dead at the invisible barrier, and zigzag -away again. By such a free-moving process -within the limits of law we had scrambled -across a continent in turbulent, individualistic -exploitation, and yet had built a sound political -system carefully and well. And there we -had stopped, convinced that we had solved the -problem of democracy and equal opportunity -for all. This explains why America is twenty -years behind the best of Europe in social and -economic reform. (To be sure, Europe needed -reform more than we did). This is what it is -to be a conservative-liberal.</p> - -<p>The Englishman is different. He is much -more likely to be an obstinate Tory, blocking<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12"></a>[12]</span> -all advance, and living, as far as he is able, by a -system as antiquated as feudalism; or if not a -Tory, then an out-and-out radical eager for a -legal revolution. But in either case he knows -what different-minded men are thinking; and if -there is a wall on his road, he looks over it. If -he is a Tory, he understands radicalism and -fights it because he prefers an inequality that -favors him to a more logical system that might -be personally disagreeable. If he is a radical, -he understands Toryism. But the American -conservative-liberal acknowledges no opinion -except his own. He insists, in the words -of a contemporary statesman, that the -American system, as founded by our forefathers, -is the best in the world, and he is not -interested in others. There are a thousand -proofs that it is not the best possible system -even for America, and plenty of them are in -print—proofs advanced by capitalists as well -as labor leaders, by Catholics as well as socialists; -but they do not trouble him, because he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13"></a>[13]</span> -neither hears nor reads them. It is easier to -call the writer a crank or a Bolshevik.</p> - -<p>This is the liberal-conservative mind that -will not look beyond its own fixed principles and -refuses to understand those who differ from -it; that suffers a kind of paralysis when confronted -by genuine radicalism. The American -college undergraduate has it to perfection. -Bubbling over with energy, ready for anything -in the practical world of struggle or adventure, -he is as confident and as careful of the ideas he -has inherited as a girl of her reputation. He -is armored against new thinking. The American -business man fairly professes it. He -speculates in material things with an abandon -that makes a Frenchman pale; but new principles -in the relations of trade to general welfare, -questions of unearned increment, first -bore and then, if pressed home, frighten him.</p> - -<p>And yet the college undergraduates, after -hatching, and the American business man have -made for us a very comfortable America, just<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14"></a>[14]</span> -now the safest place in the world to live in, the -most prosperous country in the world, the -most cheerful. The liberal-conservative way -of doing things has its great advantages. -America is its product, and the ranter who describes -the United States as the home of super-capitalism, -a sink of cheaply exploited labor, a -dull stretch of bourgeois mediocrity, does not -seem to be able to persuade even himself that -the United States is not the best of all countries -for a permanent residence.</p> - -<p>And the great Americans of the past have -nearly all been conservative-liberals. Washington -was a great republican; he was also essentially -an aristocrat in social and economic -relations, who kept slaves and did not believe -in universal suffrage. Lincoln, politically, was -the greatest of English-speaking democrats, -but he let the privileged classes exploit the -working-man and the soldier, partly in order to -win the war, chiefly because problems of wages -and unearned increments and economic privilege<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15"></a>[15]</span> -generally did not enter into his scheme of -democracy. Roosevelt fought a good fight for -the square deal in public and private life, but -hesitated and at last turned back when it became -evident that a deal that was completely -square meant the overturning of social life as -he knew and loved it in America.</p> - -<p>And these men we feel were right. Their -duty was to make possible a good government -and a stable society, and they worked not with -theories only, but also with facts as they were. -The Germans have argued that the first duty -of the state is self-preservation, and that rights -of individual men and other states may properly -be crushed in order to preserve it. We have -crushed the Germans and, one hopes, their philosophy. -But no one doubts that it is a duty of -society to preserve itself. No one believes that -universal suffrage for all, negroes included, -would have been advisable in Washington’s -day, when republicanism was still an experiment. -No one believes, I fancy, that the minimum<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a>[16]</span> -wage, the inheritance tax, and coöperative -management should have had first place, or -indeed any place, in the mind of the Lincoln of -1863. Few suppose that Roosevelt as a socialist -would have been as useful to the United -States as Roosevelt the Progressive with a -back-throw toward the ideals of the aristocratic -state; as Roosevelt the conservative-liberal.</p> - -<p>But too great reliance on even a great tradition -has its disadvantages. I know an -American preparatory school that for many -college generations has entered its students at -a famous university with the highest of examination -records, and a reputation for courtesy -and cleanness of mind and soundness of -body scarcely paralleled elsewhere. I have -watched these boys with much interest, and I -have seen them in surprising numbers gradually -decline from their position of superiority as -they faced the rapid changes of college life, as -they settled into a new environment with different<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17"></a>[17]</span> -demands and more complex standards. -They leaned too heavily upon their admirable -schooling; they were too confident of the -strength and worth of their tradition; they -looked backward instead of forward, and stood -still while less favored men went on. Their -fault was the fault of American liberalism, -which stands pat with Washington and Roosevelt -and Lincoln.</p> - -<p>Perhaps the greatest teacher in nineteenth-century -American universities was William -Graham Sumner. In his day he was called a -radical, and unsuccessful efforts were made to -oust him from his professorship because of his -advocacy of free trade. Now I hear him cited -as a conservative by those who quote his support -of individualism against socialism, his -distrust of coöperation against the league of -nations. His friends forget that an honest -radical in one age would be an honest radical -in another; and that the facts available having -changed, it is certain that his opinions<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18"></a>[18]</span> -would change also, although just what he would -advocate, just how decide, we cannot certainly -know. Is it probable that Dante, the great advocate -of imperial control in a particularistic -medieval world, would have been a pro-German -in 1914? The American liberal who proclaims -himself of the party of Lincoln, and is content -with that definition, might have an unpleasant -shock if that great reader of the heart of the -common man could resume his short-cut life.</p> - -<p>Indeed, an inherited liberalism has the same -disadvantages as inherited money: all the -owner has to do is to learn how to keep it; in -other words, to become a conservative. That -is what is going on in America. While we -were pioneers in liberty and individualism, -wealth and opportunity and independence were -showered upon us, and although wealth for the -average man is harder to come by, and opportunity -is more and more limited to the fortunate, -and independence belongs only to good -incomes, nevertheless the conservative-liberal<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19"></a>[19]</span> -keeps the pioneer’s optimism, and is satisfied to -take ready-made a system that his ancestors -wrought by painful and open-minded experiment. -In practice he is still full of initiative -and invention; in principle he can conceive of -only one dispensation, the ideas of political -democracy which were the radicalism of 1861 -and 1840 and 1789 and 1776.</p> - -<p>Suppose that he could conceive of industrial -democracy, of a system where every man began -with an equal share of worldly privilege -as he begins now with an equal share of -worldly rights. Would he not work it out, -with his still keen practicality, and test its -value precisely as he tests a new factory method -or an advertising scheme? But he cannot -conceive of it. It lies beyond his dispensation. -His liberalism turns conservative at -the thought. It was different with political -democracy and With religious toleration. The -first cannot even now be said to be precisely a -perfect system, and the second has left us perilously<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20"></a>[20]</span> -near to having no religion at all. Nevertheless, -the liberal ancestor of our American -never doubted that they were <i>his</i> problems, to -be worked out to some solution. He followed -boldly where they led.</p> - -<p>What has happened to the political and economic -thinking of many an American much -resembles what has happened to his religion. -He learns at church a number of ethical principles -which would make him very uneasy if -put into practice. He learns the virtue of -poverty, the duty of self-sacrifice, the necessity -of love for his fellow-man. Now, saintly -poverty has not become an ideal in America—certainly -not in New York or Iowa or Atlantic -City—nor is self-sacrifice common among corporations, -or love a familiar attribute of the -practice of law. Does the American therefore -eschew the ethics of Christianity? On the -contrary. Religion is accepted at its traditional -value. The church grows richer and -more influential—within limits. The plain<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>[21]</span> -man keeps all his respects for religion as an -ideal; but he regards it precisely as an ideal, a -formula beautiful in its perfection, not to be -sullied by too close an application, not to be -worked out into new terms to fit a new life.</p> - -<p>And that is just what the conservative-liberal -does with the vigorous liberalism of his -forefathers. He buries it in his garden, and -expects to dig it up after many days, a bond -with coupons attached. He has accepted it as -the irrevocable word of Jehovah establishing -the metes and bounds wherein he shall think. -It is his creed; and like the creeds of the -church, the further one gets from its origins, -the greater the repugnance to change. He -stands by the declaration of his forefathers; -stands pat, and begs to be relieved of further -abstract discussion. Business is pressing; controversy -is bad for business; ideas are bad for -business; change is bad for business: let well -enough alone.</p> - -<p>But by all odds the most important fact as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22"></a>[22]</span> -regards this conservative-liberal mind of which -I have been writing remains to be stated, and -that is its success, for it is now the prevailing -mind in America. As our soldiers in France, -though bearing Italian names, Irish names, -Hebrew, Polish, German names, yet in helmet -and uniform looked all, or nearly all, like the -physical type we call American, so in this confusing -country of ours, immigrant-settled, -polylingual, built upon fragments of the empires -of England and Spain and Russia and -France, there is indubitably a mental type -which we may call with some confidence American, -a mind liberal in its principles, but in its -instincts conservative.</p> - -<p>Indeed it is arguable and perhaps demonstrable -that this American mental type is the -most definite national entity to be found anywhere -in the Western world. I know that -this sounds paradoxical. We have heard -much for several years now of the lack of -homogeneity in America. We felt in 1914 our<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23"></a>[23]</span> -German-Americans cleave away from us (to -be sure, they came back); we saw in 1918 and -1919 the radical socialist and the I. W. W. and -the vehement intellectual manifest symptoms -that were certainly not American as the ’nineties -knew America. We began to realize that -the immigrant changes his language more -quickly than his <i>mores</i>, and frequently changes -neither. All this is true. And yet, in spite of -it, this conservative-liberal way of looking at -things which we know so well in America -comes nearer to being a definite national -psychology that acts in expected fashions, has -qualities that you can describe as I have been -describing them, and characteristics common -to all varieties of it, than either the “British -mind” or the “French mind” of which we write -glibly.</p> - -<p>For the British mind includes the Irish, -which is as different from the English as a -broncho from a dray-horse. It includes the -Tory mind and the Liberal mind, which in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24"></a>[24]</span> -England are as dissimilar as were Jefferson -Davis and Abraham Lincoln. It includes, if -we use it loosely, Sir Edward Carson and Mr. -Asquith and H. G. Wells, each of whom represents -a considerable British constituency. -And they could no more think alike on any -topic on the earth below or the heavens above -than a Turk, a Greek, and a Jew. Certain -fundamental attitudes would unite all three of -these latter if they were civilized: they would -all eat with knives and forks. And in the same -fashion certain definite racial traits unite the -Britons aforementioned. But the differences -imposed by social caste or diverging political -and social philosophies are far greater than -anything to be found in everyday America, -which latter I define as lying between the -fringe of recent immigrants on the one hand -and the excrescences of Boston intellectual -aristocrats or New York radical intellectuals -on the other.</p> - -<p>Is there a “French mind”? Intellectually<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>[25]</span> -and esthetically, perhaps yes. Politically and -socially, to a less degree of uniformity than can -be found in America. From the simple homogeneity -of France, as we casuals see it, has -crystallized out the aristocracy and much of the -church, whose respective parties differ not -merely as regards the policy of the Government, -but are still opposed to that Government -itself.</p> - -<p>The United States, far more heterogeneous -in race, far less fixed in national character, -threatened by its masses of aliens, who are in -every sense unabsorbed, is yet much more -homogeneous in its thinking. In America -weekly magazines for men and women spread -everywhere and through every class but the -lowest, and so does this conservative-liberalism -in politics and social life which I have tried to -define. In Connecticut and Kansas and Arizona -it is displayed in every conversation, as -our best known national weekly (itself conservative-liberal) -is displayed on every news-stand.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26"></a>[26]</span> -Irrespective of racial or financial differences, -everywhere in America, between the -boundaries I have already indicated—the alien -immigrant on one hand, the advanced intellectual -on the other—nine out of ten of us are -conservative-liberals; everywhere, indeed, -throughout the American bourgeoisie, which -with us includes skilled laborer and farmer, -professional man and millionaire.</p> - -<p>And the mental habits of this contemporary -American are of more than local importance. -We who are just now so afraid of internationalism -are more likely than any other single -agency to bring it about. Our habits of travel, -our traverse of class lines, our American way -of doing things, are perhaps the nearest approximation -of what the world seems likely to -adopt as a modern habit if the old aristocracies -break down everywhere, if easy transportation -becomes general, if there is wide-spread education, -if Bolshevism does not first turn our -whole Western system upside down. Already<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27"></a>[27]</span> -in newspapers and books, in theaters and politics, -in social intercourse and in forms of music -and language, one sees all through Western -Europe (and, they say, also in the East) the -American mode creeping in, to be welcomed or -cursed according to circumstances. And those -great international levelers, the movies, are -American in plot and scene and idea and manners -from one end to the other of a film that -stretches round the world.</p> - -<p>Thus the American mind is worth troubling -about; and if politically, socially, economically -the spirit that we and the foreigners call American -has become stagnant in its liberalism, it is -time to awake. In liberalism inheres our vitality, -our initiative, our strength. Its stagnation, -its inertia, its blindness to the new waves -of freedom sweeping upward from the masses -and on in broken and muddy torrents through -the world are poignant dangers. We must -open eyes; we must change our ground; we -must fight the evil in the new revolution, but<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28"></a>[28]</span> -welcome the good. Our own revolution lies -before the deluge; it is no longer enough to go -on; it is not now the sufficing document of a political -philosophy. We must not stop with -Washington and Lincoln. We must go on -where the conservative Washington and the -radical Lincoln would lead if they were -our contemporaries. Radical-conservatism is -good, and Toryism or radicalism have their -uses; but conservative-liberalism, preserved, -desiccated, museum liberalism, long continued -in, is death to the minds that maintain it.</p> -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a>[29]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER II<br /> - - -<small>CONSERVATIVE AMERICA</small></h2></div> - - -<p class="drop-cap">THERE is one experience that conservative-liberal -America—bourgeois America, -the pushing America that gets what it -wants on this side of the ocean—possesses in -common, and that is its education. We of the -vast American middle class have all been to -high school, or we have lived with high school -graduates; we have all been to college, or we -have worked with college graduates. Our -education, when viewed with any detachment, -is astoundingly homogeneous. In a given -generation most of us have studied the same -textbooks in mathematics and geography and -history, read the same selections in literature, -been inoculated with the same ethical principles -from the Bible and the moralists. Ask us a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30"></a>[30]</span> -question as to what makes right or wrong, as -the President did in his war messages, and we -will respond with a universal roar, like factory -whistles when a button is punched on some celebration -day.</p> - -<p>This general American experience is largely -responsible for the tenacity with which we of -this generation blindly conserve the liberal -principles of our ancestors, even while we keep -them, like the tables of the ten commandments, -safe from the rude touch of practical experience. -Education such as ours seldom fails to -influence men’s ways of thinking even when -their actions pass beyond its control. The influence, -however, is too often ineffectual, bloodless. -That is a lesson we need to ponder in -America.</p> - -<p>Education in these colonies in the eighteenth -century was bent toward theology. All but -the lower schools, if, indeed, they could be excepted, -were contrived to find and to train the -pastor, the minister to the people. For him<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31"></a>[31]</span> -those studies that influence opinion—history, -ethics—were chiefly taught. For his purposes, -the languages of the classics were chiefly -studied. It was the pastor that emerged as -prime product of academies and colleges. And -therefore theology, that arduous intellectual -exercise for which he prepared, set its mark upon -all intellects down to the humblest. We -wonder at the obsession with religious thinking -that the letters and diaries of farmers, merchants, -and lawyers of our eighteenth century -display to the amazement of their very untheological -descendants. We should rather wonder -at the intellectual energy expended in -wrestling with a difficult and abstract subject. -They entered, as we of the twentieth-century -bourgeois do not, into the field of scholarship; -they partook of disputes that were as international -as Christendom; and shared with the -chosen ones for whom all this education was -made, Jonathan Edwards and his co-professionals, -an interest in problems far broader<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32"></a>[32]</span> -than their strip of Atlantic clearings. That -the experience, whatever we may think of the -value of the theology, was good for them does -not, I think, permit of argument. There have -never been abler Americans than at the end of -the eighteenth century.</p> - -<p>But nineteenth-century America was a different -world. Interest in theology abated for -reasons that need not here be discussed. More -and more the United States diverged intellectually -from our colonial unity with Europe; our -own problems engrossed us; and these were -problems of material development, of local -statecraft, of that elementary education which -a democracy must necessarily take as its chief -concern. What had been a professional training -by which God’s ministers were to be selected -became relatively unprofessional, a so-called -“liberal education,” the object of which -was to illumine and make pliable and broad the -minds of laymen. The high purpose of the -teacher was not now to choose the leaders of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33"></a>[33]</span> -the spirit. It was rather to preserve in a new -world of crude physical endeavor the arts and -sciences that civilize the mind.</p> - -<p>American life in the nineteenth century had -many of the characteristics that we are accustomed -to associate with heroic barbarism. It -had the same insecurity—insecurity of life on -the border, insecurity of fortune where life was -safe. It had the same frequency of hazardous -toil against wild nature; the same accompaniments -of cold and privation; the same vast and -shadowy enterprises, usually collapsing; the -same intensity of physical sensation; the same -ardor of emotional experience in the spiritual -realm. And always education mitigated extravagance, -restrained excess, directed effort. -Through education our ancestral Europe restrained -and guided us. Education kept us -white.</p> - -<p>But never, perhaps, has the divergence between -life as it had to be lived and the civilities -taught us in school been greater. Never has<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34"></a>[34]</span> -the ideal world, which, after all, it is the chief -business of education to mirror, been more different -from the facts of experience than in -America. The ridiculous scientist of Cooper’s -“Prairie” who mistakes his donkey for a new -monster and thinks it more important to call -the buffalo the bison than to eat when hungry -of its hump, is a symbol of the contrast between -what we learned and what we did in America. -In the eighteenth century, education for most -Americans was practical preparation for a -knowledge of God’s ways with man. In the -nineteenth it had become not a preparation for -life so much as an antiseptic against the demoralizations -of a purely material struggle to -open up a continent. The results have been of -grave political importance.</p> - -<p>For the divergence between theory and practice -explains the curiously traditional character -of our schooling as we knew it in youth, as our -grandfathers knew it in youth. I am not now -speaking of the wearisome controversies over<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>[35]</span> -Latin and Greek and classic English literature, -the so-called traditional subjects which make -up a large part of education. It is not the letter, -but the spirit, that makes the thing taught -traditional. And ever since democracy began, -the teacher has had to be the priest and guardian -of tradition in America. He has been an -anxious parent stretching the coverlet of racial -culture over the restless limbs of little immigrants. -He has taught reading, writing, and -arithmetic as a means of holding fast to our -tradition. He has taught literature and history -and “moral ethics” and “natural science” -as the containers of that tradition. We have -almost forgotten that for a time in the early -nineteenth century it seemed quite possible that -the frontier would become Indian rather than -European in its culture. We see clearly now -how possible it would have been for whole -regions of the South to relapse into negro semi-barbarism. -We may guess that save for the -teacher and his grinding in of tradition the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36"></a>[36]</span> -white races of North America might have -slipped backward, as too clearly have the white -races in many parts of Latin America.</p> - -<p>One element in this education by tradition -was specially important. Liberalism, the principle -upon which this republic was founded, -education took up as soon as it dropped -theology, if not earlier. American education -became impregnated with liberalism, made liberalism -its chief tradition. What we study in -school and college stays by us, overlaid perhaps, -scarcely vital any more, yet packed close to the -roots of our conscious being. And the compost -they gave us in America was liberalism. -History enshrined the republican ideals of our -founders and the democratic ideals of our nineteenth-century -development. Sometimes it -was taught in college classes with “sources” -duly ticketed. Sometimes it trickled through -commencement speeches or primers thumbed -on back-row benches. The results were the -same. In literature, whether English or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37"></a>[37]</span> -American, the same ideas were predominant, -or at least were made to seem so by careful selection. -Democracy and the rights of man -blow through the reading of the American -school-boy, somewhat aridly it must be admitted; -but still they blow. Civics and government -and the social sciences in these latter -days, as they are taught in America, advance -the same standard.</p> - -<p>Not less definite and persuasive was the influence -of the men who taught us. Many of -them have been aristocratic in taste and in their -misprision of the stupidities of the common -man, but their text also was of liberalism and -democracy whenever the subject or the occasion -permitted. Even geography and spelling were -presented as the means whereby the child of the -laboring man had been given his chance to rise -in the world and perhaps become President. -Properly considered, the things we have been -taught, the men who taught us, the very organization -of our school and college system, have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38"></a>[38]</span> -been one vast engine for shaping the minds of -young America in the turn and mold of liberalism.</p> - -<p>But this liberalism, like most of our education, -was highly traditional. Our subjects and -the men who taught them looked prevailingly -backward for inspiration, recalled us to the -past, warned us of the future. The urge was -always the old Roman one—preserve the piety -of your ancestors. Preparation for new conditions, -for a possible new liberty in industry -or politics, for a possible new democracy in -wealth, there was, we must confess, very little. -We were linked to tradition; we were made -profoundly and sincerely liberal, at least in our -theories of life; we were implored to stand pat.</p> - -<p>And though education, as the art was practised -here in America, has perhaps kept us liberal, -it has certainly given to liberalism that -faint shadow of unreality, that sacrosanctity -which belongs to all traditional beliefs. It is -the traditional quality of American education<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39"></a>[39]</span> -that more than any other single agency has -petrified American liberalism.</p> - -<p>We plain Americans in our little red school-houses -and our big brick high schools and our -spreading universities have learned republicanism -and the rights of man and the not-to-be-questioned -opportunity of every person to go -to the top of the ladder if he wished and were -able. This we were taught explicitly and implicitly. -And we believed these things because -we were made to think that all right-thinking -men everywhere believed them: and therefore -we recited Gladstone and Lincoln and Toussaint -L’Ouverture and passages from Carlyle’s -“French Revolution” and Mrs. Browning on -the freeing of Italy with confident hearts. -Furthermore, we felt that these principles were -sincere, because, no matter how poor or how -stupid, we found educational opportunities -opened on every side. There was no discrimination -in the quantity of American education, -and but little in its quality. Until we left the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a>[40]</span> -school or the campus, our liberal tradition fitted -us like a garment. It never occurred to us -that it might not always fit.</p> - -<p>Yet as soon as we moved out into America, -crossing that bridge from theory to practice, -from ideas to application, which in all countries -is long and in new countries longest of all, -strange contradiction began to be apparent. -Republicanism, it appeared, worked out in -practice, at least in our town, into boss control -and domination by party leaders, acting usually -for vested interests. The rights of man, -we discovered, had a curious sound when discussed -by labor-unions or the unemployed. -Opportunities, it became clear, could not be -freely offered to the man without capital unless -we were prepared to change radically an industrial -system which our common sense taught -us was better—at least for us—than the visionary -industrial democracies that radicals without -business experience wished to set up. -Were these precious ideals of ours merely buncombe,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41"></a>[41]</span> -then, held only in theory, in practice to -be disregarded? Or was democracy good as a -half-way measure, but false as a general principle? -Was our education a tradition to be -reverenced—and disregarded?</p> - -<p>Not a few reached the indicated conclusion, -though they kept, as a rule, their opinions to -themselves. Perhaps as many swung to the -other extreme, believed that only more democracy -would cure us, and also kept out of print, -for fear of being associated with radical aliens -who held much the same opinions in politics and -social affairs, but very different conceptions of -cleanliness, morals, and polite conversation. -These were our right and left wings merely. -The great mass of us, the everyday Americans, -took things as they were with a kind of shrewd -childish good sense, and pushed ahead, being -as democratic as was convenient in this unequal -world, but taking no nonsense from -people who would interfere with business in -order to make us more so. And that is where<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a>[42]</span> -we are now—at the end of the war, in the midst -of a world revolution so great that no one -knows whether it has just begun or is just ending.</p> - -<p>But a revolution drives men back upon their -principles, makes them scan willingly or unwillingly -the things they live by—the prejudices, -enlightenments, interpretations, convictions -that in the largest sense <i>are</i> their education. -And this is true not only of rapid revolutions, -like the French and the Russian, but of -slow ones, such as that revolution which has -been slowly gathering headway in English-speaking -countries for three decades or more, -that revolution of social and industrial conditions -now rapidly accelerating. And what -have Americans thought of their education?</p> - -<p>I think they have found it a brake, a stabilizer, -a deterrent alike from violent reaction and -dangerous experiment. I think also that they -have found it what it is—traditional. They -have felt it as a taboo, good on Sundays, but on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>[43]</span> -week-days not to be too closely regarded. -Where it has preached restraint to the more -radical, they have listened, but grown restless. -Was it not John Bright who said that England -would be ruined if the hours for labor should -be shortened? Did not Cooper, who wrote the -epic of frontier freedom, sharpen his pen to -defend the unearned increment of the landlord? -Where it speaks of liberty and equality to the -more conservative, they have listened, but not -taken it too seriously. After all, the world -must be governed and dividends paid. While -the rights of the citizen should be safeguarded, -business is business nevertheless, and politics -politics. The Declaration of Independence, -they felt, should be kept in its place, which was -the Fourth of July. Theory—by which they -meant education—has little place in practical -affairs. They were liberals of course, but -plain and prosperous Americans first of all, and -the latter, at least, they intended to remain.</p> - -<p>And thus, in its noble attempt to shape the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44"></a>[44]</span> -minds of Americans to a similitude of their -full-blooded ancestors who dared to be radical, -American education itself has acquired the -sanctity, the reverence, the ghostliness of the -dead. Like the dead, it is most influential -upon spirits sensitive to the past, and operates -through love and veneration and mere habit -rather than through immediate compulsion. -Like them, it visits the minds of the living only -in glimpses of the moon, and its influence, -though wide-spread, is partial and easily forgotten -in the noonday glare of active, practical -life. Americans respect their education, but -too seldom do they live by it.</p> - -<p>It is a good tradition, this American ideal of -noble and sturdy liberalism. The only detraction -to be made is precisely that the education -which embodies it is felt to be merely traditional. -But this is much the same as to say -that last year’s hat is a good hat, the only -trouble being that when we wear it we invariably -remember that it is last year’s hat. And<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45"></a>[45]</span> -at least one unhappy consequence follows.</p> - -<p>American minds have been coddled in school -and college for at least a generation. There -are two kinds of mental coddling. The first -belongs to the public schools, and is one of the -defects of our educational system that we abuse -privately and largely keep out of print. It is -democratic coddling. I mean, of course, the -failure to hold up standards, the willingness to -let youth wobble upward, knowing little and -that inaccurately, passing nothing well, graduating -with an education that hits and misses -like an old type-writer with a torn ribbon. -America is full of “sloppy thinking,” of inaccuracy, -of half-baked misinformation, of sentimentalism, -especially sentimentalism, as a result -of coddling by schools that cater to an -easy-going democracy. Only fifty-six per -cent of a group of girls, graduates of the public -schools, whose records I once examined, -could do simple addition, only twenty-nine per -cent simple multiplication correctly; a deplorable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46"></a>[46]</span> -percentage had a very inaccurate -knowledge of elementary American geography.</p> - -<p>A dozen causes are responsible for this condition, -and among them, I suspect, one, which -if not major, at least deserves careful pondering. -The teacher and the taught have somehow -drifted apart. His function in the large -has been to teach an ideal, a tradition. He -is content, he has to be content, with partial -results. It is not for life as it is, it is for what -life ought to be, that he is preparing even in -arithmetic; he has allowed the faint unreality -of a priestcraft to numb him. In the mind of -the student a dim conception has entered, that -this education—all education—is a garment -merely, to be doffed for the struggle with realities. -The will is dulled. Interest slackens.</p> - -<p>But it is in aristocratic coddling that the effects -of our educational attitude gleam out to -the least observant understanding. This is the -coddling of the preparatory schools and the colleges, -and it is more serious for it is a defect<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>[47]</span> -that cannot be explained away by the hundred -difficulties that beset good teaching in a public-school -system, nation-wide, and conducted for -the young of every race in the American menagerie. -The teaching in the best American -preparatory schools and colleges is as careful -and as conscientious as any in the world. That -one gladly asserts. Indeed, an American boy -in a good boarding-school is handled like a -rare microbe in a research laboratory. He is -ticketed; every instant of his time is planned -and scrutinized; he is dieted with brain food, -predigested, and weighed before application. -I sometimes wonder if a moron could not be -made into an Abraham Lincoln by such a system—if -the system were sound.</p> - -<p>It is not sound. The boys and girls, especially -the boys, are coddled for entrance examinations, -coddled through freshman year, coddled -oftentimes for graduation. And they too -frequently go out into the world fireproof -against anything but intellectual coddling.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48"></a>[48]</span> -Such men and women can read only writing -especially prepared for brains that will take -only selected ideas, simply put. They can -think only on simple lines, not too far extended. -They can live happily only in a life where ideas -never exceed the college sixty per cent of complexity, -and where no intellectual or esthetic -experience lies too far outside the range of -their curriculum. A world where one reads -the news and skips the editorials; goes to musical -comedies, but omits the plays; looks at illustrated -magazines, but seldom at books; talks -business, sports, and politics, but never economics, -social welfare, and statesmanship—that is -the world for which we coddle the best of our -youth. Many indeed escape the evil effects by -their own innate originality; more bear the -marks to the grave.</p> - -<p>The process is simple, and one can see it in -the English public schools (where it is being attacked -vivaciously) quite as commonly as here. -You take your boy out of his family and his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49"></a>[49]</span> -world. You isolate him except for companionship -with other nursery transplantings and -teachers themselves isolated. And then you -feed him, nay, you cram him, with good traditional -education, filling up the odd hours with -the excellent, but negative, passion of sport. -Then you subject him to a special cramming -and send him to college, where sometimes he -breaks through the net of convention woven -about him, and sees the real world as it should -appear to the student before he becomes part -of it; but more frequently wraps himself deep -and more deeply in conventional opinion, conventional -practice, until, the limbs of his intellect -bound tightly, he stumbles into the outer -world.</p> - -<p>And there, in the swirl and the vivid practicalities -of American life, is the net loosened? -I think not. I think rather that the youth -learns to swim clumsily despite his encumbrances -of lethargic thinking and tangled idealism. -But if they are cut? If he goes on the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50"></a>[50]</span> -sharp rocks of experience, finds that hardness, -shrewdness, selfish individualism pay best in -American life, what has he in his spirit to meet -this disillusion? Of what use has been his -education in the liberal, idealistic traditions of -America? Of some use, undoubtedly, for -habit, even a dull habit, is strong; but whether -useful enough, whether powerful enough, to -save America, to keep us “white” in the newer -and more colloquial sense, the future will test -and test quickly.</p> - -<p>Why do we coddle our aristocracy, who can -pay for the best and most effective education? -I think that the explanation again is to be -sought in the traditionalism of American education. -If our chief, our ultimate, duty to the -boy that we teach is to make him an “American -gentleman,” and if by this is meant that we are -to instil the essence of the Americanism which -made Washington and Lincoln and Roosevelt, -and let it go at that, and if all our education -hovers about this central purpose—why, the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51"></a>[51]</span> -stage is set for a problem play that may become -tragedy or farce. It is not thinking we teach -then so much as what has been taught. It is -not life, but what has been lived; not American -liberalism, but a conservatism that never has -been characteristically American. The tradition -is not at fault, nor the thought of the past, -nor the lives of our ancestors; it is when all -these things are taught as dead idealism unrelated -to the facts of the present that they become -merely traditional.</p> - -<p>And the boy and girl are not deceived. -They take all that is given them—no youth in -the world are so pliable, so receptive as ours—and -retain and respect and cherish what they -remember of it. But it is clear that for them -it is tradition, it is unreal in comparison with -their sports, their social aspirations. It will -be unreal in comparison with their business and -their politics and their household affairs. It -will be a venerated tradition of liberal thinking -for them of which they will be highly conservative.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52"></a>[52]</span> -But it will not function in their -lives—not more at least than the sixty per cent -that they sought for in order to get that degree -of bachelor of arts which certified that they -were versed in the thought of their forefathers. -And so they merge in the common American -mind that I have called conservative-liberal.</p> - -<p>I know of no better proof of the truth of -what I have just written than the history of -our college undergraduates in war-time.</p> - -<p>Here is such a demonstration as comes only -once in a generation. Of all unpreparedness, -the unpreparedness of the undergraduate for -war was apparently chief. He knew little -about the war, its causes, its manifestations, -for he is not an ardent reader of current events -outside his college world, nor does he hear -much of the talk of the market-place. He -knew little about war. The R. O. T. C. had -spread some ideas of drill and discipline and -the technic of fighting; but he was neither -drilled nor disciplined in 1917. And as for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53"></a>[53]</span> -the training in accurate obedience and in exact -thinking which war is supposed to demand, he -simply did not have it, or so we thought. Nor -had his particularistic fashion of following his -own little contests to the exclusion of loyalties -to the world outside, and his indifference to -politics beyond fraternity elections, or economics -beyond the cost of theater-tickets and beer, -led us to assume a ready response to a great -moral emergency in national affairs.</p> - -<p>We were utterly deceived. The response of -the American undergraduate was immediate -and magnificent. He crowded into the most -dangerous military professions, and was eminent -in the most difficult branches of organization -and experiment. He did not, it is true, -think very broadly about the war, but he -thought intensely. He did not learn accuracy, -steadiness, independence overnight, but he -learned them. He was wholly admirable. -And the women, who in ways not yet sufficiently -celebrated made it possible for the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54"></a>[54]</span> -country to stiffen to the crisis, were as eager to -serve as the men.</p> - -<p>And the reason, I believe, was that for the -time the education of the undergraduate ceased -being traditional and became a moving force in -his experience. The dim liberal idealism in -which his mind had been moving for many -years suddenly took on color and became fire. -Every impulse of his mental training urged -him to do just what was asked of him, to -struggle for democracy, for justice, for a -square deal; to believe in the rights of man and -the permanence of right and the supremacy of -a righteous idealism. And his habits of hard, -earnest play, where rules were obeyed and victory -went to the best player, also were the very -stuff the world wanted, also transformed miraculously -into the very apparatus of war. -His traditional education, with its extra-curriculum -of games that also were traditional in -their neglect of the new and special qualities -required for success in modern life, precisely<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55"></a>[55]</span> -fitted the clamorous need of the hour. And the -undergraduate for a little while silenced his -critics, amazed his friends, and was in many -respects happier than in those years of peace -when he was trying to bridge the gap between -his education and life as it was being lived in -America.</p> - -<p>And with peace he relapses—the American -in general relapses into the old discontinuity. -The crisis of self-defense over, our ideals once -more begin to seem impractical, traditionary. -As long as the patriotism lit by the war and -danger crackled under the pot, our liberalism -bubbled ardently; but peace chills the brew. -For peace means that we drop our ardors and -face again the insistent reachings of the democracy -for a greater share in wealth, for a greater -control over productivity, for representation in -industry as well as in politics. Peace means -that we must face not war, with its romantic -thrills and its common enemy, but the prosaic -causes of war that hide among friends as well<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56"></a>[56]</span> -as enemies, that for cure demand self-criticism, -self-denial, and humbleness of spirit, a struggle -in which the Croix de Guerre is likely to be reproach -and contumely.</p> - -<p>The break between our education and the life -we are living again widens, and it is this break -which emasculates our liberalism. Viewed -alone, the fine ideals of our education are easily -defensible; the hustling vigor of our life is also -defensible. The trouble is that in ordinary -times they fail somehow or another to connect. -Education grows bloodless. Life becomes -aimless or merely self-regarding. What we -believe grows pallid and fades before it transmutes -into what we do. Indeed, I would go -further and say that Americans, and especially -the graduates of universities, are somewhat -weakened by their education. They go out -into life with an enormous appetite for living -and a set of ideals like a row of preserved -vegetables canned and hermetically sealed for -future contingencies. In 1917 and 1918 we<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>[57]</span> -opened some of those jars and found the contents -good for a special emergency. But ordinarily -the lids are tight, while we go about our -business proud of our stores of education, but -inwardly uncertain, like the housewife, as to -whether or not those ideas that seemed so good -when our teachers packed them away in the -season of youth will not be sour to the taste of -practical modernity.</p> - -<p>The clamor for vocational education is a protest -against this ineffectiveness of the merely -traditional. But the cure does not lie in such -a medicining. Vocational education is well -enough, and we need more of it, but training of -the hands and of the brain to purely material -accomplishments will never save liberalism in -America. The strength of vocational education -is that it looks forward and prepares for -things as they are. Its weakness, when administered -alone, is that it neglects the directing -mind. In any large sense it is aimless, or, -rather, it aims at successful slavery quite as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58"></a>[58]</span> -much as at successful freedom. Liberal education -also must look forward, must put its traditions -to work, must germinate, and become -alive in the mind of the American, and then -teach him by old principles to attack new problems.</p> - -<p>We must either live by our education or live -without it. The alternatives are desiccation -and anarchy. If we live by it, education itself -stays alive, grows, sloughs off dead matter, -adapts itself like an organism to environment. -If we live without and beyond and in neglect of -education, as many “practical” Americans have -always done once they left school or college, -education decays, and sooner or later the man -decivilizes, drifts toward that mere acceleration -of busyness, which is the modern equivalent of -barbarism.</p> - -<p>Once before, and far more seriously, a civilization -was threatened because its education became -merely traditional and ceased to function<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59"></a>[59]</span> -in practical life. The society of Appolinaris -Sidonius in the fifth century, as Dill describes -it, was faced with economic disruption, with -hordes of aliens, with a rampant individualism -that put the acquisition of a secure fortune -above everything else. The leaders failed to -lead. “Their academic training only deepened -and intensified the deadening conservatism of -unassailable wealth.” “Faith in Rome had -killed all faith in a wider future for humanity....” -There was an “apparent inability to -imagine, even in the presence of tremendous -forces of disruption, that society should ever -cease to move along the ancient lines.” Roman -imperialism divorced itself from Roman -thought and became a deadening tyranny. -Roman thought divorced itself from Roman -life and became an empty philosophy. And -the sixth century and disaster followed.</p> - -<p>The historical analogy is imperfect. Our -civilization is still vigorous where the Roman<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60"></a>[60]</span> -was tired and weak. No outer barbarians -threaten us. Science safeguards us from -economic breakdown.</p> - -<p>And yet, like the skeptic who does not believe -in God, but refuses to take chances on his -death-bed, I should not scoff at the parallel. -Stale imperialism, shaken religions, a liberalism -become an article of faith not an instrument of -practice—all these are potential of decay, of explosion. -We must look to our education. If -it does not grip our life, we must change education. -If life is not gripped, our life needs -reforming. And the thing is so extraordinarily -difficult that it is high time we ceased -praising for a while the virtues of our forefathers -or the wealth of our compatriots, and -began the task. After all, it means no more -than to teach the next generation not merely to -preserve, but also to carry on, the traditions of -America.</p> -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61"></a>[61]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER III<br /> - - -<small>RADICAL AMERICA</small></h2></div> - - -<p class="drop-cap">IT is with no intention to be paradoxical that -I call America a radical nation. I know -well by experience, sometimes galling, what -an English labor leader or a French socialist -thinks of America, as he understands it. A -mere congestion of capital, a spawning-ground -of the bourgeoisie, the birthplace of trusts, -where even the labor-unions are capitalistic. -If the world is to be saved for democracy, he -says, it will not be by America.</p> - -<p>I am not so sure. Being one of those who -doubted whether the successful termination of -the war would forever make safe democratic -ideals, I feel at liberty to doubt whether the -triumph of a European proletariate will give us<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62"></a>[62]</span> -what we want. It depends much upon what -one means by democracy. And correspondingly, -whether America is fundamentally radical -or conservative depends much upon what -one means by radicalism. If, like Louis XIV -or Napoleon, I had a leash of writers and -scholars at my command, I would have them -produce nothing but definitions while these -critical years of transition lasted. I would -make them into an academy whose fiat in general -definition would be as valid as the French -Academy’s in the meaning of a word. I would -make it a legal offense for two men to quarrel -over socialism when one means communism -and the other state control of the post-office. I -would, like the early Quakers, require arbitration -for all disputants, especially in politics, -knowing that a clear head would quickly discover -that arguers on democracy conceivably -meant anything from a standard collar for -every one to nationalization of women. But -the good old days of literary dictatorship are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63"></a>[63]</span> -past. The most a writer upon the mind of the -everyday American can do is to endeavor honestly -to make his own definitions as he goes; -and I believe that American radicalism needs a -good deal of defining.</p> - -<p>It is not the doctrines of Babeuf or Marx or -Lenine that have made what seems to be the -indigenous variety of American radicalism. -Their beliefs, and especially those of Marx, -have found acceptance here. There are moments -in intellectual or industrial development -when men’s minds become seeding-grounds for -ideas blown from without. There were centuries -when the mystical ideas of the Christian -East were sown and rooted in the barbarian -brains of the West. There were the years -when the liberal ideas of the French Revolution -were blown across Italy, Germany, and the -Low Countries. And much that we call radical -in America is simply foreign seed, growing -vigorously in our soil, but not yet acclimated, -as it is growing also in Russia and New Zealand.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64"></a>[64]</span> -And much is not American in any sense, -but rather the purely alien ideas of immigrants—individual -men among us. It is not for -nothing that Trotzky was here, and the Marxists, -the syndicalists, the nihilists, and the communists -of half Europe. We have been exposed -to every germ of radicalism ever hatched -in the Old World; yet neither the young professor, -lecturing on the redistribution of -wealth, nor the Russian stevedore, who in -lower New York awaits the proletariate revolution, -truly represents American radicalism. -These are the ideas and these the men our restless -youth are borrowing from, but they are not -yet, they may never be, American.</p> - -<p>It is fortunately not yet difficult to separate -foreign from indigenous radicalism. There is -that in both our heredity and our environment -which makes the American mind bad soil for -the seed of foreign ideologies. They rain upon -us, they germinate; but they do not make a -crop. We are too self-reliant, too concrete;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65"></a>[65]</span> -our New World has kept us too cheerfully -busy; the heavens of opportunity have leaned -too low over this blessed America for discontent -which leads to dreaming, oppression which -makes revolt, to be common among us. We -“old Americans,” at least of this generation, -are poor material for Bolshevism; even as -socialists we are never more than half convinced. -Our radicalism has been of a different -breed.</p> - -<p>Indeed, radicalism, like religion and sea-water, -takes color from the atmosphere in -which it is found. The French radical possesses -the lucidity and the self-regarding spirit -of the modern French mind. He lends ideas, -but does not propagate them. The English -radical seeks his ends by direct political action -in good English fashion. And the native -American has his own way also. That its -essential quality of radicalism has often been -overlooked, while the term has been bandied -among soapbox orators and devotees of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66"></a>[66]</span> -bomb, is natural, but unfortunate for clear -thinking.</p> - -<p>Our home-bred radicalism has been physical -and moral, not intellectual. It has been a -genuine attempt to tear down and rebuild, but -it has not ordinarily been called radicalism, -which term has been usually applied to radical -thinking, to the intellectual radicalism of -revolutionary organizations and protestants -against the social order. Our effective radicals -have been the leaders, not the opponents, -of American society. They have been -business men, philanthropists, educators, not -strike-leaders, social workers, and philosophers.</p> - -<p>I talked recently to the head of a great manufacturing -plant where technical skill both of -hand and of brain was exercised upon wood -and brass and steel. The modern world, according -to his viewing (which was very obviously -from the angle of business) is divided -into two categories, executives and engineers.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67"></a>[67]</span> -Executives are the men who organize and control. -They are the ones chiefly rewarded. -Engineers invent and carry out. They are the -experts. It is the executives who lead; the experts -supply ideas, work out methods, but follow.</p> - -<p>This statement may be disputable, and it is -certainly a painfully narrow bed in which to -tuck American life and American ideals. -Nevertheless, it has at least one element of profound -truth. In the world of physical endeavor -and physical organization it is executive -business men who have changed, broken up, reorganized, -developed the material world of -America. They have fearlessly scrapped the -whole machinery of production, transportation, -and trade as it existed in the last generation, -and in many respects improved upon, or -destroyed by competition, the parallel order in -the Old World. They have been true radicals -of the physical category, and their achievements -have been as truly radicalism as the experiments<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68"></a>[68]</span> -of Lenine in government ownership. -That it is a physical radicalism, dealing with -material values chiefly and without reference -to some of the greatest needs of the human -spirit, does not mean that intellect of a high, if -not the highest, order may not have been required -for its successful accomplishment.</p> - -<p>Our other native radicals, the philanthropists -and the educators, have also been chiefly executives. -Their work has been inspired by the -stored-up moral force of America, especially -puritan America. But their great achievements, -like those of the business men, have been -in organization and development rather than in -thought.</p> - -<p>In earlier generations our moral radicals -were such men as Emerson and Whitman. -To-day they are college presidents, organizers -of junior high-school systems, or heads of -the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations—prime -movers all of them in systems of educational -or philanthropic practice that uplift<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69"></a>[69]</span> -millions at a turn of a jack-screw. And these -men in any true sense of the word are radicals—so -radical in their thorough-going attempts -to transform society by making it more -intelligent, healthier, more productive that all -Europe is protesting or imitating them. Who -is exercising a greater pressure for durable -change upon the largest number, who is digging -most strenuously about the roots of the old -order, John Rockefeller, Jr. and his co-workers -or Trotzky? It is not easy to say.</p> - -<p>This essay is not propaganda, and I am not -particularly concerned as to whether or no the -reader accepts my broadening of the term -“radicalism.” Time may force him to do so, -for no one can tell in a given age just what -actions and what theories will lead to the tearing -up of old institutions and the planting of a -new order. Those absolutist kings, Philip -Augustus and his successors, who crushed together -the provinces of France, were, we see -now, radicals, though power and privilege were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70"></a>[70]</span> -their motives. I, however, am interested in -men rather than in categories, and the philanthropist -radicals, the business radicals, and the -educational pioneers of America already interest -the world strangely.</p> - -<p>What they are in essence is of course more -important than the name we give them. And -first of all I believe that in a genuine, if narrow, -sense they have been idealistic; indeed, -that their American idealism has made them -radical. If America at present is actively, -practically idealistic (something Europe and -the world in general would like to have determined) -it is due to them.</p> - -<p>Idealism is not a negative virtue. It is not -mysticism. It is not meditation, though it may -be its fruit. Whatever idealism may be in -philosophical definition, in life it is the desire -and the attempt to put into practice conceptions -of what ought theoretically to be accomplished -in this imperfect world; and the quality of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71"></a>[71]</span> -idealism depends upon the quality of the idealist.</p> - -<p>In this sense—a true sense for America, -however inapplicable to the Middle Ages—who -can doubt that such Americans as I have described -are idealistic? Nowhere in the world -are there more visible evidences of the desires -of men wreaking themselves upon earth and -stone and metal, upon customs and government -and morals, than in this new continent. And -these desires are predominantly for betterment, -for perfection—a low perfection sometimes, it -is true—for the “uplift,” physically, morally, -intellectually of humanity.</p> - -<p>Of course the quality of American idealism -is mixed. Beside the pure ambition of a St. -Francis to make men brothers, beside the aspiring -hope of the cathedral builders to make faith -lovely to the eye, the ideal of a chain of five-and-ten -cent stores, or a railroad system, or -even a democratic method of education, is not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72"></a>[72]</span> -a luminous, not a spiritual, idealism. But a -working ideal for the benefit of the race it may -be, and often is.</p> - -<p>The truth of this has not seemed obvious to -Europeans or to most Americans. Our individualism -has been so intense and often so -self-seeking, our preoccupation since the Civil -War so dominantly with matter rather than -with mind or spirit, that it is easy for foreigners -to call us mere money-grubbers. Yet no -one who has ever talked with a “captain of industry” -or the director of a great philanthropic -enterprise feels doubt as to the unsoundness of -this description. Unfair, narrow, material-minded -we may have been, but our enterprises -have had vision behind them, dreams, perhaps, -imposed upon us by the circumstances of a new, -raw, continent, by wealth for the seeking, by -opportunities for the making, by vast battles -with nature to be organized and won.</p> - -<p>Furthermore, behind and beneath all our -striving, sets of moral ideas have been active.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73"></a>[73]</span> -America has never been blasé or cynical. We -have never relinquished the ethics of puritanism, -which are the ethics of the Bible. Even -the greedy capitalist has disgorged at last, and -devoted his winnings to the improvement of the -society he preyed upon. But most American -capitalists have not been greedy. They themselves -have been devoured by a consuming desire -to accomplish, to build up, to put through. -When they have broken laws, it is because the -laws have held them back from what seemed to -them necessary, inevitable development for the -greater good of all—because, in a word, they -were radical.</p> - -<p>One night in war-time, at a base port in Scotland -far from our own environment and our -native prejudices, I heard the self-told tale of -an arch-enemy of American “interests,” a -pugnacious man who had fought and won, with -a price on his head, sent millionaires to jail, -been calumniated, been trapped by infamous -conspiracies, and escaped them—a man better<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74"></a>[74]</span> -hated, better loved than is the fortune of most -of us. My other companion was another -American, a young, but celebrated, preacher, a -moralist of the breed of the Beechers and the -Spurgeons. And the same question rose to our -lips when the story was finished. These enemies, -these magnates who had been jailed and -defeated, and yet still fought and often successfully, -were they mere self-seekers, rascals, by -any fair definition? And neither of us was -satisfied with that answer, nor was the hero of -the story. Two of us at least agreed that it -was rather a case of “enterprise” <i>versus</i> “social -justice,” of individualistic effort <i>versus</i> the -rights of a community. The zeal of the capitalists -had burned in their hearts until they -broke through morality in an effort to make -good.</p> - -<p>But of course most of our American radicals -have not been even illegal in their idealism. -Their zeal has encountered only obstinacy, stupidity, -and the intractable conservatism of ordinary<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75"></a>[75]</span> -life. These men have built up great industries -that made life more facile, or extended -great educational and health enterprises over -States and beyond seas, with little harm to any -man and much good to most, unless the source -of the wealth expended be questioned, or the -effect of a zealot’s ideas enforced upon millions.</p> - -<p>Indeed, if strength of purpose, if energy, if -a burning desire to change, to better the minds, -the bodies, or the tools of men, were all that -could be asked of radicalism, then we might -well rest content with the achievements of the -American idealist-radical. But more has been -asked of the reformer, even of the reformer of -business methods, than energy and will. The -radicalism I have described, based upon common -sense and inspired by restless virility, has -not always been adequate. The pioneering -days are ended when a good shot could always -get game, a strong arm always find plowlands. -It is time to take thought. And if one compares<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76"></a>[76]</span> -the uprooting energy of Americans with -the intellectual radicalism of Europe or with -the new radicalism of the incoming American -generation, a curious difference appears. Our -old radicalism was perhaps healthier, certainly -more productive of immediate betterment to -those who profited by it; but it is harder to define, -harder to follow into a probable future, because, -when all is said, it is relatively aimless.</p> - -<p>Where do our vast business enterprises lead? -Toward a greater production of this world’s -goods, toward an accumulation of wealth in the -hands of the sturdy organizers; but equally -toward a vast corporate machine in which the -individual man becomes a particle lost in the -mass, toward a society which produces wealth -without learning to distribute or employ it for -the purposes of civilization. I do not say that -this latter port is our destination. I say that -our business leaders are steering a course -which is just as likely to land us there as anywhere.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77"></a>[77]</span> -Or, rather, they are stoking the engines -and letting the rudder go free.</p> - -<p>And is our vast educational enterprise any -more definitely aimed? Perhaps so, for the -increase of intelligence is an end in itself. -Nevertheless, for what, let us say, is the American -high school preparing, a new social order, -or the stabilization of the old one? When the -aristocrats and the burghers of Europe began -to be educated, they tore themselves apart in -furious wars over religion. When the Western -proletariate becomes educated, will it not -tear our social fabric in class wars also? Are -we educating for this or against it? For what -kind of society are we educating? The socialist -has his answer. Can American school -boards say?</p> - -<p>And our organized philanthropists, combating -hookworm, tuberculosis, lynching, child labor, -liquor, slums, and preventable crime? -The medieval church, hampered by its lack of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78"></a>[78]</span> -science and the waywardness of its world, engaged -in such a struggle, and from a thousand -monasteries, built, like our modern foundations, -upon the profits of exploitation, strove to -uplift Europe. Its aim and end were clear: to -practise charity that the souls of workers and -donors might be saved; to clothe the naked and -feed the hungry that love might be felt to -govern the world. And the church succeeded -in its measure until, on the somewhat specious -plea that not love, but justice, was demanded, -rapacious governments seized the capital of the -ecclesiastical corporations and sold the abbeys -for building stone and lead.</p> - -<p>Our great organizations are more efficient -than the church, because they are more scientific. -Whether they are more successful depends -upon one’s estimate of success. The -modern man, for whom they care, is a cleaner, -brighter, more long-lived person than his -medieval ancestor. He is probably better material -for civilization, because, if more vulgarized,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79"></a>[79]</span> -he is more intelligent. That he is happier -is not so certain. The church inspired a confidence -(not always justified) in the friendliness -of destiny which the Rockefeller Foundation -has so far failed to equal. Nevertheless, -scientific philanthropy, though it promises less, -achieves what it does promise more thoroughly -and without those terrible by-products of the -ecclesiastical system—servility, pauperism, -bigotry, and superstition. But what is its aim?</p> - -<p>With little more regard to the source of their -wealth than the church, the philanthropies of -to-day have far less regard for the final results -of their benefactions. As with the educators, -it is enough for them, so to speak, to improve -the breed. The apparent philosophy behind -their program is that when the proletariate is -bathed, educated, and made healthy, it will be -civilized, and therefore competent to take over -the world (including universities and steel -mills, railroads and hospitals) and run it. But -the executives of these great organizations<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80"></a>[80]</span> -would probably protest against this reading of -their expectations almost as quickly as the -donors of the funds; certainly they show no -readiness to meet the proletariate half-way on -its upward path. Clearly, you cannot wash, -teach, and invigorate society without powerfully -affecting the whole social fabric. The -feeble experiments of the nineteenth century in -universal education have already proved that. -Some transformation the great endowments of -our age are laboring to bring about. For the -creating of a new race they have a plan, but -not for its salvation, even on this side of -heaven. Indeed, as the German experience -shows, they may even become instruments by -which the common man is made a mere tool -firmly grasped by the hand of authority. Common -sense alone governs them. Their vision -is bent upon the immediate, not the ultimate, -future.</p> - -<p>A little vague these criticisms may seem to -the practical mind; and vague, when philosophically<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81"></a>[81]</span> -considered, are the aims of American -radicalism. Very different, indeed, they -are from the clean-cut programs of the -European radical. There is little vagueness in -socialism, little vagueness in syndicalism, the -very opposite of vagueness, despite the efforts -of the American press, in Bolshevism. In all -these systems the past is condemned, the -present reconstructed, and the future made -visible with a lucidity that betrays their origin -in efforts of the pure reason. That, of course, -is the difficulty—at least to American and most -British intelligences. The aim of Bolshevism -is so definite as to be almost mathematical. -Society as a whole is considered economically, -and a program deduced that will fill the most -mouths with the least labor. To be sure, -stomach-filling is not the sole purpose of Lenine -and his followers. They argue, and with more -right than our easy-going bourgeois civilization -is willing to concede, that idleness, unrest, and -crime are more often the result than the cause<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82"></a>[82]</span> -of poverty. Nevertheless, the type radical of -the European variety does unquestionably rest -his case upon the premise that man is merely a -tool-using animal. Ask a Bolshevik where -civilization is going, and he will answer you -with ease and explicitness. Ask the average -American, and he will either reply in vague -platitudes or deny both knowledge and responsibility. -Of the two men he is less likely to be -wrong.</p> - -<p>And note well that our domesticated socialists -and intelligentzia, though far more inclined -to consider the human factor than the -Bolsheviki, have the same advantage of clarity -of aim, and the same tendency to confuse ideas -with facts. Common sense—not the highest -virtue, not the virtue which will save our souls, -or even our bodies, in a crisis like war or a -turmoil of the spirit—is often lacking in the -socialist. Good humor—again not a quality -that wins heaven’s gates, but a saving grace, -nevertheless—is noticeably absent from the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83"></a>[83]</span> -columns of our radical weeklies. An admirable -service they are rendering in clarifying the -American mind, in forcing it, or some of it, to -face issues, to think things through, to be intelligent -as well as sensible; but the logical -rigidity of their program inhibits that sense of -proportion which recognizes the <i>Falstaffs</i> and -the <i>Micawbers</i> of this world, smiles sometimes -over miscarriages of idealism, sympathizes -with feeble, humorous man, does not always -scold.</p> - -<p>And yet the American who dislikes scolding -should beware of superciliousness. It is much -easier for genial folks to chide the critics with -programs than to be critical of themselves. -The normal American is a product of American -education, with its insistence upon liberal -progress, upon acceleration toward the vaguest -of goals. It has not taught him to be critical -of others in any thorough-going fashion, it has -not taught him to be critical of himself. The -confidence that has carried our business to a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84"></a>[84]</span> -maximum, that has flung our schools broadcast, -and swept our philanthropies over the world, -spelled differently is self-assurance. Nothing -disturbs us so much as to be told to stop and -think. Nothing angers the business world so -much as legislation that “halts business.” -Nothing infuriates an educational organizer -more than to question the quality, not the -quantity, of his product. We have seen clearly -what we wished to do with iron and coal and -food. We have felt, in education and philanthropy, -sure of our moral bases. Our energy -has been concentrated on going ahead. To be -radical intellectually, to think it all out in terms -of a possible relation of labor and capital, of -a possible education, of a possible society for -the future—that has not appealed to us. We -have shunned philosophical programs by instinct, -and wilfully built for to-day instead of -tomorrow. The American radical has done -too little thinking; the European, perhaps too -much.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85"></a>[85]</span>But the infection of thought is spreading. I -do not believe that the youths who will make -the coming generation—the youths that fought -the war—are going to be radicals in the sense -that I have called European. If the ideas of -Marx and Lenine ever take root in America, it -will be because social injustice such as we have -not yet been cursed with makes a soil for them. -If they take root, they transform in the growing, -like foreign plants in California weather. -But the new generation is not like the old. It -is more sensitive to the winds of doctrine. It -is less empirical, less optimistic, less self-assured.</p> - -<p>Already one can divide into two classes the -undergraduates as one finds them in American -colleges. The smaller group their elders would -call radical. But they are not socialists, not -anarchists, not even consistently liberal. More -truly, they are critics of things as they are. -Their minds are restless; they are ever seeking -for definitions, for solutions, for a cause to enroll<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86"></a>[86]</span> -under. They are restless under the push -of common sense America that drives them into -activity without explanation. They are painfully -aware of the difference between their -ideas and the conditions of life in modern society, -and are determined to test one by the -other. Their native idealism has become intellectual.</p> - -<p>The other group is far larger, but, if less -restless, is no more static. Most of its members -are indifferent to the new ideas scintillating -all over the world, if indeed they are not -ignorant of them. Nevertheless, their faith in -society as it was is curiously weak. If few of -them are likely to become socialists, few also -will be inspired by the physical and moral idealism -of their fathers. The naïve enthusiasm of -those fathers for “movements,” “ideals,” “progress” -is not (unless I miss my guess) common -among them. They are not likely to overturn -America a second time in order to make great -fortunes; philanthropy does not interest them;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87"></a>[87]</span> -education as a missionary endeavor does not -seem to attract them. Their moral foundations -are less solid than in old days; their energies -less boundless; aimless endeavor for the -sake of doing something is no longer a lure. -Either they will find a program of their own to -excite them, or stand pat upon the fortune they -expect to inherit. If their future is to be narrowed -to a choice between pleasure and mere -productivity, why, then these men would rather -run motor-cars than make them. There is a -very real danger that rather than hustle for the -sake of hustling, they will prefer to “lie down” -on their job. And thanks to the homogeneity -of the current American mind, this analysis, if -it is true at all, is true of thousands.</p> - -<p>The American radical in the future, I take it, -will still be idealist, but not Bolshevik. That -generalization from the needs of poverty is at -the same time too material to suit his temper, -which is still fundamentally moral, and too rash -economically to sit with his practical common<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88"></a>[88]</span> -sense. He will remain an idealist; but a -sharpening of his intellect will give teeth to his -idealism, and the practical common sense he -will carry over from the days when his kind -were pioneers in a new world will steady him. -What he will want is not yet clear, except that -it will certainly not be the world of Marx or -the kaiser (himself in many respects a radical). -What he will do I cannot venture to guess. -But if one dare not prophesy, one may at least -hope.</p> - -<p>And my hope is that a principle now visibly -at work among many Americans may guide -him also. Principles, if they are sound, have -a way of making themselves felt through the -padding of mental habit and convention, like -knobs in a chair-seat.</p> - -<p>The principle I have in mind is merely this: -that a man’s character and the ideas upon -which, so to speak, he operates must be appraised -separately. Tenacity of will, honesty -of spirit, tenderness of heart—such elements<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89"></a>[89]</span> -of character make a man neither conservative -nor radical, but they cannot be left out of political -accounting.</p> - -<p>And my hope is that the new generation is -going to be forced toward such a weighing and -discrimination of character and policies. -Their mental padding has worn thin in war-time. -The moral conventions that we have accepted -almost unhesitatingly here in America -no longer protect the youth with certainty from -the shrewd blows of rationalism or superstition.</p> - -<p>Therefore ideas and character are both likely -to be more closely inspected in the days that are -coming. The conservative minded, as in the -past, will emphasize character; and as that is a -much better platform to stand on than mere obstinacy -or self-interest, they will presumably be -better conservatives, provided that the intellectual -unrest of the times forces them to think. -The radicals will search for ideas that may -transform the future, and if the abundance of -ideas in relation to the paucity of accomplishment<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90"></a>[90]</span> -causes them to put a higher value upon -character, why, so much for the better radicalism.</p> - -<p>No future in the history of the world has -been so interesting as is the immediate future -of America. Our next great political leader, -who may be conservative, but is probably radical, -is now in college or has but lately been -graduated—unless, indeed, he has just been admitted -to a labor-union. And he is studying, -one hopes, the men who dealt most heavily -in character, the amiable McKinley, the fiercely -instinctive Roosevelt; he is studying the careers -of the men who have been dominated chiefly by -ideas, the moral idealist Wilson, the ruthless -thinker Lenine. He is learning, one hopes, -when and why each and all failed, each and all -in their measure succeeded. Whether he -profits, and we profit, from their experience, -time alone will discover.</p> -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91"></a>[91]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER IV<br /> - - -<small>AMERICAN IDEALISM</small></h2></div> - - -<p class="drop-cap">IS American idealism a virtue, a disease, or -an illusion? The question cannot be -answered in an essay. It is like the inquiry -with which Tennyson threatened the flower in -the crannied wall—what man is, and what God -is? But it can be turned and twisted; it can -be made ready for answering. The writer, -and perhaps the reader, can seek an answer to -it; and that is better than the inner feeling of -many an American just now, who, weary of -five years of idealistic oratory, profoundly believes -that American idealism is first of all a -nuisance.</p> - -<p>Yet it was never so easy to make a case for -the virtue of idealism as in retrospect of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92"></a>[92]</span> -years 1914-18. What many have never -grasped in the confusion of the times is that -exactly the same idealistic prime motive made -us join hearts from the first with Great Britain -and France, kept us out of war for two years -and a half, and brought us in on that April of -1917. There is always a complex of motives -behind every war, but there is also, with few -exceptions, a <i>primum mobile</i>, and with us it was -the distrust, the fear, the hatred that were the -reactions of our idealism against arbitrary violence. -The invasion of Belgium settled our -will for Belgium and her allies. Our distrust -of war, especially European war, as a means by -which we could bring about justice and peace, -kept us out of the struggle despite clamorous, -and perhaps far-sighted, minorities. Our final -conviction that violence was a fire loose in the -world, which must be stamped out, drove us -from easy neutrality into war. And if in the -last of these three stages dread of the future -and the need of immediate self-defense had<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93"></a>[93]</span> -their large part, they did no more than sharpen -the angle of our resolve. Idealism kept us out -of war, and idealism drove us into it.</p> - -<p>The fume and spume of idealism is oratory, -sermonizing, talk about morality, duty, patriotism, -rights, and noble purposes. All such -gushing rhetoric is no more the thing itself than -foam is the ocean. But, like smoke, there is -seldom much of it without cause. Men and -women who were abroad in 1918 must reflect -curiously on the, shall we say, wearisome prevalence -of the moralistic, idealistic note in -American speech and writing in contrast to its -restraint and frequent absence in France and -England. When an Englishman orated upon -the war to stop war he was usually talking for -American consumption. This does not mean -that Great Britain and France were sordid, we -sincere; on the contrary, it is proof of a tincture -of the sentimental in our idealism, to which -I shall later return. But it is additional testimony -to the quantity and the popularity of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94"></a>[94]</span> -American idealism in those months. The tone -of the press at that crucial time was evidence -of the tone of the people that read and responded. -And while many a sounding speech -and impassioned editorial are now, as one reads -them, a little faded, faintly absurd, like tattered -war posters on a rural bill-board, yet no one -can doubt the flood of patriotic idealism that -created them, few will doubt that our war idealism -was a virtue in 1914-1918.</p> - -<p>It seemed a virtue then, but was it not already -diseased? When we entered the war, -the vast majority of Americans publicly and -privately committed themselves to certain general -principles, and, whatever else they fought -for, believed that they were fighting for them. -A square deal all around was one, the consent -of the governed to their government was another, -a third was the substitution, at all costs, -of justice for violence in the ruling of the -world. We all assented to these principles, -most of us assumed them voluntarily as an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95"></a>[95]</span> -article of faith, and the average man took them -as seriously as he is able to take abstractions. -Peace came, the armistice, the stages of the -treaty. Nothing could be clearer or more to be -expected than that sometimes in spirit, often in -detail, and most seriously in ultimate purpose, -the treaty in scores of instances ran counter to -the faiths we had accepted and made commonplaces -of speech and thinking.</p> - -<p>I am neither criticizing nor justifying the -treaty and its included covenant. No one, I -suppose, but a sentimental optimist could have -expected a work of logical art in exact conformity -with the principles and conditions of a -new epoch that has scarcely begun, no one at -least who had ever read history, or studied the -politics of Sonnino, Clemenceau, and the -Unionist party. It was bound to have inconsistencies; -to reflect as many views as there -were strong minds in the conference, to be experimental, -to be a compromise. This is not -what is astonishing; it is the attitude of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96"></a>[96]</span> -typical American mind toward the treaty negotiations.</p> - -<p>In the winter and spring of 1919, while the -world was burning, while the principles we had -shouted for were at last in actual settlement, -this enormous American idealism slept, forgot -its fine phrases, forgot its pledges to see the -thing through, was bored because some Americans -felt that it was our duty to see the thing -through. We are an uncritical nation despite -our occasional vehemence of criticism, but we -have never been so uncritical of major issues as -in 1919, when the terms of world settlement -were of acute interest to all but Americans. -We are an easy-going nation, but we have -never been so easy-going as in 1919, when not -one man in a thousand as much as read the abstract -of the treaty to see whether the things -he had said he fought for were safeguarded in -it. The only real fire-spitting fervor struck -out in this country since the armistice has been -in defense of our right to let Europe stew in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97"></a>[97]</span> -her own juice, and our privilege to tell general -principles to go hang. And this is an emotion -almost too narrow to be attributed, even by -the generous minded, to idealism.</p> - -<p>One answers, of course, that such a decline -from overheated virtue into indifferentism is -only human nature at its old tricks, the collapse -after the New Year’s resolution, the weariness -of being too good, symptoms, in short, of content -with having “licked the Hun,” and a desire -to get back to work. And the reply is, of -course this is true. But Europe is not thus -functioning. There has been a striking contrast -in the years since the war between British -and American attitudes toward treaty negotiations. -In England, exhausted by war as we -never were, deep in the lassitude of rest after -struggle, men and women have leaped into criticism -and defense of the ideals embodied in the -settlement. Peace has seemed to them as vital -a battle-ground of ideas as war. By and large, -the plodding mass of us who make money and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98"></a>[98]</span> -public opinion have been cold to the contest, uninterested. -The press of Great Britain has -fiercely attacked and fiercely defended the morale -of the treaty; ours has reported it with -little real criticism and little interest except -where the league was concerned. Their universities -have supplied men and parties to fight -through the principles for which we fought; -ours have been intent upon how much scholastic -credit should be given returned soldiers and -who should get an honorary degree. They -forced an easy-going premier to stand for a -victory that was more than conquest; we -grudged our President the attempt to carry -through in Paris what in 1917 we were all -agreed upon; let our dislike of his methods -outweigh our deep interest in his ends. If it -had not been for the great issue of the League -of Nations, which, forcing Americans to act, -forced them to remember (some with difficulty) -what they had believed in and what they had -learned in 1917 of the dangers of selfish aloofness<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99"></a>[99]</span> -from world problems, if it had not been for -the fight over the league, the politics of 1919 -would have been as local, as trivial, as wearisome, -as in the year after a Presidential election. -Some scholar in the next decade will -place side by side the files of a New York daily -in its moral-idealistic stage of 1917 and its -cynical back-to-business mood of 1919; will -compare the fantastic pledges never again to -trade with Germany, which were circulating -in 1918, with the export statistics of 1919; will -marvel, and perhaps draw conclusions.</p> - -<p>And one wonders, meeting everywhere an -interest in world affairs that seems dying, a -national morale that is forgetting its moral -impulses, a hatred of the professional idealist, -a weariness of general principles, and a cynical -distrust of ideas—one wonders whether this -flaming American idealism so-called was not -even in 1918 flushed with disease, a virtue already -dying.</p> - -<p>Were we indeed ever really idealistic? Consider<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100"></a>[100]</span> -the case of the ablest of our manufacturers, -who, when the emotional fit was on him, -proposed to increase the production of idealism -until every American home should own an ideal -of the latest model. He gives the order, draws -the checks, and, naïvely surprised at the discovery -that you cannot make ideals without -understanding them, hangs up philosophy, and -goes back to the motor business. Consider -the case of our radical papers who fought our -entrance into a war where American ideals -were not properly safeguarded, and then preferred -to risk a treaty without the League of -Nations, to a league which, though it expressed -American idealism, was not perfect by their -judging. Consider the flaming desire to make -the universe and one’s home safe for democracy, -in contrast with the current contempt for -the ideals of industrial democracy. Perforce -one wonders whether American idealism, -healthy or diseased, is not a mere emotion, -easily roused, never lasting; whether, as a valuable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101"></a>[101]</span> -part of our national character, it is not -an illusion.</p> - -<p>So much needs to be said by way of charge -and speculation in order to clear the air. If I -write with some excitement, it is no more than -the sight of the tumble from great-worded, -great deeded 1918 to the indifferent, self-regarding, -and a little cynical present may account -for. Certainly in our national past idealism -has not been an illusion, although it was -often emotional. Nor, in sober fact, do I doubt -the essential idealism of the normal American -mind, especially that American mind which inherits -the optimism and the liberal instincts of -our forefathers. I am merely curious as to the -exact nature of that idealism as it exists, and -plays strange tricks, to-day. It seems to be -a quality more resembling energy than a moral -characteristic like virtue or vice. It seems, as -one thinks over these recent manifestations, to -be a blend of physical virility and nervous sensitiveness, -good or bad, active or inactive, according<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102"></a>[102]</span> -to the condition and environment of -the patient. Stir him, and it becomes active, -beneficent, altruistic. Stir him further, and it -may become sentimental, with symptoms of -hysteria. Relax the pressure, and it drops into -desuetude. These are the habits of American -idealism, and I doubt whether more can be said -of them except by way of further description. -But there must be some thoughts, some -ideas behind to account for these vagaries. -There must be reasons why Americans idealize -more readily than other nations, and why, just -now at least, they so easily tire of their idealizing.</p> - -<p>Neither the scope of these pages nor my -knowledge permits me to trace the history of -American thinking and feeling, to say, as the -historians some day must, what elements came -from Europe, what modifications are due to -pioneer environment, racial mixture, and centuries -of unchecked material development. -But tentatively, and with all modesty, one may<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103"></a>[103]</span> -at least seek for light. I find that two great -figures of our national youth and the ways of -thinking they represented most help me to understand -the strengths and the weaknesses of -American idealism, help to an understanding -of the phenomena of 1917-20.</p> - -<p>The first is Jonathan Edwards, theologian of -international importance, leader of the great -spiritual revival of mid-eighteenth century New -England, missionary to the Indians, president -of Princeton, author of works so widely read -that even now no farm-house garret in New -England but will yield a sermon or two, a -treatise on original sin, or his epochal essay -on the freedom of the will.</p> - -<p>Alas for human reputation! This tireless -thinker, whose logic built up in entirety an -impregnable argument worthy of Aquinas, is -now chiefly remembered as a preacher of infant -damnation and a thunderer of hell-fire over -frightened Northampton congregations. But, -as all wiser critics know, the influence of a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104"></a>[104]</span> -great mind is distinct and often different from -its reputation. What it does, works on and -on after death, transmuting, transforming; -what it was in popular repute, soon becomes -legend and supposed historical fact. Compare -the reputation of Machiavelli with his achievements -and influence as described in Macaulay’s -famous essay.</p> - -<p>In actual achievement Edwards, whose mind -was of unusual lucidity and endurance, crystallized -for Americans the Calvinistic ethics of -life which were the backbone of Puritan civilization. -Man, by the unarguable might of God, -is born with a will whose nature may be either -bad or good. Henceforth his reason is free, -his choice is free, within the limits that his character -permits. It becomes therefore supremely -important that he shall choose and reason virtuously, -for there is no way to be sure that he -has a good will, that he is among the “elect” -except by virtuous action leading to a sense of -salvation. Thus in every condition of life,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105"></a>[105]</span> -without excuse or palliation, the Christian must -daily, hourly strive to <i>prove</i> that he is one of -the elect of God, saved from hell-fire by the -character God has given him. Good intentions -count for nothing. Good works, if unaccompanied -by the sense of spiritual salvation, count -for nothing. God, Himself blameless, has -willed sin and sinful men. It is for us to -prove that we are not among the damned.</p> - -<p>That the system is incredible most moderns -now believe; that it is logical, more logical perhaps -than any later attempt to justify the ways -of God to man, the student must admit. My -desire is naturally not to argue, but to emphasize, -what can never be too much emphasized, -the effect of such thinking upon the -intellectual life of America. It was believed -in powerfully and well understood by perhaps -a majority of one formative generation. Later -it was not believed in so powerfully, and it was -but little understood, especially outside of New -England. But a conviction of the infinite necessity<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106"></a>[106]</span> -of willing the right became a mental -habit in American morality that persists and -becomes a trait and a chief factor, as any reader -may see, in so-called American idealism.</p> - -<p>Benjamin Franklin was almost the exact contemporary -of Jonathan Edwards, but he had -the inestimable advantage of living longer and -seeing more; two continents and two ages, in -fact, were his familiars, and learned from him -as well as taught him. Franklin, it is clear, -was strongly influenced by that French eighteenth -century which he loved, with its praise -of reason and its trust in common sense. But -he was even more a product of the new America. -America, as Edwards and Cotton Mather -saw it, was an experiment in godliness. When -the Puritan scheme should have proved its -efficacy by an abnormal increase in the number -of earthly saints, the colonies would have served -their chief end, and would, so Mather thought, -decline. The hell-breathing vehemence of Edwards -was chiefly due to his fear that the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107"></a>[107]</span> -scheme was failing. He was fighting a spiritual -decline.</p> - -<p>But Franklin was a member of the worldly, -not the spiritual, body of America; he was a -citizen of a country visibly growing in wealth -and population. He looked outward, not inward; -forward, not backward. Like Edwards, -he hated sin; but sin for him was not sin because -it was forbidden, but forbidden because -it was sin. Franklin’s was a practical morality, -which was cut to fit life, not to compress -it. His firm character and the clarity of his -reason kept his morals high. His ethics were -admirable, but they were based upon the principle -that honesty is the best policy, not upon -the fear of God. To be “reasonable” was his -highest good. “So convenient it is to be a reasonable -creature,” he remarks whimsically, -“since it enables one to find or make a reason -for everything one has a mind to do.” As long -as one is a Franklin, with the will to virtue, -honesty, industry, and thrift that is bred from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108"></a>[108]</span> -a good inheritance, in a new and developing -country, such ethics make for idealism. No -one was more idealistic in his day than the -practical Franklin, who wished to form a league -of virtue of all nations to be governed by rules, -and supported by the reason of virtuous mankind.</p> - -<p>And here is another palpable strain of Americanism, -differing from that necessity which -Edwards trumpeted, but, like it, a stiffener of -idealistic impulses. Here one places the love -of a square deal, the desire to do what is right -because it is “fair,” the sense of the reasonableness -of justice that freed the slaves, gave Cuba -self-government, determined our policy toward -the Philippines, and was horror-struck by the -invasion of Belgium. It is the idealism of -good common sense, and together with the -mental habit of willing the right has been a -main cause of American idealism.</p> - -<p>Both of these American characteristics are -operative to-day. Both are now factors and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109"></a>[109]</span> -dangerous factors in our idealism, for the -strong will of the Calvinists to do right has -become erratic and perverted, and the common -sense of Franklin’s school has degenerated. -Here, as I shall endeavor to show, are two chief -causes for the vagaries of the American mind -in the years that ended the war.</p> - -<p>The mental discipline which the Puritans -learned from the fear of a wrathful God remained -a discipline long after it had lost its -theological basis, and is responsible in no small -measure for the disciplined will of nineteenth-century -America to succeed in material endeavors -as well as in philanthropic or moral -purpose. But, divorced from the belief in a -speedy damnation which had given it cause, -it was bound to become, and it did become, a -mere mental habit, a kind of aimless necessity -of being virtuous. Bolted no longer to a belief -in a revengeful God who demanded virtue, -loosed, like an engine from its flywheel, this -ancestral sense of necessity whirled on by its<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110"></a>[110]</span> -own momentum. It became will without thinking -behind it, which was driven by material -circumstance instead of religious belief. It became -a restless energy whose aim, as a foreign -observer has said, seemed to be “mere acceleration.” -It became unreasonable, often absurd, -sometimes hysterical. I find its manifestations -in the insistence that America must always be -described as sweet, lovely, and virtuous in disregard -of the facts, in our “boosting” of prosperity -and success by proclaiming them. I find -them in the determination to be good and happy -and prosperous immediately and without regard -to circumstance which has created the -American magazine story and brought about -national prohibition by constitutional amendment. -This hand-me-down will is responsible -for much progress, good and bad, in America; -it is also responsible for American sentimentalism. -It has been a driving force in our -idealism; but because it is not so much reasoned -purpose as a mental habit inherited, it has run<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111"></a>[111]</span> -wild, become hysterical and erratic. It led us -to propose to reform the world and to advertise -our intention before our brains were ready -for the task. It makes our idealism feverish -and uncertain.</p> - -<p>As for Franklin’s rule of common sense, it -has become a positive deterrent to idealism. -His idea of conduct reasonably shaped according -to the needs of environment was, and is -to-day, the most solid trait of Americans. It -is the ethics of modern business, and American -business has become, and for a little while yet -will remain, the fundamental America. Nevertheless, -every candid observer will admit, no -matter how great his faith in the future of his -country, that the reasonable good sense of the -Franklin tradition suffered a progressive dilution -or degeneration throughout the nineteenth -century. Rational ethics became for the most -of us materialistic rationalism, still reasonable, -still ethical in its way, still backed and restrained -by common sense (our profiteers have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112"></a>[112]</span> -also been philanthropists), but an enemy, -nevertheless, to all idealism that could not be -made from steel, brick, rubber, or oil. We -have been too reasonable to be sordid; too materialistic -to remain in the best sense reasonable. -Far from advocating a league of the -virtues, our business common sense has been -fighting a League of Nations. The contrast -between our moral code and our business code -has already been overwritten in muck-raking -literature. Nevertheless, despite exaggeration, -it exists. Our national life is dual. We can -stand on our moral foot and our business foot, -but usually we alternate. In 1918 we rested -entirely on one; in 1919 we swung with relief -to the other. Franklin’s rule of common sense -as a stimulus to idealism has broken down.</p> - -<p>What reasonable sense of proportion I myself -possess as a descendant of the compatriots -of Franklin urges me to protest instantly that -all this is not to be taken as a picture of contemporary -America. Rather it is a plucking<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113"></a>[113]</span> -out merely of two strains of experience that -all must recognize. But these are perilously -interwoven in our national character. They -affect the validity of our idealism.</p> - -<p>The hysterical will drives us into professions -of virtue we cannot make good. It drove us -to “boost” the war; and then, being a restless -energy sprung from habit rather than from -conviction, left us exhausted in spirit and cynical -in mind when the moral profits were ready -for the gathering. It stirred a passion for the -League of Nations, rights of small countries, -democracy, justice, and the rest, and then collapsed -like the second day of “clean-up” week. -It set the will going and left the brain unmoved.</p> - -<p>And our common sense, diluted through millions, -obsessed by the problems of manufacture -and construction, is in ever greater danger of -losing that basis of character and enlightened -reason that alone can make common sense anything -but common. It dreads ideas, distrusts -theories, is made uncomfortable by altruism<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114"></a>[114]</span> -that extends beyond the home. As a nation, -we have not degenerated, for our virile energy, -our will, our adaptiveness are all as strong as -ever, stronger perhaps than elsewhere in the -world. But, as compared with Franklin’s, our -common sense has lost character. It pulled -back in the great moral and intellectual problems -of the war; it did not lead. As manifested -in the present struggle over international -policies, it falls below the ethical standards of -the nation, whether you tap it in clubs and -offices or in Congress. In a time of crisis it -rallies to encounter material problems and is -invaluable; but morally and intellectually its -vision is short, its endurance weak.</p> - -<p>The trouble with the American reformer, as -has often been said, is that he has more energy -than reason; and this is because he incarnates -the instinctive, irrational will of which I have -been writing. The trouble with the American -materialist is that he has kept his common sense -while losing his vision.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115"></a>[115]</span>Both, in short, lack an adequate spiritual and -moral basis; and so does the American idealism -that is functioning nobly, but so irregularly, -to-day. With an irresponsible will driving it -forward and a matter-of-fact common sense -holding it back, it suffers too frequently from -the weakness of all qualities that spring from -custom rather than from conviction. Its leafage -has spread; its roots have contracted.</p> - -<p>I am not so unhumorous as to propose that -the remedy is once again to believe in Jonathan -Edwards’s God and infant damnation; but we -must go deeper than habit and tradition for -the springs of our action. Not since the Civil -War have we as a nation explored our souls, -sought the channels of our being, tested our -ultimate faith. This war has been no test. Its -issues were clear. They appealed to principles -that we held firmly because we had inherited -them. It was easier to go in than to stay out. -Even our material prosperity, apparently, -stood to gain, not to lose, by entering the conflict.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116"></a>[116]</span> -We made the right choice, but it was -not hard to make it. To be idealistic was easy.</p> - -<p>I do not believe that our inheritance either -of virtuous will or of practical common sense -will serve us long without renewal. The first -is vehement in propaganda, prohibition, and -hysteric excess, but flags when a load of stern -duty, national or international, is put upon it. -The second has no end and aim but the making -of a prosperous America where the grubber -and the grabber have much and others little. -It is useful, nay, indispensable, to the economic -state, but beyond economics—and so much is -beyond economics!—there is little health in it. -If our idealism is to remain as robust as our -material prosperity, it must gain what Franklin -would have described as a basis of enlightened -reason, or suffer what Edwards would have -called a conversion—and, preferably, both.</p> - -<p>Samuel’s mother was a fine, but somewhat -rigorous, woman who brought him up in the -conviction that he had to do right (by which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117"></a>[117]</span> -she meant being honest and moral, and going -to church on Sundays) or shame would come -upon him. His father was a man whose “word -was as good as his bond.” He taught his boy -that working hard and saving money were probably -the most important things in life, and that -if you paid your bills, were true to your word, -and kept an eye upon shifty neighbors, you were -sure to be happy and successful.</p> - -<p>At the age of fifty the father died from -hardening of the arteries, the result of too few -vacations, and the mother became a rather -morose member of the W. C. T. U. Samuel -found himself now possessed of half a million -dollars and a prosperous shoe factory.</p> - -<p>As for the factory, he discovered within a -year that since the death of his father its success -had been due to a new system of piece -work, which “speeded up” the worker and gave -the profits to the proprietor. But there seemed -no way of changing the system without ruining -the business. As for his wealth, it brought<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118"></a>[118]</span> -him new and pleasing associates who were more -polished and intelligent than he, and whose life -was so much more cheerful, instructive, and -interesting than his early experience that he -could only wish to be like them; especially when -he saw that they were far better citizens than -his father, who, to tell the truth, lived very -much for his own narrow interests. And yet -their ideas of pleasure and even of morality -were quite different from what he had been led -to suppose were the only proper principles on -which to conduct one’s life, and they never -went to church. He wanted to be honest, he -wanted to be good; but neither how to be honest -in his factory nor how to be good and yet a -“good fellow” were explained by the teachings -of his youth.</p> - -<p>For an unhappy year or two he tried to act -like his father, believe as his mother, and be -like his neighbors. In addition, in order to -satisfy a somewhat uneasy conscience, he prepared -to enter politics on a platform of straight<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119"></a>[119]</span> -Americanism and the full dinner-pail. Then -in one eventful week his workmen struck for -an eight-hour day and shop committees, his -mother announced her intention of bequeathing -her share of the estate to the Anti-tobacco -League, his best girl refused to marry him unless -he should become an Episcopalian, and -he was invited by the local boss to subscribe -to a “slush” fund or give up politics.</p> - -<p>Samuel went to the Maine woods to catch -trout and think over the situation. What he -did finally is not told in the story. What he -decided is, however, of some significance. For, -brooding over a dark pool in the spruces, he -concluded that each generation must search out -the foundations for its own morality, and determine -for itself the worth and power of the -ideals it proclaims. And so perhaps will -America.</p> -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120"></a>[120]</span></p> - -<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER V<br /> - - -<small>RELIGION IN AMERICA</small></h2></div> - - -<p class="drop-cap">THE rarest experience in America is a -discussion of morals. You can hear -morals preached about, but that is not a discussion. -You can read about morals in arguments -disguised as essays, but these seldom cause discussion. -Fully a third of successful American -plays and stories turn upon a moral axiom, but -one that we accept without argument, like rain -in April and the August drouth. One hears -very little real discussion of moral questions -here because “old Americans,” at least, agree -in their moral standards as remarkably as did -the Victorians.</p> - -<p>In this respect we are, indeed, still Victorians, -though in others already a century beyond them. -Some of us may (or did) get drunk, but we<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121"></a>[121]</span> -do not believe in hard drinking; not even the -saloon-keepers believed in hard drinking. -Some of us make license of our liberty in sex -relations; but the public disapproval of promiscuity -is, to fall into the current phrase, nation -wide. Some of us steal in a large and generous -fashion, taking from him who hath not business -ability for the benefit of him who hath shrewdness -and its fruits. But if these actions can -be described in terms of theft or misappropriation, -every one will agree that they are wicked, -even stock-holders and profiteers. You cannot -get up a decent argument on moral questions in -America, because, as with small boys in war-time, -no one will take the unpopular side. The -ethics of America are as definite as a code.</p> - -<p>This accepted and not unlofty moral code, -with its extension to justice and the rights of -individuals, is the force behind our idealism -that has made it an international factor to be -reckoned with from the days of Jeffersonian -ideology to our own. Like the dissenters’<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122"></a>[122]</span> -vote in England, it is a dangerous force to -oppose. Despite occasional hysteria and sentimentalism, -despite its frequent betrayals by -an unlovely common sense, it is strong because -it has the momentum of tradition and the -tenacity of prejudice. Of its worth I am -American enough to be convinced. Of its intelligence -one cannot be so certain. But what -really concerns all lovers of our hard-built -civilization is how durable under stress is this -moral idealism, under such stress as the approaching -change in our social order is sure to -bring to morals and morale, as well as to railroad -stocks and the Constitution.</p> - -<p>Indeed, the inner fire, the spirit, is not easily -discoverable in this American idealism with its -moral causes. Historically, it is easy to explain -it; habit has carried it on, and common -sense must usually approve a moral investment -that has been profitable; but, nevertheless, it is -hard to see a continuing <i>raison d’être</i> for such -idealism in America. It seems, as I have suggested<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123"></a>[123]</span> -in an earlier chapter, to lack a definable -spiritual basis. Its persistence, its weaknesses, -its dangers, raise constantly the question as to -the status of religion in America.</p> - -<p>I remember hearing Graham Wallas—who -will not be suspected of bias in this matter—remark -that England would not pass out of -clouds and darkness until she had made for -herself a new and felt interpretation of religion. -America, founded by a curious partnership of -the religious instinct and economic need and -brought up on the moral and material profits -of the union, cannot be supposed to be less in -need of a fundamental spiritual readjustment. -Every socialist and communist, every corporation -president and ex-Secretary, every professional -intellectual and amateur prophet, is declaring -his mind on the one thing needful to -save the world and America. I do not know -why we, whose profession it is to teach, whose -duty it is to interpret and to sympathize with -every motion of the American mind, should<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124"></a>[124]</span> -hesitate to speak out also in this matter. It is, -I think, demonstrable that America needs religion -as much as steel and automobiles, as -much as a better distribution of wealth and -cheaper bread and meat.</p> - -<p>The status of religion in America has been -as peculiar as the status of politics. Our religious -attitudes have been profoundly affected -and from early periods by the separation of -church and state. Struggle against a vested -institution, dissent from traditional power, conciliation -with sacred authority, have been burning -points in the modern history of Europe. -They have made great literature in England -from Shelley through Tennyson and Arnold -and Swinburne. Our first battle against the -tyrannical in tradition wherever found was won -in the Revolution; our second, in the defeat -of the Federalist party in 1800.</p> - -<p>In those contests we were freed, perhaps too -early and too easily, from the menace of the -church as a function of government. Since<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125"></a>[125]</span> -then we have been, and we still are, freer than -the European to seek religion wherever it may -be found. Our great religious literature is -creative, not protestant. Woolman of the -Quakers was a seeker; Emerson, in greater -measure, was a seeker, seeking spirituality for -Americans, and, like Woolman, fanning their -moral enthusiasms. Hawthorne and Thoreau -were searchers for a new morality; Whitman -and William James, in their fashion, searchers -also.</p> - -<p>Emerson in his religious attitude belongs a -century later than Matthew Arnold. Fed -from almost identical intellectual sources, he -is the liberated mind seeking new allegiances, -Arnold, the rebel not yet free. And in general -American religion, without reference to its -quality, has had, like American politics, a status -some generations ahead of the rest of the world. -Hamilton and Jefferson and Lincoln were -prophets for Europe. The independent sects -of America, none established, all respectable,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126"></a>[126]</span> -and the free seekers after new truth which -sprang from them, seem to have prefigured a -condition that is common in a world growing -democratic.</p> - -<p>In truth, we old Americans, who with all -our faults still best represent America, gained -freedom of conscience at the expense of shattering -the ideal of a church universal. Religion -for us came in general to be a personal -matter because the church, separated from the -state, lost the visible authority that made it -easy—or necessary—to trust to an institution -the responsibility for one’s soul. We felt, as -was to be expected, the need of new authority, -new sanctions for our religion. And we were -free, freer than others, to seek and to find a religion -for democracy. What has been the result?</p> - -<p>The results in bourgeois America, which -goes to the theater, wears the commonly advertised -collars, sends its children to college, -and keeps out of the slums and the police-court,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127"></a>[127]</span> -are clearly visible and highly significant. Four -classes, interlocking, but distinct enough for -definition, may be readily described; and though -they do not include the recent immigrant or the -fire-new sophists of radicalism, the strongest -brains, the most characteristic emotions, and -the best character in America belong there with -the mass of the mediocre undistinguished who -are public opinion and the ultimate America.</p> - -<p>There are, first, the militant advance-guards -of our idealism, the ethical enthusiasts who -carry on the moral fervor of America. They -range, like colors of the spectrum, from the -rarer violet of the philosophical moralists, inheritors -of the New England ethics or the Virginia -ideology, through the solid blue of the -organizers of great movements in social reform, -to the blatant red of the prohibitionists -and the Anti-tobacco League. I do not mean -to be flippant. The irony, if there is irony, is -bred of the sardonic humor aroused by so -various an army all certain that by stopping<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128"></a>[128]</span> -this and beginning that the world can be saved.</p> - -<p>It is their certainty that makes them impressive—the -same certainty which drove our -colonials toward republican government and -our pioneers to the conquest of a wilderness. -Sneers at their banner, “Progress,” satisfy -none but the reactionary. Progress where? -Who knows. Progress for whom? It is -hard to tell. But only the man who honestly -believes in civilization for the benefit of -the few can doubt the advance that has been -made. I should have preferred the twelfth -century to the twentieth if I could have lived in -the right Benedictine monastery or been a count -in Provence. I should have enjoyed the Elizabethan -age more than my own if I could have -voyaged—in the cabin—with Raleigh, been -Shakespeare’s patron, or possessed a manor -neither too near nor too far from London. I -still think that life in a good English college, -with a taste for letters and the proper port, -is superior to any mental or physical luxury<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129"></a>[129]</span> -we can offer in America. Yet all this is aside -from the point. Provençal poetry and perfect -social intercourse, high adventure, the intellectual -life in an appropriate physical setting, and -even good port, may come again somewhere on -the line along which our progress is marching. -In the meantime, though the war has been a -cooling card to optimism, the ethical enthusiasms -of the age have made the opportunities -of the average man for most good things in -life better, have made him, in the most accurate -sense of the word, not nobler, but more civilized, -and particularly in America, where the -fire of opportunity was first set burning.</p> - -<p>The moral enthusiasts whose religion has -been transformed into ethical idealism are safe -from ridicule. Religious persecution, slavery, -the tyranny of disease and ignorance, they have -already reformed out of the brighter parts of -the world, and perhaps alcoholism and poverty -are to follow. We can well afford to risk their -mistakes and their excesses, their blind trust in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130"></a>[130]</span> -works, so long as they are propelled by a sincere -energy of will to make the world better. But -what lies behind this will? What keeps it from -decaying? For these men are seldom religious -in the sense that their reforming zeal springs -from a deep spiritual need. A part of their -energy is moral habit; a part is exactly identical -with the energy that builds up a great industrial -plant in order to satisfy a craving for laudable -action. If the certainty that the community -must be bettered, can be bettered, should -slacken, where would it find revival? In faith, -hope, and charity? But can hope endure and -charity be permanent without faith? And -what is their faith?</p> - -<p>The faith of our moral idealists is as strong, -I suppose, as that which supported the Stoics -or the clear-sighted reformers of the eighteenth -century. They believe in the perfectability of -man and the pragmatic value of right-doing. -This, for a strong man, may be enough; but -it is not a religion. It is questionable whether<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131"></a>[131]</span> -it would stand adversity. It was not shaken -in the war, but it is shaking now. If the enthusiasm -of the reformers should be spent or -exhausted, they would have little to fall back -upon. Their idealism has already shown signs -of hysteria, spots of sentimentalism, evidences -of a basis in habit and impulse as much as in -deep spiritual conviction.</p> - -<p>It has become almost a commonplace to say -that the spiritual seekers, the second of our observable -classes—more numerous, I believe, -in America than elsewhere in the white world -since the seventeenth century—are products -of reaction against the dry moral will that -seeks its satisfaction in works, not faith. Yet -their importance has not always been grasped. -Commercial America has not only been the -home of the greatest of modern philanthropies, -but also the source of the only powerful religious -sect created in the nineteenth century, -as well as one of the few new strains in idealistic -philosophy. They are not happy in our<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132"></a>[132]</span> -commercialism or content with ethical reform, -those more sensitive spirits whose numbers and -weight in bourgeois America are evident whenever -an emotional crisis arrives. And the freedom -from ecclesiastical restraint which was -won for them by their ancestors has left them -free to construct new religions.</p> - -<p>But as it was the earnestness of the moral -enthusiasts that seemed more valuable than -any reason they had for goodness, so it is the -spiritual craving of American seekers that is -more impressive than anything they have -found. I do not undervalue the hopeful idealism -of Emerson or the strong protest of the -Christian Scientists against surrender to petty -worry and pain. Yet in so far as we may -generalize in so vast a matter, the seekers of -spirituality have been singularly out of harmony -with the needs of a democracy. They -have found religions that solace the optimistic -temperament when it has been duly intellectualized; -they have found medicine for the ills<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133"></a>[133]</span> -of prosperous people; but the breadth and often -the depth of appeal that must characterize a -religion for all men they have missed or failed -to seek. The Friends, later called Quakers, -began with the will that all the world should -become Friends; it was only in later stages that -they regarded themselves as a peculiar people -with whom only those fitted by temperament -should join. But it is with such an exclusiveness -that the seekers of to-day who promulgate -religion commence. One can prophesy in advance -who will or will not be Christian Scientists. -And beyond the bounds of sects the spiritual -adventure exhausts itself in emotional -vagaries, or rises into regions of pure mysticism -where, no matter how noble or how -satisfying it may be for individual persons, -we shall never find the religion for a democracy.</p> - -<p>The third group is again a result of that -early freeing of America from ecclesiastical -control; but its members are those whom such<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134"></a>[134]</span> -unchartered freedom tires. The reactionaries, -if I may call them by that name without offense -intended, are the lovers of tradition, whose -modern craving for the sanctions of religion -leads them back into dependence upon the old -rites, the old theologies, the old authority, -which many, indeed, never have left. They, -in our history, are the Federalists of religion.</p> - -<p>And, like the seekers, they, also, have put -restrictions of temperament upon their faith. -For many Americans of the old stock the breach -with authority made by the Reformation is -permanent. They could not go back without -an intellectual debasement that would be degradation, -not humility. For many others the -scientific revolution of the nineteenth century -has still further unfitted minds for harmony -with the forms and pressures of the ecclesiastical -past. Sheer scientific materialism as an -explanation of God and the universe has broken -down. The need for religion emerges from the -controversy more palpitating than before.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135"></a>[135]</span> -Nevertheless, the science of theology has suffered -from the science of inductive research. -Tradition carries many a man to the door of -past beauty, decorum, and harmonious faith, -and he longs to enter. But his way is barred. -He leans upon and loves the past. He cannot -enter it. The traditionalist, to give him a -better and more lovely name, has been a bringer -of joy to many; but, like the seeker, his help -has been partial only. He is a chaplain attendant -upon the regiments of his own faith.</p> - -<p>But by far the most significant product of -our precocious religiosity in America and our -early emancipation from ecclesiastical control -has been indifferentism—that American indifferentism -which has been easy because of -our willingness to be responsible for our own -evils, wide-spread because of our necessary -obsession with material development, defensible -in our century of good luck and the easy optimism -that accompanies it.</p> - -<p>Here lies the group by all odds the largest,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136"></a>[136]</span> -and certainly worthy of the most anxious -study. Here belongs the mass of everyday -Americans upon whom rests the outcome of the -immediate future. What lies beneath the -seeming religious indifference of the American -who is not ritualist, reformer, or seeker for -spiritual consolation, who is, in short, the average -American of office, mill, and law-court? -That is the crux of the problem.</p> - -<p>Indifferentism, of course, is the fashion of -the age, and fashions are always delusive. In -a Pullman smoker, watching the faces that, -like a day of south wind in July, are soggy, unillumined, -one despairs of one’s America. The -human product of too much selling and buying -has never been attractive; our half-education -and the semi-intelligence that accompanies it -have but defined the ill features, like careful -breeding of pig or goat. It was a novel principle -of primitive Christianity that lowliness -and poverty might hide the noblest soul. If -you followed these men home, saw their minds<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137"></a>[137]</span> -freed from the pressure of competition and out -of the atmosphere of distrust, would your opinion -alter? Are their religious instincts hidden -by the mask of American commercialism, inactive -merely because suppressed by custom -and fashion? Are they lying fallow? Or are -they like seed too long dormant and decaying?</p> - -<p>If only we knew by what ingenious statistics -these men might be classified, prophecy would -not be difficult. If only we knew how many -have become mere traffickers in bodily comfort, -sensualists in fact, whatever they may be -in name. If only we knew how many in their -hearts were dumb seekers for some spiritual -satisfactions that would raise the heart in adversity, -lift the mind above the necessity for -safety, pleasure, success, so that all might be -pursued, all enjoyed, without flatness and disillusion. -But no answer is ready; for there -has been no test of the latent religion of -America.</p> - -<p>It is true that in the mass of American indifferentism<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138"></a>[138]</span> -the suppressed religious instinct -exhibits itself by queer shoots of emotional enthusiasm -for high things whether in war or in -peace. It shows itself, or rather its suppression, -by unexpected sentimentalism in hard -places. It touches with melancholy many a -typical American face in which one would expect -to find self-satisfaction or arrogance. We -struggle with our religious emotions in youth, -suppress them in the middle years; in old age, -deep buried like a hidden disease, they torment -us. Old age is proverbially restless in America.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, the test that will reveal how -much religion is latent in our democracy has -not come yet; nor have our moral enthusiasms, -our spiritual adventures, our reachings for tradition, -been in our day really tested for the -spirit behind them. There is reason to believe -that the time is approaching. In a normal evolution -of the bourgeois society that has made -America, some clear revelation must have come<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139"></a>[139]</span> -of the religious spirit that as a race and a nation -we are developing. Doubtless we would -slowly have found our way to an expression -more true to our nature than any of the partial -modes so far allowed us. But there will be no -normal, or at least no slow, evolution in the -religious emotions of the old Americans. A -factor from without, a sudden emergency, calls -for an immediate reckoning of our spiritual assets. -All, in every class, who are responsible -for the American inheritance of ideals and -morale and character are challenged, but especially -the indifferents. Those neutrals in the -conflict between spirit and matter can stay neutral -no longer.</p> - -<p>Bourgeois America, which means most of -America, is, as every one sees, on the verge of -a revolution like the political-social revolution -of 1800. For a century we have pursued -economics, and now economics is pursuing us. -A new class is coming to the front, and yet that, -perhaps, is of minor importance in America,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140"></a>[140]</span> -where money and a little education extinguish -distinctions between classes in two decades. -What is coming with more significance is a new -social system, wherein a new control of industry -and a more equitable distribution of the -products thereof is to be substituted for competitive -individualism. Many are skeptical of -the proposed practices by which this revolution -is to be accomplished; few now doubt that its -theory is correct and will some day be demonstrated.</p> - -<p>But there has never been a revolution of any -kind in world history that did not bring with it -a revolution of all that tradition had established -and custom made familiar. And this revolution, -peaceful or otherwise, that is upon us differs -from earlier examples in that its economic -nature is clearly distinguished and, therefore, -its challenge to all that we term esthetic, cultural, -spiritual, religious, doubly sharp and direct. -Food, clothing, and recreation, not religious -or political liberty, are its legitimate, but<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141"></a>[141]</span> -also its only expressed, objects. If it gains -these at the expense of the soul—of what we all -understand by the soul in the ancient warning, -“What is a man profited, if he shall gain the -whole world, and lose his own soul?”—if it -gains material welfare and material welfare -only, it will fail; and if it fails, we all go down -with it.</p> - -<p>In western Europe, one guesses, the struggle -between a socialism always threatening to become -purely materialistic and our own imperfect -order will be differently conducted. -There, and, especially in France and Great -Britain, church organizations are powerful -politically, socially, and in their grip upon the -popular imagination. They will sharpen the -conflict and confuse the issues, making the -struggle seem to resemble many earlier combats -between church and anti-church. But in -bourgeois America no such easy and fallacious -division will be possible. Here the question as -to whether the new order is to satisfy the religious<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142"></a>[142]</span> -and moral, as well as the economic, -needs of society will rest squarely upon the individual -person. No church can speak for -America, for no church ever has held or ever -can hold Americans together. The responsibility -here, and ultimately in Europe, must be -personal. It will come to the question of how -much religion is possessed by the normal American. -When he is aroused by a struggle that -sweeps into far wider questions than the tariff -or the income tax, when his method of working, -his method of living, his method of thinking, -are all challenged by a new and militant -social order, more dormant idealism, more -latent cynicisms, intenser passions, will be -aroused than one would ever have suspected in -that shrewd and easy-going face in the Pullman -smoker. Will religion be aroused also?</p> - -<p>It is essential that we should bring about a -better distribution of wealth; that we should -give every child the equal opportunity that -Jefferson had in mind when he wrote the vague,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143"></a>[143]</span> -but magnificent, phrases of the Declaration of -Independence. Democracy cannot be said to -have been tried until we have made an economic -democracy, and we are too far on the road of -democratic experiment to stop half-way. But -it is even more essential that we should carry -on into the new community our moral enthusiasm, -our ideals, and also that reverence for -the shaping power, and love for its manifestations -that lie behind them, and constitute the religious -emotion which I shall not here attempt -otherwise to define. Many fear that the nice -taste, the trained mind, which have been borne -upon the crest of civilization, will go down in -the welter of indistinguishable breakers. -There is little danger of this, since already it -is the intellectuals who direct, and will direct, -the new movement; and the professional man -stands to gain as much as the laborer by a -peaceful revolution. But in a socialistic world, -built on the recovery of the unearned increment, -standardized by wages, whose <i>raison -d’être</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144"></a>[144]</span> is the distribution of wealth, it is the -religious instinct, with all that its free development -implies for democracy, that is in the gravest -danger. If we all become relatively rich—and -this is an idea of the earthly paradise that -socialism undoubtedly encourages—how many -will crawl through the eye of the needle?</p> - -<p>The labor party is not immediately responsible -for the saving or the freeing of the religious -instinct. Its first objectives are the -comforts and material opportunities of civilization; -and until these are reached we have no -right to expect religious leadership from the -proletariat. If any one is responsible, it is the -old American, the bourgeois American. He -has inherited the spiritual tradition of his ancestors; -he has profited by emancipation from -superstition and institutional tyranny; he has -lived in a comfortable world with opportunities -to illumine the spirit by literature and the arts -and education. He is not going to be crushed -or driven out of his inheritance; there are too<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145"></a>[145]</span> -many of him, and he too closely resembles in -everything but habit of life the proletariat that -is rising. Upon this American rests the -burden of spiritualizing as well as educating -his new masters—upon the moral enthusiasts, -the traditionalists, the seekers, most of all. It -is such a task as the church faced in the dark -ages, when barbarians had to be not only spiritualized, -but civilized as well. It is a lesser -task, for our new invaders are not barbarians, -and their leaders are intellectually the equal of -ours. Whether the outlook for success is -greater, depends upon the spirit we bring to the -enterprise. Our knowledge is greater; is our -will that man should make more than a market -of his time, sleeping and feeding, as great as the -great wills of earlier centuries?</p> - -<p>No one can answer; but of this we can be assured, -that the solution rests in American indifferentism. -If the commercial American is -as material as he looks, if common sense is his -only good, if his idealism is merely inherited<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146"></a>[146]</span> -habit, if he responds to two impulses only, restlessness -and sentimentality, then he will go over -to socialism in its most mechanical phase and, -instead of saving the new party, he will ruin it. -Potentially the most ardent supporters of a -purely materialistic socialism, in which the individual -person counts for nothing aside from -his appetites, are precisely the “practical” business -men who now curse the new order most -loudly because it threatens their accumulations. -For them it is civil war between seekers for the -dollar; and civil war is always the bitterest, and -the soonest healed. Such men have been our -leaders. Is the army behind them?</p> - -<p>I think that the rank and file of bourgeois -America are less concerned with wealth and the -struggle for wealth than we suppose. I think -that they are not so much dazzled by millions -as in the ’nineties; more anxious for simplicity -of heart, which spells content, and worthiness -of aim, which satisfies conscience, than one -would guess from Wall Street or Broadway or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147"></a>[147]</span> -public life in the Middle West. I think that, -while distrusting the economic paradise of the -more material socialists, they are closer in sympathy -to a thoughtful laborer than to a cynical -capitalist. If the religious instinct among -them emerges as a disgust for petty emotions, -as a passionate interest in humanity, as a willingness -to sacrifice privilege and prejudice for -a fuller life more generously shared, if the religion -of our democracy finds no more expression -than this, the crisis will pass. If even -thus far indifferentism should yield to active -spiritual faith, the bourgeoisie would cease -being bourgeois, and we could cease to fear the -triumph of the proletariate, since, if there was -anything good in our old stock, we could convert -them to it.</p> - -<p>But if the American has lost his religious -instincts, if behind his practical common sense -and his vigorous idealism and his eager experiments -in spirituality there is nothing but a restless -energy working upon the momentum of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148"></a>[148]</span> -convictions long dead, then let the new Americans -absorb us quickly, for we are worn out.</p> - -<p>With all humbleness, with a full realization -of the trivialities of hustle and bustle in which -we have sunk our religion, with concern for -our escape from easy-going optimism and skeptical -content, I, for one, feel too sure of the -depth of our racial legacy of reverence, and the -fundamental religiosity of the American character -at its truest, to admit for a moment that -conclusion of despair.</p> -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149"></a>[149]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VI<br /> - - -<small>LITERATURE IN AMERICA</small></h2></div> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="first">“Fix’t in sublimest thought behold them rise</div> -<div class="verse">World after world unfolding to their eyes,</div> -<div class="verse">Lead, light, allure them thro’ the total plan</div> -<div class="verse">And give new guidance to the paths of man.”</div> -</div></div> - - -<p class="drop-cap">THESE were the modest aspirations for -American genius, and especially American -literary genius, expressed by Joel Barlow, -the once famous author, in his “Columbiad” of -1807.</p> - -<p>It was not a democratic literature, as we understand -the term, that Barlow, and hundreds -of others on both sides of the Atlantic, hoped -and expected to see arise in the new republic. -It was not a literature that would interpret the -homely, though vigorous, personality of a new -nation. Nothing so concrete and so commonplace<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150"></a>[150]</span> -as this would have raised their ardor to -such a pitch. The excitable critics of that day -were concerned with the absolute, the ideal, and -the abstract. Liberty, not equality, had at last -found a dwelling-place, and the free spirit of -man was to expand in an illimitable continent -as never before, and create the poetry of -freedom and the epic of liberated mankind. -But their vast expectations were based upon a -misconception and surrounded by fallacies. -They have not been realized; and this is one -reason for the prevailing idea that literary -America has been a disappointment, that the -life of the mind in America has lagged behind -its opportunities, that we are a backward -race in literature and the arts. We seem -children to-day beside the dreams of our -ancestors.</p> - -<p>It is easy enough to see now that a race which -had to construct a nation in a continent in large -part scarcely habitable was not ready to sing the -epic of freedom. Freedom had been won, but<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151"></a>[151]</span> -whether it would be possible to possess and enjoy -it depended not upon lyrical interpretation, -but upon statecraft, the broadax, toil, transportation, -and the rifle. And when the pioneering -days were over, political freedom, freedom -of conscience and the individual man, belonged -as truly to other great nations who were equally -entitled to create the literature of the free mind. -To expect the ideals of liberty to appear in -American literature was legitimate, but to look -for a great poetic outburst in nineteenth-century -America just because this republic first -established a new political order was no more -reasonable than to demand a new style in architecture -from the erectors of the first capitol in -the trans-Alleghany wilderness.</p> - -<p>What should have been asked of us, at least -after the defeat of the Federalist party had -made certain, what before was only probable, -that America would become a democracy, was -a literature which should express the ideals pervading -our particular brand of democratic life,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152"></a>[152]</span> -a literature which should describe a society in -which social distinctions were elastic, opportunity -was superabundant, and, for the first -time in the modern world, the common people -become more powerful than the uncommon. A -democratic literature could rightly have been -expected from America. But such a literature -would never have been termed “sublimest -thought” by our early enthusiasts. It would -have to suffer from the tawdriness of the -masses, and develop as slowly as they develop. -It would have to be more prose than poetry, for -American life outwardly was prosaic except -upon its borders, and often gross and barbarous -there. It would have to struggle upward like -a flapping heron, not soar like the eagle of our -dreams. And in the earlier period, perhaps in -most periods of the republic, few literary -dreamers even wished that America should become -a democracy.</p> - -<p>In many respects we got, and got very soon, -such a literature, and much of it has endured.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153"></a>[153]</span> -The prose or poetry that took upon itself to let -the eagle scream for liberty has quite generally -gone into oblivion, and with reason; it is either -crude and blatant, or solemn and hackneyed -pretentiousness, like Barlow’s “Columbiad” -and much of Dwight’s “Conquest of Canaan.” -The “less enraptured” strains of Irving and -Hawthorne and Clemens and Holmes and -Bret Harte, in which the hopes, the prejudices, -the idiosyncrasies, and the passions of a nascent -civilization were expressed in prose as well as -poetry, and in humor more frequently than in -epic grandeur, have had a thousand times more -virility. They have sprung from a social and -esthetic need, not a romantic conception, and -though not an epoch-making celebration of -freedom finally brought to earth, they have been -a solid contribution to the literature of the -world and a beginning of the literature of the -American democracy.</p> - -<p>The real issue of course was not Freedom -and Liberty and the other capitalizations of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154"></a>[154]</span> -abstract, but we, the Americans. And the real -question is whether American literature has -met its proper, not its assumed, specifications. -If one considers the past, the answer inclines -toward the affirmative.</p> - -<p>There have been two chief strains in American -literature, not always distinct, but in origin -different. In the first belong those writers -whose dominant purpose has been to appeal to -the best in the many; and by the best I mean -the finest or the deepest emotions, and by the -many I mean the accessible minds of the democracy. -Emerson belongs primarily here, -and Hawthorne, and, though he would have -denied it, Whitman. Henry James in his -earlier stories is a lovable example; and when -he pursued his magical art into realms where -only the trained appreciation could follow, -Mrs. Wharton put on the mantle. In the -second have been the more numerous writers -whose chief purpose, not always a conscious -one, has been to touch and interest and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155"></a>[155]</span> -arouse not so much the best as the commonest, -the most universal emotions. Cooper is the -most excellent example of great writing in this -group. Mark Twain when not misanthropic, -Bret Harte in all moods, Whittier and Longfellow, -Riley and 0. Henry, and a host of the -less distinguished, also belong there.</p> - -<p>But far more important than this division in -purpose, which, after all, is hard to make and -harder still to keep, is the fact, if one may speak -of high esthetic matters in a biological fashion, -of constant cross-fertilization between these -strains, and especially in the men we call great. -Americans who felt impelled to write of the -ideal best have not forgotten the needs of a nation -slowly moving toward democracy. Those -who wrote to amuse and interest the populace -have felt in a curious fashion their responsibility -for what they considered American -ideals. Tribute has been paid by both sides, -though each in its own fashion, to democracy; -and this makes an unexpected congruity between<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156"></a>[156]</span> -appeals to the best and satisfactions for -the many, between Emerson and popular fiction. -The scholar presents his idealistic optimism as -an attempt to explain where the eager swarm -ought to be winging. The story-teller, though -inspired not by ideas, but by the chance to interest -an energetic society absorbed in the conquest -of nature and hot-blooded with the taste -of success, yet feels bound to urge what he -feels to be American morality and American -idealism.</p> - -<p>This common sympathy with democracy is -the hope of American literature in the sharp -tests of our nationality now almost upon us. -Emerson and Cooper, Hawthorne and Mark -Twain, are examples of what once it could do.</p> - -<p>Emerson was a man who never courted or -obtained popularity, who hitched his readers to -a star instead of a plot or a sensation, who -wrote always for minds that may have been -democratic, but certainly could not have been -common. Cooper, like Shakespeare, was an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157"></a>[157]</span> -aristocrat in tastes, a democrat by sympathy -and conviction, whose stories, even his bad -stories, contained that essential adventure, that -rapid and unexpected and successful action, -which satisfies the universal craving for struggle -well ended, stories so popular that his enemies -were entranced by them even while they -abused him.</p> - -<p>The contrast is sharp. And yet, if the greatness -of Emerson is the airy strength of his -ideology, his permanence in the history of -American civilization is determined by the expression -he gave to the moral optimism of the -typical American. And if the popularity of -Cooper was due to the unflagging interest of -his adventure and the romance of his actors -and his scenes, nevertheless what makes him -more than a good story-teller and gives him -great place in the social history of America is -his incarnation of the ideals and the morality -of a native democracy in Deerslayer, whom all -Americans could understand and admire.</p> - - - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158"></a>[158]</span>Or consider Hawthorne and Mark Twain. -Hawthorne was a moralist romancer whose -austere talents forced admiration and a somewhat -doubtful popularity. Twain touched the -universal note of humorous exaggeration so -early and so readily that his stern moral basis -went unremarked. Men read him for humor -as they read Cooper for romance, absorbing -the ideas of each as unconsciously as the child -takes medicine in a sugared glass.</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, if in Hawthorne the burden of -lofty moral ideals is more evident than any appeal -to the masses, yet the most careless reader -feels that his warnings are for a new world that -has broken with tradition and must face its -problems of sin and sex in a democracy of conscience. -And if Mark Twain writes obviously -to amuse the democracy, yet he seldom fails to -preach to them also. “Huckleberry Finn,” to -the loving, thoughtful reader, is among other -things an epic of the injustice, the inconsistency -of sophisticated man and his social system, seen<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159"></a>[159]</span> -through the eyes of the new world on the -Mississippi, where tradition, in the fresh, crude -light, showed its seams of decay. There is a -tract upon slavery in “Huckleberry Finn,” and -another upon dueling, and a third on social distinctions, -and a fourth upon conventionalized -religion. And readers of Clemens will not -forget how the bones of his acrid philosophy -wore through the skin of his humor in those -later books, especially in “The Mysterious -Stranger,” where a hatred of social injustice -and the melancholy foreboding which has always -accompanied the optimism of American -democracy had such full escape that the publishers -were led to print it as a fairytale for -children that it might be enjoyed by minds too -unobservant to trouble with its warnings.</p> - -<p>I do not wish to seem to be docketing all -American literature in these brief comparisons. -What I desire is to point to this common -interest of our writers in the needs of -democracy. Whitman, who wrote always for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160"></a>[160]</span> -the most vigorous and sometimes for the best -emotions of the many, might continue the argument. -Howells, whose zest for the familiar -experience kept his penetrating intellect busy -with problems important for democracy, is another -example. Poe, and Henry James in his -later years, fall without both groups, being as -indifferent to democracy as they are solicitous -for art. That is their distinction. Indeed, it -is by such men that the writers who sway the -masses are trained in the technique of their -craft.</p> - -<p>In short, by and large, our literature is remarkable -for its substructure of what might be -called democratic idealism—idealism applied to -the needs of a growing democracy. If the -reader doubts, let him compare Emerson with -Carlyle, Cooper with Scott, Hawthorne with -Tennyson, Whitman with Browning, and answer -whether our writers have not been formed -by the social needs of America.</p> - -<p>That this is true of so many men, and has<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161"></a>[161]</span> -led to the cross-fertilization between popular -writers and intellectuals of which I have written -above, is perhaps more readily explained -when one considers how homogeneous our society -has been, how few and how slight its -mental cleavages. Conservative and radical, -traditionalist and anti-traditionalist, democrat -and aristocrat—such clefts have not gone so -deep with us as with other nations. Except for -times of stress, as in the decade between 1765 -and 1775, or in the years just before the Civil -War, it would be hard to group, for example, -our writers by fundamental differences in their -philosophy of living. Whitman one could -classify, and Poe and Irving, but the difficulty -rapidly increases as the list lengthens. We -have been homogeneous by a common tradition -of liberalism, by a common environment -varying not too greatly between Boston and the -newer West. And our literature has resembled -us.</p> - -<p>And now, when at last our literature, like our<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162"></a>[162]</span> -politics and our economics, must at last -challenge world scrutiny, this national character, -and all that represents it, has come suddenly -to seem of vast importance. We have -become vividly aware of it, and we realize that -we are in dire need of self-expression—of self-expression -by new literature. The self-consciousness -of Americans throughout the nineteenth -century, which showed itself keenly in -their restlessness under foreign criticism and -their irrepressible desire to talk about God’s -country, was of a different kind. It was due to -a nervous uncertainty as to the success of the -American experiment. We were more concerned -with what others thought of our qualities -than with what we were or had been. But -three things have altered our situation radically, -and made us think more of character and -less of reputation.</p> - -<p>The first is the absolute success, as success is -measured by the world’s finger, of this American -experiment. The hope of the founders to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163"></a>[163]</span> -establish a stable and prosperous republican -government where life, property, conscience, -and opinion were safe has been realized.</p> - -<p>The second and more sensational change -came from the Great War, which gave us that -quiet confidence in our national strength that -comes when recognition from without confirms -the fact and makes self-assertion unnecessary.</p> - -<p>The third, and probably the most important, -has been the rise to intellectual influence and -cultural and social power of aliens—Irish, German, -most of all Jews—who, unlike the earlier -immigrants, do not cherish as their chief wish -the desire to become in every sense American. -Such phenomena as an Alexander Hamilton or -Thomas Paine, becoming almost from the day -of their landing more native than the natives, -are becoming rarer and rarer. More and -more we must count upon cosmopolitans of -brains and ability among us who know not Israel, -though they may love the traditions of -their home lands even less. It is this new<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164"></a>[164]</span> -America, heterogeneous, brilliant, useful, but -disturbing, that has more than anything else -sharpened the self-consciousness of America, -turned us toward introspection, made us sensible -of our homogeneity, and the new alignments -inevitable for the future.</p> - -<p>And just as at the turn of the eighteenth -century enthusiasts were clamoring for a new -literature from America, in which freedom and -liberty should have their apotheosis, so now the -awakened consciousness of Americans of the -older stock is clamoring for the expression of -what they vaguely denominate, and still more -vaguely describe, as Americanism. Like all -such terms called forth by a crisis and displayed -like a flag or a button, the term is at the same -time indefinite and full of significance. Ten -men and women will in ten different ways define -it. And yet none can doubt that vast feeling -lies behind the word, and would crystallize, -if power were given it, into an expression of our -national experience and aspirations and ideals<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165"></a>[165]</span> -as we have lived with them and seen them develop -for a century.</p> - -<p>And opposed to this clamor for a literature -of Americanism is another call, not loud yet, -but rising—a demand for a different literature, -mordant, sophisticated, cosmopolitan, which -will cut at the sentimentalities in which our -idealism has involved us, strike at the moribund -liberalism which we still regard as our basis of -action, take issue with the moral standards that -have been received as irrevocable because they -were American. Keenly aware of the need for -a more honest and more vigorous expression of -what America means to-day, and sensitive to -these caustic attacks upon all that we have -called American, the thoughtful mind finds -little to console it in the clever, sentimental writing -which, with sewing machines, dental pastes, -ready-made clothes, and cheap motor-cars, has -become one of the standardized products of -America.</p> - -<p>There has been one response already to the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166"></a>[166]</span> -awakening national consciousness, and this, -curiously enough, has been almost identical -with the reaction of the new republic a century -and more ago to its responsibilities. Then the -first writing which commanded attention here -and abroad was to be found in so-called state -papers, declarations of Congress and legislatures, -pamphlets by Adams and Hamilton and -Jefferson. And the first response to our -modern clamor for Americanism has also been -in state papers, beginning perhaps with Roosevelt’s -administration and continuing through -Wilson’s messages and the many documents on -the war. The worth and significance of many -of these public utterances have commanded -world-wide respect, and possible permanence in -literature.</p> - -<p>Yet it is rarely that state papers can satisfy -a national need for literature. They are too -restricted in their interests and too occasional -in their provenance. It is only once in a -century that a Gettysburg Address sums up the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167"></a>[167]</span> -political and moral philosophy of millions or a -discourse on the needs and obligations of democracy -unites public opinion in America and -Europe. The emotions of the race seek outlet -and interpretation in pure literature, and here -the American response is more doubtful.</p> - -<p>None of the more popular brands of contemporary -writing seems to satisfy the craving -for national self-expression. It is true that we -are going in for universals. Our books reach -the hundred thousands, and our magazines the -millions. The successful writer of plays, -stories, or special articles trades in the thoughts -that circulate through a vast community of -common education, experience, and environment. -The result is to spread and perpetuate -the ideals and the liberal hopes that we call -American, but also to stereotype and thus -weaken their influence. They become counters -in a game, or, better still, standardized foods -for the imagination, whose popularity is certain -until the fashion wears out. The writer of adventurous<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168"></a>[168]</span> -fiction to-day uses the same formulas -as did Cooper, because he writes for a people -still true to the mold of that America which -they have inherited directly in family life, or -indirectly in the schools. But his idealism is -faint beside Cooper’s; his “strong, simple -Americans” too often mere fabrications when -compared with Deerslayer, or crude, vulgarized -approximations, like sculptures of the -decadent fourth century. Vulgarization is the -menace of democratic literature—vulgarization -by smart and cheap short stories, by plays -where the wit is raw, the sentiment mushy, the -characters, like their language, cheap and mean. -Slang can be racy; colloquialism belongs to a -literature of the people; to be homely is often -to be lovable and true: but a literature, no matter -how moral, which in its lack of clarity and -sweetness is like a glass of dirty water, is a -heavy price to pay for mere circulation. The -appeal to universals is essential in a democracy, -but unless clarified by love and hope and conviction,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169"></a>[169]</span> -it leads toward universal vulgarity.</p> - -<p>Nor does the prospect cheer if one looks to -the contemporary Brahmins, who seek not the -universal, but the particular; who write for the -best, not the broadest, emotions of democracy. -Lowells and Emersons have not yet reappeared -in our society. No Emerson has philosophized -the reactions of America to international obligation; -no Lowell assailed militarist and pacifist -alike in the war; no Whitman even has sung -commonplace America become momentarily -heroic in the cause of a half-understood democracy. -We have had an abundance of writing -directed to fine minds and fine souls, but it has -lacked the authentic note of national inspiration.</p> - -<p>Perhaps the coldness of our intellectual -literature has been due to the specialization of -the age. A Lowell, an Emerson, even a Longfellow, -has been difficult for the last three -decades. Learned men, like these, have been -driven by the public opinion of their world<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170"></a>[170]</span> -toward investigation and scientific research. -They have been weighted with a frightful responsibility -for facts; they have been better -scholars than their predecessors, but less effective -citizens. The tool-cutter nowadays knows -only his own operation. The scholar and -philosopher have a lifetime of labor assigned -them, with no time to become acquainted with -their United States. In nineteenth-century -America there was little place for the scholar. -He was driven into the world, and if scholarship -lost, we profited. Now his corner is built -for him, and he has gone into it.</p> - -<p>As a result of all this we face a very real -danger. American literature, with its burden -of ideals and experience, being cheapened -by writers for the mob and deserted by the -academician, may lose its virility and pale before -a new literature of cosmopolitanism, which -could find no better breeding-place than Chicago -or New York.</p> - -<p>Artistically, this might be no calamity.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171"></a>[171]</span> -Such a society as a great American city -presents has never before been seen in the -world, not even in Rome, and the international -democracy which it forecasts is worthy already -of a great literature, has, indeed, already begun -one. But we old Americans, even though our -age is of only two generations, are not yet ready -for international democracy. Our own racial -character has not received its final stamp, come -to full self-expression, established itself as the -permanent influence upon the world’s development -which our career and our opportunities -should make it. To rush into literary internationalism -before the long American experience -has ripened into a national democracy would be -to skip a step. It is to commit again the error -of our forefathers, who proposed an epic of -liberty before we had freed ourselves from the -burden of economic development.</p> - -<p>And what we need is precisely such a cross-fertilization -between the mind that reaches for -the best and the imagination which feels for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172"></a>[172]</span> -the many, as one finds in varying measures in -Mark Twain and Holmes, in Cooper and Whitman -and Emerson. It must be a different and -perhaps a more mature product, but nothing -else can make American ideals worth saving in -literature, for nothing else can grasp the -shrewd native quality of this people, which is -still pervasive through all our alien swarms.</p> - -<p>For three centuries now we have been at our -experiment in democracy. We have been -sordid and we have been magnificent. We -have been timorous and we have set examples -for hardihood in man. We have stumbled -blindly on our road, and we have had great -moments of illumination. We have not made -a perfect democracy, but perhaps more men, -women, and children have been happy in -America than elsewhere in world history. -And on the whole our course has been consistently -onward. No purpose of the founders has -failed to continue; no valuable element of character -has yet been lost by the way. We are no<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173"></a>[173]</span> -worse men, by and large, than our forefathers. -And either this great experiment is worth something -or it is not.</p> - -<p>If it is worth something, it must pass into -literature, and find men to make it pass. And -these men and women must be lovers of what -we have done here and what we are, as the -young poets of England at war were above all -lovers of their blessed England. They cannot -be scoffers at our loose-held ideals and our -nervous commercialism, who scold, which is -easy, a great, though uneven, nation, but do not -search out the cause of its greatness and proclaim -its hope. Nor can they be recluses contemptuous -of that public in whose progressive -refinement lies the only chance for democracy. -Nor mere buyers and sellers of emotion who -have learned the speech of the great beast, as -Hamilton called the common people, only to -make profit by it.</p> - -<p>But you cannot summon a literature from -the vasty deep by calling for it in oratorical<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174"></a>[174]</span> -vein. Perhaps, even now as I write, some wise -youth, who takes his task more seriously than -himself, has begun in humor a poem that is -meant for some newspaper column, but will become -a better description than an essay can -give of the American who has been doing so -much, but thinking also, who still knows how -to grin at misfortune, and is not yet ready to -declare himself bankrupt in ideas, deficient in -character, or pallid in imaginative faith. As -a nation we did our boasting early and got it -out of our system; but the confidence and the -strength and the hope that inspired that boasting -remain, and approach fruition.</p> -<hr class="chap" /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175"></a>[175]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VII<br /> - - -<small>THE BOURGEOIS AMERICAN</small></h2></div> - - -<p class="drop-cap">IN the preceding chapters there has been -much said of conservatism and radicalism, -of idealism and the religious instinct, of literature -that expresses the soul of a race. Nevertheless, -when we look about in this our America, -it is painfully clear that not these absolutes -but man who makes and possesses them must -chiefly concern us. It is the American who will -make or break his religion, his literature, his -politics. He is the entity. He is our destiny.</p> - -<p>And therefore one comes back after a survey -of American traits, their strengths, and their -weaknesses, to the man himself. Can we name -him in this hive of millions? Can we find an -everyday American that will be accepted here -as typical, and be recognized abroad? If there<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176"></a>[176]</span> -is such a type, it will be among the middle class, -the bourgeois Americans, that we shall discover -it. The landholding aristocracy has passed. -The moneyed aristocracy is in the best (and -sometimes in the worst) sense bourgeois. Cosmopolitans -are few. The intellectual aristocracy -is but half emerged, like a statue of -Rodin’s, from the common clay.</p> - -<p>What we find now is the middle class incarnate. -What we may expect soon is the -finished product of bourgeois life in America. -For it is clear that this life is now in full career. -We exult in it, and its characteristic virtues. -We deprecate aristocracy. We heap scorn -upon the proletariat and persecute its prophets. -Better evidence still, no sooner does a new -group rise to security in our social system than -it becomes visibly bourgeois, and, what is more -important, mentally bourgeois. This has been -true of the railway employees, the carpenters, -the plumbers, the tenant farmers, and many -others. It has been also true of the “aristocracy”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177"></a>[177]</span> -in the old sense of the word, whether native -or European. They have come into the -fold, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes at a run -with poverty barking behind them. All these -groups have been captured by the dominant -class. And if the nature of our industrial -system still keeps them in alignment against the -capitalist (who is the soul of bourgeoisie) or -dependent upon him, nevertheless they think as -he does on all questions not involving work and -wages, and especially in religion, politics, and -morality. They act as he does; and the labor -groups are coming to fight as he does, and for -the same ends.</p> - -<p>All major influences in our American life -seem to be directed toward this consummation, -which is triumphant, or dismal, according to -your point of view. The racial factor may -seem to be an exception, but is not. It is true -that as the old American assimilates more and -more non-Teutonic and non-Latin races to his -way of living, his psychology alters, and his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178"></a>[178]</span> -habits are likely to follow. It is also true that -the immigrant belongs prevailingly to the -peasantry or the proletariat. But the immigrant -has substantially no influence upon the -dominant class until he is Americanized. And -he is not Americanized in any true sense until -he leaves his quarter and begins to read the -papers, go to the theatres, eat the food, talk -the talk, and think the thoughts of the American; -in a word, until he becomes bourgeois. -And in the majority of cases this takes at least -one generation.</p> - -<p>Economic conditions, on the other hand, -favor this triumph of the bourgeoisie. We -seem to be entering upon a period when a vastly -greater number of men and women will have -reasonable security of moderate income. But -security of a moderate income, which means a -guaranteed mediocrity, is the mainstay, is almost -the cause, of the bourgeois spirit, just as -privilege was the support of the aristocracy. -And if in the next generation ten times as many<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179"></a>[179]</span> -families can count on a cost plus basis of living, -this will but increase the middle class. It will -make, to be sure, more education, more refinement, -and perhaps more cerebration possible; -but such a circumstance will not radically affect -the character of the typical American.</p> - -<p>Culturally, we already see the results of the -many influences which are making the United -States bourgeois in warp and woof. Our traits -are not the fine exclusiveness, the discrimination, -the selfishness of an aristocracy. Nor are -they the social solidarity, the intellectual democracy, -the intolerance of a proletariat. One -finds rather individualism in opinion and unity -in thought. One finds conservatism in institutions -and radicalism in personal ambitions. -One finds a solid, though dull morality, a distrust -of ideas, a plentiful lack of taste, an -abundance of the homely virtues of industry, -truth telling, optimism, idealism, and charity, -which, in an age that suits such talents, make a -man healthy, wealthy, and, in his own generation,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180"></a>[180]</span> -wise. Such a cultural level, and such a -national character are becoming more and more -familiar in America.</p> - -<p>There must be some peak ahead; some top -of the curve when the bourgeois spirit, even in -the United States, will have reached the climax -of its power, and the height of its vigor, and -will begin to lose its sharpness of outline, and -to give way to the spirit of the next age, be -that what it may.</p> - -<p>This peak is perhaps nearer than we suppose. -What will happen afterwards lies in darkness, -but must depend in some measure upon the -temper of the bourgeoisie; and as America bids -fair to be the capital of Bourgeoisia, upon the -temper of America. The question may be -posed this way. Are we, who are no longer -the middle class, since there is no power other -than spiritual or intellectual above us, are we -proposing to imperialize, or to federalize the -world which we dominate?</p> - -<p>Is the bourgeois conception of security for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181"></a>[181]</span> -all, and superiority (other than economic) for -none, to be forced upon the years ahead? Is -our democracy, as Brooks Adams thinks, a -democracy of degradation, a level to which all -must be either lifted, or lowered? Will we -hold back, as long as our power lasts, the proletariat, -feeding them, clothing them, converting -them, but suppressing them, so that we may -be secure? Will we tyrannize the exceptional -in art, in literature, in statesmanship, in pure -thinking, freezing it by distrust, or exploiting -it for sensation and reducing its fruits to vulgarity? -Will we resolve religion into a social -emotion and poetry to rhythmic prose? Must -the poor fragments of the privileged classes -that still remain, and the little shopkeepers, and -the teachers with their hankerings after an intellectual -aristocracy, and the skilled workman -with the feverish zeal of a new convert to security -still upon him—must they all unite with the -industrial magnate in a holy alliance of things -as they are to crush into uniformity a humanity<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182"></a>[182]</span> -where only rebels against our authority and the -uncivilized remain?</p> - -<p>This would be the imperialism of the bourgeoisie. -And neither our churches, which are -rigidly bourgeois, nor our universities, which -are ponderously bourgeois, and both trading in -security, offer leadership that guarantees -escape.</p> - -<p>Or will we attempt to federalize this world -that apparently we have conquered, allowing -autonomy for races of ideas, nations of customs, -and room enough for plantations of new -desires in our fat fields? Will we tolerate fineness, -encourage variety, permit heresy, prepare -for change? It is said by way of compliment -that here in America we have neither aristocrats -nor peasants. Will we preserve, or destroy, -the peasant virtues, the ideas of the -aristocrat, the desires of the intellectual. Will -we make possible a nation where to be average -is not the highest good?</p> - -<p>I have no answer, naturally. There is no<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183"></a>[183]</span> -reply that can now be formulated. But the solution -is already present in the problem itself. -It is to be found in men and women, in boys -and girls especially, who will belong to the new -order and who will answer in their time. If -you wish to speculate upon what will become -of the post-bellum American, whose traits as -they exist to-day have been the subject of this -book, study, on the one hand, the younger -leaders in the labor parties, and on the other, -the college undergraduates. In them lies the -future.</p> - - -<p> </p> -<hr class="chap" /> -<p> </p> -<div class="transnote"> - -<p class="ph3">TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:</p> - - -<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.</p> - -<p>Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.</p> - -<p>Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.</p> - -<p>The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber and is entered into the public domain.</p> - -</div> - -<p> </p> -<hr class="pgx" /> -<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVERYDAY AMERICANS***</p> -<p>******* This file should be named 63090-h.htm or 63090-h.zip *******</p> -<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> -<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/3/0/9/63090">http://www.gutenberg.org/6/3/0/9/63090</a></p> -<p> -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed.</p> - -<p>Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law 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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