during the cosmopolitan period that the nation has gone through. Just as
foreign architecture was imitated, so the treasures of foreign countries
in art and decoration were secured at any price; and owing to the great
wealth, the most valuable things were bought, often without intelligent
appreciation, but never without a stimulating effect. One is often
surprised to find famous European paintings in private houses, often in
remote Western cities; and the fact that for many years Americans have
been the best patrons of art in the markets of the world, could not have
been without its results. At the height of this collecting period
American art itself probably suffered: a moderately good French picture
was preferred to a better American picture; but all these treasures have
indirectly benefited native art, and still do benefit it, so much that
the better artists of the country are much opposed to the absurd
protective tariff that is laid on foreign works of art. The Italian
palace of Mrs. Gardner in Boston contains the most superb private
collection; but just here one sees that the cosmopolitan period of
collection and imitation is, after all, merely an episode in the history
of American art. An Italian palace has no organic place in New England,
although the artistic merits of the Gardner collection are perhaps
nowhere surpassed.
The temporary exhibitions which are just now much in fashion have,
perhaps, more influence than the permanent museums. Every large city has
its annual exhibitions, and in the artistic centres, one special
collection comes after another. And the strongest general stimulation
has emanated from the great expositions. When the nation visited
Philadelphia in 1876, the American artistic sense was just waking up,
and the impetus there started was of decisive significance. It is said
that the taste for colour in household decoration and fittings, for
handsome carpets and draperies, came into the country at that time. When
Chicago built its Court of Honour in 1893, which was more beautiful than
what Paris could do seven years later, the country became for the first
time aware that American art could stand on its own feet, and this
æsthetic self-consciousness has stimulated endeavour through the entire
nation. In Chicago, for the first time, the connection between
architecture and sculpture came properly to be appreciated; and, more
than all else, the art of the whole world was then brought into the
American West, and that which previously had been familiar only to the
artistic section between Boston and Washington was offered to the masses
in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Missouri. Chicago has remained since
that time one of the centres of American architecture, and the æsthetic
level of the entire West was raised, although it is still below that of
the Eastern States. And once more, after a very short pause, St. Louis
is ambitious enough to try the bold experiment which New York and
Boston, like Berlin and Munich, have always avoided. The World’s Fair at
St. Louis will surely give new impetus to American art, and especially
to the artistic endeavour of the Western States.
If a feeling for art is really to pervade the people, the influence must
not begin when persons are old enough to visit a world’s fair, but
rather in childhood. The instruction in drawing, or rather in art, since
drawing is only one of the branches, must undertake the æsthetic
education of the youth in school. It cannot be denied that America has
more need of such æsthetic training of children than Germany. The
Anglo-Saxon love of sport leads the youth almost solely to the bodily
games which stimulate the fancy much less than the German games of
children, and other influences are also lacking to direct the children’s
emotional life in the road of æsthetic pleasure. On the other hand, it
must be admitted that the problem has been well solved in America. The
American art training in school, say on the Prang system, which more
than 20,000 teachers are using in class instruction, is a true
development of the natural sense of beauty. The child learns to observe,
learns technique, learns the value of lines and colours, and learns,
more than all, to create beauty. In place of merely copying he divides
and fills a given space harmoniously, and so little by little goes on to
make small works of art. Generations which have enjoyed such influences
must look on their environment with new eyes, and even in the poorest
surroundings instinctively transform what they have, in the interests of
beauty.
Corresponding to these popular stimulations of the sense of beauty is
the wish to decorate the surroundings of daily life, most of all the
interior; even in more modest circles to make them bright, pleasing, and
livable, whereas they have too long been bare and meaningless. The arts
and crafts have taken great steps forward, have gotten the services of
true artists, and accomplished wonderful results. The glittering glasses
of Tiffany and many other things from his world-famous studios are
unsurpassed. There are also the wonderfully attractive silver objects of
Gorham, the clay vases of the Rockwood Pottery, objects in cut-glass and
pearl, furniture in Old English and Colonial designs, and much else of a
similar nature. And for the artistic sense it is more significant and
important that at last even the cheap fabrics manufactured for the large
masses reveal more and more an appreciation of beauty. Even the cheap
furniture and ornaments have to-day considerable character; and no less
characteristic is the general demand, which is much greater than that of
Europe, for Oriental rugs. The extravagant display of flowers in the
large cities, the splendid parks and park-ways such as surround Boston,
the beautification of landscapes which Charles Eliot has so admirably
effected, and in social life the increasing fondness for coloured and
æsthetic symbols, such as the gay academic costumes, the beautiful
typography and book-bindings, and a thousand other things of the same
sort, indicate a fresh, vigorous, and intense appreciation of beauty.
While such a sense for visible beauty has been developed by the wealth
and the artistic instruction of the country, one special condition more
has affected not only the fine arts but also poetry and literature. This
is the development of the national feeling, which more than anything
else has stimulated literary and artistic life. The American feels that
he has entered the exclusive circle of world powers, and must like the
best of them realize and express his own nature. He is conscious of a
mission, and the national feeling is unified much less by a common past
than by a common ideal for the future. His national feeling is not
sentimental, but aggressive; the American knows that his goal is to
become typically American. All this gives him the courage to be
individual, to have his own points of view, and since he has now studied
history and mastered technique, this means no longer to be odd and
freakish, but to be truly original and creative. He is now for the first
time thoroughly aware what a wealth of artistic problems is offered by
his own continent, by his history, by his surroundings, and by his
social conditions. And just as American science has been most successful
in developing the history, geography, geology, zoölogy, and anthropology
of the American Continent, so now his new art and literature are looking
about for American material.
His hopes are high; he sees indications of a new art approaching which
will excite the admiration of the world. He feels that the great writer
is not far off who will express the New World in the great American
novel. Who shall say that these hopes may not be realized to-morrow? For
it is certain that he enjoys an unusual combination of favourable
conditions for developing a world force. Here are a people thoroughly
educated in the appreciation of literature and art—a people in the
hey-day of success, with their national feeling growing, and having, by
reason of their economic prosperity, the amplest means for encouraging
art; a people who find in their own country untold treasures of artistic
and literary problems, and who in the structure of their government and
customs favour talent wherever it is found; a people who have learned
much in cosmopolitan studies and to-day have mastered every technique,
who have absorbed the temperament and ambitions of the most diverse
races and yet developed their own consistent, national consciousness, in
which indomitable will, fertile invention, Puritan morals, and
irrepressible humour form a combination that has never before been
known. The times seem ripe for something great.
CHAPTER TWENTY
_Religion_
The individualistic conception of life and the religious conceptions of
the world favour each other. The more that an individual’s religious
temperament sees this earthly life merely as a preparation for the
heavenly, the more he puts all his efforts into the development of his
individual personality. General concepts, civilizations, and political
powers cannot, as such, enter the gates of heaven; and the perfection of
the individual soul is the only thing which makes for eternal salvation.
On the other hand, the more deeply individualism and the desire for
self-perfection have taken hold on a person, so much the deeper is his
conviction that the short shrift before death is not the whole meaning
of human existence, and that his craving for personal development hints
at an existence beyond this world. Through such individualism, it is
true, religion is in a sense narrowed; the idea of immortality is unduly
emphasized. Yet the whole life of an individualistic nation is
necessarily religious. The entire American people are in fact profoundly
religious, and have been from the day when the Pilgrim Fathers landed,
down to the present moment.
On the other hand, individualism cannot decide whether we ought to look
on God with fear or with joy, to conceive Him as revengeful or
benevolent, to think human nature sinful or good. The two most
independent American thinkers of the eighteenth century, Jonathan
Edwards and Benjamin Franklin, represent here the two extremes. The men
who have made American history and culture took in early times the point
of view of Edwards, but take to-day rather that of Franklin.
Can it be said that America is really religious to-day? From first
impressions, a European may judge the opposite; first and most of all,
he observes that the government does not concern itself with the church.
Article VI of the Constitution expressly forbids the filling of any
office or any political position of honour in the United States being
made dependent on religion, and the first amendment adds that Congress
may never pass a law aiming to establish any official religion or to
hinder religious freedom. This provision of the Constitution is closely
followed in the Constitutions of the several states. The government has
nothing to do with the church; that is, the church lacks the powerful
support of the state which it receives in all monarchical countries; and
in fact the state interprets this neutrality prescribed by the
Constitution so rigorously that, for example, statistics of religious
adherence for the last great census were obtained from the church
organizations, because the state has not the right to inquire into the
religious faith of citizens. Ecclesiastics pass no state examinations to
show their fitness to preach; millions of people belong to no church
organization; the lower masses are not reached by any church, and the
public schools have no religious instruction. It might thus appear as if
the whole country were as indifferent to religion as European humourists
have declared it to be, in saying that the Almighty Dollar is the
American’s only god.
On looking more closely, one finds very soon that the opposite is the
case. Although it is true that the state is not concerned with religion,
yet this provision of the Constitution in no wise signifies any wish to
encourage religious indifference. The states which united to form the
Federation were profoundly religious; both Protestants and Catholics had
come to the New World to find religious freedom, had made great
renunciations to live in their faith untroubled by the persecutions of
the Old World, and every sect of Europe had adherents on this side of
the ocean. Not a few of the states were, in their general temperament,
actually theocratic. Not only in Puritan New England had the church all
the power in her hands, but in the colony of Virginia, the seat of the
English High-Churchmen, it was originally the law that one who remained
twice away from church was flogged, and on the third time punished with
death. When America broke away from England, almost every state had its
special and pronounced religious complexion. The majority of the
population in the separate colonies had generally forced their religion
on the whole community, and religious interests were everywhere in the
foreground.
Although, finally, Jefferson’s proposition constitutionally to separate
church and state was accepted, this move is not to be interpreted as
indifference, but rather as a wish to avoid religious conflicts. In view
of such pronounced differences as those between Puritans, Quakers,
High-Churchmen, Catholics, etc., the establishment of any church as a
state institution would have required a subordination of the other sects
which would have been felt as suppression. The separation of the church
from the state simply meant freedom for every sect. Then, too, not all
the separate states followed the federal precedent; the New England
States especially favoured, by their taxation laws, the Calvinistic
faith until the beginning of the nineteenth century; and Massachusetts
was the last to introduce complete religious neutrality, as lately as
1833. In the Southern States, the relations between church and state
were more easily severed; and in the Middle States, even during colonial
times, there was general religious freedom.
Whether or not the separation was rapid or slow, or whether it took
place under the passive submission, or through the active efforts of the
clergy, the churches everywhere soon became the warmest supporter of
this new condition of things. All the clergy found that in this way the
interests of religion were best preserved. The state does nothing to-day
for the churches except by way of laws in single states against
blasphemy and the disturbance of religious worship, and by the
recognition, but not the requirement, of church marriage. There are also
remnants of the connection in the recognized duty of the President to
appoint the annual day of Thanksgiving, and in cases of signal danger to
appoint days of fasting and prayer, and one more remnant in the fact
that the legislatures are opened by daily prayer. Otherwise, the state
and church move in separate dimensions of space, as it were, and there
is no attempt to change this condition.
It was, therefore, no case of an orthodox minority being forced to
content itself with an unchurchly state; but neither party nor sect nor
state had the slightest wish to see church and state united. The
appreciation of this mutual independence is so great that public opinion
turns at once against any church which tries to exert a political
influence, whether by supporting a certain political body in local
elections or by trying to obtain public moneys for its educational
institutions and hospitals. When, for instance, the principal
anti-Catholic organization, the so-called American Protective
Association, became regrettably wide-spread, it got its strength, not
from any Protestant ecclesiastical opposition, but only from the
political antipathy against that church which seemed the most inclined
to introduce such un-American side influences in party politics. Every
one felt that a great American principle was there at stake.
Thus the legal status of the churches is that of a large private
corporation, and nobody is required to connect himself with any church.
Special ecclesiastical legislation is, therefore, superfluous; every
church may organize, appoint officers, and regulate its property matters
and disciplinary questions as it likes, and any disputed points are
settled by civil law, as in the case of all corporations. Just as with
business companies, a certain sort of collective responsibility is
required; but the competition between churches, as between industrial
corporations, is unhampered, and the relation of the individual to his
church is that of ordinary contract. One hundred and forty-eight
different sects appeal to-day for public favour. To the European this
sounds at first like secularization, like a lowering of the church to
the level of a stock company—like profanation. And still no Catholic
bishop nor Orthodox minister would wish it different. Now how does this
come about?
In the first place individualism has even here victoriously carried
through its desire for self-determination. Nobody is bound to belong to
any congregation, and one who belongs is therefore willing to submit
himself to its organization, to subscribe to its by-laws, and to support
its expenditures. Nobody pays public taxes for any church, nor is under
ecclesiastical authority which he does not freely recognize. The church
is, therefore, essentially relieved of any suspicion of interfering with
individual freedom. The individual himself is for the same reason not
only free to adopt or to reject religion, but also to express his
personal views in any form or creed whatsoever. Only where the church
exercises no authority on thought or conscience can it be supported by
the spirit of self-determination. Thus, the Mennonite Church has already
developed twelve sects, the Baptist thirteen, the Methodist seventeen,
and all of these are equally countenanced. At the same time the reproach
can never be made that the church owes its success to the assistance of
the state: what it does is by its own might; and so its success is
thoroughly intrinsic and genuine, its zeal is quickened, and its whole
activities kept apart from the world of political strife and directed
toward ideals.
The church which is not supported by any written laws of the state is
not, for that reason, dependent alone on the religious ideals of its
adherents, but also on the unwritten law of the social community. The
less the authority of the state, the more the society as a whole
realizes its duties; and while society remains indifferent as long as
religion is enforced by external means, it becomes energetic as soon as
it feels itself responsible for the general religious situation. The
church has had no greater fortune than in having religion made
independent of the state and made the affair of society at large. Here
an obligation could be developed, which is perhaps more firm and
energetic than that of the state, but which is nevertheless not felt as
an interference, firstly, because the political individual is untouched,
and secondly, because the allegiance to a certain social class is not
predetermined, but becomes the goal and the honourable achievement of
the individual. Of course, even the social obligation would not have
developed had there not been a deep religious consciousness living in
the people; but such individual piety has been able to take much deeper
root in a soil socially so favourable. A religiously inclined
population, which has made churchliness a social and not a political
obligation, affords the American church the most favourable condition
for its success that could be imagined.
One may see even from the grouping of sects, how much the church is
supported by society. If anywhere democracy seems natural, it should be
in the eyes of God; and yet, if Americans show anywhere social
demarcations, it is in the province of religion. This is true, not only
of different churches where the expense of membership is so unequal that
in large cities rich and poor are farther apart on Sundays than on
week-days, but it is true of the sects themselves. Methodists and
Episcopalians or Baptists and Unitarians form in general utterly
different social groups, and one of these sects is socially predominant
in one section of the country, another in another. But just because
religious differences are so closely related to the differences existing
in the social world, the relations between the sects are thoroughly
friendly. Each has its natural sphere.
It is certain that the large number of sects are helpful in this
direction, since they make the distinction between related faiths
extremely small, sometimes even unintelligible to all except the
theological epicure; and, indeed, they often rest on purely local or
ancestral distinctions. Thus the German Reformed and the Dutch Reformed
churches are called two sects, and even the African Methodist
Episcopalians and the Coloured Methodist Episcopalians wish to be
distinguished from each other as from the other negro sects. Where large
parties oppose each other, a war for principles can break out; but where
the religions merge into one another through many small gradations, the
consciousness of difference is less likely to be joined to any feeling
of opposition. The real opponent of churches is the common enemy, the
atheist, although the more straitlaced congregations are not quite sure
that the Unitarians, who are most nearly comparable to members of the
German Protestantenverein, are not best classed with the atheists. And,
lastly, envy and jealousy do not belong to the American optimistic
temperament, which does not grudge another his success. Thus everything
works together to make the churches get on peacefully with one another.
The religion of the country stretches from one end to the other, like a
brilliant and many-hued rainbow.
The commingling of church and society is shown everywhere. The church is
popular, religious worship is observed in the home, the minister is
esteemed, divine worship is well attended, the work of the church is
generously supported, and the cause of religion is favoured by the
social community. These outlines may now be filled in by a few details.
The American grows up with a knowledge of the Bible. The church,
Sabbath-school, and the home influences work together; a true piety
rules in every farm-house, and whosoever supposes this to be in anywise
hypocrisy has no notion of the actual conditions. In many city homes of
artisans the occupants do not know the Bible and do not wish to know it;
but they are in nowise hypocritical, and in the country at large
religion is so firmly rooted that people are much more likely to make
sham pretences of general enlightenment than of religious belief. Thus,
it is mostly a matter of course that festivals, banquets, and other
meetings which in Germany would not call for any religious demonstration
whatsoever, are opened and closed by prayer. Religious discussions are
carried on with animation in every class of society, and one who travels
about through the country finds that business and religion are the two
great topics of conversation, while after them come politics. It is only
among individuals who are so religiously disposed, that such vagaries of
the supernatural consciousness, as spiritualism, healing by prayer,
etc., could excite so much interest. But also normal religious questions
interest an incomparably large circle of people; nine hundred
ecclesiastical newspapers and magazines are regularly published and
circulated by the millions.