PART III

EUROPE AND AMERICA

I

THE AMERICAN DEFINITION OF PROGRESS

The two visits I paid to South and North America between 1907 and 1909

were the result of a lucky chance, not of a prearranged plan. In 1906,

after having been plunged for ten years in the study of Roman history,

I had no idea of crossing the Atlantic, much less of writing a book

on America and Europe. I had never dreamt that my long researches in

the great cemetery of the ancient world might start me suddenly one

day along the road which leads to the New World. But destiny willed

it so. In November of 1906, by invitation of the Collège de France, I

delivered in Paris a course of lectures on the history of Augustus,

in which I summarised the fourth and fifth volumes of my _Greatness

and Decline of Rome_. There happened to be at Paris at that time a

distinguished Argentine, Señor Emilio Mitré, son of that General Mitré

who was one of the Republic’s most conspicuous politicians during

the second half of the nineteenth century. He himself was a man of

importance in the political world, and proprietor of the _Nacion_,

which is not only the biggest, most serious, and most authoritative

newspaper in Latin America, but one of the leading newspapers of the

world. I had contributed to this paper for years, so I called on

Mitré in Paris. He came to hear my lectures, and the day before the

concluding one, November 29th,—he was due to sail for Buenos Aires

on December 1st,—he came to me with a proposal that I should go to

Argentina and there deliver some lectures. I accepted, impelled chiefly

by curiosity to see that vast and rich country which, for the last ten

years, had been so much talked about in Italy, and to which during

the last half-century so many Italians had emigrated. I accordingly

prepared my lectures, and on June 7, 1907, I sailed from Genoa for

Buenos Aires with my wife and little boy. Every European who crosses

the Atlantic and can wield his pen with any sort of effect writes his

impressions when he gets back. Naturally, therefore, I too had promised

several reviews and one publisher to bring back with me a volume of

“Impressions of Argentina.”

At six P.M. on June 8th, we put in to Barcelona. Directly the steamer

came alongside, the Brazilian consul came on board in search of me. He

handed me a despatch from Baron di Rio Branco, the Brazilian Minister

of Foreign affairs, who invited me in the name of the Brazilian

Academy to stop at Rio, and read a paper there. I begged the consul to

telegraph to Baron di Rio Branco that I could not stop on my voyage

out, as I was expected at Buenos Aires; but that on my return I should

be delighted to accept his kind invitation. As the steamer was to put

in at Rio, I could arrange matters with him _en route_. As the steamer

resumed her journey, and passed out of the Mediterranean into the vast

wilderness of the ocean, I busied myself with some books of philosophy

which I had brought along, amongst them, some of Buddha’s discourses,

which had just been published in an Italian translation.

On June 24th, at 5 P.M., we reached the bay of Rio, one of the most

marvellous spots in the world. But while we were gazing from the deck

in admiration at the gloomy mountains standing round about and the

woods which covered them, at the city rising from the sea towards the

mountains, and the roseate glow of the setting sun upon the bay, we

descried a steam launch laden with people coming towards us. It was a

deputation from the Brazilian Academy and from the Ministry of Foreign

Affairs, which was coming to take us for a motor tour through the city,

and afterwards to take us to dinner at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,

where Baron di Rio Branco was expecting us. We hastened ashore, and

found some motors waiting for us at the Pharoux jetty. We jumped in,

and were off.

As long as life lasts, I shall never forget that drive at sunset,

between the dying light of evening and the first gleams of the electric

lamps, which were just beginning to light up the marvellous city built

in the midst of the remains of the primeval forest on the borders of

the sea, on the hills, and on the mountains. I shall never forget our

dash through endless streets, with hurried glimpses of multi-coloured

houses, sumptuous palaces half hidden in superb gardens, avenues of

gigantic palms which stretched far away into the night, glorious

promenades along the seashore, and mountain peaks which beetled above

the city. I longed to stop the car. But time pressed, and after

having hurriedly traversed the whole city, we reached, about 7.30

P.M., Itamaraty (as the palace of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is

called), where a select company of men and women were awaiting us in

rooms ablaze with light. As soon as we had been introduced, dinner was

served; a most sumptuous dinner, into which, among the most luscious

ragoûts of the French cuisine, the thoughtful Minister of Foreign

Affairs had introduced several Brazilian dishes. I remember the

_palmiti_, a dish of palm-pith, cooked as we cook asparagus, and really

delicious; and _bakury_, a white fruit from the equator, preserved in

syrup, which reminded me strongly of the smell of magnolia and gave me

the illusion of eating marvellous flowers.

Speeches followed the dinner, whereupon we returned on shipboard, but

before doing so I had arranged in a corner of the drawing-room with

Baron di Rio Branco, Giuseppe Graça Aranha, now Brazilian Minister at

the Hague, and a distinguished writer, who was then the Minister’s

secretary, and Machado de Assis, the great writer who was then

President of the Brazilian Academy, that I would stop a couple of

months in Brazil on my way back, repeat my Buenos Aires lectures, and

visit the country. At 11 P.M., the steamer weighed anchor and left the

dark bay, in which there was nothing now to be seen but the glitter of

an infinite number of tiny lights.

That night, however, I did not sleep, so stunned and dazzled was I by

that first fantastic glimpse of America, which will remain one of the

most singular experiences of my life, though, so far, my life has not

been devoid of strange and curious chances. I had started from Europe

with no, or practically no, knowledge of the two Americas, excepting

the little I had picked up here and there in books and papers which I

happened to read. Consequently, my opinion of America was the same as

that formed by other Europeans: that it was the country of material

realities, of business, of fortunes made rapidly, of wealth stripped

of every ornament, poetry, beauty, and ideal refinement; that rude and

bustling America with which all cultured Europeans love to contrast

Europe as the continent of the Ideal, where beauty, wisdom, and every

refinement of civil life flourish. And behold! my first impression of

America was as of a strip of India, and the first American city I had

seen reminded me of the East, and especially, for some reason or other,

of Bagdad, or rather, of the somewhat fantastic idea of Bagdad which I

had conceived in the days when I read more often and more ardently than

I do now, the _Orientales_ of Victor Hugo, and the other romantic poets

of the middle of the nineteenth century. And in that city, I had been

present at a succulent and magnificent banquet, at which, amidst the

refinements of the old civilisation of Europe, I had tasted the unknown

rarities of the tropics, in the company of elegant, cultured, and

refined guests, with whom I had discussed in French the latest literary

and artistic novelties, as if we had been on the banks of the Seine.

Was it a reality or a dream?

Quite other surprises were, however, in store for me on my wanderings

in America. Four days later, on June 27th, we reached Buenos Aires,

where we were joyfully welcomed by a number of kind folk, who had

spared neither trouble nor care to make our stay agreeable to us.

Then began four months of really strenuous life, to borrow Theodore

Roosevelt’s favourite expression. Conferences, receptions, banquets,

visits to hospitals, schools, factories, workshops, and ranches; trips

by boat, train, and motor-car. It was a real _moto perpetuo_. I passed

the month of July at Buenos Aires. In August, I plunged into the

interior, visiting successively Rosario, Mendoza, Cordova, Tucuman,

Santiago, dell ’Estero, Santa Fé, Paraná, and penetrating right up

to the foot of the Andes. I travelled about ten thousand kilometres

in the railway train, observing, collecting documents, asking and

answering questions, and discussing problems. All these, however, were

labours less tiring than another, which became by degrees the principal

preoccupation of my mind during those two months: the endeavour to put

to flight a demon which kept obstinately springing up before my eyes,

in conversations, on journeys, during visits, during dinner-parties,

notwithstanding all the efforts I made to keep it at a distance; and

which seemed determined to reappear at every moment and wound me in the

inmost recesses of my European pride and in my most touchy European

susceptibilities. What was this demon? It was American progress.

Every day I had pointed out to me on my rapid journeys, immense and

marvellous ranches, herds of many thousand head, markets overflowing

with wealth, magnificent schools, and superb hospitals. I was given

descriptions and demonstrations, in figures and in fact, of the rapid

spread of cultivation, the increase of production, the bewildering

prosperity of the banks, the expansion of Buenos Aires, now become the

second city of the Latin world in wealth and population, after Paris.

They were all interesting things to observe and study. Nevertheless,

too many of those who showed them to me implicitly or explicitly

established comparisons between this rapid increase and transformation

in everything Argentine, and the more deliberate advance of the great

nations of Europe, and deduced the conclusion that Argentina was a more

progressive and advanced country.

The word “progress” is one of those which is much misused in Europe.

I had no sooner landed in Argentina, however, than I recognised that

the word had quite a different sound and significance on that side

of the water from what it has in Europe. The standard by which my new

transatlantic friends were unanimous in measuring progress was the

rapidity of transformation and the magnitude of the results. New,

modern, larger, were to them synonyms of progress and of improvement.

Consequently, they had only to cast their eyes round their own country

to find reasons for self-satisfaction. But this conception of progress

at first somewhat amused and somewhat irritated me, just as the naïve

touches of vanity in the young often amuse and irritate grown men.

Many a time, when we were discussing the progress of Argentina and the

comparisons, tacit or explicit, which were made with Europe, have I

said to my Argentine friends:

“Undoubtedly the effort which you are making is a noble one, and a

paying one. In thirty years, you have increased your wealth ten-,

twenty-, even thirty-fold. You have been wonderfully quick in extending

cultivation, railways, and population over the vast territory which

Fortune has given you. You are now flooding the world with riches, and,

profiting by the experience of others, you can transform, reshape, and

make perfect your public services, your institutions, and your whole

mode of living in the smallest number of years.

“You make a great mistake, however, if you think that the contrast

between the rapidity of your growth and your changes and the slowness

and immutability of Europe is any proof of your own nearer approach

to perfection. That rapidity is a phenomenon of youth. A child’s

weight and height double themselves every six months, year, two years,

or three years in the first years of its life; while an adult stops

growing or grows so slowly as to be hardly aware that he is doing so.

Would you deduce from this that a boy of six years of age is superior

to a man of forty? No. Childhood and manhood are two phases of life.

Each has its own necessity, its own function, its own advantages and

disadvantages. It is no more possible to compare them than it is to

compare day and night, dawn and twilight, winter and summer; I can see

no essential difference between the countries of Europe and your own.

We are all children of the same civilisation; we have been nursed at

the same breast. We are all like one to the other, though we may differ

one from the other as brothers, or, if you prefer it, as cousins do. So

an American progress, different from European progress, does not exist,

though there are countries whose transformation, owing to external

circumstances, may be retarded or accelerated. You have political

institutions and social orders of less antiquity, and, therefore, of

less rigidity and less strength than those of Europe. You also have a

territory to exploit which is vaster, very much vaster, and much more

easy to exploit, because civilisation supplies you, ready to hand, with

almost perfect instruments for such exploitation. There you have the

real difference between us.”

Though these arguments were listened to with courteous attention, they

made but a slight impression on my hearers. I very soon realised

that American progress, the rapid increase, that is to say, of the

wealth of Argentina and the incessant modernisation of the customs and

institutions of the country, were a sort of national religion, which

was accepted by most people with a blind credence. So in the end, I was

persuaded that this ardent faith in progress must be attributed to the

preponderating influence of Buenos Aires, that immense city, almost

half the population of which is composed of European immigrants in

search of wealth. For it is the largest port, the principal emporium,

and the financial centre of the Republic, through which passes most

of the export and import trade, nearly all the great stream of wealth

which flows out from the vast territory over the world, and from the

world ebbs back to it again: a rich American city, after the European

picture of such. It is only natural that a city whose wealth and size

are being multiplied by the rapid development of the country should

have adopted American progress as its religion, and should, through

its influence, have imposed that religion on the whole country. The

conclusion of the matter was, however, that the Argentine conception of

progress was not and could not be anything but the passing exaltation

of a fortunate country which, profiting by circumstances unusually

favourable, could watch its wealth growing round it with bewildering

rapidity. That, at any rate, was the conclusion I came to, and I

thought it both reasonable and justifiable.

With this idea in my head, after a laborious, agreeable, and

instructive stay of two months in Argentina, I sailed for Rio, making

on my way thither a brief halt at Montevideo. I expected to find in

Rio another American city like Buenos Aires. I was, however, mistaken.

Brazil is not, like Argentina, a single body with one enormous head.

Its economic activity is more diffuse and centres in different

cities,—for coffee, in São Paulo; for rubber, in Manaos; for each one

of the other great articles of production, in other cities scattered

over the vast territory. Rio de Janeiro, though the chief political

and intellectual centre of the Confederation, cannot, therefore, be

called either the emporium or the port, or the economic capital _par

excellence_. Consequently, it differs widely from Buenos Aires. It is

less crowded, noisy, and busy. It lives, I might almost say, in the

shade of its gardens and between the forest and the sea, quietly and

reposedly. It is the only great American city I have visited in which

people walk at a leisurely pace and not at headlong speed; and it not

only lives reposedly, but it thinks, and even dreams a little.

While at Buenos Aires, we had lived surrounded by men of action;

we found at Rio a coterie composed almost exclusively of

intellectuals—literary men, journalists, historians, philosophers,

and jurists. Most of them were state officials and members of the

Brazilian Academy,—an academy founded about ten years ago and modelled

exactly on the lines of the Académie Française,—composed, like it,

of forty members, elected in the same way, and admitted with the same

ceremonial. In a small inn situated on the slopes of Corcovado, on

the outskirts of the town and the forest, whose roads were shaded by

secular trees, we lived for six weeks, just as Plato and his friends

lived in the gardens of the Academy; discussing art, literature,

philosophy, right, and morality with the friends whom Graça Aranha, the

diplomatist and man of letters chosen by Baron di Rio Branco to do us

the honours of Brazil, gathered round us almost daily. At no moment of

my life have I felt myself so much detached from, and so superior to,

the accustomed preoccupations which form the groundwork of ordinary

existence in the modern world. And when I found myself living amongst

persons for whom the culture of Europe represented the supreme blessing

of life, the greatest pride of civilisation, for a moment I believed

myself freed from that demon of American progress which had dogged me

in Argentina.

It was an illusion, however, which did not last long. Brazil is a

country slightly older than Argentina. Owing to this reason, to its

much greater size, to the variety of its climates and lands, which

make it impossible to concentrate in a single city the direction of

the whole of national life, and to other contingent reasons which it

would take too long to enumerate here, Brazil has not developed in

the last twenty years so rapidly as has Argentina. It has, however,

developed much more quickly than any European country. I speedily saw

that the rapidity of this progress was the great national pride of the

Brazilians, even of those men of letters, philosophers, and writers,

who professed to be such devoted disciples and admirers of Europe. In

the same way the great national preoccupation was the acceleration,

as far as possible, of the progress and increase of riches, and the

exploiting and modernisation of the country, so that Brazil might

not appear inferior in this particular to the other great states of

America. An energetic administration had just finished the resanitation

of Rio de Janeiro, destroying, at the cost of vast public works, all

the breeding-places of yellow fever which up till then had infested it.

The administration was then renovating it from top to bottom, opening

streets and squares in the middle of the old quarters, constructing

spacious promenades and gardens, and sumptuous public edifices, in a

word, giving air and light and splendour and beauty to a city which was

already beautiful in addition to being placed in a unique situation. I

think there must be very few cities which in a few years have managed

to destroy and rebuild, according to new plans, so large a part of

themselves. Naturally the work has cost millions; but on the few

occasions on which I timidly dared to make a remark to this effect,

I received the laughing answer: “We are optimists; and we believe in

progress!” This ædilitian transformation of Rio de Janeiro filled with

pride all Brazilians, including my lettered and philosophical friends,

on account of its rapidity and grandeur; and their pride was swelled by

the thought that no European states, but perhaps the United States of

North America alone, their great elder brother, could have done so much.

Everybody thought, moreover, that the whole of Brazil ought to be

modernised just like Rio, from top to bottom. I visited São Paulo,

the great coffee-producing state. I traversed from end to end Minas

Gerães, the great agricultural and mineral state which, as a symbol, as

it were, of its intention to modernise itself entirely, has recently

constructed a smiling and graceful new capitol, Bello Horizonte, in a

most picturesque position crowning the hoary Ouro Preto. Everywhere

I found politicians, officials, professors, literary men, commercial

men, bankers, Brazilian and European immigrants, united in the same

thought: that railways must be built, machinery bought, able engineers

engaged, mines explored, cultivation extended, and industries

founded to increase the country’s rate of progress by modernising

it entirely. It was useless for me to try to prove even to those of

my Rio acquaintances who were endowed with the highest and finest

intellectual culture, that this conception of progress was too simple

and material; that real progress is not to make new or to make quickly,

but to make better; that it is not enough to augment wealth, but that

it is necessary also to put it to good use, a more difficult problem

than the producing of it. I tried to convince my friends that if so

simple and material a notion of progress acquired a strong hold on the

popular mind, the public would infallibly be impelled to create, not

a lofty and noble civilisation, but a sort of opulent barbarism. In

Brazil, as much as in Argentina, my arguments beat harmlessly against

a faith and a passion which demands no proofs. “American Progress” for

the Brazilians too was the great historical force of the future, which

is going to create the new world, and the new civilisation whose dim

foreshadowing seems to be agitating the masses at the present time.

We returned to Italy in November. I recrossed the ocean from Rio de

Janeiro to Genoa in fifteen days, during which I reread my books

of philosophy. But the pages of Bergson, Kant, and Comte, which I

read in mid-ocean, no longer riveted my attention as they had on the

way out. For in the time for thought afforded me by the crossing,

far from the world and its troubles, I plunged day by day in a more

intense meditation on American progress, which, of all the things and

phenomena I had witnessed, was that which had left on me the liveliest

impressions. It was clear that it was not a theoretical idea, but a

passion, a faith, a religion fervently embraced by nearly everybody.

All the arguments which I had advanced to subject it to criticism had

been fruitless; and not only ignorant men, and those eager to make

money, but the most highly cultivated minds, the very intellectual

élite of America, were blind to the contradictions and logical

shortcomings of this conception. Nevertheless, was not this but an

additional reason for studying this phenomenon thoroughly? It is not

ideas which move and transform the world, but passions; and a passion,

even if it be absurd, is a thousand times more powerful than a wise

idea.

Now it was not difficult to see what would happen if this religion of

American progress spread through the world. Europe would lose, so to

speak, her rights of historical primogeniture, and all her ancient

civilisation would lose a great part of its value. If the rapid

increase of riches is the supreme measure of civilisation, and if, in

consequence, the efforts of a people must be concentrated on everything

which can accelerate this increase, it is clear that the most ancient,

populous, and glorious countries of Europe will not be able to

keep pace with the young countries and with the nations which are

masters of vast territories; and that, bit by bit, the most glorious

civilisations of Europe will come to be regarded by the eyes of the

rising generations as relics and fossils of another age. This danger

no longer appeared to me so distant and hypothetical as to many other

Europeans. After what I had seen in America, many facts and thoughts

and tendencies to which I had hitherto paid scarcely any attention in

Europe, seemed to me to acquire a new significance. I saw everywhere,

even in the ancient world, traces and proofs of the rapid spread of

the American idea of progress, especially among the nations like

Germany, which have developed industry to a great, perhaps a too great,

extent; and in all the countries, classes, and professions which have

identified their interests most completely with those of industry. So

the enemy who threatened the destruction of the ancient civilisation of

Europe had already invaded the Old World.

It was while I was meditating on these thoughts in mid-ocean that the

idea occurred to me of writing something different from a book of

impressions on Argentina and Brazil. Too many books of impressions of

the two Americas are written in Europe; and literature of this sort,

as copious as it is useless, has justly satiated the public. Inasmuch

as this idea of progress implies a great conflict of tendencies, from

which may arise a profound upheaval of our civilisation, why should

I not contrast in a book the two conceptions of progress, that which

America has created and is trying to impose on the world, and that

which is even now professed in Europe by the classes most faithful

to tradition, and which they ought to seek to defend? If I succeeded

in giving a vivid representation of this conflict, should I not

have described a living part of America better than if I had merely

accumulated thousands of detached impressions and observations? And so

the idea flashed across my mind of writing a dialogue introducing some

Europeans and Americans who on board a steamer in mid-ocean discussed

Europe and America, that is to say, progress, in the sense proper to

the word as well as in the sense given to it by the Americans. Is not

the dialogue an ancient and glorious literary form? It is true that for

many reasons it has lately been neglected, one particular reason being,

that in modern life, busy and exhausting as it is, it is difficult to

find a scene which will give verisimilitude to a conversation lasting

several days. Modern civilisation is a civilisation of much action and

little discussion. However, there is still one scene left in modern

life on which one can stage with artistic verisimilitude a discussion

lasting several days: a transatlantic liner. A liner is perhaps the

only spot in the modern world where one may find discussion holding the

field. Usually discussions on board ship deal with frivolous and empty

topics. Why might not a writer suppose, however, that for once in a

way, four or five serious-minded persons met on board a liner and began

a casual talk which later developed into a discussion of one of the

gravest of the problems which oppress our own generation, no less than

every one of its predecessors?

Among the persons whose acquaintance I had made during the voyage,

some appeared to me to lend themselves to the rôle of interlocutor

in the dialogue. So, directly I got back, I began to sketch out

my dialogue. It was then that I experienced a curious phenomenon.

With every fresh attempt I made to embody in certain characteristic

personages the American idea of progress, as I had observed it in so

many of my friends on that side, and the European idea, as I had

many times defended it, both ideas seemed to me to evaporate, and

to lose consistency and colour. That conflict of tendencies, ideas,

and passions which had seemed to me so lively and so profound in my

meditations in mid-ocean appeared to have melted away after I had

touched the soil of old Europe. The dialogue which I was writing seemed

to me cold, dead, and academic.

I was torn in two directions by these difficulties, uncertain whether

to abandon the enterprise, and asking myself whether American progress

had not been a passing hallucination of the voyage; when towards the

middle of February, 1908, I received from North America a new surprise

of a still greater and more agreeable nature, in the shape of a letter

from Baron Eduardo Mayor de Planches, at that time Italian Ambassador

at Washington, in which he told me that President Roosevelt at his last

diplomatic reception had expressed to him his wish to see me in the

United States, and to have me as his guest for a few days at the White

House before his presidential term ended. At any time, so courteous an

invitation from a man for whose culture, intellect, and statesmanlike

qualities I had so great an admiration, would have given me much

pleasure. My joy was much increased, however, by the fact of its having

arrived two months after my return from South America. A visit to the

United States directly after one to South America was a rare stroke

of luck. For, to tell the truth, in visiting Brazil and Argentina, I

had seen only a fragment of the New World. But to come to know that

great New-World State which by itself personifies America in the eyes

of all, and to come to know the two largest states of South America

into the bargain, was equivalent to saying that I had studied at least

what was most important, characteristic, and deserving of study in

the boundless continent which Columbus discovered. All the curiosity

to which the rumours and legends current in Europe about the United

States had given birth in me, and which was dominant in the recesses of

my mind, awoke to life. I forgot the problem of progress, the doubts

which tormented me, and the problems which I had posed to myself on

my travels in Argentina, as well as the dialogue I intended to write,

in my preparation for my fresh journey and for the lectures in Roman

history which I was scheduled to give at the Lowell Institute, at

Columbia University, and at the University of Chicago. I set to work to

read as many books as I could about North America. I resumed the mantle

of Roman historian to prepare my course of lectures and gave no further

thought to the book on America which I had promised to write.

On November 1, 1908, I sailed for New York, and a three months’ course

of the intense life began again for me; rapid journeys, incessant

visits, interviews with journalists, hundreds of conversations,

banquets, receptions, speeches, and inquiries. I visited schools,

hospitals, universities, prisons, law-courts, factories, banks, and

co-operative enterprises. I made the acquaintance of millionaires and

artisans, industrialists and professors, lawyers and journalists. I

managed to get a peep into the wealthy abodes of the rich families

of the great cities of the East, and into the little houses in which

the middle classes drag out a crowded and pinched existence. I

witnessed the frenzy for work, the incessant activity, the unending

agitation which wears out every class in America. Most important of

all, however, I saw reappear before me—and this time in gigantic form,

monstrous, unrestrained, almost sublime in its savage energy—that

demon of American progress which had impressed me so much in Brazil

and Argentina, comparatively small though it had there appeared to

me, and which in Europe seemed to me to have almost melted away. Was

it not this which imbued everything American with that startling air

of novelty, extravagance, and grandeur, which stunned and almost

frightened me? So I devoted myself not only to the accumulation of

impressions, informations, and recollections in profusion; I also set

to work in the tumult of American life to think again about American

progress. I made an effort to dive deeper down into the nature of this

strange phenomenon, to guard against its melting away from before me

when I got back to Europe. And at last, one day, I really thought I had

found the clue.

My wife and I had been invited to luncheon with a cultured and clever

author, who knew three languages, had received an extensive and

liberal education, and lived by her pen, writing for newspapers,

translating, and giving lessons. She belonged, in fact, to what one

might call the intellectual middle class. She lived with a sister in a

street of old New York, occupying a little flat of the kind in which

many middle-class New Yorkers live. One reached it by a little wooden

staircase, and entered it by a little door, opening on to a little

corridor, which gave access to four tiny rooms, whose floors creaked

under foot and whose walls let the voices and noises of the neighbours

and co-lodgers be clearly heard. Outside the windows and extending to

the court-yard, the fire-escapes reminded one that the house, partly

constructed of wood, might at any moment catch fire like a match.

Naturally there were no servants in the house. With her sister’s help

the charming author, when she returned home, laid down the pen and

became cook and chambermaid. The luncheon, considered from an artistic

point of view, gave us clearly to understand, that the hands which had

prepared it did not possess any very considerable technical skill.

That did not prevent us, however, from enjoying ourselves mightily, so

interesting and pleasant was the company.

Now, while I was eating my luncheon, and looking round me, I thought

that America must certainly be much wealthier than the wealthiest

of European countries. A woman as richly endowed with intellect and

culture as my kind hostess, who lived by her pen in Paris, Rome, or

London, would certainly earn less than she. And yet the foreign woman

could live in better style, keep a servant to relieve her of the most

troublesome and humble of her domestic duties, live in a large and less

inflammable house, and have fresher and better prepared food to eat. If

she married a man of her own station, she could more easily and with

less stint, bring into the world, rear, and educate a family.

From my hostess, I passed on to think of all the other persons of the

same station in life, of those middle classes which are everywhere

the support and foundation of democratic institutions and the great

reserve of energy of modern civilisation. In New York, Boston, and

Philadelphia, the great cities of the East, I had seen several families

belonging to this class. I had even been the recipient of their

confidences and complaints. At that moment, I realised clearly how much

more difficult and laborious, owing to the greater cost of food and

lodging, the extreme difficulty of finding servants, and the enormous

expense of rearing, and still more of educating, children must be the

life of those middle classes in the great cities of the United States

than in the great cities of Europe. Like my hostess, a business clerk,

a humble employé, or an artisan in the most select industries, though

he gains less in Paris or in London than in New York, can live much

better in the former towns. He can eat better, lodge more comfortably,

employ someone to help in the household, and rear his family without

excessive drudgery.

Then I asked myself: “But what is the use of wealth, then, if it is

not a means of living better, of securing some extra ease, comfort,

or pleasure? What is the reason for this startling paradox, of riches

turning from a blessing into a torment? How comes it that America,

which has shown such energy in the exploitation of the immense wealth

hidden in her boundless territory, has not followed up her conquests

by converting these riches to the benefit of the whole population?

How is it that, in this fortunate country, it is these middle classes

who suffer most who yet have an influence on the Government such as

they have in no European country? Why can we find in poorer countries

individuals and classes who are happier because they are better

satisfied with their condition?”

It was by reflecting on this problem that I at last arrived at a

comprehension of the real nature of American progress, and that I

finally lighted on the subject, the frame, and the key of the dialogue

over which I had so long worried. How and in what way, I shall recount

in the following chapter.

II

FACTS AND MOTIVES IN THE MODERN WORLD

Like every other European, I had gone to North America with the fixed

idea that it was the country of the practical spirit _par excellence_,

and that the Americans were all men who did not lose themselves in

dreams, but lived in reality, intent on shaping it to their own ends,

and acquiring by the most rapid means the tangible and sure blessings

of life—riches, prosperity, power, and the mastery over nature. I

was convinced that they knew better than anyone else the art of

increasing the comforts, and diminishing the difficulties, of life by

the intelligent use of the means furnished by nature, fortune, and

preceding generations. I expected, therefore, to find in America, many

facts and few ideas; an intelligent and vigorous egoism omnipresent;

scanty traces of idealism, and but little faith in the transcendent

principles which so often lead dreamers—individuals and nations—to toil

and fight for fair but unreal chimeras, in the vain hope of distant

glory or grandeur.

So my first surprise, and a very great one it was, arose from my

examination at close quarters, of the policy pursued by the United

States in dealing with the immense herds of immigrants, who yearly

pour into their harbours from all parts of the Old World. In South

America, I had closely observed the cautious prudence and really

practical sagacity with which the republics try to prevent the

continual immigration of foreigners from disturbing too profoundly the

political balance of the State, by reserving the government to small

oligarchies born and educated in the country, and therefore capable

of directing public affairs with a certain continuity of projects and

of national spirit. This policy of the South American republics is, I

know, severely criticised in Europe, and especially in Italy, by too

many persons who judge the affairs of the New World by the standard of

the ideas of the Old. But to a historian of Rome, like myself, to whom

history has taught the great internal difficulties which were caused in

every ancient state by the μέτοιχοι or _peregrini_, this policy seemed

practical and reasonable, at least if it be granted that the principal

task of every state is that of solving in the best possible way the

problems of the hour and leaving to the future its own problems.

To grant every year citizenship in a new state to a great number

of men born and educated in distant lands, who come stuffed with

ideas and tendencies, opinions which correspond in no wise with the

utterly different situation they find in the new country; to give them

political rights which they do not want or give a thought to; to make

them, almost by force, the pillars of a political constitution which

they generally do not understand; to hope to transform them in a flash

from subjects of ancient European monarchies into citizens of young

American republics—is not all this to do violence to the practical

ideas of government, and to multiply the already great difficulties

among which every representative régime works, without any compensating

advantage, not even that of planting the immigrants firmly in the new

country? The vast multitudes which are to-day crossing from Europe to

America no longer go, as they did once, in search of liberty beyond

the ocean. They go in search of higher salaries, an easier and larger

existence, and greater probability of bettering themselves. To open to

the children of immigrants on the same terms as to home-born children

the high schools, the professions, and the public offices—in short,

all the roads by which the son of a peasant or artisan can climb to

the higher _bourgeoisie_—is a surer means of planting firmly in the

country the crowds carried to America on the wave of emigration than

the concession to them of electoral rights. And that is just what the

states of South America, with their practical spirit, have done and are

doing.

With these impressions and opinions, I arrived from South America in

the America which symbolises in the eyes of the world the practical

spirit. And in this America, to my no small surprise, I found the

opposite policy to this in actual operation, with all the effects

which I imagined must follow it; in particular, the growing difficulty

of making democratic institutions work smoothly, with an electoral body

so swollen, so enormous, and so varied and heterogeneous. I often had

occasion, when speaking or writing in the United States, to remember

that the cosmopolitan electoral body which is the base of the democracy

of the United States recalls that of Rome, where the freedmen—the

immigrants of the time—became citizens, and were inscribed in the

electoral lists, whatever their national origin, and even if they

were all foreigners, barbarians some of them, uncivilised the rest.

Nevertheless, there is between the United States and Ancient Rome one

essential difference; and that is, that in the Roman Republic, the

electoral operations were concentrated in the capital, so that the

number of persons who took part in them, the really active electoral

body, was extremely small; while in the United States, the electors

are numbered by millions, and are scattered over a continent. Do not

most of the difficulties and inconveniences of which I have heard

America complain in connection with its internal politics arise from

the enormous size of the electoral body and from its heterogeneity?

For both of these are unique phenomena in the history of the world, as

until now every democracy has governed small, and often the tiniest

of, states. So this experiment, which America is making, without being

compelled to do so by any historical necessity, is a new and bold

one, the final result of which it is difficult to foretell. As a

matter of fact, the ancient national oligarchies, which governed North

America, for so many years after it had gained its independence, did

not open the doors of the constitution to the immigrant multitudes who

threatened, if admitted, to swamp them. It would have been easy to keep

at least the first Europe-born generation out of politics, because—as

I have already said—the greater number of immigrants arrive in America

without the vaguest idea, much less ambition, of obtaining what, in a

democracy, are the political rights of a citizen, and only want big

salaries.

How, then, has the United States come to this pass? Certainly

historical accidents have contributed to set the Union in this

direction. Historical accidents would, however, not have sufficed, if

they had not been helped by that conception of democracy, not practical

but mystical, so to speak, which I have found obtains among so many

Americans. The rights of the people are not in America a political

doctrine, to be employed by the nation and its governors in compassing

certain ends of general utility, and to be applied only in the measure

and with the limitations and qualifications which make it fruitful of

good results and prevent it from giving rise to inconveniences. It is a

transcendent principle, an article of faith, as it were, to be applied

and developed without too much regard to the immediate consequences,

which must be endured with patience if they are for the moment

unpleasant or dangerous, in the conviction that the principle, being

just and true, must finally produce beneficial effects.

So, little by little, I was led to ask myself whether by chance,

in politics at any rate, the South Americans and the Europeans

were not more practical than the North Americans, and whether the

North Americans, on the other hand, were not great idealists; at

least, if by the practical spirit is understood the art of solving

present difficulties by the quickest and simplest devices with only

an immediately realisable benefit in view, instead of multiplying

difficulties with future benefits in view or for love of an idea or a

principle. The amazement and uncertainty caused by this preliminary

survey of the very foundations of the American constitution were

increased, however, by my subsequent observation of the numberless

philanthropic works, educational institutions, intellectual, political,

or social foundations which owe their existence to the inexhaustible

generosity of the American upper classes. For though Europeans may

think that every American thinks only of making money, a few weeks of

travel and of observation were enough to convince me that America is

quite as richly, perhaps more richly endowed than Europe with wealthy

men whose only thought it is to spend their money for the good of their

fellows, for the progress of the nation, in a word, for objects of

public utility.

However, though American philanthropic works may equal and often exceed

those of Europe in number and in value, I have often had occasion to

notice one difference between those of the two continents: and that is,

that the American works are not unusually inspired by a more intense,

I might almost say a more ingenuous faith in the power of man over the

miseries and difficulties of life. The American often addresses himself

with fervour, energy, and great intellectual and pecuniary effort to

the eradication of ills which the European regards as incurable and

irresponsive to treatment. And this American faith in the power to

rectify, revive, and purify nature often struck me, no less than many

other Europeans, as fringing on the chimerical. In short, even in what

are called social works, the American often seemed to me more idealist,

more of a dreamer, and less practical than the European; more ready,

that is to say, to venture on a struggle against the innumerable ills

of life without being quite sure of possessing adequate means for

conquering them, at the summons of a mystical faith in the progress of

the world.

As the result of all my observations, I kept asking myself whether

by chance the United States, notwithstanding their great practical

activity, might not be a much more mystical, idealistic, and visionary

people than the European gives them credit for. But I did not dare

answer the question with a resolute Yes or No. I could not answer

No, because that would have involved ignoring facts which were daily

obtruding themselves on my notice. On the other hand, I dared not

answer Yes, because I was afraid of being accused of excessive fondness

for paradoxes, and of wishing to do violence to current opinions at

every opportunity and at all costs. So I went groping around for a

truth which so far I conjectured rather than saw.

I had reached this point in my reflections and observations when I

was invited to luncheon by our friend the author and journalist whom

I have mentioned in the preceding chapter. When I saw her home and

mode of life, I could not help asking myself: For what reason is

the general standard of wealth higher, while that of living is no

higher, in America than in Europe? Why are dwellings in the great

American cities so small, the distances so great, the communications

so difficult, provisions so dear, that notwithstanding the vast riches

of the country, life is for the masses and the middle classes more

expensive and difficult than in many much less wealthy cities of

Europe? The primary answer was not difficult: Because the cities have

become too big and populous, because their growth has been too rapid in

comparison with the progress of agriculture, and because a section at

least of their inhabitants has contracted too expensive habits and is

accustomed to a life of too great luxury. This primary answer, however,

gave rise to a second question: Why have the cities grown so rapidly,

and with the cities the luxury of every class? This too was easily

explained: Because of the rapid development of industries. America is

a vast continent of great natural wealth, where capital accumulates

rapidly. Owing to her ability to accumulate capital readily, and to

find work for the numberless hands which the overcrowded districts of

Europe have been supplying for the last hundred years to those American

countries which have need of them, America has been able, not only to

extend her agriculture rapidly and to exploit her mines, but also, and

in particular, to multiply her industries to the point of packing her

larger cities with so dense a crowd of inhabitants that life has become

difficult for the majority of the town populations.

At this point, however, one conclusion seemed to emerge from the

preceding observations. Suppose North America, instead of employing

all the capital at her disposal in her many industries, as well as

the capital borrowed from European countries poorer than herself,

had done as France is doing in Europe, namely, had invested part of

her capital in foreign countries, in loans to governments, cities,

railways, industries, trades, and agricultural enterprises, what would

have happened? The demand for labour would doubtless have been less

in America, and therefore the emigration to it would not have been so

startling. Her industries would have developed less, and her cities

would not have increased so rapidly. The United States would now have a

smaller population to support, and one better distributed between the

cities and the country; would have fewer cities, and those smaller.

The band of fortunates who have made huge wealth out of the rapid and

prodigious development of the cities would be smaller, but the middle

and lower classes would enjoy a more comfortable and easier existence.

Their condition would resemble much more closely that of the middle

and lower classes in Europe. They would earn lower wages, but those

wages, though numerically less, would procure them greater comforts and

pleasures.

It was now that, after my many discussions with others, and my extended

solitary meditation on the difficult problem, I thought that I had

finally confuted the troublesome doctrine of American progress. What

is that progress of which the Americans are so proud but the unbridled

rush of enterprise which has so rapidly multiplied the industries,

enlarged the cities, and increased the population and wealth of the

United States? But in that case it was clear that American progress

contradicted itself. By inciting the American people to gather

together capital and workers, to open their gates to millions of

European emigrants, to invest their gains in new enterprises or in

the enlargement of old enterprises, to redouble and multiply in every

direction efforts and enterprises, so as to form of them a mountain

with which to scale the heavens, the spirit of progress had created in

America an opulence which teemed with difficulties, contradictions,

and embarrassments, and which meant for a large part of the population

a condition somewhat resembling that of King Midas: seeing riches all

round him, and not being able to enjoy them. But to produce riches with

no prospect of enjoying them is an absurdity. Much wiser, therefore,

was old Europe, which, taught by the experience of centuries, refused

to let herself be dazzled by this idea of progress, and instead of

heaping up riches at top speed as does the New World, was more careful

in her choice of new riches to create so that she might enjoy them;

so that she might make of them a fount of well-being, not a cause of

difficulty for mankind.

This was the moment at which I was inclined to think that all the ideas

of America and the optimistic spirit which animates them, beginning

with the idea of progress, could only be a passing ebullition and the

merry madness of youth. This nation, I said to myself, favoured as it

is at the moment by unusual facilities for the creation of wealth, has

been so much carried away by its success as to make of riches, which

are and can be only a means, an end in themselves. A longer experience

of history will convince America of its mistake. One day, however, as

I was again pondering intently over the facts I had observed, which

seemed to prove that the Americans were often dreamers, idealists,

almost mystics in matters in which the Europeans show themselves

eminently practical, an idea flashed across my mind. What if American

progress, which to me had seemed up to then to be but a youthful

madness, should prove, if thoroughly analysed, to be only an idealistic

and semi-mystical conception of wealth itself? What if this nation,

accused of desiring only the immediate possession of worldly goods,

was wearing itself out in an unbridled and diabolical activity from

dawn till sundown, not with the object of increasing its happiness

and pleasure, but for a distant end, transcending the egoism and even

the consciousness of the individual? What if all, without knowing it,

or impelled as it were by a superior, if not directly mystical force,

were labouring and even suffering for this end—a new end, to which

history can show us no parallel; the conquest of an immense continent

from one sea to the other, by means of a new instrument unknown to our

forefathers: steam- or electricity-driven machinery?

* * * * *

From progress, from the democratic and philanthropic ideality of the

Americans, from the economic difficulties with which our kind hostess

had to wrestle, to machinery and to the conquest of the great territory

of the United States, may seem a risky, violent, and unexpected

transition or transitions. As a matter of fact, I could not have

executed so bold a transition unaided. I was helped by my wife, in an

indirect, but, for that very reason, strange and decisive way. In fact,

without her help I should not have succeeded in finding my bearings in

the chaos of my American experiences, nor in understanding how and to

what extent the Old World and the New World are opposed to each other;

as a result, I could not have written the philosophical dialogue on

Europe and America, which will be published shortly. It seems to me

necessary, then, to recount how this help was given me; and I hope

that my brief account will not be read without interest.

Several years before we embarked on our journeys to the two Americas,

my wife had begun a long and deep study of modern machinery and of the

great mechanical industry. Though a daughter of Cesare Lombroso, who

was a great inventor, she is temperamentally inclined to the ancient

more than to the new, and therefore little disposed by nature to admire

the gigantic disorder of modern society which other minds find so

intoxicating. Her innate antipathy to the civilisation of steam and

electricity had been increased a thousandfold by observation of the

profound perturbation which the great mechanical industry has caused

in a country of ancient civilisation like Italy, densely populated and

living on the resources of a small territory devoid of great natural

riches. But when she at last made of machinery an object of methodical

study, her researches and the evidence she had patiently accumulated

transformed this antipathy into a complex and bold theory, the cardinal

idea of which I think I can express as follows. Machinery produces only

apparent wealth and prosperity, because instead of diminishing the

effort necessary to produce the things we need, and therefore their

price, in reality it increases it. The mechanical industry demands

immense capital to construct the machines and set them going; immense

quantities of raw material to keep the machinery always busy; the

concentration of the industry in places where combustibles or the

motive forces abound; consequently an enormous development in the means

of communication, for the exchange of products and raw materials, and a

dense population accustomed to produce and consume as much as possible.

Therefore, the civilisation of steam- or electricity-driven machines

cannot develop without rapidly exhausting nature, so to speak—mines, or

forests, or the fertility of the soil. That explains why it flourishes

chiefly in vast and naturally wealthy territories, which it rapidly

exploits and impoverishes. Indeed, it explains why it is always seeking

for new, rich territories, seeking to penetrate unexplored continents,

like Africa, as soon as it has conquered America. Nor is it difficult

to understand why nations which live in countries of limited natural

resources get more harm than good, and often become involved in

vexatious crises, from the introduction of mechanical civilisation. It

is clear, too, how that civilisation must result in making life ever

more and more expensive, and therefore forcing men to despoil the earth

and to work ever harder, without ever attaining to satisfaction.

These ideas were the subject of long and lively discussions between my

wife, her father, and myself. These discussions, as was natural with

discussions arising out of a doctrine which was maturing in the mind

of a patient seeker after truth, were, so to speak, eccentric; they

revolved now round one point, now round another. Nevertheless, the

central point round which they ultimately revolved was this: whether

the wealth for which man has to thank machinery is real or apparent.

I said that, since machinery produces much and at great speed, there

seemed to me no room for doubt that it increased the sum of benefits

at man’s disposal, and therefore enriched the world. My wife replied

that if machinery produces much, it also consumes enormously, more

indeed than it produces, so that a mechanical civilisation must

always feel itself tormented by the necessity of having more than it

possesses, and, therefore, must be always in a state of indigence. So

the discussions went on, lively and long, without either of the parties

convincing the other; and at last I came to the conclusion that our

_amour propre_ must be making us persist in the sophistical discussion

of an unreal question.

When I got to America, however, I saw that the question we were

discussing was anything but unreal; for it was these ideas and

discussions which enabled me to collate our friend’s economic

difficulties with the mystical spirit which pervades so large a part

of American life, and to understand the nature of American progress.

Were not the economic difficulties encountered especially in the

big cities, notwithstanding the immense wealth of the country,

by the most numerous classes of America, the decisive proof that

really, as my wife asserted, the wealth created by a mechanical

civilisation is to some extent only apparent? That notwithstanding

the great depredation of nature carried out with means furnished by

science, men’s needs increase faster than their riches; therefore

that mechanical civilisation revolves in the vicious circle of an

insoluble contradiction? All the same, if America had set herself with

less eagerness to exploit by means of machinery her immense natural

resources; if she had not welcomed so many millions of men from all

parts of the world; if she had not invested in machinery and industries

and railways such a vast amount of capital, without a doubt we should

find a smaller number of people living, and living more comfortably, in

America to-day; but the conquest of the vast continent would not have

reached its present pitch, and the world would not have witnessed that

unparalleled event in its history, the bewildering development of the

United States.

In fact, we must not forget, if we wish to realise what a miracle

the civilisation of machinery has succeeded in accomplishing in the

New World, how slow and difficult was the expansion of mankind over

the world up to the end of the eighteenth century, that is, during

a period when men worked with their hands and travelled over their

planet on their own legs, or on those of animals little swifter than

themselves. The great plains acted as so many great barriers in the way

of men’s occupation of the land, because men lost their way in them.

Consequently men tended to settle on little tracts of land, in such a

way as to be near one another, to be able to communicate easily with

one another, and to exchange their products. Everybody knows how slow

has been in Europe the advance of civilisation from south to north; how

many centuries were required for the passage of the Alps and expansion

into Gaul, how many for the crossing of the Rhine and extension as far

as the Elbe, and again for the passage of the Elbe and the advance

towards the Vistula and the great plains of Eastern Europe. In America

itself—in the South as well as in the North—up to the end of the

eighteenth century, the progress of population and civilisation was

very slow and difficult.

In the twentieth century, on the other hand, a prodigy occurred, thanks

to steam-engines and all the other machines of which the steam-engine

is the parent. With these machines, men can exploit more rapidly and

thoroughly all the wealth of the earth, and with the railways can

export the wealth produced, even from the most remote and buried

regions, which thus can be peopled and exploited. Civilisation,

following the railway-lines, and armed with fire and machines, in

little more than fifty years extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific,

crossing and occupying, however summarily, the immense territories of

the interior, and binding together with a network of communications and

interests, cities, climates, and territories without number from east

to west, from north to south. But machinery is an inanimate instrument,

only to be imbued with creative force by the thought and will of

man. In consequence, this miracle of history would not have come

about if a bold and energetic people had not multiplied machines with

extraordinary rapidity over the whole immensity of their territory;

if they had not subordinated to this supreme end every other good,

æsthetic beauty, the preservation of traditions, the purity of the

national spirit, and even the conveniences of life which wealth can

give. American progress is then a transcendent and mystical idea which

inflames America with passion and impels it to accomplish the new and

rapid conquest of its own territory. And logic wastes its time looking

for and laying bare contradictions in it savouring of the absurd.

Doubtless, to work with frenzied zeal at creating riches in order to

be unable to enjoy them is an absurdity if judged in the light of the

interest of each individual; but are not all ideals absurd, when judged

in the light of the interest of the individual? What does it matter to

the soldier who dies in battle that his country emerges victorious from

the conflict in which it is engaged, seeing that he will not be able

to enjoy the fruits of the victory? From the point of view of personal

interest, it is better to live in a country disgraced and diminished

by a defeat than to die in a country aggrandised by a victory. So the

privations to which I had seen exposed in the intimacy of her home,

that kind hostess of ours, who had offered us luncheon in her modest

flat, no longer seemed an absurd contradiction of life. Her privations

were transfigured into a small personal sacrifice necessary for the

fulfilment of a great national work, transcending the interest and the

wishes of every individual American.

* * * * *

Thus at last I had grasped American progress and its apparent

incongruities. It was an ideal of life, born and rapidly matured in

a new continent during the past half century, at a time when the

conquest of the vast territory by means of machinery was becoming

more widespread and more intense. It was the ideal of life which,

overshadowing all the others, had called forth from the depths of

American society the marvellous energy which has staggered the world.

When I had once found the key to this enigma, many phenomena of

American life seemed to me clearer. I could easily explain to myself

why the public attached less weight to politics on that side than in

Europe, and regarded the defects and shortcomings in its political

institutions with an indifference which to Europeans seems strange; in

particular, why it preferred having them in a condition full of defects

and inconveniences rather than any reform which increased the power of

the State and limited the initiative of the individual. I could explain

also how it had succeeded in keeping alive that spirit of liberty, not

in politics only, but in religion, administration, customs, and culture

which often strikes Europeans as either excessive or bizarre. The great

national work—the conquest of the continent—is accomplished much more

by personal initiative than with the help and under the direction of

the State; the important point, therefore, is that personal energy

should be subjected in this great work to the smallest possible number

of limits and restrictions.

Lastly, I could explain why in American society, to borrow a rather

quaint philosophical expression, the category of quantity prevails

over that of quality. During my first few weeks in America, I used to

smile when I heard some Americans go into ecstasies at the thought

that everything in America was big, from the country to the cities,

the factories, and the statistics of population; when they gloated

over comparisons between their own country and the little countries of

Europe, and statements of the comparative superiority in size of things

in their own country. I no longer smiled, however, when I realised

what American progress represented. A civilisation, whose principal

instrument for the accomplishment of its work and for establishing

itself in the world is machinery, must necessarily consider the

quantitative criterion the supreme criterion of perfection. In what

respect, indeed, is machinery, regarded as an instrument of production,

superior to the human hand? Everybody knows that its superiority

consists not in quality, but in the quantity, of its output. Machinery

produces much and quickly. The hand produces little and slowly. The

hand, however, can attain a standard of perfection which is denied

machinery. Man will never succeed in constructing a machine capable

of sculpturing the Venus of Milo or of weaving the marvellous

tapestries which we admire in the museums of Europe. Everything of

a high degree of perfection is exclusively handmade; _vice versa_,

the hand, however, it may strive and labour and practise, will never

succeed in attaining in its work the giddy rapidity of which steam-

and electricity-driven machines are capable, or in producing in so

short a time so many good things. Consequently, in a civilisation in

which machinery predominates, men will be continually making fresh

efforts to live faster and faster, and to produce and consume more

and more rapidly. They will not be, on the other hand, too exacting

on the score of quality. They will be content with things which look

nice, without demanding extraordinary excellence or finish in details.

They will be better pleased to consume many examples of products of

inferior durability than one single example of products of great

perfection. Consequently, vagaries of taste, continual movement,

ready forgetfulness of traditions, and abundance of mediocrity, will

be salient characteristics of machine-ruled civilisation. The great

works of art which were the glory of past régimes will disappear for

the present, which will see them replaced by objects of medium quality

offered in greater quantity.

As a matter of fact, I found all these characteristics in North

America, and they no longer offended me. They seemed to me necessary

qualities of a society which sets out to conquer a boundless territory

with machinery. Nevertheless, at this point, having solved the

American problem, I was confronted with the European problem under a

new aspect. If American progress, if machinery, if the quantitative

criterion of perfection are necessary weapons for the accomplishment

of the great historical work to which the United States have set

themselves, how are we to explain the fact that in the states of Europe

also machines are being multiplied, the American idea of progress is

spreading, and the quantitative criterion of perfection is prevailing

gradually? All of them except Russia, which in many respects resembles

the United States, are countries of an old civilisation, live in small

tracts of territory, and have not immense continents to exploit.

At this point I saw hovering over Europe and America a new, vaster,

and more general problem, which dominates the two worlds and bestrides

the Atlantic like a great bridge: the struggle between quantity and

quality.

III

MORE OR BETTER?

It is an undoubted fact that Europe is becoming Americanised; that the

American idea of progress—understood to mean the increase of wealth

and the perfectioning of the instruments of production—is penetrating

European society. No profound knowledge of European society is needed

to recognise this. I would even go so far as to say that the only idea

which in the last fifty years has sunk deep into the minds of the

masses in Europe is this American idea of progress. I must, however,

also confess that before I went to America I belonged to that group of

Europeans, numerous enough, especially among the cultured and upper

classes, which laments this “Americanisation” of Europe, and considers

it to be a sort of mental aberration and decadence on the part of the

Old World. The idea is fairly wide-spread in Europe. It may startle

a good many Americans; but it will not seem paradoxical to those who

spare a moment’s reflection for the history of European civilisation up

to the French Revolution.

There is no doubt that, considered from the point of view of our

ancient history, this idea of progress, interpreted American-fashion,

is a kind of revolutionary dissolving force. Perhaps the upheaval which

it has produced and is producing in Europe can almost be compared with

that which Christianity caused in the ancient civilisation, when it

destroyed in the Greco-Latin world the political and military spirit

which had been the mainstay of that world. Indeed, we must not forget

that from the dawn of history up to the French Revolution succeeding

generations had lived in Europe contented with little, faithful to

traditions, and holding every innovation to be a danger and every

enterprise a revolt against God and against the memory of their

ancestors. It is true that even in those days men usually preferred

ease to poverty and were not insensible to the magnetism of gold. Even

then, each succeeding generation saw an increase in the wealth of the

world and in the spread of population over the face of the earth. But

how slow and spasmodic was the increase! Up to the time of the French

Revolution it is impossible to discern in history any differences in

wealth and population at intervals of less than a century. The change

produced by each generation was so small as to be barely recognisable.

In compensation, the men of that time strove to make the world fairer

and better. Art and religion were their absorbing preoccupation.

From Greece [says one of the characters in my dialogue], which

taught the world to write and to sculp, up to the Middle Ages

which built the fairest cathedrals and the most fantastic

palaces of all times; from the Egypt of the Ptolemies,

from which the last rays of Hellenic beauty illumined the

Mediterranean world, up to the Rome of the popes and up to

the Venice of the sixteenth century, which flaunted her

marble pomp in the eyes of the world, up to the France of the

eighteenth century, which immortalised her three sovereigns in

three world-compelling decorative styles; from Augustus, who

protected Horace and Virgil, up to Louis XIV, who protected

Racine and Molière, and up to the Marquise de Pompadour, who

strove to make Paris the metropolis of elegance,—was not the

perpetuation of a form of beauty the supreme ambition of every

nation and of every state? Consider the countless efforts made

to establish in the world the reign either of sanctity or of

justice or both, from the Roman Empire which created law, up to

Christianity which strove to cleanse human nature of sin, and

up to the French Revolution, which proclaimed to the world the

age of liberty, fraternity, and equality.

Such was that old Europe which created the numberless masterpieces

of architecture, sculpture, and painting, now so much admired by the

Americans; that old Europe which discovered America, created science,

and produced the French Revolution. But what remains of that old

Europe? American progress is busy to-day destroying it; in particular,

the artistic spirit is rapidly disappearing from the continent which

for centuries was the world’s teacher of beauty.

Do you seriously believe [asks another of my characters, he

who in the dialogue defends America and the new ideals of

life] that it is any use nowadays lamenting the fact that some

rare genius is unable at the present day to give birth to his

immortal masterpiece in the solitude of his pride? At a time

when man is inventing increasingly powerful machinery, and is

conquering the earth, the sea, the air, the vast treasures

hidden in every nook and cranny of the universe; with these

marvellous tools in his hand is recognising that he is becoming

the wizard visioned in the legends of centuries; while the

masses are clamouring for bread, victuals, education, ease,

security, pleasures, air, light, liberty, all God’s blessings

in prodigious and yearly-increasing quantities?

These words are not the vapourings of a fanciful individual. They are

repeated a hundred times daily in Europe, in a more or less elegant

form, for they express the kernel of the thought of the Europe which

is being Americanised. I could quote many examples in support of my

contention. I will quote one only, a characteristic one. A foreigner

may often see in the smaller Italian cities ancient monuments—churches

or palaces—which are gradually falling into ruin. The nonchalance of

the authorities or the ignorance and stinginess of the proprietors

suffer time to do its deadly work, or even help to accelerate it by

befouling the last relics of a past beauty. The foreigner shakes his

head, sighs, mutters harsh judgments, and asks himself _sotto voce_

whether the inhabitants of that little town are barbarians. His

stupor would be increased, however, if he could speak with one of the

locals and open his mind freely to him. “We barbarians?”—would answer

the local shop-keeper, lawyer, doctor, or artisan. To prove to the

foreigner how wrong he was, they would tell him that that little town

has actually got electric light! The municipality, which cannot find a

few thousand francs for keeping this or that great monument in a decent

state, will spend large sums on lighting with electric light streets in

which after 9 P.M. there is nobody to be seen. The adoption of electric

light is an act of progress, and nowadays even the shop-keeper and

the artisan understand progress in this American sense; while, with

the exception of a few cultured and art-loving persons, who have no

influence whatever, nobody ever thinks it a barbarism to allow an old

monument built by our fathers to fall into ruin.

This is a trifling instance; but it indicates the new spirit which is

now pervading and conquering the whole of Europe. The most evident

proof of this triumph of American progress is the decadence or

disappearance of all the schools of art. Europe was in past centuries,

in harder and more difficult times than the present, the glorious

mother and mistress of civilisation, because under diverse forms, she

managed to create and keep going schools of literature, sculpture,

painting, architecture, and music. To-day, these schools have almost

all disappeared; and the few survivors, with very few exceptions, are

in a state of decadence. On the other hand, schools of electricity,

dyeing, weaving, mechanics, commerce, and chemistry abound and

flourish; they are the only schools the masses now require. In past

centuries, the states and aristocracies of Europe had in various ways

protected and encouraged the arts; and this protection had been one

of the principal reasons for their progress. Now this is no longer

the case. The wealthy classes of Europe to-day consider it much more

dignified and elegant to build motor-cars and aeroplanes than to

help painting and sculpture. As to the states, if one of them tries

to encourage some art, protests pour in from every side that the

expenditure is a wasting of the people’s money in the most idiotic

way. Italy was for centuries the mistress of the world in every art.

Yet even in Italy bitter complaints are made to-day about the few

millions which the public bodies have spent in the last thirty years

in raising monuments to the great men of the Revolution. On the other

hand, how can sculpture flourish, if nobody will pay the sculptors for

the works which they are capable of executing? And for what reason is

the State, which possesses ancient monuments, unable to spend another

million or two on keeping alive the tradition of an art which has shed

no little glory on the Nation? Is not this tradition, too, a national

heirloom? But the first-born daughter of Beauty no longer understands

these simple truths. Infected by the spirit of American progress,

she protests that the money spent on art is wasted; she is right

willing that hundreds of millions be spent on the encouragement of the

mechanical and iron industries.

There is no need to wonder, therefore, if many Europeans regret the

Americanisation of the old continent as a kind of grievous madness.

Europe—especially its upper classes—lives a great deal—it could hardly

help living—in its past history. I have already said, that I, too,

when I undertook my journeys to America, was more or less of this

same cast of thought. But in America, confronted with this frenzy of

desires and of works which has attracted from all parts of the world

and fused into one people so many millions of souls, has created so

many cities and produced so much wealth, it was no longer possible for

me to shut my eyes to the fact that so vast and profound a phenomenon

must depend on causes much more complex and grave than a simple mistake

or mental aberration. For what reason was Europe ready to destroy even

her secular tradition of art for the sake of emulating that rapidity of

execution and audacity of enterprise which I was then witnessing in the

New World? This was the problem which presented itself to me, after I

had grasped the meaning of American progress; and which I succeeded in

solving with the help of my wife’s investigations into the history of

machinery.

“Christopher Columbus,” says one of my characters, in _Between the

Old World and the New_, “not only discovered America, but re-endowed

man with the globe which God had already given him, inasmuch as he

enabled man at last to know it.” Europe had remained content up to the

fifteenth century to live in her little territory, ignorant of how

great the world was. That earlier limitation, however, only increased

the force of the impulse, given to man by the discovery of America,

to scour and ransack the oceans, with the object of discovering and

possessing the whole plane. Between the sixteenth and the eighteenth

centuries, then, Europe saw the world expanding around her. With the

expansion of the world, however, came an increase in the longing to

possess it, to master it, and to exploit it. How was Europe to do

so, with means so scanty, and under the sway of the ancient ideas,

which said to man, “Dare not!” which taught him to change as little

as possible the order of things under which he had grown up, and not

to yield to the temptation of over-ardent desires and of over-lofty

ambitions?

Then began, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that effort of

thought and of will which, slowly at first, was destined gradually to

arm our civilisation with all the weapons necessary for the conquest

and exploitation of the earth. The sciences began their advances.

The first machines were invented and applied. The idea of liberty

of progress, of the rights of man, and of the popular will began to

undermine the ancient beliefs and traditions. Nevertheless, it is

probable that these would have long resisted, and that the ancient ties

which restrained the human will from the great enterprises would have

slackened, but not broken for who knows how many more centuries, if it

had not been for that immense event which convulsed the history of

Europe and America, the French Revolution. The French Revolution and

the great wars to which it gave rise made such and so great breaches

in the ancient prison-walls of traditions and principles in which our

civilisation was confined that man could thereafter easily escape

through them and wander freely over the vast world.

In fact, after the French Revolution, we see the beginning of a new

history of the world. The ideas of liberty and of progress invade

Europe and America. In every class and in every nation comes an

awakening of new desires for comfort and culture. Industry develops,

railways spread, inventions multiply. Cities become thronged and

increase rapidly. The great new phenomenon of the history of the

world, the intensive exploitation of America, begins. The new wealth,

especially that produced in such abundance in America, whets men’s

appetites. Gradually the desire for comfort, ease, and culture spreads

to multitudes more numerous and to new nations, drives followers along

in the steps of pioneers, in turn prompts others to follow them, and

brings crowding on the heels of riches already realised, the hungry

greed of the masses; in a word, impels all Europe and all America to

the conquest of the earth.

In consequence, not only America, but also Europe, saw the beginning

fifty years ago of what might be truly called the Golden Age of human

history, the epoch of abundance.

What has man dreamt of [exclaims one of my characters]—what

has man dreamt of, since the dawn of time, but the Terrestrial

Paradise, the Promised Land, the Garden of the Hesperides,

the Age of Gold, Arabia Félix; one single thing, under

various names, the empire of nature and abundance? Is not the

great myth which centuries have mildly fantasied now at last

materialising under our eyes?

But every medal has its reverse side; and we have had to pay, and to

pay dearly, for this fabulous abundance which man had vainly visioned

for centuries.

The modern world [says another of my characters] has crowned

quantity at the expense of quality—which is, after all, an

eternal law. For I can make in a certain time things of a

certain quality, that is to say, resembling a certain model

of perfection which I have before my eyes or in my mind. But

in that case, I cannot make any quantity of it which I may

require. I must rest content with that quantity which I can

manage, working with all my zeal. I can say, on the other hand:

I want so many things of a certain quality. But in that case,

I can no longer prescribe the time necessary to finish them as

my fancy bids me. Or again: I wish in so much time to make such

a quantity. Very well; but in that case, I must put up with

the best quality I can get. So that whoever wants to increase

the quantity, and to curtail the time must abate his demand

for quality. And that is just what we are doing to-day in this

civilisation of ours, in which quantity reigns supreme.

In the light of this idea that decadence in art, and in so many other

refinements of life, which many Europeans impute to America, seemed to

me no longer the effect of an aberration on the part of the masses, but

a sort of compensation. We pay, and we ought to pay, for the rapid

fortunes so commonly made nowadays. We pay, we ought to pay, for the

speed of the trains, the motor-cars, the aeroplane, the telegraph;

and the price is the mediocrity which pervades everything. We cannot

have, we must not want, everything in this world,—railways as well as

beautiful pictures, aeroplanes as well as the marvellous furniture

which the great French artists used to make in the eighteenth century,

speed as well as good manners. For among the reproaches hurled at

America by Europe is that of having banished from Europe by the example

of her democracy the good manners of our ancient ceremonial, and

substituted for it a rather over-simple and over-casual cordiality. But

can we expect the polished form, for which the eighteenth century was

famous, to survive in the social relations of a civilisation which,

like ours, is always in a hurry? Among men, who live between the train,

the motor-car, and the telephone?

Every epoch directs all its efforts towards a supreme goal, which

for it is the all-important one. There have been epochs ablaze with

religious fervour, whose chief aspiration it was to diffuse and to

defend the faith. There have been epochs with a profound sense of

the ambition for glory, which fought great wars. Others again have

turned their attention to the fostering of the arts and sciences. Our

civilisation aims, in the first place, at the mastery over nature, and

the intensive exploitation of all the riches of the earth. We enjoy

the advantages of it. We are not inclined to abjure railways and

telegraphs. We have no wish again to run the risk of famine, which was

such an ever-present one to the civilisations of the past. We enjoy

the incredible abundance and liberty of the day and are by no means

eager to return to the pristine régime of discipline and parsimony.

We Europeans also, then, must resign ourselves to paying the price

which all these advantages cost, and to living in an epoch in which

art cannot flourish in any high degree, in which religion will no

longer have the strength to emanate waves of mystical ardour, and

even science will be cultivated only so far as it can be of immediate

service to practical ends, by intensifying and making more prolific

the exploitation of natural riches. For this, too, is a phenomenon

noticeable to-day in every part of Europe: disinterested studies are

falling into disfavour. Rich as it is, the world of to-day is less

capable of searching after the true for the sole pleasure of expanding

the field of knowledge, than it was two centuries ago, when it was so

much poorer. Even scientists nowadays want to see their discoveries

turned into money.

* * * * *

The Americanisation of Europe, then, is a fatal phenomenon. Europe,

from the moment when she aspired to great wealth and to the dominion of

nature, was called upon to renounce her claim to many of the treasures

of her ancient and refined culture. This was the conclusion at which

I rested for a moment. And yet at this point, I, as a European, felt

a misgiving. If matters stood thus, was not Europe fatally doomed

to become even more thoroughly Americanised in the future? At the

present time, the appetites and ambitions of all classes in Europe,

even the most numerous, have been given free rein. Everybody, from

the aristocrat of ancient lineage to the most obscure peasant, wishes

to earn, spend, and accumulate as much as he can. There is no power,

human or divine, which can pretend to drive back towards its historical

fountainhead this immense torrent of greed and ambition. Europe,

thus, is fated to become increasingly oblivious of the traditions of

its ancient and disinterested culture; to struggle to imitate and

compete with America in the production of great riches at greater

speed. And, as America with her immense territories and smaller store

of traditions is better equipped for the competition, so Europe must

necessarily become ever more and more decadent in the future. The

continent destined to dominate the civilisation of the future, as

Europe dominated it up to the middle of the nineteenth century, will be

America.

There are not wanting persons in Europe who take a delight in repeating

from time to time this prophecy, which to the ears of a European sounds

somewhat lugubrious. For a moment, when in America, I, too, somewhat

discouraged by the vitality of which the American spirit of progress

gives proof, felt myself inclined to give ear to these prophets, whom

hitherto in Europe I had always contradicted. Yes, culture in Europe

was destined to become ever more decadent before the invasion of

progress interpreted in the American sense; quantity, that is to say,

the nations with vast territories at their disposal and capable of

rapidly producing vast wealth, would rule supreme in the future, while

the forces of idealism would lose a great part of their ancient empire

over the world.

America, however, actually America, proved to me that the ancient

culture represented by Europe is not destined to die out, and that,

if Europe is being Americanised, America in compensation is being

induced by an eternal impulse to Europeanise herself! I, like so many

other Europeans, had gone to America, persuaded that the American’s

only thought is to make money. But in America, I, too, ended with

the conviction that no country in Europe expends so much money,

labour, and zeal on founding museums, schools, universities, and new

religions; on fostering, in the midst of the mechanical civilisation

and the realm of quantity, the arts, the religious spirit, and the

disinterested sciences; on preventing the loss of that intellectual

legacy of the past, in which Europe takes an ever-decreasing interest,

occupied as she is in developing her industries and her trade. If,

out of deference to history, rather than to the present day, we

may grant that Europe represents in the world’s history the effort

directed to the perfecting of a lofty culture, artistic, scientific,

religious, or philosophic,—there is no doubt but that America is

to-day becoming Europeanised; is seeking, that is to say, to employ the

vast riches which she has accumulated by the intensive exploitation

of her territory in the promotion of the progress of art, knowledge,

and the religious spirit. Doubtless, not all the efforts she makes are

successful; but they are numerous, intense, and obstinate. Indeed, if

America is open to any reproach in this relation, it is, in my opinion,

to that of feeling too ardent an admiration for lofty culture—art and

science in particular—an admiration which sometimes blunts the critical

sense, and does not permit her to distinguish what in the world of

the ideal is authentic from what is counterfeit, the real gold from

pinchbeck. In fact, one can find in no European country so lively and

profound a trust in science as in America. Europe knows that science

can do a great deal and has done a great deal, but that it often

promises, or raises hopes of, more than it can do. Not so in America.

Among the cultured, as among the lower classes, faith in the power of

science is practically unlimited. There is no marvel which the American

does not expect to see issuing from the scientist’s closet. Even the

mystical movements in America, whose trend is anti-scientific, like to

trick themselves out with the name of “Science,” which has a kind of

magic sound and glamour for the men of the New World.

There is the same universal enthusiasm for art in America. It might

be said that America is determined to admire everything which might

possibly be beautiful, of every country, every epoch, and every

school. It is true that the most engrossing preoccupation of the

Americans is not that of fostering the arts; they must still keep their

minds fixed on the conquest of their great continent. But it is also

true that, in the moments of leisure, when they can think of something

other than business, they fling open, so to speak, their arms to the

arts of the whole world. Just as all the styles of architecture can be

found in the great buildings of New York, so all the arts which have

flourished in the course of centuries in Asia and Europe have been

transplanted into the New World. America, I might almost say, wishes

to taste and understand all the beauties which the past has created;

classical literature as well as contemporary European literature,

Italian as well as German music, Greek sculpture as well as the French

sculpture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Italian as well

as Dutch painting, Japanese decorative art as well as the styles of the

fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth Louis. New York, from this point

of view, is a real artistic cosmopolis.

If, then, Europe is gradually destroying her ancient culture, and

her great traditions, in order to construct railways and factories,

to found banks and to initiate commercial enterprises, America, on

the other hand, wishes to employ the wealth gained by the intensive

exploitation of her vast continent in creating an art and a science.

How can we explain this contrast? “The snobbery of a parvenue nation,”

it pleases the European, with a shrug of the shoulders, to label it.

But anyone with any knowledge of America and much knowledge of human

nature will not rest content with so glib an explanation. It is true

that, thanks to machinery, to America, and to the idea of liberty and

progress, quantity is to-day triumphant in the world. Men wish to enjoy

abundance. Can they, however, confine their wish to abundance, to the

increase, that is to say, of the quantity of things they possess?

Observe a peasant who comes to town, turns artisan, and earns a higher

wage. What does he do? Does he buy with his higher wage a second pair

of boots, or a second suit in addition to and like the one he wore when

he was poor? No. He adopts the town fashions and buys more elegant

shoes and clothes, in appearance at least, that is to say, like those

worn by the upper classes. In every country of America and Europe,

the differences in dress between the upper and lower classes, once so

great, are disappearing. And why? Because the people want to dress like

the “Swells”; and modern industry spares no trouble to give them at

little cost the means of satisfying their ambition. In other words, the

workman wants to invest his higher wage in the purchase of finer, or

what he thinks are finer, clothes, than those he wore before, because

to possess a suit of superior clothes is to him a greater joy than to

have two suits of the same workmanship as those he wore when he was

poorer. In other words, quantity soon satiates, and at a certain stage

man needs to translate it into quality, and to employ his wealth to

procure for himself, not a greater number of things, but more beautiful

and better things, otherwise wealth is useless.

If this need is lively and profound in the minds of the people, how

much stronger must it be in the richer classes, those with great

resources at their disposal! A man who possesses ten millions and

another who possesses one hundred cannot eat ten and a hundred times

as much respectively as the modest lord of only one million, live in a

house ten or a hundred times as vast, or buy himself ten or a hundred

hats where the other buys only one. If they used their wealth in that

way, they would be considered mad, and with good reason. They must then

strive to procure for themselves, with their superior wealth, things

of superior beauty or quality, to translate their wealth into beauty

and merit, quantity into quality. There are, it is true, men who desire

wealth only for the pleasure of creating it, and who are indifferent to

the other pleasures which it brings. At no time, perhaps, were these

men so numerous as at present among the great bankers, merchants,

and manufacturers who now rule the economic destinies of the modern

world. But even to-day, these men, who love money as the artist loves

his art, in itself and not for the pleasures which it can give, are

in a minority. And so they will always be, because even if—impossible

hypothesis—anybody in the upper classes developed such a fervid

enthusiasm for banking, industry, and commerce, as to arrive at

considering wealth only as an end in itself, a means of displaying his

own ability, there would still be the women. Unless it be wished that

even in the wealthy classes, women should engage in business and work,

women will be bound always to consider wealth as an instrument for the

advancement of life, procuring for its possessor joys more select and

articles of superior quality.

In fact, this and no other is the origin of snobbery. Snobbery is, I

know, an obvious target for sarcasm at the present day. And it is easy

to laugh at the _nouveau riche_ who is determined at all costs, even

at the price of sacrifice and snubs, to frequent houses and circles

which formerly were closed to him; who is glad to go for trips in a

motor-car, even if they cause him suffering, or to go to the opera even

if he falls asleep there, because he thinks that by doing so, he is

living up to the standard of the highest elegance. But if he were not

under this delusion, what would be the use of his wealth to him? What

compensation would he have for the fatigues and perils he had incurred

in its acquisition? Snobbery is simply an effort to translate quantity

into quality to which man is impelled by the very increase of wealth.

There never was so much snobbery as there is at the present time,

because there never was so much wealth.

Without a doubt, modern snobbery is full of grotesque deceptions.

The world never contained so many _nouveaux riches_, unprepared to

enjoy the real refinements of life, and destined to be the victims of

every sort of fraud. How often and in how many instances do we not

see the tragi-comedy of _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, Molière’s immortal

comedy, acted over again at the present day? But one can also find,

in America perhaps more abundantly than in Europe, families whose

wealth dates back several generations, in which families the mania

for the accumulation of riches has died down, and which have time,

inclination, and culture enough to employ their wealth on behalf of

the most lofty activities of the mind. These are the American families

who ransack Europe for works of art, who found schools and museums,

who give work to architects, painters, and sculptors, who directly or

indirectly stimulate an ever-increasing number of the rising generation

not to concentrate on the making of money, but to devote themselves to

those intellectual labours of which, till a short while ago, Europe

had the monopoly. And it is the existence of this portion of American

society and its tendencies that entitle us to say that America is being

Europeanised.

Europe, then, wishing to live a larger life, after centuries of penury

and stint, is becoming Americanised, and is sacrificing a part of

her splendid traditions of lofty culture to her desire to learn from

America the art of producing new wealth rapidly. America, on the other

hand, having accumulated immense wealth by the intensive exploitation

of her territory, is becoming Europeanised; she is turning, that is to

say, to the arts, sciences, and most lofty forms of higher culture, to

perfect which Europe has laboured for centuries. Yet at this point I

think I hear the reader cry:

“Is not this all to the good? Does it not establish a marvellous

balance between the two worlds? Does it not prove that our civilisation

is the richest, most powerful, best balanced, and most perfect which

has ever existed? Ought Europe to have gone on living for ever in

misery, intent only on the perfecting of culture, and America to have

had never a thought for anything but the multiplication of wealth?”