THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA
[Illustration]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA
BY
HENRY VAN DYKE
Professor of English at Princeton University
Hyde Lecturer, University of Paris, 1908-9
Hon. LL.D., University of Geneva
Hon. F.R.S.L., London
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1912
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1910,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1910.
Reprinted March, October, 1910; February, 1912.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
TO MADAME
ELISABETH SAINTE-MARIE PERRIN, _NÉE_ BAZIN
To inscribe your name upon this volume, dear Madame, is to recall
delightful memories of my year in France. Your sympathy encouraged me in
the adventurous choice of a subject so large and simple for a course of
lectures at the Sorbonne. While they were in the making, you acted as an
audience of one, in the long music-room at Hostel and in the forest of
St. Gervais, and gave gentle counsels of wisdom in regard to the points
likely to interest and retain a larger audience of Parisians in the
_Amphithéâtre Richelieu_. Then, the university adventure being ended
without mishap, your skill as a translator admirably clothed the
lectures in your own lucid language, and sent them out to help a little
in strengthening the ties of friendship between France and America.
Grateful for all the charming hospitality of your country, which made my
year happy and, I hope, not unfruitful, I dedicate to you this book on
the Spirit of America, because you have done so much to make me
understand, appreciate, and admire the true Spirit of France.
HENRY VAN DYKE.
PREFACE
This book contains the first seven of a series of twenty-six
_conférences_, given in the winter of 1908-1909, on the Hyde Foundation,
at the University of Paris, and repeated in part at other universities
of France. They were delivered in English, and afterward translated into
French and published under the title of _Le Génie de l'Amérique_. In
making this American edition it has not seemed worth while to attempt to
disguise the fact that these chapters were prepared as lectures to be
given to a French audience, and that their purpose, in accordance with
the generous design of the founder of the chair, was to promote an
intelligent sympathy between France and the United States. If the book
finds readers among my countrymen, I beg them, as they read, to remember
its origin. Perhaps it may have an interest of its own, as a report,
made in Paris, of the things that seem vital, significant, and creative
in the life and character of the American people.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION xi
THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE 3
SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC 31
FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY 71
WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH 113
COMMON ORDER AND SOCIAL COÖPERATION 151
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION 195
SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE 239
INTRODUCTION
There is an ancient amity between France and America, which is recorded
in golden letters in the chronicles of human liberty. In one of the
crowded squares of New York there stands a statue of a young nobleman,
slender, elegant, and brave, springing forward to offer his sword to the
cause of freedom. The name under that figure is La Fayette. In one of
the broad avenues of Paris there stands a statue of a plain gentleman,
grave, powerful, earnest, sitting his horse like a victor and lifting
high his sword to salute the star of France. The name under that figure
is Washington.
It is well that in both lands such a friendship between two great
peoples should be
"Immortalized by art's immortal praise."
It is better still that it should be warmed and strengthened by present
efforts for the common good: that the world should see the two great
republics standing together for justice and fair play at Algeciras,
working together for the world's peace at the Congress of the Hague.
But in order that a friendship like this should really continue and
increase, there must be something more than a sentimental sympathy.
There must be a mutual comprehension, a real understanding, between the
two peoples. Romantic love, the little _Amor_ with the bow and arrows,
may be as blind as the painters and novelists represent him. But true
friendship, the strong god _Amicitia_, is open-eyed and clear-sighted.
So long as Frenchmen insist upon looking at America merely as the
country of the Sky-scraper and the Almighty Dollar, so long as Americans
insist upon regarding France merely as the home of the Yellow Novel and
the Everlasting Dance, so long will it be difficult for the ancient
amity between these two countries to expand and deepen into a true and
vital concord.
France and America must know each other better. They must learn to look
each into the other's mind, to read each the other's heart. They must
recognize each other less by their foibles and more by their faiths,
less by the factors of national weakness and more by the elements of
national strength. Then, indeed, I hope and believe they will be good
and faithful friends.
It is to promote this serious and noble purpose that an American
gentleman, Mr. James Hazen Hyde, has founded two chairs, one at the
University of Paris, and one at Harvard University, for an annual
interchange of professors, (and possibly of ideas,) between France and
America. Through this generous arrangement we have had the benefit of
hearing, in the United States, MM. Doumic, Rod, de Régnier, Gaston
Deschamps, Hugues Le Roux, Mabilleau, Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, Millet, Le
Braz, Tardieu, and the Vicomte d'Avenel. On the same basis Messrs.
Barrett Wendell, Santayana, Coolidge, and Baker have spoken at the
Sorbonne and at the other French Universities. This year Harvard has
called me from the chair of English Literature at Princeton University,
and the authorities of the Sorbonne have graciously accorded me the
hospitality of this _Amphithéâtre Richelieu_, to take my small part in
this international mission.
Do you ask for my credentials as an ambassador? Let me omit such
formalities as academic degrees, professorships, and doctorates, and
present my claims in more simple and humble form. A family residence of
two hundred and fifty years in America, whither my ancestors came from
Holland in 1652; a working life of thirty years which has taken me among
all sorts and conditions of men, in almost all the states of the Union
from Maine to Florida and from New York to California; a personal
acquaintance with all the Presidents except one since Lincoln; a
friendship with many woodsmen, hunters, and fishermen in the forests
where I spend the summers; an entire independence of any kind of
political, ecclesiastical, or academic partisanship; and some
familiarity with American literature, its origins, and its historical
relations,--these are all the claims that I can make to your attention.
They are small enough, to be sure, but such as they are you may find in
them a partial explanation of the course which these lectures are to
take.
You will understand that if I have chosen a subject which is not
strictly academic, it is because the best part of my life has been spent
out of doors among men. You will perceive that my failure to speak of
Boston as the centre of the United States may have some connection with
the accident that I am not a Bostonian. You will account for the absence
of a suggestion that any one political party is the only hope of the
Republic by the fact that I am not a politician. You will detect in my
attitude towards literature the naïve conviction that it is not merely
an art existing for art's sake, but an expression of the inner life and
a factor in the moral character. Finally, you will conclude, with your
French logicality of mind, that I must be an obstinate idealist, because
I am going to venture to lecture to you on _The Spirit of America_. That
is as much as to say that I believe man is led by an inner light, and
that the ideals, moral convictions, and vital principles of a people are
the most important factors in their history.
All these things are true. They cannot be denied or concealed. I would
willingly confess them and a hundred more, if I might contribute but a
little towards the purpose of these lectures: to help some of the people
of France to understand more truly the real people of America,--a people
of idealists engaged in a great practical task.
I
THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE
THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA
I
THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE
There is a proverb which affirms that in order to know a man you have
only to travel with him for a week. Almost all of us have had
experiences, sometimes happy and sometimes the reverse, which seem to
confirm this saying.
A journey in common is a sort of involuntary confessional. There is a
certain excitement, a confusion and quickening of perceptions and
sensations, in the adventures, the sudden changes, the new and striking
scenes of travel. The bonds of habit are loosened. Impulses of pleasure
and of displeasure, suddenly felt, make themselves surprisingly visible.
Wishes and appetites and prejudices which are usually dressed in a
costume of words so conventional as to amount to a disguise now appear
unmasked, and often in very scanty costume, as if they had been suddenly
called from their beds by an alarm of fire on a steamboat, or, to use a
more agreeable figure, by the announcement in a hotel on the Righi of
approaching sunrise.
There is another thing which plays, perhaps, a part in this power of
travel to make swift disclosures. I mean the vague sense of release from
duties and restraints which comes to one who is away from home. Much of
the outward form of our daily conduct is regulated by the structure and
operation of the social machinery in which we quite inevitably find our
place. But when all this is left behind, when a man no longer feels the
pressure of the neighbouring wheels, the constraint of the driving-belt
which makes them all move together, nor the restraint of the common task
to which the collective force of all is applied, he is "outside of the
machine."
The ordinary sight-seeing, uncommercial traveller--the tourist, the
globe-trotter--is not usually a person who thinks much of his own
responsibilities, however conscious he may be of his own importance. His
favourite proverb is, "When you are in Rome, do as the Romans do." But
in the application of the proverb, he does not always inquire whether
the particular thing which he is invited to do is done by the particular
kind of Roman that he would like to be, if he lived in Rome, or by some
other kind of Roman quite different, even contrary. He is liberated. He
is unaccountable. He is a butterfly visiting a strange garden. He has
only to enjoy himself according to his caprice and to accept the
invitations of the flowers which please him most.
This feeling of irresponsibility in travel corresponds somewhat to the
effect of wine. The tongue is loosened. Unexpected qualities and
inclinations are unconsciously confessed. A new man, hitherto unknown,
appears upon the scene. And this new man often seems more natural, more
spontaneous, more vivid, than our old acquaintance. "At last," we say to
ourselves, "we know the true inwardness, the real reality of this
fellow. He is not acting a part now. He is coming to the surface. We see
what a bad fellow, or what a good fellow, he is. _In vino et in viatore
veritas!_"
But is it quite correct, after all, this first impression that travel is
the great revealer of character? Is it the essential truth, the
fundamental truth, _la vraie verité_, that we discover through this
glass? Or is it, rather, a novel aspect of facts which are real enough,
indeed, but not fundamental,--an aspect so novel that it presents itself
as more important than it really is? To put the question in brief, and
in a practical form, is a railway train the place to study character, or
is it only a place to observe characteristics?
There is, of course, a great deal of complicated and quarrelsome
psychology involved in this seeming simple question,--for example, the
point at issue between the determinists and libertarians, the
philosophers of the unconscious and the philosophers of the ideal,--all
of which I will prudently pass by, in order to make a very practical and
common-sense observation.
Ordinary travel usually obscures and confuses quite as much as it
reveals in the character of the traveller. His excitement, his moral
detachment, his intellectual dislocation, unless he is a person of
extraordinary firmness and poise, are apt to make him lose himself much
more than they help him to find himself. In these strange and transient
experiences his action lacks meaning and relation. He is carried away.
He is uprooted. He is swept along by the current of external novelty.
This may be good for him or bad for him. I do not ask this question. I
am not moralizing. I am observing. The point is that under these
conditions I do not see the real man more clearly, but less clearly. To
paraphrase a Greek saying, I wish not to study Philip when he is a
little exhilarated, but Philip when he is sober: not when he is at a
Persian banquet, but when he is with his Macedonians.
Moreover, if I mistake not, the native environment, the chosen or
accepted task, the definite place in the great world-work, is part of
the man himself. There are no human atoms. Relation is inseparable from
quality. Absolute isolation would be invisibility. Displacement is
deformity. You remember what Emerson says in his poem, _Each and All_:--
"The delicate shells lay on the shore:
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home,
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar."
So I would see my man where he belongs, in the midst of the things which
have produced him and which he has helped to produce. I would understand
something of his relation to them. I would watch him at his work, the
daily labour which not only earns his living but also moulds and forms
his life. I would see how he takes hold of it, with reluctance or with
alacrity, and how he regards it, with honour or with contempt. I would
consider the way in which he uses its tangible results; to what purpose
he applies them; for what objects he spends the fruit of his toil; what
kind of bread he buys with the sweat of his brow or his brain. I would
trace in his environment the influence of those who have gone before
him. I would read the secrets of his heart in the uncompleted projects
which he forms for those who are to come after him. In short, I would
see the roots from which he springs, and the hopes in which his heart
flowers.
Thus, and thus only, the real man, the entire man, would become more
clear to me. He might appear more or less admirable. I might like him
more, or less. That would make no difference. The one thing that is sure
is that I should know him better. I should know the soul of the man.
If this is true, then, of the individual, how much more is it true of a
nation, a people? The inward life, the real life, the animating and
formative life of a people is infinitely difficult to discern and
understand.
There are a hundred concourses of travel in modern Europe where you may
watch "the passing show" of all nations with vast amusement,--on the
_Champs-Elysées_ in May or June, in the park of _Aix-les-Bains_ in
midsummer, at the Italian Lakes in autumn, in the colonnade of
Shepherd's Hotel at Cairo in January or February, on the Pincian Hill at
Rome in March or April. Take your seats, ladies and gentlemen, at this
continuous performance, this international _vaudeville_, and observe
British habits, French manners, German customs, American eccentricities,
whatever interests you in the varied entertainment. But do not imagine
that in this way you will learn to know the national personality of
England, or France, or Germany, or America. That is something which is
never exported.
Some drop of tincture or extract of it, indeed, may pass from one land
to another in a distinct and concentrated individuality, as when a
Lafayette comes to America, or a Franklin to France. Some partial
portrait and imperfect image of it, indeed, may be produced in
literature. And there the reader who is wise enough to separate the
head-dress from the head, and to discern the figure beneath the costume,
may trace at least some features of the real life represented and
expressed in poem or romance, in essay or discourse. But even this
literature, in order to be vitally understood, must be interpreted in
relation to the life of the men who have produced it and the men for
whom it was produced.
Authors are not algebraic quantities,--_X_, _Y_, _Z_, &c. They express
spiritual actions and reactions in the midst of a given environment.
What they write is in one sense a work of art, and therefore to be
judged accurately by the laws of that art. But when this judgment is
made, when the book has been assigned its rank according to its
substance, its structure, its style, there still remains another point
of view from which it is to be considered. The book is a document of
life. It is the embodiment of a spiritual protest, perhaps; or it is the
unconscious confession of an intellectual ambition; or it is an appeal
to some popular sentiment; or it is the expression of the craving for
some particular form of beauty or joy; or it is a tribute to some
personal or social excellence; or it is the record of some vision of
perfection seen in
"The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the poet's dream."
In every case, it is something that comes out of a heritage of ideals
and adds to them.
The possessor of this heritage is the soul of a people. This soul of a
people lives at home.
It is for this reason that America has been imperfectly understood, and
in some respects positively misunderstood in Europe. The American
tourists, who have been numerous (and noticeable) on all the European
highways of pleasure and byways of curiosity during the last forty
years, have made a vivid impression on the people of the countries which
they have visited. They are recognized. They are remembered. It is not
necessary to inquire whether this recognition contains more of
admiration or of astonishment, whether the forms which it often takes
are flattering or the reverse. On this point I am sufficiently American
myself to be largely indifferent. But the point on which I feel strongly
is that the popular impression of America which is derived only or
chiefly from the observation of American travellers is, and must be,
deficient, superficial, and in many ways misleading.
If this crowd of American travellers were a hundred times as numerous,
it would still fail to be representative, it would still be unable to
reveal the Spirit of America, just because it is composed of travellers.
I grant you that it includes many, perhaps almost all, of the different
types and varieties of Americans, good, bad, and mediocre. You will find
in this crowd some very simple people and some very complicated people;
country folk and city folk; strenuous souls who come to seek culture and
relaxed souls who come to spend money; millionnaires and
school-teachers, saloon-keepers and university professors; men of the
East and men of the West; Yankees, Knickerbockers, Hoosiers, Cavaliers,
and Cowboys. Surely, you say, from such a large collection of samples
one ought to be able to form an adequate judgment of the stuff.
But no; on the contrary, the larger the collection of samples, seen
under the detaching and exaggerating conditions of travel, the more
confused and the less sane and penetrating your impression will be,
unless by some other means you have obtained an idea of the vital
origin, the true relation, the common inheritance, and the national
unity of these strange and diverse travellers who come from beyond the
sea.
Understand, I do not mean to say that European scholars and critics
have not studied American affairs and institutions to advantage and
thrown a clear light of intelligence, of sympathy, of criticism, upon
the history and life of the United States. A philosophical study like
that of Tocqueville, a political study like that of Mr. James Bryce, a
series of acute social observations like those of M. Paul Bourget, M.
André Tardieu, M. Paul Boutmy, M. Weiller, an industrial study like that
of M. d'Avenel, or a religious study like that of the Abbé Klein,--these
are of great value. But they are quite apart, quite different, from the
popular impression of America in Europe, an impression which is, and
perhaps to some extent must naturally be, based upon the observations of
Americans _en voyage_, and which by some strange hypnotism sometimes
imposes itself for a while upon the American travellers themselves.
I call this the international postal-card view of America. It is often
amusing, occasionally irritating, and almost always confusing. It has
flashes of truth in it. It renders certain details with the accuracy of
a kodak. But, like a picture made by the kodak, it has a deficient
perspective and no atmosphere. The details do not fit together. They are
irrelevant. They are often contradictory.
For example, you will hear statements made about America like the
following:--
'The Americans worship the Almighty Dollar more than the English
revere the Ponderous Pound or the French adore _les beaux écus
sonnants_. _Per contra_, the Americans are foolish spendthrifts
who have no sense of the real value of money.'
'America is a country without a social order. It is a house of one
story, without partitions, in which all the inhabitants are on a
level. _Per contra_, America is the place where class distinctions
are most sharply drawn, and where the rich are most widely and
irreconcilably separated from the poor.'
'The United States is a definite experiment in political theory,
which was begun in 1776, and which has succeeded because of its
philosophical truth and logical consistency. _Per contra_, the
United States is an accident, a nation born of circumstances and
held together by good fortune, without real unity or firm
foundation.'
'The American race is a new creation, aboriginal, autochthonous,
which ought to express itself in totally new and hitherto
unheard-of forms of art and literature. _Per contra_, there is no
American race, only a vast and absurd _mélange_ of incongruous
elements, cast off from Europe by various political convulsions,
and combined by the pressure of events, not into a people, but
into a mere population, which can never have a literature or an
art of its own.'
'America is a lawless land, where every one does what he likes and
pays no attention to the opinion of his neighbour. _Per contra_,
America is a land of prejudice, of interference, of restriction,
where personal liberty is constantly invaded by the tyranny of
narrow ideas and traditions, embodied in ridiculous laws which
tell a man how many hours a day he may work, what he may drink,
how he may amuse himself on Sunday, and how fast he may drive his
automobile.'
'Finally, America is the home of materialism, a land of crude,
practical worldliness, unimaginative, irreverent, without
religion. But _per contra_, America is the last refuge of
superstition, of religious enthusiasm, of unenlightened devotion,
even of antique bigotry, a land of spiritual dreamers and
fanatics, who, as Brillat-Savarin said, have "forty religions and
only one sauce."'
Have I sharpened these contrasts and contradictions a little? Have I
overaccented the inconsistencies in this picture postal-card view of
America?
Perhaps so. Yet it is impossible to deny that the main features of this
incoherent view are familiar. We see the reflection of them in the
singular choice and presentation of the rare items of American news
which find their way into the columns of European newspapers. We
recognize them in the talk of the street and of the _table-d'hôte_.
I remember very well the gravity and earnestness with which a learned
German asked me, some years ago, whether, if he went to America, it
would be a serious disadvantage to him in the first social circles to
eat with his knife at the dinner-table. He was much relieved by my
assurance that no one would take notice of it.
I recall also the charming naïveté with which an English lady inquired,
"Have you any good writers in the States?" The answer was: "None to
speak of. We import most of our literature from Australia, by way of the
Cape of Good Hope."
Sometimes we are asked whether we do not find it a great disadvantage to
have no language of our own; or whether the justices of the Supreme
Court are usually persons of good education; or whether we often meet
Buffalo Bill in New York society; or whether Shakespeare or Bernard Shaw
is most read in the States. To such inquiries we try to return polite
answers, although our despair of conveying the truth sometimes leads us
to clothe it in a humorous disguise.
But these are minor matters. It is when we are seriously interrogated
about the prospect of a hereditary nobility in America, created from the
descendants of railway princes, oil magnates, and iron dukes; or when we
are questioned as to the probability that the next President, or the one
after the next, may assume an imperial state and crown, or perhaps that
he may abolish the Constitution and establish communism; or when we are
asked whether the Germans, or the Irish, or the Scandinavians, or the
Jews are going to dominate the United States in the twentieth century;
or when we are told that the industrial and commercial forces which
created the republic are no longer coöperant but divisive, and that the
nation must inevitably split into several fragments, more or less
hostile, but certainly rival; it is when such questions are gravely
asked, that we begin to feel that there are some grave misconceptions,
or at least that there is something important lacking, in the current
notion of how America came into being and what America really is.
I believe that the thing which is lacking is the perception of the
Spirit of America as the creative force, the controlling power, the
characteristic element of the United States.
The republic is not an accident, happy or otherwise. It is not a
fortuitous concourse of emigrants. It is not the logical demonstration
of an abstract theory of government. It is the development of a
life,--an inward life of ideals, sentiments, ruling passions, embodying
itself in an outward life of forms, customs, institutions, relations,--a
process as vital, as spontaneous, as inevitable, as the growth of a
child into a man. The soul of a people has made the American nation.
It is of this Spirit of America, in the past and in the present, and of
some of its expressions, that I would speak in these conferences. I
speak of it in the past because I believe that we must know something of
its origins, its early manifestations, its experiences, and its
conflicts in order to understand what it truly signifies.
The spirit of a people, like the spirit of a man, is influenced by
heredity. But this heredity is not merely physical, it is spiritual.
There is a transmission of qualities through the soul as well as through
the flesh. There is an intellectual paternity. There is a kinship of the
mind as well as of the body. The soul of the people in America to-day is
the lineal descendant of the soul of the people which made America in
the beginning.
Just at what moment of time this soul came into being, I do not know.
Some theologians teach that there is a certain point at which the hidden
physical life of an infant receives a _donum_ of spiritual life which
makes it a person, a human being. I do not imagine that we can fix any
such point in the conception and gestation of a people. Certainly it
would be difficult to select any date of which we could say with
assurance, "On that day, in that year, the exiles of England, of
Scotland, of Holland, of France, of Germany, on the shores of the new
world, became one folk, into which the Spirit of America entered." But
just as certainly it is clear that the mysterious event came to pass.
And beyond a doubt the time of its occurrence was long before the
traditional birthday of the republic, the 4th of July, 1776.
The Declaration of Independence did not create--it did not even pretend
to create--a new state of things. It simply recognized a state of
things already existing. It declared "that these United Colonies _are_,
and of right ought to be, free and independent States."
The men who framed this declaration were not ignorant, nor careless in
the use of words. When practically the same men were called, a few years
later, to frame a constitution for the United States, they employed
quite different language: "We, the people of the United States, ... do
ordain and establish this Constitution." That is the language of
creation. It assumes to bring into being something which did not
previously exist. But the language of the Declaration of Independence is
the language of recognition. It sets forth clearly a fact which has
already come to pass, but which has hitherto been ignored, neglected or
denied.
What was that fact? Nothing else than the existence of a new people,
separate, distinct, independent, in the thirteen American colonies. At
what moment in the troubled seventeenth century, age of European revolt
and conflict, the spirit of liberty brooding upon the immense wilderness
of the New World, engendered this new life, we cannot tell. At what
moment in the philosophical eighteenth century, age of reason and
reflection, this new life began to be self-conscious and to feel its way
toward an organic unity of powers and efforts, we cannot precisely
determine. But the thing that is clear and significant is that
independence existed before it was declared. The soul of the American
people was already living and conscious before the history of the United
States began.
I call this fact significant, immensely significant, because it marks
not merely a verbal distinction but an essential difference, a
difference which is vital to the true comprehension of the American
spirit in the past and in the present.
A nation brought to birth by an act of violence, if such a thing be
possible,--or let us rather say, a nation achieving liberty by a sharp
and sudden break with its own past and a complete overturning of its own
traditions, will naturally carry with it the marks of such an origin. It
will be inclined to extreme measures and methods. It will be
particularly liable to counter-revolutions. It will often vibrate
between radicalism and reactionism.
But a nation "conceived in liberty," to use Lincoln's glorious phrase,
and pursuing its natural aims, not by the method of swift and forcible
change, but by the method of normal and steady development, will be
likely to have another temperament and a different history. It will at
least endeavour to practice moderation, prudence, patience. It will try
new experiments slowly. It will advance, not indeed without
interruption, but with a large and tranquil confidence that its security
and progress are in accordance with the course of nature and the
eternal laws of right reason.
Now this is true in the main of the United States. And the reason for
this large and tranquil confidence, at which Europeans sometimes smile
because it looks like bravado, and for this essentially conservative
temper, at which Europeans sometimes wonder because it seems unsuitable
to a democracy,--the reason, I think, is to be found in the history of
the soul of the people.
The American Revolution, to speak accurately and philosophically, was
not a revolution at all. It was a resistance.
The Americans did not propose to conquer new rights and privileges, but
to defend old ones.
The claim of Washington and Adams and Franklin and Jefferson and Jay and
Schuyler and Witherspoon was that the kings of England had established
the colonies in certain liberties which the Parliament was endeavouring
to take away. These liberties, the Americans asserted, belonged to them
not only by natural right, but also by precedent and ancient tradition.
The colonists claimed that the proposed reorganization of the colonies,
which was undertaken by the British Parliament in 1763, was an
interruption of their history and a change in the established conditions
of their life. They were unwilling to submit to it. They united and
armed to prevent it. They took the position of men who were defending
their inheritance of self-government against a war of subjugation
disguised as a new scheme of imperial legislation.
Whether they were right or wrong in making this claim, whether the
arguments by which they supported it were sound or sophistical, we need
not now consider. For the present, the point is that the claim was made,
and that the making of it is one of the earliest and clearest
revelations of the Spirit of America.
No doubt in that struggle of defence which we are wont to call, for want
of a better name, the Revolution, the colonists were carried by the
irresistible force of events far beyond this position. The privilege of
self-government which they claimed, the principle of "no taxation
without representation," appeared to them, at last, defensible and
practicable only on the condition of absolute separation from Great
Britain. This separation implied sovereignty. This sovereignty demanded
union. This union, by the logic of events, took the form of a republic.
This republic continues to exist and to develop along the normal lines
of its own nature, because it is still animated and controlled by the
same Spirit of America which brought it into being to embody the soul of
the people.
I am quite sure that there are few, even among Americans, who appreciate
the literal truth and the full meaning of this last statement. It is
common to assume that the Spirit of 1776 is an affair of the past; that
the native American stock is swallowed up and lost in our mixed
population; and that the new United States, beginning, let us say, at
the close of the Civil War, is now controlled and guided by forces which
have come to it from without. This is not true even physically, much
less is it true intellectually and morally.
The blended strains of blood which made the American people in the
beginning are still the dominant factors in the American people of
to-day. Men of distinction in science, art, and statesmanship have come
from abroad to cast their fortunes in with the republic,--men like
Gallatin and Agassiz and Guyot and Lieber and McCosh and Carl
Schurz,--and their presence has been welcomed, their service received
with honour. Of the total population of the United States in 1900 more
than 34 per cent were of foreign birth or parentage. But the native
stock has led and still leads America.
There is a popular cyclopædia of names, called _Who's Who in America_,
which contains brief biographies of some 16,395 living persons, who are
supposed to be more or less distinguished, in one way or another, in the
various regions in which they live. It includes the representatives of
foreign governments in the United States, and some foreign authors and
business men. It is not necessary to imagine that all who are admitted
to this quasi-golden book of "Who's-who-dom" are really great or widely
famous. There are perhaps many of whom we might inquire, Which is who,
and why is he somewhat? But, after all, the book includes most of the
successful lawyers, doctors, merchants, bankers, preachers, politicians,
authors, artists, and teachers,--the people who are most influential in
their local communities and best known to their fellow-citizens. The
noteworthy fact is that 86.07 per cent are native Americans. I think
that a careful examination of the record would show that a very large
majority have at least three generations of American ancestry on one
side or the other of the family.
Of the men elected to the presidency of the United States there has been
only one whose ancestors did not belong to America before the
Revolution,--James Buchanan, whose father was a Scotch-Irish preacher
who came to the New World in 1783. All but four of the Presidents of the
United States could trace their line back to Americans of the
seventeenth century.
But it is not upon these striking facts of physical heredity that I
would rest my idea of an American people, distinct and continuous,
beginning a conscious life at some time antecedent to 1764 and still
guiding the development of the United States. I would lay far more
stress upon intellectual and spiritual heredity, that strange process of
moral generation by which the qualities of the Spirit of America have
been communicated to millions of immigrants from all parts of the world.
Since 1820 about twenty-six million persons have come to the United
States from foreign lands. At the present moment, in a population which
is estimated at about ninety millions, there are probably between
thirteen and fifteen millions who are foreign-born. It is an immense
quantity for any nation to digest and assimilate, and it must be
confessed that there are occasional signs of local dyspepsia in the
large cities. But none the less it may be confidently affirmed that the
foreign immigration of the past has been thoroughly transformed into
American material, and that the immigration of the present is passing
through the same process without any alarming interruption.
I can take you into quarters of New York where you might think yourself
in a Russian Ghetto, or into regions of Pennsylvania which would seem to
you like Hungarian mining towns. But if you will come with me into the
public schools, where the children of these people of the Old World are
gathered for education, you will find yourself in the midst of fairly
intelligent and genuinely patriotic young Americans. They will salute
the flag for you with enthusiasm. They will sing "Columbia" and "The
Star Spangled Banner" with more vigour than harmony. They will declaim
Webster's apostrophe to the Union, or cry with Patrick Henry, "Give me
liberty or give me death."
What is more, they will really feel, in some dim but none the less vital
way, the ideals for which these symbols stand. Give them time, and their
inward allegiance will become clearer, they will begin to perceive how
and why they are Americans. They will be among those wise children who
know their own spiritual fathers.
Last June it fell to my lot to deliver the commencement address at the
College of the City of New York, a free institution which is the crown
of the public school system of the city. Only a very small proportion of
the scholars had names that you could call American, or even
Anglo-Saxon. They were French and German, Polish and Italian, Russian
and Hebrew. Yet as I spoke on the subject of citizenship, suggested by
the recent death of that great American, ex-President Grover Cleveland,
the response was intelligent, immediate, unanimous, and eager. There was
not one of that crowd of young men who would have denied or surrendered
his right to trace his patriotic ancestry, his inherited share in the
Spirit of America, back to Lincoln and Webster, Madison and Jefferson,
Franklin and Washington.
Here, then, is the proposition to which I dedicate these conferences.
There is now, and there has been since before the Revolution, a Spirit
of America, the soul of a people, and it is this which has made the
United States and which still animates and controls them.
I shall try to distinguish and describe a few, four or five of the
essential features, qualities, ideals,--call them what you will,--the
main elements of that spirit as I understand it. I shall also speak of
two or three other traits, matters of temperament, perhaps, more than of
character, which seem to me distinctly American. Then because I am
neither a politician nor a jurist, I shall pass from the important field
of civil government and national institutions, to consider some of the
ways in which this soul of the American people has expressed itself in
education and in social effort and in literature.
In following this course I venture to hope that it may be possible to
correct, or at least to modify, some of the inaccuracies and
inconsistencies in the popular view of America which prevails in some
quarters of Europe. Perhaps I may be able to suggest, even to
Americans, some of the real sources of our national unity and strength.
"_Un Américain_" says André Tardieu, in his recent book, "_est toujours
plus proche qu'on ne croit d'un contradicteur Américain_."
Why?
That is what I hope to show in these lectures. I do not propose to argue
for any creed, nor to win converts for any political theory. In these
conferences I am not a propagandist, nor a preacher, nor an advocate.
Not even a professor, strictly speaking. Just a man from America who is
trying to make you feel the real spirit of his country, first in her
life, then in her literature. I should be glad if in the end you might
be able to modify the ancient proverb a little and say, _Tout
comprendre, c'est un peu aimer_.
II
SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC
II
SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC
The other day I came upon a new book with a title which seemed to take a
good ideal for granted: _The New American Type_.
The author began with a description of a recent exhibition of portraits
in New York, including pictures of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and
twentieth centuries. He was impressed with the idea that "an astonishing
change had taken place in men and women between the time of President
Washington and President McKinley; bodies, faces, thoughts, had all been
transformed. One short stairway from the portraits of Reynolds to those
of Sargent ushered in changes as if it had stretched from the first
Pharaoh to the last Ptolemy." From this interesting text the author went
on into an acute and sparkling discussion of the different pictures and
the personalities whom they presented, and so into an attempt to define
the new type of American character which he inferred from the modern
portraits.
Now it had been my good fortune, only a little while before, to see
another exhibition of pictures which made upon my mind a directly
contrary impression. This was not a collection of paintings, but a show
of living pictures: a Twelfth Night celebration, in costume, at the
Century Club in New York. Four or five hundred of the best-known and
most influential men in the metropolis of America had arrayed themselves
in the habiliments of various lands and ages for an evening of fun and
frolic. There were travellers and explorers who had brought home the
robes of the Orient. There were men of exuberant fancy who had made
themselves up as Roman senators or Spanish toreadors or Provençal
troubadours. But most of the costumes were English or Dutch or French of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The astonishing thing was that
the men who wore them might easily have been taken for their own
grandfathers or great-grandfathers.
There was a Puritan who might have fled from the oppressions of
Archbishop Laud, a Cavalier who might have sought a refuge from the
severities of Cromwell's Parliament, a Huguenot who might have escaped
from the pressing attentions of Louis XIV in the Dragonnades, a Dutch
burgher who might have sailed from Amsterdam in the _Goede Vrouw_. There
were soldiers of the Colonial army and members of the Continental
Congress who might have been painted by Copley or Stuart or Trumbull or
Peale.
The types of the faces were not essentially different. There was the
same strength of bony structure, the same firmness of outline, the same
expression of self-reliance, varying from the tranquillity of the quiet
temperament to the turbulence of the stormy temperament. They looked
like men who were able to take care of themselves, who knew what they
wanted, and who would be likely to get it. They had the veritable air
and expression of their ancestors of one or two hundred years ago. And
yet, as a matter of fact, they were intensely modern Americans, typical
New Yorkers of the twentieth century.
Reflecting upon this interesting and rather pleasant experience, I was
convinced that the author of _The New American Type_ had allowed his
imagination to run away with his judgment. No such general and
fundamental change as he describes has really taken place. There have
been modifications and developments and degenerations, of course, under
the new conditions and influences of modern life. There have been also
great changes of fashion and dress,--the wearing of mustaches and
beards,--the discarding of wigs and ruffles,--the sacrifice of a
somewhat fantastic elegance to a rather monotonous comfort in the
ordinary costume of men. These things have confused and misled my
ingenious author.
He has been bewildered also by the alteration in the methods of
portraiture. He has mistaken a change in the art of the painters for a
change in the character of their subjects. It is a well-known fact that
something comes into a portrait from the place and the manner in which
it is made. I have a collection of pictures of Charles Dickens, and it
is interesting to observe how the Scotch ones make him look a little
like a Scotchman, and the London ones make him look intensely English,
and the American ones give him a touch of Broadway in 1845, and the
photographs made in Paris have an unmistakable suggestion of the
_Boulevards_. There is a great difference between the spirit and method
of Reynolds, Hoppner, Latour, Vanloo, and those of Sargent, Holl, Duran,
Bonnat, Alexander, and Zorn. It is this difference that helps to conceal
the essential likeness of their sitters.
I was intimately acquainted with Benjamin Franklin's great-grandson, a
surgeon in the American navy. Put a fur cap and knee breeches on him,
and he might easily have sat for his great-grandfather's portrait. In
character there was a still closer resemblance. You can see the same
faces at any banquet in New York to-day that Rembrandt has depicted in
his "Night-Watch," or Franz Hals in his "Banquet of the Civic Guard."
But there is something which interests me even more than this
persistence of visible ancestral features in the Americans of to-day. It
is the continuance from generation to generation of the main lines, the
essential elements, of that American character which came into being on
the Western continent.
It is commonly assumed that this character is composite, that the people
who inhabit America are a mosaic, made up of fragments brought from
various lands and put together rather at haphazard and in a curious
pattern. This assumption misses the inward verity by dwelling too much
upon the outward fact.
Undoubtedly there were large and striking differences between the grave
and strict Puritans who peopled the shores of Massachusetts Bay, the
pleasure-loving Cavaliers who made their tobacco plantations in
Virginia, the liberal and comfortable Hollanders who took possession of
the lands along the Hudson, the skilful and industrious Frenchmen who
came from old Rochelle to New Rochelle, the peaceful and prudent Quakers
who followed William Penn, the stolid Germans of the Rhine who made
their farms along the Susquehanna, the vigorous and aggressive
Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who became the pioneers of western
Pennsylvania and North Carolina, the tolerant Catholics who fled from
English persecution to Lord Baltimore's Maryland. But these outward
differences of speech, of dress, of habits, of tradition, were, after
all, of less practical consequence than the inward resemblances and
sympathies of spirit which brought these men of different stocks
together as one people.
They were not a composite people, but a blended people. They became in
large measure conscious of the same aims, loyal to the same ideals, and
capable of fighting and working together as Americans to achieve their
destiny.