machinery of justice in the United States, because there is not time to
do so. If it were possible to characterize the general tendency in a
sentence, I would say that it lays the primary emphasis on the
protection of rights, and the secondary emphasis on the punishment of
offences. Looking at the processes of justice from the outside, and
describing things by their appearance, one might say that in many parts
of the continent of Europe an accused man looks guilty till he is proved
innocent; in America he looks innocent until his guilt is established.
The American tendency has its serious drawbacks,--legal delays, failures
to convict, immunity of criminals, and so on. These are unpleasant and
dangerous things. Yet, after all, when the thoughtful American looks at
his country quietly and soberly he feels that a fundamental sense of
justice prevails there not only in the courts but among the people. The
exceptions are glaring, but they are still exceptions. And when he
remembers the immense and inevitable perils of a republic, he reassures
himself by considering the past history and the present power of the
Supreme Court, that great bulwark against official encroachment,
legislative tyranny, and mobocracy,--that grave and majestic symbol of
the spirit of fair play. A republic with such an institution at the
centre of its national conscience has at least one instrument of
protection against the dangers which lurk in the periphery of its own
passions.
If you should ask me for a second illustration of the spirit of fair
play in America, I should name religious liberty and the peaceful
independence of the churches within the state. I do not call it the
"Separation of Church and State," because I fear that in France the
phrase might carry a false meaning. It might convey the impression of a
forcible rupture, or even a feeling of hostility, between the government
and the religious bodies. Nothing of that kind exists in America. The
state extends a firm and friendly protection to the adherents of all
forms of religious belief or unbelief, defending all alike in their
persons, in the possession of their property, and in their chosen method
of pursuing happiness, whether in this world or in the next. It
requires only that they shall not practise as a part of their cult
anything contrary to public morality, such as polygamy, or physical
cruelty, or neglect of children. Otherwise they are all free to follow
the dictates of conscience in worshipping or in not worshipping, and in
so doing they are under the shield of government.
This is guaranteed not only by the Constitution of the United States,
but also by the separate State constitutions, so far as I know, without
exception. Moreover, the general confidence and good-will of the state
towards the churches is shown in many ways. Property used for religious
purposes is exempted from taxation,--doubtless on the ground that these
purposes are likely to promote good citizenship and orderly living.
Religious marriage is recognized, but not required; and the act of a
minister of any creed is, in this particular, as valid and binding as if
he were a magistrate. But such marriages must be witnessed and
registered according to law, and no church can annul them. It is the
common practice to open sessions of the legislature, national and State,
with an act of prayer; but participation in this act is voluntary. The
President, according to ancient custom, appoints an annual day of
national thanksgiving in the month of November, and his proclamation to
this effect is repeated by the governors of the different States. But
here, again, it is a proclamation of liberty. The people are simply
recommended to assemble in their various places of worship, and to give
thanks according to their conscience and faith.
The laws against blasphemy and against the disturbance of public worship
which exist in most of the States offer an equal protection to a Jewish
synagogue, a Catholic cathedral, a Buddhist temple, a Protestant church,
and a Quaker meeting-house; and no citizen is under any compulsion to
enter any one of these buildings, or to pay a penny of taxation for
their support. Each religious organization regulates its own affairs and
controls its own property. In cases of dispute arising within a church
the civil law has decided, again and again, that the rule and
constitution of the church itself shall prevail.
But what of the religious bodies which exist under this system? Do not
imagine that they are small, feeble, or insignificant; that they are
content to be merely tolerated; that they feel themselves in any way
impotent or slighted. They include the large majority of the American
people. Twelve millions are adherents of the Catholic Church. The
adherents of the Protestant churches are estimated to number between
forty and fifty millions. But neither as a whole, nor in any of their
separate organizations, do the religious people of America feel that
they are deprived of any real rights or robbed of any just powers.
It is true that the different churches are sometimes very jealous of one
another. But bad as that may be for them, from a political point of view
it is rather a safeguard.
It is true that ecclesiastics sometimes have dreams, and perhaps
schemes, which look towards the obtaining of special privileges or
powers for their own organization. But that is because ecclesiastics are
human and fallible. In the main, you may say with confidence that there
is no party or sect in America that has the slightest wish to see church
and state united, or even entangled. The American people are content and
happy that religion should be free and independent. And this contentment
arises from three causes.
First, religious liberty has come naturally, peacefully, in a moderate
and friendly temper, with consideration for the conscience and the
rights of all, and at the same time, if I mistake not, with a general
recognition that the essence of religion, personal faith in a spiritual
life and a Divine law, is a purifying, strengthening, elevating factor
in human society.
Second, the churches have prospered in freedom; they are well-to-do,
they are active, they are able to erect fine edifices, to support their
clergy, to carry on benevolent and missionary enterprises on an immense
scale, costing many millions of dollars every year. The voluntary system
has its great disadvantages and drawbacks,--its perils, even. But upon
the whole, religious people in America, Catholics, Protestants, and Jews
alike, feel that these are more than counterbalanced by the devotion
which is begotten and nourished by the very act of making gifts and
sacrifices, and by the sober strength which comes into a man's faith
when he is called to support it by his works.
Men value what they pay for. But this is true only when they pay for
what they really want.
Third, and chiefly, religious liberty commends itself to the Americans
because they feel that it is the very highest kind of fair play. That a
man should have freedom in the affairs of his soul is certainly most
vital to his pursuit of happiness. The noble example of tolerance which
was set to the American colonies by the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the
Baptists of Rhode Island, and the Catholics of Maryland, prevailed
slowly but surely over the opposite example of the Puritans of
Massachusetts and the Anglicans of Virginia. The saying of William of
Orange, "Conscience is God's province," has become one of the watchwords
of America.
In a country which, as a matter of fact, is predominantly Christian and
Protestant, there is neither establishment nor proscription of any form
of faith. In the President's cabinet (1908) I personally know a Jew, a
Catholic, a Presbyterian, an Episcopalian, and a Methodist. The
President himself is a member of one of the smallest denominations in
the country, the Dutch Reformed.
Nor is unfaith penalized or persecuted. A recent writer on America has
said that "an avowed atheist is not received in any social circles above
that of the ordinary saloon." Well, an atheist avowed in definite and
unmistakable terms, a man who positively affirms that there is no God,
is a very difficult person to find in this world of mystery. But a
positivist, a free-thinker, a Voltairean, a sceptic, an agnostic, an
antisupernaturalist of any kind, has the same rights and privileges as
any other man. In America, if his life is clean and his manners decent,
he goes everywhere. You may meet him in the best clubs, and in social
circles which are at the farthest remove from the saloon. This is not
because people like his opinions, but because they feel he is entitled
to form them for himself. They take it for granted that it is as
impossible to correct unbelief by earthly penalties as it is to deprive
faith of its heavenly rewards.
I do not say that this is the right attitude, the only reasonable
attitude. I do not wish to persuade any one to adopt it. I say only that
it is the characteristic attitude of the Americans, and that sincerely
religious people hold it, in the Catholic Church and in the Protestant
Church. It may be that the spirit of fair play has blinded them. It may
be that it has enlightened them. Be that as it may, they have passed
beyond the point of demanding freedom of conscience for themselves to
that of conceding it to others. And in this they think that they are
acting in accordance with the Divine will and example.
An anecdote will illustrate this attitude better than many paragraphs of
explanation. In the older American colleges, which were independent of
state control, the original course of study was uniform and prescribed,
and chapel services were held which the students were required to
attend. Elective studies came in. The oldest of the universities made
attendance at chapel voluntary. "I understand," said a critic to the
president of the university, "that you have made God an elective in your
college." The President thought for a moment. "No," said he, "we
understand that He has made Himself elective everywhere."
There are certain singular limitations in the spirit of fair play in
America of which I must say a word in order to play fair. Chief among
these is the way in which the people of the colonies and of the United
States dealt for many years with the races which have not a white skin.
The American Indians, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
undoubtedly sinned as much as they were sinned against. They were
treacherous, implacable, unspeakably cruel, horribly bloodthirsty. It is
no wonder that the colonists regarded them as devils. It is no wonder
that the feeling of mistrust and resentment persisted from one
generation to another. But the strange thing is that when the Indians
were subjugated and for the most part pacified, America still treated
them from a hostile and alien point of view, denied them the rights of
citizenship, took their property from them, and made it very difficult
for them to pursue happiness in any reasonable form. For many years this
treatment continued. It was so glaring that a book was written which
described the Indian policy of the United States, not altogether
unjustly, as _A Century of Dishonor_. To-day all this is changed. The
scattered and diminished remnants of the red men are admitted to
citizenship if they wish it, and protected in their rights, and private
benevolence vies with government in seeking to better their condition.
The African race, introduced into America for industrial reasons,
multiplied more rapidly there than in its native home, and soon became a
large factor in the population. But it was regarded and treated from a
point of view totally different from that which controlled the treatment
of the white factors. It did not share in the rights enumerated in the
Declaration of Independence. It was an object of commerce, a source of
wealth, a necessity of agriculture. The system of domestic slavery held
practically all of the negroes in bondage (in spite of the fact that the
Northern States abandoned it, and many of the best men in the South
disliked it and protested against it) until the third quarter of the
nineteenth century. It was approved, or at least tolerated, by the
majority of the people until the Civil War did away with it. It has left
as a legacy of retribution the most difficult and dangerous problem of
America,--perhaps the greatest and most perplexing problem that any
nation has ever had to face.
Nine millions of negroes, largely ignorant and naturally ill-fitted for
self-government, are domiciled in the midst of a white population which
in some sections of the South they outnumber. How to rule, protect, and
educate this body of coloured people; how to secure them in their civil
rights without admitting them to a racial mixture--that is the problem.
The Oriental races, recently coming to America in increasing numbers,
receive from the people a welcome which cannot be described as cordial.
The exclusion of the Chinese from citizenship, and in some States from
immigration, is but a small symptom of the general situation. If any
considerable number of Burmese or East Indians or Japanese should come,
the situation would be the same, and it would be intensified with the
increase of the numbers. They would not find the Americans inclined to
make an open career for the Oriental talents.
Understand, I am not now condemning this state of affairs, nor am I
defending it. That is not my business. I am simply trying to describe
it. How is it to be reconciled with the spirit of fair play? I do not
know. Perhaps reconciliation is impossible. But a partial understanding
of the facts is possible, if you take into account _the doctrine of
inferior races_.
This doctrine is not held or defended by all Americans. Some on
religious grounds, some on philosophic grounds, would deny it. But on
the mass of the people it has a firm, though in part an unrecognized,
hold. They believe--or perhaps feel would be a better word--that the
white race has an innate superiority to the coloured races. From this
doctrine they have proceeded to draw conclusions, and curiously enough
they have put them in the form of fair play. The Indians were not to be
admitted to citizenship because they were the wards of the nation. The
negroes were better off under slavery because they were like children,
needing control and protection. They must still be kept in social
dependence and tutelage because they will be safer and happier so. The
Orientals are not fit for a share in American citizenship, and they
shall not be let in because they will simply give us another inferior
race to be taken care of.
I do not propose to discuss the philosophical consistency of such
arguments. It is difficult to imagine what place Rousseau would have
found for them in his doctrine of the state of nature and the rights of
man.
The truth is that the Spirit of America has never been profoundly
impressed with the idea of philosophical consistency. The Republic finds
herself face to face not with a theory but with a condition. It is the
immense mass of the African population that creates the difficulty for
America. She means to give equal civil rights to her nine million
negroes. She does not mean to let the black blood mix with the white.
Whatever social division may be necessary to prevent this immense and
formidable adulteration must be maintained intact.
Here, it seems to me, is the supreme test which the Spirit of America
has to meet. In a certain sense the problem appears insoluble because it
involves an insoluble race. But precisely here, in the necessity of
keeping the negro race distinct, and in the duty of giving it full
opportunity for self-development, fair play may find the occasion for a
most notable and noble triumph.
I have left but a moment in which to speak of the influence of the kind
of democracy which exists in America upon social conditions. In a word:
it has produced a society of natural divisions without closed
partitions, a temper of independence which shows itself either as
self-assertion or self-respect according to the quality of the man, and
an atmosphere of large opportunity which promotes general good humour.
In America, as elsewhere, people who have tastes and capacities in
common consort together. An uneducated man will not find himself at ease
in the habitual society of learned men who talk principally about books.
A poor man will not feel comfortable if he attempts to keep company with
those whose wealth has led them to immerse themselves in costly
amusements. This makes classes, if you like, ranks, if you choose to
call them so.
Moreover you will find that certain occupations and achievements which
men have generally regarded with respect confer a kind of social
distinction in America. Men who have become eminent in the learned
professions, or in the army or navy, or in the higher sort of politics;
men who have won success in literature or the other fine arts; men who
have done notable things of various kinds,--such persons are likely to
know each other better and to be better known to the world than if they
had done nothing. Furthermore there are families in which this kind of
thing has gone on from generation to generation; and others in which
inherited wealth, moderate or great, has opened the way to culture and
refinement; and others in which newly acquired wealth has been used with
generosity and dignity; and others in which the mere mass of money has
created a noteworthy establishment. These various people, divided among
themselves by their tastes, their opinions, and perhaps as much as
anything else by their favourite recreations, find their way into the
red book of _Who's Who_, into the blue book of the Social Register.
Here, if you have an imaginative turn of mind, you may discover (and
denounce, or applaud, or ridicule) the beginnings of an aristocracy.
But if you use that word, remember that it is an aristocracy without
legal privilege or prerogative, without definite boundaries, and without
any rule of primogeniture. Therefore it seems to exist in the midst of
democracy without serious friction or hostility. The typical American
does not feel injured by the fact that another man is richer, better
known, more influential than himself, unless he believes that the
eminence has been unfairly reached. He respects those who respect
themselves and him. He is ready to meet the men who are above him
without servility, and the men who are beneath him without patronage.
True, he is sometimes a little hazy about the precise definition of
"above" and "beneath." His feeling that all the doors are open may lead
him to act as if he had already passed through a good many of them.
There is at times an "I-could-if-I-would" air about him which is rather
disconcerting.
There are great differences among Americans, of course, in regard to
manners, ranging all the way from the most banal formality to the most
exquisite informality. But in general you may say that manners are taken
rather lightly, too lightly, perhaps, because they are not regarded as
very real things. Their value as a means of discipline is often
forgotten. The average American will not blush very deeply over a social
blunder; he will laugh at it as a mistake in a game. But to really hurt
you, or to lower his own independence, would make him feel badly indeed.
The free-and-easy atmosphere of the streets, the shops, the hotels, all
public places, always strikes the foreigner, and sometimes very
uncomfortably. The conductor on the railway car will not touch his hat
to you; but, on the other hand, he does not expect a fee from you. The
workman on the street of whom you ask a question will answer you as an
equal, but he will tell you what you want to know. In the country the
tone of familiarity is even more marked. If you board for the summer
with a Yankee farmer, you can see that he not only thinks himself as
good as you are, but that he cultivates a slightly artificial pity for
you as "city folks."
In American family life there is often an absence of restraint and
deference, in school and college life a lack of discipline and
subordination, which looks ugly, and probably is rather unwholesome. One
sometimes regrets in America the want of those tokens of respect which
are the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.
But, on the other hand, there is probably more good feeling,
friendliness, plain human kindness, running around loose in America than
anywhere else in the world. The sense of the essential equality of
manhood takes away much of the sting of the inequalities of fortune. The
knowledge of the open door reduces the offence of the stairway. It is
pleasant and wholesome to live with men who have a feeling of the
dignity and worth of their own occupations.
Our letter-carrier at Princeton never made any difference in his
treatment of my neighbour President Cleveland and myself. He was equally
kind to both of us, and I may add equally cheerful in rendering little
friendly services outside of his strict duty. My guides in the backwoods
of Maine and the Adirondacks regard me as a comrade who curiously enough
makes his living by writing books, but who also shows that he knows the
real value of life by spending his vacation in the forest. As a matter
of fact, they think much more of their own skill with the axe and paddle
than of my supposed ability with the pen. They have not a touch of
subservience in their manner or their talk. They do their work
willingly. They carry their packs, and chop the wood, and spread the
tents, and make the bed of green boughs. And then, at night, around the
camp-fire, they smoke their pipes with me, and the question is, Who can
tell the best story?
IV
WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH
IV
WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH
The Spirit of America is best known in Europe by one of its
qualities,--_energy_. This is supposed to be so vast, so abnormal, that
it overwhelms and obliterates all other qualities, and acts almost as a
blind force, driving the whole nation along the highroad of unremitting
toil for the development of physical power and the accumulation of
material wealth.
_La vie intense_--which is the polite French translation of "the
strenuous life"--is regarded as the unanimous choice of the Americans,
who are never happy unless they are doing something, and never satisfied
until they have made a great deal of money. The current view in Europe
considers them as a well-meaning people enslaved by their own restless
activity, bound to the service of gigantic industries, and captive to
the adoration of a golden idol. But curiously enough they are often
supposed to be unconscious both of the slavery and of the idolatry; in
weaving the shackles of industrious materialism they imagine themselves
to be free and strong; in bowing down to the Almighty Dollar they
ignorantly worship an unknown god.
This European view of American energy, and its inexplicable nature, and
its terrible results, seems to have something of the fairy tale about
it. It is like the story of a giant, dreadful, but not altogether
convincing. It lacks discrimination. In one point, at least, it is
palpably incorrect. And with that point I propose to begin a more
careful, and perhaps a more sane, consideration of the whole subject.
It is evidently not true that America is ignorant of the dangers that
accompany her immense development of energy and its application in such
large measure to material ends. Only the other day I was reading a book
by an American about his country, which paints the picture in colours as
fierce and forms as flat as the most modern of French decadent painters
would use.