anvil" was not a sufficient ground for awarding the primacy to a
university. Its standing must be measured in its own sphere,--the realm
of knowledge and wisdom. It exists for the disinterested pursuit of
truth, for the development of the intellectual life, and for the rounded
development of character. Its primary aim is not to fit men for any
specific industry, but to give them those things which are everywhere
essential to intelligent living. Its attention must be fixed not on the
work, but on the man. In him, as a person, it must seek to develop four
powers--the power to see clearly, the power to imagine vividly, the
power to think independently, and the power to will wisely and nobly.
This is the university ideal which a conservative critic would maintain
against the utilitarian theory. He might admire the University of
Wisconsin greatly, but it would be for other reasons than those which
the Englishman gave.
"After all," this conservative would say, "the older American
universities are still the most important factors in the higher
education of the country. They have the traditions. They set the
standard. You cannot understand education in England without going to
Oxford and Cambridge, nor in America without going to Harvard, Yale,
Princeton, and Columbia."
Perhaps the conservative would be right. At all events, I wish that I
could help the friendly foreign observer to understand just what these
older institutions of learning, and some others like them, have meant
and still mean to Americans. They are the monuments of the devotion of
our fathers to ideal aims. They are the landmarks of the intellectual
life of the young republic. Time has changed them, but it has not
removed them. They still define a region within which the making of a
reasonable man is the main interest, and truth is sought and served for
her own sake.
Originally, these older universities were almost identical in form. They
were called colleges and based upon the idea of a uniform four years'
course consisting mainly of Latin, Greek, and mathematics, with an
addition of history, philosophy, and natural science in the last two
years, and leading to the degree of Bachelor of Arts. This was supposed
to be the way to make a reasonable man.
But in the course of time the desire to seek truth in other regions, by
other paths, led to a gradual enlargement and finally to an immense
expansion of the curriculum. The department of letters was opened to
receive English and other modern languages. The department of philosophy
branched out into economics and civics and experimental psychology.
History took notice of the fact that much has happened since the fall of
the Roman Empire. Science threw wide its doors to receive the new
methods and discoveries of the nineteenth century. The elective system
of study came in like a flood from Germany. The old-fashioned
curriculum was submerged and dissolved. The four senior colleges came
out as universities and began to differentiate themselves.
Harvard, under the bold leadership of President Eliot, went first and
farthest in the development of the elective system. One of its own
graduates, Mr. John Corbin, has recently written of it as "a Germanized
university." It offers to its students free choice among a multitude of
courses so great that it is said that one man could hardly take them all
in two hundred years. There is only one course which every undergraduate
is required to take,--English composition in the Freshman year: 551
distinct courses are presented by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In
the whole university there are 556 officers of instruction and 4000
students. There is no other institution in America which provides such a
rich, varied, and free chance for the individual to develop his
intellectual life.
Princeton, so far as the elective system is concerned, represents the
other extreme. President McCosh introduced it with Scotch caution and
reserve, in 1875. It hardly went beyond the liberalizing of the last two
years of study. Other enlargements followed. But at heart Princeton
remained conservative. It liked regularity, uniformity, system, more
than it liked freedom and variety. In recent years it has rearranged
the electives in groups, which compel a certain amount of unity in the
main direction of a student's effort. It has introduced a system of
preceptors or tutors who take personal charge of each student in his
reading and extra class-room work. The picked men of the classes, who
have won prizes, or scholarships, or fellowships, go on with higher
university work in the graduate school. The divinity school is
academically independent, though closely allied. There are no other
professional schools. Thus Princeton is distinctly "a collegiate
university," with a very definite idea of what a liberal education ought
to include, and a fixed purpose of developing the individual by leading
him through a regulated intellectual discipline.
Yale, the second in age of the American universities, occupies a middle
ground, and fills it with immense vigour. Very slow in yielding to the
elective system, Yale theoretically adopted it four years ago in its
extreme form. But in practice the "Yale Spirit" preserves the unity of
each class from entrance to graduation; the "average man" is much more
of a controlling factor than he is at Harvard, and the solid body of
students in the Department of Arts and Sciences gives tone to the whole
university. Yale is typically American in its love of liberty and its
faculty of self-organization. It draws its support from a wider range of
country than either Harvard or Princeton. It has not been a leader in
the production of advanced ideas or educational methods. Originality is
not its mark. Efficiency is. No other American university has done more
in giving men of light and leading to industrial, professional, and
public life in the United States.
Columbia, by its location in the largest of the American cities, and by
the direction which its last three presidents have given to its policy,
has become much stronger in its professional schools and its advanced
graduate work, than in its undergraduate college. Its schools of mines
and law and medicine are famous. In its graduate courses it has as many
students enrolled as Harvard, Yale, and Michigan put together. It has a
library of 450,000 volumes, and endowment for various kinds of special
study, including Chinese and journalism.
None of these four universities is coeducational in the department of
arts and sciences. But Harvard and Columbia each have an annex for
women,--Radcliffe College and Barnard College,--in which the university
professors lecture and teach.
In Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and most of the older colleges, except
those which are situated in the great cities, there is a common life of
the students which is peculiar, I believe, to America, and highly
characteristic and interesting. They reside together in large halls or
dormitories grouped in an academic estate which is almost always
beautiful with ancient trees and spacious lawns. There is nothing like
the caste division among them which is permitted, if not fostered, at
Oxford and Cambridge by the existence of distinct colleges in the same
university. They belong to the same social body, a community of youth
bound together for a happy interval of four years between the strict
discipline of school and the separating pressure of life in the outer
world. They have their own customs and traditions, often absurd, always
picturesque and amusing. They have their own interests, chief among
which is the cultivation of warm friendships among men of the same age.
They organize their own clubs and societies, athletic, musical,
literary, dramatic, or purely social, according to elective affinity.
But the class spirit creates a ground of unity for all who enter and
graduate together, and the college spirit makes a common tie for all.
It is a little world by itself,--this American college life,--incredibly
free, yet on the whole self-controlled and morally sound,--physically
active and joyful, yet at bottom full of serious purpose. See the
students on the athletic field at some great foot-ball or base-ball
match; hear their volleying cheers, their ringing songs of encouragement
or victory; watch their waving colours, their eager faces, their
movements of excitement as the fortune of the game shifts and changes;
and you might think that these young men cared for nothing but
out-of-door sport. But that noisy enthusiasm is the natural overflow of
youthful spirits. The athletic game gives it the easiest outlet, the
simplest opportunity to express college loyalty by an outward sign, a
shout, a cheer, a song. Follow the same men from day to day, from week
to week, and you will find that the majority of them, even among the
athletes, know that the central object of their college life is to get
an education. But they will tell you, also, that this education does not
come only from the lecture-room, the class, the library. An
indispensable and vital part of it comes from their daily contact with
one another in play and work and comradeship,--from the chance which
college gives them to know, and estimate, and choose, their friends
among their fellows.
It is intensely democratic,--this American college life,--and therefore
it has distinctions, as every real democracy must. But they are not
artificial and conventional. They are based in the main upon what a man
is and does, what contribution he makes to the honour and joy and
fellowship of the community.
The entrance of the son of a millionnaire, of a high official, of a
famous man, is noted, of course. But it is noted only as a curious fact
of natural history which has no bearing upon the college world. The
real question is, What kind of a fellow is the new man? Is he a good
companion; has he the power of leadership; can he do anything
particularly well; is he a vigorous and friendly person? Wealth and
parental fame do not count, except perhaps as slight hindrances, because
of the subconscious jealousy which they arouse in a community where the
majority do not possess them. Poverty does not count at all, unless it
makes the man himself proud and shy, or confines him so closely to the
work of self-support that he has no time to mix with the crowd. Men who
are working their own way through college are often the leaders in
popularity and influence.
I do not say that there are no social distinctions in American college
life. There, as in the great world, little groups of men are drawn
together by expensive tastes and amusements; little coteries are formed
which aim at exclusiveness. But these are of no real account in the
student body. It lives in a brisk and wholesome air of free competition
in study and sport, of free intercourse on a human basis.
It is this tone of humanity, of sincerity, of joyful contact with
reality, in student life, that makes the American graduate love his
college with a sentiment which must seem to foreigners almost like
sentimentality. His memory holds her as the _Alma Mater_ of his happiest
years. He goes back to visit her halls, her playgrounds, her shady
walks, year after year, as one returns to a shrine of the heart. He
sings the college songs, he joins in the college cheers, with an
enthusiasm which does not die as his voice loses the ring of youth. And
when gray hairs come upon him, he still walks with his class among the
old graduates at the head of the commencement procession. It is all a
little strange, a little absurd, perhaps, to one who watches it
critically, from the outside. But to the man himself it is simply a
natural tribute to the good and wholesome memory of American college
life.
But what are its results from the educational point of view? What do
these colleges and universities do for the intellectual life of the
country? Doubtless they are still far from perfect in method and
achievement. Doubtless they let many students pass through them without
acquiring mental thoroughness, philosophical balance, fine culture.
Doubtless they need to advance in the standard of teaching, the
strictness of examination, the encouragement of research. They have much
to learn. They are learning.
Great central institutions like those which Mr. Carnegie has endowed for
the Promotion of Research and for the Advancement of Teaching will help
progress. Conservative experiments and liberal experiments will lead to
better knowledge.
But whatever changes are made, whatever improvements arrive in the
higher education in America, one thing I hope will never be given
up,--the free, democratic, united student life of our colleges and
universities. For without this factor we cannot develop the kind of
intellectual person who will be at home in the republic. The world in
which he has to live will not ask him what degrees he has taken. It will
ask him simply what he is, and what he can do. If he is to be a leader
in a country where the people are sovereign, he must add to the power to
see clearly, to imagine vividly, to think independently, and to will
wisely, the faculty of knowing other men as they are, and of working
with them for what they ought to be. And one of the best places to get
this faculty is in the student life of an American college.
VII
SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE
VII
SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE
All human activity is, in a certain sense, a mode of self-expression.
The works of man in the organization of the State, in the development of
industry, in voluntary effort for the improvement of the common order,
are an utterance of his inner life.
But it is natural for him to seek a fuller, clearer, more conscious mode
of self-expression, to speak more directly of his ideals, thoughts, and
feelings. It is this direct utterance of the Spirit of America, as it is
found in literature, which I propose now, and in the following
lectures,[1] to discuss.
[1] The lectures which followed, at the Sorbonne, on Irving, Cooper,
Bryant, Poe, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Whittier, Emerson, Lowell,
Whitman, and Present Tendencies in American Literature, are not
included in this volume.
Around the political and ecclesiastical and social structures which men
build for themselves there are always flowing great tides and currents
of human speech; like the discussions in the studio of the architect,
the confused murmur of talk among the workmen, the curious and wondering
comments of the passing crowd, when some vast cathedral or palace or
hall of industry is rising from the silent earth. Man is a talking
animal. The daily debates of the forum and the market-place, the
orations and lectures of a thousand platforms, the sermons and
exhortations of the thousand pulpits, the ceaseless conversation of the
street and the fireside, all confess that one of the deepest of human
appetites and passions is for self-expression and intercourse, to reveal
and to communicate the hidden motions of the spirit that is in man.
Language, said a cynic, is chiefly useful to conceal thought. But that
is only a late-discovered, minor, and decadent use of speech. If
concealment had been the first and chief need that man felt, he never
would have made a language. He would have remained silent. He would have
lived among the trees, contented with that inarticulate chatter which
still keeps the thoughts of monkeys (if they have any) so well
concealed.
But vastly the greater part of human effort toward self-expression
serves only the need of the transient individual, the passing hour. It
sounds incessantly beneath the silent stars,--this murmur, this roar,
this _susurrus_ of mingled voices,--and melts continually into the vague
inane. The idle talk of the multitude, the eloquence of golden tongues,
the shouts of brazen throats, go by and are forgotten, like the wind
that passes through the rustling leaves of the forest.
In the fine arts man has invented not only a more perfect and sensitive,
but also a more enduring, form for the expression of that which fills
his spirit with the joy and wonder of living. His sense of beauty and
order; the response of something within him to certain aspects of
nature, certain events of life; his interpretation of the vague and
mysterious things about him which seem to suggest a secret meaning; his
delight in the intensity and clearness of single impressions, in the
symmetry and proportion of related objects; his double desire to surpass
nature, on the one side by the simplicity and unity of his work, or on
the other side by the freedom of its range and the richness of its
imagery; his sudden glimpses of truth; his persistent visions of virtue;
his perception of human misery and his hopes of human excellence; his
deep thoughts and solemn dreams of the Divine,--all these he strives to
embody, clearly or vaguely, by symbol, or allusion, or imitation, in
painting and sculpture, music and architecture.
The medium of these arts is physical; they speak to the eye and the ear.
But their ultimate appeal is spiritual, and the pleasure which they give
goes far deeper than the outward senses.
In literature we have another art whose very medium is more than half
spiritual. For words are not like lines, or colours, or sounds. They are
living creatures begotten in the soul of man. They come to us saturated
with human meaning and association. They are vitally related to the
emotions and thoughts out of which they have sprung. They have a wider
range, a more delicate precision, a more direct and penetrating power
than any other medium of expression.
The art of literature which weaves these living threads into its fabric
lies closer to the common life and rises higher into the ideal life than
any other art. In the lyric, the drama, the epic, the romance, the
fable, the _conte_, the essay, the history, the biography, it not only
speaks to the present hour, but also leaves its record for the future.
Literature consists of those writings which interpret the meanings of
nature and life, in words of charm and power, touched with the
personality of the author, in artistic forms of permanent interest.
Out of the common utterances of men, the daily flood of language spoken
and written, by which they express their thoughts and feelings,--out of
that current of journalism and oratory, preaching and debate, literature
comes. But with that current it does not pass away. Art has endowed it
with the magic which confers a distinct life, a longer endurance, a
so-called immortality. It is the ark on the flood. It is the light on
the candlestick. It is the flower among the leaves, the consummation of
the plant's vitality, the crown of its beauty, the treasure-house of its
seeds.
Races and nations have existed without a literature. But their life has
been dumb. With their death their power has departed.
What does the world know of the thoughts and feelings of those
unlettered tribes of white and black and yellow and red, flitting in
ghost-like pantomime across the background of the stage? Whatever
message they may have had for us, of warning, of encouragement, of hope,
of guidance, remains undelivered. They are but phantoms, mysterious and
ineffective.
But with literature life arrives at utterance and lasting power. The
Scythians, the Etruscans, the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians, have
vanished into thin air. We grope among their ruined cities. We collect
their figured pottery, their rusted coins and weapons. And we wonder
what manner of men they were. But the Greeks, the Hebrews, the Romans,
still live. We know their thoughts and feelings, their loves and hates,
their motives and ideals. They touch us and move us to-day through a
vital literature. Nor should we fully understand their other arts, nor
grasp the meaning of their political and social institutions without the
light which is kindled within them by the ever-burning torch of letters.
The Americans do not belong among the dumb races. Their spiritual
descent is not from Etruria and Phoenicia and Carthage, nor from the
silent red man of the western forests. Intellectually, like all the
leading races of Europe, they inherit from Greece and Rome and
Palestine.
Their instinct of self-expression in the arts has been slower
to assert itself than those other traits which we have been
considering,--self-reliance, fair-play, common order, the desire of
personal development. But they have taken part, and they still take part
(not altogether inaudibly), in the general conversation and current
debate of the world. Moreover, they have begun to create a native
literature which utters, to some extent at least, the thoughts and
feelings of the soul of the people.
This literature, considered in its _ensemble_ as an expression of our
country, raises some interesting questions which I should like to
answer. Why has it been so slow to begin? Why is it not more
recognizably American? What are the qualities in which it really
expresses the Spirit of America?
I. If you ask me why a native literature has been so slow to begin in
America, I answer, first, _that it has not been slow at all_. Compared
with other races, the Americans have been rather less slow than the
average in seeking self-expression in literary form and in producing
books which have survived the generation which produced them.
How long was it, for example, before the Hebrews began to create a
literature? A definite answer to that question would bring us into
trouble with the theologians. But at least we may say that from the
beginning of the Hebrew Commonwealth to the time of the prophet Samuel
there were three centuries and a half without literature.
How long did Rome exist before its literary activities began? Of course
we do not know what books may have perished. But the first Romans whose
names have kept a place in literature were Nævius and Ennius, who began
to write more than five hundred years after the city was founded.
Compared with these long periods of silence, the two hundred years
between the settlement of America and the appearance of Washington
Irving and James Fenimore Cooper seems but a short time.
Even earlier than these writers I should be inclined to claim a place in
literature for two Americans,--Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin.
Indeed it is possible that the clean-cut philosophical essays of the
iron-clad Edwards, and the intensely human autobiography of the shrewd
and genial Franklin may continue to find critical admirers and real
readers long after many writers, at present more praised, have been
forgotten.
But if you will allow me this preliminary protest against the
superficial notion that the Americans have been remarkably backward in
producing a national literature, I will make a concession to current and
commonplace criticism by admitting that they were not as quick in
turning to literary self-expression as might have been expected. They
were not a mentally sluggish people. They were a race of idealists. They
were fairly well educated. Why did they not go to work at once, with
their intense energy, to produce a national literature on demand?
One reason, perhaps, was that they had the good sense to perceive that a
national literature never has been, and never can be, produced in this
way. It is not made to order. It grows.
Another reason, no doubt, was the fact that they already had more books
than they had time to read. They were the inheritors of the literature
of Europe. They had the classics and the old masters. Milton and Dryden
and Locke wrote for them. Pope and Johnson, Defoe and Goldsmith, wrote
for them. Cervantes and Le Sage wrote for them. Montesquieu and Rousseau
wrote for them. Richardson and Smollett and Fielding gave them a plenty
of long-measure novels. Above all, they found an overflowing supply of
books of edification in the religious writings of Thomas Fuller, Richard
Baxter, John Bunyan, Philip Doddridge, Matthew Henry, and other copious
Puritans. There was no pressing need of mental food for the Americans.
The supply was equal to the demand.
Another reason, possibly, was the fact that they did not have a new
language, with all its words fresh and vivid from their origin in life,
to develop and exploit. This was at once an advantage and a
disadvantage.
English was not the mother-tongue of all the colonists. For two or three
generations there was a confusion of speech in the middle settlements.
It is recorded of a certain young Dutchwoman from New Amsterdam,
travelling to the English province of Connecticut, that she was in
danger of being tried for witchcraft because she spoke a diabolical
tongue, evidently marking her as "a child of Satan."
But this polyglot period passed away, and the people in general spoke
"the tongue that Shakespeare spoke,"--