As the greatest lessons of Nature through the universe are perhaps the
lessons of variety and freedom, the same present the greatest lessons
also in New World politics and progress. If a man were ask'd, for
instance, the distinctive points contrasting modern European and
American political and other life with the old Asiatic cultus, as
lingering-bequeath'd yet in China and Turkey, he might find the amount
of them in John Stuart Mill's profound essay on Liberty in the future,
where he demands two main constituents, or sub-strata, for a truly grand
nationality--1st, a large variety of character--and 2d, full play
for human nature to expand itself in numberless and even conflicting
directions--(seems to be for general humanity much like the influences
that make up, in their limitless field, that perennial health-action of
the air we call the weather--an infinite number of currents and forces,
and contributions, and temperatures, and cross-purposes, whose ceaseless
play of counterpart upon counterpart brings constant restoration and
vitality.) With this thought--and not for itself alone, but all it
necessitates, and draws after it--let me begin my speculations.
America, filling the present with greatest deeds and problems,
cheerfully accepting the past, including feudalism, (as, indeed, the
present is but the legitimate birth of the past, including feudalism,)
counts, as I reckon, for her justification and success, (for who, as
yet, dare claim success?) almost entirely on the future. Nor is that
hope unwarranted. To-day, ahead, though dimly yet, we see, in vistas, a
copious, sane, gigantic offspring. For our New World I consider far less
important for what it has done, or what it is, than for results to come.
Sole among nationalities, these States have assumed the task to put in
forms of lasting power and practicality, on areas of amplitude rivaling
the operations of the physical kosmos, the moral political speculations
of ages, long, long deferr'd, the democratic republican principle, and
the theory of development and perfection by voluntary standards, and
self-reliance. Who else, indeed, except the United States, in history,
so far, have accepted in unwitting faith, and, as we now see, stand, act
upon, and go security for, these things? But preluding no longer, let
me strike the key-note of the following strain. First premising that,
though the passages of it have been written at widely different
times, (it is, in fact, a collection of memoranda, perhaps for future
designers, comprehenders,) and though it may be open to the charge of
one part contradicting another--for there are opposite sides to the
great question of democracy, as to every great question--I feel the
parts harmoniously blended in my own realization and convictions, and
present them to be read only in such oneness, each page and each claim
and assertion modified and temper'd by the others. Bear in mind, too,
that they are not the result of studying up in political economy, but of
the ordinary sense, observing, wandering among men, these States, these
stirring years of war and peace. I will not gloss over the appaling
dangers of universal suffrage in the United States. In fact, it is to
admit and face these dangers I am writing. To him or her within whose
thought rages the battle, advancing, retreating, between democracy's
convictions, aspirations, and the people's crudeness, vice, caprices, I
mainly write this essay. I shall use the words America and democracy as
convertible terms. Not an ordinary one is the issue. The United States
are destined either to surmount the gorgeous history of feudalism, or
else prove the most tremendous failure of time. Not the least doubtful
am I on any prospects of their material success. The triumphant future
of their business, geographic and productive departments, on larger
scales and in more varieties than ever, is certain. In those respects
the republic must soon (if she does not already) outstrip all examples
hitherto afforded, and dominate the world.[20]
Admitting all this, with the priceless value of our political
institutions, general suffrage, (and fully acknowledging the latest,
widest opening of the doors,) I say that, far deeper than these, what
finally and only is to make of our western world a nationality superior
to any hither known, and out-topping the past, must be vigorous,
yet unsuspected Literatures, perfect personalities and sociologies,
original, transcendental, and expressing (what, in highest sense, are
not yet express'd at all,) democracy and the modern. With these, and
out of these, I promulge new races of Teachers, and of perfect Women,
indispensable to endow the birth-stock of a New World. For feudalism,
caste, the ecclesiastic traditions, though palpably retreating from
political institutions, still hold essentially, by their spirit, even in
this country, entire possession of the more important fields, indeed the
very subsoil, of education, and of social standards and literature.
I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it
founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools,
theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere
in the past, under opposite influences. It is curious to me that
while so many voices, pens, minds, in the press, lecture-rooms, in our
Congress, &c., are discussing intellectual topics, pecuniary dangers,
legislative problems, the suffrage, tariff and labor questions, and the
various business and benevolent needs of America, with propositions,
remedies, often worth deep attention, there is one need, a hiatus the
profoundest, that no eye seems to perceive, no voice to state. Our
fundamental want to-day in the United States, with closest, amplest
reference to present conditions, and to the future, is of a class,
and the clear idea of a class, of native authors, literatuses, far
different, far higher in grade than any yet known, sacerdotal, modern,
fit to cope with our occasions, lands, permeating the whole mass of
American mentality, taste, belief, breathing into it a new breath of
life, giving it decision, affecting politics far more than the popular
superficial suffrage, with results inside and underneath the elections
of Presidents or Congresses--radiating, begetting appropriate teachers,
schools, manners, and, as its grandest result, accomplishing, (what
neither the schools nor the churches and their clergy have hitherto
accomplish'd, and without which this nation will no more stand,
permanently, soundly, than a house will stand without a substratum,) a
religious and moral character beneath the political and productive
and intellectual bases of the States. For know you not, dear, earnest
reader, that the people of our land may all read and write, and may
all possess the right to vote--and yet the main things may be entirely
lacking?--(and this to suggest them.)
View'd, to-day, from a point of view sufficiently over-arching,
the problem of humanity all over the civilized world is social and
religious, and is to be finally met and treated by literature. The
priest departs, the divine literatus comes. Never was anything more
wanted than, to-day, and here in the States, the poet of the modern is
wanted, or the great literatus of the modern. At all times, perhaps, the
central point in any nation, and that whence it is itself really sway'd
the most, and whence it sways others, is its national literature,
especially its archetypal poems. Above all previous lands, a great
original literature is surely to become the justification and reliance,
(in some respects the sole reliance,) of American democracy.
Few are aware how the great literature penetrates all, gives hue to
all, shapes aggregates and individuals, and, after subtle ways, with
irresistible power, constructs, sustains, demolishes at will. Why tower,
in reminiscence, above all the nations of the earth, two special lands,
petty in themselves, yet inexpressibly gigantic, beautiful, columnar?
Immortal Judah lives, and Greece immortal lives, in a couple of poems.
Nearer than this. It is not generally realized, but it is true, as
the genius of Greece, and all the sociology, personality, politics
and religion of those wonderful states, resided in their literature
or esthetics, that what was afterwards the main support of European
chivalry, the feudal, ecclesiastical, dynastic world over there--forming
its osseous structure, holding it together for hundreds, thousands
of years, preserving its flesh and bloom, giving it form, decision,
rounding it out, and so saturating it in the conscious and unconscious
blood, breed, belief, and intuitions of men, that it still prevails
powerful to this day, in defiance of the mighty changes of time--was its
literature, permeating to the very marrow, especially that major part,
its enchanting songs, ballads, and poems.[21]
To the ostent of the senses and eyes, I know, the influences which
stamp the world's history are wars, uprisings or downfalls of dynasties,
changeful movements of trade, important inventions, navigation, military
or civil governments, advent of powerful personalities, conquerors,
etc.. These of course play their part; yet, it may be, a single new
thought, imagination, abstract principle, even literary style, fit for
the time, put in shape by some great literatus, and projected among
mankind, may duly cause changes, growths, removals, greater than the
longest and bloodiest war, or the most stupendous merely political,
dynastic, or commercial overturn.
In short, as, though it may not be realized, it is strictly true, that
a few first-class poets, philosophs, and authors, have substantially
settled and given status to the entire religion, education, law,
sociology, &c., of the hitherto civilized world, by tinging and often
creating the atmospheres out of which they have arisen, such also
must stamp, and more than ever stamp, the interior and real democratic
construction of this American continent, to-day, and days to come.
Remember also this fact of difference, that, while through the antique
and through the mediaeval ages, highest thoughts and ideals realized
themselves, and their expression made its way by other arts, as much
as, or even more than by, technical literature, (not open to the mass of
persons, or even to the majority of eminent persons,) such literature in
our day and for current purposes, is not only more eligible than all
the other arts put together, but has become the only general means of
morally influencing the world. Painting, sculpture, and the dramatic
theatre, it would seem, no longer play an indispensable or even
important part in the workings and mediumship of intellect, utility, or
even high esthetics. Architecture remains, doubtless with capacities,
and a real future. Then music, the combiner, nothing more spiritual,
nothing more sensuous, a god, yet completely human, advances, prevails,
holds highest place; supplying in certain wants and quarters what
nothing else could supply. Yet in the civilization of to-day it is
undeniable that, over all the arts, literature dominates, serves beyond
all--shapes the character of church and school--or, at any rate, is
capable of doing so. Including the literature of science, its scope is
indeed unparallel'd.
Before proceeding further, it were perhaps well to discriminate on
certain points. Literature tills its crops in many fields, and some
may flourish, while others lag. What I say in these Vistas has its main
bearing on imaginative literature, especially poetry, the stock of all.
In the department of science, and the specialty of journalism, there
appear, in these States, promises, perhaps fulfilments, of highest
earnestness, reality, and life, These, of course, are modern. But in
the region of imaginative, spinal and essential attributes, something
equivalent to creation is, for our age and lands, imperatively demanded.
For not only is it not enough that the new blood, new frame of
democracy shall be vivified and held together merely by political means,
superficial suffrage, legislation, &c., but it is clear to me that,
unless it goes deeper, gets at least as firm and as warm a hold in
men's hearts, emotions and belief, as, in their days, feudalism or
ecclesiasticism, and inaugurates its own perennial sources, welling from
the centre forever, its strength will be defective, its growth doubtful,
and its main charm wanting. I suggest, therefore, the possibility,
should some two or three really original American poets, (perhaps
artists or lecturers,) arise, mounting the horizon like planets, stars
of the first magnitude, that, from their eminence, fusing contributions,
races, far localities, &c., together, they would give more compaction
and more moral identity, (the quality to-day most needed,) to these
States, than all its Constitutions, legislative and judicial ties, and
all its hitherto political, warlike, or materialistic experiences. As,
for instance, there could hardly happen anything that would more serve
the States, with all their variety of origins, their diverse climes,
cities, standards, &c., than possessing an aggregate of heroes,
characters, exploits, sufferings, prosperity or misfortune, glory or
disgrace, common to all, typical of all--no less, but even greater would
it be to possess the aggregation of a cluster of mighty poets, artists,
teachers, fit for us, national expressers, comprehending and effusing
for the men and women of the States, what is universal, native, common
to all, inland and seaboard, northern and southern. The historians say
of ancient Greece, with her ever-jealous autonomies, cities, and states,
that the only positive unity she ever own'd or receiv'd, was the sad
unity of a common subjection, at the last, to foreign conquerors.
Subjection, aggregation of that sort, is impossible to America; but
the fear of conflicting and irreconcilable interiors, and the lack of
a common skeleton, knitting all close, continually haunts me. Or, if it
does not, nothing is plainer than the need, a long period to come, of
a fusion of the States into the only reliable identity, the moral
and artistic one. For, I say, the true nationality of the States, the
genuine union, when we come to a moral crisis, is, and is to be, after
all, neither the written law, nor, (as is generally supposed,) either
self-interest, or common pecuniary or material objects--but the fervid
and tremendous IDEA, melting everything else with resistless heat,
and solving all lesser and definite distinctions in vast, indefinite,
spiritual, emotional power.
It may be claim'd, (and I admit the weight of the claim,) that common
and general worldly prosperity, and a populace well-to-do, and with all
life's material comforts, is the main thing, and is enough. It may be
argued that our republic is, in performance, really enacting to-day the
grandest arts, poems, &c., by beating up the wilderness into fertile
farms, and in her railroads, ships, machinery, &c. And it may be ask'd,
Are these not better, indeed, for America, than any utterances even of
greatest rhapsode, artist, or literatus?
I too hail those achievements with pride and joy: then answer that
the soul of man will not with such only--nay, not with such at all--be
finally satisfied; but needs what, (standing on these and on all things,
as the feet stand on the ground,) is address'd to the loftiest, to
itself alone.
Out of such considerations, such truths, arises for treatment in
these Vistas the important question of character, of an American
stock-personality, with literatures and arts for outlets and
return-expressions, and, of course, to correspond, within outlines
common to all. To these, the main affair, the thinkers of the United
States, in general so acute, have either given feeblest attention, or
have remain'd, and remain, in a state of somnolence.
For my part, I would alarm and caution even the political and business
reader, and to the utmost extent, against the prevailing delusion
that the establishment of free political institutions, and plentiful
intellectual smartness, with general good order, physical plenty,
industry, &c., (desirable and precious advantages as they all are,) do,
of themselves, determine and yield to our experiment of democracy the
fruitage of success. With such advantages at present fully, or almost
fully, possess'd--the Union just issued, victorious, from the struggle
with the only foes it need ever fear, (namely, those within itself,
the interior ones,) and with unprecedented materialistic
advancement--society, in these States, is canker'd, crude,
superstitious, and rotten. Political, or law-made society is, and
private, or voluntary society, is also. In any vigor, the element of
the moral conscience, the most important, the verteber to State or man,
seems to me either entirely lacking, or seriously enfeebled or ungrown.
I say we had best look our times and lands searchingly in the face, like
a physician diagnosing some deep disease. Never was there, perhaps,
more hollowness at heart than at present, and here in the United States.
Genuine belief seems to have left us. The underlying principles of the
States are not honestly believ'd in, (for all this hectic glow, and
these melo-dramatic screamings,) nor is humanity itself believ'd in.
What penetrating eye does not everywhere see through the mask? The
spectacle is appaling. We live in an atmosphere of hypocrisy throughout.
The men believe not in the women, nor the women in the men. A scornful
superciliousness rules in literature. The aim of all the _littérateurs_
is to find something to make fun of. A lot of churches, sects, &c., the
most dismal phantasms I know, usurp the name of religion. Conversation
is a mass of badinage. From deceit in the spirit, the mother of all
false deeds, the offspring is already incalculable. An acute and candid
person, in the revenue department in Washington, who is led by the
course of his employment to regularly visit the cities, north, south
and west, to investigate frauds, has talk'd much with me about his
discoveries. The depravity of the business classes of our country is
not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater. The official
services of America, national, state, and municipal, in all their
branches and departments, except the judiciary, are saturated in
corruption, bribery, falsehood, mal-administration; and the judiciary
is tainted. The great cities reek with respectable as much as
non-respectable robbery and scoundrelism. In fashionable life,
flippancy, tepid amours, weak infidelism, small aims, or no aims at
all, only to kill time. In business, (this all-devouring modern word,
business,) the one sole object is, by any means, pecuniary gain. The
magician's serpent in the fable ate up all the other serpents; and
money-making is our magician's serpent, remaining today sole master of
the field. The best class we show, is but a mob of fashionably dress'd
speculators and vulgarians. True, indeed, behind this fantastic farce,
enacted on the visible stage of society, solid things and stupendous
labors are to be discover'd, existing crudely and going on in the
background, to advance and tell themselves in time. Yet the truths are
none the less terrible. I say that our New World democracy, however
great a success in uplifting the masses out of their sloughs, in
materialistic development, products, and in a certain highly-deceptive
superficial popular intellectuality, is, so far, an almost complete
failure in its social aspects, and in really grand religious, moral,
literary, and esthetic results. In vain do we march with unprecedented
strides to empire so colossal, outvying the antique, beyond Alexander's,
beyond the proudest sway of Rome. In vain have we annex'd Texas,
California, Alaska, and reach north for Canada and south for Cuba. It
is as if we were somehow being endow'd with a vast and more and more
thoroughly-appointed body, and then left with little or no soul.
Let me illustrate further, as I write, with current observations,
localities, &c. The subject is important, and will bear repetition.
After an absence, I am now again (September, 1870) in New York city and
Brooklyn, on a few weeks' vacation. The splendor, picturesqueness,
and oceanic amplitude and rush of these great cities, the unsurpass'd
situation, rivers and bay, sparkling sea-tides, costly and lofty new
buildings, façades of marble and iron, of original grandeur and elegance
of design, with the masses of gay color, the preponderance of white
and blue, the flags flying, the endless ships, the tumultuous streets,
Broadway, the heavy, low, musical roar, hardly ever intermitted, even
at night; the jobbers' houses, the rich shops, the wharves, the great
Central Park, and the Brooklyn Park of hills, (as I wander among
them this beautiful fall weather, musing, watching, absorbing)--the
assemblages of the citizens in their groups, conversations, trades,
evening amusements, or along the by-quarters--these, I say, and the like
of these, completely satisfy my senses of power, fulness, motion, &c.,
and give me, through such senses and appetites, and through my esthetic
conscience, a continued exaltation and absolute fulfilment. Always and
more and more, as I cross the East and North rivers, the ferries, or
with the pilots in their pilot-houses, or pass an hour in Wall street,
or the gold exchange, I realize, (if we must admit such partialisms,)
that not Nature alone is great in her fields of freedom and the open
air, in her storms, the shows of night and day, the mountains, forests,
seas--but in the artificial, the work of man too is equally great--in
this profusion of teeming humanity--in these ingenuities, streets,
goods, houses, ships--these hurrying, feverish, electric crowds of men,
their complicated business genius, (not least among the geniuses,) and
all this mighty, many-threaded wealth and industry concentrated here.
But sternly discarding, shutting our eyes to the glow and grandeur of
the general superficial effect, coming down to what is of the only real
importance, Personalities, and examining minutely, we question, we ask,
Are there, indeed, _men_ here worthy the name? Are there athletes? Are
there perfect women, to match the generous material luxuriance? Is there
a pervading atmosphere of beautiful manners? Are there crops of fine
youths, and majestic old persons? Are there arts worthy freedom and a
rich people? Is there a great moral and religious civilization--the
only justification of a great material one? Confess that to severe eyes,
using the moral microscope upon humanity, a sort of dry and flat Sahara
appears, these cities, crowded with petty grotesques, malformations,
phantoms, playing meaningless antics.
Confess that everywhere, in shop, street, church, theatre, bar-room,
official chair, are pervading flippancy and vulgarity, low cunning,
infidelity--everywhere the youth puny, impudent, foppish, prematurely
ripe--everywhere an abnormal libidinousness, unhealthy forms, male,
female, painted, padded, dyed, chignon'd, muddy complexions, bad blood,
the capacity for good motherhood deceasing or deceas'd, shallow
notions of beauty, with a range of manners, or rather lack of manners,
(considering the advantages enjoy'd,) probably the meanest to be seen in
the world.[22]
Of all this, and these lamentable conditions, to breathe into them
the breath recuperative of sane and heroic life, I say a new founded
literature, not merely to copy and reflect existing surfaces, or pander
to what is called taste--not only to amuse, pass away time, celebrate
the beautiful, the refined, the past, or exhibit technical, rhythmic,
or grammatical dexterity--but a literature underlying life, religious,
consistent with science, handling the elements and forces with competent
power, teaching and training men--and, as perhaps the most precious
of its results, achieving the entire redemption of woman out of these
incredible holds and webs of silliness, millinery, and every kind of
dyspeptic depletion--and thus insuring to the States a strong and sweet
Female Race, a race of perfect Mothers--is what is needed.
And now, in the full conception of these facts and points, and all that
they infer, pro and con--with yet unshaken faith in the elements of the
American masses, the composites, of both sexes, and even consider'd as
individuals--and ever recognizing in them the broadest bases of the
best literary and esthetic appreciation--I proceed with my speculations,
Vistas.
First, let us see what we can make out of a brief, general, sentimental
consideration of political democracy, and whence it has arisen, with
regard to some of its current features, as an aggregate, and as the
basic structure of our future literature and authorship. We shall, it is
true, quickly and continually find the origin-idea of the singleness of
man, individualism, asserting itself, and cropping forth, even from the
opposite ideas. But the mass, or lump character, for imperative reasons,
is to be ever carefully weigh'd, borne in mind, and provided for. Only
from it, and from its proper regulation and potency, comes the other,
comes the chance of individualism. The two are contradictory, but our
task is to reconcile them.[23]
The political history of the past may be summ'd up as having grown out
of what underlies the words, order, safety, caste, and especially out of
the need of some prompt deciding authority, and of cohesion at all cost.
Leaping time, we come to the period within the memory of people
now living, when, as from some lair where they had slumber'd long,
accumulating wrath, sprang up and are yet active, (1790, and on eyen to
the present, 1870,) those noisy eructations, destructive iconoclasms, a
fierce sense of wrongs, amid which moves the form, well known in modern
history, in the old world, stain'd with much blood, and mark'd by savage
reactionary clamors and demands. These bear, mostly, as on one inclosing
point of need.
For after the rest is said--after the many time-honor'd and really true
things for subordination, experience, rights of property, &c., have
been listen'd to and acquiesced in--after the valuable and well-settled
statement of our duties and relations in society is thoroughly conn'd
over and exhausted--it remains to bring forward and modify everything
else with the idea of that Something a man is, (last precious
consolation of the drudging poor,) standing apart from all else, divine
in his own right, and a woman in hers, sole and untouchable by any
canons of authority, or any rule derived from precedent, state-safety,
the acts of legislatures, or even from what is called religion, modesty,
or art. The radiation of this truth is the key of the most significant
doings of our immediately preceding three centuries, and has been the
political genesis and life of America. Advancing visibly, it still more
advances invisibly. Underneath the fluctuations of the expressions of
society, as well as the movements of the politics of the leading nations
of the world, we see steadily pressing ahead and strengthening itself,
even in the midst of immense tendencies toward aggregation, this image
of completeness in separatism, of individual personal dignity, of a
single person, either male or female, characterized in the main, not
from extrinsic acquirements or position, but in the pride of himself or
herself alone; and, as an eventual conclusion and summing up, (or else
the entire scheme of things is aimless, a cheat, a crash,) the simple
idea that the last, best dependence is to be upon humanity itself, and
its own inherent, normal, fullgrown qualities, without any superstitious
support whatever. This idea of perfect individualism it is indeed that
deepest tinges and gives character to the idea of the aggregate. For it
is mainly or altogether to serve independent separatism that we favor a
strong generalization, consolidation. As it is to give the best vitality
and freedom to the rights of the States, (every bit as important as the
right of nationality, the union,) that we insist on the identity of the
Union at all hazards.
The purpose of democracy--supplanting old belief in the necessary
absoluteness of establish'd dynastic rulership, temporal,
ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only security against
chaos, crime, and ignorance--is, through many transmigrations, and amid
endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failures, to illustrate,
at all hazards, this doctrine or theory that man, properly train'd in
sanest, highest freedom, may and must become a law, and series of laws,
unto himself, surrounding and providing for, not only his own personal
control, but all his relations to other individuals, and to the State;
and that, while other theories, as in the past histories of nations,
have proved wise enough, and indispensable perhaps for their conditions,
_this,_ as matters now stand in our civilized world, is the only scheme
worth working from, as warranting results like those of Nature's laws,
reliable, when once establish'd, to carry on themselves.
The argument of the matter is extensive, and, we admit, by no means all
on one side. What we shall offer will be far, far from sufficient. But
while leaving unsaid much that should properly even prepare the way
for the treatment of this many-sided question of political liberty,
equality, or republicanism--leaving the whole history and consideration
of the feudal plan and its products, embodying humanity, its politics
and civilization, through the retrospect of past time, (which plan
and products, indeed, make up all of the past, and a large part of the
present)--leaving unanswer'd, at least by any specific and local answer,
many a well-wrought argument and instance, and many a conscientious
declamatory cry and warning--as, very lately, from an eminent and
venerable person abroad[24]--things, problems, full of doubt, dread,
suspense, (not new to me, but old occupiers of many an anxious hour in
city's din, or night's silence,) we still may give a page or so, whose
drift is opportune. Time alone can finally answer these things. But as
a substitute in passing, let us, even if fragmentarily, throw forth a
short direct or indirect suggestion of the premises of that other plan,
in the new spirit, under the new forms, started here in our America.
As to the political section of Democracy, which introduces and breaks
ground for further and vaster sections, few probably are the minds, even
in these republican States, that fully comprehend the aptness of that
phrase, "THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE,"
which we inherit from the lips of Abraham Lincoln; a formula whose
verbal shape is homely wit, but whose scope includes both the totality
and all minutiae of the lesson.
The People! Like our huge earth itself, which, to ordinary scansion,
is full of vulgar contradictions and offence, man, viewed in the lump,
displeases, and is a constant puzzle and affront to the merely educated
classes. The rare, cosmical, artist-mind, lit with the Infinite, alone
confronts his manifold and oceanic qualities--but taste, intelligence
and culture, (so-called,) have been against the masses, and remain so.
There is plenty of glamour about the most damnable crimes and hoggish
meannesses, special and general, of the feudal and dynastic world
over there, with its _personnel_ of lords and queens and courts, so
well-dress'd and so handsome. But the People are ungrammatical, untidy,
and their sins gaunt and ill-bred.
Literature, strictly consider'd, has never recognized the People,
and, whatever may be said, does not to-day. Speaking generally, the
tendencies of literature, as hitherto pursued, have been to make mostly
critical and querulous men. It seems as if, so far, there were some
natural repugnance between a literary and professional life, and the
rude rank spirit of the democracies. There is, in later literature, a
treatment of benevolence, a charity business, rife enough it is
true; but I know nothing more rare, even in this country, than a fit
scientific estimate and reverent appreciation of the People--of their
measureless wealth of latent power and capacity, their vast, artistic
contrasts of lights and shades--with, in America, their entire
reliability in emergencies, and a certain breadth of historic grandeur,
of peace or war, far surpassing all the vaunted samples of book-heroes,
or any _haut ton_ coteries, in all the records of the world.
The movements of the late secession war, and their results, to any sense
that studies well and comprehends them, show that popular democracy,
whatever its faults and dangers, practically justifies itself beyond the
proudest claims and wildest hopes of its enthusiasts. Probably no future
age can know, but I well know, how the gist of this fiercest and most
resolute of the world's war-like contentions resided exclusively in the
unnamed, unknown rank and file; and how the brunt of its labor of death
was, to all essential purposes, volunteer'd. The People, of their own
choice, fighting, dying for their own idea, insolently attack'd by the
secession-slave-power, and its very existence imperil'd. Descending
to detail, entering any of the armies, and mixing with the private
soldiers, we see and have seen august spectacles. We have seen the
alacrity with which the American-born populace, the peaceablest and most
good-natured race in the world, and the most personally independent
and intelligent, and the least fitted to submit to the irksomeness and
exasperation of regimental discipline, sprang, at the first tap of the
drum, to arms--not for gain, nor even glory, nor to repel invasion--but
for an emblem, a mere abstraction--for the life, _the safety of the
flag_. We have seen the unequal'd docility and obedience of these
soldiers. We have seen them tried long and long by hopelessness,
mismanagement, and by defeat; have seen the incredible slaughter toward
or through which the armies (as at first Fredericksburg, and afterward
at the Wilderness,) still unhesitatingly obey'd orders to advance. We
have seen them in trench, or crouching behind breastwork, or tramping
in deep mud, or amid pouring rain or thick-falling snow, or under forced
marches in hottest summer (as on the road to get to Gettysburg)--vast
suffocating swarms, divisions, corps, with every single man so grimed
and black with sweat and dust, his own mother would not have known
him--his clothes all dirty, stain'd and torn, with sour, accumulated
sweat for perfume--many a comrade, perhaps a brother, sun-struck,
staggering out, dying, by the roadside, of exhaustion--yet the great
bulk bearing steadily on, cheery enough, hollow-bellied from hunger, but
sinewy with unconquerable resolution.
We have seen this race proved by wholesale by drearier, yet more fearful
tests--the wound, the amputation, the shatter'd face or limb, the
slow hot fever, long impatient anchorage in bed, and all the forms of
maiming, operation and disease. Alas! America have we seen, though only
in her early youth, already to hospital brought. There have we watch'd
these soldiers, many of them only boys in years--mark'd their decorum,
their religious nature and fortitude, and their sweet affection.
Wholesale, truly. For at the front, and through the camps, in countless
tents, stood the regimental, brigade and division hospitals; while
everywhere amid the land, in or near cities, rose clusters of huge,
white-wash'd, crowded, one-story wooden barracks; and there ruled agony
with bitter scourge, yet seldom brought a cry; and there stalk'd death
by day and night along the narrow aisles between the rows of cots, or
by the blankets on the ground, and touch'd lightly many a poor sufferer,
often with blessed, welcome touch.
I know not whether I shall be understood, but I realize that it is
finally from what I learn'd personally mixing in such scenes that I am
now penning these pages. One night in the gloomiest period of the war,
in the Patent-office hospital in Washington city, as I stood by
the bedside of a Pennsylvania soldier, who lay, conscious of quick
approaching death, yet perfectly calm, and with noble, spiritual manner,
the veteran surgeon, turning aside, said to me, that though he had
witness'd many, many deaths of soldiers, and had been a worker at Bull
Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, &c., he had not seen yet the first case
of man or boy that met the approach of dissolution with cowardly qualms
or terror. My own observation fully bears out the remark.
What have we here, if not, towering above all talk and argument,
the plentifully-supplied, last-needed proof of democracy, in its
personalities? Curiously enough, too, the proof on this point comes,
I should say, every bit as much from the south, as from the north.
Although I have spoken only of the latter, yet I deliberately include
all. Grand, common stock! to me the accomplish'd and convincing growth,
prophetic of the future; proof undeniable to sharpest sense, of perfect
beauty, tenderness and pluck, that never feudal lord, nor Greek, nor
Roman breed, yet rival'd. Let no tongue ever speak in disparagement of
the American races, north or south, to one who has been through the war
in the great army hospitals.
Meantime, general humanity, (for to that we return, as, for our
purposes, what it really is, to bear in mind,) has always, in every
department, been full of perverse maleficence, and is so yet. In
downcast hours the soul thinks it always will be--but soon recovers
from such sickly moods. I myself see clearly enough the crude, defective
streaks in all the strata of the common people; the specimens and vast
collections of the ignorant, the credulous, the unfit and uncouth, the
incapable, and the very low and poor. The eminent person just mention'd
sneeringly asks whether we expect to elevate and improve a nation's
politics by absorbing such morbid collections and qualities therein. The
point is a formidable one, and there will doubtless always be numbers of
solid and reflective citizens who will never get over it. Our answer
is general, and is involved in the scope and letter of this essay.
We believe the ulterior object of political and all other government,
(having, of course, provided for the police, the safety of life,
property, and for the basic statute and common law, and their
administration, always first in order,) to be among the rest, not
merely to rule, to repress disorder, &c., but to develop, to open up to
cultivation, to encourage the possibilities of all beneficent and manly
outcroppage, and of that aspiration for independence, and the pride and
self-respect latent in all characters. (Or, if there be exceptions, we
cannot, fixing our eyes on them alone, make theirs the rule for all.)
I say the mission of government, henceforth, in civilized lands, is not
repression alone, and not Authority alone, not even of law, nor by that
favorite standard of the eminent writer, the rule of the best men, the
born heroes and captains of the race, (as if such ever, or one time out
of a hundred, get into the big places, elective or dynastic)--but higher
than the highest arbitrary rule, to train communities through all their
grades, beginning with individuals and ending there again, to rule
themselves. What Christ appear'd for in the moral-spiritual field for
human-kind, namely, that in respect to the absolute soul, there is
in the possession of such by each single individual, something so
transcendent, so incapable of gradations, (like life,) that, to that
extent, it places all beings on a common level, utterly regardless
of the distinctions of intellect, virtue, station, or any height or
lowliness whatever--is tallied in like manner, in this other field, by
democracy's rule that men, the nation, as a common aggregate of living
identities, affording in each a separate and complete subject for
freedom, worldly thrift and happiness, and for a fair chance for growth,
and for protection in citizenship, &c., must, to the political extent
of the suffrage or vote, if no further, be placed, in each and in the
whole, on one broad, primary, universal, common platform.
The purpose is not altogether direct; perhaps it is more indirect. For
it is not that democracy is of exhaustive account, in itself. Perhaps,
indeed, it is, (like Nature,) of no account in itself. It is that, as
we see, it is the best, perhaps only, fit and full means, formulater,
general caller-forth, trainer, for the million, not for grand material
personalities only, but for immortal souls. To be a voter with the
rest is not so much; and this, like every institute, will have its
imperfections.
But to become an enfranchised man, and now, impediments removed,
to stand and start without humiliation, and equal with the rest; to
commence, or have the road clear'd to commence, the grand experiment of
development, whose end, (perhaps requiring several generations,) may
be the forming of a full-grown man or woman--that _is_ something. To
ballast the State is also secured, and in our times is to be secured, in
no other way.
We do not, (at any rate I do not,) put it either on the ground that
the People, the masses, even the best of them, are, in their latent or
exhibited qualities, essentially sensible and good--nor on the ground of
their rights; but that good or bad, rights or no rights, the democratic
formula is the only safe and preservative one for coming times. We endow
the masses with the suffrage for their own sake, no doubt; then, perhaps
still more, from another point of view, for community's sake. Leaving
the rest to the sentimentalists, we present freedom as sufficient in
its scientific aspect, cold as ice, reasoning, deductive, clear and
passionless as crystal.
Democracy too is law, and of the strictest, amplest kind. Many suppose,
(and often in its own ranks the error,) that it means a throwing aside
of law, and running riot. But, briefly, it is the superior law, not
alone that of physical force, the body, which, adding to, it supersedes
with that of the spirit. Law is the unshakable order of the universe
forever; and the law over all, and law of laws, is the law of
successions; that of the superior law, in time, gradually supplanting
and overwhelming the inferior one. (While, for myself, I would
cheerfully agree--first covenanting that the formative tendencies shall
be administer'd in favor, or at least not against it, and that this
reservation be closely construed--that until the individual or community
show due signs, or be so minor and fractional as not to endanger
the State, the condition of authoritative tutelage may continue, and
self-government must abide its time.) Nor is the esthetic point, always
an important one, without fascination for highest aiming souls. The
common ambition strains for elevations, to become some privileged
exclusive. The master sees greatness and health in being part of the
mass; nothing will do as well as common ground. Would you have in
yourself the divine, vast, general law? Then merge yourself in it.
And, topping democracy, this most alluring record, that it alone can
bind, and ever seeks to bind, all nations, all men, of however various
and distant lands, into a brotherhood, a family. It is the old, yet
ever-modern dream of earth, out of her eldest and her youngest, her
fond philosophers and poets. Not that half only, individualism, which
isolates. There is another half, which is adhesiveness or love, that
fuses, ties and aggregates, making the races comrades, and fraternizing
all. Both are to be vitalized by religion, (sole worthiest elevator of
man or State,) breathing into the proud, material tissues, the breath
of life. For I say at the core of democracy, finally, is the religious
element. All the religions, old and new, are there. Nor may the scheme
step forth, clothed in resplendent beauty and command, till these,
bearing the best, the latest fruit, the spiritual, shall fully appear.
A portion of our pages we might indite with reference toward Europe,
especially the British part of it, more than our own land, perhaps not
absolutely needed for the home reader. But the whole question hangs
together, and fastens and links all peoples. The liberalist of to-day
has this advantage over antique or mediaeval times, that his doctrine
seeks not only to individualize but to universalize. The great word
Solidarity has arisen. Of all dangers to a nation, as things exist in
our day, there can be no greater one than having certain portions of
the people set off from the rest by a line drawn--they not privileged
as others, but degraded, humiliated, made of no account. Much quackery
teems, of course, even on democracy's side, yet does not really affect
the orbic quality of the matter. To work in, if we may so term it, and
justify God, his divine aggregate, the People, (or, the veritable horn'd
and sharp-tail'd Devil, _his_ aggregate, if there be who convulsively
insist upon it)--this, I say, is what democracy is for; and this is what
our America means, and is doing--may I not say, has done? If not, she
means nothing more, and does nothing more, than any other land. And as,
by virtue of its kosmical, antiseptic power, Nature's stomach is fully
strong enough not only to digest the morbific matter always presented,
not to be turn'd aside, and perhaps, indeed, intuitively gravitating
thither--but even to change such contributions into nutriment for
highest use and life--so American democracy's. That is the lesson we,
these days, send over to European lands by every western breeze.
And, truly, whatever may be said in the way of abstract argument, for
or against the theory of a wider democratizing of institutions in any
civilized country, much trouble might well be saved to all European
lands by recognizing this palpable fact, (for a palpable fact it is,)
that some form of such democratizing is about the only resource now
left. _That_, or chronic dissatisfaction continued, mutterings which
grow annually louder and louder, till, in due course, and pretty swiftly
in most cases, the inevitable crisis, crash, dynastic ruin. Anything
worthy to be call'd statesmanship in the Old World, I should say, among
the advanced students, adepts, or men of any brains, does not debate
to-day whether to hold on, attempting to lean back and monarchize, or
to look forward and democratize--but _how_, and in what degree and part,
most prudently to democratize.
The eager and often inconsiderate appeals of reformers and
revolutionists are indispensable, to counterbalance the inertness and
fossilism making so large a part of human institutions. The latter will
always take care of themselves--the danger being that they rapidly tend
to ossify us. The former is to be treated with indulgence, and even with
respect. As circulation to air, so is agitation and a plentiful degree
of speculative license to political and moral sanity. Indirectly, but
surely, goodness, virtue, law, (of the very best,) follow freedom.
These, to democracy, are what the keel is to the ship, or saltness to
the ocean.
The true gravitation-hold of liberalism in the United States will be
a more universal ownership of property, general homesteads, general
comfort--a vast, intertwining reticulation of wealth. As the human
frame, or, indeed, any object in this manifold universe, is best kept
together by the simple miracle of its own cohesion, and the necessity,
exercise and profit thereof, so a great and varied nationality,
occupying millions of square miles, were firmest held and knit by the
principle of the safety and endurance of the aggregate of its middling
property owners. So that, from another point of view, ungracious as it
may sound, and a paradox after what we have been saying, democracy looks
with suspicious, ill-satisfied eye upon the very poor, the ignorant, and
on those out of business. She asks for men and women with occupations,
well-off, owners of houses and acres, and with cash in the bank--and
with some cravings for literature, too; and must have them, and hastens
to make them. Luckily, the seed is already well-sown, and has taken
ineradicable root.[25]
Huge and mighty are our days, our republican lands--and most in their
rapid shiftings, their changes, all in the interest of the cause. As I
write this particular passage, (November, 1868,) the din of disputation
rages around me. Acrid the temper of the parties, vital the pending
questions. Congress convenes; the President sends his message;
reconstruction is still in abeyance; the nomination and the contest
for the twenty-first Presidentiad draw close, with loudest threat and
bustle. Of these, and all the like of these, the eventuations I know
not; but well I know that behind them, and whatever their eventuations,
the vital things remain safe and certain, and all the needed work goes
on. Time, with soon or later superciliousness, disposes of Presidents,
Congressmen, party platforms, and such. Anon, it clears the stage of
each and any mortal shred that thinks itself so potent to its day; and
at and after which, (with precious, golden exceptions once or twice in
a century,) all that relates to sir potency is flung to moulder in
a burial-vault, and no one bothers himself the least bit about it
afterward. But the People ever remain, tendencies continue, and all the
idiocratic transfers in unbroken chain go on.
In a few years the dominion-heart of America will be far inland, toward
the west. Our future national capital may not be where the present one
is. It is possible, nay likely, that in less than fifty years, it will
migrate a thousand or two miles, will be re-founded, and every thing
belonging to it made on a different plan, original, far more superb. The
main social, political, spine-character of the States will probably run
along the Ohio, Missouri and Mississippi rivers, and west and north
of them, including Canada. Those regions, with the group of powerful
brothers toward the Pacific, (destined to the mastership of that sea and
its countless paradises of islands,) will compact and settle the traits
of America, with all the old retain'd, but more expanded, grafted on
newer, hardier, purely native stock. A giant growth, composite from
the rest, getting their contribution, absorbing it, to make it more
illustrious. From the north, intellect, the sun of things, also the idea
of unswayable justice, anchor amid the last, the wildest tempests.
From the south the living soul, the animus of good and bad, haughtily
admitting no demonstration but its own. While from the west itself
comes solid personality, with blood and brawn, and the deep quality of
all-accepting fusion.
Political democracy, as it exists and practically works in America,
with all its threatening evils, supplies a training-school for making
first-class men. It is life's gymnasium, not of good only, but of
all. We try often, though we fall back often. A brave delight, fit for
freedom's athletes, fills these arenas, and fully satisfies, out of the
action in them, irrespective of success. Whatever we do not attain, we
at any rate attain the experiences of the fight, the hardening of the
strong campaign, and throb with currents of attempt at least. Time is
ample. Let the victors come after us. Not for nothing does evil play
its part among us. Judging from the main portions of the history of the
world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy, peace walks amid hourly
pitfalls, and of slavery, misery, meanness, the craft of tyrants and the
credulity of the populace, in some of their protean forms, no voice can
at any time say, They are not. The clouds break a little, and the sun
shines out--but soon and certain the lowering darkness falls again, as
if to last forever. Yet is there an immortal courage and prophecy
in every sane soul that cannot, must not, under any circumstances,
capitulate. _Vive_, the attack--the perennial assault! _Vive_, the
unpopular cause--the spirit that audaciously aims--the never-abandon'd
efforts, pursued the same amid opposing proofs and precedents.
Once, before the war, (alas! I dare not say how many times the mood has
come!) I, too, was fill'd with doubt and gloom. A foreigner, an acute
and good man, had impressively said to me, that day--putting in form,
indeed, my own observations: "I have travel'd much in the United States,
and watch'd their politicians, and listen'd to the speeches of the
candidates, and read the journals, and gone into the public houses, and
heard the unguarded talk of men. And I have found your vaunted America
honeycomb'd from top to toe with infidelism, even to itself and its own
programme. I have mark'd the brazen hell-faces of secession and slavery
gazing defiantly from all the windows and doorways. I have everywhere
found, primarily, thieves and scalliwags arranging the nominations to
offices, and sometimes filling the offices themselves. I have found the
north just as full of bad stuff as the south. Of the holders of public
office in the Nation or the States or their municipalities, I have found
that not one in a hundred has been chosen by any spontaneous selection
of the outsiders, the people, but all have been nominated and put
through by little or large caucuses of the politicians, and have got
in by corrupt rings and electioneering, not capacity or desert. I have
noticed how the millions of sturdy farmers and mechanics are thus the
helpless supple-jacks of comparatively few politicians. And I have
noticed more and more, the alarming spectacle of parties usurping the
government, and openly and shamelessly wielding it for party purposes."
Sad, serious, deep truths. Yet are there other, still deeper, amply
confronting, dominating truths. Over those politicians and great and
little rings, and over all their insolence and wiles, and over the
powerfulest parties, looms a power, too sluggish maybe, but ever holding
decisions and decrees in hand, ready, with stern process, to execute
them as soon as plainly needed--and at times, indeed, summarily crushing
to atoms the mightiest parties, even in the hour of their pride.
In saner hours far different are the amounts of these things from what,
at first sight, they appear. Though it is no doubt important who
is elected governor, mayor, or legislator, (and full of dismay when
incompetent or vile ones get elected, as they sometimes do,) there are
other, quieter contingencies, infinitely more important. Shams, &c.,
will always be the show, like ocean's scum; enough, if waters deep and
clear make up the rest. Enough, that while the piled embroider'd shoddy
gaud and fraud spreads to the superficial eye, the hidden warp and weft
are genuine, and will wear forever. Enough, in short, that the race,
the land which could raise such as the late rebellion, could also put it
down. The average man of a land at last only is important. He, in these
States, remains immortal owner and boss, deriving good uses, somehow,
out of any sort of servant in office, even the basest; (certain
universal requisites, and their settled regularity and protection, being
first secured,) a nation like ours, in a sort of geological formation
state, trying continually new experiments, choosing new delegations,
is not served by the best men only, but sometimes more by those that
provoke it--by the combats they arouse. Thus national rage, fury,
discussions, &c., better than content. Thus, also, the warning signals,
invaluable for after times.
What is more dramatic than the spectacle we have seen repeated, and
doubtless long shall see--the popular judgment taking the successful
candidates on trial in the offices--standing off, as it were, and
observing them and their doings for a while, and always giving, finally,
the fit, exactly due reward? I think, after all, the sublimest part of
political history, and its culmination, is currently issuing from
the American people. I know nothing grander, better exercise, better
digestion, more positive proof of the past, the triumphant result of
faith in human-kind, than a well-contested American national election.
Then still the thought returns, (like the thread-passage in overtures,)
giving the key and echo to these pages. When I pass to and fro,
different latitudes, different seasons, beholding the crowds of the
great cities, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Chicago, St.
Louis, San Francisco, New Orleans, Baltimore--when I mix with these
interminable swarms of alert, turbulent, good-natured, independent
citizens, mechanics, clerks, young persons--at the idea of this mass
of men, so fresh and free, so loving and so proud, a singular awe falls
upon me. I feel, with dejection and amazement, that among our geniuses
and talented writers or speakers, few or none have yet really spoken to
this people, created a single image-making work for them, or absorb'd
the central spirit and the idiosyncrasies which are theirs--and
which, thus, in highest ranges, so far remain entirely uncelebrated,
unexpress'd.
Dominion strong is the body's; dominion stronger is the mind's. What
has fill'd, and fills to-day our intellect, our fancy, furnishing the
standards therein, is yet foreign. The great poems, Shakspere included,
are poisonous to the idea of the pride and dignity of the common people,
the life-blood of democracy. The models of our literature, as we get
it from other lands, ultra-marine, have had their birth in courts, and
bask'd and grown in castle sunshine; all smells of princes' favors. Of
workers of a certain sort, we have, indeed, plenty, contributing after
their kind; many elegant, many learn'd, all complacent. But touch'd by
the national test, or tried by the standards of democratic personality,
they wither to ashes. I say I have not seen a single writer, artist,
lecturer, or what-not, that has confronted the voiceless but ever erect
and active, pervading, underlying will and typic aspiration of the
land, in a spirit kindred to itself. Do you call those genteel little
creatures American poets? Do you term that perpetual, pistareen,
paste-pot work, American art, American drama, taste, verse? I think I
hear, echoed as from some mountain-top afar in the west, the scornful
laugh of the Genius of these States.
Democracy, in silence, biding its time, ponders its own ideals, not of
literature and art only--not of men only, but of women. The idea of the
women of America, (extricated from this daze, this fossil and unhealthy
air which hangs about the word _lady_,) develop'd, raised to become the
robust equals, workers, and, it may be, even practical and political
deciders with the men--greater than man, we may admit, through their
divine maternity, always their towering, emblematical attribute--but
great, at any rate, as man, in all departments; or, rather, capable of
being so, soon as they realize it, and can bring themselves to give up
toys and fictions, and launch forth, as men do, amid real, independent,
stormy life.
Then, as towards our thought's finalé, (and, in that, overarching the
true scholar's lesson,) we have to say there can be no complete or
epical presentation of democracy in the aggregate, or anything like it,
at this day, because its doctrines will only be effectually incarnated
in any one branch, when, in all, their spirit is at the root and centre.
Far, far, indeed, stretch, in distance, our Vistas! How much is still
to be disentangled, freed! How long it takes to make this American world
see that it is, in itself, the final authority and reliance!
Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for
politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there
that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruits in manners, in
the highest forms of interaction between men, and their beliefs--in
religion, literature, colleges, and schools--democracy in all public and
private life, and in the army and navy.[26] I have intimated that, as a
paramount scheme, it has yet few or no full realizers and believers.
I do not see, either, that it owes any serious thanks to noted
propagandists or champions, or has been essentially help'd, though often
harm'd, by them. It has been and is carried on by all the moral forces,
and by trade, finance, machinery, intercommunications, and, in fact,
by all the developments of history, and can no more be stopp'd than the
tides, or the earth in its orbit. Doubtless, also, it resides, crude and
latent, well down in the hearts of the fair average of the American-born
people, mainly in the agricultural regions. But it is not yet, there or
anywhere, the fully-receiv'd, the fervid, the absolute faith.
I submit, therefore, that the fruition of democracy, on aught like a
grand scale, resides altogether in the future. As, under any profound
and comprehensive view of the gorgeous-composite feudal world, we see
in it, through the long ages and cycles of ages, the results of a deep,
integral, human and divine principle, or fountain, from which issued
laws, ecclesia, manners, institutes, costumes, personalities, poems,
(hitherto unequall'd,) faithfully partaking of their source, and
indeed only arising either to betoken it, or to furnish parts of that
varied-flowing display, whose centre was one and absolute--so, long
ages hence, shall the due historian or critic make at least an equal
retrospect, an equal history for the democratic principle. It too must
be adorn'd, credited with its results--then, when it, with imperial
power, through amplest time, has dominated mankind--has been the source
and test of all the moral, esthetic, social, political, and religious
expressions and institutes of the civilized world--has begotten them
in spirit and in form, and has carried them to its own unprecedented
heights--has had, (it is possible,) monastics and ascetics, more
numerous, more devout than the monks and priests of all previous
creeds--has sway'd the ages with a breadth and rectitude tallying
Nature's own--has fashion'd, systematized, and triumphantly finish'd and
carried out, in its own interest, and with unparallel'd success, a new
earth and a new man.
Thus we presume to write, as it were, upon things that exist not, and
travel by maps yet unmade, and a blank. But the throes of birth are
upon us; and we have something of this advantage in seasons of strong
formations, doubts, suspense--for then the afflatus of such themes haply
may fall upon us, more or less; and then, hot from surrounding war and
revolution, our speech, though without polish'd coherence, and a failure
by the standard called criticism, comes forth, real at least as the
lightnings.
And may-be we, these days, have, too, our own reward--(for there are yet
some, in all lands, worthy to be so encouraged.) Though not for us the
joy of entering at the last the conquer'd city--not ours the chance ever
to see with our own eyes the peerless power and splendid _eclat_ of
the democratic principle, arriv'd at meridian, filling the world with
effulgence and majesty far beyond those of past history's kings, or
all dynastic sway--there is yet, to whoever is eligible among us, the
prophetic vision, the joy of being toss'd in the brave turmoil of these
times--the promulgation and the path, obedient, lowly reverent to the
voice, the gesture of the god, or holy ghost, which others see not, hear
not--with the proud consciousness that amid whatever clouds, seductions,
or heart-wearying postponements, we have never deserted, never
despair'd, never abandon'd the faith.
So much contributed, to be conn'd well, to help prepare and brace our
edifice, our plann'd Idea--we still proceed to give it in another of its
aspects--perhaps the main, the high façade of all. For to democracy,
the leveler, the unyielding principle of the average, is surely join'd
another principle, equally unyielding, closely tracking the first,
indispensable to it, opposite, (as the sexes are opposite,) and whose
existence, confronting and ever modifying the other, often clashing,
paradoxical, yet neither of highest avail without the other,
plainly supplies to these grand cosmic politics of ours, and to the
launch'd-forth mortal dangers of republicanism, to-day or any day, the
counterpart and offset whereby Nature restrains the deadly original
relentlessness of all her first-class laws. This second principle is
individuality, the pride and centripetal isolation of a human being in
himself--identity--personalism. Whatever the name, its acceptance and
thorough infusion through the organizations of political commonalty now
shooting Aurora-like about the world, are of utmost importance, as the
principle itself is needed for very life's sake. It forms, in a sort,
or is to form, the compensating balance-wheel of the successful working
machinery of aggregate America.
And, if we think of it, what does civilization itself rest upon--and
what object has it, with its religions, arts, schools, &c., but rich,
luxuriant, varied personalism? To that, all bends; and it is because
toward such result democracy alone, on anything like Nature's scale,
breaks up the limitless fallows of humankind, and plants the seed, and
gives fair play, that its claims now precede the rest. The literature,
songs, esthetics, &c., of a country are of importance principally
because they furnish the materials and suggestions of personality
for the women and men of that country, and enforce them in a thousand
effective ways.[27] As the topmost claim of a strong consolidating
of the nationality of these States, is, that only by such powerful
compaction can the separate States secure that full and free swing
within their spheres, which is becoming to them, each after its kind,
so will individuality, with unimpeded branchings, flourish best under
imperial republican forms.
Assuming Democracy to be at present in its embryo condition, and that
the only large and satisfactory justification of it resides in the
future, mainly through the copious production of perfect characters
among the people, and through the advent of a sane and pervading
religiousness, it is with regard to the atmosphere and spaciousness
fit for such characters, and of certain nutriment and cartoon-draftings
proper for them, and indicating them for New-World purposes, that
I continue the present statement--an exploration, as of new ground,
wherein, like other primitive surveyors, I must do the best I can,
leaving it to those who come after me to do much better. (The service,
in fact, if any, must be to break a sort of first path or track, no
matter how rude and ungeometrical.)
We have frequently printed the word Democracy. Yet I cannot too often
repeat that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite
unawaken'd, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests
out of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a great
word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history
has yet to be enacted. It is, in some sort, younger brother of another
great and often-used word, Nature, whose history also waits unwritten.
As I perceive, the tendencies of our day, in the States, (and I entirely
respect them,) are toward those vast and sweeping movements, influences,
moral and physical, of humanity, now and always current over the planet,
on the scale of the impulses of the elements. Then it is also good to
reduce the whole matter to the consideration of a single self, a man, a
woman, on permanent grounds. Even for the treatment of the universal, in
politics, metaphysics, or anything, sooner or later we come down to one
single, solitary soul.
There is, in sanest hours, a consciousness, a thought that rises,
independent, lifted out from all else, calm, like the stars, shining
eternal. This is the thought of identity--yours for you, whoever
you are, as mine for me. Miracle of miracles, beyond statement, most
spiritual and vaguest of earth's dreams, yet hardest basic fact, and
only entrance to all facts. In such devout hours, in the midst of the
significant wonders of heaven and earth, (significant only because of
the Me in the centre,) creeds, conventions, fall away and become of no
account before this simple idea. Under the luminousness of real vision,
it alone takes possession, takes value. Like the shadowy dwarf in the
fable, 'once liberated and look'd upon, it expands over the whole earth,
and spreads to the roof of heaven.
The quality of BEING, in the object's self, according to its own central
idea and purpose, and of growing therefrom and thereto--not criticism by
other standards, and adjustments thereto--is the lesson of Nature.
True, the full man wisely gathers, culls, absorbs; but if, engaged
disproportionately in that, he slights or overlays the precious
idiocrasy and special nativity and intention that he is, the man's self,
the main thing, is a failure, however wide his general cultivation.
Thus, in our times, refinement and delicatesse are not only attended
to sufficiently, but threaten to eat us up, like a cancer. Already, the
democratic genius watches, ill-pleased, these tendencies. Provision for
a little healthy rudeness, savage virtue, justification of what one has
in one's self, whatever it is, is demanded. Negative qualities, even
deficiencies, would be a relief. Singleness and normal simplicity
and separation, amid this more and more complex, more and more
artificialized state of society--how pensively we yearn for them! how we
would welcome their return!
In some such direction, then--at any rate enough to preserve the
balance--we feel called upon to throw what weight we can, not for
absolute reasons, but current ones. To prune, gather, trim, conform, and
ever cram and stuff, and be genteel and proper, is the pressure of our
days. While aware that much can be said even in behalf of all this,
we perceive that we have not now to consider the question of what
is demanded to serve a half-starved and barbarous nation, or set of
nations, but what is most applicable, most pertinent, for numerous
congeries of conventional, over-corpulent societies, already becoming
stifled and rotten with flatulent, infidelistic literature, and polite
conformity and art. In addition to establish'd sciences, we suggest a
science as it were of healthy average personalism, on original-universal
grounds, the object of which should be to raise up and supply through
the States a copious race of superb American men and women, cheerful,
religious, ahead of any yet known.
America has yet morally and artistically originated nothing. She seems
singularly unaware that the models of persons, books, manners, &c.,
appropriate for former conditions and for European lands, are but exiles
and exotics here. No current of her life, as shown on the surfaces of
what is authoritatively called her society, accepts or runs into social
or esthetic democracy; but all the currents set squarely against it.
Never, in the Old World, was thoroughly upholster'd exterior appearance
and show, mental and other, built entirely on the idea of caste, and on
the sufficiency of mere outside acquisition--never were glibness, verbal
intellect, more the test, the emulation--more loftily elevated as head
and sample--than they are on the surface of our republican States this
day. The writers of a time hint the mottoes of its gods. The word of the
modern, say these voices, is the word Culture.
We find ourselves abruptly in close quarters with the enemy. This word
Culture, or what it has come to represent, involves, by contrast, our
whole theme, and has been, indeed, the spur, urging us to engagement.
Certain questions arise. As now taught, accepted and carried out, are
not the processes of culture rapidly creating a class of supercilious
infidels, who believe in nothing? Shall a man lose himself in countless
masses of adjustments, and be so shaped with reference to this, that,
and the other, that the simply good and healthy and brave parts of him
are reduced and clipp'd away, like the bordering of box in a garden? You
can cultivate corn and roses and orchards--but who shall cultivate the
mountain peaks, the ocean, and the tumbling gorgeousness of the clouds?
Lastly--is the readily-given reply that culture only seeks to help,
systematize, and put in attitude, the elements of fertility and power, a
conclusive reply?
I do not so much object to the name, or word, but I should certainly
insist, for the purposes of these States, on a radical change of
category, in the distribution of precedence. I should demand a programme
of culture, drawn out, not for a single class alone, or for the parlors
or lecture-rooms, but with an eye to practical life, the west, the
working-men, the facts of farms and jack-planes and engineers, and of
the broad range of the women also of the middle and working strata,
and with reference to the perfect equality of women, and of a grand and
powerful motherhood. I should demand of this programme or theory a scope
generous enough to include the widest human area. It must have for its
spinal meaning the formation of a typical personality of character,
eligible to the uses of the high average of men--and _not_ restricted
by conditions ineligible to the masses. The best culture will always be
that of the manly and courageous instincts, and loving perceptions, and
of self-respect--aiming to form, over this continent, an idiocrasy
of universalism, which, true child of America, will bring joy to its
mother, returning to her in her own spirit, recruiting myriads of
offspring, able, natural, perceptive, tolerant, devout believers in
her, America, and with some definite instinct why and for what she has
arisen, most vast, most formidable of historic births, and is, now and
here, with wonderful step, journeying through Time.
The problem, as it seems to me, presented to the New World, is,
under permanent law and order, and after preserving cohesion,
(ensemble-individuality,) at all hazards, to vitalize man's free play of
special Personalism, recognizing in it something that calls ever more
to be consider'd, fed, and adopted as the substratum for the best
that belongs to us, (government indeed is for it,) including the new
esthetics of our future.
To formulate beyond this present vagueness--to help line and put
before us the species, or a specimen of the species, of the democratic
ethnology of the future, is a work toward which the genius of our land,
with peculiar encouragement, invites her well-wishers. Already certain
limnings, more or less grotesque, more or less fading and watery, have
appear'd. We too, (repressing doubts and qualms,) will try our hand.
Attempting, then, however crudely, a basic model or portrait of
personality for general use for the manliness of the States, (and
doubtless that is most useful which is most simple and comprehensive
for all, and toned low enough,) we should prepare the canvas well
beforehand. Parentage must consider itself in advance. (Will the time
hasten when fatherhood and motherhood shall become a science--and the
noblest science?) To our model, a clear-blooded, strong-fibred
physique, is indispensable; the questions of food, drink, air, exercise,
assimilation, digestion, can never be intermitted. Out of these we
descry a well-begotten selfhood--in youth, fresh, ardent, emotional,
aspiring, full of adventure; at maturity, brave, perceptive, under
control, neither too talkative nor too reticent, neither flippant nor
sombre; of the bodily figure, the movements easy, the complexion showing
the best blood, somewhat flush'd, breast expanded, an erect attitude,
a voice whose sound outvies music, eyes of calm and steady gaze, yet
capable also of flashing--and a general presence that holds its own
in the company of the highest. (For it is native personality, and that
alone, that endows a man to stand before presidents or generals, or in
any distinguish'd collection, with _aplomb_--and _not_ culture, or any
knowledge or intellect whatever.) With regard to the mental-educational
part of our model, enlargement of intellect, stores of cephalic
knowledge, &c., the concentration thitherward of all the customs of our
age, especially in America, is so overweening, and provides so fully
for that part, that, important and necessary as it is, it really needs
nothing from us here--except, indeed, a phrase of warning and restraint.
Manners, costumes, too, though important, we need not dwell upon here.
Like beauty, grace of motion, &c., they are results. Causes, original
things, being attended to, the right manners unerringly follow. Much
is said, among artists, of "the grand style," as if it were a thing by
itself. When a man, artist or whoever, has health, pride, acuteness,
noble aspirations, he has the motive-elements of the grandest style. The
rest is but manipulation, (yet that is no small matter.)
Leaving still unspecified several sterling parts of any model fit for
the future personality of America, I must not fail, again and ever,
to pronounce myself on one, probably the least attended to in modern
times--a hiatus, indeed, threatening its gloomiest consequences after
us. I mean the simple, unsophisticated Conscience, the primary moral
element. If I were asked to specify in what quarter lie the grounds of
darkest dread, respecting the America of our hopes, I should have to
point to this particular. I should demand the invariable application to
individuality, this day and any day, of that old, ever-true plumb-rule
of persons, eras, nations. Our triumphant modern civilizee, with his
all-schooling and his wondrous appliances, will still show himself but
an amputation while this deficiency remains. Beyond, (assuming a more
hopeful tone,) the vertebration of the manly and womanly personalism
of our western world, can only be, and is, indeed, to be, (I hope,) its
all-penetrating Religiousness.
The ripeness of Religion is doubtless to be looked for in this field of
individuality, and is a result that no organization or church can
ever achieve. As history is poorly retain'd by what the technists call
history, and is not given out from their pages, except the learner
has in himself the sense of the well-wrapt, never yet written, perhaps
impossible to be written, history--so Religion, although casually
arrested, and, after a fashion, preserv'd in the churches and creeds,
does not depend at all upon them, but is a part of the identified
soul, which, when greatest, knows not bibles in the old way, but in new
ways--the identified soul, which can really confront Religion when it
extricates itself entirely from the churches, and not before.