Our Totem.
Carlyle has remarked upon the significance of symbolism. All nations
seek a sign. The sign becomes the visible expression of the highest
thought. It is made into an emblem around which the given people march
by day and encamp by night. Thus have come all the totems which mankind
have lifted up, from the brazen snake in the desert to the Stars and
Stripes on the mountain.
Symbolism has its beauty and also its ugliness. In some cases the symbol
is happily conceived. It is benign; it expresses hope, truth, fidelity,
aspiration, even immortality. Behold the egg of the Egyptians and their
circle expressive of undying life and eternity. Note the owl of the
Athenians. Note the sweet lily of ancient Provence, adopted by France as
the emblem of purity and national peace. Note the Irish shamrock--that
delicate green trifolium which has signified so much of union and hope
to an enthusiastic and failing race. On the other hand, note the serpent
of the Aztecs, the crawling reptiles of Malaysia and India, the savage
beasts and carnivorous birds adopted as the symbols of race-life and
purpose by the coarse barbarians of northern Europe, and preserved on
the flags and banners of their descendants to the present day.
Russia is a bear. Germany is a black eagle. France also, in her
Bonaparte mood, is an eagle. Imperial Rome _was_ an eagle from the days
of the Caesars. Great Britain is a lion, and Prussia is a leopard, and
Siam is an elephant, and Mexico is still a snake. As for Great Britain,
not satisfied with one lion, she repeats him seven times, rampant or
couchant, on the royal standard. She also preserves on her coat-of-arms
and coins the unicorn, that fabulous, one-horned monster of a horrid
dream.
The American Republic seems to have accepted the eagle for its totem. We
might have taken a bear or a caribou, but the eagle has pleased our
mythologists more--and so, instead of belonging to the tribe of the
Turkey, the tribe of the Dog, or the tribe of the Calf, we belong to
the tribe of the Eagle. But what does our totem signify?
The eagle in our symbolism and war-myth has come to us from the past. He
was of old the totem of the Romans. From the Tiber he flew beyond the
Alps, to perch on the standards of German chieftains and Gallic
emperors. He has visited all lands that are affected with the civil and
ethnic life of Rome. He has appeared here and there on the flags of the
Latin races in the Old World and the New. He has made an eyrie in our
mountains, and his scream has been heard in our wars. He has settled on
our flagstaffs, and has been seen by certain and sundry poets who
apostrophize him in verse. He has been admired by orators whose
imaginations rise as high as battle and conquest, but not as high as the
Stars and Stripes. He has been adored in academic essays. He has hovered
over the pages of inchoate histories, until his claim to be regarded as
the American bird is established. The eagle has become traditional as
the totem of the United States.
In so far as the eagle is the symbol of the independence and freedom of
men, let us accept him! In so far as he represents the idea and
sublimity of height and flight, let him soar! The eagle as a sign of the
free voyage of the human mind, triumphant over nature, visiting on
strong wing the far and otherwise inaccessible heights of escape and
glory, is the noblest of all the totems ever discovered by man; for
flight is the noblest and most sublime of earthly actions. Height is the
sublimest of all earthly stations. Height and flight are precisely the
dream which we would select from the infinite visions of the soul and
have engraved on our seal as a motto for eternity. Height and flight and
freedom!
In so far as the eagle may be regarded as the bird of the past; in so
far as he stands for violence and conquest; in so far as he represents
the rending and destruction of life, the carnivorous passion in mankind,
the rage of battle and triumph,--to that extent be there no eagle for
the Republic or for us! It is high time that some race of men should
rise to the height of discarding violence and blood as the beginnings of
fame and power. It is high time that some race should renounce all bears
and leopards and lions and mythological monsters as the symbols of its
spirit and purpose. It is high time that some nation should ascend to a
level from which it may look down on the savage emblems and beast-born
symbolism of the past world as no longer fit to express the central
purposes and noblest visions of an enlightened people.
The American eagle in the better and more glorious sense--in the sense
in which he typifies freedom and height and flight--is a totem of which
neither philosopher nor peasant need be ashamed. The eagle's wing is
more than pinion; it is thought. The eagle's eye is more than fierce
disdain; it is a flash of ineffable light. His glance is more than
terror; it is an arrow shot into the darkness. His breast is more than
pressure and force; it is defiance of wind and battle-rack. His spirit
is more than destruction; it is supremacy over chaotic elements and the
triumph of the emancipated spirit. His scream is more than the shriek of
carnal victory and rage of destroying strength; it is the cry of liberty
and the shout of progress to all peoples in the valleys of the world.
Give man the spirit of the eagle. Give him height and flight and
freedom. Give us who are Americans the splendid arena of the plains and
the open vault of heaven. Give us the mountain, the beetling crag, the
precipice, the gnarled oak, the lightning, and the cloud. Give us the
warfare of the lawless elements, the world-blaze of the magnificent sun,
the starlight of the profound and unspeakable night. Give us the
transport of the unchained seasons, the snow-blast and the sun-flash,
the tenderness of the dawn, the sorrow of the evening, the rainspout of
the bursting nimbus, and the mellow light of autumn. Give us the
splendid apocalypse of October and the infinite air-bath of the perfumed
June. Give us all the aspirations of the man-soul standing in the midst
of this splendor and mutation, standing high and opening the eagle-wing
to cloudland and the sky, soaring and circling unfettered, viewing all
lakes and hills from the aerial curves of freedom, alighting at will on
the chosen summit, undisturbed by fear and untroubled by the torments of
power!
Vive La France.
A strange fact is the apathy of the American nation towards France and
the French people. There is every reason to expect a different sentiment
on this side of the sea. France was ever our friend; since the colonial
days we have never warred with her. The French were our allies when the
days were dark and the winds of our destiny were loosed on the deep. We
had been assailed by an unnatural mother. That strong mother had wronged
us, treated us as aliens, erased us from her book, turned loose
mercenary armies upon us, killed our patriot fathers.
In that hour of fate France appeared willingly on the scene as our
champion. She succored us. Whatever may have been her motive, she put
her aegis over our head. She sent her heroes to our camps; she gave us
Lafayette and Rochambeau. She placed her fleets at our ports, with guns
pointed seaward for protection. Then, when the fight was won, she aided
us to enlarge our territories, to confirm our new republican empire.
Though in the afterdays of her monarchical gloom France sometimes looked
askance at our flag, the French nation was never once disloyal to
us--never once indifferent to the fate of our great democracy.
In our institutional development for more than a century we have
proceeded on the same general lines with the French. If we are satisfied
with the result--if we _believe_ in our republic--we ought, in good
reason, to believe in the republic of France; for the republic is a
universal fact, little trammelled by locality. The barrier of race ought
not to predominate over political and social sympathies. The barrier of
race ought not to separate us from our own. The fact that we are allied
in ethnic descent with the English people ought not to make us enamored
of the social life and civil institutions of Great Britain. Much less
should the industrial and commercial life of England allure us as if to
provoke a like manner of life in ourselves. Least of all should the
financial method of Great Britain lead us by imitation to fix upon
ourselves a similar incubus and horror.
This leads us to say that to break away from Great Britain, even when
incited thereto by the antipathy and prejudice which we must needs hold
against her; to leave her behind; to treat her as a historical fact not
favorable, but inimical rather, to our progress and independent
destiny,--seems to be the hardest task imposed upon the American
democracy. The preference of race and language is so profound, the
influences of the commercial life are so far-reaching, the admiration
for political stability is so natural, the domination of centralized
wealth is so overwhelming, and the allurements of consolidated power so
well calculated to fascinate the masses, that even American democracy
has found it hard to break the British tie and sail away uncabled and
disenchanted on the sea.
This deluded instinct of attachment to Great Britain, and this unnatural
lack of sympathy for France have cost us dearly. The two sentiments have
modified our national life, and have left a result different by not a
little from what it would have been if influenced by other and more
wholesome dispositions on our part. Our nationality has lost much force
on both counts--on the score of our illogical attachment to Great
Britain on the one hand, and of our unnatural indifference to France on
the other. Under the one influence we have become _tolerant of
subserviency_ as a national trait, and under the other we have become in
a measure _incapable of enthusiasm_. The addition of British
subserviency has been aggravated with the subtraction of French
enthusiasm from our public and private life.
All this had been better otherwise. All this--even after the lapse of a
hundred and twenty-one years from the great summer of our
Independence--ought still to be bettered with amendment. It is not
needed, stiff as we have already become in our national instincts and
methods, to go forward by going backwards. To approximate Great Britain
is to go backwards. The English _people_ are among the greatest of the
historic races, but the British _monarchy_, with its mediaeval
pretensions, its humbug of a throne and a crown, its subordinated ranks
of society, its military and naval despotism, and its vast skein of
_tentaculae_ stretching to every valuable thing in the world,--is perhaps
the one thing that modern civilization should most dread and put away
from the field of its desires.
On the other hand France is, in nearly all respects, admirable. Her
mobility is life, and her warmth is a fructifying force. France gives
forth more than she takes from the nations. Her republic is a splendid
piece of political workmanship. Her spirit is patriotic. Her people,
instead of straggling over the world like adventurers and pirates,
remain in the borders of _La Patrie_, happy and vital in the possession
of freedom.
Her lilies still bloom in the depth of the valleys.
Her vineyards are a covert under which if there be a peasantry it is not
a peasantry forced down by oppression, but only the modest residue of
the stronger life above and beyond. The free institutions of this
beautiful land are the natural counterpart of our own; we should be all
the better for warming ourselves not a little in the glow of the Gallic
enthusiasm. _Vive la France!_
Le Siecle.
The century passes as a broken dream
That fades into the darkness ere the dawn!
The hopes it cherished and its griefs are gone
As spirit-shadows on Time's silent stream!
The outcry and the anguish of it seem
Like echoes on dusk hills--like lights upon
The haunted borders of oblivion--
Pale will-o'-wisps of a disordered scheme.
O thou New Age that comest! welcome thrice--
More welcome than the ever-welcome birth
Of the expected love-child of our youth!
Bring us a nobler portion--nobler twice
Than ever yet was given unto earth!
Bring us our freedom--bring us love and truth.