Kitabı oku: «Search-Light Letters», sayfa 7

To A Young Man wishing to be an American. III

The foregoing suggestions will suffice, I think, to demonstrate to you that we are not uniformly a nation of Sir Galahads, and that certain types of Americanism, if encouraged and perpetuated, are likely to impair the value and force of our civilization. But having dispelled the hallucination that we are uniformly irreproachable, I would remind you that, in order to be a good American, it is even more necessary for you to appreciate the fine traits of your countrymen than to be keenly alive to their shortcomings. There are two ways of looking at any community, as there are two ways of looking at life. The same landscape may appear to the same gaze brilliant, inspiring, and interesting, or flat, homely, and unsuggestive, according as the eye of the onlooker be healthy or jaundiced. It is easy to fix one's attention on the vulgar and heartless ostentation of the rich, on the cheapness and venality of some of our legislators, on the evidences of hypocrisy and false hero-worship, materialism, and superficiality of a portion of our population, and in doing so to forget and overlook the efficacy and finer manifestations of the people whose lives are the force and bulwark of the state. It is easy to go through the streets of a large city and note only the noise and smoke and stir, coarse circumstance and coarser crime, neglecting to remember that beneath this kernel of hard, real life the human heart is beating high and warm with the hopes and desires of the spirit. It is not necessary for a human being, it is essentially not necessary for an American, to look at life from the point of view of what the eye beholds in the hours of soul-torpor. True is it that Americanism stands to-day as almost synonymous with the struggle of democracy, and that the equal development of the life of the whole people for the common good is what most deeply concerns us; but this does not mean that it is right or American to adhere to what is ordinary and low, because it is still inevitable that the ideals and standards of the mass should not be those of the finest spirits. It was an American who bade you hitch your wagon to a star, and you have only to reflect in order to recall the spiritual vigor, the righteous force of will, the strength of aspiring mind, the patriotic courage, the tireless soul-struggle of the early generations of choicely educated, simply nurtured Americans. Their thought and conscience, true and star-seeking even in its limitations, laid the foundations of law and order, of civic liberty and private welfare, of national honor and domestic repute. Their enterprise and perseverance, their grit and suppleness of intelligence wrested our broad Western acreage from the savage and —

[Note.– I was here interrupted in the fervor of this genuine peroration by my wife Josephine's exclamation, "Oh, how atrociously they abused and persecuted those poor Indians, shunting them off from reservation to reservation, cheating them out of their lands and furs!"

It is not agreeable to be held up in this highwayman fashion when one is warming to a subject, but there is a melancholy truth in Josephine's statement which cannot be utterly contradicted. Still this is what I said to her: "My dear, I had hoped you understood that I had referred sufficiently to our national delinquencies, and that I was trying to depict to my correspondent the other side of the case. However just and appropriate your criticism might be under other circumstances, I can only regard it now as misplaced and unfortunate." I spoke with appropriate dignity. "Hoity, toity, toity me!" she responded. "I won't say another word."]

– wrested our broad Western acreage from the savage, and in less than half a century transformed it into a thriving, bustling, forceful civilization. Their ingenuity, their restless spirit of inquiry, their practical skill, their impatience of delay and love of swift decisive action have erected countless monuments in huge new cities founded in the twinkling of an eye, in the marvellous useful inventions which have revolutionized the methods of the world, the cotton-gin, the steamboat, the telegraph, the telephone, the palace-car – in the eager response made to the call of patriotism when danger threatened the existence of their country, and in the strong, original, clear-thinking, shrewdly acting, quaint personalities which have sprung from time to time from the very soil, as it were, in full mental panoply like the warriors of the Cadmean seed. Their stern sense of responsibility, their earnest desire for self-improvement, their ambitious zeal to acquire and to diffuse knowledge have founded, fostered, and supported the system of public schools and well-organized colleges which exist to-day in almost every portion of the country. The possessors of these qualities were Americans – the best Americans. Their plan of life was neither cheap nor shallow, but steadfast, aspiring, strong, and patient. From small beginnings, by industry and fortitude, they fought their way to success, and produced the powerful and vital nation whose career the world is watching with an interest born of the knowledge that it is humanity's latest and most important experiment. The development of the democratic principle is at the root of Americanism, but whoever, out of deference to what may be called practical considerations, abates one jot the fervor of his or her desire to escape from the commonplace, or who, in other words, forsakes his ideals and is content with a lower aim and a lower outlook, in order to suit the average temper, is false to his birthright and to the best Americanism.

It has been one of the grievances of those, whose material surroundings have been more favorable and who have possessed more ostensible social refinement than the mass of the population, that they were regarded askance and excluded from public service and influence. There used to be some foundation for this charge, but the counter plea of lack of sympathy and distrust of country was still more true, and an explanation and, in a large measure, a justification of the prejudice. True strength and refinement of character has always in the end commanded the respect and admiration of our people, but they have been roughly suspicious of any class isolation or assumption of superiority. It has been difficult accordingly for that type of Americans who arrogated tacitly, but nevertheless plainly, the prerogatives of social importance, to take an active part in the responsibilities of citizenship. They have been mistrusted, and sneered at, and not always unjustly, for they have been prone to belittle our national institutions and to make sport of the social idiosyncrasies of their unconventional countrymen for the entertainment of foreigners. And yet the people have never failed to recognize and to reverence the fine emanations of the spirit as evidenced by our poets, historians, thinkers, or statesmen. Our forceful humanitarian and ethical movements, our most earnest reforms found their most zealous and untiring supporters among the rank and file of the people. Abraham Lincoln was understood last of all by the social aristocracy of the nation. Emerson's inspiration found an answering chord in every country town in New England. True it is that on the surface the popular judgment may often seem superficial and cheap in tone, but the wise American is chary of accepting surface ebullitions as the real index of the public judgment. He understands that mixed in with the unthinking and the degenerate is a rank and file majority of sober, self-respecting men and women, whose instincts are both earnest and original, and who are to be depended on in every serious emergency to think and act on the side of civilizing progress. It is the inability to appreciate this which breeds our civic censors, who are led by their lack of perspective to underestimate the character of the people and to foretell the ultimate failure of our experiment.

The increase of wealth and a wider familiarity with luxury and comfort through the country has made a considerable and more important class of those whose material and social surroundings are exceptional. The participation of the citizens of this class in the affairs of government is no longer discouraged – on the contrary, it is welcomed by the community. Indeed, many men have secured nomination and election to office solely because of their large means, which enabled them to control men and caucuses in their own favor.

[Note.– An appearance of spontaneity is preserved in these cases by the publication of a letter from leading citizens requesting the candidate to stand for office. He thereupon yields to the overwhelming invitation of the voters of the district, and his henchmen do the rest.]

But though the possession of wealth and social sophistication are no longer regarded as un-American, the public sentiment against open or tacit assumption of social superiority, or a lack of sympathy with democratic principles, is as strong as ever. It is incumbent, therefore, on you, if you would be an American in the best sense, to fix your ideal of life high, and at the same time to fix it in sympathy with the underlying American principle of a broad and progressive common humanity, free from caste or discriminating social conventions. It is not necessary for you to accept the standards and adopt the behavior of the superficial and imperfectly educated, but it is indispensable that you accept and act on the faith that your fellow-man is your brother, and that the attainment of a freer and more equal enjoyment of the privileges of life is essential to true human progress. We have, as I have intimated, passed through the pioneer stage of national development; we have tilled our fields, opened our mines, built our railroads, established our large cities – in short, have laid the foundations of a new and masterful civilization; it now remains for us to show whether we are capable of treating with originality the old problems which confront complex societies, and of solving them for the welfare of the public and the consequent elevation of individual character.

The originality and clearness of the American point of view has always been a salient national characteristic. Hitherto its favorite scope has been commercial and utilitarian. Yankee notions have been suggestive of sewing-machines, reapers, and labor-saving contrivances, or the mechanism of rushing trade. Now that we have caught up with the rest of the world in material progress and taught it many tricks, it remains for the true American to demonstrate equal sagacity and clear-headedness in dealing with subtler conditions. To be sure the scope of our originality has not been entirely directed to things material, for we have ever asserted with some vehemence our devotion to the things of the spirit, squinting longingly at them even when obliged to deplore only a passing acquaintance with them because of lack of time. The splendid superficiality of the army of youth of both sexes in the department of intellectual and artistic exertion, which has been one of the notable features of the last thirty years, has shown clearly enough the true temper and fibre of our people. To regard this superficiality as more than a transient symptom, and thereby to lose sight of the genuine intensity of nature which has animated it, would indicate the shallow observer. Our youth has been audacious, self-confident, and lacking in thoroughness because of its zeal to assert and distinguish itself, and thus has justly, in one sense, incurred the accusation of being superficial, but it has incurred this partially because of its disposition to maintain the privileges of individual judgments.

Our young men and women have been blamed for their lack of reverence and their readiness to form conclusions without adequate knowledge or study in the teeth of venerable opinion and convention. Indisputably they have erred in this respect, but indisputably also the fault is now recognized, and is being cured in the curriculum of education. Yet, evil as the fault is, the traits which seem to have nourished it – unwillingness to accept tradition and a searching, honest clearness of vision – are virtues of the first water, and typical of the best national character. There are many persons of education and refinement in our society who accept as satisfactory and indisputable the old forms and symbols which illustrate the experience, and have become the final word of the older civilizations in ethics, politics, and art. They would be willing that we should become a mere complement to the most highly civilized nations of Europe, and they welcome every evidence that we are becoming so. As I have already suggested to you, the nations of the world are all nearer akin in thought and impulse than formerly, but if our civilization is to stand for anything, it must be by our divergence from the conclusions of the past when they fail to pass the test of honest scrutiny, not by tame imitation. Profoundly necessary as it is that we should accept with reverence the truths of experience, and much as our students and citizens may learn from the wisdom and performance of older peoples, it behooves the American to prize and cherish his birthright of independent judgment and freedom from servile adherence to convention. Almost everything that has been truly vital in our production has borne the stamp of this birthright.

The American citizen of the finest type is essentially a man or woman of simple character, and the effect of our institutions and mode of thought, when rightly appreciated, is to produce simplicity. The American is free from the glamour or prejudice which results from the conscious or unconscious influence of the lay figures of the old political, social, or religious world, from the glamour of royalty and vested caste, of an established or dominant church, of aristocratic, monkish, or military privilege. He is neither impelled nor allured to subject the liberty of conscience or opinion to the conventions appurtenant to these former forces of society. For him the law of the state, in the making of which he has a voice, and the authority of his own judgment are the only arbiters of his conduct. He accords neither to fineness of race nor force of intellect the right of aristocratic exclusiveness which they have too often hitherto claimed. To the cloistered nun he devotes no special reverence; he sees in the haughty and condescending fine gentleman an object for the exercise of his humor, not of servility; he is indifferent to the claim of all who by reason of self-congratulation or ancient custom arrogate to themselves special privileges on earth, or special privileges in heaven. This temper of mind, when unalloyed by shallow conceit, begets a quiet self-respect and simple honesty of judgment, eminently serviceable in the struggle to live wisely.

To the best citizens of every nation the most interesting and vital of all questions is what we are here for, what men and women are seeking to accomplish, what is to be the future of human development. For Americans of the best type, those who have learned to be reverent without losing their independence and without sacrifice of originality, the problem of living is simplified through the elimination of the influence of these symbols and conventions. Their outlook is not confused or deluded by the specious dogmas of caste. They perceive that the attainment of the welfare and happiness of the inhabitants of earth is the purpose of human struggle, and that the free choice and will of the majority as to what is best for humanity as a whole is to be the determining force of the future. To those who argue that the majority must always be wrong, and that as a corollary the will of the cheap man will prevail, this drift of society is depressing. The good American in the first place, recognizing the inevitability of this drift, declines to be depressed; and in the second, without subscribing to the doctrine that the majority must be wrong, exercises the privilege of his own independent judgment, subject only to the statute law and his conscience.

There is a noble strength of position in this; there is a danger, too, in that it suggests a lack of definiteness of standard. Yet this want of precision is preferable to the tyranny of hard and fast prescription. It is clear, for instance, that if the men and women of civilization are determined to modify their divorce laws so as to allow the annulment of marriage when either party is weary of the compact, no canon or anathema of the church will restrain them. Nor, on the other hand, will the mere whim or volition of an easy-going majority force them to do so. The judgment of men and women untrammelled by precedent and tradition and seeking simply to ascertain what is best and wisest for all will settle the question. Though the majority will be the force that puts any law into effect, the impulse must inevitably come from the higher wisdom of the few, and that higher wisdom in America works in the interest of a broad humanity, free from the delusions of outworn culture. The wisdom of the few may not seem to guide, but in the end the mass listens to true counsel. Honesty toward self and toward one's fellow-man, without fear or favor, is the leavening force of the finest Americanism, and, if persevered in, will lead the many, sooner or later, with a compelling power far beyond that of thrones and hierarchies. The wise application of this doctrine of the search for the common good in the highest terms of earthly condition to the whole range of economic, social, and political questions is what demands to-day the interest and attention of earnest Americans. The problems relating to capital and labor, to the restraint of the money power, to the government of our cities, to the education of all classes, to the status of divorce, to the treatment of paupers and criminals, to the wise control of the sale of liquor, to equitable taxation, and to a variety of kindred matters are ripe for the scrutiny of independent, sagacious thought and action. To the consideration of these subjects the best national intelligence is beginning to turn with a fresh vigor and efficiency, but none too soon. Though democracy and Americanism have become largely identical, the spread of the creed of a broader humanity in the countries of civilization where autocratic forms of government still obtain, has been so signal and productive of results that the American may well ask himself or herself if our people have not been slovenly and vain-glorious along the paths where it seemed to be their prerogative to lead. Certainly in the matter of many of the civic and humanitarian problems which I have cited, we may fitly borrow from the recent and modern methods of those to whom we are apt to refer, in terms of condescending pity, as the effete dynasties of Europe. They have in some instances been more prompt than we to recognize the trend of our and the world's new faith.

To A Young Man wishing to be an American. IV

In this same connection I suggest to you that in the domain of literary art an Englishman – a colonist, it is true, and so a little nearer allied to us in democratic sentiment – has more clearly and forcibly than any one else expressed the spirit of the best Americanism – of the best world-temper of to-day. I refer to Rudyard Kipling. Human society has been fascinated by the virility and uncompromising force of his writings, but it has found an equal fascination in the deep, simple, sham-detesting sympathy with common humanity which permeates them. He has been the first to adopt and exalt the idea of the brotherhood of man without either condescension or depressing materialistic realism. He has interpreted the poetry of "the trivial round and common task" without suggesting impending soup, blankets, and coals on earth and reward in heaven on the one hand, or without emphasizing the dirtiness of the workman's blouse on the other. His imagery, his symbols and his point of view are essentially alien to those of social convention and caste. Yet his heroes of the engine-room, the telegraph-station, the Newfoundland Banks, and the dreary ends of the earth, democratic though they are to the core, appeal to the imagination by their stimulating human qualities no less than the bearers of titles and the aristocratic monopolists of culture and aspiration who have been the leading figures in the poetry and fiction of the past. Strength, courage, truth, simplicity and loving-kindness are still their salient qualities – the qualities of noble manhood; he expounds them to us by the force of his sympathy, which clothes them with no impossible virtues, yet shows them, in the white light of performance, men no less entitled to our admiration than the Knights of King Arthur or any of the other superhuman figures of traditional æsthetic culture. He recognizes the artistic value of the workaday life in law courts and hospitals and libraries and mines and factories and camps and lighthouses and ocean steamers and railroad trains, as a stimulus to and rectifier of poetic imagination, negativing the theory that men and women are to seek inspiration solely from what is dainty, exclusive, elegantly romantic, or rhapsodically star-gazing in human conditions and thought. This is of the essence of the American idea, which has been, however, slow to subdue imagination, which is the very electric current of art, to its use by reason chiefly of the seeming discord between it and common life, and partly from the reluctance of the world to renounce its diet of highly colored court, heaven and fairy-land imagery; partly, too, because so many of the best poets and writers of America have adopted traditional symbols. The great New England writers, who have just passed away, were, however, the exponents of the simple life, of high religious and intellectual thought amid common circumstance. They stood for noble ideals as the privilege of all. Yet their mental attitude, though scornful of pomp and materialism, was almost aristocratic; at least it was exclusive in that it was not wholly human, savoring rather of the ascetic star-gazer than the full-blooded appreciator of the boon of life. Their passion was pure as snow, but it was thin. Yet the central tenet of their philosophy, independent naturalness of soul, is the necessary complement to the broad human sympathy which is of the essence of modern art. The difficulty which imagination finds in expressing itself in the new terms is natural enough, for the poet and painter and musician are seemingly deprived of color, the color which we associate with mystic elegance and aristocratic prestige. Yet only seemingly. Externals may have lost the dignity and lustre of prerogative; but the essentials for color remain – the human soul in all its fervor – the striving world in all its joy and suffering. There is no fear that the tide of existence will be less intense or that the mind of man will degenerate in æsthetic appreciation, but it must be on new lines which only a master imbued with the value and the pathos of the highest life in the common life as a source for heroism can fitly indicate. There lies the future field for the poet, the novelist, and the painter – the idealization of the real world as it is in its highest terms of love and passion, struggle, joy, and sorrow, free from the condescension of superior castes and the mystification of the star-reaching introspective culture which seeks only personal exaltation, and excludes sympathy with the every-day beings and things of earth from its so-called spiritual outlook.