Kitabı oku: «The Art of Living», sayfa 14
The conduct of life here has necessarily and beneficially been affected by the almost general recognition that we have not a monopoly of all the virtues, and by the adoption of many customs and points of view recommended by cosmopolitan experience. The American people still believe, however, that our civilization is not merely a repetition of the older ones, and a duplication on new soil of the old social tread-mill. That it must be so in a measure every one will admit, but we still insist, and most of us believe, that we are to point the way to a new dispensation. We believe, but at the same time when we stop to think we find some difficulty in specifying exactly what we are doing to justify the faith. It is easy enough to get tangled up in the stars and stripes and cry “hurrah!” and to thrust the American eagle down the throats of a weary universe, but it is quite another to command the admiration of the world by behavior commensurate with our ambition and self-confidence. Our forefathers could point to their own nakedness as a proof of their greatness, but there seems to be some danger that we, now that we have clothed ourselves – and clothed ourselves as expensively as possible and not always in the best taste – will forget the ideas and ideals for which those fathers stood, and let ourselves be seduced by the specious doctrine that human nature is always human nature, and that all civilizations are alike. To be sure, an American now is apt to look and act like any other rational mortal, and there is no denying that the Atlantic cable and ocean greyhound have brought the nations of the world much closer together than they ever were before; but this merely proves that we can become just like the others, only worse, in case we choose to. But we intend to improve upon them.
To those who believe that we are going to improve upon them it must be rather an edifying spectacle to observe the doings and sayings of that body of people in the city of New York who figure in the newspapers of the day as “the four hundred,” “the smart set,” or “the fashionable world.” After taking into full account the claims of the sensitive city of Chicago, it may be truthfully stated that the city of New York is the Paris of America. There are other municipalities which are doing their best in their several ways to rival her, but it is toward New York that all the eyes in the country are turned, and from which they take suggestion as a cat laps milk. The rest of us are in a measure provincial. Many of us profess not to approve of New York, but, though we cross ourselves piously, we take or read a New York daily paper. New York gives the cue alike to the Secretary of the Treasury and (by way of London) to the social swell. The ablest men in the country seek New York as a market for their brains, and the wealthiest people of the country move to New York to spend the patrimony which their rail-splitting fathers or grandfathers accumulated. Therefore it is perfectly just to refer to the social life of New York as representative of that element of the American people which has been most blessed with brains or fortune, and as representative of our most highly evolved civilization. It ought to be our best. The men and women who contribute to its movement and influence ought to be the pick of the country. But what do we find? We find as the ostensible leaders of New York society a set of shallow worldlings whose whole existence is given up to emulating one another in elaborate and splendid inane social fripperies. They dine and wine and dance and entertain from January to December. Their houses, whether in town or at the fashionable watering-places to which they move in summer, are as sumptuous, if not more so, than those of the French nobility in its palmiest days, and their energies are devoted to the discovery of new expensive luxuries and fresh titillating creature comforts. That such a body of people should exist in this country after little more than a century of democratic institutions is extraordinary, but much more extraordinary is the absorbing interest which a large portion of the American public takes in the doings and sayings of this fashionable rump. There is the disturbing feature of the case. Whatever these worldlings do is flashed over the entire country, and is copied into a thousand newspapers as being of vital concern to the health and home of the nation. The editors print it because it is demanded; because they have found that the free-born American citizen is keenly solicitous to know “what is going on in society,” and that he or she follows with almost feverish interest and with open-mouthed absorption the spangled and jewelled annual social circus parade which goes on in the Paris of America. The public is indifferently conscious that underneath this frothy upper-crust in New York there is a large number of the ablest men and women of the country by whose activities the great educational, philanthropic, and artistic enterprises of the day have been fostered, promoted, and made successful; but this consciousness pales into secondary importance in the democratic mind as compared with realistic details concerning this ball and that dinner-party where thousands of dollars are poured out in vulgar extravagance, or concerning the cost of the wedding-presents, the names and toilettes of the guests, and the number of bottles of champagne opened at the marriage of some millionaire’s daughter.
No wonder that this aristocracy of ours plumes itself on its importance, and takes itself seriously when it finds its slightest doings telegraphed from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It feels itself called to new efforts, for it understands with native shrewdness that the American people requires novelty and fresh entertainment, or it looks elsewhere. Accordingly it is beginning to be unfaithful to its marriage vows. Until within a recent period the husbands and wives of this vapid society have, much to the bewilderment of warm-blooded students of manners and morals, been satisfied to flirt and produce the appearance of infidelity, and yet only pretend. Now the divorce court and the whispered or public scandal bear frequent testimony to the fact that it is not so fashionable or “smart” as it used to be merely to make believe.
Was there ever a foreign court, when foreign courts were in their glory, where men and women were content merely to whisper and giggle behind a rubber-tree in order to appear vicious? It may be said at least that some of our fashionables have learned to be men and women instead of mere simpering marionettes. Still there was originality in being simpering marionettes: Marital infidelity has been the favorite excitement of every rotten aristocracy which the world has ever seen.
II
A manner of life of this description can scarcely be the ideal of the American people. Certainly neither George Washington, when he delivered his farewell address, nor Abraham Lincoln, on the occasion of his second inaugural, looked forward to the evolution of any such aristocracy as the fulfilment of the nation’s hopes. And yet this coterie of people has its representatives in all the large cities of the country, and there is no reason to doubt that in a short time the example set will be imitated to some extent, at least, and that one portion of the country will vie with another in extravagant social vanities and prodigal display on the part of a pleasure-seeking leisure class.
Most of these people go to church, and, indeed, some of them are ostensibly regardful of church functions and ceremonies, and, as they do not openly violate any laws so as to subject themselves to terms of imprisonment, the patriotic American citizen finds himself able merely to frown by way of showing his dissatisfaction at this form of high treason against the morals and aims of democracy. To frown and to be grateful that one is not like certain pleasure-seeking millionaires is not much of a comfort, especially when it is obvious that the ignorant and semi-ignorant mass is fascinated by the extravagances and worldly manifestations of the individuals in question, and has made them its heroes on account of their unadulterated millions. Indeed, the self-respecting, patriotic American citizen finds himself to-day veritably between Scylla and Charybdis in the matter of the conduct of life. We are no longer the almost homogeneous nation we were fifty years ago. There are far greater extremes of wealth and poverty. Our economic conditions, or at least the conditions which exist in our principal cities, are closely approximating those which exist in the cities of the Old World. Outside of our cities the people for the most part live in respectable comfort by the practice of what passes in America for economy, which may be defined as a high but ignorant moral purpose negatived by waste and domestic incompetence. It has always been true of our beloved country that, though the ship of state has seemed on the point of floundering from time to time, disaster has invariably been averted at critical junctures by the saving grace of the common-sense and right-mindedness of the American people. This is not so complimentary as it sounds. It really means that the average sense and intelligence of the public is apt to be in the wrong at the outset, and to be converted to the right only after many days and much tribulation. In other words, our safety and our progress have been the result of a slow and often reluctant yielding of opinion by the mass to the superior judgment of a minority. This is merely another way of stating that, where every one has a right to individual opinion, and there are no arbitrary standards of conduct or of anything else outside the statute law, the mean is likely to fall far short of what is best. Our salvation in every instance of national perplexity has been the effectual working on the public conscience of the leaven of the best Americanism. A comparatively small proportion of the population have been the pioneers in thought and suggestion of subsequent ardent espousals by the entire public. This leaven, in the days when we were more homogeneous, was made up from all the elements of society; or, in other words, the best Americanism drew its representatives from every condition of life; the farmer of the Western prairie was just as likely to tower above his fellows and become a torch-bearer as the merchant or mechanic of the city.
If we as a nation have needed a leaven in the past, we certainly have no less need of one to-day, now that we are in the flush of material prosperity and consciousness of power. Fortunately we have one. The public-spirited, nobly independent, earnest, conscientious, ambitious American exists to-day as indisputably and unmistakably as ever, and he is a finer specimen of humanity than he used to be, for he knows more and he poses much less. It is safe to assert, too, that he is still to be found in every walk of our national life. The existence of an aggravating and frivolous aristocracy on the surface, and an ignorant, unæsthetic mass underneath should not blind us to the fact that there is a sound core to our social system. The hope of the United States to-day lies in that large minority of the people who are really trying to solve the problems of life from more than a merely selfish standpoint. One has merely to think a moment in order to realize what a really numerous and significant body among us is endeavoring to promote the cause of American civilization by aspiring or decent behavior. Our clergymen, our lawyers, our doctors, our architects, our merchants, our teachers, some of our editors, our bankers, our scientists, our scholars, and our philanthropists, at once stand out as a generally sane and earnest force of citizens. The great educational, charitable, artistic, and other undertakings which have been begun and splendidly completed by individual energy and liberality since the death of Abraham Lincoln, bespeak eloquently the temper of a certain portion of the community. If it be true that the so-called aristocracy of New York City threatens the repute and sincerity of democracy by its heartlessness and unworthy attempts to ape the vices of a fifteenth-century European nobility, New York can fairly retort that it offers in its working force of well-to-do people the most vital, interesting, sympathetic, and effective force of men and women in the nation. If the Paris of America contains the most dangerous element of society, it also contains an element which is equal to the best elsewhere, and is more attractive than any. The New York man or woman who is in earnest is sure to accomplish something, for he or she is not likely to be handicapped by ignorant provincialism of ethics or art which plays havoc with many of the good intentions of the rest of the country.
This versatile and interesting leaven of American society finds its counterpart, to a greater or less extent, in every section of the United States, but it is nowhere quite so attractive as in the Paris of America, for the reason that nowhere does the pulse of life move so keenly as there, and nowhere is the science of living absorbingly so well understood. The art of living has there reached a more interesting phase than in any part of America, if zest in life and the facilities to make the most of it are regarded as the test.
This may sound worldly. The people of the United States used to consider it worldly to admire pictures or to listen to beautiful music. Some think so still. Many a citizen of what was lately the prairie sits down to his dinner in his shirt-sleeves to-day and pretends to be thankful that he is neither an aristocrat nor a gold-bug. The next week, perhaps, this same citizen will vote against a national bankrupt law because he does not wish to pay his debts, or vote for a bill which will enable him to pay them in depreciated currency. Many a clergyman who knows better gives his flock consolingly to understand that to be absorbed in the best human interests of life is unworthy of the Christian, and that to be ordinary and unattractive is a legitimate condition of mind and body. Surely the best Americanism is the Americanism of the man or woman who makes the most of what this life affords, and throws himself or herself keenly into the thick of it. The art of living is the science of living nobly and well, and how can one live either nobly or well by regarding life on the earth as a mere log-cabin existence? If we in this country who seek to live wisely are in danger from the extravagant vanities of the very rich, we are scarcely less menaced by that narrow spirit of ethical teaching which tries to inculcate that it does not much matter what our material surroundings are, and that any progress made by society, except in the direction of sheer morality, is a delusion and a snare.
Character is the basis and the indispensable requisite of the finest humanity; without it refinement, appreciation, manners, fancy, and power of expression are like so many boughs on a tree which is dead. But, on the other hand, what is more uninspiring than an unadorned soul? That kind of virtue and morality which finds no interest in the affairs of this life is but a fresh contribution to the sum of human incompetence, and but serves to retard the progress of civilization. The true and the chief reason why there is less misery in the world than formerly is that men understand better how to live. That straight-laced type of American, who is content to be moral in his own narrow way, and to exclude from his scheme of life all those interests which serve to refine and to inspire, bears the same relation to the ideal man or woman that a chromo bears to a masterpiece of painting.
We have no standards in this country. The individual is free to express himself here within the law in any way he sees fit, and the conduct of life comes always at last to an equation of the individual. Each one of us when we awake in the morning finds the problem of existence staring him anew in the face, and cannot always spare the time to remember that he is an American. And yet Americanism is the sum total of what all of us are. It will be very easy for us simply to imitate the civilizations of the past, but if our civilization is to stand for anything vital, and to be a step forward in the progress of humanity, we must do more than use the old combinations and devices of society in a new kaleidoscopic form. Our heritage as Americans is independence, originality, self-reliance, and sympathetic energy animated by a strong ethical instinct, and these are forces which can produce a higher and a broader civilization than the world has yet seen if we choose to have it so. But it is no longer a matter of cutting down forests and opening mines, of boasting beside the plough and building cities in a single year, of fabulous fortunes won in a trice, and of favorite sons in black broadcloth all the year round. It is a matter of a vast, populous country and a powerful, seething civilization where the same problems confront us which have taxed the minds and souls of the Old World for generations of men. It is for our originality to throw new light upon them, and it is for our independence to face them in the spirit of a deeper sympathy with humanity, and free from the canker of that utter selfishness which has made the prosperity and glory of other great nations culminate so often in a decadence of degrading luxury and fruitless culture.
No civilization which regards the blessings and comforts of refined living as unworthy to be striven for and appropriated can hope to promote the cause of humanity. On the other hand, we Americans must remember that purely selfish appropriation and appreciation of these blessings and comforts has worked the ruin of the most famous civilizations of the past. Marie Antoinette was more elegant than the most fashionable woman in New York, and yet that did not save her from the tumbrel and the axe. The best Americanism of to-day and for the future is that which shall seek to use the fruits of the earth and the fulness thereof, and to develop all the manifestations of art and gentle living in the interest of humanity as a whole. But even heartless elegance is preferable to that self-righteous commonness of spirit which sits at home in its shirt-sleeves and is graceless, ascetic, and unimaginative in the name of God.
