ISSUE 12, OCTOBER, 1858***


E-text prepared by Joshua Hutchinson, Keith M. Eckrich, and Project
Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. II.--OCTOBER, 1858.--NO. XII.






THE NEW WORLD AND THE NEW MAN.

Half a dozen rivulets leap down the western declivity of the Rocky
Mountains, and unite; four thousand miles away the mighty Missouri
debouches into the Mexican Gulf as the result of that junction. Did the
rivulets propose or plan the river? Not at all; but they knew, each,
its private need to find a lower level; the universal law they obeyed
accomplished the rest. So is it with the great human streams. Mighty
beginnings do not lie in the minds of the beginners. History is a
perpetual surprise, ever developing results of which men were the
agents without being the expectants. Individual actors, with respect to
the master claim of humanity, are, for the most part, not unlike that
fleet hound which, enticed by a tempting prospect of meat, outran a
locomotive engine all the way from Lowell to Boston, and won a handsome
wager for his owner, while intent only on a dinner for himself.
Humanity is served out of all proportion to the intention of service.
Even the noble souls, never wanting in history, who follow not a bait,
but belief, see only in imperfect survey the connections and relations
of their deeds. Each is faithfully obeying his own inward vocation, a
voice unheard by other soul than his own, and the inability to
calculate consequences makes the preeminent grandeur of his position;
or he is urged by the high inevitable impulse to publish or verify an
idea: the Divine Destiny _works_ in their hearts, and _plans_ over
their heads.

Socrates felt a sacred impulse to test his neighbors, what they knew
and were: this is such account of his life as he himself can give at
its close. His contemporaries generally saw in him an imperturbable and
troublesome questioner, fatally sure to come at the secret of every
man's character and credence, whom no subterfuge could elude, no
compliments flatter, no menaces appall,--suspected also of some
emancipation from the popular superstitions: this is the account of him
which _they_ are able to give. At twenty-three centuries' distance _we_
see in him the source of a river of spiritual influence, that yet
streams on, more than a Missouri, in the minds of men,--more than a
Missouri, for it not only flows as an open current, but, percolating
beneath the surface, and coming up in distinct and distant fountains,
it becomes the hidden source of many a constant tide in the faiths and
philosophies of nations.

The veil covers the eyes of spectators and agents alike. Columbus
returns, freighted with wondrous tidings, to the Spanish shore; the
nation rises and claps its hands; the nation kneels to bless its gods
at all its shrines, and chants its delight in many a choral Te Deum.
What, then, do they think is gained? Why, El Dorado! Have they not
gained a whole world of gold and silver mines to buy jewelled cloaks
and feathers and frippery with? Have they not gained a cornucopia of
savages, to support new brigades at home by their enslavement, and new
bishoprics abroad by their salvation? Touching, truly, is the childish
eagerness and _bonhommie_ with which those Spaniards in fancy assume,
as it were, between thumb and finger, this continent, deemed to be
nothing less than gold, and feed with it the leanness of hungry purses;
and the effect is not a little enhanced by the extreme pains they are
at to say a sufficient grace over the imagined meal. "Oh, wonderful,
Pomponius!" shouts the large-minded Peter Martyr. "Upon the surface of
that earth are found rude masses of gold, of a weight that one fears to
mention!... Spain is spreading her wings," etc. He is of the minority
there, who does not suppose this New World a Providential donation to
aid him to dinners, dances, and dawdling, or at best to promote his
"glory" and pride of social estimation. Even Columbus, more magnanimous
than most of his contemporaries, is not so greatly more wise. The
noblest use he can conceive for his discovery is to aid in the recovery
of the Holy Sepulchre. With the precious metals that should fall to his
share, says his biographer, he made haste to vow the raising of a force
of five thousand horse and fifty thousand foot for the expulsion of the
Saracens from Jerusalem. Nor is this the only instance in which even
the noble among men have sought to clutch the grand opening futures,
and wreathe the beauty of their promise about the consecrated graves of
the past. "Servants of Sepulchres" is a title which even now, not
individuals alone, but whole nations, may lawfully claim.

The Old World, we say, seized upon this magnificent new force now
thrown into history, and harnessed it unsuspiciously to its own car, as
if it could have been designed for no other possible use. Happily,
however, the design was different, and Providence having a peculiar
faculty of protecting its own plans, the holding of the reins after
such a steed proved anything but a sinecure. Spain, indeed, rode in a
high chariot for a time, but at length, in that unlucky Armada drive,
crashed against English oak on the ocean highways, and came off
creaking and rickety,--grew thenceforth ever more unsteady,--finally,
came utterly to the ground, with contusions, fractures, and much
mishap,--and now the poor nation hobbles hypochondriacally upon
crutches, all its brave charioteering sadly ended. England drove more
considerately, but could not avoid fate; so in 1783 she, too, must let
go the rein with some mental disturbance. For the great Destiny was not
exclusively a European Providence,--had meditated the establishment of
a fresh and independent human centre on the western side of the sea.
The excellent citizens of London and Madrid found themselves incapable
of crediting this until it was duly placarded in gunpowder print.--It
is, indeed, an unaccountable foible men have, not to recognize a plain
fact till it has been published in this blazing hieroglyphic. What were
England and France doing at Sebastopol? Merely issuing a poster to this
effect,--"Turkey is not yours,"--in a type that Russia could feel free
to understand. Terribly costly editions these are, and in a type
utterly hideous; but while nations refuse to see the fact in a more
agreeable presentation, it may probably feel compelled to go into this
ugly, but indubitable shape.--Well, somewhat less than a century since,
England had committed herself to the proposition, that America was
really a part or dependency of Europe, a lower-caste Europe, having
about the same relation to the Cisatlantic continent that the farmer's
barn has to his house. Mild refutations of this modest doctrine having
been attempted without success, posters in the necessary red-letter
type were issued at Concord, Bunker Hill, Yorktown, etc., which might
be translated somewhat thus:--"America has its own independent root in
the world's centre, its own independent destiny in the Providential
thought." This important fact, having then and there exploded itself
into legibility, and come to be known and read of all men, admits now
of no dispute, and requires no confirmation. It is evidently so. The
New World is not merely a newly-discovered hay-loft and dairy-stall for
the Old, but is itself a proper household, of equal dignity with any.
To draw the due inferences from this, to see what is implied in it, is
all that we are here required to do.

Be it, then, especially noted that the continent by itself can take no
such rank. A spirituality must appear to crown and complete this great
continental body; otherwise America is acephalous. Unless there be an
American Man, the continent is inevitably but an appendage, a kitchen
and laundry for the European parlor. American Man,--and the word Man is
to receive a large emphasis. Observe, that it does not refer to mere
population. The fact required will hardly be reported in the census.
Indeed, there is quite too much talk about population, about
prospective increase of numbers. We are to have thirty millions of
inhabitants, they say, in 1860; soon forty, fifty, one hundred
millions. Doubtless; and if that be all, one yawns over the statement.
Could any prophet assure us of _one_ million of men who would stand for
the broadest justice as Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans stood
for Lacedaemon! But Hebrew David was thought to be punished for taking
a census; nor is the story without significance. To reckon numbers
alone a success _is_ a sin, and a blunder beside. Russia has sixty
millions of people: who would not gladly swap her out of the world for
glorious little Greece back again, and Plato and Aeschylus and
Epaminondas still there? Who would exchange Concord or Cambridge in
Massachusetts for any hundred thousand square miles of slave-breeding
dead-level? Who Massachusetts in whole for as many South American (or
Southern) republics as would cover Saturn and all his moons? Make sure
of depth and breadth of soul as the national characteristic; then roll
up the census columns; and roll out a hallelujah for each additional
thousand.

Thus had the great Genoese been destined merely to make a new highway
on the ocean and new lines on the map,--to add the potato, maize, and
tapioca to the known list of edibles, and tobacco to that of
narcotics,--to explode Spain, give England a cotton-field, Ireland a
hospital, and Africa a hell. This could by no means seem sufficient.
The crew of the Pinta shouted, "Land! Land!"--peering through the dark
at the new shores; the Spanish nation chanted, "Gold! Gold!"--gazing
out through murky desires toward the wondrous West; but it is only with
the cry of "Man! Man!" as at the sight of new cerebral shores and
wealth of more than golden humanities, that the true America is
discovered and announced. So whatever reason we have to assert for
America a really independent existence and destiny, the same have we
for predicting an opulence of heart and brain, to which Western
prairies and Californian gold shall seem the natural appurtenance.

And this noble man must be likewise a _new_ man,--not merely a migrated
European. Western Europe pushed a little farther west does not meet our
demand. Why should Europe go three thousand miles off to be Europe
still? Besides, can we afford to England, France, Spain, a larger room
in the world? Are we more than satisfied with their occupancy of that
they already possess? The Englishman is undeniably a wholesome picture
to the mental eye; but will not twenty million copies of him do, for
the present? It would seem like a poverty in Nature, were she unable to
vary, but must go helplessly on to reproduce that selfsame British
likeness over all North America. But history fully warrants the
expectation of a new form of man for the new continent. German and
Scandinavian Teutons peopled England; but the Englishman is _sui
generis_, not merely an exported Teuton. Egypt, says Bunsen, was
peopled by a colony from Western Asia; but the genius and physiognomy
of Egypt are peculiar and its own. Mr. Pococke will have it that Greece
was a migrated India: it was, of course, a migration from some place
that first planted the Hellenic stock in Europe; but if the man who
carved the Zeus, and built the Parthenon, and wrote the "Prometheus"
and the "Phaedrus," were a copy, where shall we find the original?
Indeed, there has never been a great migration that did not result in a
new form of national genius. And it is the thoroughness of the
transformations thus induced which makes the chief difficulty in
tracing the affinities of peoples.

So it is that the world is enriched. Every new form of man establishes
another current in those reciprocations of thought, in those electrical
streams of sympathy,--of wholesome attraction and wholesome
repulsion,--by which the intellectual life is kindled and quickened.
Thought begins not until two men meet. Col. Hamilton Smith makes it
quite clear that civilization has found its first centres there where
two highways of national movement crossed, and dissimilar men looked
each other in the face. They have met, it may be, with the rudest kind
of greetings; but have obtained good thoughts from hard blows, and
beaten ideas _out_ of each other's heads, if not _into_ them, according
to the ancient pedagogic tradition. Higher culture brings higher terms
of meeting; traffic succeeds war, conversation follows upon traffic;
ever the necessity of various men to each other remains. There is no
pure white light until seven colors blend; so to the mental
illumination of humanity many hues of national genius must consent: and
the value of life to all men is greater so soon as a new man has made
his advent.

All this is matter of daily experience with us. We do not, indeed, tire
of old friends. A soul whose wealth we have once recognized must be
ever rich to us. Gold turns not to copper by keeping; and perhaps old
friends are rather like old wine, and can never be too old. Yet who
does not mark in the calendar those days wherein he has met a _new_
rich soul, that has a physiognomy, a grace and expression, peculiarly
its own? Even decided repulsions have also a use. We whet our
conscience on our neighbors' faults, as sober Spartans were made by the
spectacle of drunken Helots;--though he who makes habitual _talk_ about
his neighbors' faults whets his conscience across the edge. If there be
sermons in stones, no less is there blessing in bores and in bullies.
We found one day in the face of a black bear what could not be so well
found in libraries. The creature regarded us attentively, and with
affection rather than malice,--saw simply certain amounts of savory
flesh, useful for the satisfaction of ursine hungers,--and saw nothing
more. It was an incomparable lesson to teach that the world is an
endless series of levels, and that each eye sees what its own altitude
commands; the rest to it is non-extant. _That_ bear was in his natural
covering of hair; his brothers we frequently meet in broadcloth.

Now, as Nature keeps up this inexhaustible variety of individual genius
which individual quickening requires, so on the larger scale is she
ever working and compounding to produce varieties of national genius.
Her aim is the same in both cases,--to enrich the whole by this
electrical and enlivening relation between its parts. And thus an
American man, no copy, but an original, formed in unprecedented moulds,
with his own unborrowed grandeur, his own piquancy and charm, is to be
looked for,--is, indeed, even now to be seen,--on this shore.

Yes, the man we seek is already found, his features rapidly becoming
distinct. He is the offspring of Northern Europe; he occupies Central
North-America. Other fresh forms are doubtless to appear, but, though
dimly shaping themselves, are as yet inchoate. But the Anglo-American
is an existing fact, to be spoken of without prognostication, save as
this is implied in the recognition of tendencies established and
unfolding into results. The Anglo-American may be considered the latest
new-comer into this planet. Let us, then, a little celebrate his
advent. Let us make all lawful and gentle inquiry about the
distinguished stranger.

First, what is his pedigree? He need not be ashamed to tell; for he
comes of a noble family, the Teutonic,--a family more opulent of human
abilities, and those, for the most part, the deeper kind of abilities,
than any other on the earth at present. He reckons among his
progenitors and relatives such names as Shakspeare, Goethe, Milton, the
two Bacons, Lessing, Richter, Schiller, Carlyle, Hegel, Luther, Behmen,
Swedenborg, Gustavus Adolphus, William of Orange, Cromwell, Frederick
II., Wellington, Newton, Leibnitz, Humboldt, Beethoven, Handel, Turner;
and nations might be enriched out of the names that remain when the
supreme ones in each class have been mentioned. Consider what
incomparable range and variety, as well as depth, of genius are here
affirmed. Greece and India possessed powers not equally represented
here; but otherwise these might stand for the full abilities of
mankind, each in its handsomest illustration.--It is remarkable, too,
that our Anglo-American has no "poor relations." Not a scurvy nation
comes of this stock. They are the Protestant nations, giving religion a
moral expression, and reconciling it with freedom of thought. They are
the constitutional nations, exacting terms of government that
acknowledge private right. _Resource_ may also be emphasized as a
characteristic of these nations. Hitherto they have honored every draft
that has been made upon them. The Dutch first fished their country out
from under the sea, and afterwards defended it in a war of eighty
years' duration against the first military power on the globe: two
feats, perhaps, equally without parallel.

Being thus satisfied upon the point of pedigree, we may proceed to
inquire about estate. To what inheritance of land has Nature invited
our New Man? He comes to the country of highest organization, perhaps,
upon either hemisphere. Brazil and China suggest, but probably do not
sustain, a rivalry.