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THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA




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  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  NEW YORK. BOSTON. CHICAGO
  DALLAS. SAN FRANCISCO

  MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
  LONDON. BOMBAY. CALCUTTA
  MELBOURNE

  THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
  TORONTO




  THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA

  BY

  HENRY VAN <DW18>

  Professor of English at Princeton University
  Hyde Lecturer, University of Paris, 1908-9
  Hon. LL.D., University of Geneva
  Hon. F.R.S.L., London


  New York
  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  1912

  _All rights reserved_




  COPYRIGHT, 1910,
  BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

  Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1910.
  Reprinted March, October, 1910; February, 1912.


  Norwood Press
  J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
  Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.




TO MADAME

ELISABETH SAINTE-MARIE PERRIN, _NEE_ BAZIN


To inscribe your name upon this volume, dear Madame, is to recall
delightful memories of my year in France. Your sympathy encouraged me in
the adventurous choice of a subject so large and simple for a course of
lectures at the Sorbonne. While they were in the making, you acted as an
audience of one, in the long music-room at Hostel and in the forest of
St. Gervais, and gave gentle counsels of wisdom in regard to the points
likely to interest and retain a larger audience of Parisians in the
_Amphitheatre Richelieu_. Then, the university adventure being ended
without mishap, your skill as a translator admirably clothed the
lectures in your own lucid language, and sent them out to help a little
in strengthening the ties of friendship between France and America.
Grateful for all the charming hospitality of your country, which made my
year happy and, I hope, not unfruitful, I dedicate to you this book on
the Spirit of America, because you have done so much to make me
understand, appreciate, and admire the true Spirit of France.

                                                       HENRY VAN <DW18>.




PREFACE


This book contains the first seven of a series of twenty-six
_conferences_, given in the winter of 1908-1909, on the Hyde Foundation,
at the University of Paris, and repeated in part at other universities
of France. They were delivered in English, and afterward translated into
French and published under the title of _Le Genie de l'Amerique_. In
making this American edition it has not seemed worth while to attempt to
disguise the fact that these chapters were prepared as lectures to be
given to a French audience, and that their purpose, in accordance with
the generous design of the founder of the chair, was to promote an
intelligent sympathy between France and the United States. If the book
finds readers among my countrymen, I beg them, as they read, to remember
its origin. Perhaps it may have an interest of its own, as a report,
made in Paris, of the things that seem vital, significant, and creative
in the life and character of the American people.




CONTENTS


                                          PAGE
  INTRODUCTION                              xi
  THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE                       3
  SELF-RELIANCE AND THE REPUBLIC            31
  FAIR PLAY AND DEMOCRACY                   71
  WILL-POWER, WORK, AND WEALTH             113
  COMMON ORDER AND SOCIAL COOPERATION      151
  PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION       195
  SELF-EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE           239




INTRODUCTION


There is an ancient amity between France and America, which is recorded
in golden letters in the chronicles of human liberty. In one of the
crowded squares of New York there stands a statue of a young nobleman,
slender, elegant, and brave, springing forward to offer his sword to the
cause of freedom. The name under that figure is La Fayette. In one of
the broad avenues of Paris there stands a statue of a plain gentleman,
grave, powerful, earnest, sitting his horse like a victor and lifting
high his sword to salute the star of France. The name under that figure
is Washington.

It is well that in both lands such a friendship between two great
peoples should be

    "Immortalized by art's immortal praise."

It is better still that it should be warmed and strengthened by present
efforts for the common good: that the world should see the two great
republics standing together for justice and fair play at Algeciras,
working together for the world's peace at the Congress of the Hague.

But in order that a friendship like this should really continue and
increase, there must be something more than a sentimental sympathy.
There must be a mutual comprehension, a real understanding, between the
two peoples. Romantic love, the little _Amor_ with the bow and arrows,
may be as blind as the painters and novelists represent him. But true
friendship, the strong god _Amicitia_, is open-eyed and clear-sighted.
So long as Frenchmen insist upon looking at America merely as the
country of the Sky-scraper and the Almighty Dollar, so long as Americans
insist upon regarding France merely as the home of the Yellow Novel and
the Everlasting Dance, so long will it be difficult for the ancient
amity between these two countries to expand and deepen into a true and
vital concord.

France and America must know each other better. They must learn to look
each into the other's mind, to read each the other's heart. They must
recognize each other less by their foibles and more by their faiths,
less by the factors of national weakness and more by the elements of
national strength. Then, indeed, I hope and believe they will be good
and faithful friends.

It is to promote this serious and noble purpose that an American
gentleman, Mr. James Hazen Hyde, has founded two chairs, one at the
University of Paris, and one at Harvard University, for an annual
interchange of professors, (and possibly of ideas,) between France and
America. Through this generous arrangement we have had the benefit of
hearing, in the United States, MM. Doumic, Rod, de Regnier, Gaston
Deschamps, Hugues Le Roux, Mabilleau, Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, Millet, Le
Braz, Tardieu, and the Vicomte d'Avenel. On the same basis Messrs.
Barrett Wendell, Santayana, Coolidge, and Baker have spoken at the
Sorbonne and at the other French Universities. This year Harvard has
called me from the chair of English Literature at Princeton University,
and the authorities of the Sorbonne have graciously accorded me the
hospitality of this _Amphitheatre Richelieu_, to take my small part in
this international mission.

Do you ask for my credentials as an ambassador? Let me omit such
formalities as academic degrees, professorships, and doctorates, and
present my claims in more simple and humble form. A family residence of
two hundred and fifty years in America, whither my ancestors came from
Holland in 1652; a working life of thirty years which has taken me among
all sorts and conditions of men, in almost all the states of the Union
from Maine to Florida and from New York to California; a personal
acquaintance with all the Presidents except one since Lincoln; a
friendship with many woodsmen, hunters, and fishermen in the forests
where I spend the summers; an entire independence of any kind of
political, ecclesiastical, or academic partisanship; and some
familiarity with American literature, its origins, and its historical
relations,--these are all the claims that I can make to your attention.
They are small enough, to be sure, but such as they are you may find in
them a partial explanation of the course which these lectures are to
take.

You will understand that if I have chosen a subject which is not
strictly academic, it is because the best part of my life has been spent
out of doors among men. You will perceive that my failure to speak of
Boston as the centre of the United States may have some connection with
the accident that I am not a Bostonian. You will account for the absence
of a suggestion that any one political party is the only hope of the
Republic by the fact that I am not a politician. You will detect in my
attitude towards literature the naive conviction that it is not merely
an art existing for art's sake, but an expression of the inner life and
a factor in the moral character. Finally, you will conclude, with your
French logicality of mind, that I must be an obstinate idealist, because
I am going to venture to lecture to you on _The Spirit of America_. That
is as much as to say that I believe man is led by an inner light, and
that the ideals, moral convictions, and vital principles of a people are
the most important factors in their history.

All these things are true. They cannot be denied or concealed. I would
willingly confess them and a hundred more, if I might contribute but a
little towards the purpose of these lectures: to help some of the people
of France to understand more truly the real people of America,--a people
of idealists engaged in a great practical task.




I

THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE




THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA




I

THE SOUL OF A PEOPLE


There is a proverb which affirms that in order to know a man you have
only to travel with him for a week. Almost all of us have had
experiences, sometimes happy and sometimes the reverse, which seem to
confirm this saying.

A journey in common is a sort of involuntary confessional. There is a
certain excitement, a confusion and quickening of perceptions and
sensations, in the adventures, the sudden changes, the new and striking
scenes of travel. The bonds of habit are loosened. Impulses of pleasure
and of displeasure, suddenly felt, make themselves surprisingly visible.
Wishes and appetites and prejudices which are usually dressed in a
costume of words so conventional as to amount to a disguise now appear
unmasked, and often in very scanty costume, as if they had been suddenly
called from their beds by an alarm of fire on a steamboat, or, to use a
more agreeable figure, by the announcement in a hotel on the Righi of
approaching sunrise.

There is another thing which plays, perhaps, a part in this power of
travel to make swift disclosures. I mean the vague sense of release from
duties and restraints which comes to one who is away from home. Much of
the outward form of our daily conduct is regulated by the structure and
operation of the social machinery in which we quite inevitably find our
place. But when all this is left behind, when a man no longer feels the
pressure of the neighbouring wheels, the constraint of the driving-belt
which makes them all move together, nor the restraint of the common task
to which the collective force of all is applied, he is "outside of the
machine."

The ordinary sight-seeing, uncommercial traveller--the tourist, the
globe-trotter--is not usually a person who thinks much of his own
responsibilities, however conscious he may be of his own importance. His
favourite proverb is, "When you are in Rome, do as the Romans do." But
in the application of the proverb, he does not always inquire whether
the particular thing which he is invited to do is done by the particular
kind of Roman that he would like to be, if he lived in Rome, or by some
other kind of Roman quite different, even contrary. He is liberated. He
is unaccountable. He is a butterfly visiting a strange garden. He has
only to enjoy himself according to his caprice and to accept the
invitations of the flowers which please him most.

This feeling of irresponsibility in travel corresponds somewhat to the
effect of wine. The tongue is loosened. Unexpected qualities and
inclinations are unconsciously confessed. A new man, hitherto unknown,
appears upon the scene. And this new man often seems more natural, more
spontaneous, more vivid, than our old acquaintance. "At last," we say to
ourselves, "we know the true inwardness, the real reality of this
fellow. He is not acting a part now. He is coming to the surface. We see
what a bad fellow, or what a good fellow, he is. _In vino et in viatore
veritas!_"

But is it quite correct, after all, this first impression that travel is
the great revealer of character? Is it the essential truth, the
fundamental truth, _la vraie verite_, that we discover through this
glass? Or is it, rather, a novel aspect of facts which are real enough,
indeed, but not fundamental,--an aspect so novel that it presents itself
as more important than it really is? To put the question in brief, and
in a practical form, is a railway train the place to study character, or
is it only a place to observe characteristics?

There is, of course, a great deal of complicated and quarrelsome
psychology involved in this seeming simple question,--for example, the
point at issue between the determinists and libertarians, the
philosophers of the unconscious and the philosophers of the ideal,--all
of which I will prudently pass by, in order to make a very practical and
common-sense observation.

Ordinary travel usually obscures and confuses quite as much as it
reveals in the character of the traveller. His excitement, his moral
detachment, his intellectual dislocation, unless he is a person of
extraordinary firmness and poise, are apt to make him lose himself much
more than they help him to find himself. In these strange and transient
experiences his action lacks meaning and relation. He is carried away.
He is uprooted. He is swept along by the current of external novelty.
This may be good for him or bad for him. I do not ask this question. I
am not moralizing. I am observing. The point is that under these
conditions I do not see the real man more clearly, but less clearly. To
paraphrase a Greek saying, I wish not to study Philip when he is a
little exhilarated, but Philip when he is sober: not when he is at a
Persian banquet, but when he is with his Macedonians.

Moreover, if I mistake not, the native environment, the chosen or
accepted task, the definite place in the great world-work, is part of
the man himself. There are no human atoms. Relation is inseparable from
quality. Absolute isolation would be invisibility. Displacement is
deformity. You remember what Emerson says in his poem, _Each and All_:--

  "The delicate shells lay on the shore:
  The bubbles of the latest wave
  Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,
  And the bellowing of the savage sea
  Greeted their safe escape to me.
  I wiped away the weeds and foam,
  I fetched my sea-born treasures home,
  But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
  Had left their beauty on the shore
  With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar."

So I would see my man where he belongs, in the midst of the things which
have produced him and which he has helped to produce. I would understand
something of his relation to them. I would watch him at his work, the
daily labour which not only earns his living but also moulds and forms
his life. I would see how he takes hold of it, with reluctance or with
alacrity, and how he regards it, with honour or with contempt. I would
consider the way in which he uses its tangible results; to what purpose
he applies them; for what objects he spends the fruit of his toil; what
kind of bread he buys with the sweat of his brow or his brain. I would
trace in his environment the influence of those who have gone before
him. I would read the secrets of his heart in the uncompleted projects
which he forms for those who are to come after him. In short, I would
see the roots from which he springs, and the hopes in which his heart
flowers.

Thus, and thus only, the real man, the entire man, would become more
clear to me. He might appear more or less admirable. I might like him
more, or less. That would make no difference. The one thing that is sure
is that I should know him better. I should know the soul of the man.

If this is true, then, of the individual, how much more is it true of a
nation, a people? The inward life, the real life, the animating and
formative life of a people is infinitely difficult to discern and
understand.

There are a hundred concourses of travel in modern Europe where you may
watch "the passing show" of all nations with vast amusement,--on the
_Champs-Elysees_ in May or June, in the park of _Aix-les-Bains_ in
midsummer, at the Italian Lakes in autumn, in the colonnade of
Shepherd's Hotel at Cairo in January or February, on the Pincian Hill at
Rome in March or April. Take your seats, ladies and gentlemen, at this
continuous performance, this international _vaudeville_, and observe
British habits, French manners, German customs, American eccentricities,
whatever interests you in the varied entertainment. But do not imagine
that in this way you will learn to know the national personality of
England, or France, or Germany, or America. That is something which is
never exported.

Some drop of tincture or extract of it, indeed, may pass from one land
to another in a distinct and concentrated individuality, as when a
Lafayette comes to America, or a Franklin to France. Some partial
portrait and imperfect image of it, indeed, may be produced in
literature. And there the reader who is wise enough to separate the
head-dress from the head, and to discern the figure beneath the