CHAPTER III

AMERICA AND CIVILIZATION

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HERBERT SPENCER said, "I think that whatever difficulties they may have to surmount, and whatever tribulations they may have to pass through, the Americans may reasonably look forward to a time when they will have produced a civilization grander than any the world has known." We hope so. But what is civilization and in what directions will America improve it? The word civilization includes many things; the form of government, the laws, science, religion, philosophy, literature, art, education, the character and intelligence of the people, the production of great men, manners, and conduct of life. In which of these fields will America advance beyond Europe?

Nature is ceaselessly working to produce higher races of men. She is in no hurry. Centuries go by while she is welding a new race. In a hundred years she produces only a few great men. Nature builds up a civilization and then tears it down to make way for a higher. But always and everywhere, of all the elements making up a civilization she subordinates all to one, namely, the character of men. As Emerson wrote, the true test of civilization is "the kind of man the country turns out."2 Lodge says, "When we speak of a race, then, we do not mean its expressions in art or in language, or its achievements in knowledge. We mean the moral and intellectual characters, which in their association make the soul of a race, and which represent the produce of all its past, the inheritance of all its ancestors, and the motives of all its conduct. The men of each race possess an indestructible stock of ideas, traditions, sentiments, modes of thought, an unconscious inheritance from their ancestors, upon which argu

ment has no effect. What makes a race are their mental and, above all, their moral characteristics, the slow growth and accumulation of centuries of toil and conflict. These are the qualities which determine their social efficiency as a people, which make one race rise and another fall, which we draw out of a dim past through many generations of ancestors, about which we cannot argue, but in which we blindly believe, and which guide us in our short-lived generation as they have guided the race itself across the centuries." 1

In building up a new and improved race nature makes it difficult to obtain food, shelter, and clothing. She also precipitates them into wars, revolutions, and revolts. Over an ungovernable people she places a despot, an absolute monarch, who hammers law and order into their unruly bones. Over a steadier but progressive race she places a constitutional monarchy and aristocracy. Finally, in order to allow free play to all the capacity of man she plants republican institutions with equality of opportunity. All of the elements of civilization are then open to all, but the choicest instrumentality which nature uses to raise the character of men her ultimate goal is the form of government, republican institutions, which govern but do not restrict. Hence it is that the great nations have been nations of republican institutions Greece, Rome, England. Hence, too, it is that so many of the great men in history have been from those

nations.

"A cultivated man," says Emerson, "wise to know and bold to perform, is the end to which nature works."2 If it be true that the chief end of nature is to develop the character of men, and that her chief instrument to that end is government, and that the highest form of government is a republic, then so far as we are able to fathom the mysterious workings of nature, America has been allotted the task of establishing the practicability of a great people governing themselves; in other words, a republic. Here lies the mission of America not wealth or power or ma

terial comforts, but self-government and a high character of man. The mission of Rome was to establish law and order and develop governmental institutions throughout the world. The mission of England has been the same. John Fiske in 1880 delivered in London three lectures on "American Political Ideas."1 He set forth three as constituting American contributions to civilization: (1) the town meeting; (2) the federal union, dividing sovereign powers between the nation and the states; (3) the "manifest destiny" that this principle of division will be ultimately used to unite not only Europe but the whole world. President Eliot in 1907 in a book on "American Contributions to Civilization" summarized his views as follows: "These five contributions to civilization — peacekeeping, religious toleration, the development of manhood suffrage, the welcoming of newcomers, and the diffusion of well-being- I hold to have been eminently characteristic of our country, and so important that, in spite of the qualifications and deductions which every candid citizen would admit with regard to every one of them, they will ever be held in the grateful remembrance of mankind." 2

To my mind the greatest contribution of America to civilization is the reëstablishment of republican institutions out of the wreck and ruin that had overtaken those institutions in 1776. The mission of America is to develop governmental institutions still further. Somewhat blindly America gropes its way. Its soul, its characteristics, its aspirations, its tendencies, and its mission, as distinguished from its achievements, its wealth, power, population, and materialistic occupations, are difficult to detect and difficult to describe. It is the outgrowth not only of the mingling of many races but also of the conflict of many ideas. It is ascertained not from wars or administrations, nor the clamor of politicians, nor conquests, nor the growth of population, wealth, and inventions, but from the characteristics and beliefs of the different nationalities that came to America, and the final predominance of the Puritan type, broadened by being trans

planted, and finally fusing most of these different nationalities into a homogeneous nation - a feat unparalleled in history. This involves description of the English, Dutch, Irish, ScotchIrish, German, Jew, Italian, Scandinavian, and the dark-eyed races of Southeastern Europe. Each had a different type of mind and view of life. Their racial traits remain today, localized or intermingled, with minds and ideas acting and reacting on American national life. The origin, growth, and consolidation of most of these elements into a composite whole has produced the American, with grievous faults but on the whole the best of all. It has produced a man of personal independence, of resourcefulness, of absolute freedom of individual initiative-destined and qualified to perpetuate republican institutions.

The American may never excel in art, literature, or as a philosopher. He may not be a great scientist or historian. He may not be a real conversationalist or master of manners. But the old Romans were none of these and yet they originated laws for the world, not merely for their age but down to the present day. The American has a like mission and there is no higher in the records of time. The Roman was greatest when the Republic was in danger. The American is the same. Then he shakes off the coil of materialism. A menace to his freedom rouses the innate fierceness of his nature.

Meantime nature is ceaselessly working to produce a higher and finer type of man. She planted in America the sturdiest stock of the sturdiest races of Europe. She gave them a continent of every clime, every element of wealth and power, every advantage. She welded them into a composite race. She gave them new ideas as to life and human institutions. She has done this for a purpose, but as to what that purpose is we can only say, "There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will." Man sees only nature and nature speaks,

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""Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply,

And weave for God the Garment thou see'st Him by."

It is an astonishing spectacle; an intelligent, progressive, forceful people; a country of vast natural and accumulated wealth; a republican form of government. What will the great underlying laws of nature do with all this? The future is almost portentous in its magnitude. America is moving towards some unknown, unseen destiny. Will it be broken up by factions or will it become the dominating power of the world? Will it advance science, philosophy, literature, art, and religion or will it sink into materialism? A world drama is evolving from the environment, races, traditions, character, government, aspirations, conflicting interests, and economic phantasmagoria. What will be the fifth act? However, the spectacle was equally astonishing a hundred years ago when all conservative people were afraid of Andrew Jackson and the populace; and yet America survived while Europe was revolutionized by America's example.