HISTORY OF A LITERARY RADICAL 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS 
 
RANDOLPH BOURNE 
 
 Drawn by Arthur G. Dove from the 
 Death Mask by James Earle Eraser 
 
BY RANDOLPH BOURNE 
 
 HISTORY OF A 
 LITERARY RADICAL 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 BY VAN WYCK BROOKS 
 
 "To write in favor of that 
 which the great interests of the 
 world are against is what I 
 conceive to be the duty and the 
 privilege of the intellectual." 
 
 PADRAIC COLUM 
 
 NEW YORK B.W. HUEBSCH MCMXX 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1920, B Y B. W. HUEBSCH, INC. 
 PRINTED IN U. S. A. 
 
13 
 
 &>% 
 
 j 
 
 NOTE 
 
 Most of the papers included in this volume 
 have already appeared in one or another of the 
 following magazines: The Atlantic Monthly , 
 The Dial, The New Republic, The Seven Arts, 
 The Tale Review, The Columbia University 
 Quarterly, and are reprinted here with the kind 
 permission of the editors. 
 
 [v] 
 
R. B. 
 
 Bitter-sweet, and a northwest wind 
 
 To sing his requiem, 
 
 Who was 
 
 Our Age, 
 
 And who becomes 
 
 An imperishable symbol of our ongoing, 
 
 For in himself 
 
 He rose above his body and came among us 
 
 Prophetic of the race, 
 
 The great hater 
 
 Of the dark human deformity 
 
 Which is our dying world, 
 
 The great lover 
 
 Of the spirit of youth 
 
 Which is our future s seed . . . 
 
 JAMES OPPENHEIM. 
 
 [vii] 
 
\ 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 RANDOLPH BOURNE was born in Bloomfield, 
 New Jersey, May 30, 1886. He died in New 
 York, December 22, 1918. Between these two 
 dates was packed one of the fullest, richest, and 
 most significant lives of the younger generation. 
 Its outward events can be summarized in a few 
 words. Bourne went to the public schools in his 
 native town, and then for some time earned his 
 living as an assistant to a manufacturer of auto 
 matic piano music. In 1909 he entered Colum 
 bia, graduating in 1913 as holder of the Gilder 
 Fellowship, which enabled him to spend a year of 
 study and investigation in Europe. In 1911 he 
 had begun contributing to The Atlantic Monthly, 
 and his first book, "Youth and Life," a volume of 
 essays, appeared^in 1913. He was a member of 
 the contributing staff of The New Republic 
 during its first three years; later he was a con 
 tributing editor of The Seven Arts and The 
 [ix] 
 
Dial. He had published, in addition to his first 
 collection of essays and a large number of mis 
 cellaneous articles and book reviews, two other 
 books, "Education and Living" and "The Gary 
 Schools." At the time of his death he was en 
 gaged on a novel and a study of the political 
 future. 
 
 It might be guessed from this that Bourne at 
 thirty-two had not quite found himself. His in 
 terests were indeed almost universal: he had 
 written on politics, economics, philosophy, educa 
 tion, literature. No other of our younger critics 
 had cast so wide a net, and Bourne had hardly 
 begun to draw the strings and count and sort his 
 catch. He was a working journalist, a literary 
 freelance with connections often of the most pre 
 carious kind, who contrived, by daily miracles of 
 audacity and courage, to keep himself serenely 
 afloat in a society where his convictions prevented 
 him from following any of the ordinary avenues 
 of preferment and recognition. It was a feat 
 never to be sufficiently marvelled over; it would 
 have been striking, in our twentieth century New 
 York, even in the case of a man who was not 
 physically handicapped as Bourne was. But such 
 
a life is inevitably scattering, and it was only 
 after the war had literally driven him in upon 
 himself that he set to work at the systematic har 
 vesting of his thoughts and experiences. He had 
 not quite found himself, perhaps, owing to the 
 extraordinary range of interests for which he had 
 to find a personal common denominator; yet no 
 other young American critic, I think, had exhibited 
 so clear a tendency, so coherent a body of desires. 
 His personality was not only unique, it was also 
 absolutely expressive. I have had the delightful 
 experience of reading through at a sitting, so to 
 say, the whole mass of his uncollected writings, 
 articles, essays, book reviews, unprinted frag 
 ments, and a few letters, and I am astonished at 
 the way in which, like a ball of camphor in a 
 trunk, the pungent savor of the man spreads itself 
 over every paragraph. Here was no anonymous 
 reviewer, no mere brilliant satellite of the radical 
 movement losing himself in his immediate reac 
 tions: one finds everywhere, interwoven in the 
 fabric of his work, the silver thread of a personal 
 philosophy, the singing line of an intense and 
 beautiful desire. 
 
 What was that desire? It was for a new fel- 
 [xi] 
 
lowship in the youth of America as the principle 
 of a great and revolutionary departure in our 
 life, a league of youth, one might call it, con 
 sciously framed with the purpose of creating, out 
 of the blind chaos of American society, a fine, free, 
 articulate cultural order. That, as it seems to me, 
 was the dominant theme of all his effort, the posi 
 tive theme to which he always returned from his 
 thrilling forays into the fields of education and 
 politics, philosophy and sociology. One finds it 
 at the beginning of his career in such essays as 
 "Our Cultural Humility," one finds it at the end 
 in the "History of a Literary Radical." One 
 finds it in that pacifism which he pursued with such 
 an obstinate and lonely courage and which was 
 the logical outcome of the checking and thwarting 
 of those currents of thought and feeling in which 
 he had invested the whole passion of his life. 
 Place aux jeunes might have been his motto: he 
 seemed indeed the flying wedge of the younger 
 generation itself. 
 
 I shall never forget my first meeting with him, 
 that odd little apparition with his vibrant eyes, 
 his quick, birdlike steps and the long black stu 
 dent s cape he had brougkt back with him from 
 [xii] 
 
Paris. It was in November, 1914, and we never 
 imagined then that the war was going to be more 
 than a slash, however deep, across the face of 
 civilization, we never imagined it was going to 
 plough on and on until it had uprooted and turned 
 under the soil so many green shoots of hope and 
 desire in the young world. Bourne had published 
 that radiant book of essays on the Adventure of 
 Life, the Two Generations, the Excitement of 
 Friendship, with its happy and confident sugges 
 tion of the present as a sort of transparent veil 
 hung up against the window of some dazzling 
 future, he had had his wanderyear abroad, and 
 had come home with that indescribable air of the 
 scholar-gypsy, his sensibility fresh, clairvoyant, 
 matutinal, a philosopher of the gaya scienza^ his 
 hammer poised over the rock of American philist- 
 inism, with never a doubt in his heart of the 
 waters of youth imprisoned there. One divined 
 him in a moment, the fine, mettlesome temper of 
 his intellect, his curiosity, his acutely critical self- 
 consciousness, his aesthetic flair, his delicate sense 
 of personal relationships, his toughness of fiber, 
 his masterly powers of assimilation, his grasp of 
 reality, his burning convictions, his beautifully 
 
precise desires. Here was Emerson s "American 
 scholar" at last, but radiating an infinitely 
 warmer, profaner, more companionable influence 
 than Emerson had ever dreamed of, an influence 
 that savored rather of Whitman and William 
 James. He was the new America incarnate, 
 with that stamp of a sort of permanent youthful- 
 ness on his queer, twisted, appealing face. You 
 felt that in him the new America had suddenly 
 found itself and was all astir with the excitement 
 of its first maturity. 
 
 His life had prepared him for the role, for the 
 physical disability that had cut him off from the 
 traditional currents and preoccupations of Amer 
 ican life had given him a poignant insight into 
 the predicament of all those others who, like him, 
 could not adjust themselves to the industrial 
 machine the exploited, the sensitive, the de 
 spised, the aspiring, those, in short, to whom a 
 new and very different America was no academic 
 idea but a necessity so urgent that it had begun to 
 be a reality. As detached as any young East 
 Sider from the herd-unity of American life, the 
 colonial tradition, the "genteel tradition," yet 
 passionately concerned with America, passionately 
 [xiv] 
 
caring for America, he had discovered himself at 
 Columbia, where so many strains of the newer 
 immigrant population meet one another in the 
 full flood and ferment of modern ideas. Shut in 
 as he had been with himself and his books, what 
 dreams had passed through his mind of the pos 
 sibilities of life, of the range of adventures that 
 are open to the spirit, of some great collective 
 effort of humanity ! Would there never be room 
 for these things in America, was it not precisely 
 the task of the young to make room for them"? 
 Bourne s grandfather and great-grandfather had 
 been doughty preachers and reformers : he had in 
 herited a certain religious momentum that thrust 
 him now into the midst of the radical tide. Above 
 all, he had found companions who helped him to 
 clarify his ideas and grapple with his aims. Im 
 migrants, many of them, of the second generation, 
 candidates for the "melting-pot" that had simply 
 failed to melt them, they trailed with them a 
 dozen rich, diverse racial and cultural tendencies 
 which America seemed unable either to assimilate 
 or to suppress. Were they not, these newcomers 
 of the eleventh hour, as clearly entitled as the first 
 colonials had been to a place in the sun of the 
 
 [XV] 
 
great experimental democracy upon which they 
 were making such strange new demands ? They 
 wanted a freer emotional life, a more vivid in 
 tellectual life; oddly enough, it was they and not 
 the hereditary Americans, the "people of action," 
 who spoke of an "American culture" and de 
 manded it. Bourne had found his natural allies. 
 Intensely Anglo-Saxon himself, it was America 
 he cared for, not the triumph of the Anglo-Saxon 
 tradition which had apparently lost itself in the 
 pursuit of a mechanical efficiency. It was a 
 "trans-national" America of which he caught 
 glimpses now, a battleground of all the cultures, 
 a super-culture, that might perhaps, by some 
 happy chance, determine the future of civilization 
 itself. 
 
 It was with some such vision as this that he had 
 gone abroad. If that super-culture was ever to 
 come it could only be through some prodigious 
 spiritual organization of the youth of America, 
 some organization that would have to begin with 
 small and highly self-conscious groups; these 
 groups, moreover, would have to depend for a 
 long time upon the experience of young Europe. 
 The very ideas of spiritual leadership, the intel- 
 [xvi] 
 
lectual life, the social revolution were foreign to a 
 modern America that had submitted to the com 
 mon mould of business enterprise; even philos 
 ophers like Professor Dewey had had to assume a 
 protective coloration, and when people spoke of 
 art they had to justify it as an "asset." For 
 Bourne, therefore, the European tour was some 
 thing more than a preparation for his own life: 
 he was like a bird in the nesting season, gathering 
 twigs and straw for a nest that was not to be his 
 but young America s, a nest for which old America 
 would have to provide the bough! He was in 
 search, in other words, of new ideas, new attitudes, 
 new techniques, personal and social, for which he 
 was going to demand recognition at home, and it 
 is this that gives to his "Impressions of Europe 
 1913-1914" his report to Columbia as holder 
 of the Gilder Fellowship an actuality that so 
 perfectly survives the war. Where can one find 
 anything better in the way of social insight than 
 his pictures of radical France, of the ferment of 
 the young Italian soul, of the London intellectuals 
 Sidney Webb, lecturing "with the patient air 
 of a man expounding arithmetic to backward 
 children," Shaw, "clean, straight, clear, and fine 
 [ xvii ] 
 
as an upland wind and summer sun," Chesterton, 
 "gluttonous and thick, with something tricky and 
 unsavory about him"; of the Scandinavian note, 
 "one got a sense in those countries of the most 
 advanced civilization, yet without sophistication, 
 a luminous modern intelligence that selected and 
 controlled and did not allow itself to be over 
 whelmed by the chaos of twentieth century pos 
 sibility" 1 ? We see things in that white light only 
 when they have some deeply personal meaning 
 for us, and Bourne s instinct had led him straight 
 to his mark. Two complex impressions he had 
 gained that were to dominate all his later work. 
 One was the sense of what a national culture is, 
 of its immense value and significance as a source 
 and fund of spiritual power even in a young world 
 committed to a political and economic inter 
 nationalism. The other was a keen realization 
 of the almost apostolic role of the young student 
 class in perpetuating, rejuvenating, vivifying 
 and, if need be, creating this national conscious 
 ness. No young Hindu ever went back to India, 
 no young Persian or Ukrainian or Balkan student 
 ever went home from a European year with a 
 more fervent sense of the chaos and spiritual 
 [ xviii ] 
 
stagnation and backwardness of his own people, 
 of the happy responsibility laid upon himself and 
 all those other young men and women who had 
 been touched by the modern spirit. 
 
 It was a tremendous moment. Never had we 
 realized so keenly the spiritual inadequacy of 
 American life : the great war of the cultures left us 
 literally gasping in the vacuum of our own 
 provincialism, colonialism, naivete, and romantic 
 self-complacency. We were in much the same 
 position as that of the Scandinavian countries 
 during the European wars of 1866-1870, if we 
 are to accept George Brandes description of it: 
 "While the intellectual life languished, as a plant 
 droops in a close, confined place, the people were 
 self-satisfied. They rested on their laurels and 
 fell into a doze. And while they dozed they had 
 dreams. The cultivated, and especially the half- 
 cultivated, public in Denmark and Norway 
 dreamed that they were the salt of Europe. They 
 dreamed that by their idealism they would re 
 generate the foreign nations. They dreamed that 
 they were the free, mighty North, which would 
 lead the cause of the peoples to victory and they 
 woke up unfree, impotent, ignorant." It was 
 [xix] 
 
through a great effort of social introspection that 
 Scandinavia had roused itself from the stupor of 
 this optimistic idealism, and at last a similar 
 movement was on foot in America. The New 
 Republic had started with the war, The Masses 
 was still young, The Seven Arts and the new 
 Dial were on the horizon. Bourne found himself 
 instantly in touch with the purposes of all these 
 papers, which spoke of a new class-consciousness, 
 a sort of offensive and defensive alliance of the 
 younger intelligentsia and the awakened elements 
 of the labor groups. His audience was awaiting 
 him, and no one could have been better prepared 
 to take advantage of it. 
 
 It was not merely the exigencies of journalism 
 that turned his mind at first so largely to the prob 
 lems of primary education. In Professor Dewey s 
 theories, in the Gary Schools, he saw, as he could 
 see it nowhere else, the definite promise, the actual 
 unfolding of the freer, more individualistic, and 
 at the same time more communistic social life of 
 which he dreamed. But even if he had not come 
 to feel a certain inadequacy in Professor Dewey s 
 point of view, I doubt if this field of interest could 
 have held him long. Children fascinated him; 
 
 [XX] 
 
how well he understood them we can see from his 
 delightful "Ernest: or Parent for a Day." But 
 Bourne s heart was too insistently involved in the 
 situation of his own contemporaries, in the stress 
 of their immediate problems, to allow him to 
 linger in these long hopes. This young intelli 
 gentsia in whose ultimate unity he had had such 
 faith did he not see it, moreover, as the war 
 advanced, lapsing, falling apart again, reverting 
 into the ancestral attitudes of the tribe*? Granted 
 the war, it was the business of these liberals to see 
 that it was played, as he said, "with insistent care 
 for democratic values at home, and unequivocal 
 alliance with democratic elements abroad for a 
 peace that should promise more than a mere union 
 of benevolent imperialisms." Instead, the "allure 
 of the martial" passed only to be succeeded by the 
 "allure of the technical," and the "prudent, en 
 lightened college man," cut in the familiar pat 
 tern, took the place of the value-creator, the path 
 finder, the seeker of new horizons. Plainly, the 
 younger generation had not begun to find its own 
 soul, had hardly so much as registered its will for 
 a new orientation of the American spirit. 
 
 Had it not occurred before, this general rever- 
 [xxi] 
 
sion to type ? The whole first phase of the social 
 movement had spent itself in a sort of ineffectual 
 beating of the air, and Bourne saw that only 
 through a far more heroic effort of criticism than 
 had yet been attempted could the young intelli 
 gentsia disentangle itself, prevail against the mass- 
 fatalism of the middle class, and rouse the workers 
 out of their blindness and apathy. Fifteen years 
 ago a new breath had blown over the American 
 scene; people felt that the era of big business had 
 reached its climacteric, that a new nation was 
 about to be born out of the social settlements, out 
 of the soil that had been harrowed and swept by 
 the muck-rakers, out of the spirit of service that 
 animated a whole new race of novelists, and a 
 vast army of young men and young women, who 
 felt fluttering in their souls the call to some great 
 impersonal adventure, went forth to the slums 
 and the factories and the universities with a 
 powerful but very vague desire to realize them 
 selves and to "dosojnething for the world. But 
 one would have said that movement had been 
 born middle-aged, so earnest, so anxious, so con 
 scientious, so troubled, so maternal and paternal 
 were the faces of those young men and women 
 
who marched forth with so puzzled an intrepidity; 
 there was none of the tang and fire of youth in it, 
 none of the fierce glitter of the intellect; there was 
 no joyous burning of boats; there were no trans 
 figurations, no ecstasies. There was only a warm 
 simmer of eager, evangelical sentiment that some 
 how never reached the boiling-point and cooled 
 rapidly off again, and that host of tentative and 
 wistful seekers found themselves as cruelly astray 
 as the little visionaries of the Children s Crusade. 
 Was not the failure of that movement due almost 
 wholly to its lack of critical equipment? In the 
 first place, it was too naive and too provincial, it 
 was outside the main stream of modern activity 
 and desire, it had none of the reserves of power 
 that result from being in touch with contemporary 
 developments in other countries. In the second 
 place, it had no realistic sense of American life: 
 it ignored the facts of the class struggle, it ac 
 cepted enthusiastically illusions like that of the 
 "melting-pot," it wasted its energy in attacking 
 "bad" business without realizing that the spirit of 
 business enterprise is itself the great enemy, it 
 failed to see the need of a consciously organized 
 intellectual class or to appreciate the necessary 
 [ xxiii ] 
 
conjunction in our day of the intellectuals and 
 the proletariat. Worst of all, it had no personal 
 psychology. Those crusaders of the "social con 
 sciousness" were far from being conscious of them 
 selves; they had never broken the umbilical cord 
 of their hereditary class, they had not discovered 
 their own individual lines of growth, they had no 
 knowledge of their own powers, no technique for 
 using them effectively. Embarked in activities 
 that instantly revealed themselves as futile and 
 fallacious, they also found their loyalties in per 
 petual conflict with one another. Inevitably their 
 zeal waned and their energy ebbed away, and the 
 tides of uniformity and commercialism swept the 
 American scene once more. 
 
 No one had grasped all these elements of the 
 social situation so firmly as Bourne. He saw that 
 we needed, first, a psychological interpretation of 
 these younger malcontents, secondly, a realistic 
 study of our institutional life, and finally, a gen 
 eral opening of the American mind to the currents 
 of contemporary desire and effort and experiment 
 abroad. And along each of these lines he did the 
 work of a pioneer. 
 
 Who, for example, had ever thought of explor- 
 [ xxiv ] 
 
ing the soul of the younger generation as Bourne 
 explored it? He had planned a long series of 
 literary portraits of its types and personalities: 
 half a dozen of them exist (along with several 
 of quite a different character! the keenest 
 satires we have), enough to show us how sensi 
 tively he responded to those detached, groping, 
 wistful, yet resolutely independent spirits whom 
 he saw weaving the iridescent fabric of the future. 
 He who had so early divined the truth of Maurice 
 Barres saying, that we never conquer the intellec 
 tual suffrages of those who precede us in life, ad 
 dressed himself exclusively to these young spirits : 
 he went out to meet them, he probed their obscuri 
 ties; one would have said that he was a sort of 
 impresario gathering the personnel of some im 
 mense orchestra, seeking in each the principle of 
 his own growth. He had studied his chosen 
 minority with such instinctive care that everything 
 he wrote came as a personal message to those, and 
 those alone, who were capable of assimilating it; 
 and that is why, as we look over his writings to 
 day, we find them a sort of corpus, a text full of 
 secret ciphers, and packed with meaning between 
 the lines, of all the most intimate questions and 
 [ xxv ] 
 
difficulties and turns of thought and feeling that 
 make up the soul of young America. He re 
 vealed us to ourselves, he intensified and at the 
 same time corroborated our desires; above all, he 
 showed us what we had in common and what new 
 increments of life might jrifif p"t ^ ^ function 
 of our differences. In these portraits he was al 
 ready doing the work of the novelist he might well 
 have become, he left two or three chapters of a 
 novel he had begun to write, in which "Karen" 
 and "Sophronisba" and "The Professor" would 
 probably have appeared, along with a whole 
 battle-array of the older and younger generations; 
 he was sketching out the role some novelist might 
 play in the parturition of the new America. 
 Everything for analysis, for self-discovery, for 
 articulation, everything to put the younger gen 
 eration in possession of itself! Everything to 
 weave the tissue of a common understanding, to 
 help the growth and freedom of the spirit ! There 
 was something prophetic in Bourne s personality. 
 In his presence one felt, in his writings one realizes, 
 that the army of youth is already assembling for 
 "the effort of reason and the adventure of beauty." 
 I shall say little of his work as a critic of in- 
 [ xx vi ] 
 
stitutions. It is enough to point out that if such 
 realistic studies as his "Trans-National America" 
 and his "Mirror of the Middle West" (a perfect 
 example, by the way, of his theory of the book 
 review as an independent enquiry with a central 
 idea of its own), his papers on the settlements 
 and on sociological fiction had appeared fifteen 
 years ago, a vastly greater amount of effective 
 energy might have survived the break-up of the 
 first phase of the social movement. When he 
 showed what mare s-nests the settlements and the 
 "melting-pot" theory and the "spirit of service" 
 are, and what snares for democracy lie in Meredith 
 Nicholson s "folksiness," he closed the gate on 
 half the blind alleys in which youth had gone 
 astray; and he who had so delighted in Veblen s 
 ruthless condensation of the mystical gases of 
 American business implied in every line he wrote 
 that there is a gulf fixed between the young in 
 tellectual and the unreformable "system." The 
 young intellectual, henceforth, was an unclassed 
 outsider, with a scent all the more keenly sharp 
 ened for new trails because the old trails were 
 denied him, and for Bourne those new trails led 
 straight, and by the shortest possible route, to a 
 [ xxvii ] 
 
society the very reverse of ours, a society such as 
 A.E. has described in the phrase, "democratic in 
 economics, aristocratic in thought," to be attained 
 through a coalition of the thinkers and the work 
 ers. The task of the thinkers, of the intelli 
 gentsia, in so far as they concerned themselves di 
 rectly with economic problems, was, in Bourne s 
 eyes, chiefly to think. It was a new doctrine for 
 
 American radicals; it precisely denoted their ad- 
 
 f 
 
 vance over the evangelicism of fifteen years ago. 
 "The young radical to-day," he wrote in one of his 
 reviews, "is not asked to be a martyr, but he is 
 asked to be a thinker, an intellectual leader. . . . 
 The labor movement in this country needs a 
 philosophy, a literature, a constructive socialist 
 analysis and criticism of industrial relations. 
 Labor will scarcely do this thinking for itself. 
 Unless middle-class radicalism threshes out its 
 categories and interpretations and undertakes this 
 constructive thought it will not be done. . . . The 
 only way by which middle-class radicalism can 
 serve is by being fiercely and concentratedly in 
 tellectual." 
 
 Finally, through Bourne more than through any 
 Other of our younger writers one gained a sense of 
 [ xxviii ] 
 
the stir of the great world, of the currents and 
 cross-currents of the contemporary European 
 spirit, behind and beneath the war, of the ten 
 dencies and experiences and common aims and 
 bonds of the younger generation everywhere. He 
 was an exception to what seems to be the general 
 rule, that Americans who are able to pass outside 
 their own national spirit at all are apt to fall 
 headlong into the national spirit of some one other 
 country: they become vehement partisans of 
 Latin Europe, or of England, or of Germany 
 and Scandinavia, or, more recently, of Russia. 
 Bourne, with that singular union of detachment 
 and affectionate penetration which he brought also 
 to his personal relationships, had entered them all 
 with an equal curiosity, an impartial delight. If 
 he had absorbed the fine idealism of the English 
 liberals, he understood also the more elemental, 
 the more emotional, the more positive urge of 
 revolutionary Russia. He was full of practical 
 suggestions from the vast social and economic 
 laboratory of modern Germany. He had caught 
 something also from the intellectual excitement 
 of young Italy; most of all, his imagination had 
 been captivated, as we can see from such essays as 
 [ xxix ] 
 
"Mon Amie," by the candor and the self-conscious 
 ness and the genius for social introspection of 
 radical France. And all these influences were 
 perpetually at play in his mind and in his writings. 
 He was the conductor of innumerable diverse in 
 spirations, a sort of clearing-house of the best 
 living ideas of the time; through him the young 
 writer and the young thinker came into instant 
 contact with whatever in the modern world he 
 most needed. And here again Bourne revealed 
 his central aim. He reviewed by choice, and with 
 a special passion, what he called the "epics of 
 youthful talent that grows great with quest and 
 desire." It is easy to see, in his articles on such 
 books as "Pelle the Conqueror" and Gorky s 
 Autobiography and "The Ragged-Trousered 
 Philanthropists," that what lured him was the 
 common struggle and aspiration of youth and 
 poverty and the creative spirit everywhere, the 
 sense of a new socialized world groping its way 
 upward. It was this rich ground-note in all his 
 work that made him, not the critic merely, but the 
 leader. 
 
 It is impossible to say, of course, what he would 
 have become if his life had been spared. The 
 [ xxx ] 
 
war had immensely stimulated his "political- 
 mindedness" : he was obsessed, during the last 
 two years of his life, with a sense of the precari- 
 ousness of free thought and free speech in this 
 country; if they were cut off, he foresaw, the 
 whole enterprise, both of the social revolution and 
 of the new American culture, would perish of 
 inanition; he felt himself at bay. Would he, 
 with all the additional provocation of a hopelessly 
 bungled peace settlement, have continued in the 
 political field, as his unfinished study on "The 
 State" might suggest*? Or would that activity, 
 while remaining vivid and consistent, have sub 
 sided into a second place behind* his more purely 
 cultural interests ? 
 
 Personally, I like to think that he would have 
 followed this second course. He speaks in the 
 "History of a Literary Radical" of "living down 
 the new orthodoxies of propaganda" as he and 
 his friends had lived down the old orthodoxies of 
 the classics, and I believe that, freed from the 
 obsessions of the war, his criticism would have 
 concentrated more and more on the problem of 
 evoking and shaping an American literature as 
 the nucleus of that rich, vital and independent 
 [ xxxi ] 
 
national life he had been seeking in so many ways 
 to promote. Who that knew his talents could 
 have wished it otherwise? Already, except for 
 the poets, the intellectual energy of the younger 
 generation has been drawn almost exclusively into 
 political interests; and the new era, which has 
 begun to draw so sharply the battle-line between 
 radicals and reactionaries, is certain only to in 
 crease this tendency. If our literary criticism is 
 always impelled sooner or later to become social 
 criticism, it is certainly because the future of our 
 literature and art depends upon the wholesale re 
 construction of a social life all the elements of 
 which are as if united in a sort of conspiracy 
 against the growth and freedom of the spirit: we 
 are in the position described by Ibsen in one of 
 his letters: "I do not think it is of much use to 
 plead the cause of art with arguments derived 
 from its own nature, which with us is still so 
 little understood, or rather so thoroughly misun 
 derstood. . . . My opinion is that at the present 
 time it is of no use to wield one s weapons for 
 art; one must simply turn them against what is 
 hostile to art." That is why Bourne, whose ulti 
 mate interest was always artistic, found himself a 
 [ xxxii ] 
 
guerilla fighter along the whole battlefront of the 
 social revolution. He was drawn into the polit 
 ical arena as a skilful specialist, called into war 
 service, is drawn into the practice of a general 
 surgery in which he may indeed accomplish much 
 but at the price of the suspension of his own 
 uniqueness. Others, at the expiration of what 
 was for him a critical moment, the moment when 
 all freedom seemed to be at stake, might have 
 been trusted to do his political work for him; the 
 whole radical tide was flowing behind him; his 
 unique function, meanwhile, was not political but 
 spiritual. It was the creation, the communication 
 of what he called "the allure of fresh and true 
 ideas, of free speculation, of artistic vigor, of cul 
 tural styles, of intelligence suffused by feeling and 
 feeling given fiber and outline by intelligence." 
 Was it not to have been hoped, therefore, that he 
 would have revived, exemplified among these new 
 revolutionary conditions, and on behalf of them, 
 the lapsed role of the man of letters ? 
 
 For if he held a hammer in one hand, he held 
 
 in the other a divining-rod. He, if any one, in 
 
 the days to come, would have conjured out of our 
 
 dry soil the green shoots of a beautiful and a 
 
 [ xxxiii ] 
 
characteristic literature : he knew that soil so well, 
 and why it was dry, and how it ought to be irri 
 gated! We have had no chart of our cultural 
 situation to compare with his "History of a 
 Literary Radical," and certainly no one has com 
 bined with an analytical gift like his, and an 
 adoration for the instinct of workmanship, so 
 burning an eye for every stir of life and color on 
 the drab American landscape. I think of a 
 sentence in one of his reviews : "The appearance 
 of dramatic imagination in any form in this coun 
 try is something to make us all drop our work and 
 run to see." That was the spirit which animated 
 all his criticism: is it not the spirit that creates 
 out of the void the thing it contemplates ? 
 
 To have known Randolph Bourne is indeed to 
 have surprised some of the finest secrets of the 
 American future. But those who lived with him 
 in friendship will remember him for reasons that 
 are far more personal, and at the same time far 
 more universal, than that: they will remember him 
 as the wondrous companion, the lyrical intellect, 
 the transparent idealist, most of all perhaps as the 
 ingenuous and lonely child. It is said that every 
 writer possesses in his vocabulary one talismanic 
 [ xxxiv ] 
 
word which he repeats again and again, half un 
 consciously, like a sort of signature, and which 
 reveals the essential secret of his personality. In 
 Bourne s case the word is "wistful"; and those 
 who accused him of malice and bitterness, not 
 realizing how instinctively we impute these quali 
 ties to the physically deformed who are so daunt 
 less in spirit that they repel our pity, would do 
 well to consider that secret signature, sown like 
 some beautiful wild flower over the meadow of 
 his writings, which no man can counterfeit, 
 which is indeed the token of their inviolable sin 
 cerity. He was a wanderer, the child of some 
 nation yet unborn, smitten with an inappeasable 
 "nostalgia for the Beloved Community on the far 
 side of socialism, he carried with him the intoxi 
 cating air of that community, the mysterious 
 aroma of all its works and ways. "High philo 
 sophic thought infused with sensuous love," he 
 wrote once, "is not this the one incorrigible dream 
 that clutches us?" It was the dream he had 
 brought back from the bright future in which he 
 lived, the dream he summoned us to realize. And 
 it issues now like a gallant command out of the 
 space left vacant by his passing. 
 
 VAN WYCK BROOKS. 
 [ xxxv ] 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION, ix 
 
 HISTORY OF A LITERARY RADICAL, i 
 OUR CULTURAL HUMILITY, 31 
 Six PORTRAITS, 45 
 
 FIRST KAREN, 47 
 
 SECOND SOPHRONISBA, 57 
 
 THIRD MON AMIE, 66 
 
 FOURTH FERGUS, 82 
 
 FIFTH THE PROFESSOR, 91 
 
 SIXTH ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS, 98 
 THIS OLDER GENERATION, 107 
 A MIRROR OF THE MIDDLE WEST, 128 
 ERNEST: OR PARENT FOR A DAY, 140 
 ON DISCUSSION, 168 
 THE PURITAN S WILL TO POWER, 176 
 THE IMMANENCE OF DOSTOEVSKY, 188 
 THE ART OF THEODORE DREISER, 195 
 THE USES OF INFALLIBILITY, 205 
 IMPRESSIONS OF EUROPE, 1913-14, 230 
 TRANS-NATIONAL AMERICA, 266 
 FRAGMENT OF A NOVEL, 300 
 
HISTORY OF A LITERARY RADICAL 
 
 FOR a man of culture, my friend Miro began his 
 literary career in a singularly unpromising way. 
 Potential statesmen in log-cabins might miracul 
 ously come in touch with all the great books of the 
 world, but the days of Miro s young school life 
 were passed in innocence of Homer or Dante or 
 Shakespeare, or any of the other traditional mind- 
 formers of the race. What Miro had for his 
 nourishment, outside the Bible, which was a 
 magical book that you must not drop on the floor, 
 or his school-readers, which were like lightning 
 flashes of unintelligible scenes, was the literature 
 that his playmates lent him exploits of British 
 soldiers in Spain and the Crimea, the death-defy 
 ing adventures of young filibusters in Cuba and 
 Nicaragua. Miro gave them a languid perusing, 
 and did not criticize their literary style. Huckle 
 berry Finn and Tom Sawyer somehow eluded him 
 until he had finished college, and no fresher tale of 
 
 to 
 
adventure drifted into his complacent home until 
 the era of "Richard Carvel" and "Janice Mere 
 dith" sharpened his wits and gave him a vague 
 feeling that there was such a thing as literary art. 
 The classics were stiffly enshrined behind glass 
 doors that were very hard to open at least Haw 
 thorne and Irving and Thackeray were there, and 
 Tennyson s and Scott s poems but nobody ever 
 discussed them or looked at them. Miro s busy 
 elders were taken up with the weekly Outlook and 
 Independent and Christian Work, and felt they 
 were doing much for Miro when they provided 
 him and his sister with St. Nicholas and The 
 Youth s Companion. It was only that Miro saw 
 the black books looking at him accusingly from 
 the case, and a rudimentary conscience, slipping 
 easily over from Calvinism to culture, forced him 
 solemnly to grapple with "The Scarlet Letter" or 
 "Marmion." All he remembers is that the writers 
 of these books he browsed among used a great 
 many words and made a great fuss over shadowy 
 offenses and conflicts and passions that did not 
 even stimulate his imagination with sufficient 
 force to cause him to ask his elders what it was all 
 about. Certainly the filibusters were easier. 
 
 [2] 
 
At school Miro was early impressed with the 
 vast dignity of the literary works and names he 
 was compelled to learn. Shakespeare and Goethe 
 and Dante lifted their plaster heads frowningly 
 above the teacher s, as they perched on shelves 
 about the room. Much was said of the greatness 
 of literature. But the art of phonetics and the 
 complications of grammar swamped Miro s early 
 school years. It was not until he reached the 
 High School that literature began really to as 
 sume that sacredness which he had heretofore felt 
 only for Holy Scripture. His initiation into cul 
 ture was made almost a religious mystery by the 
 conscientious and harassed teacher. As the Dead- 
 wood Boys and Henty and David Harum slipped 
 away from Miro s soul in the presence of Milton s 
 "Comus" and Burke "On Conciliation," a cultural 
 devoutness was engendered in him that never 
 really died. At first it did not take Miro beyond 
 the stage where your conscience is strong enough to 
 make you uncomfortable, but not strong enough to 
 make you do anything about it. Miro did not 
 actually become an omnivorous reader of great 
 books. But he was filled with a rich grief that 
 the millions pursued cheap and vulgar fiction in- 
 
 [3] 
 
stead of the best that has been thought and said in 
 the world. Miro indiscriminately bought cheap 
 editions of the English classics and read them 
 with a certain patient incomprehension. 
 
 As for the dead classics, they came to Miro from 
 the hands of his teachers with a prestige even 
 vaster than the books of his native tongue. No 
 doubt ever entered his head that four years of 
 Latin and three years of Greek, an hour a day, 
 were the important preparation he needed for his 
 future as an American citizen. No doubt ever 
 hurt him that the world into which he would pass 
 would be a world where, as his teacher said, Latin 
 and Greek were a solace to the aged, a quickener of 
 taste, a refreshment after manual labor, and a clue 
 to the general knowledge of all human things. 
 Miro would as soon have doubted the rising of the 
 sun as have doubted the wisdom of these serious, 
 puckered women who had the precious manipula 
 tion of his cultural upbringing in their charge. 
 Miro was a bright, if a rather vague, little boy, 
 and a fusion of brightness and docility gave him 
 high marks in the school where we went together. 
 
 No one ever doubted that these marks expressed 
 Miro s assimilation of the books we pored over. 
 
 [4] 
 
But he told me later that he had never really 
 known what he was studying. Caesar, Virgil, 
 Cicero, Xenophon, Homer, were veiled and misty 
 experiences to him. His mind was a moving pres 
 ent, obliterating each day what it had read the day 
 before, and piercing into a no more comprehended 
 future. He could at no time have given any in 
 telligible account of ^Eneas s wanderings or what 
 Cicero was really inveighing against. The Iliad 
 was even more obscure. The only thing which 
 impressed him deeply was an expurgated passage, 
 which he looked up somewhere else and found to 
 be about Mars and Venus caught in the golden 
 bed. Csesar seemed to be at war, and Xenophon 
 wandering somewhere in Asia Minor, with about 
 the same lengthiness and hardship as Miro suffered 
 in reading him. The trouble, Miro thought after 
 wards, was that these books were to his mind 
 flickering lights in a vast jungle of ignorance. He 
 does not remember marvelling at the excessive 
 dulness of the stories themselves. He plodded 
 his faithful way, using them as his conscientious 
 teachers did, as exercises in language. He looked 
 on Virgil and Cicero as essentially problems in dis 
 entangling words which had unaccountably gotten 
 
 [5] 
 
into a bizarre order, and in recognizing certain 
 rather amusing and ingenious combinations, known 
 as "constructions." Why these words took so 
 irritating an order Miro never knew, but he always 
 connected the problem with -those algebraic puz 
 zles he had elsewhere to unravel. Virgil s words 
 were further complicated by being arranged in 
 lines which one had to "scan." Miro was pleased 
 with the rhythm, and there were stanzas that had 
 a roll of their own. But the inexorable trans 
 lating that had to go on tore all this fabric of 
 poetry to pieces. His translations were impecca 
 ble, but, as he never wrote them down, he had 
 * never before his eyes the consecutive story. 
 
 Translations Miro never saw. He knew that 
 they were implements of deadly sin that boys used 
 to cheat with. His horror of them was such as a 
 saint might feel towards a parody of the Bible. 
 Just before Miro left school, his sister in a younger 
 class began to read a prose translation of the 
 Odyssey, and Miro remembers the scorn with 
 which he looked down on so sneaking an entrance 
 into the temple of light. He knew that not every 
 one could study Latin and Greek, and he learned 
 to be proud of his knowledge. When at last he 
 
 [6] 
 
had passed his examinations for college his 
 Latin composition and grammar, his syntax and 
 his sight-reading, and his Greek composition and 
 grammar, his Greek syntax and sight-reading, and 
 his translation of Gallic battles and Anabatic 
 frosts, and Dido s farewell and Cicero s objurga 
 tions his zealous rage did not abate. He even 
 insisted on reading the Bucolics, while he was 
 away on his vacation, and a book or two in the 
 Odyssey. His family was a little chilled by his 
 studiousness, but he knew well that he was laying 
 up cultural treasures in heaven, where moth and 
 rust do not corrupt, neither do thieves break 
 in and steal. 
 
 Arrived at college, Miro expanded his cultural 
 interests on the approved lines. He read Horace 
 and Plato, Lysias and Terence, impartially, with 
 faithful conscience. Horace was the most excit 
 ing because of the parodies that were beginning to 
 appear in the cleverer newspapers. Miro scarcely 
 knew whether to be amused or shocked at "Odi 
 Persicos" or "Integer Vitse" done into current 
 slang. The professors, mild-mannered men who 
 knew their place and kept it, never mentioned 
 these impudent adventures, but for Miro it was 
 
 [7] 
 
the first crack in his Ptolemaic system of rever 
 ences. There came a time when his mind began 
 to feel replete, when this heavy pushing through 
 the opaque medium of dead language began to fa 
 tigue him. He should have been able to read flu 
 ently, but there were always turning up new styles, 
 new constructions, to plague him. Latin became 
 to him like a constant diet of beefsteak, and 
 Greek like a constant diet of fine wheaten bread. 
 They lost their taste. These witty poets and os 
 tentatious orators what were they all about? 
 What was their background? Where did they fit 
 into Miro s life? The professors knew some his 
 tory, but what did that history mean? Miro 
 found himself surfeited and dissatisfied. He be 
 gan to look furtively at translations to get some 
 better English than he was able to provide. The 
 hair-splittings of Plato began to bore him when 
 he saw them in crystal-clear English, and not muf 
 fled in the original Greek. His apostasy had be 
 gun. 
 
 It was not much better in his study of English 
 literature. Miro was given a huge anthology, a 
 sort of press-clipping bureau of belles-lettres, from 
 Chaucer to Arthur Symons. Under the direction 
 
 [8] 
 
of a professor who was laying out a career for 
 himself as poet or "modern singer," as he ex 
 pressed it the class went briskly through the cen 
 turies sampling their genius and tasting the vari 
 ous literary flavors. The enterprise reminded 
 Miro of those books of woollen samples which one 
 looks through when one is to have a suit of clothes 
 made. But in this case, the student did not even 
 have the pleasure of seeing the suit of clothes. 
 All that was expected of him, apparently, was that 
 he should become familiar, from these microscopic 
 pieces, with the different textures and patterns. 
 The great writers passed before his mind like fig 
 ures in a crowded street. There was no time for 
 preferences. Indeed the professor strove dili 
 gently to give each writer his just due. How was 
 one to appreciate the great thoughts and the great 
 styles if one began to choose violently between 
 them, or attempt any discrimination on grounds 
 of their peculiar congeniality for one s own soul^ 
 Criticism had to spurn such subjectivity, scholar 
 ship could not be wilful. The neatly arranged 
 book of "readings," with its medicinal doses of 
 inspiration, became the symbol of Miro s educa 
 tion. 
 
 [9] 
 
These early years of college did not deprive 
 Miro of his cultural loyalty, but they deadened his 
 appetite. Although almost inconceivably docile, 
 he found himself being bored. He had come 
 from school a serious boy, with more than a touch 
 of priggishness in him, and a vague aspiration to 
 be a "man of letters." He found himself becom 
 ing a collector of literary odds-and-ends. If he 
 did not formulate this feeling clearly, he at least 
 knew. He found that the literary life was not as 
 interesting as he had expected. He sought no ad 
 ventures. When he wrote, it was graceful lyrics 
 or polite criticisms of William Collins or Charles 
 Lamb. These canonized saints of culture still 
 held the field for Miro, however. There was 
 nothing between them and that popular literature 
 of the day that all good men bemoaned. Classic 
 or popular, "highbrow" or "lowbrow," this was 
 the choice, and Miro unquestioningly took the or 
 thodox heaven. In 1912 the most popular of 
 Miro s English professors had never heard of Gals 
 worthy, and another was creating a flurry of scan 
 dal in the department by recommending Chester 
 ton to his classes. It would scarcely have been 
 in college that Miro would have learned of an 
 
 [10] 
 
escape from the closed dichotomy of culture. 
 Bored with the "classic," and frozen with horror 
 at the "popular," his career as a man of culture 
 must have come to a dragging end if he had not 
 been suddenly liberated by a chance lecture which 
 he happened to hear while he was at home for the 
 holidays. 
 
 The literary radical who appeared before the Ly 
 ceum Club of Miro s village was none other than 
 Professor William Lyon Phelps, and it is to that 
 evening of cultural audacity Miro thinks he owes 
 all his later emancipation. The lecturer grap 
 pled with the "modern novel," and tossed Hardy, 
 Tolstoi, Turgenev, Meredith, even Trollope, into 
 the minds of the charmed audience with such ef 
 fect that the virgin shelves of the village library 
 were ravished for days to come by the eager minds 
 upon whom these great names dawned for the first 
 time. "Jude the Obscure" and "Resurrection" 
 were of course kept officially away from the vul 
 gar, but Miro managed to find "Smoke" and 
 "Virgin Soil" and "Anna Karenina" and "The 
 Warden" and "A Pair of Blue Eyes" and "The 
 Return of the Native." Later at college he ex 
 plored the forbidden realms. It was as if some 
 
devout and restless saint had suddenly been intro 
 duced to the Apocrypha. A new world was 
 opened to Miro that was neither "classic" nor 
 "popular," and yet which came to one under the 
 most unimpeachable auspices. There was, at 
 first, it is true, an air of illicit adventure about the 
 enterprise. The lecturer who made himself the 
 missionary of such vigorous and piquant doctrine 
 had the air of being a heretic, or at least a boy 
 playing out- of school. But Miro himself re 
 turned to college a cultural revolutionist. His 
 orthodoxies crumbled. He did not try to recon 
 cile the new with the old. He applied pick and 
 dynamite to the whole structure of the canon. 
 Irony, humor, tragedy, sensuality, suddenly ap 
 peared to him as literary qualities in forms that 
 he could understand. They were like oxygen to 
 his soul. 
 
 If these qualities were in the books he had been 
 reading, he had never felt them. The expur 
 gated sample-books he had studied had passed too 
 swiftly over the Elizabethans to give him a sense 
 of their lustiness. Miro immersed himself volup 
 tuously in the pessimism of Hardy. He fed on 
 the poignant torture of Tolstoi. While he was 
 
 [12] 
 
reading "Resurrection," his class in literature was 
 making an intensive" study of Tennyson. It 
 was too much. Miro rose in revolt. He for 
 swore literary courses forever, dead rituals in 
 which anaemic priests mumbled their trite critical 
 commentary. Miro did not know that to naugh 
 tier critics even Mr. Phelps might eventually seem 
 a pale and timid Gideon, himself stuck in moral 
 sloughs. He was grateful enough for that blast 
 of trumpets which made his own scholastic walls 
 fall down. 
 
 The next stage in Miro s cultural life was one 
 of frank revolt. He became as violent as a here 
 tic as he had been docile as a believer. Modern 
 novels merely started the rift that widened into 
 modern ideas. The professors were of little use. 
 Indeed, when Miro joined a group of radicals who 
 had started a new college paper, a relentless ven 
 detta began with the teachers. Miro and his 
 friends threw over everything that was mere lit 
 erature. Social purpose must shine from any 
 writing that was to rouse their enthusiasm. Lit 
 erary flavor was to be permissible only where it 
 made vivid high and revolutionary thought. 
 [Tolstoi became their god, Wells their high priest. 
 
 [13] 
 
Chesterton infuriated them. They wrote violent 
 assaults upon him which began in imitation of his 
 cool paradoxical ity and ended in incoherent rav 
 ings. There were so many enemies to their new 
 fervor that they scarcely knew where to begin. 
 There were not only the old tables of stone to 
 destroy, but there were new and threatening 
 prophets of the eternal verities who had to be 
 exposed. The nineteenth century which they had 
 studied must be weeded of its nauseous moralists. 
 The instructors consulted together how they might 
 put down the revolt, and bring these sinners back 
 to the faith of cultural scripture. 
 
 It was of no avail. In a short time Miro had 
 been converted from an aspiration for the career 
 of a cultivated "man of letters" to a fiery zeal for 
 artistic and literary propaganda in the service of 
 radical ideas. One of the results of this conver 
 sion was the discovery that he really had no stand 
 ards of critical taste. Miro had been reverential 
 so long that he had felt no preferences. Every 
 thing that was classic had to be good to him. 
 But now that he had thrown away the books that 
 were stamped with the mark of the classic mint, 
 and was dealing with the raw materials of letters, 
 
he had to become a critic and make selection. It 
 was not enough that a book should be radical. 
 Some of the books he read, though impeccably 
 revolutionary as to ideas, were clearly poor as lit 
 erature. His muffled taste began to assert itself. 
 He found himself impressionable where before he 
 had been only mildly acquisitive. The literature 
 of revolt and free speculation fired him into a state 
 of spiritual explosiveness. All that he read now 
 stood out in brighter colors and in sharper outlines 
 than before. As he reached a better balance, he 
 began to feel the vigor of literary form, the value 
 of sincerity and freshness of style. He began to 
 look for them keenly in everything he read. It 
 was long before Miro realized that enthusiasm not 
 docility had made him critical. He became a lit 
 tle proud of his sensitive and discriminating reac 
 tions to the modern and the unsifted. 
 
 This pursuit had to take place without any help 
 from the college. After Miro graduated, it is true 
 that it became the fashion to study literature as the 
 record of ideas and not merely as a canon of sa 
 cred books to be analyzed, commented upon, and 
 absorbed. But no dent was made upon the sys 
 tem in Miro s time, and, the inventory of English 
 
 [15] 
 
criticism not going beyond Stevenson, no college 
 course went beyond Stevenson. The Elizabeth 
 ans had been exhumed and fumigated, but the 
 most popular attention went to the gallery of Vic 
 torians, who combined moral soundness with lit 
 erary beauty, and were therefore considered whole 
 some food for young men. The instructors all 
 remained in the state of reverence which saw all 
 things good that had been immemorially taught. 
 Miro s own teacher was a fragile, earnest young 
 man, whose robuster parents had evidently seized 
 upon his nature as a fortunate pledge of what the 
 family might produce in the way of an intellec 
 tual flower that should surpass in culture and gen 
 tility the ambitions of his parents. His studious- 
 ness, hopeless for his father s career as grocer, had 
 therefore been capitalized into education. 
 
 The product now shone forth as one of the most 
 successful and promising younger instructors in 
 the department. He knew his subject. Card-in 
 dexes filled his room, covering in detail the works, 
 lives, and deaths of the illustrious persons whom 
 he expounded, as well as everything that had been 
 said about them in the way of appreciation or 
 interpretation. An endless number of lectures 
 
 [16] 
 
and courses could be made from this bountiful 
 store. He never tried to write himself, but he 
 knew all about the different kinds of writing, and 
 when he corrected the boys themes he knew infal 
 libly what to tell them to avoid. Miro s vagaries 
 scandalized his teacher all the more because during 
 his first year in college Miro had been generally 
 noticed as one with the proper sobriety and schol 
 arly patience to graduate into a similar priestly 
 calling. Miro found scant sympathy in the 
 young man. To the latter, literary studies were a 
 science not an art, and they were to be treated 
 with somewhat the same cold rigor of delimitation 
 and analysis as any other science. Miro felt his 
 teacher s recoil at the idea that literature was sig 
 nificant only as the expression of personality or 
 as interpretation of some social movement. Miro 
 saw how uneasy he became when he was con 
 fronted with current literature. It was clear that 
 Miro s slowly growing critical sense had not a 
 counterpart in the scholastic mind. 
 
 When Miro and his friends abandoned literary 
 studies, they followed after the teachers of history 
 and philosophy, intellectual arenas of which the 
 literary professors seemed scandalously ignorant. 
 
 [17] 
 
At this ignorance Miro boiled with contempt. 
 Here were the profitable clues that would give 
 meaning to dusty literary scholarship, but the 
 scholars had not the wits to seize them. They 
 lived along, playing what seemed to Miro a rather 
 dreary game, when they were not gaping rever 
 ently at ideas and forms which they scarcely had 
 the genuine personality to appreciate. Miro felt 
 once and for all free of these mysteries and rever 
 ences. He was to know the world as it has been 
 and as it is. He was to put literature into its 
 proper place, making all "culture" serve its ap 
 prenticeship for him as interpretation of things 
 larger than itself, of the course of individual lives 
 and the great tides of society. 
 
 Miro s later cultural life is not without interest. 
 When he had finished college and his architectural 
 course, and was making headway in his profession, 
 his philosophy of the intellectual life began to 
 straighten itself out. Rapid as his surrender of 
 orthodoxy had been, it had taken him some time 
 to live down that early education. He found now 
 that he would have to live down his heresies also, 
 and get some coherent system of tastes that was his 
 
own and not the fruit of either docility or the 
 zeal of propaganda. 
 
 The old battles that were still going on helped 
 Miro to realize his modern position. It was a 
 queer, musty quarrel, but it was enlisting minds 
 from all classes and of all intellectual fibers. The 
 "classics" were dying hard, as Miro recognized 
 whenever he read, in the magazines, attacks on 
 the "new education." He found that professors 
 were still tak>en seriously who declared in passion 
 that without the universal study of the Latin lan 
 guage in American schools all conceptions of 
 taste, standards, criticism, the historic sense itself, 
 would vanish from the earth. He found that 
 even as late as 1917 professional men were gath 
 ering together in solemn conclave and buttressing 
 the "value of the classics" with testimonials from 
 "successful men" in a variety of vocations. Miro 
 was amused at the fact that the mighty studies 
 once pressed upon him so uncritically should now 
 require, like the patent medicines, testimonials as 
 to their virtue. Bank presidents, lawyers, and 
 editors had taken the Latin language regularly 
 for years, and had found its effects painless and 
 
invigorating. He could not escape the uncon 
 scious satire that such plump and prosperous Amer 
 icans expressed when they thought it admirable to 
 save their cherished intellectual traditions in any 
 such fashion. 
 
 Other conservatives Miro saw to be abandon 
 ing the line of opposition to science, only to fall 
 back on the line of a defensive against "pseudo- 
 science," as they seemed to call whatever intellec 
 tual interests had not yet become indubitably rep 
 utable. It was a line which would hold them 
 rather strongly for a time, Miro thought, because 
 so many of the cultural revolutionists agreed 
 with them in hating some of these arrogant and 
 mechanical psychologies and sociologies that re 
 duced life to figures or organisms. But Miro felt 
 also how obstructive was their fight. If the 
 "classics" had done little for him except to hold 
 his mind in an uncomprehending prison, and fet 
 ter his spontaneous taste, they seemed to have done 
 little more for even the thorough scholars. When 
 professors had devoted scholarly lives to the 
 "classics" only to exhibit in their own polemics 
 none of the urbanity and intellectual command 
 which weje supposed by the believer somehow to 
 
 [20] 
 
rub off automatically on the faithful student, 
 Miro had to conclude an absence of causal connec 
 tion between the "classics" and the able modern 
 mind. When, moreover, critical power or crea 
 tive literary work became almost extinct among 
 these defenders of the "old education," Miro felt 
 sure that a revolution was needed in the materials 
 and attitudes of "culture." 
 
 The case of the defenders was all the weaker be 
 cause their enemies were not wanton infidels, ig 
 norant of the holy places they profaned. They 
 were rather cultural "Modernists," reforming the 
 church from within. They had the classic back 
 ground, these young vandals, but they had es 
 caped from its flat and unoriented surface. 
 Abreast of the newer objective, impersonal stand 
 ards of thinking, they saw the weakness of these 
 archaic minds which could only appeal to vested 
 interests in culture and testimonials from success 
 ful men. 
 
 The older critics had long since disavowed the 
 intention of discriminating among current writers. 
 These men, who had to have an Academy to pro 
 tect them, lumped the younger writers of verse 
 and prose together as "anarchic" and 
 
 [21] 
 
tic," and had become, in these latter days, merely 
 peevish and querulous, protesting in favor of 
 standards that no longer represented our best val 
 ues. Every one, in Miro s time, bemoaned the 
 lack of critics, but the older critics seemed to have 
 lost all sense of hospitality and to have become 
 tired and a little spitefully disconsolate, while the 
 newer ones were too intent on their crusades 
 against puritanism and philistinism to have time 
 I for a constructive pointing of the way. 
 
 Miro had a very real sense of standing at the 
 end of an era. He and his friends had lived down 
 
 Iboth their old orthodoxies of the classics and their 
 new orthodoxies of propaganda. Gone were the 
 priggishness and self -consciousness which had 
 marked their teachers. The new culture would 
 be more personal than the old, but it would not be 
 held as a personal property. It would be demo 
 cratic in the sense that it would represent each 
 person s honest spontaneous taste. The old atti 
 tude was only speciously democratic. The as 
 sumption was that if you pressed your material 
 long enough and winningly enough upon your cul- 
 turable public, they would acquire it. But the 
 material was something handed down, not grown 
 
 [22] 
 
in the garden of their own appreciations. Under 
 these conditions the critic and appreciator became 
 a mere impersonal register of orthodox opinion. 
 The cultivated person, in conforming his judg 
 ments to what was authoritatively taught him, 
 was really a member of the herd a cultivated 
 herd, it is true, but still a herd. It was the mass 
 that spoke through the critic and not his own dis 
 crimination. These authoritative judgments 
 might, of course, have come probably had come 
 to the herd through discerning critics, but in 
 Miro s time judgment in the schools had petrified. 
 One believed not because one felt the original dis 
 cernment, but because one was impressed by the 
 weight and reputability of opinion. At least so 
 it seemed to Miro. 
 
 Now just as the artists had become tired of con 
 ventions and were breaking through into new and 
 personal forms, so Miro saw the younger critics 
 breaking through these cultural conventions. To 
 the elders the result would seem mere anarchy. 
 But Miro s attitude did not want to destroy, it 
 merely wanted to rearrange the materials. He 
 wanted no more second-hand appreciations. No 
 one s cultural store was to include anything that 
 
 [23] 
 
one could not be enthusiastic about. One s ac 
 quaintance with the best that had been said and 
 thought should be encouraged in Miro s ideal 
 school to follow the lines of one s temperament. 
 Miro, having thrown out the old gods, found them 
 slowly and properly coming back to him. Some 
 would always repel him, others he hoped to un 
 derstand eventually. But if it took wisdom to 
 write the great books, did it not also take wis 
 dom to understand them? Even the Latin writ 
 ers he hoped to recover, with the aid of transla 
 tions. But why bother with Greek when you 
 could get Euripides in the marvellous verse of 
 Gilbert Murray? Miro was willing to believe 
 that no education was complete without at least 
 an inoculation of the virus of the two orthodoxies 
 that he was transcending. 
 
 As Miro looked around the American scene, he 
 wondered where the critics were to come from. 
 He saw, on the one hand, Mr. Mencken and Mr. 
 Dreiser and their friends, going heavily forth to 
 battle with the Philistines, glorying in pachyder 
 matous vulgarisms that hurt the polite and culti 
 vated young men of the old school. And he saw 
 these violent critics, in their rage against puritan- 
 
 [24] 
 
ism, becoming themselves moralists, with the same 
 bigotry and tastelessness as their enemies. No, 
 these would never do. On the other hand, he saw 
 Mr. Stuart P. Sherman, in his youthful if some 
 what belated ardor, revolting so conscientiously 
 against the "naturalism" and crude expression of 
 current efforts that, in his defense of belles-lettres^ 
 of the fine tradition of literary art, he himself be 
 came a moralist of the intensest brand, and as 
 critic plumped for Arnold Bennett, because that 
 clever man had a feeling for the proprieties of hu 
 man conduct. No, Mr. Sherman would do even 
 less adequately. His fine sympathies were as 
 much out of the current as was the specious clas 
 sicism of Professor Shorey. He would have to 
 look for the critics among the young men who had 
 an abounding sense of life, as well as a feeling for 
 literary form. They would be men who had not 
 been content to live on their cultural inheritance, 
 but had gone out into the modern world and 
 amassed a fresh fortune of their own. They 
 would be men who were not squeamish, who did 
 not feel the delicate differences between "animal" 
 and "human" conduct, who were enthusiastic 
 about Mark Twain and Gorki as well as Remain 
 
 [25] 
 
Holland, and at the same time were thrilled by 
 Copeau s theater. 
 
 Where was a better program for culture, for 
 any kind of literary art? Culture as a living ef 
 fort, a driving attempt both at sincere expression 
 and at the comprehension of sincere expression 
 wherever it was found ! Appreciation to be as far 
 removed from the "I know what I like !" as from 
 the textbook impeccability of taste! If each 
 mind sought its own along these lines, would not 
 many find themselves agreed? Miro insisted on 
 liking Amy Lowell s attempt to outline the ten 
 dencies in American poetry in a form which made 
 clear the struggles of contemporary men and 
 women with the tradition and against "every affec 
 tation of the mind." He began to see in the new 
 class-consciousness of poets the ending of that old 
 division which "culture" made between the chosen 
 people and the gentiles. We were now to form 
 little pools of workers and appreciators of similar 
 temperaments and tastes. The little magazines 
 that were starting up became voices for these new 
 communities of sentiment. Miro thought that 
 perhaps at first it was right to adopt a tentative 
 superciliousness towards the rest of the world, so 
 
 [26] 
 
that both Mr. Mencken with his shudders at the 
 vulgar Demos and Mr. Sherman with his obsession 
 with the sanely and wholesomely American might 
 be shut out from influence. Instead of fighting 
 the Philistine in the name of freedom, or fighting 
 the vulgar iconoclast in the name of wholesome 
 human notions, it might be better to write for 
 one s own band of comprehenders, in order that 
 one might have something genuine with which to 
 appeal to both the mob of the "bourgeois" and the 
 ferocious vandals who had been dividing the field 
 among them. Far better a quarrel among these 
 intensely self-conscious groups than the issues that 
 had filled The Atlantic and The Nation with their 
 dreary obsolescence. Far better for the mind that 
 aspired towards "culture" to be told not to con 
 form or worship, but to search out its group, its 
 own temperamental community of sentiment, and 
 there deepen appreciations through sympathetic 
 contact. 
 
 It was no longer a question of being hospitable 
 towards the work of other countries. Miro found 
 the whole world open to him, in these days, 
 through the enterprise of publishers. He and his 
 friends felt more sympathetic with certain groups 
 
 [27] 
 
in France and Russia than they did with the varie 
 gated "prominent authors" of their own land. 
 Winston Churchill as a novelist came to seem 
 more of an alien than Artzybashev. The fact of 
 culture being international had been followed by 
 a sense of its being. The old cultural attitude 
 had been hospitable enough, but it had imported 
 its alien culture in the form of "comparative lit 
 erature." It was hospitable only in trying to 
 mould its own taste to the orthodox canons abroad. 
 The older American critic was mostly interested in 
 getting the proper rank and reverence for what he 
 borrowed. The new critic will take what suits his 
 community of sentiment. He will want to link 
 up not with the foreign canon, but with that group 
 which is nearest in spirit with the effort he and his 
 friends are making. The American has to work to 
 interpret and portray the life he knows. He can 
 not be international in the sense that anything but 
 the life in which he is saturated, with its questions 
 and its colors, can be the material for his art. 
 But he can be international and must be in the 
 sense that he works with a certain hopeful vision 
 of a "young world," and with certain ideal values 
 
 [28] 
 
upon which the younger men, stained and revolted 
 by war, in all countries are agreeing. 
 
 Miro wonders sometimes whether the direction 
 in which he is tending will not bring him around 
 the circle again to a new classicism. The last 
 stage in the history of the man of culture will be 
 that "classic" which he did not understand and 
 which his mind spent its youth in overthrowing. 
 But it will be a classicism far different from that 
 which was so unintelligently handed down to him 
 in the American world. It will be something 
 worked out and lived into. Looking into the fu 
 ture he will have to do what Van Wyck Brooks 
 calls "inventing a usable past." Finding little in 
 the American tradition that is not tainted with 
 sweetness and light and burdened with the terrible 
 patronage of bourgeois society, the new classicist 
 will yet rescue Thoreau and Whitman and Mark 
 Twain and try to tap through them a certain eter 
 nal human tradition of abounding vitality and 
 moral freedom, and so build out the future. If 
 the classic means power with restraint, vitality 
 with harmony, a fusion of intellect and feeling, 
 and a keen sense of the artistic conscience, then the 
 
 [29] 
 
revolutionary world is coming out into the classic. 
 When Miro sees behind the minds of The Masses 
 group a desire for form and for expressive beauty, 
 and sees the radicals following Jacques Copeau 
 and reading Chekhov, he smiles at the thought of 
 the American critics, young and old, who do not 
 know yet that they are dead. 
 
 [30] 
 
OUR CULTURAL HUMILITY 
 
 IT was Matthew Arnold, read and reverenced 
 by the generation immediately preceding our own, 
 who set to our eyes a definition and a goal of cul 
 ture which has become the common property of all 
 our world. To know the best that had been 
 thought and said, to appreciate the master-works 
 which the previous civilizations had produced, to 
 put our minds and appreciations in contact with 
 the great of all ages, here was a clear ideal which 
 dissolved the mists in which the vaguenesses of cul 
 ture had been lost. And it was an ideal that ap 
 pealed with peculiar force to Americans. For it 
 was a democratic ideal; every one who had the 
 energy and perseverance could reasonably expect 
 to acquire by taking thought that orientation of 
 soul to which Arnold gave the magic name of cul 
 ture. And it was a quantitative ideal; culture 
 was a matter of acquisition with appreciation 
 and prayerfulness perhaps, but still a matter of 
 
 [31] 
 
adding little by little to one s store until one 
 should have a vision of that radiant limit, when 
 one knew all the best that had been thought and 
 said and pictured in the world. 
 
 I do not know in just what way the British pub 
 lic responded to Arnold s eloquence; if the pro 
 phetic wrath of Ruskin failed to stir them, it is 
 not probable that they were moved by the persua 
 siveness of Arnold. But I do know that, coming 
 at a time when America was producing rapidly an 
 enormous number of people who were "comfort 
 ably off," as the phrase goes, and who were suf 
 ficiently awake to feel their limitations, with the 
 broader horizons of Europe just opening on the 
 view, the new doctrine had the most decisive effect 
 on our succeeding spiritual history. The "land- 
 of-liberty" American of the era of Dickens still ex 
 ists in the British weeklies and in observations of 
 America by callow young journalists, but as a liv 
 ing species he has long been extinct. His place 
 has been taken by a person whose pride is meas 
 ured not by the greatness of the "land of the free," 
 but by his own orientation in Europe. 
 
 Already in the nineties, our college professors 
 and our artists were beginning to require the seal 
 
 [32] 
 
of a European training to justify their existence. 
 We appropriated the German system of education. 
 Our millionaires began the collecting of pictures 
 and the endowment of museums with foreign 
 works of art. We began the exportation of 
 school-teachers for a summer tour of Europe. 
 American art and music colonies sprang up in 
 Paris and Berlin and Munich. The movement 
 became a rush. That mystical premonition of 
 Europe, which Henry James tells us he had from 
 his earliest boyhood, became the common property 
 of the talented young American, who felt a cer 
 tain starvation in his own land, and longed for the 
 fleshpots of European culture. But the bour 
 geoisie soon followed the artistic and the semi-ar 
 tistic, and Europe became so much the fashion that 
 it is now almost a test of respectability to have 
 traveled at least once abroad. 
 
 Underlying all this vivacious emigration, there 
 was of course a real if vague thirst for "culture," 
 and, in strict accord with Arnold s definition, the 
 idea that somehow culture could be imbibed, that 
 from the contact with the treasures of Europe 
 there would be rubbed off on us a little of that 
 grace which had made the art. So for those who 
 
 [33] 
 
could not travel abroad, our millionaires trans 
 ported, in almost terrifying bulk and at staggering 
 cost, samples of everything that the foreign gal 
 leries had to show. We were to acquire culture at 
 any cost, and we had no doubt that we had dis 
 covered the royal road to it. We followed it, at 
 any rate, with eye single to the goal. The natur 
 ally sensitive, who really found in the European 
 literature and arts some sort of spiritual nourish 
 ment, set the pace, and the crowd followed at their 
 heels. 
 
 This cultural humility of ours astonished and 
 still astonishes Europe. In England, where "cul 
 ture" is taken very frivolously, the bated breath of 
 the American, when he speaks of Shakespeare or 
 Tennyson or Browning, is always cause for amuse 
 ment. And the Frenchman is always a little puz 
 zled at the crowds who attend lectures in Paris 
 on "How to See Europe Intelligently," or are 
 taken in vast parties through the Louvre. The 
 European objects a little to being so constantly 
 regarded as the keeper of a huge museum. If you 
 speak to him of culture, you find him frankly more 
 interested in contemporaneous literature and art 
 and music than in his worthies of the olden time, 
 
 [34] 
 
more interested in discriminating the good of to 
 day than in accepting the classics. If he is a cul 
 tivated person, he is much more interested usually 
 in quarreling about a living dog than in reverenc 
 ing a dead lion. If he is a French lettre^ for in 
 stance, he will be producing a book on the psychol 
 ogy of some living writer, while the Anglo-Saxon 
 will be writing another on Shakespeare. His 
 whole attitude towards the things of culture, be it 
 noted, is one of daily appreciation and intimacy, 
 not that attitude of reverence with which we 
 Americans approach alien art, and which penalizes 
 cultural heresy among us. 
 
 The European may be enthusiastic, polemic, ra 
 diant, concerning his culture; he is never humble. 
 And he is, above all, never humble before the cul 
 ture of another country. The Frenchman will 
 hear nothing but French music, read nothing but 
 French literature, and prefers his own art to that 
 of any other nation. He can hardly understand 
 our almost pathetic eagerness to learn of the cul 
 ture of other nations, our humility of worship in 
 the presence of art that in no sense represents the 
 expression of any of our ideals and motivating 
 forces. 
 
 [35] 
 
To a genuinely patriotic American this cultural 
 humility of ours is somewhat humiliating. In re 
 sponse to this eager inexhaustible interest in Eu 
 rope, where is Europe s interest in us? Europe is 
 to us the land of history, of mellow tradition, of 
 the arts and graces of life, of the best that has been 
 said and thought in the world. To Europe we are 
 the land of crude racial chaos, of skyscrapers and 
 bluff, of millionaires and "bosses." A French 
 philosopher visits us, and we are all eagerness to 
 get from him an orientation in all that is moving in 
 the world of thought across the seas. But does he 
 ask about our philosophy, does he seek an orienta 
 tion in the American thought of the day? Not at 
 all. Our humility has kept us from forcing it 
 upon his attention, and it scarcely exists for him. 
 Our advertising genius, so powerful and universal 
 where soap and biscuits are concerned, wilts and 
 languishes before the task of trumpeting our intel 
 lectual and spiritual products before the world. 
 Yet there can be little doubt which is the more in 
 trinsically worth advertising. But our humility 
 causes us to be taken at our own face value, and 
 for all this patient fixity of gaze upon Europe, we 
 get little reward except to be ignored, or to have 
 
 [36] 
 
our interest somewhat contemptuously dismissed 
 as parasitic. 
 
 And with justice ! For our very goal and ideal 
 of culture has made us parasites. Our method 
 has been exactly wrong. For the truth is that 
 the definition of culture, which we have accepted 
 with such devastating enthusiasm, is a definition 
 emanating from that very barbarism from which 
 its author recoiled in such horror. If it were 
 not that all our attitude showed that we had 
 adopted a quite different standard, it would be 
 the merest platitude to say that culture is not an 
 acquired familiarity with things outside, but an 
 inner and constantly operating taste, a fresh and 
 responsive power of discrimination, and the in 
 sistent judging of everything that comes to our 
 minds and senses. It is clear that such a sensitive 
 taste cannot be acquired by torturing our appre 
 ciations into conformity with the judgments of 
 others, no matter how "authoritative" those judg 
 ments may be. Such a method means a hypnoti- 
 zation of judgment, not a true development of 
 soul. 
 
 At the back of Arnold s definition is, of course, 
 the implication that if we have only learned to 
 
 [37] 
 
appreciate the "best," we shall have been trained 
 thus to discriminate generally, that our apprecia 
 tion of Shakespeare will somehow spill over into 
 admiration of the incomparable art of Mr. G. 
 Lowes Dickinson. This is, of course, exactly to 
 reverse the psychological process. A true appre 
 ciation of the remote and the magnificent is ac 
 quired only after the judgment has learned to 
 discriminate with accuracy and taste between the 
 good and bad, the sincere and the false, of the 
 familiar and contemporaneous art and writing of 
 every day. To set up an alien standard of the 
 classics is merely to give our lazy taste a resting- 
 point, and to prevent forever any genuine culture. 
 This virus of the "best" rages throughout all 
 our Anglo-Saxon campaign for culture. Is it not 
 a notorious fact that our professors of English 
 literature make no attempt to judge the work pro 
 duced since the death of the last consecrated saint 
 of the literary canon, Robert Louis Stevenson? 
 In strict accordance with Arnold s doctrine, they 
 are waiting for the judgment upon our contempo 
 raries which they call the test of time, that is, an 
 authoritative objective judgment, upon which 
 they can unquestioningly rely. Surely it seems as 
 
 [38] 
 
if the principle of authority, having been ousted 
 from religion and politics, had found a strong 
 refuge in the sphere of culture. This tyranny of 
 the "best" objectifies all our taste. It is a "best" 
 that is always outside of our native reactions to 
 the freshnesses and sincerities of life, a "best" to 
 which our spontaneities must be disciplined. By 
 fixing our eyes humbly on the ages that are past, 
 and on foreign countries, we effectually protect 
 ourselves from that inner taste which is the only 
 sincere "culture." 
 
 Our cultural humility before the civilizations of 
 Europe, then, is the chief obstacle which prevents 
 us from producing any true indigenous culture of 
 our own. I am far from saying, of course, that 
 it is not necessary for our arts to be fertilized by 
 the civilizations of other nations past and present. 
 The culture of Europe has arisen only from such 
 an extensive cross-fertilization in the past. But 
 we have passed through that period of learning, 
 and it is time for us now to set up our individual 
 standards. We are already "heir of all the ages" 
 through our English ancestry, and our last half- 
 century of European idolatry has done for us all 
 that can be expected. But, with our eyes fixed on 
 
 [39] 
 
Europe, we continue to strangle whatever native 
 genius springs up. Is it not a tragedy that the 
 American artist feels the imperative need of 
 foreign approval before he can be assured of his 
 attainment? Through our inability or unwilling 
 ness to judge him, through our cultural humility, 
 through our insistence on the objective standard, 
 we drive him to depend on a foreign clientele, to 
 live even in foreign countries, where taste is more 
 confident of itself and does not require the label, 
 to be assured of the worth of what it appreciates. 
 The only remedy for this deplorable situation 
 is the cultivation of a new American nationalism. 
 We need that keen introspection into the beauties 
 and vitalities and sincerities of our own life and 
 ideals that characterizes the French. The French 
 culture is animated by principles and tastes which 
 are as old as art itself. There are "classics," not 
 in the English and Arnoldian sense of a conse 
 crated canon, dissent from which is heresy, but in 
 the sense that each successive generation, putting 
 them to the test, finds them redolent of those 
 qualities which are characteristically French, and 
 so preserves them as a precious heritage. This 
 cultural chauvinism is the most harmless of 
 
 [40] 
 
patriotisms; indeed it is absolutely necessary for 
 a true life of civilization. And it can hardly be 
 too intense, or too exaggerated. Such an inter 
 national art exhibition as was held recently in 
 New York, with the frankly avowed purpose of 
 showing American artists how bad they were in 
 comparison with the modern French, represents an 
 appalling degradation of attitude which would 
 be quite impossible in any other country. Such 
 groveling humility can only have the effect of 
 making us feeble imitators, instead of making us 
 assert, with all the power at our command, the 
 genius and individuality which we already possess 
 in quantity, if we would only see it. 
 
 In the contemporary talent that Europe is ex 
 hibiting, or even in the genius of the last half- 
 century, one will go far to find greater poets than 
 our Walt Whitman, philosophers than William 
 James, essayists than Emerson and Thoreau, com 
 posers than MacDowell, sculptors than Saint- 
 Gaudens. In any other country such names 
 would be focuses to which interest and enthusiasms 
 would converge, symbols of a national spirit 
 about which judgments and tastes would revolve. 
 For none of them could have been born in another 
 
 [41] 
 
country than our own. If some of them had their 
 training abroad, it was still the indigenous 
 America that their works expressed, the Amer 
 ican ideals and qualities, our pulsating democ 
 racy, the vigor and daring of our pioneer spirit, 
 our sense of camaraderie, our dynamism, the big- 
 heartedness of our scenery, our hospitality to all 
 the world. In the music of MacDowell, the 
 poetry of Whitman, the philosophy of James, I 
 recognize a national spirit, "Pesprit americain," as 
 superbly clear and gripping as anything the cul 
 ture of Europe has to offer us, and immensely 
 more stimulating, because of the very body and 
 soul of to-day s interests and aspirations. 
 
 To come to an intense self-consciousness of 
 these qualities, to feel them in the work of these 
 masters, and to search for them everywhere among 
 the lesser artists and thinkers who are trying to 
 express the soul of this hot chaos of America, 
 this will be the attainment of culture for us. 
 Not to look on ravished while our marvelous 
 millionaires fill our museums with "old masters," 
 armor, and porcelains, but to turn our eyes upon 
 our own art for a time, shut ourselves in with 
 our own genius, and cultivate with an intense and 
 
 [42] 
 
partial pride what we have already achieved 
 against the obstacles of our cultural humility. 
 Only thus shall we conserve the American spirit 
 and saturate the next generation with those quali 
 ties which are our strength. Only thus can we 
 take our rightful place among the cultures of the 
 world, to which we are entitled if we would but 
 recognize it. We shall never be able to per 
 petuate our ideals except in the form of art and 
 literature; the world will never understand our 
 spirit except in terms of art. When shall we 
 learn that "culture," like the kingdom of heaven, 
 lies within us, in the heart of our national soul, 
 and not in foreign galleries and books? When 
 shall we learn to be proud? For only pride is 
 creative. 
 
 us] 
 
SIX PORTRAITS 
 I KAREN 
 
 II SOPHRONISBA 
 
 III MON AMIE 
 IV FERGUS 
 V THE PROFESSOR 
 VI ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 
 
KAREN 
 
 KAREN interested more by what she always 
 seemed about to say and be than by anything she 
 was at the moment. I could never tell whether 
 her inscrutability was deliberate or whether she 
 did not know how to be articulate. When she 
 was pleased she would gaze at you benignly but 
 there was always a slight uneasiness in the air as 
 if the serenity were only a resultant of tumultuous 
 feelings that were struggling to appreciate the 
 situation. She was always most animated when 
 she was annoyed at you. At those times you 
 could fairly feel the piquant shafts of evil-heart- 
 edness hitting your body as she contended against 
 your egoism or any of the personal failings that 
 hurt her sense of your fitness. These moments 
 took you into the presence of the somber irascib 
 ility of that northern land from which she came, 
 and you felt her foreignness brush you. Her 
 smooth, fair, parted hair would become bristly 
 
 [47] 
 
and surly; that face, which looked in repose like 
 some Madonna which a Swedish painter would 
 love, took on a flush; green lights glanced from 
 her eyes. She was as inscrutable in anger as she 
 was in her friendliness. You never knew just 
 what strange personal freak of your villainy had 
 set it off, though you often found it ascribed to 
 some boiling fury in your own placid soul. You 
 were not aware of this fury, but her intuition for 
 it made her more inscrutable than ever. 
 
 I first met Karen at a state university in the 
 West where she had come for some special work 
 in literature, after a few years of earning her 
 living at browbeaten stenography. She never 
 went to her classes, and I had many long walks 
 with her by the lake. In that somewhat thin in 
 tellectual atmosphere of the college, she devoted 
 most of her time to the fine art of personal rela 
 tions, and, as nobody who ever looked at her was 
 not fascinated by her blonde inscrutability and 
 curious soft intensity, she had no difficulty in soon 
 enmeshing herself in several nebulous friendships. 
 She told us that she hoped eventually to write 
 novels, but there was never anything to show that 
 her novels unfolded anywhere but in her mind as 
 
 [48] 
 
they interpreted the richly exciting detail of her 
 daily personal contacts. If you asked her about 
 her writings, you became immediately thankful 
 that looks could not slay, and some witch-fearing 
 ancestor crossed himself shudderingly in your 
 soul. Intercourse with Karen was not very con 
 crete. Our innumerable false starts at under 
 standing, the violence and exact quality of my 
 interest, the technique of getting just that smooth 
 and silky rapport between us which she was always 
 anticipating this seemed to make up the fabric of 
 her thoughts. At that time she was reading 
 mostly George Moore and Henry James, and I 
 think she hoped we would all prove adequate for a 
 subtly interwoven society. This was a little 
 difficult in a group that was proud of its moderni 
 ties, of its dizzy walking over flimsy generaliza 
 tions, of its gifts of exploding in shrapnels of 
 epigram. Karen loathed ideas and often quoted 
 George Moore on their hideousness. The mere 
 suggestion of an idea was so likely to destroy the 
 poise of her mood, that conversation became a 
 strategy worth working for. Karen did not think, 
 she felt in slow, sensuous outlines. You could 
 feel her feelings curiously putting out long 
 
 [49] 
 
streamers at you, and, if you were in the mood, a 
 certain subterranean conversation was not im 
 possible. But if you did not happen to guess 
 her mood, then you quarreled. 
 
 When I met Karen, she was twenty-five, and I 
 guessed that she would always be twenty-five. 
 She had personal ideals that she wished for herself, 
 and if you asked what she was thinking about, it 
 was quite likely to be the kind of noble woman 
 she was to be, or feared she would not be, at forty. 
 But she was too insistent upon creating her world 
 in her own image to remain sensitive to the im 
 pressions that make for growth. As the story of 
 her life came out, the bitter immigrant journey, 
 the despised house-work, the struggle to get an 
 education, the office drudgery, the lack of roots 
 and a place, you came to appreciate this personal 
 cult of Karen s. She was so clearly finer and in- 
 tenser than the people who had been in the world 
 about her, that her starved soul had to find nour 
 ishment where it could. Even if she was insen 
 sible to ideas, her soft searching at least allured. 
 It was perhaps her starved condition which made 
 her friendships so subject to sudden disaster. 
 Karen s notes were always a little more brightly 
 [50] 
 
intimate than her personal resources were able to 
 support. She seemed to start with a plan of the 
 conversation in her head. If you bungled, and 
 with her little retreats and evasions you were al 
 ways bungling, you could feel her spirit stamp its 
 feet in vexation. She would plan pleasant 
 soliloquies, and you would find yourself in a 
 fiercely cross-examinatory mood. She loathed 
 your probing of her mood, and parried you in a 
 helpless way which made you feel as if you were 
 tearing tissue. You always seemed with Karen 
 to be in a laboratory of personal relations where 
 priceless things were being discovered, but you 
 felt her more as an alchemist than a modern 
 physicist of the soul, and her method rather that 
 of trial and error than real experiment. 
 
 I am quite sure that Karen s system of personal 
 relations was platonic. She never seemed to get 
 beyond that laying of the broad foundation of the 
 Jamesian tone that would have been necessary to 
 make the thing an "affair." She was often lovely 
 and she was not unloved. She was much inter 
 ested in men, but it was more as co-actors in a 
 personal drama of her own devising than as lovers 
 or even as men. The most she ever hoped for, I 
 
 [51] 
 
think, was to be the sacred fount, and to have her 
 flow copious and manifold. You felt the im 
 mense qualifications a man would have to have 
 in the subtleties of rapport to make him even a 
 candidate for loving. For Karen, men seemed to 
 exist only as they brought a touch of ceremonial 
 into their personal relations. I think Karen 
 never quite intended to surround herself with the 
 impenetrable armor of vestal virginity, and yet 
 she did not avoid it. However glowing and mys 
 terious she might look as she lay before the fire 
 in her room, so that to an impatient friend nothing 
 might seem more important than to catch her up 
 warmly in his arms, he would have been an auda 
 cious brigand who violated the atmosphere. 
 Karen always so much gave the impression of 
 playing for higher and nobler stakes that no bri 
 gand ever appeared. Whether she deluded her 
 self as to what she wanted or whether she had a 
 clearer insight than most women into the preda- 
 toriness of my sex, her relations with men were 
 rarely smooth. Caddishness seemed to be break 
 ing out repeatedly in the most unexpected places. 
 Some of the most serious of my friends got dark 
 inadequacies charged against them by Karen. I 
 
 [52] 
 
was a little in her confidence, but I could rarely 
 gather more than that the men of to-day had no 
 sensitiveness and were far too coarse for the fine 
 and decent friendships which she spent so much 
 of her time and artistic imagination on arranging 
 for them with herself. I was constantly under 
 going, at the hands of Karen, a course of discipline 
 myself, for my ungovernable temper or my various 
 repellant "tones" or my failure to catch just the 
 quality of certain people we discussed. .1 under 
 stood dimly the lucklessness of her "cads." They 
 had perhaps not been urbanely plastic, they had 
 perhaps been impatiently adoring. They had at 
 least not offended in any of the usual ways. She 
 would even forgive them sometimes with sur 
 prising suddenness. But she never so far forgot 
 her principles as to let them dictate a mood. 
 She never recognized any of the naive collisions of 
 men and women. 
 
 Karen often seemed keenly to wonder at this 
 unsatisfactoriness of men. She cultivated them, 
 walking always in her magic circle, but they 
 slipped and grew dimmer. She had her fling of 
 feminism towards the end of her year. She left 
 the university to become secretary for a state suf- 
 
 [53] 
 
frage leader. Under the stress of public life she 
 became fierce and serious. She abandoned the 
 picturesque peasant costumes which she had af 
 fected, and made herself hideous in mannish skirts 
 and waists. She felt the woes of women, and saw 
 everywhere the devilish hand of the exploiting 
 male. If she ever married, she would have a 
 house separate from her husband. She would be 
 no parasite, no man s woman. She spoke of the 
 "human sex," and set up its norms for her ac 
 quaintanceships. 
 
 When I saw Karen later, however, she was 
 herself again. She had taken up again the tissue 
 of personal relations. But in that reconstituted 
 world all her friends seemed to be women. Her 
 taste of battle had seemed to fortify and enlighten 
 that ancient shrinking; her old annoyance that 
 men should be abruptly different from what she 
 would have them. She was intimate with fem 
 inists whose feminism had done little more for 
 their emotional life than to make them acutely 
 conscious of the cloven hoof of the male. Karen, 
 in her brooding way, was able to give this philos 
 ophy a far more poetical glamor than any one I 
 
 [54] 
 
knew. Her woman friends adored her, even those 
 who had not acquired that mystic sense of 
 "loyalty to woman" and did not believe that no 
 man was so worthy that he might not be betrayed 
 with impunity. Karen, on her part, adored her 
 friends, and the care that had been spent on un 
 worthy men now went into toning up and making 
 subtle the women around her. She did a great 
 deal for them, and was constantly discovering 
 godlike creatures in shop and street and bringing 
 them in to be mystically mingled with her circle. 
 Naturally it is Karen s married friends who 
 cause her greatest concern. Eternal vigilance is 
 the price of their salvation from masculine tyr 
 anny. In the enemy s country, under at least 
 the nominal yoke, these married girls seem to 
 Karen subjects for her prayer and aid. She has 
 become exquisitely sensitive to any aggressive 
 gestures on the part of these creatures with whom 
 her dear friends have so inexplicably allied them 
 selves, and she is constantly in little subtle in 
 trigues to get the victim free or at least armisticed. 
 She broods over her little circle, inscrutable, vigi 
 lant, a true vestal virgin on the sacred hearth of 
 
 [55] 
 
woman. Husbands are doubtless better for that 
 silent enemy whom they see jealously adoring 
 their wives. 
 
 Karen still leaves trails of mystery and desire 
 where she goes, but it is as a woman s woman 
 that I see her now, and, I am ashamed to say, 
 ignore her. Men could not be crowded into her 
 Jamesian world and she has solved the problem 
 by obliterating them. She will not live by means 
 of them. Since she does not know how to live 
 with them she lives without them. 
 
 [56] 
 
SOPHRONISBA 
 
 I SHOULD scarcely have understood Sophronisba 
 unless I had imagined her against the background 
 of that impeccable New England town from which 
 she says she escaped. It is a setting of elm- 
 shaded streets, with houses that can fairly be 
 called mansions, and broad lawns stretching 
 away from the green and beautiful white church. 
 In this large princeliness of aspect the naive 
 stranger, like myself, would imagine nothing but 
 what was grave and sweet and frank. Yet be 
 hind those pillared porticos Sophronisba tells me 
 sit little and petrified people. This spacious 
 beauty exists for people who are mostly afraid; 
 afraid of each other, afraid of candor, afraid of 
 sex, afraid of radicals. Underneath the large- 
 hearted exterior she says they are stifled within. 
 Women go queer from repression, spinsters mul 
 tiply on families hands, while the young men 
 
 [57] 
 
drift away to Boston. Dark tales are heard of 
 sexual insanity, and Sophronisba seems to think 
 that the chastest wife never conceives without a se 
 cret haunting in her heart of guilt. I think there 
 are other things in Sophronisba s town, but these 
 are the things she has seen, and these are the 
 things she has fled from. 
 
 Sophronisba is perhaps forty, but she is prob 
 ably much younger than she was at eleven. At 
 that age the devilish conviction that she hated her 
 mother strove incessantly with the heavenly con 
 viction that it was her duty to love her. And 
 there were unpleasing aunts and cousins who ex- 
 haustingly had to be loved when she wished only 
 spitefully to slap them. Her conscience thus 
 played her unhappy tricks through a submerged 
 childhood, until college came as an emancipation 
 from that deadly homesickness that is sickness not 
 for your home but intolerance at it. 
 
 No more blessed relief comes to the conscience- 
 burdened than the chance to exchange their duties 
 for their tastes, when what you should unselfishly 
 do to others is transformed into what books and 
 pictures you ought to like. Your conscience gets 
 its daily exercise, but without the moral pain. I 
 
 [58] 
 
imagine Sophronisba was not unhappy at college, 
 where she could give up her weary efforts to get 
 her emotions correct towards everybody in the 
 world and the Three Persons in the heaven above 
 it, in favor of acquiring a sound and authorized 
 cultural taste. She seems to have very dutifully 
 taken her master s degree in English literature, 
 and for her industrious conscience is recorded 
 somewhere an unreadable but scholarly thesis, the 
 very name of which she has probably forgotten 
 herself. 
 
 For several years Sophronisba must have flowed 
 along on that thin stream of the intellectual life 
 which seems almost to have been invented for 
 slender and thin-lipped New England maidens 
 who desperately must make a living for them 
 selves in order to keep out of the dull prison of 
 their homes. There was for Sophronisba a little 
 teaching, a little settlement work, a little writing, 
 and a position with a publishing house. And 
 always the firm clutch on New York and the 
 dizzy living on a crust that might at any moment 
 break and precipitate her on the intolerable ease of 
 her dutifully loving family. It is the conven 
 tional opinion that this being a prisoner on parole 
 
 [59] 
 
can be terminated only by the safe custody of a 
 man, or the thrilling freedom of complete personal 
 success. Sophronisba s career has been an inde 
 terminate sentence of womanhood. She is at once 
 a proof of how very hard the world still is on 
 women, and how gaily they may play the game 
 with the odds against them. 
 
 I did not meet Sophronisba until she was in the 
 mellow of her years, and I cannot disentangle all 
 her journalistic attempts, her dives into this maga 
 zine and that, the electrifying discovery of her by 
 a great editor, the great careers that were always 
 beginning, the great articles that were called off at 
 the last moment, the delayed checks, the checks 
 that never came, the magazines that went down 
 with all on board. But there were always articles 
 that did come off, and Sophronisba zigzagged her 
 literary way through fat years of weekly series 
 and Sunday supplements and lean years of desk 
 work and book-reviewing. There are some of 
 Sophronisba s articles that I should like to have 
 written myself. She piles her facts with great 
 neatness, and there is a little ironic punch some 
 times which is not enough to disturb the simple 
 people who read it, but flatters you as of the more 
 
 [60] 
 
subtly discerning. Further, she has a genuine 
 talent for the timely. 
 
 There has been strategy as well as art in her 
 career. That feminine Yankeeness which speaks 
 out of her quizzical features has not lived in vain. 
 She tells with glee of editors captured in skilful 
 sorties of wit, of connections laboriously pieced 
 together. She confesses to plots to take the inter 
 esting and valuable in her net. There is con 
 tinuous action along her battlefront. She makes 
 the acceptance of an article an exciting event. As 
 you drop in upon her for tea to follow her work 
 from week to week, you seem to move in a maze of 
 editorial conspiracy. Her zestfulness almost 
 brings a thrill into the prosaic business of writing. 
 Not beguilements, but candor and wit, are her 
 ammunition. One would expect a person who 
 looked like Sophronisba to be humorous. But 
 her wit is good enough to be surprising, it is sharp 
 but it leaves no sting. And it gets all the advan 
 tage of being carried along on a voice that retains 
 the least suggestion of a racy Eastern twang. 
 With the twang goes that lift and breathlessness 
 that makes everything sound interesting. When 
 you come upon Sophronisba in that charming din- 
 
 [61] 
 
ner group that she frequents or as she trips out of 
 the library, portfolio in hand, with a certain se 
 date primness which no amount of New York will 
 ever strain out of her, you know that for a few 
 moments the air is going to be bright. 
 
 How Sophronisba got rid of the virus of her 
 New England conscience and morbidities I do not 
 know. She must have exorcised more demons 
 than most of us are even acquainted with. Yet 
 she never seems to have lost the zest that comes 
 from standing on the brink and watching the 
 Gadarene swine plunge heavily down into the sea. 
 She has expelled the terrors of religion and the 
 perils of thwarted sex, but their nearness still 
 thrills. She would not be herself, neither would 
 her wit be as good, if it were not much made of 
 gay little blasphemies and bold feminist irrever 
 ences. There is the unconscious play to the stiff 
 New England gallery that makes what she says 
 of more than local relevance. In her serious talk 
 there lingers the slight, interested bitter tang of 
 the old Puritan poison. But current issues mean 
 much to Sophronisba. These things which foolish 
 people speak of with grave-faced strainings after 
 objectivity, with uncouth scientific jargon and 
 
 [62] 
 
sudden lapses into pruriency, Sophronisba presents 
 as a genuine revelation. Her personal curiosity, 
 combined with intellectual clarity, enable her to 
 get it all assimilated. Her allegiance went, of 
 course, quickly to Freud, and once, in a sudden 
 summer flight to Jung in Zurich, she sat many 
 hours absorbing the theories from a grave, ample, 
 formidably abstract, and for Sophronisba too 
 unhumorous Fraiilein assistant. What Sophron 
 isba got she has made into a philosophy of life, 
 translated into New England dialect, and made 
 quite revealingly her own. Before journalism 
 claimed her for more startling researches, she 
 would often give it for you in racy and eager 
 fashion, turning up great layers of her own life 
 and of those she knew about her. Many demons 
 were thus sent flying. 
 
 Her exorcisms have been gained by a blazing 
 candor and by a self-directed sense of humor which 
 alone can support it. With the white light of 
 this lantern she seems to have hunted down all 
 the evil shadows in that background of hers. Her 
 relentless exposure of her own motives, her eager 
 publicity of soul and that fascinating life which 
 is hers, her gossip without malice and her wise 
 
cynicism, make Sophronisba the greatest of reliefs 
 from a world too full of decent reticences and 
 self-respects. That heavy conscience has been 
 trained down to an athletic trimness. I cannot 
 find an interest or a realism or a self-interpretation 
 at which she will cringe, though three centuries 
 of Puritanism in her blood should tell her how 
 unhallowed most of them are. 
 
 Sophronisba, naturally, is feminist to the core. 
 Particularly on the subject of the economic servi 
 tude of married women does she grow very tense, 
 and if anywhere her sense of humor deserts her it 
 is here. But she is so convincing that she can 
 throw me into a state of profound depression, 
 from which I am not cheered by reflecting how 
 unconscious of their servitude most of these women 
 are. Sophronisba herself is a symbol of trium 
 phant spinsterhood rejoicing the heart, an un 
 married woman who knows she would make a 
 wretched wife and does not seem to mind. Her 
 going home once a year to see her family has epic 
 quality about it. She parts from her friends with 
 a kind of resigned daring, and returns with the air 
 of a Proserpine from the regions of Pluto. To 
 have laid all these ghosts of gloom and queerness 
 
and fear which must have darkened her prim and 
 neglected young life, is to have made herself a 
 rarely interesting woman. I think the most de 
 lightful bohemians are those who have been New 
 England Puritans first. 
 
 [65] 
 
MON AMIE 
 
 SHE was French from the crown of her head 
 to the soles of her feet, but she was of that France 
 which few Americans, I think, know or imagine. 
 She belonged to that France which Jean-Chris- 
 tophe found in his friend Olivier, a world of flash 
 ing ideas and enthusiasms, a golden youth of 
 ideals. 
 
 She had picked me out for an exchange of con 
 versation, as the custom is, precisely because I had 
 left my name at the Sorbonne as a person who 
 wrote a little. I had put this bait out, as it were, 
 deliberately, with the intention of hooking a mind 
 that cared for a little more than mere chatter, but 
 I had hardly expected to find it in the form of a 
 young girl who, as she told me in her charmingly 
 polished note, was nineteen and had just com 
 pleted her studies. 
 
 [66] 
 
These studies formed a useful introduction 
 when she received me in the little old-fashioned 
 apartment in the Batignolles quarter on my first 
 visit. She had made them ever since she was 
 five years old in a wonderful old convent at 
 Bourges; and in the town had lived her grand 
 mother, a very old lady, whom she had gone lov 
 ingly to see, as often as she could be away from 
 the watchful care of the nuns. In her she had 
 found her real mother, for her parents had been 
 far away in Brittany. When the old lady died, 
 my friend had to face an empty world, and to 
 become acquainted all over again with a mother 
 whom she confessed she found "little sympa 
 thetic." But she was a girl of devoir, and she 
 would do nothing to wound her. 
 
 She told me one afternoon as we took our first 
 walk through the dusky richness of the Musee 
 Cluny, that the shock of death had disclosed to her 
 how fleeting life was, how much she thought of 
 death, and how much she feared it. I used the 
 lustiness of her grandmother s eighty-four years to 
 convince her as to how long she might have to 
 postpone her dread, but her fragile youth seemed 
 already to feel the beating wings about her. As 
 
she talked, her expression had all that wistful 
 seriousness of the French face which has not been 
 devitalized by the city, that sense of the nearness 
 of unutterable things which runs, a golden thread, 
 through their poetry. Though she had lived away 
 from Brittany, in her graver moments there was 
 much in her of the patient melancholy of the 
 Breton. For her father s people had been sea- 
 folk, not fishermen, but pilots and navigators on 
 those misty and niggardly shores, and the long 
 defeat and ever-trustful suffering was in her 
 blood. She would interpret to me the homely 
 pictures at the Luxembourg which spoke of coast 
 and peasant life; and her beautiful articulateness 
 brought the very soul of France out of the can 
 vases of Cottet and Breton and Carriere. She un 
 derstood these people. 
 
 But she was very various, and, if at first we 
 plumbed together the profoundest depths of her, 
 we soon got into shallower waters. The fluency 
 of her thought outran any foreign medium, and 
 made anything but her flying French impossible. 
 Her meager English had been learned from some 
 curious foreigner with an accent more German 
 than French, and we abandoned it by mutual con- 
 [68] 
 
sent. Our conversation became an exchange of 
 ideas and not of languages. Or rather her mind 
 became the field where I explored at will. 
 
 I think I began by assuming a Catholic devotion 
 in her, and implied that her serious outlook on 
 life might lead her into the church. She scoffed 
 unmitigatedly at this. The nuns were not un 
 kindly, she said, but they were hard and narrow 
 and did not care for the theater and for books, 
 which she adored. 
 
 She believed in God. "Et le theatre !" I said, 
 which delighted her hugely. But these Christian 
 virtues made unlovely characters and cut one off 
 so painfully from the fascinating moving world of 
 ideas outside. But surely after fourteen years of 
 religious training and Christian care, did she not 
 believe in the Church, its priesthood and its 
 dogmas ? 
 
 She repudiated her faith with indescribable 
 vivacity. A hardened Anglo-Saxon agnostic 
 would have shown more diffidence in denying his 
 belief in dogma or the Bible. As for the latter, 
 she said, it might do for children of five years. 
 And the cutting sweep of that "enfants de cinq 
 ans" afforded me a revealing glimpse of that lucid 
 
 [69] 
 
intelligence with which the French mind cuts 
 through layers and strata of equivocation and 
 compromise. 
 
 Most Frenchmen, if they lose their faith, go 
 the swift and logical road to atheism. Her loss 
 was no childish dream or frenzy; she still believed 
 in God. But as for the Church and its priest 
 hood, she told me, with malicious irony, and 
 with the intelligence that erases squeamishness, of 
 a friend of hers who was the daughter of the priest 
 in charge of one of the largest Parisian churches. 
 Would she confess to a member of a priestly caste 
 which thus broke faith 4 ? Confession was odious 
 anyway. She had been kept busy in school in 
 venting sins. She would go to church on Easter, 
 but she would not take the Eucharist, though I 
 noticed a charming lapse when she crossed her 
 self with holy water as we entered Notre Dame 
 one day. 
 
 Where had she ever got such ideas, shut up in a 
 con vent *? Oh, they were all perfectly obvious, 
 were they not? Where would one not get them? 
 This amazing soul of modern France ! which per 
 vades even the walls of convents with its spirit of 
 free criticism and its terrible play of the intelli- 
 
 [70] 
 
gence; which will examine and ruthlessly cast 
 aside, just as my vibrant, dark-haired, fragile 
 friend was casting aside, without hypocrisy or 
 scruple, whatever ideas do not seem to enhance 
 the clear life to be lived. 
 
 ii 
 
 Accustomed to grope and flounder in the mazes 
 of the intellect, I found her intelligence well-nigh 
 terrifying. I would sit almost helplessly and 
 listen to her sparkle of talk. Her freedom 
 knocked into pieces all my little imagined world 
 of French conventionalities and inhibitions. 
 How could this pale, dignified mother, to whom I 
 was presented as she passed hurriedly through the 
 room one day, allow her to wander so freely about 
 Paris parks and museums with a foreign young 
 man*? Her answer came superbly, with a.flare of 
 decision which showed me that at least in one 
 spot the eternal conflict of the generations had 
 been settled: "Je me permets!" I allow my 
 self. She gave me to understand that for a while 
 her mother had been difficult, but that there was 
 no longer any question of her "living her life" 
 vivre sa vie. And she really thought that her 
 
 [71 ] 
 
mother, in releasing her from the useless trammels, 
 had become herself much more of an independent 
 personality. As for my friend, she dared, she 
 took risks, she played with the adventure of life. 
 But she knew what was there. 
 
 The motherly Anglo-Saxon frame of mind 
 would come upon me, to see her in the light of a 
 poor ignorant child, filled with fantastic ideals, all 
 so pitifully untested by experience. How ignor 
 ant she was of life, and to what pitfalls her daring 
 freedom must expose her in this unregenerate 
 France ! I tried and gave it up. As she talked, 
 her glowing eyes, in which ideas seemed to well 
 up brimming with feeling and purpose, saying 
 almost more than her words, she seemed too pal 
 pably a symbol of luminous youth, a flaming 
 militant of the younger generation, who by her 
 courage would shrivel up the dangers that so beset 
 the timorous. She was French, and that fact by 
 itself meant that whole layers of equivocation had 
 been cut through, whole sets of intricacies avoided. 
 
 In order to get the full shock of her individual 
 ity, I took her one afternoon to a model little 
 English tea-room on the rue de Rivoli, where 
 normal Britishers were reading Punch and the 
 
 [72] 
 
Spectator over their jam and cake. The little 
 flurry of disapprobation and the hostile stare 
 which our appearance elicited from the well-bred 
 families and discreet young men at the tables, the 
 flaring incongruity of her dark, lithe, inscrutable 
 personality in this bland, vacuous British atmos 
 phere, showed me as could nothing else how hard 
 was the gem-like flame with which she burned. 
 
 As we walked in the Luxembourg and along the 
 quays, or sat on the iron chairs in the gardens of 
 the Pare Monceau or the Trocadero, our friend 
 ship became a sort of intellectual orgy. The dif 
 ficulty of following the pace of her flying tongue 
 and of hammering and beating my own thoughts 
 into the unaccustomed French was fatiguing, but 
 it was the fascinating weariness of exploration. 
 My first idle remarks about God touched off a 
 whole battery of modern ideas. None of the so 
 cial currents of the day seemed to have passed her 
 by, though she had been immured so long in her 
 sleepy convent at Bourges. She had that same 
 interest and curiosity about other classes and con 
 ditions of life which animates us here in America, 
 and the same desire to do something effective 
 against the misery of poverty. 
 
 [73] 
 
I had teased her a little about her academic, 
 untried ideas, and in grave reproof she told me, 
 one afternoon, as we stood of all places! on 
 the porch of the Little Trianon at Versailles, a 
 touching story of a family of the poorest of the 
 Parisian poor, whom she and her mother visited 
 and helped to get work. She did not think charity 
 accomplished very much, and flamed at the word 
 "Socialism," although she had not yet had its 
 program made very clear to her. 
 
 But mostly she was feminist, an ardent 
 disciple in that singularly uncomplicated and 
 happy march of the Frenchwomen, already so 
 practically emancipated, toward a definite social 
 recognition of that liberation. The normal 
 Frenchwoman, in all but the richer classes, is an 
 economic asset to her country. And economic 
 independence was a cardinal dogma in my friend s 
 faith. She was already taking a secretarial 
 course, in order to ensure her ability to make her 
 living? and she looked forward quite eagerly to a 
 career. 
 
 Marriage was in considerable disfavor; it had 
 still the taint of the Church upon it, while the civil 
 marriage seemed, with the only recently surren- 
 
 [74] 
 
derecl necessary parental consent, to mark the sub 
 jection of the younger to the older generation. 
 These barriers were now removed, but the evil 
 savor of the institution lingered on. My friend, 
 like all the French intellectuals, was all for the 
 "union libre," but it would have to be loyal unto 
 death. It was all the more inspiring as an ideal, 
 , because it would be perhaps hard to obtain. 
 Men, she was inclined to think, were usually 
 malhonnete, but she might find some day a man of 
 complete sympathy and complete loyalty. But 
 she did not care. Life was life, freedom was 
 freedom, and the glory of being a woman in the 
 modern world was enough for her. 
 
 The French situation was perhaps quite as bad 
 as it was pictured. Friendship between a girl and 
 a young man was almost impossible. It was that 
 they usually wished to love her. She did not 
 mind them on the streets. The students oh, the 
 students! were frightfully annoying; but per 
 haps one gave a gifte and passed rapidly on. Her 
 parents, before she had become genuinely the cap 
 tain of her soul, had tried to marry her off in the 
 orthodox French way. She had had four pro 
 posals. Risking the clean candor of the French 
 
 1 75 1 
 
soul, I became curious and audacious. So she 
 dramatized for me, without a trace of self-con 
 sciousness, a wonderful little scene of provincial 
 manners. The stiff young Frenchman making 
 his stilted offer, her self-possessed reluctance, her 
 final refusal, were given in inimitable style. 
 These incidents, which in the life of a little 
 American bourgeoise would have been crises or 
 triumphs, and, at any rate, unutterably hoarded 
 secrets, were given with a cold frankness which 
 showed refreshingly to what insignificance mar 
 riage was relegated in her life. She wished, she 
 said, to vivre sa vie to live her life. If mar 
 riage fitted in with her living of her life, it might 
 take her. It should never submerge or deflect her. 
 Countless Frenchwomen, in defiance of the stri 
 dent Anglo-Saxon belief, were able both to keep a 
 household and to earn their own living; and why 
 not she also? She would always be free; and her 
 black eyes burned as they looked out so fearlessly 
 into a world that was to be all hers, because she 
 expected nothing from it. 
 
 About this world, she had few illusions. To its 
 worldlinesses and glitter she showed really a 
 superb indifference. I brutally tried to trap her 
 
 [76] 
 
into a confession that she spurned it only because 
 it might be closed to her through lack of money or 
 prestige. Her eloquent eyes almost slew me with 
 vivacious denial. She despised these "dolls" 
 whose only business in life was to wear clothes. 
 Her own sober black was not affectation, but only 
 her way of showing that she was more than a 
 poupee. She did not say it, but I quite appre 
 ciated, and I knew well that she knew, how charm 
 ing a poupee she might have made. 
 
 Several of her friends were gay and worldly. 
 She spoke of them with charming frankness, touch 
 ing off, with a tone quite clean of malice, all their 
 little worthlessnesses and futilities. Some of this 
 world, indeed, shaded off into unimaginable 
 nuances, but she was wholly aware of its sig 
 nificance. In the inimitable French way, she dis 
 dained to use its errors as a lever to elevate her 
 own virtues. 
 
 in 
 
 Her blazing candor lighted up for me every 
 part of her world. We skirted abysses, but the 
 language helped us wonderfully through. French 
 has worn tracks in so many fields of experience 
 
 [77] 
 
where English blunders either boorishly or senti 
 mentally. French is made for illumination and 
 clear expression; it has kept its purity and crisp- 
 ness and can express, without shamefacedness or 
 bungling, attitudes and interpretations which the 
 Anglo-Saxon fatuously hides. 
 
 My friend was dimly sensible of some such 
 contrast. I think she had as much difficulty in 
 making me out as I had in making her out. She 
 was very curious as to how she compared with 
 American girls. She had once met one but had 
 found her, though not a doll, yet not sympathique 
 and little understandable. I had to tell my friend 
 how untranslatable she was. The Anglo-Saxon, 
 I had to tell her, was apt to be either a school- 
 child or a middle-aged person. To the first, ideas 
 were strange and disturbing. To the second, they 
 were a nuisance and a bore. I almost assured her 
 that in America she would be considered a quite 
 horrible portent. Her brimming idealism would 
 make everybody uncomfortable. The sensual de 
 light which she took in thinking, the way her ideas 
 were all warmly felt and her feelings luminously 
 expressed, would adapt her badly to a world of 
 school-children and tired business men. I tried to 
 
 [78] 
 
go over for her the girls of her age whom I had 
 known. How charming they were to be sure, 
 but, even when they had ideas, how strangely in 
 articulate they sometimes were, and, if they were 
 articulate, how pedantic and priggish they seemed 
 to the world about them! And what forests of 
 reticences and exaggerated values there were, and 
 curious illogicalities How jealous they were of 
 their personalities, and what a suspicious and in 
 dividualistic guard they kept over their candor 
 and sincerities! I was very gay and perhaps a 
 little cruel. 
 
 She listened eagerly, but I think she did not 
 quite understand. If one were not frankly a doll, 
 was not life a great swirl to be grappled with and 
 clarified, and thought and felt about 4 ? And as 
 for her personality, the more she gave the more 
 she had. She would take the high risks of friend 
 ship. 
 
 To cross the seas and come upon my own en 
 thusiasms and ideals vibrating with so intense a 
 glow seemed an amazing fortune. It was like 
 coming upon the same design, tinted in novel and 
 picturesque colors of a finer harmony. In this in 
 tellectual flirtation, carried on in musee and gar- 
 
 [79] 
 
den and on quay throughout that cloudless April, 
 I began to suspect some gigantic flattery. Was 
 her enthusiasm sincere, and her clean-cutting ideas, 
 or had she by some subtle intuition anticipated 
 me? Did she think, or was it to be expected of 
 me, that I should fall in love with her? But 
 perhaps there was a touch of the too foreign in 
 her personality. And if I had fallen in love, I 
 know it would not have been with herself. It 
 would have been with the Frenchness of her, and 
 perhaps was. It would have been with the eternal 
 youth of France that she was. For she could 
 never have been so very glowing if France had not 
 been full of her. Her charm and appeal were far 
 broader than herself. It took in all that rare 
 spiritual climate where one absorbs ideas and 
 ideals as the earth drinks in rain. 
 
 She was of that young France with its luminous 
 understanding, its personal verve, its light of ex 
 pression, its way of feeling its ideas and thinking 
 its emotions, its deathless loyalty which betrays 
 only at the clutch of some deeper loyalty. She 
 adored her country and all its mystic values and 
 aspirations. When she heard I was going to Ger 
 many, she actually winced with pain. She could 
 
 [80] 
 
scarcely believe it. I fell back at once to the 
 position of a vulgar traveler, visiting even the 
 lands of the barbarians. They were her country s 
 enemies, and some day they would attack. France 
 awaited the onslaught fatalistically. She did not 
 want to be a man, but she wished that they would 
 let women be soldiers. If the war came, how 
 ever, she would enlist at once as a Red Cross nurse. 
 She thrilled at the thought that perhaps there she 
 could serve to the uttermost. 
 
 And the war has come, hot upon her en 
 thusiasms. She must have been long since in the 
 field, either at the army stations, or moving about 
 among the hospitals of Paris, her heart full of 
 pride and pity for the France which she loved and 
 felt so well, and of whose deathless spirit she was, 
 for me, at least, so glowing a symbol. 
 
FERGUS 
 
 MY friend Fergus has all the characteristics of 
 genius except the divine fire. The guardian angel 
 who presided at his birth and set in order all his 
 delicate appreciations just forgot to start flowing 
 the creative current. Fergus was born to suffer 
 the pangs of artistic desire without the gushing 
 energy that would have moulded artistic form. 
 It was perhaps difficult enough to produce him as 
 it was. There is much that is clearly impossible 
 about him. His father is a bluff old Irish news 
 paper compositor, with the obstinately genial air 
 of a man who cannot believe that life will not 
 some day do something for him. His mother is 
 a French-Canadian, jolly and stout, who plays old 
 Irish and French melodies on the harp, and 
 mothers the young Catholic girls of the crowded 
 city neighborhood in which they live. She has 
 the slightly surprised background of never realized 
 prosperity. Fergus is an old child, and moves in 
 
 [82] 
 
the dark little flat, with its green plush furniture, 
 its prints of the Great Commoner and Lake 
 Killarney, its Bible texts of the Holy Name, with 
 the detached condescension of an exiled prince. 
 He is very dark and finely formed, of the type 
 that would be taken for a Spaniard in France and 
 an Italian in Spain, and his manners have the dis 
 tinction of the born aristocrat. 
 
 The influences of that close little Catholic so 
 ciety in which he was brought up he has shed as a 
 duck sheds water. His mother wished him to be a 
 Jesuit. The quickness of his mind, the refinement 
 and hauteur of his manner, intoxicated her with 
 the assurance of his priestly future. His father, 
 however, inclined towards the insurance business. 
 Fergus himself viewed his future with cold dis 
 interestedness. When I first met him he had just 
 emerged from a year of violin study at a music 
 school. The violin had been an escape from the 
 twin horrors that had menaced him. On his 
 parents anxiety that he "make something of him 
 self" he looked with some disdain. He did, how 
 ever, feel to a certain extent their chagrin at find 
 ing so curious and aristocratic a person in their 
 family, and he allowed himself, with a fine 
 
 [83] 
 
stoicism as of an exiled prince supporting himself 
 until the revolution was crushed and he was rein 
 stated in his possessions, to be buried in an insur 
 ance broker s office. At this time he spent his 
 evenings in the dim vaulted reading-room of a 
 public library composing music, or in wandering 
 in the park with his friends, discussing philosophy. 
 His little music notebook and Gomperz s "Greek 
 Thinkers" were rarely out of his hand. 
 
 Harmony and counterpoint had not appealed to 
 him at the Conservatory, but now the themes that 
 raced and rocketed through his head compelled 
 him to composition. The bloodless scherzos and 
 allegros which he produced and tried to play for 
 me on his rickety piano had so archaic a flavor as 
 to suggest that Fergus was inventing anew the art 
 of music, somewhat as our childhood is supposed 
 to pass through all the stages of the evolution of 
 the race. As he did not seem to pass beyond a 
 pre-Bachian stage, he began to feel at length, he 
 told me, that there was something lacking in his 
 style. But he was afraid that routine study would 
 dull his inspiration. It was time that he needed, 
 and not instruction. And time was slipping so 
 
quickly away. He was twenty-two, and he could 
 not grasp or control it. 
 
 When summer was near he came to me with an 
 idea. His office work was insupportable. Even 
 accepting that one dropped eight of the best hours 
 of one s every day into a black and bottomless pit 
 in exchange for the privilege of remaining alive, 
 such a life was almost worse than none. I had 
 friends who were struggling with a large country 
 farm. He wished to offer them his services as 
 farmhand on half-time in exchange for simple 
 board and lodging. Working in the morning, he 
 would have all the rest of his pastoral day for 
 writing music. 
 
 Before I could communicate to him my friends 
 reluctance to this proposal, he told me that his 
 musical inspiration had entirely left him. He 
 was now spending all his spare time in the Art 
 Museum, discovering tastes and delights that he 
 had not known were in him. Why had not some 
 one told him of the joy of sitting and reading 
 Plato in those glowing rooms ? The Museum was 
 more significant when I walked in it with Fergus. 
 His gracious bearing almost seemed to please the 
 
 [85] 
 
pictures themselves. He walked as a princely 
 connoisseur through his own historic galleries. 
 
 When I saw Fergus next, however, a physical 
 depression had fallen upon him. He had gone 
 into a vegetarian diet and was enfeebling himself 
 with Spartan fare. He was disturbed by loneli 
 ness, the erotic world gnawed persistently at him, 
 and all the Muses seemed to have left him. But 
 in his gloominess, in the fine discrimination with 
 which he analyzed his helplessness, in the noble 
 despair with which he faced an insoluble world, 
 he was more aristocratic than ever. He was not 
 like one who had never attained genius, fame, 
 voluptuous passion, riches, he was rather as one 
 who had been bereft of all these things. 
 
 Returning last autumn from a year abroad, dur 
 ing which I had not heard a word of Fergus, I 
 found he had turned himself into a professional 
 violin-teacher. The insurance job had passed 
 out, and for a few weeks he had supported him 
 self by playing the organ in a small Catholic 
 church. There was jugglery with his salary, how 
 ever, and it annoyed him to be so intimate a figure 
 in a ritual to which he could only refer in irony. 
 Priests whose "will to power" background he 
 [86] 
 
analyzed to me with Nietzschean fidelity always 
 repelled him. 
 
 He was saved from falling back on the indus 
 trious parents who had so strangely borne him by 
 an offer to play the harmonium in the orchestra of 
 a fashionable restaurant. To this opportunity of 
 making eighteen dollars a week he had evidently 
 gone with a new and pleasurable sense of the 
 power of wealth. It was easy, he said, but the 
 heat and the lights, the food and the long evening 
 hours fairly nauseated him, and he gave the work 
 up. 
 
 All this time, I gathered, his parents had been 
 restive over a certain economic waste. They 
 seemed to feel that his expensive musical educa 
 tion should be capitalized more firmly arid more 
 profitably. His mother had even deplored his 
 lack of ambition. She had explored and had dis 
 covered that one made much money as a "vaude 
 ville act." He had obtained a trial at an Upper 
 Bronx moving-picture vaudeville theater. Fergus 
 told me that the nervous girl who had gone on the 
 stage before him had been cut short in the middle 
 of her "Fox-Trot Lullaby," or whatever her song 
 was, by hostile yells from the audience. Fergus 
 
himself went on in rather a depressed mood, and 
 hardly did himself justice. He played the Bach 
 air, and a short movement from Brahms. He did 
 not, however, get that rapport with his audience 
 which he felt the successful vaudeville artist 
 should feel. They had not yelled at him, but 
 they had refused to applaud, and the circuit man 
 ager had declined to engage him. 
 
 After this experience it occurred to Fergus that 
 he liked to teach, and that his training had made 
 him a professional musician. His personality, he 
 felt, was not unfavorable. By beginning modest 
 ly he saw no reason why he should not build up a 
 clientele and an honorable competence. When I 
 saw him a week later at the Music Settlement, 
 he told me that there was no longer any doubt 
 that he had found his lifework. His fees are 
 very small and his pupils are exacting. He has 
 practised much besides. He told me the other 
 day that teaching was uninspiring drudgery. He 
 had decided to give it up, and compose songs. 
 
 Whenever I see Fergus I have a slight quicken 
 ing of the sense of life. His rich and rather 
 somber personality makes all ordinary back 
 grounds tawdry. He knows so exactly what he 
 [88] 
 
is doing and what he is feeling. I do not think 
 he reads very much, but he breathes in from the 
 air around him certain large aethestic and philos 
 ophical ideas. There are many philosophies and 
 many artists, however, that he has never heard of, 
 and this ignorance of the concrete gives one a fine 
 pleasure of impressing him. One can pour into 
 receptive ears judgments and enthusiasms that 
 have long ago been taken for granted by one s 
 more sophisticated friends. His taste in art as in 
 music is impeccable, and veers strongly to the 
 classics Rembrandt and the Greeks, as Bach and 
 Beethoven. 
 
 Fergus has been in love, but he does not talk 
 much about it. A girl in his words is somewhat 
 dark and inscrutable. She always has something 
 haunting and finely-toned about her, whoever she 
 may be. I always think of the clothed lady in 
 the flowing silks, in Titian s "Sacred and Profane 
 Love." Yet withal Fergus gives her a touch of 
 the allurement of her nude companion. His re 
 serve, I think, always keeps these persons very 
 dusky and distant. His chastity is a result of his 
 fineness of taste rather than of feeble desire or 
 conscious control. That impersonal passion 
 
which descends on people like Fergus in a sultry 
 cloud he tells me he contrives to work off into his 
 violin. I sometimes wonder if a little more of it 
 with a better violin would have made him an 
 artist. 
 
 But destiny has just clipped his wings so that 
 he must live a life of noble leisure instead of 
 artistic creation. His unconscious interest is the 
 art of life. Against a background of Harlem flats 
 and stodgy bourgeois prejudices he works out this 
 life of otium cum dignitate, calm speculation and 
 artistic appreciation that Nietzsche glorifies. On 
 any code that would judge him by the seven dol 
 lars a week which is perhaps his average income he 
 looks with cold disdain. He does not demand 
 that the world give him a living. He did not ask 
 to come into it, but being here he will take it with 
 candor. Sometimes I think he is very patient 
 with life. Probably he is not happy. This is 
 not important. As his candor and his apprecia 
 tions refresh me, I wonder if the next best thing 
 to producing works of art is not to be, like Fergus, 
 a work of art one s self. 
 
 [90] 
 
THE PROFESSOR 
 
 THE Professor is a young man, but he had so 
 obviously the misfortune of growing up too early 
 that he seems already like a mournful relic of 
 irrevocable days. His ardent youth was spent in 
 that halcyon time of the early nineteen-hundreds 
 when all was innocence in the heart of young 
 America. "When I was in college," the Professor 
 often says, "all this discussion of social questions 
 was unknown to us. The growing seriousness of 
 the American college student is an inspiring phe 
 nomenon in our contemporary life." 
 
 In those days the young men who felt an urge 
 within them went in for literature. It was still 
 the time when Presbyterian clergymen and courtly 
 Confederate generals were contributing the inspi 
 ration of their ripe scholarship to the younger gen 
 eration. It was the time when Brander Matthews 
 still thrilled the world of criticism with his scin 
 tillating Gallic wit and his cosmopolitan wealth 
 
 [91] 
 
of friendships. The young men of that time are 
 still a race apart. Through these literary masters 
 they touched the intimate life of literature; they 
 knew Kipling and Stevenson, Arthur Symons and 
 the great Frenchmen, and felt themselves one with 
 the charmed literary brotherhood throughout the 
 world. It was still the time when, free from 
 philosophic or sociologic taint, our American 
 youth was privileged to breathe in from men like 
 Henry van Dyke and Charles Eliot Norton the 
 ideals of the scholar and the gentleman. 
 
 The Professor s sensitive talent soon asserted 
 itself. With Wordsworth he had absorbed him 
 self into the circumambient life of nature and 
 made the great reconciliation between her and 
 man. With Shelley he had dared unutterable 
 things and beaten his wings against the stars. 
 With Tennyson he had shuddered pensively on 
 the brink of declining faith. With Carlyle he 
 
 had felt the call of duty, and all the revulsion 
 
 
 
 against a sordid and mechanical age. With Ar 
 nold he had sought the sweetness and light which 
 should come to him from knowing all the best that 
 had been said and thought in the world. The 
 Professor had scarcely begun to write verse before 
 
 [92] 
 
he found himself victor in a prize poetry contest 
 which had enlisted the talent of all the best poets 
 of America. He often tells his students of the in 
 toxication of that evening when he encircled the 
 dim vaulted corridors of the college library, while 
 his excited brain beat out the golden couplets of 
 the now celebrated "Ganymede." The success 
 of this undergraduate stripling fell like a thunder 
 bolt upon the literary world. Already conse 
 crated to the scholar s career, he found fallen upon 
 him the miracle of the creative artist. But Shel 
 ley and Keats had had their greatness very early, 
 too. And when, at the early age of twenty-three, 
 the Professor published his masterly doctoral dis 
 sertation on "The Anonymous Lyrics of the Four 
 teenth Century," he at once attained in the world 
 of literary scholarship the distinction that "Gany 
 mede" had given him in the world of poetry. 
 
 His career has not frustrated those bright prom- 
 sises. His rare fusion of scholarship and genius 
 won him the chair of English Literature in one of 
 our most rapidly growing colleges, where he has 
 incomparable opportunities for influencing the 
 ideals of the young men under him. His courses 
 are among the most popular in the college. Al- 
 
 [93] 
 
though his special scholarly research has been de 
 voted to pre-Elizabethan literature, he is at home 
 in all the ages. His lectures are models of care 
 fully weighed criticism. "My purpose," he says, 
 "is to give my boys the spirit of the authors, and 
 let them judge between them for themselves." 
 Consequently, however much Swinburne may re 
 volt him, the Professor expounds the carnal and 
 desperate message of that poet with the same care 
 which he gives to his beloved Wordsworth. 
 "When they have heard them all," he told me 
 once, "I can trust my boys to feel the insufficiency 
 of any purely materialistic interpretation of life." 
 Impeccable as is his critical taste where the clas 
 sics are concerned, he is reluctant about giving his 
 opinion to those students who come for a clue 
 through the current literary maze. Stevenson 
 was early canonized, and the Professor speaks with 
 charm and fulness upon him, but G. B. S. and 
 Galsworthy must wait. "Time, perhaps," says 
 the Professor, "will put the seal of approval upon 
 them. Meanwhile our judgment can be only ten 
 tative." His fine objectivity is shown in those 
 lists of the hundred best books of the year which 
 he is sometimes asked to compile for the Sunday 
 
 [94] 
 
newspapers. Rarely does a new author, never 
 does a young author, appear among them. Schol 
 arly criticism, the Professor feels, can scarcely be 
 too cautious. 
 
 The Professor s inspiring influence upon his 
 students, however, is not confined to his courses. 
 He has formed a little literary society in the 
 college, which meets weekly to discuss with him 
 the larger cultural issues of the time. Lately he 
 has become interested in philosophy. "In my 
 day," he once told me, "we young literary men 
 did not study philosophy." But now, professor 
 that he is, he goes to sit at the feet of the great 
 metaphysicians of his college. He has been im 
 mensely stirred by the social and moral awakening 
 of recent years. He willingly allows discussions 
 of socialism in his little society, but is inclined to 
 deprecate the fanaticism of college men who lose 
 their sense of proportion on social questions. But 
 in his open-mindedness to radical thought he is an 
 inspiration to all who meet him. To be radical, 
 he tells his boys, is a necessary part of experience. 
 In professorial circles he is looked upon as a 
 veritable revolutionist, for he encourages the dis 
 cussion of vital questions even in the classroom. 
 
 [95] 
 
Questions such as evolution, capital punishment, 
 free thought, protection and education of women, 
 furnish the themes for composition. And from 
 the essays of the masters Macaulay, Huxley, 
 John Stuart Mill and Matthew Arnold come the 
 great arguments as freshly and as vitally as of 
 yore. Literature, says the Professor, is not 
 merely language; it is ideas. We must above all, 
 he says, teach our undergraduates to think. 
 
 Although the Professor is thus responsive to the 
 best radicalisms of the day, he does not let their 
 shock break the sacred chalice of the past. He is 
 deeply interested in the religious life of his col 
 lege. A devout Episcopalian, he deplores the 
 callousness of the present generation towards the 
 immemorial beauty of ritual and dogma. The 
 empty seats of the college chapel nil him with 
 dismay. One of his most beautiful poems pic 
 tures his poignant sensations as he comes from a 
 quiet hour within its dim, organ-haunted shadows 
 out into the sunlight, where the careless athletes 
 are running bare-leggedly past him, unmindful of 
 the eternal things. 
 
 I think I like the Professor best in his study at 
 home, when he talks on art and life with one or 
 
 [96] 
 
two respectful students. On the wall is a framed 
 autograph of Wordsworth, picked up in some 
 London bookshop; and a framed letter of appre 
 ciation from Richard Watson Gilder. On the 
 table stands a richly-bound volume of "Gany 
 mede" with some of the very manuscripts, as he 
 has shown us, bound in among the leaves. His 
 deep and measured voice flows pleasantly on in 
 anecdotes of the Authors Club, or reminiscences 
 of the golden past. As one listens, the glamor 
 steals upon one. This is the literary life, grave, 
 respected, serene. All else is hectic rush, modern 
 ideas a futile babel. It is men like the Professor 
 who keep the luster of scholarship bright, who 
 hold true the life of the scholar and the gentleman 
 as it was lived of old. In a world of change he 
 keeps the faith pure. 
 
 [97] 
 
ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS 
 
 WHEN Dr. Alexander Mackintosh Butcher was 
 elected to the presidency of Pluribus University 
 ten years ago, there was general agreement that 
 in selecting a man who was not only a distin 
 guished educator but an executive of marked busi 
 ness ability the trustees had done honor to them 
 selves and their university as well as to the new 
 president. For Dr. Butcher had that peculiar 
 genius which would have made him as successful 
 in Wall Street or in a governor s chair as in the 
 classroom. Every alumnus of Pluribus knows the 
 story told of the young Alexander Mackintosh 
 Butcher, standing at the age of twenty-two at the 
 threshold of a career. Eager, energetic, with a 
 brilliant scholastic record behind him, it was diffi 
 cult to decide into what profession he should throw 
 his powerful talents. To his beloved and aged 
 president the young man went for counsel. "My 
 boy," said the good old man, "remember that no 
 
 [98] 
 
profession offers nobler opportunities for service 
 to humanity than that of education." And what 
 should he teach? "Philosophy is the noblest 
 study of man." And a professor of philosophy 
 the young Butcher speedily became. 
 
 Those who were so fortunate as to study philo 
 sophy under him at Pluribus will never forget how 
 uncompromisingly he preached absolute idealism, 
 the Good, the True and the Beautiful, or how 
 witheringly he excoriated the mushroom philoso 
 phies which were springing up to challenge the 
 eternal verities. I have heard his old students 
 remark the secret anguish which must have been 
 his when later, as president of the university, he 
 was compelled to entertain the famous Swiss 
 philosopher, Monsfilius, whose alluring empiricism 
 was taking the philosophic world by storm. 
 
 Dr. Butcher s philosophic acuteness is only 
 equaled by his political rectitude. Indeed, it is 
 as philosopher-politician that he holds the unique 
 place he does in our American life, injecting into 
 the petty issues of the political arena the immu 
 table principles of Truth. Early conscious of his 
 duty as a man and a citizen, he joined the historic 
 party which had earned the eternal allegiance of 
 
 [99] 
 
the nation by rescuing it from slavery. By faith 
 ful service to the chiefs of his state organization, 
 first under the powerful Flatt, and later under the 
 well-known Harnes, himself college-bred and a 
 political philosopher of no mean merit, the young 
 Dr. Butcher worked his way up through ward 
 captain to the position of district leader. The 
 practical example of Dr. Butcher, the scholar and 
 educator, leaving the peace of his academic shades 
 to carry the banner in the service of his party 
 ideals of Prosperity and Protection has been an 
 inspiration to thousands of educated men in these 
 days of civic cowardice. When, three years ago, 
 his long and faithful services were rewarded by 
 the honor of second place on the Presidential ticket 
 which swept the great states of Mormonia and 
 Green Mountain, there were none of his friends 
 and admirers who felt that the distinction was 
 undeserved. 
 
 President Butcher is frequently called into the 
 councils of the party whenever there are resolu 
 tions to be drawn up or statements of philosophic 
 principle to be issued. He is in great demand 
 also as chairman of state conventions, which his 
 rare academic distinction lifts far above the usual 
 
 ( 100] 
 
level of such affairs. Jt was at one of thtsc, con 
 ventions that he made the memorable speech in 
 which he drew the analogy between the immuta 
 bility of Anglo-Saxon political institutions and 
 the multiplication table. To the applause of the 
 keen and hard-headed business men and lawyers 
 who sat as delegates under him, he scored with 
 matchless satire the idea of progress in politics, 
 and demonstrated to their complete satisfaction 
 that it was as absurd to tinker with the fundamen 
 tals of our political system as it would be to con 
 struct a new arithmetic. In such characteristic 
 wisdom we have the intellectual caliber of the 
 man. 
 
 This brilliant and profound address came only 
 as the fruit of a lifetime of thought on political 
 philosophy. President Butcher s treatise on 
 "Why We Should Never Change Any Form of 
 Government" has been worth more to thoughtful 
 men than thousands of sermons on civic right 
 eousness. No one who has ever heard President 
 Butcher s rotund voice discuss in a public address 
 "those ideas and practices which have been tried 
 and tested by a thousand years of experience" will 
 ever allow his mind to dwell again on the pro- 
 [101] 
 
gressivt and disintegrating tendencies of the day, 
 nor will he have the heart again to challenge on 
 any subject the "decent respect for the common 
 opinions of mankind." 
 
 President Butcher s social philosophy is as 
 sound as his political. The flexibility of his 
 mind is shown in the fact that, although an immu- 
 tabilist in politics, he is a staunch Darwinian in 
 sociology. Himself triumphantly fit, he never 
 wearies of expressing his robust contempt for the 
 unfit who encumber the earth. His essay on "The 
 Insurrection of the Maladjusted" is already a 
 classic in American literature. The trenchant at 
 tack on modern social movements as the impu 
 dent revolt of the unfit against those who, by their 
 personal merits and industry, have, like himself, 
 achieved success, has been a grateful bulwark to 
 thousands who might otherwise have been swept 
 sentimentally from their moorings by those false 
 guides who erect their own weakness and failure 
 into a criticism of society. 
 
 Dr. Butcher s literary eminence has not only 
 won him a chair in the American Academy of 
 All the Arts, Sciences, and Philosophies, but has 
 made him almost as well known abroad as at 
 
 [102] 
 
home. He has lectured before the learned socie 
 ties of Lisbon on "The American at Home," and 
 he has a wide circle of acquaintances in every cap 
 ital in Europe. Most of the foreign universities 
 have awarded him honorary degrees. In spite of 
 his stout Americanism, Dr. Butcher has one of the 
 most cosmopolitan of minds. His essay on "The 
 Cosmopolitan Intellect" has been translated into 
 every civilized language. With his admired 
 friend, Owen Griffith, he has collaborated in the 
 latter s endeavor to beat the swords of industrial 
 exploitation into the ploughshares of universal 
 peace. He has served in numerous capacities on 
 Griffith s many peace boards and foundations, and 
 has advised him widely and well how to distribute 
 his millions so as to prevent the recurrence of war 
 in future centuries. 
 
 Let it not be thought that, in recounting Presi 
 dent Butcher s public life and services, I am min 
 imizing his distinction as a university administra 
 tor. As executive of one of the largest universi 
 ties in America, he has raised the position of col 
 lege president to a dignity surpassed by scarcely 
 any office except President of the United States. 
 The splendid $125,000 mansion which President 
 [ 03] 
 
Butcher had the trustees of Pluribus build for him 
 on the heights overlooking the city, where he en 
 tertains distinguished foreign guests with all the 
 pomp worthy of his high office, is the precise meas 
 ure both of the majesty with which he has en 
 dowed the hitherto relatively humble position, and 
 the appreciation of a grateful university. The 
 relations between President Butcher and the trus 
 tees of Pluribus have always been of the most 
 beautiful nature. The warm and profound intel 
 lectual sympathy which he feels for the methods 
 and practices of the financial and corporate world, 
 and the extensive personal affiliations he has 
 formed with its leaders, have made it possible to 
 leave in his hands a large measure of absolute 
 authority. Huge endowments have made Pluri 
 bus under President Butcher s rule one of the 
 wealthiest of our higher institutions of learning. 
 With a rare intuitive response to the spirit of the 
 time, the President has labored to make it the big 
 gest and most comprehensive of its kind. Already 
 its schools are numbered by the dozens, its build 
 ings by the scores, its instructors by the hundreds, 
 its students by the thousands, its income by the 
 
 [ 10 4] 
 
millions, and its possessions by the tens of mil 
 lions. 
 
 None who have seen President Butcher in the 
 commencement exercises of Pluribus can ever for 
 get the impressiveness of the spectacle. His re 
 semblance to Henry VIII is more marked now that 
 he has donned the crimson gown and flat hat of the 
 famous English university which gave him the de 
 gree of LL.D. Seated in a high-backed chair 
 the historic chair of the first colonial president of 
 Pluribus surrounded by tier upon tier of his ret 
 inue of the thousand professors of the university, 
 President Alexander Mackintosh Butcher presents 
 the degrees, and in his emphatic voice warns the 
 five thousand graduates before him against every 
 thing new, everything untried, everything un* 
 tested. 
 
 Only one office could tempt President Butcher 
 from his high estate. Yet even those enthusiastic 
 alumni and those devoted professors who long to 
 see him President of the United States have little 
 hope of tempting him from his duties to his alma 
 mater. Having set his hand to the plough, he 
 must see Pluribus through her harvest season, and 
 
 [105] 
 
may God prosper the work! So, beloved of all, 
 alumni and instructors alike, the idol of the un 
 dergraduates, a national oracle of Prosperity and 
 Peace, President Butcher passes to a green old age, 
 a truly Olympian figure of the time. 
 
 [ 106 ] 
 
THIS OLDER GENERATION 
 
 I READ with ever-increasing wonder the guarded 
 defenses and discreet apologies for the older gen 
 eration which keep filtering through the essays of 
 the Atlantic. I can even seem to detect a grow 
 ing decision of tone, a definite assurance of convic 
 tion, which seems to imply that a rally has been 
 undertaken against the accusations which the 
 younger generation, in its self-assurance, its irrev 
 erence for the old conventions and moralities, its 
 passion for the novel and startling, seemed to be 
 bringing against them. The first faint twinges of 
 conscience felt by the older generation have given 
 place to renewed homily. There is an evident 
 anxiety to get itself put on record as perfectly sat 
 isfied with its world, and desirous that its sons and 
 daughters should learn anew of those peculiar 
 beauties in which it has lived. Swept off its feet 
 
by the call to social service and social reform, it 
 is slowly regaining its foundation, and, slightly 
 flushed, and with garments somewhat awry, it pro 
 claims again its belief in the eternal verities of 
 Protestant religion and conventional New Eng 
 land morality. 
 
 It is always an encouraging sign when people 
 are rendered self-conscious and are forced to ex-. 
 amine the basis of their ideals. The demand that 
 they explain them to skeptics always makes for 
 clarity. When the older generation is put on the 
 defensive, it must first discover what convictions it 
 has, and then sharpen them to their finest point in 
 order to present them convincingly. There are al 
 ways too many unquestioned things in the world, 
 and for a person or class to have to scurry about to 
 find reasons for its prejudices is about as healthy 
 an exercise as one could wish for either of them. 
 To be sure, the reasons are rarely any more than 
 ex post facto excuses, supports and justifications 
 for the prejudices rather than the causes thereof. 
 Reason itself is very seldom more than that. The 
 important point is that one should feel the need of 
 a reason. This always indicates that something 
 has begun to slide, that the world is no longer so 
 
 [108] 
 
secure as it was, that obvious truths no longer are 
 obvious, that the world has begun to bristle with 
 question marks. 
 
 One of the basic grievances of this older gener 
 ation against the younger of to-day, with its social 
 agitation, its religious heresy, its presumptive in 
 dividuality, its economic restlessness, is that all 
 this makes it uncomfortable. When you have 
 found growing older to be a process of the recon 
 ciliation of the spirit to life, it is decidedly dis 
 concerting to have some youngster come along and 
 point out the irreconcilable things in the universe. 
 Just as you have made a tacit agreement to call 
 certain things non-existent, it is highly discom 
 moding to have somebody shout with strident 
 tones that they are very real and significant. 
 When, after much struggling and compromise, you 
 have got your world clamped down, it is discour 
 aging to have a gale arise which threatens to blow 
 over all your structure. Through so much of the 
 current writing runs this quiet note of disapproba 
 tion. These agnostic professors who unsettle the 
 faith of our youth, these "intellectuals who stick a 
 finger in everybody s pie in the name of social jus 
 tice," these sensation-mongers who unveil great 
 
masses of political and social corruption, these re 
 morseless scientists who would reveal so many of 
 our reticences why can t they let us alone 1 ? Can 
 they not see that God s in his heaven, all s right 
 with the world? 
 
 ii 
 
 Now I know this older generation which doth 
 protest so much. I have lived with it for the 
 last fifteen years, ever since I began to wonder 
 whether all was for the best in the best of all pos 
 sible worlds. I was educated by it, grew up with 
 it. I doubt if any generation ever had a more 
 docile pupil than I. What they taught me, I find 
 they still believe, or at least so many of them as 
 have not gone over to the enemy, or been captured 
 by the militant youth of to-day. Or, as seems 
 rather likely, they no longer precisely believe, 
 but they want their own arguments to con 
 vince themselves. It is probable that when we 
 really believe a thing with all our hearts, we do 
 not attempt to justify it. Justification comes 
 only when we are beginning to doubt it. 
 
 By this older generation I mean, of course, the 
 mothers and fathers and uncles and aunts of the 
 
 [110] 
 
youth of both sexes between twenty and thirty 
 who are beginning their professional or business 
 life. And I refer of course to the comfortable or 
 fairly comfortable American middle class. Now 
 this older generation has had a religion, a meta 
 physics, an ethics, and a political and social phil 
 osophy, which have reigned practically undis 
 puted until the appearance of the present genera 
 tion. It has at least never felt called upon to jus- ^ 
 tify itself. It has never been directly challenged, 
 as it is to-day. In order to localize this genera 
 tion still further, we must see it in its typical set 
 ting of the small town or city, clustered about the 
 institutions of church and family. If we have 
 any society which can be called "American," it is 
 this society. Its psychology is American psychol 
 ogy; its soul is America s soul. 
 
 This older generation, which I have known so 
 well for fifteen years, has a religion which is on 
 the whole as pleasant and easy as could be de 
 vised. Though its members are the descendants 
 of the stern and rugged old Puritans, who wrestled 
 with the devil and stripped their world of all that 
 might seduce them from the awful service of God, 
 they have succeeded in straining away by a long 
 
 [in] 
 
process all the repellent attitudes in the old phil 
 osophy of life. It is unfair to say that the older 
 generation believe in dogmas and creeds. It 
 would be more accurate to say that it does not dis 
 believe. It retains them as a sort of guaranty of 
 the stability of the faith, but leaves them rather 
 severely alone. It does not even make more than 
 feeble efforts to reinterpret them in the light of 
 modern knowledge. They are useless, but neces 
 sary. 
 
 The foundation of this religion may be relig 
 ious, but the superstructure is almost entirely eth 
 ical. Most sermons of to-day are little more than 
 pious exhortations to good conduct. By good con 
 duct is meant that sort of action which will least 
 disturb the normal routine of modern middle-class 
 life : common honesty in business life, faithful 
 ness to duty, ambition in business and profession, 
 filial obligation, the use of talents, and always and 
 everywhere simple human kindness and love. 
 The old Puritan ethics, which saw in the least is 
 sue of conduct a struggle between God and the 
 devil, has become a mere code for facilitating the 
 daily friction of conventional life. 
 
 Now one would indeed be churlish to find fault 
 
 [112] 
 
with this devout belief in simple goodness, which 
 characterizes the older generation. It is only 
 when these humble virtues are raised up into an 
 all-inclusive program for social reform and into a 
 philosophy of life, that one begins to question, and 
 to feel afar the deep hostility of the older genera 
 tion to the new faith. 
 
 Simple kindness, common honesty, filial obedi 
 ence, it is evidently still felt, will solve all the dif 
 ficulties of personal and social life. The most 
 popular novels of the day are those in which the 
 characters do the most good to each other. The 
 enormous success with the older generation of The 
 Inside of the Cup, Queed, and V. V. s Eyes, is 
 based primarily on the fact that these books repre 
 sent a sublimated form of the good old American 
 melodramatic moral sense. And now comes along 
 Mr. Gerald Stanley Lee with his Crowds, what 
 a funny, individualized, personal-responsibility 
 crowd he gives us, to be sure, and his panacea for 
 modern social ills by the old solution of applied 
 personal virtue. Never a word about removing 
 the barriers of caste and race and economic in 
 equality, but only an urging to step over them. 
 Never a trumpet-call to level the ramparts of priv- 
 
ilege, or build up the heights of opportunity, but 
 only an appeal to extend the charitable hand from 
 the ramparts of heaven, or offer the kindly patron 
 age to the less fortunate, or most dazzling of all 
 throw away, in a frenzy of abandonment, life 
 and fortune. Not to construct a business organ 
 ization where dishonesty would be meaningless, 
 but to be utopianly honest against the business 
 world. In other words, the older generation be 
 lieves in getting all the luxury of the virtue of 
 goodness, while conserving all the advantages of 
 being in a vicious society. 
 
 If there is any one characteristic which distin 
 guishes the older generation, it is this belief that 
 social ills may be cured by personal virtue. Its 
 highest moral ideals are sacrifice and service. But 
 the older generation can never see how intensely 
 selfish these ideals are, in the most complete sense 
 of the word selfish. What they mean always is, 
 "I sacrifice myself for you," "I serve you," not, 
 "We cooperate in working ceaselessly toward an 
 ideal where all may be free and none may be 
 served or serve." These ideals of sacrifice and 
 service are utterly selfish, because they take ac 
 count only of the satisfaction and moral consolida- 
 
tion of the doer. They enhance his moral value; 
 but what of the person who is served or sacrificed 
 for? What of the person who is done good to? 
 If the feelings of sacrifice and service were in any 
 sense altruistic, the moral enhancement of the re 
 ceiver would be the object sought. But can it not 
 be said that for every individual virtuous merit se 
 cured by an act of sacrifice or service on the part 
 of the doer, there is a corresponding depression 
 on the part of the receiver? Do we not univers 
 ally recognize this by calling a person who is not 
 conscious of this depression, a parasite, and the 
 person who is no longer capable of depression, a 
 pauper? It is exactly those free gifts, such as 
 schools, libraries, and so forth, which are imper 
 sonal or social, that we -can accept gratefully and 
 gladly; and it is exactly because the ministrations 
 of a Charity Organization Society are impersonal 
 and businesslike that they can be received will 
 ingly and without moral depression by the poor. 
 
 The ideal of duty is equally open to attack. 
 The great complaint of the younger against the 
 older generation has to do with the rigidity of the 
 social relationships into which the younger find 
 themselves born. The world seems to be full of 
 
what may be called canalized emotions. One is 
 "supposed" to love one s aunt or one s grandfather 
 in a certain definite way, at the risk of being "un 
 natural." One gets almost a sense of the quanti 
 tative measurement of emotion. Perhaps the 
 greatest tragedy of family life is the useless energy 
 that is expended by the dutiful in keeping these 
 artificial channels open, and the correct amount 
 of current running. It is exactly this that pro 
 duces most infallibly the rebellion of the younger 
 generation. To hear that one ought to love this 
 or that person; or to hear loyalty spoken of, as 
 the older generation so often speaks of it, as if it 
 consisted in an allegiance to something which one 
 no longer believes in, this is what soonest liber 
 ates those forces of madness and revolt which be 
 wilder spiritual teachers and guides. It is those 
 dry channels of duty and obligation through which 
 no living waters of emotion flow that it is the 
 ideal of the younger generation to break up. 
 They will have no network of emotional canals 
 which are not brimming, no duties which are not 
 equally loves. 
 
 But when they are loves, you have duty no 
 longer meaning very much. Duty, like sacrifice 
 
 [116] 
 
and service, always implies a personal relation of 
 individuals. You are always doing your duty to 
 somebody or something. Always the taint of in 
 equality comes in. You are morally superior to 
 the person who has duty done to him. If that 
 duty is not filled with good-will and desire, it is 
 morally hateful, or at very best, a necessary evil, 
 one of those compromises with the world which 
 must be made in order to get through it at all. 
 But duty without good-will is a compromise with 
 our present state of inequality, and to raise duty 
 to the level of a virtue is to consecrate that state of 
 inequality forevermore. 
 
 in 
 
 It is the same thing with service. The older 
 generation has attempted an insidious compromise 
 with the new social democracy by combining the 
 words "social" and "service." Under cover of 
 the ideal of service it tries to appropriate to itself 
 the glory of social work, and succeeds in almost 
 convincing itself and the world that its Christian 
 ity has always held the same ideal. The faithful 
 are urged to extend their activities. The assump 
 tion is that, by doing good to more individuals, 
 
 [117] 
 
you are thereby becoming social. But to speak of 
 "social democracy," which of course means a 
 freely cooperating, freely reciprocating society of 
 equals, and "service," together, is a contradiction 
 of terms. For, when you serve people or do good 
 to them, you thereby render yourself unequal with 
 them. You insult the democratic ideal. If the 
 service is compulsory, it is menial and you are in 
 ferior. If voluntary, you are superior. The dif 
 ference, however, is only academic. The entire 
 Christian scheme is a clever but unsuccessful at 
 tempt to cure the evils of inequality by transpos 
 ing the values. The slave serves gladly instead of 
 servilely. That is, he turns his master into a 
 slave. That is why good Christian people can 
 never get over the idea that Socialism means sim 
 ply the triumph of one class over another. To 
 day the proletarian is down, the capitalist up. 
 To-morrow the proletarian will be up and the 
 capitalist down. To pull down the mighty from 
 their seats and exalt them of low degree is the 
 highest pitch to which Christian ethics ever at 
 tained. The failure of the older generation to 
 recognize a higher ethic, the ethic of democracy, 
 is the cause of all the trouble. 
 
The notorious Victorian era, which in its secret 
 heart this older generation still admires so much, 
 accentuated all the latent individualism of Chris 
 tian ethics, and produced a code which, without 
 the rebellion of the younger generation, would 
 have spiritually guaranteed forever all moral caste 
 divisions and inequalities of modern society. The 
 Protestant Church, in which this exaggerated ethic 
 was enshrined, is now paying heavily the price of 
 this debauch of ethical power. Its rapidly declin 
 ing numbers show that human nature has an in 
 vincible objection to being individually saved. 
 The Catholic Church, which saves men as members 
 of the Beloved Community, and not as individu 
 als, flourishes. When one is saved by Catholi 
 cism, one becomes a democrat, and not a spiritual 
 snob and aristocrat, as one does through Calvin 
 ism. The older generation can never understand 
 that superb loyalty which is loyalty te a com 
 munity, a loyalty which, paradoxical as it may 
 seem, nourishes the true social personality in pro 
 portion as the individual sense is lessened. The 
 Protestant Church in its tenacious devotion to the 
 personal ideal of a Divine Master the highest 
 and most popular Christian ideal of to-day 
 
shows how very far it still is away from the ideals 
 and ethics of a social democracy, a life lived in the 
 Beloved Community. 
 
 The sense of self-respect is the very keystone of 
 the personality in whose defence all this individu 
 alistic philosophy has been carefully built up. 
 The Christian virtues date from ages when there 
 was a vastly greater number of morally depressed 
 people than there is now. The tenacious survival 
 of these virtues can be due only to the fact that 
 they were valuable to the moral prestige of some 
 class. Our older generation, with its emphasis on 
 duty, sacrifice, and service, shows us very clearly 
 what those interests were. I deliberately accuse 
 the older generation of conserving and greatly 
 strengthening these ideals, as a defensive measure. 
 Morals are always the product of a situation ; they 
 reflect a certain organization of human relations 
 which some class or group wishes to preserve. A 
 moral code or set of ideals is always the invisible 
 spiritual sign of a visible social grace. In an ef 
 fort to retain the status quo of that world of in 
 equalities and conventions in which they most com 
 fortably and prosperously live, the older genera 
 tion has stamped, through all its agencies of fam- 
 
 [120] 
 
ily, church and school, upon the younger genera 
 tion, just those seductive ideals which would pre 
 serve its position. These old virtues upon which, 
 however, the younger generation is already making 
 guerilla warfare are simply the moral support 
 with which the older generation buttresses its so 
 cial situation. 
 
 The natural barriers and prejudices by which 
 our elders are cut off from a freely flowing democ 
 racy are thus given a spiritual justification, and 
 there is added for our elders the almost sensual 
 luxury of leaping, by free grace, the barriers and 
 giving themselves away. But the price has to be 
 paid. Just as profits, in the socialist philosophy, 
 are taken to be an abstraction from wages, through 
 the economic power which one class has over an 
 other, so the virtues of the older generation may 
 be said to be an abstraction from the virtue of 
 other classes less favorably situated from a moral 
 or personal point of view. Their swollen self-re 
 spect is at the expense of others. 
 
 How well we know the type of man in the older 
 generation who has been doing good all his life! 
 How his personality has thriven on it ! How he 
 has ceaselessly been storing away moral fat in 
 
 [121] 
 
every cranny of his soul ! His goodness has been 
 meat to him. The need and depression of other 
 people has been, all unconsciously to him, the air 
 which he has breathed. Without their compen 
 sating misfortune or sin, his goodness would 
 have wilted and died. If good people would 
 earnestly set to work to make the world uniformly 
 healthy, courageous, beautiful, and prosperous, 
 the field of their vocation would be constantly lim 
 ited, and finally destroyed. That they so stoutly 
 resist all philosophies and movements which have 
 these ends primarily in view is convincing evi 
 dence of the fierce and jealous egoism which ani 
 mates their so plausibly altruistic spirit. One 
 suspects that the older generation does not want its 
 vocation destroyed. It takes an heroic type of 
 goodness to undermine all the foundations on 
 which our virtue rests. 
 
 If then I object to the ethical philosophy of the 
 older generation on the ground that it is too in 
 dividualistic, and, under the pretense of altruism, 
 too egoistic, I object to its general intellectuality 
 as not individual enough. Intellectually the older 
 generation seems to me to lead far too vegetative 
 a life. It may be that this life has been lived on 
 [122] 
 
the heights, that these souls have passed through 
 fires and glories, but there is generally too little ob 
 jective evidence of this subjective fact. If the in 
 tuition which accompanies experience has verified 
 all the data regarding God, the soul, the family, 
 and so forth, to quote one of the staunchest de 
 fenders of the generation, this verification seems 
 to have been obtained rather that the issues might 
 be promptly disposed of and forgotten. Cer 
 tainly the older generation is rarely interested in 
 the profounder issues of life. It never speaks of 
 death, the suggestion makes it uncomfortable. 
 It shies in panic at hints of sex-issues. It seems 
 resolute to keep life on as objective a plane as 
 possible. It is no longer curious about the mo 
 tives and feelings of people. It seems singularly 
 to lack the psychological sense. If it gossips, it 
 recounts actions, effects; it rarely seeks to inter 
 pret. It tends more and more to treat human be 
 ings as moving masses of matter instead of as per 
 sonalities filled with potent influence, or as ab 
 sorbingly interesting social types, as I am sure the 
 younger generation does. 
 
 The older generation seems no longer to gen 
 eralize, although it gives every evidence of having 
 
once prodigiously generalized, for its world is all 
 hardened and definite. There are the good and 
 the criminal, and the poor, the people who can be 
 called nice, and the ordinary people. The world 
 is already plotted out. Now I am sure that the 
 generalizations of the truly philosophical mind 
 are very fluid and ephemeral. They are no sooner 
 made than the mind sees their insufficiency and 
 has to break them up. A new cutting is made, 
 only in turn to be shaken and rearranged. This 
 keeps the philosopher thinking all the time, and it 
 makes his world a very uncertain place. But he 
 at least runs no risk of hardening, and he has his 
 eyes open to most experience. 
 
 I am often impressed with the fact that the 
 older generation has grown weary of thinking. 
 It has simply put up the bars in its intellectual 
 shop-windows and gone off home to rest. It may 
 well be that this is because it has felt so much 
 sorrow that it does not want to talk about sorrow, 
 or so much love that to interpret love tires it, or 
 repulsed so many rude blows of destiny that it has 
 no interest in speaking of destiny. Its flame may 
 be low for the very reason that it has burned so 
 
 [124] 
 
intensely. But how many of the younger genera 
 tion would eagerly long for such interpretations if 
 the older would only reveal them ! And how lit 
 tle plausible is that experience when it is occasion 
 ally interpreted! No, enthusiasm, passion for 
 ideas, sensuality, religious fervor, all the heated 
 weapons with which the younger generation at 
 tacks the world, seem only to make the older gen 
 eration uneasy. The spirit, in becoming recon 
 ciled to life, has lost life itself. 
 
 As I see the older generation going through its 
 daily round of business, church, and family life, I 
 cannot help feeling that its influence is profoundly 
 pernicious. It has signally failed to broaden its 
 institutions for the larger horizon of the time. 
 The church remains a private club of comfortable 
 middle-class families, while outside there grows up 
 without spiritual inspiration a heterogeneous mass 
 of people without ties, roots, or principles. The 
 town changes from a village to an industrial cen 
 ter, and church and school go through their time- 
 honored and listless motions. The,, world widens, 
 society expands, formidable crises appear, but the 
 older generation does not broaden, or if it does, the 
 
broadening is in no adequate proportion to our 
 needs. The older generation still uses the old 
 ideas for the new problem. Whatever new wine 
 it finds must be poured into the old bottles. 
 
 Where are the leaders among the older genera 
 tion in America who, with luminous faith and in 
 telligence, are rallying around them the disinte 
 grated numbers of idealistic youth, as Bergson and 
 Barres and Jaures have done in France 4 ? A few 
 years ago there seemed to be a promise of a for 
 ward movement toward Democracy, led by em 
 battled veterans in a war against privilege. But 
 how soon the older generation became wearied in 
 the march! What is left now of that shining 
 army and its leader? Must the younger genera 
 tion eternally wait for the sign? 
 
 The answer is, of course, that it will not wait. 
 It must shoulder the gigantic task of putting into 
 practice its ideals and revolutionary points of view 
 as wholeheartedly and successfully as our great 
 grandfathers applied theirs and tightened the phil 
 osophy of life which imprisons the older genera 
 tion. The shuddering fear that we in turn may 
 become weary, complacent, evasive, should be the 
 best preventive of that stagnation. We shall 
 
 [126] 
 
never have done looking for the miracle, that it 
 shall be given us to lighten, cheer, and purify our 
 "younger generation," even as our older has de 
 pressed and disintegrated us. 
 
 [ 127 ] 
 
A MIRROR OF THE MIDDLE WEST 
 
 No Easterner, born forlornly within the sphere 
 of New York, Boston, or Philadelphia, can pass 
 very far beyond the Alleghanies without feeling 
 that American civilization is here found in the full 
 tide of believing in itself. The flat countryside 
 looks more ordered, more farmlike; the Main 
 Streets that flash by the car-windows somehow 
 look more robust and communal. There may be 
 no less litter and scrubbiness; the clustered houses 
 of the towns may look even more flimsy, undistin 
 guished, well-worn; but it is a litter of aspiring or 
 der, a chaos which the people are insensitive to be 
 cause they are living in the light of a hopeful 
 future. The East has pretty much abandoned it 
 self to the tides of immigration and industrial 
 change which have overwhelmed it : no one really 
 believes that anything startling will be done to 
 bring about a new heaven ,and a new earth. But 
 [128] 
 
the intelligence of the West seems to live in apoca 
 lyptic sociological not socialistic, however 
 dreams. Architects and business men combine 
 half-heartedly to "save New York" from the hor 
 rors of the Jewish clothing-trade invasion, but 
 Chicago draws great maps and sketches of a city- 
 planning that shall make it not only habitable but 
 radiant and palatial. 
 
 Hope has not vanished from the East, but it has 
 long since ceased to be our daily diet. Europe has 
 infected us perhaps with some of its world-weari 
 ness. The East produces more skeptics and spir 
 itual malcontents than the West. For the Mid 
 dle West seems to have accomplished most of the 
 things, industrial and political, that the East has 
 been trying to do, and it has done them better. 
 The Middle West is the apotheosis of American 
 civilization, and like all successes it is in no mood 
 to be very critical of itself or very examinatory as 
 to the anatomy and physiology of its social being. 
 No Easterner with Meredith Nicholson s human 
 and literary experience would write so complac 
 ently and cheerfully about his part of the country 
 as Mr. Nicholson writes about "The Valley of 
 Democracy." His self-confidence is the very 
 
voice of the Middle West, telling us what it thinks 
 of itself. This, we say as we read, must be the 
 inner candor which goes with the West that we 
 see with our eyes. So we like Mr. Nicholson s 
 articles not so much for the information they give 
 us as for the attitudes they let slip, the unconscious 
 revelations of what the people he is talking for 
 think important. 
 
 It is not a book of justification, although he 
 would rather anxiously have us take not too seri 
 ously the political vagaries like Bryanism and Pro- 
 gressivism. And he wishes us to miss none of the 
 symphony orchestras and art institutes that evi 
 dently now begin to grow like grasshoppers on the 
 prairies. He treats himself rather as an expositor, 
 and he is explicitly informational, almost as if for 
 a foreign country. He sometimes has an amusing 
 air of having hastily read up and investigated 
 Western wonders and significances that have been 
 not only common material in the Eastern maga 
 zines, but matter of despairing admiration on the 
 part of those of us who are general improvers of 
 mankind. He is naive about the greatness of 
 Chicago, the vastness of agricultural production, 
 the ravages of culture among the middle classes. 
 [ 130] 
 
He is almost the professional Westerner showing 
 off his prize human stock. 
 
 Mr. Nicholson does well to begin with the 
 folksiness of the West. No one who has experi 
 enced that fine open friendliness of the prosperous 
 Middle Westerner, that pleasant awareness of the 
 alert and beneficent world we live in, can deny 
 that the Middle West is quite justified in think 
 ing of itself as the real heart of the nation. That 
 belief in the ultimate good sense, breadth of 
 vision, and devotion to the common good, of the 
 "folks back home," is in itself a guaranty of social 
 stability and of a prosperity which implies that 
 things will never be any different except as they 
 slowly improve. Who can say that we have no 
 Gemuthlichkeit in America, when he runs up 
 against this warm social mixability which goes so 
 far to compensate for the lack of intellectual 
 nuances and spontaneous artistic sensibilities? 
 
 Of course the Middle West has to pay for its 
 social responsiveness in a failure to create, at least 
 in this day and generation, very vigorous and di 
 verse spiritual types. An excessive amiability, a 
 genius for adaptability will, in the end, put a 
 premium on conformity. The Westerner sin- 
 
cerely believes that he is more averse to conven 
 tionality than the Easterner, but the latter does 
 not find him so. The heretic seems to have a 
 much harder time of it in the West. Classes and 
 attitudes that have offended against the "folks " 
 codes may be actually outlawed. When there 
 are acute differences of opinion, as in the war, so 
 ciety splits into bitter and irreconcilable camps, 
 whereas in the East the undesirables have been al 
 lowed to shade off towards limbo in gradual de 
 grees. When hatred and malice, too long starved 
 by too much "niceness," do break out from the 
 natural man, they may produce those waves of per 
 secution and vindictiveness which, coming from a 
 so recently pacifist West, astonished an East that 
 was no less densely saturated with aliens but was 
 more conversant with the feeling that it takes all 
 kinds of people to make a world. Folksiness evi 
 dently has its dark underlining in a tendency to be 
 stampeded by herd-emotion. "Social conscience" 
 may become the duty to follow what the mob de 
 mands, and democracy may come to mean that the 
 individual feels himself somehow expressed his 
 private tastes and intelligence in whatever the 
 crowd chooses to do. 
 
I have followed Mr. Nicholson in his speaking 
 of the Middle West as if he thought of the region 
 as a unit. He does speak as if he did, but he does 
 not really mean it. Much as he would like to be 
 lieve in the substantial equality of the people in 
 the Valley of Democracy, he cannot help letting 
 us see that it is but one class that he has in mind 
 his own, the prosperous people of the towns. He 
 protests against their being scornfully waved aside 
 as bourgeoisie. "They constitute the most inter 
 esting and admirable of our social strata." And 
 he is quite right. Certainly this stratum is by far 
 the most admirable of all the middle classes of the 
 world. It is true that "nowhere else have com 
 fort, opportunity, and aspiration produced the 
 same combination." He marvels at the numbers 
 of homes in the cities that cannot imaginably be 
 supported on less than five thousand a year. And 
 it is these homes, and their slightly more impov 
 erished neighbors, who are for him the "folks," 
 the incarnate Middle West. The proletarian 
 does not exist for him. The working-classes are 
 merely so much cement, filling in the bricks of the 
 temple or, better, folks in embryo, potential 
 owners of bungalows on pleasant suburban streets. 
 
 [133] 
 
Mr. Nicholson s enthusiasm is for the college-girl 
 wife, who raises babies, attends women s clubs, 
 and is not afraid to dispense with the unattainable 
 servant. It is for the good-natured and public- 
 spirited business man, who goes into politics be 
 cause politics in the Middle West has always been 
 concerned with the prosperity of the business com 
 munity. But about the economic foundation of 
 this class Mr. Nicholson sounds as innocent as a 
 babe. 
 
 Take his attitude towards the farmer. You 
 gather from these pages that in the Middle West 
 the farmer is a somewhat unfortunate anomaly, a 
 shadow on the bright scene. Farming is scarcely 
 even a respectable profession: "the great-grand 
 children of the Middle Western pioneers are not 
 easily persuaded that farming is an honorable call 
 ing" ! He hints darkly at a decay in fiber. Only 
 one chapter out of six is given to the farmer, and 
 that is largely occupied with the exertions of state 
 agencies, universities, to lift him out of his ignor 
 ance and selfishness. The average farmer has few 
 of the admirable qualities of the Valley of De 
 mocracy. He is not "folksy"; he is suspicious, 
 conservative, somewhat embittered, little given to 
 
 [134] 
 
cooperation; he even needed prodding with his 
 Liberty bonds. In Mr. Nicholson s pages the 
 farmer becomes a huge problem which lies on the 
 brain and conscience of a Middle West that can 
 only act towards him in its best moments like a 
 sort of benevolent Charity Organization Society. 
 "To the average urban citizen," says Mr. Nichol 
 son, "farming is something remote and uninterest 
 ing, carried on by men he never meets in regions 
 that he only observes hastily from a speeding auto 
 mobile or the window of a limited train." 
 
 It would take whole volumes to develop the im 
 plications of that sentence. Remember that that 
 urban citizen is Mr. Nicholson s Middle West, 
 and that the farmer comprises the huge bulk of the 
 population. Is this not interesting, the attitude 
 of the prosperous minority of an urban minority 
 a small but significant class which has in its 
 hands all the non-productive business and political 
 power towards the great productive mass of the 
 people? Could class division be revealed in 
 plainer terms? This Middle West of Mr. Nich 
 olson s class sees itself as not only innocent of ex 
 ploitation, but full of all the personal and social 
 virtues besides. But does the farmer see this class 
 
 [135] 
 
in this light? He does not. And Mr. Veblen 
 has given us in one of his books an analysis of this 
 society which may explain why : "The American 
 country town and small city," he says, "is a busi 
 ness community, that is to say it lives for and by 
 business traffic, primarily of a merchandising sort. 
 . . . Municipal politics is conducted as in some 
 sort a public or overt extension of that private or 
 covert organization of local interests that watches 
 over the joint pecuniary benefit of the local busi 
 nessmen. It is a means ... of safe-guarding 
 the local business community against interlopers 
 and against any evasive tactics on the part of the 
 country population that serves as a host. . . . 
 The country town is a product and exponent of 
 the American land system. In its beginning it is 
 located and developed as an enterprise of specu 
 lation in land values; that is to say, it is a business 
 like endeavor to get something for nothing by en 
 grossing as much as may be of the increment of 
 land values due to the increase of population and 
 the settlement and cultivation of the adjacent 
 agricultural area. It never (hitherto) loses this 
 character of real-estate speculation. This af 
 fords a common bond and a common ground of 
 
 [ 136.1 
 
pecuniary interest, which commonly masquerades 
 under the name of public patriotism, public spirit, 
 civic pride, and the like." 
 
 In other words, Town, in the traditional Ameri 
 can scheme of things, is shown charging Country 
 all the traffic will bear. It would be hard to find 
 a member of Mr. Nicholson s Middle West that 
 minority urban class who was not owing his pros 
 perity to some form of industrial or real-estate 
 speculation, of brokerage business enterprise, or 
 landlordism. This class likes to say sometimes 
 that it is "carrying the farmer." It would be 
 more like the truth to say that the farmer is carry 
 ing this class. Country ultimately has to support 
 Town ; and Town, by holding control of the chan 
 nels of credit and market, can make the farmer pay 
 up to the hilt for the privilege of selling it his 
 product. And does. When the farmers, getting 
 a sense of the true workings of the society they live 
 in, combine in a Non-Partisan League to control 
 the organism of market and credit, they find they 
 have a bitter class war on their hands. And the 
 authentic voice of Mr. Nicholson here scolds them 
 roundly for their restlessness and sedition. In 
 this ferocious reaction of Town against Country s 
 
 [137] 
 
socialistic efforts to give itself economic auton 
 omy, we get the betrayal of the social malaise of 
 the Middle West, a confession of the cleavage of 
 latent class conflict in a society as exploitative, as 
 steeply tilted, as tragically extreme in its poles of 
 well-being, as any other modern society based on 
 the economic absolutism of property. 
 
 A large part of the hopefulness, the spiritual 
 comfort of the Middle West, of its sturdy belief 
 in itself, must be based on the inflexible reluctance 
 of its intelligentsia to any such set of ideas. 
 However thoroughly Marxian ideas may have sat 
 urated the thought of Europe and become the in 
 tellectual explosive of social change, the Middle 
 West, as in this book, persists in its robust resist 
 ance to any such analysis or self-knowledge. It 
 is not that Mr. Nicholson s attitudes are not true. 
 It is that they are so very much less than the whole 
 truth. They need to be supplemented by analysis 
 set in the terms in which the progressive minds of 
 the rest of the world are thinking. The intelli 
 gent Middle West needs to sacrifice a certain 
 amount of complacency in exchange for an under 
 standing of the structure of its own society. It 
 would then realize that to read "The Valley of 
 
 [138] 
 
Democracy" in conjunction with pages 315-323 
 of Veblen s "Imperial Germany and the Industrial 
 Revolution" is to experience one of the most pi 
 quant intellectual adventures granted to the cur 
 rent mind. 
 
 [139] 
 
ERNEST: OR, PARENT FOR A DAY 
 
 I HAD been talking rather loosely about the 
 bringing-up of children. They had been lately 
 appearing to me in the guise of infinitely preva 
 lent little beings who impressed themselves almost 
 too vividly upon one s consciousness. My sum 
 mer vacation I had passed in a household where a 
 vivacious little boy of two years and a solemn lit 
 tle boy of six months had turned their mother into 
 a household slave. I had seen walks, conversa 
 tions, luncheons, and all the amenities of summer 
 civilized life, shot to pieces by the indomitable 
 need of imperious little children to be taken care 
 of. Little boys who came running at you smiling, 
 stubbed their toes, and were instantly transformed 
 into wailing inconsolables ; babies who woke im 
 portunately at ten o clock in the evening, and had 
 to be brought down warm and blinking before the 
 
 [ HO] 
 
fire; human beings who were not self -regulating, 
 but to whom every hard surface, every protuber 
 ance, was a menace to happiness, and in whom 
 every want and sensation was an order and claim 
 upon somebody else these were new offerings to 
 my smooth and independent existence. They in 
 terested and perturbed me. 
 
 The older little boy, with his sunny luxuriance 
 of hair and cheek, was always on the point of say 
 ing something novel and disconcerting. The 
 baby, with his deep black eyes, seemed to be wait 
 ing silently and in soft anticipation for life. He 
 would look at you so calmly and yet so eagerly, 
 and give you a pleasant satisfaction that just your 
 mere presence, your form, your movement, were 
 etching new little lines on his cortex, sending new 
 little shoots of feeling through his nerves. You 
 were being part of his education just by letting his 
 consciousness look at you. I liked particularly to 
 hold my watch to his ear, and see the sudden grave 
 concentration of his face, as he called all his mind 
 to the judgment of this arresting phenomenon. I 
 would love to accost him as he lay murmuring in 
 his carriage, and to check his little breakings into 
 tears by quick movements of my hands. He 
 
 [HI] 
 
would watch me intently for a while until the fact 
 of his little restless woe would come upon him 
 again. I was challenged then to something more 
 startling, and the woe would disappear in little 
 short gasps. But I would find that he was sub 
 ject to the law of diminishing returns. The mo 
 ment would arrive when the woe submerged every 
 thing in a wail, and his mother would have to be 
 called to nurse or coddle him in the magical moth 
 erly way. 
 
 The baby I found perhaps more interesting than 
 his little brother, for the baby s moods had more 
 style to them. The brother could be transformed 
 from golden prattlingness to raging storm, with 
 the most disconcerting quickness. He could want 
 the most irrational things with an intensity that 
 got itself expressed in hypnotic reiteration. Some 
 smoldering will-to-power in one s self told one 
 that a child should never be given the thing that 
 he most wanted ; and yet in five minutes one would 
 have given him one s soul, to be rid of the brazen 
 rod which he pounded through one. But I could 
 not keep away from him. He and his baby 
 brother absorbed me, and when I contemplated 
 their mother s life, I had many a solemn sense of 
 
the arduousness of being a parent. I thought of 
 the long years ahead of them, and the incalculabil- 
 ity of their manifestations. I shuddered and re 
 mained, gloating, I am afraid, a little over the 
 opportunity of enjoyment without responsibility. 
 
 All these things I was recounting the other even 
 ing after dinner to a group of friends who profes 
 sionally look after the minds and bodies of the 
 neglected. I was explaining my absorption, and 
 the perils and merciless tyranny of the mother s 
 life, and my thankfulness at having been so much 
 in, and yet so much not of, the child-world. I 
 was not responsible, and the policeman mother 
 could be called in at any time to soothe or to 
 quell. I could always maintain the amused aloof 
 ness which is my usual attitude toward children. 
 And I made the point that parenthood must be 
 come less arduous after the child is a self-regulat 
 ing little organism, and can be trusted not to com 
 mit suicide inadvertently over every threshold, can 
 feed himself, dress himself, and take himself rea 
 sonably around. I even suggested unwarily that 
 after five or six the tyranny was much mitigated. 
 
 There was strong dissent. Just at that age, I 
 was told, the real responsibilities began. I was 
 
 [ H3] 
 
living in a fool s paradise of bachelordom if I 
 thought that at six children were grown-up. One 
 of the women before the fire made it her business 
 to get children adopted. I had a sense of fore 
 boding before she spoke. She promptly confirmed 
 my intuition by offering to endow me with an in 
 fant of six years, for a day or for as long as I 
 would take him. The hearty agreement of the 
 rest amazed and alarmed me. They seemed de 
 lighted at the thought of my becoming parent for 
 a day. I should have Ernest. They all knew Er 
 nest; and I should have him. They seemed to 
 have no concern that he would not survive my 
 brief parenthood. It rather warmed and flattered 
 me to think that they trusted me. 
 
 I had a sense of being caught in an inescapable 
 net, prisoner of my own theories. If children of 
 six were no longer tyrants, the possession of Ernest 
 would not interfere with my work or my life. I 
 had spoken confidently. I had a reputation 
 among my friends of speaking eloquently about 
 "the child." And I always find it almost impos 
 sible to resist the offer of new experience. I hes 
 itated and was lost. I even found myself naming 
 the day for Ernest s momentary adoption. And 
 
 [ H4] 
 
during all that week I found it increasingly impos 
 sible to forget him. The night before Ernest was 
 to come I told myself that I could not believe that 
 this perilous thing was about to happen to me. I 
 made no preparations to receive Ernest in my tiny 
 bachelor apartment. I felt that I was in the 
 hands of fate. 
 
 ii 
 
 I was not really surprised when fate knocked at 
 the door next morning in the person of my grin 
 ning friend, and swiftly left a well-bundled little 
 boy with me. I have rarely seen a young woman 
 look as maliciously happy as did his guide when 
 she left, with the remark that she couldn t possibly 
 come for Ernest that evening, but would take him 
 at nine o clock on the morrow. My first quick re 
 sentment was stilled by the thought that perhaps 
 an official day was a day plus a night. But Er 
 nest loomed formidably at me. There would be 
 problems of sleeping. Was I a victim 4 ? Well, 
 that is what parents were ! They should not find 
 me weak. 
 
 Ernest expressed no aversion to staying with 
 me. He was cheerful, a little embarrassed, in- 
 
 [145] 
 
curious. The removal of his hat disclosed a 
 Dutch-cut of yellow hair, blue eyes, many little 
 freckles, and an expression of slightly quizzical 
 good-humor. I really had not had the least con 
 ception how big a boy of six was likely to be, and 
 I found comfort in the evidence that he was big 
 enough to be self -regulating, and yet deliciously 
 small enough to be watched over. He could be 
 played with, and without danger of breaking him. 
 
 Ernest sat passively on a chair and surveyed the 
 room. I had thought a little pedantically of ex 
 posing him to some Montessori apparatus. I had 
 got nothing, however. The room suddenly be 
 came very inane; the piano a huge packing-box, 
 the bookcases offensive, idiotic shelves. A silly 
 room to live in! A room practically useless for 
 these new and major purposes of life. I was 
 ashamed of my surroundings, for I felt that Er 
 nest was surveying me with contempt and re 
 proach. 
 
 It suddenly seemed as if little boys must like to 
 look at pictures. Ernest had clambered up into 
 a big chair, and was sitting flattened against its 
 back, his legs sticking straight out in front of 
 him, and a look of mild lassitude on his face. He 
 
took with some alacrity the illustrated newspaper 
 supplement which I gave him, but my conscience 
 tortured me a little as to whether his interest was 
 the desperate one of demanding something for his 
 mind to feed on, however arid it might be, or 
 whether it was a genuine aesthetic response. He 
 gave all the pictures exactly the same amount of 
 time, rubbing his hand over each to make sure that 
 it was flat, and he showed no desire to talk about 
 anything he had seen. Since most of the pictures 
 were of war, my pacifist spirit rebelled against 
 dwelling on them. His celerity dismayed me. 
 It became necessary to find more pictures. I had 
 a sudden horror of an afternoon of picture-books, 
 each devoured in increasingly accelerated fashion. 
 How stupid seemed my rows of dully printed 
 books ! Not one of them could disgorge a picture, 
 no matter how hard you shook it. Despair seized 
 me when I found only a German handbook of 
 Greek sculpture, and another of Michelangelo. 
 In hopeful trepidation I began on them. I won 
 dered how long they would last. 
 
 It was clearly an unfamiliar field to Ernest. 
 My attempts to test his classical knowledge were 
 a failure. He recognized the Greeks as men and 
 
 [147] 
 
women, but not as gods, and there were moments 
 when I was afraid he felt their nudity as indecent. 
 He insisted on calling the Winged Victory an an 
 gel. There had evidently been religion in Er 
 nest s career. I told him that these were pictures 
 of marble statues from Greece, of gods and things, 
 and I hurriedly sketched such myths as I could re 
 member in an attempt to overtake Ernest s head 
 long rush of interest. But he did not seem to 
 listen, and he ended by calling every flowing fe 
 male form an angel. He laughed greatly at their 
 missing arms and heads. I do not think I quite 
 impressed him with the Greek spirit. 
 
 On Michelangelo there was chance to test his 
 Biblical background. He proved never to have 
 heard of David, and took the story I told him with 
 a little amused and incredulous chortle. Moses 
 was new to him, and I could not make him feel 
 the majesty of the horns and beard. When we 
 came to the Sistine I felt the constraint of theol 
 ogy. Should I point out to him God and Adam 
 and Eve, and so perhaps fix in his infant mind an 
 ineradicable theological bias? Now I understand 
 the temptation which every parent must suffer, 
 to dose his child with easy mythology. Some- 
 
thing urged me to say, Adam was the first man and 
 Eve was the first woman, and get the vague glow 
 of having imparted godly information. But I am 
 glad that I had the strength sternly to refrain, 
 hoping that Ernest was too intellectually robust to 
 be trifled with. I confined myself to pointing out 
 the sweep of clouds, the majesty of the prophets, 
 the cracks in the plaster, the mighty forms of the 
 sibyls. 
 
 But with my last sibyl I was trapped. It smote 
 my thought that there were no more pictures. 
 And Ernest s passivity had changed. We were 
 sitting on the floor, and his limbs began to take on 
 movement. He crawled about, and I thought be 
 gan to look menacingly at movable objects on ta 
 bles. My phobia of the combination of movable 
 objects and children returned. Parenthood sud 
 denly seemed the most difficult thing in the world. 
 Ernest was not talking very much, and I doubted 
 my ability to hold him very long entranced in con 
 versation. Imagination came to my relief in the 
 thought of a suburban errand. I remembered a 
 wonderful day when I myself had been taken by 
 my uncle to the next town on a journey the long 
 golden afternoon, the thundering expresses at the 
 
 [ H9] 
 
station, the amazing watch which he had unac 
 countably presented me with at the end of the day. 
 Ernest should be taken to Brookfield. 
 
 Our lunch had to be taken at the railroad sta 
 tion. Ernest climbed with much puffing up to 
 the high stool by the lunch-counter, and sat there 
 unsteadily and triumphantly while I tried to think 
 what little boys ate for their lunch. My decision 
 for scrambled eggs and a glass of milk was unwise. 
 The excitement of feeding scrambled eggs to a 
 slippery little boy on top of a high stool was full 
 of incredible thrills. The business of preventing 
 a deluge of milk whenever Ernest touched his 
 glass forced me to an intellectual concentration 
 which quite made me forget my own eating. Er 
 nest himself seemed in a state of measureless satis 
 faction; but the dizzy way in which he brandished 
 his fork, the hairbreadth escape of those morsels 
 of food as they passed over the abyss of his lap, 
 the new and strange impression of smearedness 
 one got from his face, kept me in a state of absorp 
 tion until I found we had but one minute to catch 
 our train. With Ernest clutching a large but 
 tered roll which he had decently refused to re 
 linquish, we rushed through the gates, 
 
When the candy-man came through the train, 
 Ernest asked me in the most detached tone in the 
 world if I was going to buy any candy. And I 
 asked him with a similar dryness what his prefer 
 ences in candy were. He expressed a cool interest 
 in lemon-drops. The marvelous way in which Er 
 nest did not eat those lemon-drops gave me a new 
 admiration for his self-control. He finished his 
 buttered roll, gazed out of the window, casually 
 ate two or three lemon-drops, and then carefully 
 closed the box and put it in his pocket. I was al 
 most jealous of Ernest s character. I recalled my 
 incorrigible nibblings. I predicted for Ernest a 
 moral life. 
 
 Our talk was mostly of the things that flashed 
 past our eyes. I was interested in Ernest s intel 
 lectual background. Out of the waste of sign 
 boards and salt-meadows there was occasionally 
 disentangled a river with boats or a factory or a 
 lumber-yard which Ernest could be called upon to 
 identify. He was in great good humor, squirm 
 ing on his seat, and he took delight in naming 
 things and in telling me of other trips on the rail 
 road he had taken. He did not ask where we 
 were going. I told him, but it seemed not es- 
 
pecially to concern him. He was living in life s 
 essential, excitement, and neither the future 
 nor the past mattered. He held his own ticket a 
 little incredulously, but without that sense of the 
 importance of the business that I had looked for. 
 I found it harder and harder not to treat him as 
 an intellectual equal. 
 
 In Brookfield I became conscious of a desire to 
 show Ernest off. I was acquiring a proprietary 
 interest in him. I was getting proud of his good 
 temper, his intelligence, his self-restraint, his ca 
 pacity for enjoying himself. I wanted to see my 
 pride reflected in another mind. I would take 
 him to my wise old friend, Beulah. I knew how 
 pleasurably mystified she would be at my sudden 
 possession of a chubby, yellow-haired little boy 
 of six. 
 
 Ernest had a delightful hour on Beulah s par 
 lor floor. He turned somersaults, he shouted, he 
 played that I was an evil monster who was trying 
 to catch him. He would crawl up warily towards 
 me and put his hand on my sleepily outstretched 
 palm. As I suddenly woke and seized him, he 
 would dart away in shrieks of fear and glee. 
 When I caught him, I would feel like a grim ogre 
 
indeed, for his face would cloud and little tears 
 shoot into his eyes, and his lips would curl in mor 
 tal fear. And then I would let him go tugging 
 and sprawling, and he would yell with joy, and 
 steal back with ever-renewed cunning and watch 
 fulness. When he had eaten Beulah s cakes and 
 drunk her cocoa, he lay back in a big chair, glow 
 ing with rosiness, and still laughing at the thought 
 of his escape from my ogredom. 
 
 Our minds played about him. I tried to tease 
 Beulah into adopting him. We spoke of his birth 
 in a reformatory, and the apparently indomitable 
 way in which nature had erased this fact from his 
 personality. We wondered about his unknown 
 mother, and his still more unknown father, and 
 what he would be and how either of us could help 
 keeping him forever. She pleaded her Man, I my 
 poverty. But we were not convincing, and I be 
 gan to conceive a vague fear of Ernest s adopting 
 me, because I could not let him go. 
 
 And then it was time for the train. Ernest 
 was very self-possessed. His manners on leaving 
 Beulah were those of an equal, parting from a very 
 old and jolly friend. The walk to the station 
 gave me a sudden realization how very badly the 
 
 [153] 
 
world was adapted to the needs of little boys. Its 
 measurements, its times, its lengths and its 
 breadths were grotesquely exaggerated. Ernest 
 ploughed manfully along, but I could feel the tug 
 at my hand. Time would have to double itself 
 for him to reach the station in the allotted min 
 utes. His legs were going in great strides like 
 those of the giant in seven-league boots, and he 
 was panting a little. I was cruel, and yet there 
 was the train. I felt myself a symbol of parent 
 hood, earth-adjusted, fixed on an adult goal, drag 
 ging little children panting through a world not 
 their own. "I m ti-yerd !" said Ernest in so plain 
 tive a voice that my heart smote me. Nameless 
 premonitions of what might ensue to Ernest from 
 being ti-yerd came upon me. I felt a vague dread 
 of having already made Ernest an invalid for life. 
 But my adulthood must have triumphed, for the 
 train was caught. Ernest s spirits revived on the 
 reappearance of the lemon-drops. And my heart 
 leaped to hear him say that only his legs were ti- 
 yerd, and that now they were no longer so. The 
 world had diminished again to his size. 
 
 [154] 
 
Ill 
 
 Ernest ate his supper in great contentment at a 
 little table by my fireplace. The unaccustomed 
 task of cooking it gave me new and vivid thrills. 
 And the intellectual concentration involved in 
 heating soup and making toast was so great as to 
 lose me the pleasure of watching Ernest draw. I 
 had asked him in the morning if he liked to draw. 
 He had answered in such scorn that I had hastily 
 called in Michelangelo. Now I placed a pencil 
 and many large sheets of paper negligently near 
 him. When I brought him his supper, he had 
 covered them all with futuristic men, houses, and 
 horses. The floor was strewn with his work, and 
 he was magnificently casting it from him as he at 
 tacked these aesthetic problems with fierce gusto. 
 Only the sight of food quelled his artistic rage. 
 After supper, however, he did not return to them. 
 Instead, he became fascinated with the pillows of 
 my couch, and piled them in a line, with a whis 
 tling and shouting as of railroad trains. I wrote 
 a little, merely to show myself that this business of 
 parenthood need not devastate one s life. But I 
 found myself wondering acutely, in the midst of 
 
 [ 155 ] 
 
an eloquent sentence, what time it was healthy for 
 Ernest to go to bed. I seemed to remember seven 
 incredible to me, and yet perhaps meet for a 
 child. It was already seven, but the vigor with 
 which he rejected my proposal startled me. His 
 amiability all day had been so irreproachable that 
 I did not wish to strain it now. Yet I was con 
 scious of an approaching parental crisis. Suppose 
 he did not want to go to bed at all! 
 
 When I next looked up, I found that he had 
 compromised by falling asleep in a curious diag 
 onal and perilous position across his pillows the 
 trainman asleep at the switch. In a position in 
 which nobody could sleep, Ernest slept with the 
 face of an angel. Complexity ! Only a brute 
 would wake him. Yet how did parents get their 
 children to bed? And then I thought of the in 
 tricacies of his clothes. I touched him very gen 
 tly; he jumped at me in a dazed way, with the 
 quaintest, "Oh, I don t know what made me go 
 to sleep !" and was off into the big chair and help 
 less slumber. 
 
 I repented of my brutality. I tried to read, but 
 my parental conscience again smote me. Ernest 
 looked forlorn and maladjusted, his head sinking 
 
down on his breast. I thought that Ernest would 
 thank me now for reminding him of his bed. He 
 showed astonishing force of will. I recoiled from 
 the "I don t want to go to bed !" which he hurled 
 at me. I tried reason. I called his attention to 
 his uncomfortableness. But he was unmoved, 
 and insisted on going to sleep again after every 
 question. I hardened my heart a little. I saw 
 that stern measures would have to be adopted, 
 Ernest s little clothes taken off, Ernest inserted 
 into his flannel nightgown, and tucked into bed. 
 Yet I had no idea of the parental technique for 
 such situations. Ernest had been quite irrespon 
 sive to my appeal that all good little boys went to 
 bed at seven o clock, and I could think of no fur 
 ther generalizations. Crisis after so happy a day ! 
 Was this parenthood? 
 
 The variety of buttons and hooks on Ernest s 
 outer and inner garments bewildered me. Er 
 nest s dead sleepiness made the work difficult. 
 
 But finally his little body emerged from the midst, 
 
 . 
 
 leaving me with the feeling of one who has taken 
 a watch apart and wonders dismayedly how he 
 will ever get it together again. Ernest, however, 
 was not inclined to permit the indignity of this 
 
 [157] 
 
disrobing without bitter protest. When I urged 
 his cooperation in putting on his nightgown, he 
 became voluble. The sunniness of his temper 
 was clouded. His tone turned to harsh bitterness. 
 Little angry tears rolled down his cheeks, and he 
 betrayed his sense of extreme outrage with an "I 
 don t want to put on my nightgown! hurled at 
 me with so much of moral pain that I was chilled. 
 But it was too late. I could not unscramble Er 
 nest. With a sinking heart I had gently to thrust 
 his little arms and legs into the warm flannel, trun 
 dle him over the floor, bitter and sleepily protest 
 ing, roll him into his bed, and cover him up. As 
 he curled and snuggled into the covers his tears 
 dried as if by magic, the bitterness smoothed out 
 of his face, and all his griefs were forgotten. 
 
 IV 
 
 In the next room I sat and read, a pleasant 
 warmth of parental protection in my heart. And 
 then Ernest began to cough. It was no light 
 childish spasm, but a deep racking cough that 
 froze my blood. There had been a little cold in 
 him when he came. I had taken him out into the 
 raw December air. I had overexerted him in my 
 
thoughtless haste. Visions of a delirious and 
 pneumonic child floated before me. Or what 
 was that dreadful thing called croup? I could 
 not keep my thought on my book. That racking 
 cough came again and again. Ernest must be 
 awake and tossing feverishly. Yet when I looked 
 in at him, he would be lying peaceful and rosy, 
 and the cough that tore him did not disturb his 
 slumbers. He must then be in a state of fatigue 
 so extreme that even the cough could not wake 
 him. I reproached myself for dragging him into 
 the cold. How could I have led him on so long 
 a journey, and let him play with a strenuousness 
 such as his days never knew! I foresaw a lurid 
 to-morrow : Ernest sick, myself helpless and igno 
 rant, guilty of a negligence that might be fatal. 
 And as I watched him, he began to show the most 
 alarming tendency to fall out of bed. I did not 
 dare to move him, and yet his head moved ever 
 more perilously near the edge. I relied on a chair 
 pushed close to the bed to save him. But I felt 
 weary and worn. What an exacting life, the pa 
 rent s ! Could it be that every evening provided 
 such anxieties and problems and thrills? Could 
 one let one s life become so engrossed? 
 
 [159] 
 
And then I remembered how every evening, 
 when we went to bed, we used to ask our mother if 
 she was going to be home that evening, and with 
 what thankful security we sank back, knowing 
 that we should be protected through another night. 
 Ernest had not seemed to care what became of me. 
 Having had no home and no parents, he had 
 grown up into a manly robustness. He did not 
 ask what you were going to do with him. He was 
 all for the moment. He took the cash and let the 
 credit go. It was I who felt the panic and the in 
 security. I envied Ernest. I saw that contrary 
 to popular mythology, there were advantages in 
 being an institutional orphan, provided you had 
 been properly Binet-ed as of normal intelligence 
 and the State got you a decent boarding-mother. 
 How much bringing up Ernest had escaped ! If 
 his manners were not polished, at least they were 
 not uncouth. He had been a little shy at first, 
 nodding at questions with a smile, and throwing 
 his head against the chair. But there was nothing 
 repressed about him, nothing institutionalized, and 
 certainly nothing artificial. 
 
 His cough grew lighter, and as I looked at his 
 yellow hair and the angelic flush of his round 
 
 [160] 
 
cheeks, I thought of the horrid little puppets that 
 had been produced around me in conventional 
 homes, under model fathers and kind and devout 
 mothers. How their fears and inhibitions con 
 trasted with Ernest s directness ! His bitter mood 
 at going to bed had a certain fine quality about it. 
 I recalled the camaraderie we had established. 
 The box of lemon-drops, only half-exhausted, 
 stared at me from the pocket of his little sweater. 
 I became proud of Ernest. I was enjoying again 
 my vicarious parenthood. What did that obscure 
 and tangled heredity of his, or his most problemat 
 ical of futures, matter to him or to me? It was 
 delightful to adopt him thus imaginatively. If 
 he turned out badly, could you not ascribe it to his 
 heredity, and if well, to your kindly nurture and 
 constant wisdom? Nothing else could be very 
 much thought about, perhaps, but for the moment 
 Ernest seemed supremely worth thinking about. 
 There would be his education. And suddenly it 
 seemed that I did not know very much about edu 
 cating a child. It would be too absorbing. 
 There would be no time for the making of a living. 
 Ernest loomed before my imagination in the guise 
 of a pleasant peril. 
 
And then morning came. As soon as it was 
 light Ernest could be heard talking and chuckling 
 to himself, with no hint of delirium or pneumonia, 
 or the bogies of the night. When I spoke he came 
 running in in his bare feet, and crawled in with 
 me. He told me that in spite of my valiant chair 
 he had really fallen out of bed. He did not care, 
 and proceeded to jump over me in a vigorous acro 
 batic way. He did not even cough, and I won 
 dered if all the little sinister things of childhood 
 passed so easily with the night. It was impossible 
 to remember my fears as he tossed and shouted, the 
 perfection of healthiness. Parenthood now 
 seemed almost too easy to bother with. 
 
 Ernest caught sight of my dollar watch on the 
 chair, and I saw that he conceived a fatal and in 
 stantaneous passion. He listened to its tick, 
 shook it, ogled it amorously. He made little sug 
 gestive remarks about liking it. I teased him with 
 the fact that he could not tell time. Ernest 
 snorted at first in good-natured contempt at the ar 
 tificial rigidity of the process, but finally allowed 
 himself to be persuaded that I was not fooling him. 
 And my heart swelled with the generosity which I 
 
was about to practise in presenting him with this 
 wonderful watch. 
 
 But it suddenly became time to dress, for my 
 parental day was to end at nine. And then I dis 
 covered that it was as hard to get Ernest into his 
 clothes as it was to get him out of them. It was 
 intolerable to him that he should leave his romp 
 and the watch, and he shouted a No to my every 
 suggestion. A new parental crisis crashed upon 
 me. What a life of ingenuity and stratagem the 
 parent had to lead ! To spend half one s evening 
 persuading a sleepy and bitter little boy to take off 
 his clothes, and half the morning in persuading a 
 vivid and jubilant little boy to put them on again 
 this was a life that taxed one s personal re 
 sources to the utmost. I reasoned with Ernest. 
 I pointed out that his kind friend was coming very 
 soon, and that he must be ready. But Ernest was 
 obdurate. He would not even bathe. I pointed 
 out the almost universal practice of the human 
 race of clothing themselves during the early morn 
 ing hours. Historic generalizations had no more 
 effect on Ernest in the morning than they had had 
 in the evening. And with a sudden stab I thought 
 
 [163] 
 
of the watch. That watch I knew would be an 
 Aladdin s lamp to make Ernest my obedient slave. 
 I had only to bribe him with it, and he would 
 bathe, dress, or do anything which I told him to 
 do. Here was the easy art of corruption by which 
 parents got moral clutches on their children! 
 And I deliberately renounced it. I would not 
 bribe Ernest. Yet the mischief was done. So in 
 tuitive was his mind that I felt guiltily that he al 
 ready knew my readiness to give him the watch 
 if he would only dress. In that case, I should 
 rniss my moral victory. I could not disappoint 
 him, and I did not want to bribe him inadvert 
 ently. 
 
 There was another consideration which dis 
 mayed me. Even if Ernest should prove amen 
 able to reason or corruption, where was my ability 
 to reconstruct him? Unbuttoning a sleepy and 
 scarcely resisting little boy in the evening was 
 quite different from constructively buttoning a 
 jumping and hilarious one in the morning. And 
 time was flowing dangerously on. Only a sud 
 den theory of self-activity saved me. Could Er 
 nest perhaps dress himself? I caught him in one 
 of his tumbles and asked him. His mind was too 
 
full of excitement j to be working on prosaic 
 themes. And then I shot my bolt. "I don t be 
 lieve you know how to dress yourself, do you^" 
 To that challenge Ernest rose. "Hurry !" I said, 
 "and see how quickly you can dress. See if you 
 can dress before I can!" Ernest flew into the 
 other room, and in an incredibly short time ap 
 peared quite constructed except as to an occasional 
 rear-button, washed and shining, self-reliant, 
 ready for the business of the day. I glowed with 
 the success of my parental generalship. I felt a 
 sense of power. But power gained in so adroit 
 and harmless a way was safe. What a parent I 
 would make! How grateful I was to Ernest to 
 be leaving me at this height! 
 
 I gave him the watch. Though he had longed, 
 the fulfillment of his desire struck him with in 
 credulity. The event awed him. But I showed 
 him how to wind it, and seemed so indifferent to 
 its fate that he was reassured as to my sincerity. 
 He recovered his poise. He sang as he ate his 
 breakfast. And when his guide and friend came, 
 amused and curious, he went off with her as unre- 
 luctantly as he had come, proud and self-possessed, 
 the master of himself. He strutted a little with 
 
 [165] 
 
his watch, and he politely admitted that he had 
 had a good time. 
 
 I do not know whether Ernest ever thought of 
 me again. He had been an unconscious artist, 
 for he had painted many new impressions on my 
 soul. He had been sent to me to test my theories 
 of parenthood, but he had driven away all thought 
 of theory in the obsession of his demands. How 
 could I let him go so cheerily out of my door? It 
 wasn t at all because I minded having my time ab 
 sorbed, for I like people to absorb my time. Why 
 did I not cling to him, buy him from his protector, 
 with a "Dear boy, you shall never leave my pleas 
 ant rooms again" *? Why did I not rush after him 
 down the street, stung by a belated remorse"? I 
 was conscious enough that I was missing all the 
 dramatic climax of the situation. I was not act 
 ing at all as one does with tempting little orphan 
 boys. But that is the way life works. The heart 
 fails, and the vast and incalculable sea of respon 
 sibility drowns one in doubt. I let him go with 
 no more real hesitation than that with which he 
 went. 
 
 The later life of Ernest I feel will be one of 
 sturdy self-reliance. That all the aspects of his 
 
 [166] 
 
many-sided character did not become apparent in 
 the short time that I held him was clear from the 
 report I heard of a Christmas party to which he 
 was invited a few weeks later. Ernest, it seems, 
 had broken loose with the fervor of a modern 
 Europe after its forty years of peace. He had 
 seized chocolate cake, slapped little girls, bitten 
 the hand of the kind lady who fed him, and ended 
 by lying down on the floor and yelling in a self-re 
 liant rage. Was this the effect of a day with me? 
 Or had I charmed and soothed him*? I had a 
 pleasant shudder of power, wondering at my influ 
 ence over him. 
 
 The next I heard of Ernest was his departure 
 for the home of an adopting family in New Jersey, 
 from which he was presently to be shipped back 
 for offenses unknown. My respect for Ernest rose 
 even higher. He would not fit in easily to any 
 smug conventional family life. He would not 
 rest adopted until he was satisfied. I began to 
 wonder if, after all, we were not affinities. He 
 had kept the peace with me, he had derived stim 
 ulation from my society. Should I not have 
 called him back? Shall I not now? Shall I not 
 want to see him with me again? I wonder. 
 
ON DISCUSSION 
 
 GRAHAM WALLAS, in his "Great Society," 
 wrote few more interesting sentences than that in 
 which he remarked the paucity of genuine discus 
 sion around him, the lack of skill in meeting each 
 others minds which Englishmen show when they 
 talk together. Particularly in this country where 
 mere talk is always contrasted unfavorably with 
 action is discussion rare. The only way we can 
 justify our substitution of talking for acting is to 
 talk badly. And we like to talk badly. To put 
 into talk the deliberate effort which action de 
 mands would seem an insufferable pedantry. 
 Talk is one of the few unspecialized talents still 
 left in a mechanical world. The plain man re 
 sents any invasion of this last preserve of freedom. 
 He resents the demand that skill and effort be put 
 to work in raising talk into real discussion where 
 points are met and presuppositions are clarified 
 and formulations made. So conversation is left 
 
 [168] 
 
to grow wild as a common flower along the way 
 side of our personal contacts. 
 
 Yet this lack of art in discussion is not really 
 due to lack of desire. An inner need drives talk 
 into something more formal. Discussion is popu 
 lar, and because it is popular it needs, in spite of 
 the plain man, a certain deliberate technique. 
 One often stumbles on groups which have met not 
 because some problem has seized them all and will 
 not let them go until it is satisfied, but because 
 they have felt a general craving for talk. They 
 find that their mental wheels will not rotate with 
 out some corn to grind. In the revelation of what 
 each person thinks it important to discuss, one gets 
 the attitude of his mind and the color of his gov 
 erning philosophy. Such a group is a kind of kin 
 dergarten of discussion. Ostensibly equal and 
 sympathetic in background and approach, they 
 show in very little time the startling diversity of 
 their actual equipment and mental framework. A 
 score of people all doing apparently the same qual 
 ity of work in the professional world, all enjoying 
 a popular reputation, all backed by a college edu 
 cation, all reacting constantly to each other in the 
 intersecting world of journalism, art, teaching, 
 
 [,69] 
 
law, will often be found to show a lack of mental 
 sympathy so profound that one wonders how such 
 people can smilingly continue to seem to be living 
 in the same world. They are using the same 
 words, but they are not using the same meanings, 
 and because they are not conscious that it is really 
 meanings which they should be exchanging, the 
 discussion is apt to lose itself feebly as in desert 
 sands. What really emerges from most discus 
 sions, you find, is an astonishing array of philo 
 sophical skeletons-in-the-closet which stalk about 
 the room unchallenged. Their owners are quite 
 unconscious of this fatal escape. Yet it takes lit 
 tle wit to discover rigid platonists discoursing with 
 pragmatists, minds whose first operation in think 
 ing is always to fix a moral judgment contending 
 with remorseless realists. Ideals are discussed 
 when one man means by an ideal a measuring-stick 
 for human conduct, another a social goal towards 
 which he works. Concepts emerge which to half 
 the company represent a mental vacuum, and to 
 the other half imply a warm blow of virtue. 
 World-philosophies which might be recognized are 
 shabbily ignored. The feeble sparring of their 
 distorted shadows is taken for discussion, and the 
 
company separates with a vague feeling of having 
 occupied itself for an evening with something 
 profitably mental. 
 
 All the time, however, it is these fundamental 
 philosophies which are the real antagonists, and 
 not the concrete ideas which are the subjects of dis 
 cussion. A good discussion passes rapidly into an 
 examination of those presuppositions. It is more 
 interested in charting out the minds of the other 
 talkers than in winning small victories or getting 
 agreements. Good discussion is a kind of detec 
 tive uncovering the hidden categories and secret 
 springs of emotion that underlie "opinions" on 
 things. It seeks that common background and 
 store of meanings in which alone diverse opinions 
 can really meet and operate. We can no longer 
 tolerate reasons which are only retrospective props 
 for action that was really impulsive in its origin. 
 No more should we tolerate in discussion that 
 stubborn voicing of attitudes which seem axiom 
 atic to the speaker only because he has never exam 
 ined the structure of his own thought. It is pop 
 ular nowadays to welcome the expression of every 
 new attitude. But a discussion should be tolerant 
 and hospitable only after the ground has been 
 
 [171] 
 
cleared. You must be very sure that what you 
 have to deal with is a real attitude and not a coun 
 terfeit. Discussion remains mere talk if it re 
 mains content with the expression of an "opin 
 ion" and does not put the expressor to immediate 
 cross-examination to discover in the name of what 
 Weltanschauung the opinion came. 
 
 Discussion should be one of the most important 
 things in the world, for it is almost our only arena 
 of thinking. It is here that all the jumble of ideas 
 and impressions that we get from reading and 
 watching are dramatically placed in conflict. 
 Here only is there a genuine challenge to put them 
 into some sort of order. Without discussion in 
 tellectual experience is only an exercise in a pri 
 vate gymnasium. It has never been put to the 
 test, never had to give an account of itself. It is 
 some such motive that impels people to discussion; 
 though they are too often content with the joust 
 ing of pasteboard knights. But a good discussion 
 is not only a conflict. It is fundamentally a co 
 operation. It progresses towards some common 
 understanding. This does not mean that it must 
 end in agreement. A discussion will have been 
 adequate if it has done no more than set the prob- 
 
lem in its significant terms, or even defined the 
 purpose that makes such a setting significant. 
 You turn up things in your mind that would have 
 remained buried without the incision of some new 
 idea. The effort to say exactly what you mean, 
 sharpening your idea to the point that will drive 
 home to others, is itself invigorating. A good dis 
 cussion tones up your mind, concentrates its loose 
 particles, gives form and direction. When all 
 say exactly what they mean, then for the first time 
 understanding the goal of discussion is pos 
 sible. 
 
 Discussion demands a mutual trustfulness, a 
 mutual candor. But this very trustfulness makes 
 discussion vulnerable. It is particularly open to 
 the attack of the person who sees in the group a 
 forum. The physical signs of such a misinter 
 pretation are familiar. The eye becomes slightly 
 dilated, the voice more orotund. The suggestion 
 develops into an exposition, the exposition into an 
 apologia or recrimination. Discussion is slain. 
 Another enemy is the person who sidetracks a sen 
 tence and then proceeds, in a leisurely way to un 
 load its freight into his own wagon. But in a 
 good discussion the traffic is kept constantly mov- 
 
 [173] 
 
ing in both directions along a rather rigid line of 
 track, and the freight arrives somewhere. Some 
 people have a fatal gift of derailment. Wit is 
 perhaps the most common means. Discussion has 
 no greater enemies than those who can catch an 
 idea and touch it off into a puff of smoke. Wit 
 should salt a discussion but not explode it. 
 
 Good discussion is so important that those who 
 set about it may be rather pedantic and self-con 
 scious in their enterprise. One may acutely real 
 ize himself as being, for the time, primarily a 
 mind. He renounces the seeming of personal ad 
 vantage in an argument. He sincerely and anx 
 iously searches his intellectual stores in order to set 
 down exactly what he thinks in just the propor 
 tions and colors that he thinks it. He studies 
 what the others say, and tries to detect quickly the 
 search for advantage or the loose use of terminol 
 ogy. He insists that words and phrases have 
 meanings, and if they carry no meaning to him, he 
 searches indefatigably until he has found the word 
 that does carry over the full freight of significance 
 intended. 
 
 The rewards for such pedantry are found in a 
 tone of clear thinking. A good discussion in- 
 
 [174] 
 
creases the dimensions of every one who takes 
 part. Being rather self-consciously a mind in a 
 group of minds means becoming more of a person. 
 Ideas are stale things until they are personally 
 dramatized. The only good writers of opinion 
 are those who instinctively reproduce the atmo 
 sphere of discussion, whose sentences have the tone 
 of discussion with themselves or with an imagined 
 group. The impulse for discussion is an impulse 
 towards the only environment where creative 
 thinking can be done. All the more reason why 
 an instinct for workmanship should come in to 
 insure that thought does not lose itself in feeble 
 sparring or detached monologue. 
 
 [175] 
 
THE PURITAN S WILL TO POWER 
 
 To the modern young person who tries to live 
 well there is no type so devastating and harassing 
 as the puritan. We cannot get away from him. 
 In his sight we always live. We finish with just 
 ifying our new paganism against him, but we 
 never quite lose consciousness of his presence. 
 Even Theodore Dreiser, who has always revolted 
 from the puritan clutch, finds it necessary now 
 and then to tilt a lance against him. If there 
 were no puritans we should have to invent them. 
 And if the pagan Mr. Dreiser has to keep on 
 through life fighting puritans, how much more in 
 trigued must we be who are only reformed puri 
 tans, and feel old dangers stirring at every aggres 
 sive gesture of righteousness? For the puritan is 
 the most stable and persistent of types. It is 
 scarcely a question of a puritanical age and a 
 pagan age. It is only a question of more puritans 
 or less puritans. Even the most emancipated gen- 
 
 [176] 
 
eration will find that it has only broken its 
 puritanism up into compartments, and balances 
 Sexual freedom or better, perhaps, a pious belief 
 in sexual freedom with a cult of efficiency and 
 personal integrity which is far more coercive than 
 the most sumptuary of laws. Young people who 
 have given up all thought of "being good" anxi 
 ously celebrate a cult of "making good." And a 
 superstition like eugenics threatens to terrorize the 
 new intelligentsia. 
 
 Every new generation, in fact, contrives to find 
 some new way of being puritanical. Every new 
 generation finds some new way of sacrifice. 
 Every new triumphant assertion of life is counter 
 balanced by some new denial. In Europe this 
 most proud and lusty young generation goes to its 
 million-headed slaughter, and in America the so 
 cial consciousness arises to bewilder and deflect 
 the essor towards life. Just when convention 
 seemed to be on the run, and youth seemed to be 
 facing a sane and candid attitude towards sex, we 
 find idealistic girls and men coming out of the 
 colleges to tell us of our social responsibility to 
 the race. This means not only that our daily 
 living is to be dampened by the haunting thought 
 
 [177] 
 
of misery that we cannot personally prevent, but 
 that our thirst towards love-experience is to be 
 discouraged and turned aside into a concern for 
 racial perfection. That is, we are subtly per 
 suaded against merely growing widely and loving 
 intensely. We become vague and mystified 
 means toward nebulous and unreal ends. This 
 new puritanism will not let us be ends in our 
 selves, or let personality be the chief value in life. 
 It will almost let us sometimes. But it always 
 pulls us up somewhere. There is always a devil 
 of inhibition to interpose before our clean and 
 nai ve grasping of life. (You see, my puritanism 
 takes the form of a suspicion that there may be a 
 personal devil lurking in the universe.) 
 
 This is why the puritan always needs to be 
 thoroughly explained and exposed. We must 
 keep him before our eyes, recognize him as the 
 real enemy, no matter in what ideal disguise he 
 lurks. We must learn how he works, and what 
 peculiar satisfactions he gets from his activity. 
 For he must get satisfaction or he would not be so 
 prevalent. I accept the dogma that to explain 
 anybody we have to do little more than discover 
 just what contentment people are getting from 
 
 [178] 
 
what they do, or from what they are permitting to 
 happen to them, or even from what they are fling 
 ing their will into trying to prevent happening to 
 them. For, if life is anything positive, it is the 
 sense of control. In the puritan, of course, we 
 have the paradox how he can get satisfaction from 
 ruggedly aud sternly subjecting himself and re 
 nouncing the world, the flesh and .the devil. 
 There is a } mlar superstition that the puritan 
 has an extra endowment of moral force, that he 
 reverses the natural current of life, that he resists 
 the drag of carnality down towards hell, that his 
 energy is thrown centra-satisfaction, that this con 
 trol is a real straddling of the nefarious way. 
 But, of course, it is just this superstition that gives 
 the puritan his terrific prestige. In the light of 
 the will-to-power dogma this superstition fades. 
 The puritan becomes just as much of a naturalistic 
 phenomenon as the most carnal sinner. Instincts 
 and impulses, in the puritan, are not miraculously 
 cancelled, but have their full play. The primitive 
 currents of life are not blocked and turned back 
 on their sources, but turned into powerful and 
 usually devastating channels. The puritan is 
 just as much of a "natural" man as you or I. 
 
But we still have to explain how this lustful, 
 headstrong creature called man, spilling with 
 greed, could so unabatedly throughout the ages 
 give up the primitive satisfaction of sex and food 
 and drink and gregariousness and act the ascetic 
 and the glumly censorious. How could an animal 
 whose business was to feel powerful get power 
 from being in subjection and deprivation? Well, 
 the puritan gets his sense of power from a very 
 cunningly organized satisfaction of two of his 
 strongest impulses, the self-conscious personal 
 impulses of being regarded and being neglected. 
 The puritan is no thwarted and depleted person. 
 On the contrary, he is rather a complete person, 
 getting almost the maximum of satisfaction out of 
 these two apparently contradictory sentiments, 
 the self-regarding and self-abasing. The pure 
 autocrat would feed himself wholly on the first, 
 the pure slave would be only a human embodiment 
 of the second. But the pure puritan manages to 
 make the most powerful amalgam of both. 
 
 What we may call the puritan process starts 
 with the satisfaction of the impulse for self- 
 abasement (an impulse as primitive as any, for in 
 the long struggle for survival it was often just as 
 
 [180] 
 
necessary for life to cower as it was to fight). It 
 is only the puritan s prestige that has attached 
 moral value to self-sacrifice, for there is nothing 
 intrinsic in it that makes it any more praiseworthy 
 than lust. But its pragmatic value is immense. 
 When the puritan announces himself as the least 
 worthy of men, he not only predisposes in his 
 favor the naturally slavish people around him, but 
 he neutralizes the aggressive and self- regarding 
 who would otherwise be moved to suppress him. 
 He renounces, he puts on meekness, he sternly 
 regiments himself, he makes himself unhappy in 
 ways that are just not quite severe enough to ex 
 cite pity and yet run no risk of arousing any 
 envy. If the puritan does all this unconsciously, 
 the effect is yet the same as if he were deliberately 
 plotting. To give his impulses of self-abasement 
 full play, he must, of course, exercise a certain 
 degree of control. This control, however, gives 
 him little of that sense of power that makes for 
 happiness. Puritan moralists have always tried 
 to make us believe in this virtue of self-control. 
 They forget to point out, however, that it does 
 not become a virtue until it has become idealized. 
 Control over self gives us little sense of control. 
 
 [181] 
 
It is the dreariest of all satisfactions of the will 
 to power. Not until we become proud of our 
 self-control do we get satisfaction. The puritan 
 only begins to reap his satisfaction when the self- 
 regarding impulse comes into play. 
 
 Having given his self-abasing impulse free rein, 
 he is now in a position to exploit his self-regard. 
 He has made himself right with the weak and 
 slavish. He has fortified himself with their alli 
 ance. He now satisfies his self-regard by becom 
 ing proud of his humility and enjoining it on 
 others. If it were self-control akne that made 
 the puritan, he would not be as powerful as he is. 
 Indeed he would be no more than the mild ascetic, 
 who is all abnegation because his self -regarding 
 mechanism is weak. But in the puritan both im 
 pulses are strong. It is control over others that 
 yields him his satisfactions of power. He may 
 stamp out his sex-desire, but his impulse to shatter 
 ideas that he does not like will flourish wild and 
 wanton. To the true puritan the beauty of un 
 selfishness lies in his being able to enforce it on 
 
 others. He loves virtue not so much for its own 
 I 
 
 ! sake as for its being an instrument of his terrorism. 
 The true puritan is at once the most unselfish 
 
 [182] 
 
and the most self-righteous of men. There is 
 nothing he will not do for you, give up for you, 
 suffer for you. But at the same time there is no 
 cranny of your world that he will not illuminate 
 with the virtue of this doing of his. His real 
 satisfaction comes not from his action of benevo 
 lence but from the moral of the tale. He need 
 not boast about his renunciation or his altruism. 
 But in any true puritan atmosphere that pride will 
 be prevalent. Indeed, it is the oxygen of that 
 atmosphere. Wherever you come across that 
 combination of selfless devotion with self-right 
 eousness, you have the essence of the puritan. 
 Should you come across the one without the other 
 you would find not the puritan but the saint. 
 
 The puritan then gets the satisfaction of his 
 will to power through the turning of his self- 
 abasement into purposes of self-regard. Re- . 
 nunciation is the raw material for his positive 
 sense of power. The puritan gets his satisfaction 
 exactly where the most carnal of natural men gets 
 his, out of the stimulation of his pride. And in a 
 world where renunciation has to happen to us 
 whether we want it or not, the puritan is in the 
 most impressive strategic position. In economy 
 
of energy he has it all over the head that is bloody 
 but unbowed. For the puritan is so efficient 
 morally that he can bow his head and yet exact 
 control both out of the bowing and out of the 
 prestige which his bowing gives him, as well as 
 out of the bowing which he can enforce on others. 
 The true puritan must become an evangelist. It 
 is not enough to renounce the stimulus to satis 
 faction which is technically known as a "tempta 
 tion." The renouncing must be made into an 
 ideal, the ideal must be codified, promulgated, 
 and, in the last analysis, enforced. In the com 
 pelling of others to abstain, you have the final 
 glut of puritanical power. For in getting other 
 people to renounce a thing you thereby get re 
 newed justification for your own renouncing. 
 And so the puritan may go on inexhaustibly roll 
 ing up his satisfactions, one impulse reinforcing 
 the other. The simultaneous play of these two 
 apparently inconsistent personal impulses makes 
 the puritan type one of the stablest in society. 
 While the rest of us are longing for power the 
 puritan is enjoying his. And because the puritan 
 is so well integrated he almost always rules. The 
 
person whose satisfactions of control are more 
 various and more refined is on the defensive 
 against him. 
 
 The puritan gets his sense of power not in the 
 harmless way of the artist or the philosopher or 
 the lover or the scientist, but in a crude assault on 
 that most vulnerable part of other people s souls, 
 their moral sense. He is far more dangerous to 
 those he converts than to those he intimidates. 
 For he first scares them into abandoning the rich 
 and sensuous and expressive impulses in life, and 
 then teaches them to be proud of having done 
 so. We all have the potentiality of the puritan 
 within us. I remember suffering agonies at the 
 age of ten because my aunt used to bring me 
 candy that had been wickedly purchased on the 
 Sabbath day. I forget whether I ate it or not, 
 but that fact is irrelevant. What counted was 
 the guilt with which the whole universe seemed to 
 be stained. I need no other evidence of the irra 
 tional nature of morality than this fact that chil 
 dren can be such dogged little puritans, can be at 
 the age of ten so sternly and intuitively righteous. 
 
 The puritan is a case of arrested development. 
 
Most of us do grow beyond him and find subtler 
 ways of satisfying our desire for power. And we 
 do it because we never can quite take that step 
 from self-abasement to self-regard. We never 
 can quite become proud of our humility. Re 
 nunciation remains an actual going without, sacri 
 fice a real thwarting. If we value an experience 
 and deliberately surrender it, we are too naive to 
 pretend that there are compensations. There is a 
 loss. We are left with a vacuum. There is only 
 depression and loss of control. Our self-regard 
 is not quite elemental enough to get stimulation 
 from wielding virtue over others. I never feel so 
 degraded as when I have renounced. I had 
 rather beat my head rhythmically and endlessly 
 against an unyielding wall. For the pagan often 
 breaks miraculously through the wall. But the 
 puritan at his best can only strut outside. 
 
 Most of us, therefore, after we have had our 
 puritan fling, sown our puritan wild oats as it 
 were, grow up into devout and progressing pagans, 
 cultivating the warmth of the sun, the delicious- 
 ness of love-experience, the high moods of art. 
 The puritans remain around us, a danger and a 
 threat. But they have value to us in keeping us 
 
 [186] 
 
acutely self-conscious of our faith. They whet 
 our ardor. Perhaps no one can be really a good 
 appreciating pagan who has not once been a bad 
 puritan. 
 
 1 187 1 
 
THE IMMANENCE OF DOSTOEVSKY 
 
 IT is impossible not to think of Dostoevsky as a 
 living author when his books come regularly, as 
 they are coming, to the American public every few 
 months. Our grandfathers sixty years ago are 
 said to have lived their imaginative lives in an 
 ticipation of the next instalment of Dickens or 
 Thackeray. I can feel somewhat of the same ex 
 citement in this Dostoevsky stream, though I can 
 not pretend that the great Russian will ever be 
 come a popular American classic. Yet in the 
 progress from Dickens to Dostoevsky there is a 
 symbol of the widening and deepening of the 
 American imagination. We are adrift on a far 
 wider sea than our forefathers. We are far more 
 adventurous in personal relations, far more aware 
 of the bewildering variousness of human nature. 
 If you have once warmed to Dostoevsky, you can 
 never go back to the older classic fiction on which 
 we were brought up. The lack of nuance, the 
 
 [188] 
 
hideous normality of its people begin to depress 
 you. When once you have a sense of the illusion 
 of "character," when once you have felt the 
 sinister, irrational turn of human thoughts, and 
 the subtle interplay of impression and desire, and 
 the crude impingement of circumstance, you find 
 yourself unless you keep conscious watch feel 
 ing a shade of contempt for the Scott and Balzac 
 and Dickens and Thackeray and Trollope who 
 were the authoritative showmen of life for our 
 middle-class relatives. You relegate such fiction 
 to the level of "movie" art, with its clean, pigeon 
 holed categories of the emotions, and its "register 
 ing" of a few simple moods. 
 
 You will, of course, be wrong in any such con 
 tempt, because these novelists show a bewildering 
 variety of types and a deep intuition of the major 
 movements of the soul. Dickens teems with irra 
 tional creatures, with unconventional levels of 
 life. But you can scarcely contradict me when I 
 say that neither Dickens nor his readers ever for 
 got that these human patterns were queer. His 
 appeal lies exactly in the joyful irrelevance with 
 which we take all these lapses from the norm, in 
 the pitiful tears which we .can shed for human 
 
beings done so obviously as they should not be 
 done by. In reading these familiar novelists we 
 never lose our moral landmarks. No matter how 
 great the deviations a character shows, we are al 
 ways conscious or could be conscious if we liked 
 of the exact amount of that deviation. The 
 charm of that nineteenth-century fiction, as in the 
 work of belated Victorians like Mr. Chesterton, 
 lies in that duality between the sane and the in 
 sane, the virtuous and the villainous, the sober and 
 the mischievous, the responsible and the irrespon 
 sible. There is no falsification in this. These 
 novelists were writing for an epoch that really had 
 stable "character," standards, morals, that consist 
 ently saw the world in a duality of body and 
 spirit. They were a reflection of a class that 
 really had reticences, altruisms, and religious 
 codes. 
 
 Dostoevsky appeals to us to-day because we are 
 trying to close up that dualism. And our appre 
 ciation of him and the other modern Russians is a 
 mark of how far we have actually gone. It is 
 still common to call this fiction unhealthy, morbid, 
 unwholesome. All that is meant by this is that 
 the sudden shock of a democratic, unified, in- 
 [ 
 
tensely feeling and living outlook is so severe to 
 the mind that thinks in the old dual terms as to 
 be almost revolting. What becomes more and 
 more apparent to the readers of Dostoevsky, how 
 ever, is his superb modern healthiness. He is 
 healthy because he has no sense of any dividing 
 line between the normal and the abnormal, or 
 even between the sane and the insane. I call this 
 healthy because it is so particularly salutary for 
 our American imagination to be jolted out of its 
 stiltedness and preconceived notions of human 
 psychology. I admit that the shock is somewhat 
 rough and rude. "The Idiot", which I have read 
 only once, remains in my mind as a stream of 
 fairly incomprehensible people and unintelligible 
 emotional changes. Yet I feel that when I read 
 it again I shall understand it. For Dostoevsky 
 has a strange, intimate power which breaks in 
 your neat walls and shows you how much more 
 subtle and inconsequent your flowing life is than 
 even your introspection had thought. But for all 
 his subtlety he is the reverse of anything morbidly 
 introspective. In his work you get the full warm 
 unity of emotional life without losing any of the 
 detail of the understanding analysis of the soul. 
 
 [191] 
 
This astounding mergence Dostoevsky actually 
 seems to achieve. That is what gives him the 
 intimate power which distinguishes every story of 
 his from anything else you have ever read. Again 
 he contrasts with the classical novelists. For they 
 are quite palpably outside their subjects. You 
 are never unaware of the author as telling the 
 story. He has always the air of the showman, 
 unrolling his drama before your eyes. His char 
 acters may be infinitely warm and human, but the 
 writer himself is somehow not in them. 
 "Wuthering Heights" is the only English story I 
 think of that has something of the fierce, absorbed 
 intensity of Dostoevsky. In the great Russian 
 you lose all sense of the showman. The writer is 
 himself the story; he is inextricably in it. In 
 narratives like The Double" or "A Gentle 
 Spirit" immanence could go no further. The 
 story seems to tell itself. Its strange, breathless 
 intimacy of mood follows faithfully every turn 
 and quirk of thought and feeling. Its tempo is 
 just of that inner life we know, with its ceaseless 
 boring into the anxious future and its trails of the 
 unresolved past. These stories follow just that 
 [192] 
 
fluctuating line of our conscious life with its de 
 pressions and satisfactions, its striving always for 
 a sense of control, its uneasiness. In Dostoevsky s 
 novels it is not only the author that is immanent. 
 The reader also is absorbed. After reading 
 "Crime and Punishment" you are yourself the 
 murderer. For days the odor of guilt follows you 
 around. The extravaganza of "The Double" 
 pursues you like a vivid dream of your own. 
 
 Such stories, however fantastic the problems of 
 the soul, get deeply into us. We cannot ignore 
 them, we cannot take them irresponsibly. We 
 cannot read them for amusement, or even in de 
 tachment, as we can our classics. We forget our 
 categories, our standards, our notions of human 
 nature. All we feel is that we are tracing the 
 current of life itself. Dostoevsky is so much in 
 his stories that we get no sense of his attitude 
 toward his characters or of his criticism of life. 
 Yet the after-impression is one of rich kindness, 
 bom of suffering and imperfection, and of a truly 
 religious reverence for all living experience. 
 Man as a being with his feet in the mud and his 
 gaze turned toward the stars, yet always indis- 
 [193] 
 
solubly one in feet and eyes and heart and brain ! 
 If we are strong enough to hear him, this is the 
 decisive force we need on our American creative 
 outlook. 
 
 [ 194 1 
 
THE ART OF THEODORE DREISER 
 
 THEODORE DREISER has had the good fortune 
 to evoke a peculiar quality of pugnacious interest 
 among the younger American intelligentsia such 
 as has been the lot of almost nobody else writing 
 to-day unless it be Miss Amy Lowell. We do 
 not usually take literature seriously enough to 
 quarrel over it. Or else we take it so seriously 
 that we urbanely avoid squabbles. Certainly 
 there are none of the vendettas that rage in a 
 culture like that of France. But Mr. Dreiser 
 seems to have made himself, particularly since the 
 suppression of "The Genius," a veritable issue. 
 Interesting and surprising are the reactions to him. 
 Edgar Lee Masters makes him a "soul-enrapt 
 demi-urge, walking the earth, stalking life"; 
 Harris Merton Lyon saw in him a "seer of in 
 scrutable mien"; Arthur Davison Ficke sees him 
 as master of a passing throng of figures, "labored 
 with immortal illusion, the terrible and beautiful, 
 
 [195] 
 
cruel and wonder-laden illusion of life"; Mr. 
 Powys makes him an epic philosopher of the 
 "life-tide"; H. L. Mencken puts him ahead of 
 Conrad, with "an agnosticism that has almost 
 passed beyond curiosity." On the other hand, an 
 unhappy critic in The Nation last year gave 
 Mr. Dreiser his place for all time in a neat 
 antithesis between the realism that was based on a 
 theory of human conduct and the naturalism that 
 reduced life to a mere animal behavior. For 
 Dreiser this last special hell was reserved, and the 
 jungle-like and simian activities of his characters 
 were rather exhaustively outlined. At the time 
 this antithesis looked silly. With the appearance 
 of Mr. Dreiser s latest book, "A Hoosier Holi 
 day," it becomes nonsensical. For that wise and 
 delightful book reveals him as a very human critic 
 of very common human life, romantically sensual 
 and poetically realistic, with an artist s vision and 
 a thick, warm feeling for American life. 
 
 This book gives the clue to Mr. Dreiser, to his 
 insatiable curiosity about people, about their 
 sexual inclinations, about their dreams, about 
 the homely qualities that make them Ameri 
 can. His memories give a picture of the floun- 
 
 [196] 
 
dering young American that is so typical as 
 to be almost epic. No one has ever pictured this 
 lower middle-class American life so winningly, be 
 cause no one has had the necessary literary skill 
 with the lack of self-consciousness. Mr. Dreisei 
 is often sentimental, but it is a sentimentality that 
 captivates you with its candor. You are seeing 
 this vacuous, wistful, spiritually rootless, Middle- 
 Western life through the eyes of a nai ve but very 
 wise boy. Mr. Dreiser seems queer only because 
 he has carried along his youthful attitude in un 
 broken continuity. He is fascinated with sex be 
 cause youth is usually obsessed with sex. He 
 puzzles about the universe because youth usually 
 puzzles. He thrills to crudity and violence be 
 cause sensitive youth usually recoils from the 
 savagery of the industrial world. Imagine in 
 corrigible, sensuous youth endowed with the 
 brooding skepticism of the philosopher who feels 
 the vanity of life, and you have the paradox of 
 Mr. Dreiser. For these two attitudes in him sup 
 port rather than oppose each other. His spiritual 
 evolution was out of a pious, ascetic atmosphere 
 into intellectual and personal freedom. He seems 
 to have found himself without losing himself. 
 
 [197] 
 
Of how many American writers can this be said*? 
 And for this much shall be forgiven him, his 
 slovenliness of style, his lack of nuances^ his 
 apathy to the finer shades of beauty, his weakness 
 for the mystical and the vague. Mr. Dreiser sug 
 gests the over-sensitive temperament that protects 
 itself by an admiration for crudity and cruelty. 
 His latest book reveals the boyhood shyness and 
 timidity of this Don Juan of novelists. Mr. 
 Dreiser is complicated, but he is complicated in a 
 very understandable American way, the product 
 of the uncouth forces of small-town life and the 
 vast disorganization of the wider American 
 world. As he reveals himself, it is a revelation 
 of a certain broad level of the American soul. 
 
 Mr. Dreiser seems uncommon only because he 
 is more naive than most of us. It is not so much 
 that his pages swarm with sexful figures as 
 that he rescues sex for the scheme of personal life. 
 He feels a holy mission to slay the American 
 literary superstition that men and women are not 
 sensual beings. But he does not brush this fact 
 in the sniggering way of the popular magazines. 
 He takes it very seriously, so much so that some 
 of his novels become caricatures of desire. It is, 
 
 [198] 
 
however, a misfortune that it has been Brieux 
 and Freud and not native Theodore Dreiser who 
 has saturated the sexual imagination of the 
 younger American intelligentsia. It would have 
 been far healthier to absorb Mr. Dreiser s literary 
 treatment of sex than to go hysterical over its 
 pathology. Sex has little significance unless it is 
 treated in personally artistic, novel istic terms. 
 The American tradition had tabooed the treat 
 ment of those infinite gradations and complexities 
 of love that fill the literary imagination of a sensi 
 tive people. When curiosity became too strong 
 and reticence was repealed in America, we had no 
 means of articulating ourselves except in a de 
 plorable pseudo-scientific jargon that has no more 
 to do with the relevance of sex than the chemical 
 composition of orange paint has to do with the 
 artist s vision. Dreiser has done a real service to 
 the American imagination in despising the under 
 world and going gravely to the business of pic 
 turing sex as it is lived in the personal relations of 
 bungling, wistful, or masterful men and women. 
 He seemed strange and rowdy only because he 
 made sex human, and American tradition had 
 never made it human. It had only made it either 
 [ 199 ] 
 
sacred or vulgar, and when these categories no 
 longer worked, we fell under the dubious and per 
 verting magic of the psycho-analysts. 
 
 In spite of his looseness of literary gait and 
 heaviness of style Dreiser seems a sincere groper 
 after beauty. It is natural enough that this 
 should so largely be the beauty of sex. For 
 where would a sensitive boy, brought up in In 
 diana and in the big American cities, get beauty 
 expressed for him except in women *? What does 
 Mid- Western America offer to the starving except 
 its personal beauty*? A few landscapes, an occa 
 sional picture in a museum, a book of verse per 
 haps ! Would not all the rest be one long, flaunt 
 ing offense of ugliness and depression^ "The 
 Genius, " instead of being that mass of porno 
 graphic horror which the Vice Societies repute it 
 to be, is the story of a groping artist whose love 
 of beauty runs obsessingly upon the charm of girl 
 hood. Through different social planes, through 
 business and manual labor and the feverish world 
 of artists, he pursues this lure. Dreiser is re 
 freshing in his air of the moral democrat, who 
 sees life impassively, neither praising nor blaming, 
 at the same time that he realizes how much more 
 
 [200] 
 
terrible and beautiful and incalculable life is than 
 any of us are willing to admit. It may be all 
 apologia, but it comes with the grave air of a mind 
 that wants us to understand just how it all hap 
 pened. "Sister Carrie" will always retain the 
 fresh charm of a spontaneous working-out of 
 mediocre, and yet elemental and significant, lives. 
 A good novelist catches hold of the thread of 
 human desire. Dreiser does this, and that is why 
 his admirers forgive him so many faults. 
 
 If you like to speculate about personal and 
 literary qualities that are specifically American, 
 Dreiser should be as interesting as any one now 
 writing in America. This becomes clearer as he 
 writes more about his youth. His hopelessly un- 
 orientated, half-educated boyhood is so typical 
 of the uncritical and careless society in which wist 
 ful American talent has had to grope. He had 
 to be spiritually a self-made man, work out a 
 philosophy of life, discover his own sincerity. 
 Talent in America outside of the ruling class flow 
 ers very late, because it takes so long to find its 
 bearings. It has had almost to create its own soil, 
 before it could put in its roots and grow. It is 
 born shivering into an inhospitable and irrelevant 
 
 [201] 
 
group. It has to find its own kind of people and 
 piece together its links of comprehension. It is a 
 gruelling and tedious task, but those who come 
 through it contribute, like Vachel Lindsay, crea 
 tive work that is both novel and indigenous. The 
 process can be more easily traced in Dreiser than 
 in almost anybody else. "A Hoosier Holiday" 
 not only traces the personal process, but it gives 
 the social background. The common life, as seen 
 throughout the countryside, is touched off quizzi 
 cally, and yet sympathetically, with an artist s 
 vision. Dreiser sees the American masses in their 
 commonness and at their pleasure as brisk, rather 
 vacuous people, a little pathetic in their innocence 
 of the possibilities of life and their optimistic 
 trustfulness. He see them ruled by great barons 
 of industry, and yet unconscious of their serfdom. 
 He seems to love this countryside, and he makes 
 you love it. 
 
 Dreiser loves, too, the ugly violent bursts of 
 American industry, the flaming steel-mills and 
 gaunt lakesides. "The Titan" and "The Finan 
 cier" are unattractive novels, but they are human 
 documents of the brawn of a passing American 
 era. Those stenographic conversations, webs of 
 
 [202] 
 
financial intrigue, bare bones of enterprise, insult 
 our artistic sense. There is too much raw beef, 
 and yet it all has the taste and smell of the primi 
 tive business-jungle it deals with. These crude 
 and greedy captains of finance with their wars and 
 their amours had to be given some kind of literary 
 embodiment, and Dreiser has hammered a sort of 
 raw epic out of their lives. 
 
 It is not only his feeling for these themes of 
 crude power and sex and the American common 
 life that makes Dreiser interesting. His emphases 
 are those of a new America which is latently ex 
 pressive and which must develop its art before we 
 shall really have become articulate. For Dreiser 
 is a true hyphenate, a product of that conglo 
 merate Americanism that springs from other roots 
 than the English tradition. Do we realize how 
 rare it is to find a talent that is thoroughly 
 American and wholly un-English? Culturally 
 we have somehow suppressed the hyphenate. 
 Only recently has he forced his way through the 
 unofficial literary censorship. The vers-librists 
 teem with him, but Dreiser is almost the first to 
 achieve a largeness of utterance. His outlook, it 
 is true, flouts the American canons of optimism 
 [203] 
 
and redemption, but these were never anything 
 but conventions. There stirs in Dreiser s books a 
 new American quality. It is not at all German. 
 It is an authentic attempt to make something 
 artistic out of the chaotic materials that lie 
 around us in American life. Dreiser interests be 
 cause we can watch him grope and feel his clumsi 
 ness. He has the artist s vision without the sure- 
 ness of the artist s technique. That is one of the 
 tragedies of America. But his faults are those of 
 his material and of uncouth bulk, and not of shod- 
 diness. He expresses an America that is in pro 
 cess of forming. The interest he evokes is part of 
 the eager interest we feel in that growth. 
 
 I 204 ] 
 
THE USES OF INFALLIBILITY 
 
 FEW people read Newman to-day. The old 
 anxious issues have been drowned in a flood of 
 social problems, and that world of liberal prog 
 ress which to him was the enemy at the gates has 
 long ago broken in and carried everything before 
 it. Newman s persuasive voice sounds thin and 
 remote, and his ideas smell of a musty age. Yet 
 that title of his, Apologia Pro Vita Sua, always 
 intrigues one with its modern and subjective 
 sound. It is so much what all of us are itching 
 to write. Its egotism brushes with a faint irony 
 that absorption in the righteousness most emphati 
 cally not ourselves with which Newman s life was 
 mingled. In that call upon him to interpret his 
 life, one feels an unquenchable ego which carries 
 him over to these shameless and self-centred times. 
 Fortunately placed for a week in a theological 
 household, I plunged into the slightly forbidding 
 pages of the wistful cardinal. What I found 
 
 [205] 
 
in him must be very different from what he found 
 in himself or what anybody else found in him at 
 the time. Newman in 1917 suggests less a re 
 actionary theology than a subtle and secret sym 
 pathy with certain veins of our modern intel 
 lectual radicalism. The voice was faint, but 
 what I heard made Newman significant for me. 
 For it implied that if faith is eternal, so is skep 
 ticism, and that even in the most pious mind may 
 be found the healthy poison of doubt. 
 
 Superficially seen, Newman appeared to have 
 abolished doubt. His faith was more conserva 
 tive than that of the orthodox. He surrendered 
 all that Victorian life for the narrowest of ob 
 scurantisms. The reasons he found for his course 
 only riveted him impregnably to the rock of un 
 reason. What my mind fastened on, however, 
 was the emotional impulse that led him his tor 
 tuous way. One detected there in him that same 
 sinister note one feels in Pascal. It is a reason 
 ableness that eats away at belief until it finally de 
 stroys either it or you. It is an uncanny honesty 
 of soul which, struggling utterly for faith, saves 
 it only by unconsciously losing it. For if you 
 win your way through to belief by sheer intel- 
 
 [206} 
 
lectual force, you run the risk of over-reaching 
 your belief. You do not know that you have 
 passed it, but you have really dispensed with its 
 use. If you are honest in mind and religious in 
 temperament, you find yourself reduced to the 
 naked reality of religion. You are left with only 
 the most primitive mysticism of feeling. You are 
 one with the primitive savage group. Ineffable 
 feeling, ecstatic union with the universe, this is 
 your state. The more religious you become, the 
 more you tear the fabric of your dogma. Belief 
 is only for the irreligious. Intellectuality in re 
 ligion, under the guise of fortifying faith, only 
 destroys its foundations. Newman s approach 
 towards the certitude of dogma was really only an 
 approach towards the certitude of mysticism. 
 When he thought he was satisfying his intellectual 
 doubts, he was satisfying his emotional cravings. 
 Intending to buttress dogma, he only assured for 
 himself the mystic state. 
 
 How far he really attained mysticism is a fas 
 cinating problem for the reader of the Apologia. 
 Popular impression is probably right that he bore 
 to his incredibly lengthened age a pathos of un 
 easiness and sadness. But popular impression is 
 
 [207] 
 
probably wrong in ascribing this to lingering re 
 morse or regret. If there was any uncertainty, it 
 was not for having left his Anglican position, but 
 for not having seen the thing wholly through. 
 Intellectuality still clung around him like a cold 
 swathing garment. He probably never attained 
 that pure mysticism which his soul craved. One 
 has the impression that Newman s pathos lay in 
 the fact that he never quite became a saint. The 
 official world seemed to hang about him hamper- 
 ingly. One wonders sometimes if he could not 
 almost as easily have become a wan sweet pagan 
 as a saint. The tragedy of Pascal was that in 
 trinsically he was a pagan. The kind of Chris 
 tianity to which he drove himself was for him the 
 most virulent form of moral suicide. The terri 
 ble fascination of his Pensces lies in that relentless 
 closing in of the divine enemy on his human 
 "pride," which might have been, with his intel 
 lectual genius, so lusty an organ of creativeness 
 and adventure. It was not disease that killed him 
 but Christianity. Pascal is an eternal warning 
 from the perils of intellectual religion. 
 
 Dogma did not kill Newman, but it did not 
 save him. He was not a pagan, but he never be- 
 
 [208] 
 
came a saint. He never quite got rid of dogma. 
 And that is what so fascinates us in his religious 
 technique. For his Apologia is really a subtle ex 
 posure of infallibility. It shows us what the 
 acute intellectuality of a mystic finds to do with 
 dogma. The goal towards which he tends is the 
 utter bankruptcy of articulate religion. And in 
 volved in it is the bankruptcy of institutional re 
 ligion. It is a religious bankruptcy that acts like 
 modern commercial bankruptcy. All material 
 assets are relinquished, and you start again in 
 business on the old footing. You throw over 
 your dogma but keep the mystic experience, which 
 can never be taken away from you. In this way 
 the Catholic Church becomes, or could become, 
 eternal. Newman shows a way just short of re- 
 linquishment. He uses infallibility to liquidate 
 his intellectual debts, and then becomes free of 
 his creditors. 
 
 ii 
 
 How these attitudes are implied in the 
 Apologia I can only suggest through the surprises 
 that a reading brought. The contention had al 
 ways been that Newman s apostasy was due to 
 [209] 
 
feebleness of will, to a fatigue in the search for 
 certitude that let him slip into the arms of Mother 
 Church. My Protestant training had persistently 
 represented every going over to Rome as a sur 
 render of individual integrity. For the sake of 
 intellectual peace, one became content to stultify 
 the intellect and leave all thinking to the infallible 
 Church. There is nothing of intellectual fatigue, 
 however, in Newman. His course did not spring 
 from weariness of thinking. He had a most 
 fluent and flexible mind, and if he seemed to ac 
 cept beliefs at which Protestants thrilled with 
 frightened incredulity, it was because such an ac 
 ceptance satisfied some deeper need, some surer 
 craving. Read to-day, Newman interests not be 
 cause of the beliefs but because of this deeper 
 desire. He had a sure intuition of the uses of 
 infallibility and intellectual authority, and of 
 their place in the scheme of things. This is his 
 significance for the modern mind. And he is the 
 only one of the great religious writers who seems 
 to reach out to us and make contact with our 
 modern attitude. 
 
 Newman loved dogma, but it was not dogma 
 that he loved most. It was not to quiet a heart 
 
 [210] 
 
that ached with doubt that he passed from the 
 Anglican to the Roman Church. As an Anglican 
 Catholic he was quite as sure of his doctrine as 
 he was as a Roman Catholic. His most primitive 
 craving was not so much for infallibility as for 
 legitimacy. It was because the Roman Church 
 was primitive, legitimate^ authorized, and the 
 Anglican Church yawned in spots, that he made 
 his reluctant choice. His Anglican brothers 
 would not let him show them the catholicity of 
 the Articles. They began to act schismatically, 
 and there was nothing to do but join the legitimate 
 order and leave them to their vulgar insufficiencies. 
 This one gets from the Apologia. But this crav 
 ing, one feels, sprang not from cowardice but from 
 a sense of proportion. Newman was frankly a 
 conservative. Here was a mind that lived in the 
 most exciting of all intellectual eras, when all the 
 acuteness of England was passing from orthodoxy 
 to liberalism. Newman deliberately went in the 
 other direction. But he went because he valued 
 certain personal and spiritual things to which he 
 saw the new issues would be either wholly irrele 
 vant or fatally confusing. One of the best things 
 in the Apologia is the appendix on Liberalism, 
 [211] 
 
where Newman, with the clarity of the perfect 
 enemy, sums up the new faith. Each proposition 
 outrages some aspect of legitimacy which is 
 precious to him, yet his intuition he wrote it not 
 many years after the Reform Bill has put in 
 classic form what is the Nicene Creed of liberal 
 religion. No liberal ever expressed liberalism so 
 justly and concisely. Newman understands this 
 modem creed as perfectly as he flouts it. So 
 Pascal s uncanny analysis of human pride led him 
 only to self-prostration. 
 
 Why did Newman disdain liberalism"? He 
 understood it, and he did not like it. His death 
 less virtue lies in his disconcerting honesty. The 
 air was full of strange new cries that he saw 
 would arrest the Church. She would have to ex 
 plain, defend, interpret, on a scale far larger than 
 had been done for centuries. She would have to 
 make adjustment to a new era. Theology would 
 be mingled with sociology. The church of the 
 spirit would be challenged with social problems, 
 would be called down into a battling arena of life. 
 Newman s intuition saw that the challenge of lib 
 eralism meant a worried and harassed Church. 
 He was not interested in social and political ques- 
 [212] 
 
tions. The old order had a fixed charm for him. 
 It soothed and sustained his life, and it was in his 
 own life that he was supremely interested. He 
 loved dogma, but he loved it as a priceless jewel 
 that one does not wear. His emotion was not 
 really any more entangled in it than it was in 
 social problems. Given an established order that 
 made his personal life possible, what he was in 
 terested in was mystical meditation, the subtle and 
 difficult art of personal relations, and the exquisite 
 ethical problems that arise out of them. 
 
 Newman s position was one of sublime common- 
 sense. He saw that the Protestant Church would 
 be engaged for decades in the doleful task of re 
 conciling the broadening science with the old re 
 ligious dogma. He knew that this was ludicrous. 
 He saw that liberalism was incompatible with 
 dogma. But mostly he saw that the new social 
 and scientific turn of men s thinking was incom 
 patible with the mellowed mystical and personal 
 life where lay his true genius. So, with a lumi 
 nous sincerity, following the appeal of his talents, 
 he passed into the infallible Church which should 
 be a casket for the riches of his personal life. He 
 was saved thus from the sin of schism, and from 
 
the sin of adding to that hopeless confusion of in 
 tellectual tongues which embroiled the English 
 world for the rest of the century. The Church 
 guaranteed the established order beneath him, 
 blotted out the sociological worries around him, 
 and removed the incubus of dogma above him. 
 Legitimacy and infallibility did not imprison his 
 person or his mind. On the contrary, they freed 
 him, because they abolished futilities from his life. 
 Nothing is clearer from the Apologia than New 
 man s sense of the hideous vulgarity of theological 
 discussion. He uses infallibility to purge himself 
 of that vulgarity. He uses it in exactly the way 
 that it should rightly be employed. The com 
 mon view is that dogma is entrusted to the Church 
 because its truth is of such momentous import as 
 to make fatal the risk of error through private 
 judgment. The Church is the mother who suckles 
 us with the precious milk of doctrine without 
 which we should die. Through ecclesiastical in 
 fallibility dogma becomes the letter and spirit of 
 religion, bony structure and life-blood. 
 
 But Newman s use of infallibility was as a 
 storage vault in which one puts priceless securi 
 ties. They are there for service when one wishes 
 
 [214] 
 
to realize on their value. But in the business of 
 daily living one need not look at them from one 
 year to another. Infallibility is the strong lock 
 of the safety-vault. It is a guarantee not of the 
 value of the wealth but of its protection. The 
 wealth must have other grounds for its valuable- 
 ness, but one is assured that it will not be tampered 
 with. By surrendering all your dogmas to the 
 keeper-Church, you win, not certitude for your 
 treasures are no more certain inside the vault than 
 they are in your pocket but assurance that you 
 will not have to see your life constantly inter 
 rupted by the need of defending them against 
 burglars, or of proving their genuineness for the 
 benefit of inquisitive and incredulous neighbors. 
 The suspicion is irresistible that Newman craved 
 infallibility not because dogma was so supremely 
 significant to him, but because it was so supremely 
 irrelevant. Nothing could be more revealing than 
 his acceptance of the doctrine of the Immaculate 
 Conception. He has no trouble whatever in be 
 lieving this belated and hotly-disdained dogma. 
 Because it is essential to his understanding of 
 heaven and hell, eternity and the ineffable God 4 ? 
 On the contrary, because it is so quintessentially 
 
irrelevant to anything that really entangles his 
 emotions. His tone in acknowledging his belief 
 is airy, almost gay. He seems to feel no im 
 plications in the belief. It merely rounds off a 
 logical point in his theology. It merely expresses 
 in happy metaphor a poetical truth. To him 
 there is no tyranny in the promulgation of this 
 new dogma. Infallibility, he seems to suggest, 
 removes from discussion ideas that otherwise one 
 might be weakly tempted to spend unprofitable 
 hours arguing about. 
 
 And nothing could be more seductive than his 
 belief in Transubstantiation. Science, of course, 
 declares this transmutation of matter impossible. 
 But science deals only with phenomena. Tran 
 substantiation has to do not with phenomena but 
 with things-in-themselves. And what has science 
 to say about the inner reality of things ? Science 
 itself would be the first to disclaim any such com 
 petence. Why, therefore, should not the Church 
 know as much as anybody about the nature of this 
 thing-in-itself ? Why is it not as easy to believe 
 the Church s testimony as to the nature of things 
 as it is to believe any testmony? Such dogma is 
 therefore unassailable by science. And if it can- 
 
 [216] 
 
not be criticized it might just as well be infallible. 
 The papal guarantee does not invade science. It 
 merely preempts an uncharted region. It in 
 fringes no intellectual rights. It steps in merely 
 to withdraw from discussion ideas which would 
 otherwise be misused. Infallibility Newman uses 
 as a shelf upon which to store away his glowing 
 but pragmatically sterile theological ideas, while 
 down below in the arena are left for discussion 
 the interesting aspects of life. He is at great 
 pains to tell us that the Church is infallible only 
 in her expressly declared doctrine. It is only over 
 a few and definite dogmas that she presides in 
 fallibly. You surrender to infallibility only 
 those cosmic ideas it would do you no good to talk 
 of anyway. In the vast overflowing world of 
 urgent practical life you are free to speculate as 
 you will. Underneath the eternal serene of 
 dogma is the darting vivid web of casuistry. Re 
 lieved of the inanity of theological discussion, the 
 Catholic may use his intellect on the human world 
 about him. That is why we are apt to find in the 
 Catholic the acute psychologist, while the Protes 
 tant remains embroiled in weary dialectics. 
 
 Such a use of infallibility as Newman implies 
 
 [217] 
 
exposes the fallacy of the Protestant position. 
 For as soon as you have removed this healthy check 
 to theological embroilment you have opened the 
 way to intellectual corruption. As soon as you 
 admit the right of individual judgment in theolog 
 ical matters you have upset the balance between 
 dogma and life. The Catholic consigns his 
 dogmas to the infallible Church and speculates 
 about the pragmatic issues of the dynamic moral 
 life. The Protestant on the other hand, encases 
 himself in an iron-bound morality and gives free 
 rein to his fancy about the eternal verities. The 
 Catholic is empirical in ethics and dogmatic in 
 theology. The Protestant is dogmatic in ethics 
 and more and more empirical in theology. He 
 speculates where it is futile to speculate, because 
 in supernatural matters you can never come by 
 evidence to any final, all-convincing truth. But 
 he refuses to speculate where a decent skepticism 
 and a changing adjustment to human nature 
 would work out attitudes towards conduct that 
 make for flowering and growth. The Protestant 
 infallibility of morals is the cruellest and least 
 defensible of all infallibilities. Protestantism 
 
 [218] 
 
passes most easily into that fierce puritan form 
 which constrains both conduct and belief. 
 
 The Protestant inevitably gravitates either 
 towards puritanism or towards unitarianism. 
 The one petrifies in a harsh and narrow moral 
 code, the ordering of conduct by the most elderly, 
 least aesthetic, dullest and gloomiest elements in 
 the community. The other mingles in endless 
 controversy over the attributes of deity, the his 
 tory of its workings in the world, and the power 
 of the supernatural. Religion becomes a village 
 sewing-society, in which each member s life is lived 
 in the fearful sight of all the others, while the 
 tongues clack endlessly about rumors that can 
 never be proved and that no one outside will ever 
 find the slightest interest in having proved. 
 
 If the Catholic Church had used infallibility in 
 the way that Newman did, its influence could 
 never have been accused of oppression. There 
 need never have been any warfare between theol 
 ogy and science. Infallibility affords the Church 
 an adroit way of continuing its spiritual existence 
 while it permits free speculation in science and 
 ethics to go on. Suppose the Church in its in- 
 
 [219] 
 
fallibility had not stuck to dogma. Suppose the 
 reformers had been successful, and the Church had 
 accepted early scientific truth. Suppose it had 
 refused any longer to insist on correctness in 
 theological belief but had insisted on correctness 
 in scientific belief. Suppose the dogmas of the 
 Resurrection had made way for the first crude 
 imperfect generalizations in physics. Imagine 
 the hideousness of a world where scientific theories 
 had been declared infallible by an all-powerful 
 Church! Our world s safety lay exactly in the 
 Church s rejection of science. If the Church had 
 accepted science, scientific progress would have 
 been impossible. Progress was possible only by 
 ignoring the Church. Knowledge about the 
 world could only advance through accepting grate 
 fully the freedom which the Church tacitly offered 
 in all that fallible field of the technique of earthly 
 living. What progress we have we owe not to 
 any overcoming or converting of the Church but 
 to a scrupulous ignoring of her. 
 
 In punishing heresy the Church worked with a 
 sound intuition. For a heretic is not a man who 
 ignores the Church. He is one who tries to mix 
 his theology and science. He could not be a 
 
 [220] 
 
heretic unless he were a victim of muddy think 
 ing, and as a muddy thinker he is as much a 
 nuisance to secular society as he is to the Church 
 against which he rebels. He is the officious citi 
 zen who tries to break into the storage-vault with 
 the benevolent intention of showing that the 
 jewels are paste. But all he usually accomplishes 
 is to set the whole town by the ears. The con 
 structive daily life of the citizens is interrupted in 
 a flood of idle gossip. It is as much to the interest 
 of the intelligent authorities, who have important 
 communal projects on hand, to suppress him as it 
 is to the interest of the owne> of the jewels. 
 Heresy is fundamentally the error of trying to 
 reconcile new knowledge with old dogma. The 
 would-be heretic could far more wisely ignore 
 theology altogether and pursue his realistic knowl 
 edge in the aloofness which it requires. If there 
 is still any theological taint in him, he should not 
 dabble in science at all. If there is none, the 
 Church will scarcely feel itself threatened and he 
 will not appear as a heretic. On the pestiferous- 
 ness of the heretic both the Church and the most 
 modern realist can agree. Let theology deal with 
 its world of dogma. Let science deal with its 
 
 [221] 
 
world of analysable and measurable fact. Let 
 them never touch hands or recognize even each 
 other s existence. 
 
 The intellectual and spiritual chaos of the nine 
 teenth century was due to the prevalence of heresy 
 which raged like an epidemic through Europe. 
 Minds which tried to test their new indubitable 
 knowledge by the presuppositions of faith were 
 bound to be disordered and to spread disorder 
 around them. Faith and science tap different 
 planes of the soul, elicit different emotional cur 
 rents. It is when the Church has acted from full 
 realization of this fact that it has remained strong. 
 Protestantism, trying to live in two worlds at the 
 same time, has swept thousands of excellent 
 minds into a spiritual limbo where, in their vague 
 twilight realm of a modernity which has not quite 
 sacrificed theology, they have ceased to count for 
 intellectual or spiritual light. 
 
 Perhaps the most pathetic of heresies is the 
 "modernism" which is spreading through the 
 French and Italian Church. For this effort to 
 bring unitarian criticism into Catholic theology, 
 to make over the dogmas from within, to apply 
 reason to the unreasonable, is really the least 
 [222] 
 
"modern" of enterprises. It is only a belated 
 Protestant reformation, and if it succeeds it could 
 do little more than add another Protestant sect to 
 the existing multitude. It would not in the least 
 have modernized Catholicism, for the most mod 
 ern attitude which one can take towards the 
 Church is to ignore it entirely, to cease to feel its 
 validity in the new humane, democratic world 
 that is our vision. In other words, to take to 
 wards it exactly the attitude which it takes to 
 wards itself. This is its strength. It has never 
 hesitated to accept pragmatic truth that was dis 
 covered by others. The Catholic makes use of 
 whatever scientific, industrial, political, sociolog: 
 ical development works, and adjusts himself with 
 out discomfort to a dynamic world. He makes 
 no attempt at reconciliation with the supernatural. 
 A Catholic hospital uses all the latest medical sci 
 ence without exhibiting the least concern over its 
 infallible "truth." It is doubtful whether the 
 Church ever attempted to prevent Catholics from 
 adopting anything as long as they did not bother 
 whether it was "true" or not. This is the real 
 mischief, to get your infallible divine truth con 
 fused with your pragmatic human truth. The 
 [223] 
 
"modernist" in setting about this confusion simply 
 courts that expulsion which is his. 
 
 All this seemed to me implicit in the Apologia. 
 But if the use Newman made of infallibility de 
 stroys the Protestant position, it no less destroys 
 the Catholic. For if you use infallibility as a 
 technique for getting dogmas into a form in which 
 they are easy to forget, you reduce the Church 
 from a repository of truth to a mere political in 
 stitution. When dogma is removed from discus 
 sion, religious truth becomes irrelevant to life as it 
 is commonly lived. The Church, therefore, can 
 touch life only through its political and organizing 
 power, just as any human institution touches life. 
 It no longer touches it through the divinely in 
 spiring quality of its thought. Intellectually the 
 Church will only appeal to those cowed minds 
 which have no critical power and demand abso 
 lutism in thought. Spiritually it will appeal only 
 to temperaments like Newman s which crave a 
 guarantor for their mystic life. Politically it will 
 appeal to the subtle who want power through the 
 devious control over human souls. To few other 
 types will it appeal. 
 
 Newman unveils the true paradox of dogma. 
 
 [224] 
 
If, on the one hand, you throw it open to individ 
 ual judgment, you destroy it through the futile 
 wranglings of faith which can never be objec 
 tively solved. If, on the other hand, you declare 
 it infallible, you destroy it by slowly sending it to 
 oblivion. Infallibility gets rid of dogma just as 
 surely as does private judgment. Under the pre 
 tense of consolidating the Church in its cosmic 
 role, Newman, therefore, has really put it in its 
 proper parochial place as a pleasant grouping of 
 souls who are similarly affected by a collection of 
 beautiful and vigorous poetic ideas. Fundamen 
 tally, however, this grouping has no more uni 
 versal significance than any other, than a secret 
 society or any religious sect. 
 
 Thus Newman unconsciously anticipates the 
 most modern realist agnostic. For the latter 
 would agree that to relegate dogma to the stor 
 age-vault of infallibility is exactly what ought 
 to be done with dogma. At such an infallible as 
 Newman pictures no modern radical need balk. 
 Newman s argument means little more than that 
 infallibility is merely the politest way of sending 
 an idea to Nirvana. What more can the liberal 
 ask who is finished with theology and all its 
 
 [225] 
 
works? He can accept this infallible in even an 
 other sense. For there is not a single Christian 
 doctrine in which he does not feel a kind of wild 
 accuracy. Every Christian dogma has a poetic 
 vigor about it which might just as well be called 
 "true" because to deny its metaphorical power 
 would certainly be to utter an untruth. Indeed 
 is not poetry the only "truth" that can be called 
 infallible? For scientific truth is constantly be 
 ing developed, revised, re-applied. It is only 
 poetry that can think in terms of absolutes. Sci 
 ence cannot because it is experimental. But 
 poetry may, because each soul draws its own mean 
 ing from the words* And dogma is poetry. 
 
 To render dogma infallible is to make it some 
 thing that no longer has to be fought for. This 
 attitude ultimately undermines the whole struc 
 ture for belief. If it is only infallible ideas that 
 we are to believe, then belief loses all its moral 
 force. It is no longer a fierce struggle to maintain 
 one s intellectual position. Nothing is at stake. 
 One is not braced in faith with the hosts of hell 
 assailing one s citadel. To the puritan, belief 
 meant something to be gloweringly and tenaci 
 ously held against the world, the flesh and the 
 
 [226] 
 
devil. But Catholic belief, in the Newman at 
 mosphere, is too sheltered, too safely insured, to 
 count excitingly. One only yawns over it, as his 
 own deep soul must have secretly yawned over it, 
 and turns aside to the genuine issues of life. But 
 this is just what we should do with belief. We 
 are passing out of the faith era, and belief, as an 
 intellectual attitude, has almost ceased to play an 
 active part in our life. In the scientific attitude 
 there is no place whatever for belief. We have 
 no right to "believe" anything unless it has been 
 experimentally proved. But if it has been 
 proved, then we do not say we "believe" it, be 
 cause this would imply that an alternative was 
 possible. All we do is to register our common as 
 sent to the new truth s incontrovertibility. Nor 
 has belief any place in the loose, indecisive issues 
 of ordinary living. We have to act constantly on 
 insufficient evidence, on the best "opinion" we can 
 get. But opinion is not belief, and we are lost if 
 we treat it so. Belief is dogmatic, but opinion 
 has value only when it is tentative, questioning. 
 The fact is that in modern thinking the attitude of 
 belief has given place to what may be called the 
 higher plausibility. Stern, rugged conviction 
 [227] 
 
which has no scientific background behind it is 
 coming to be dealt with rather impatiently by the 
 modern mind. We have difficulty in distinguish 
 ing it from prejudice. There is no hostility to 
 faith, if by "faith" we only mean an emotional 
 core of desire driving towards some ideal. But 
 idealism is a very different thing from belief. Be 
 lief is impelled from behind; it is sterile, fixed. 
 Belief has no seeds of progress, no constructive 
 impulse. An ideal, on the other hand, is an 
 illumined end towards which our hopes and en 
 deavors converge. It looks forward and pulls us 
 along with it. It is ideals and not beliefs that 
 motivate the modern mind. It is meaningless to 
 say that we "believe" in our ideals. This sepa 
 rates our ideals from us. But what they are is 
 just the push of our temperaments towards perfec 
 tion. They are what is most inseparably and in 
 trinsically ourselves. The place of a belief which 
 put truth outside of us and made virtue a hard 
 clinging to it has been taken by the idealism which 
 merges us with the growing end we wish to 
 achieve. 
 
 Newman illustrates the perpetual paradox of 
 ecclesiasticism, that the more devoutly you accept 
 
 [228] 
 
the Church the less important you make it. As 
 you press closer and closer to its mystic heart, its 
 walls and forms and ideas crumble and fade. 
 The better Catholic you are, the more insidious 
 your vitiation of Catholicism. So that the Church 
 has remained strong only through its stout politi 
 cians and not through its saints. As a casket for 
 the precious jewel of mysticism, it cannot die. 
 But shorn of its political power it shrinks to a 
 poetical society of mystics, held together by the 
 strong and earthy bond of men who enjoy the easy 
 expression of power over the least intelligent and 
 intellectually assertive masses in Western society. 
 The Church declines towards its natural limits. 
 No attack on it, no undermining of it from within, 
 can destroy religious feeling, for that is an organ 
 ization of sentiments that are incarnate in man. 
 Newman s emotion, whatever his mind may have 
 done, reached through to this eternal heart. Im 
 plicit in his intellect, however, is that demolition 
 of religious intellectuality which has freed our 
 minds for the work of the future. He was an un 
 conscious pioneer. Ostensibly reactionary, he re 
 veals in his own Apologia an anticipation of our 
 modern outlook. His use of infallibility insidi 
 ously destroys the foundations of belief. 
 [229] 
 
IMPRESSIONS OF EUROPE 1913-14 * 
 
 IT was my good fortune as holder of the Gilder 
 Fellowship in this University to spend in Europe 
 the thirteen months immediately preceding the 
 war. I used the opportunity for extensive travel 
 and general acclimatization rather than for spe 
 cialized research, and was thus able to get an ex 
 tensive survey of the European scheme on the eve 
 of a cataclysm from which it may emerge entirely 
 altered. No one can predict how truly that year 
 will mark the "end of an era." It seems true, 
 however, that most of the tendencies of democ 
 racy, social reform, and international understand 
 ing, to whose development I gave my most eager 
 attention, have been snapped off like threads, per 
 haps never to be pieced together again. And the 
 material development, so striking in Germany and 
 Italy, the rebuilding of the cities and the under 
 taking of vast communal projects, will be indefi- 
 
 1 Report to the Trustees of Columbia University, 1914. 
 
 [230] 
 
nitely checked, from sheer want of capital, wasted 
 in the war. 
 
 No one was more innocent than I of the impend 
 ing horror. In fact, this menacing "armed camp" 
 actually seemed to bristle in less sharply defined 
 lines when seen at close range. Public opinion 
 seemed far less violent than I had expected. In 
 England there was the persistent hostility to Com 
 pulsory Service, the gnawing compunction at the 
 folly of the Boer War, the complete subsidence of 
 the panic over German invasion. In France, 
 there was the unyielding opposition to the new 
 three-years military law, culminating in the rad 
 ical victory at the April parliamentary elections, a 
 clear national expression of reluctance at the in 
 creased military expenditures; there was the su 
 perb irony of the French press over the Zabern af 
 fair, where one would have expected a raging 
 chauvinism; there was the general public depreca 
 tion of the activities of the royalists, and the con 
 stant discrediting of their Alsace-Lorraine propa 
 ganda. In Italy I had seen the wild outburst of 
 reaction against the criminal Tripolitan war, and 
 the great general strike of June, a direct popular 
 uprising against war and militarism. Perhaps if 
 
I had spent the winter in Germany, I should have 
 felt the drift towards war, but even there all the 
 opinion I heard was of some gigantic slow-moving 
 Slavic pressure, against which defence must be 
 made. And if public and press were full of blat 
 ant world-defiance, the spirit certainly escaped my 
 attention. My mind became quite reconciled to 
 the fact of "armed peace." My imagination un 
 consciously began to envisage armaments as mere 
 frozen symbols of power, grim, menacing and 
 costly, yet little more than graphic expressions, in 
 a language that all the world could understand, 
 of the relative strength and prestige of the nations. 
 In spite of the uniforms that sprinkled the side 
 walks and the wagon-trains that littered the 
 streets, my imagination simply refused to take 
 them as dynamic. And there was little in press 
 and people to make me think that they themselves 
 took them as dynamic. How I should have acted 
 if I had known of the imminence of the world- 
 war I do not know, but in the light of the event 
 my rambles and interests take on the aspect of the 
 toddlings of an innocent child about the edge of a 
 volcano s crater. 
 
 I can give, however, a few indications of what 
 
 [232] 
 
such an innocent mind might see and feel in Eu 
 rope, this year of last breathless hush before the 
 explosion. I concerned myself with getting, first, 
 a clear impression of the physical body in which 
 each country clothed itself, the aspect of town 
 and countryside, villages, farms, working-class 
 quarters, factories, suburbs, plans of towns, styles 
 of architecture, characteristic types and ways of 
 living, of modern Europe; and, second, the atti 
 tudes, social and political, of various classes, the 
 social psychology of the different peoples. Such 
 acquisitions had, of course, to be the merest im 
 pressions. One could not get "data"; one s tour 
 could be little more than a perpetual "sizing-up." 
 The best one could do was to settle down in the 
 various capitals for a few months, immerse oneself 
 in the newspapers, talk with as many people as 
 one could reach, read the contemporary novels and 
 plays, attend political meetings and meetings of 
 social reformers, go to church and court-house and 
 school and library and university, and watch the 
 national life in action. One could only cut one 
 self off from American interests, imagine that one 
 had always lived in the foreign city, and try, by a 
 reach of sympathy and appreciation, to assimilate 
 [233] 
 
the tone and spirit and attitudes of the people 
 among whom one was living. Such an effort may 
 result only in the most fantastic illusions. I am 
 not trying to boast that I got any understanding 
 of European countries, a matter of years of ac 
 quaintance and not of months. I am merely in 
 dicating an attitude of approach. But it was an 
 attitude I found none too common among Ameri 
 can students abroad. Among the many who were 
 conducting historical and political researches at 
 the libraries, I was never able to find any student 
 interested in the political meetings of the cam 
 paign, for instance, which I attended with so much 
 ardor, as a revelation of French social psychology. 
 The Americans I saw would have an enthusiasm 
 for particular things, perhaps, that they were in 
 terested in, a patronizing attitude towards certain 
 immoralities and inefficiencies that impressed 
 them, but as for a curiosity about the French mind 
 and the French culture as a whole, I could not find 
 any interest that flowed along with mine. My 
 curiosity, therefore, had to go its own gait. I 
 seemed to have a singular faculty for not getting 
 information. Unless one is fortunate enough to 
 step into a social group, one must dig one s way 
 [234] 
 
along unaided. By means of newspapers and 
 magazines and guide-books, one hews out a little 
 passage towards the center of things. Slowly a 
 definite picture is built up of the culture and psy 
 chology of the people among whom one is living. 
 There is no way, however, of checking up one s 
 impressions. One must rely on one s intuition. 
 Letters of introduction bring out only class or pro 
 fessional attitudes. Very few people are socially 
 introspective enough to map out for you the mind 
 of the society in which they live. Only the 
 French seem to have this self-consciousness of their 
 own traits, and the gift of expression, and that is 
 why France is incomparably the most interesting 
 and enlightening country for the amateur and curi 
 ous American student to visit. 
 
 These considerations suggest the fact that I 
 wish to bring out, that my most striking impres 
 sion was the extraordinary toughness and homo 
 geneity of the cultural fabric in the different coun 
 tries, England, France, Italy and Germany, that I 
 studied. Each country was a distinct unit, the 
 parts of which hung together, and interpreted each 
 other, styles and attitudes, literature, architecture, 
 and social organization. This idea is of course a 
 [235] 
 
truism, yet brought up, as most Americans are, I 
 think, with the idea that foreigners are just human 
 beings living on other parts of the earth s surface, 
 "folks" like ourselves with accidental differences 
 of language and customs, I was genuinely shocked 
 to find distinct national temperaments, distinct 
 psychologies and attitudes, distinct languages that 
 embodied, not different sounds for the same mean 
 ings, but actually different meanings. We really 
 know all this; but when we write about the war, 
 for instance, we insensibly fall back to our old atti 
 tude. Most American comment on the war, even 
 the most intelligent, suggests a complete ignorance 
 of the fact that there is a German mind, and a 
 French mind and an English mind, each a whole 
 bundle of attitudes and interpretations that har 
 monize and support each other. And each of 
 these national minds feels its own reasons and emo 
 tions and justifications to be cosmically grounded, 
 just as we ourselves feel that Anglo-Saxon moral 
 ity is Morality, and Anglo-Saxon freedom Liberty. 
 We do, of course, more or less dimly recognize 
 these differences of national culture. We no 
 longer think of other nations as "Barbarians," un 
 less they have a national scheme which is as much 
 
 [236] 
 
of a challenge to our own social inefficiency as is 
 the German. We express our sense of the differ 
 ence by a constant belittling. Foreigners are not 
 monsters, but Lilliputians, dwarfs, playing with 
 toys. We do not take other cultures seriously. 
 We tend to dwell on the amusing, the quaint, the 
 picturesque, rather than the intense emotional and 
 intellectual differences. The opportunity to im 
 merse oneself in these various cultures until one 
 feels their powerful and homogeneous strength, 
 their meaning and depth, until one takes each with 
 entire seriousness and judges it, not in American 
 terms, but in its own, this is the educative value 
 of a rapid, superficial European year such as mine. 
 The only American book I have ever been able to 
 find that deals with a foreign country in this ade 
 quate sense is Mr. BrownelPs "French Traits." 
 Almost all other writing, political, historical, de 
 scriptive, about European countries, must be read 
 with the constant realization that the peculiar 
 emotional and intellectual biases of the people, the 
 temperamental traits, the soul which animates all 
 their activities and expressions, have all been 
 omitted from consideration by the author. 
 
 I can only give fragmentary hints in this short 
 
 [ 237 ] 
 
article of the incidents which built up my sense of 
 these differences of national cultures. London 
 was the place where I had the best opportunities 
 for meeting people through letters of introduction. 
 There were glimpses of the Webbs at a meeting of 
 the Fabian Society, which seems to retain the alle 
 giance of its old members rather than enlist the en 
 thusiasm of the younger generation. At their 
 house Mr. Webb talked, as he lectures, with the 
 patient air of a man expounding arithmetic to 
 backward children, and Mrs. Webb, passive by his 
 side, spoke only to correct some slight slip on his 
 part; there was another picture of her sweeping into 
 the New Statesman office and producing a sudden 
 panic of reverent awe among the editorial staff. 
 Lectures by Shaw and Chesterton on succeeding 
 nights Shaw, clean, straight, clear and fine as an 
 upland wind and summer sun; Chesterton, glut 
 tonous and thick, with something tricky and un 
 savory about him gave me a personal estimate 
 of their contrasted philosophies. Then there was 
 Professor Hobhouse, excessively judicial, with 
 that high consciousness of excellence which the 
 Liberal professor seems to exude ; Graham Wallas, 
 with his personal vivacity of expression and lack 
 
 [238] 
 
of any clear philosophy, who considered the Amer 
 ican sociologist a national disaster; H. G. Wells, 
 a suggestive talker, but very disappointing per 
 sonally; John A. Hobson, whom I cannot admire 
 too much, a publicist with immense stores of 
 knowledge, poise of mind, and yet radical philos 
 ophy and gifts of journalistic expression, a type 
 that we simply do not seem to be able to produce 
 in this country. 
 
 I expected to find the atmosphere of London 
 very depressing. On the contrary, a sort of fat 
 uous cheerfulness seemed to reign everywhere on 
 the streets, in middle-class homes, even in the 
 slums. This impressed me as the prevailing tone 
 of English life. Wells and Bennett seem to have 
 caught it exactly. As for the world that Mr. 
 Galsworthy lives in, though I looked hard for his 
 people, I could find nothing with the remotest re 
 semblance. Such a tone of optimism is possible 
 only to an unimaginative people who are well 
 schooled against personal reactions, and against 
 the depressing influences of environment slums 
 and fog and a prevailing stodginess of middle- 
 class life that would affect the moods of more 
 impressionable peoples. In certain educated cir- 
 [239] 
 
cles this tone gave an impression of incorrigible 
 intellectual frivolity. London has fashions in 
 talk. Significant discussion almost did not exist. 
 A running fire of ideational badinage, "good talk," 
 took its place. Every idea tended to go up in 
 smoke. You found your tone either monstrously 
 prophetic, as of a young Jeremiah sitting at the 
 board, or else unpleasantly cynical. Irony does 
 not seem to be known in England. 
 
 The impression one got from the newspapers 
 and magazines and popular books was of a sort of 
 exuberant irrelevance, a vivacity of interest about 
 matters that seemed quite alien to the personal and 
 social issues of life as one knew it. There seemed 
 indeed to be a direct avoidance of these issues. 
 One could never discover whether or how much 
 an Englishman "cared." The national mind 
 seemed to have made a sort of permanent derange 
 ment of intellect from emotion. In no country is 
 so large a proportion of the literary product a mere 
 hobby of leisurely gentlemen whose interests are 
 quite elsewhere. The literary supplements of the 
 newspapers used to contain the greatest collection 
 of futilities that I ever saw. One got the impres 
 sion that the intellectual life of the country was 
 
 [240] 
 
"hobbyized," that ideas were taken as sports, just 
 as sports were taken as serious issues. This im 
 pression was rather confirmed at Oxford, where 
 the anthropologist, Marrett, turned out to be a 
 Jersey country gentleman, digging up prehistoric 
 bones on his place, and mentioning Chesterton as 
 "entertaining writer even had him down here to 
 lunch, but not a gentleman/ you know, not a 
 gentleman. Oxford itself seemed to be one 
 long play of schoolboys in the soft damp Novem 
 ber air. Schiller, who gave me a delightful morn 
 ing, after I had attended his class where the boys 
 came in their black gowns and sat at primitive 
 desks in the low room before a blazing fire, from 
 which one looked out on mouldering walls and 
 dead ivy and the pale morning sun and wan sweet 
 decay, drew a wicked picture of the dons satisfy 
 ing their thwarted sporting instincts by putting 
 their boys through their intellectual paces and pit 
 ting them against each other in scholastic compe 
 tition like race-horses. Mr. McDougall,. large 
 and with an Irish courtliness, I heard and liked, 
 and Mr. L. P. Jacks talked with me at Manchester 
 College. A meeting of the Fabians at St. John s 
 and a lecture by Mrs. Pember Reeves on "Coop- 
 
eration" attracted me, with her dramatic flaring 
 out at the stolid audience for their "English" lack 
 of imagination she came from New Zealand 
 the inanely facetious comments of the dons, the 
 lumbering discourses of certain beefy burgesses 
 from the local "Cooperative," who had not fol 
 lowed well the lady s nimble thought. Every lit 
 tle incident of the Oxford week of classes and 
 rambles fitted into a picture of the place as a per 
 fect epitome of English life, past and present. It 
 was even more than London a world. 
 
 Politically, London was dead that autumn. 
 No parliament, and every one weary of politics. 
 The bitter Dublin strike dragged along with its 
 reverberations through the English labor situation, 
 which showed unrest and dissatisfaction with its 
 leaders and much more of "syndicalist" leaning 
 than any one would admit. A debate, heard later 
 in Paris, hit the English labor situation off beau 
 tifully, Longuet, arguing that there was no syn 
 dicalism in England because all the leaders had 
 written him there wasn t; Joyaux, arguing that 
 there was, because the unions were using forms of 
 "direct action" and acting exactly "as if" syndi 
 calist ideas were spreading. 
 
 [242] 
 
The Lloyd George land campaign for the bet 
 tering of rural labor conditions was beginning, but 
 was arousing so little enthusiasm that, with the in 
 tense dissatisfaction over the Insurance Acts that 
 rose from every class, one wondered if the energy 
 of the Liberal social program had about spent it 
 self. The London press, solidly Tory extraor 
 dinary situation for a Liberal country was find 
 ing, besides its social grievances, the Ulster theme 
 to play upon. Indefatigable industry, worthy of 
 a better cause, was apparently being exercised to 
 drum up reluctant English sentiment against 
 Home Rule. All that autumn we lived ostensibly 
 on the brink of a civil war, whose first mutter- 
 ings did not even occur till the next July. 
 
 The suffragettes were quiescent, but their big 
 meetings at Knightsbridge gave one a new insight 
 into the psychology of the movement. As one 
 watched this fusion of the grotesque and the 
 tragic, these pale martyrs carried in amidst the 
 reverent hush of a throng as mystically religious 
 as ever stood around the death-bed of a saint; or 
 as one heard the terrific roars of "Shame!" that 
 went up at the mention of wrongs done to women, 
 pne realized that one was in the presence of Eng- 
 
 [243] 
 
lish emotion, long starved and dried from its 
 proper channels of expression, and now breaking 
 out irrepressibly into these new and wild ways. 
 It was the reverse side of the idolized English 
 "reticence." It was a pleasant little commentary 
 on the Victorian era. Suffragettism is what you 
 get when you turn your whole national psychic en 
 ergy into divorcing emotion from expression and 
 from intellect. 
 
 A hysterical Larkin meeting in Albert Hall; 
 meetings of the Lansbury people in the East End, 
 with swarms of capped, cheerful, dirty, stodgy 
 British workmen; a big Churchill meeting at Alex 
 andra Palace, from which seventeen hecklers were 
 thrown out, dully, one after the other, on their 
 heads, after terrific scrimmages in the audience; 
 quieter lectures at the Sociological Society, etc.; 
 churches and law-courts, and tutorial classes, and 
 settlements, and garden cities, and talks with 
 many undistinguished people, rounded out my 
 London impression, and in December I moved my 
 stage to Paris. 
 
 The weeks of getting a hearing acquaintance 
 with the language were spent in reading sociology 
 at the Bibliotheque Ste. Genevieve, exchanging 
 
 [ 244 1 
 
conversation with students at the Sorbonne, and 
 attending still not understood lectures, in the hope 
 that some day the electric spark of apprehension 
 might flash. I soon felt an intellectual vivacity, 
 a sincerity and candor, a tendency to think emo 
 tions and feel ideas, that integrated again the 
 spiritual world as I knew it, and wiped out those 
 irrelevances and facetiousnesses and puzzle-inter 
 ests and sporting attitudes towards life, that so got 
 on one s nerves in England. Here was also a de 
 mocracy, not a society all shot into intellectual 
 and social castes, where one lived shut in with 
 ideas and attitudes that, like the proverbial os 
 trich, annihilated the rest of the world. In Eng 
 land, unless you were a "social reformer," you did 
 not know anything about anybody but your own 
 class; in France there seemed to be scarcely any 
 social reformers, but everybody assumed an intelli 
 gent interest in everything. In short, a democ 
 racy, where you criticized everything and every 
 body, and neither attempted to "lift" the "lower 
 orders" nor "ordered yourself lowly and rever 
 ently towards your betters." There was a solid, 
 robust air of equality, which one felt in no other 
 country, certainly not our own. The labor move- 
 
 [245] 
 
ment had an air of helping itself, and its leaders 
 showed an intellectuality that ranked them with 
 the professional men. In fact, the distinction be 
 tween the "intellectual" and the non-intellectual 
 seems to have quite broken down in France. 
 Manners, styles of speech, pronunciation, ideas, 
 the terms in which things are phrased, seem to flow 
 rather freely over all the classes. Class-distinc 
 tions, which hit you in the face in England and 
 America I mean, differences of manner and 
 speech, attitudes of contempt or admiration for 
 other types are much blurred. The language 
 has remained simple, pure, usable without the 
 triteness and vulgarity which dogs English, and 
 which constitutes the most subtle evidence of our 
 inherent Anglo-Saxon snobbery. It was a new 
 world, where the values and the issues of life got 
 reinstated for me into something of their proper 
 relative emphasis. 
 
 With few letters of introduction, acclimatiza 
 tion was much more difficult than in London. 
 One had to hew one s way around by the aid of 
 the newspapers. These are infinitely more ex 
 pressive of every shade of political opinion than 
 is the London press. They provided a complete 
 
 [246] 
 
education in the contemporary world. Supple 
 mented by the interesting symposiums in the re 
 views, and the mapping-out of the various French 
 intellectual worlds which the youftg agreges and 
 instructors I met were always eager to give me, the 
 Paris press provided a witty, interpretative daily 
 articulation of the French mind at work. It is a 
 very self-conscious and articulate mind, interested 
 in the psychological artistic aspects of life rather 
 than the objective active aspects which appeal to 
 the English. Life to the Anglo-Saxon is what 
 people are doing; to the Latin, rather the stream 
 of consciousness, what individuals and also what 
 groups are thinking and feeling. This all makes 
 for clear thinking, constant interpretation I no 
 ticed that my young lawyer friend was all the time 
 saying "Voila! mon explication!" and an 
 amount of what might be called social introspec 
 tion that makes France the easiest as well as the 
 most stimulating country to become acquainted 
 with. The French are right in telling you that 
 their scholarship is not the collection of insignifi 
 cant facts, but the interpretation of significant 
 ones, the only kind of scholarship that is worth 
 anything. 
 
 [247] 
 
In Paris, I continued my general policy of run 
 ning down the various social institutions, churches, 
 courts, schools, political meetings, model tene 
 ments, etc., in order to get, at least, a taste of 
 French society in operation. I poked about the 
 various quarters of town and countryside, and 
 talked to as many people as I could meet. After 
 the lectures at the Sorbonne became intelligible, I 
 followed the public courses of Bougie and Dela 
 croix and Burkheim in sociology, and when the 
 campaign for the parliamentary election came I 
 plunged into that, following the bulletin boards of 
 the parties, with their flaring manifestoes among 
 them the royalists "A Bas La Republique!" 
 calmly left posted on the government s own of 
 ficial bulletin-board, as evidence of the most su 
 perb political tolerance I suppose any country has 
 ever shown ! and attending the disorderly meet 
 ings held in the dingy playrooms of the public 
 schoolhouses or in crowded cafes. French free 
 dom of speech has been struggled for too long not 
 to be prized when won, and the refusal to silence 
 interrupters made each meeting a contest of wits 
 and eloquence between the speaker and his audi 
 ence. The most extraordinary incident of "fair 
 
 [248] 
 
play" I ever saw Anglo-Saxons simply do not 
 know what "fair play" is was at one of Bougie s 
 meetings, where the chairman allowed one of his 
 political opponents, who had repeatedly inter 
 rupted Bougie, to take the platform and hold it for 
 half an hour, attacking Bougie and stating his own 
 creed. When he had finished Bougie took him up 
 point by point, demolished him, and went on with 
 his own exposition. This at his own meeting, 
 called by his own Radical Party, to forward his 
 candidature! When I left at 12:45 A.M. the 
 meeting was still in progress. At a Socialist meet 
 ing an old Catholic, looking exactly like Napoleon 
 III, was allowed to hold forth for several min 
 utes from a chair, until the impatient audience 
 howled him off. Young normaliennes^ represent 
 ing the suffrage movement, appeared at meetings 
 of all the parties, and were given the platform to 
 plead the cause of women as long as the crowd 
 would listen. These young girls were treated ex 
 actly as men; there was no trace of either chiv 
 alry or vulgarity, the audience reacted directly and 
 intensely to their ideas and not to them. The first 
 impulse of a Frenchman actually seems to be, 
 when he hears something he doesn t like, not to 
 [249] 
 
stop the other fellow s mouth, but to answer him, 
 and not with a taunt, or disarming wit, but with 
 an argument. In the Chamber of Deputies the 
 same spirit prevailed. The only visible signs of 
 parliamentary order were Deschanel s clashing of 
 his big bell and his despairing "Voulez-vous ecou- 
 ter! Voulez-vous ecouter!" The speaker in the 
 tribune held it as long as he was permitted by his 
 hearers; his interrupter would himself be inter 
 rupted and would exchange words across the cham 
 ber while the official speaker looked resignedly on. 
 The Left would go off as one man in violent ex 
 plosions of wrath, shake their fists at the Center, 
 call out epithets. Yet this was a dull session that 
 I saw, only a matter of raising the pay of generals. 
 Certainly the campaign of that election against 
 the new Three Years Military Law seems very 
 far away now. The crowd outside the Mairie of 
 the V me the night of the election shouting "A Bas 
 Les-Trois-Ans," in the same rhythmic way that 
 the law-students a few weeks earlier had marched 
 down rue St. Jacques yelling "Cail laux as-sas- 
 sin !" knew no more than I how soon they would 
 need this defence of more soldiers. The cheers of 
 the crowd as the splendid cortege of the English 
 
 [250] 
 
sovereigns swept along the streets seem more im 
 portant than they did to me at the time. Dou- 
 mergue s stand-pat ministry, with which my stay 
 in Paris almost exactly coincided, and during 
 which the income-tax, lay-instruction, and propor 
 tional representation issues slowly made progress, 
 appears now in the light of a holding everything 
 safe till the election was over, and the President 
 could stem the tide of reaction against the new 
 military laws. France was waiting for the blow 
 to fall that might be mortal. 
 
 On the first of May I was in Nimes, delightful 
 Southern city, where gaunt Protestants gave out 
 tracts in the cars, and newspapers devoted to bull 
 fighting graced the news-stands, reading the big 
 red posters of the socialist mayor, summoning all 
 the workmen to leave off work and come out to 
 celebrate the International. Indeed a foreign 
 land! 
 
 I arrived in Genoa the evening the Kaiser 
 landed from Corfu, and witnessed the pompous 
 and important event. In Pisa, I stepped into a 
 demonstration of students, who were moving rap 
 idly about the city closing the schools and making 
 speeches to each other, as a protest against harsh 
 
treatment of Italians by the Austrian government 
 in Trieste, the passionate leit motiv of Italia Irre 
 denta that runs through all current Italian thought 
 and feeling. In Florence I began to understand 
 "futurism," that crude and glaring artistic expres 
 sion which arises from the intolerable ennui of the 
 ancient art with which the young Italian is sur 
 rounded, the swarms of uncritical foreigners, the 
 dead museums. That Mona Lisa smile of Flor 
 ence drove me soon to Rome, where I sensed the 
 real Italy, with its industrial and intellectual fer 
 ment, its new renaissance of the twentieth cen 
 tury. 
 
 Rome is not a city, it is a world. Every cen 
 tury, from the first to the twentieth, has left its 
 traces. It is the one city in Europe to study west 
 ern civilization, an endless source of suggestion, 
 stimulation and delight. It is the one city where 
 the ancient and the ultra-modern live side by side, 
 both brimming over with vitality. The Church 
 and the most advanced and determined body of 
 social revolutionists living side by side; the Vati 
 can galleries faced by the futurist; a statue of Fer 
 rer just outside Bernini s colonnade; rampant de 
 mocracy confronting Prince Colonnas and Borgh- 
 
 [252] 
 
eses ; Renaissance palaces, and blocks of monstrous 
 apartments built in the mad speculation after 
 1870; all the tendencies and ideas of all Europe 
 contending there in Rome, at once the most an 
 cient and the most modern city we know. What 
 is a month in Rome ! 
 
 I could do little more than disentangle the po 
 litical currents, get familiar with certain names in 
 the intellectual world, and plot out the city, his 
 torically and sociologically, after a fashion. A 
 noted psychologist, Dr. Assagioli in Florence, had 
 gone over the philosophical situation for me; and 
 in Rome, Professor Pettazoni of the university 
 told me of the political tendencies. A young 
 Modernist priest, discharged from his theological 
 professorship for suspected connection with the 
 "Programma," who talked about as much English 
 as I did Italian, proved very friendly and inform 
 ing, and gave me a sense of that vast subterran 
 ean, resistless, democratizing and liberalizing 
 movement in the Church. Various types, Italian 
 cavalry officers, professors of pedagogy, Sicilian 
 lawyers, an emotional law student from Lecce, 
 who took me to the university and talked repub 
 licanism to me, passed through the pension. And 
 
 [253] 
 
in Rome anyway you simply seeped Italy in, from 
 the newspapers, as vivid and varied as those in 
 Paris, and the host of little democratic and polit 
 ical weeklies, most of them recent, but fervent and 
 packed with ideas that indicated a great ferment 
 of young intellectual Italy. The young Floren 
 tine Papini gives in his picturesque books the pic 
 ture of the Italian soul struggling with French, 
 English and German ideas, and trying to hew some 
 sort of order out of the chaos. One got the im 
 pression that Nietzsche was raging through the 
 young Italian mind. But I was all for the candor 
 and sympathy and personality of this expression. 
 Papers like "La Voce," published by Papini s 
 friends, have an idealistic sweep such as we simply 
 cannot imagine or, I suppose, appreciate in this 
 country. I had touched a different national mind. 
 Expressions which seem wild to us fell there into 
 their proper and interpretative order. 
 
 My impression was that almost anything might 
 happen in Italy. While I was in Rome, the Pope 
 was drawing protests from even the most conserva 
 tive clerical dailies for his obscurantism. The 
 country seemed to be disillusionizing itself about 
 representative government, which, though it had 
 [254] 
 
become perfectly democratic, and had the most 
 sweeping program of social reform, was clumsy 
 and ineffective, and had utterly failed to carry out 
 the popular hopes. The Crown scarcely seemed 
 to be taken much more seriously than in Norway. 
 Republican sentiment cropped up in unexpected 
 places. Nationalism grew apace, cleverly stimu 
 lated by the new capitalistic bourgeosie and the 
 new industry, which first impressed you as you 
 came through the long string of gayly-colored, 
 swarming factory towns on the coast between Ven- 
 timiglia and Genoa. Political parties, National 
 ist, Constitutionalist, Republican, Socialist, etc., 
 seemed as numerous as in France, but there was 
 not the same fluctuation, for the expert govern 
 mental hand kept a majority, in the Camera. 
 This body gave little of the impression of dignity 
 that one had felt in the French Chamber. One 
 felt that while in Italy democratic feeling was 
 almost as genuine and universal as in France, po 
 litical democracy had by no means proved its 
 worth. That Latin passion for intellectual sin 
 cerity and articulation that quality which makes 
 the Latin the most sympathetic and at the same 
 time the most satisfactory person in the world, 
 
 [255] 
 
because you can always know that his outward 
 expression bears some relation to his inward feel 
 ing had resulted, as in France, in the duplication 
 of parties, which were constantly holding con 
 gresses and issuing programs, and then splitting up 
 into dissentient groups. This trait may be unfor 
 tunate politically; but it certainly makes for sin 
 cerity and intelligence, and all the other virtues 
 which our Anglo-Saxon two-party system is well 
 devised to destroy. 
 
 This Latin quality of not being reticent, of re 
 acting directly and truthfully, had its most dra 
 matic expression in the great general strike of 
 June, which I witnessed in Rome. Disgust and 
 chagrin at the Tripolitan war, a general reaction 
 against militarism, had been slowly accumulating 
 in the working classes, and the smouldering feel 
 ing was touched off into a revolutionary explosion 
 by the shooting of two demonstrators at Ancona 
 by the police on the festival day of the Statuto. 
 This was followed in Rome, as in most of the 
 other cities of Italy, by a complete suspension of 
 work. No cars or wagons moved for three days; 
 no shops or stores opened their doors; none of the 
 public services were performed; the only newspa- 
 
 [256] 
 
per was a little red "bolletino" which told of the 
 riots of the day before. One did nothing but walk 
 the garbage-littered streets, past the shuttered win 
 dows and barricaded doors, and watch the long 
 lines of infantry surrounding the public squares, 
 and the mounted carabinieri holding the Piazza del 
 Popolo, to prevent meetings and demonstrations. 
 The calm spirit of the troops, surrounded by the 
 excited crowds, was admirable. And the over 
 whelming expression of social solidarity displayed 
 by this suspended city made one realize that here 
 were radical classes that had the courage of their 
 convictions. On the third day, the conservative 
 classes recovered their breath, and I saw the 
 slightly fearful demonstration of shouting youths 
 who moved down the Via del Tritone while great 
 Italian flags swung out from one window after an 
 other, greeted with wild hand-clapping from every 
 thronged bourgeois balcony. The next day the 
 darting trolley-cars told the strike was over, but 
 tw r o days later I alighted at the Naples station into 
 a fortress held by Bersaglieri against a mob who 
 had been trying all day to burn the station. The 
 shooting kept us inside until the last rioters were 
 dispersed, and the great protest was over, though 
 
 [257] 
 
it was days before the people of the Romagna, 
 where railroads and telegraphs were cut, were con 
 vinced that the monarchy had not fallen and a re 
 public been proclaimed. The government had 
 kept very quiet, except for the floods of oratory 
 that rolled through the Camera; if it had not, 
 there might have been a real revolution, instead of 
 merely the taste and thrill of one. 
 
 My last political experience in Italy was elec 
 tion night in Venice, with the triumph of the con 
 servatives, who had made no bones of the eco 
 nomic interpretation of politics, but had placarded 
 the city with posters recalling to gondolieri, hotel- 
 keepers and shop-keepers, the exact amount of 
 money they had lost by reason of the general strike 
 and the wild scurry of foreigners out of the coun 
 try. This rather appalling sum was apparently a 
 final and clinching argument, and we heard the 
 gratitude of the Patriarch from his balcony by 
 San Marco expressed to the citizens who had 
 "saved" their country. Such incidents are sym 
 bols of the candors and delights of the Latin tem 
 perament and of everything in the Latin countries. 
 
 Switzerland, besides its holidaying, contributed 
 the Bern Exposition, the intensely significant spec- 
 
 [258] 
 
tacle of a nation looking at itself. If, as was said, 
 every Swiss schoolchild saw the exposition not 
 once but three times, our day was one of those 
 times. All Switzerland was there studying and 
 enjoying itself. In this little epitome of its life, 
 one had a sense of the refreshing value of living 
 in a small country where its activities and spirit 
 could all, in some sort of fashion, be grasped, un 
 derstood, contemplated, as one might a large pic 
 ture. Most suggestive, perhaps, were the great 
 water-power development projects, electrical engi 
 neering schemes, and mountain railroading, 
 planned ahead in a broad way for fifty years or so. 
 A country that knew what it was about, that knew 
 how to use its resources for large social ends ! 
 
 My German tour of the last two weeks of July, 
 cut short by the war, was more definitely sociolog 
 ical. I had been through the Rhine country to 
 Heidelberg, Stuttgart, and Munich, the preceding 
 summer. This trip went straight north from 
 Friedrichshafen to Berlin. There were the fa 
 mous town-planned cities to be seen, and housing- 
 schemes, which I had followed rather closely in all 
 the countries, and a general "sizing-up" of Ger 
 man "Kultur." I missed my settling down in 
 [259] 
 
Berlin ; newspapers and people had to be taken on 
 the wing. But then the German spirit and ex 
 pression was much more familiar to me through 
 study than had been the French and Italian. My 
 most striking impression was of the splendor of 
 the artistic renaissance, as shown particularly in 
 the new architecture and household and decora 
 tive and civic art. These new and opulent styles 
 are gradually submerging that fearful debauch of 
 bad taste which followed the French war, and 
 which makes the business quarters of the German 
 cities so hideous. But the newer quarters, mon 
 uments, public buildings of the last ten years have 
 a massive, daring style which marks an epoch in 
 art. I have yet to come across an American who 
 likes this most recent German architecture; but to 
 me buildings like the University at Jena, the Stutt 
 gart theater, the Tietz shops, etc., with their heavy 
 concrete masses and soaring lines, speak of per 
 fectly new and indigenous ideas. And if artistic 
 creation is a mark of a nation s vitality, the signifi 
 cance of this fine flare and splurge of German 
 style, the endless fecundity of decorative design 
 in printing and furniture, etc., the application of 
 design to the laying out of towns and suburbs, the 
 
 [260] 
 
careful homogeneity and integrity of artistic idea, 
 should not be overlooked. These things are fer 
 tile, are exhilarating and make for the enhance 
 ment of life. The Germans are acting exactly as 
 if they no longer believed, as we do, that a high 
 quality of urban life can be developed in a rag 
 tag chaos of undistinguished styles and general 
 planlessness. 
 
 Specifically, I visited the municipal working- 
 men s cottages in Ulm and saw the town-planning 
 charts of the city in the office of the Stadtbaurat; 
 the huge apartments, municipally built and 
 owned, in Munich; the big Volksbad in Nurem 
 berg, and the garden-city workingmen s suburb at 
 Lichtenhof, with the schoolchildrens garden al 
 lotments; the model garbage-disposal plant at 
 Furth, a miracle of scientific resource and econ 
 omy; the extraordinary model municipal slaugh 
 ter-house at Dresden, so characteristically German 
 with its Schlachthof and Direktorhaus at the en 
 trance; and, lastly the famous garden-city of Hel- 
 lerau, inferior, however, on the whole, to the Eng 
 lish Hampstead Suburb at Golders Green. 
 Towns like Rothenburg and Nordlingen were lit 
 tle laboratories of mediaeval and modern town- 
 
 [261] 
 
planning. The Stadtbaurat at Rothenburg went 
 over for us the development of the city, and gave 
 us considerable insight into the government, policy 
 and spirit of a typical little German municipality. 
 Undemocratic in political form, yet ultra-demo 
 cratic in policy and spirit, scientific, impartial, giv 
 ing the populace who seemed to have no sense of 
 being excluded from "rights" what they really 
 wanted, far more truly than our democracies seem 
 to be able to secure, this epitome of the German 
 political scheme served to convince us that we were 
 in a world where our ordinary neat categories of 
 political thought simply didn t apply. It was fu 
 tile to attempt an interpretation in Anglo-Saxon 
 terms. There was no objective evidence of the 
 German groaning under "autocracy" and "pa 
 ternalism." One found oneself for the first time 
 in the presence of a government between whom 
 and the people there seemed to exist some pro 
 found and subtle sympathy, a harmony of spirit 
 and ends. 
 
 It was dramatic to sweep up through the endless 
 billowing fields and carefully tended forests and 
 imposing factory towns Germany, caught at 
 mid-summer, in the full tide of prosperity and 
 
 262 
 
come into Berlin on the morning of "the historic 
 day," July 3ist, 1914, with the agitated capital 
 on the brink of war ; to see the arrival of the Kaiser 
 and the princes at the Schloss ; to watch the Crown 
 Prince s automobile blocked twenty feet away 
 from us by the cheering crowd; "der wahre 
 Kriegesmann," as the papers were calling him in 
 contemptuous contrast to his peaceful father; to 
 hear the speech of the latter grim, staccato- 
 voiced, helmeted figure, very symbol of war 
 from the balcony of the palace ; to watch next day 
 the endless files of reservists marching through the 
 streets to the casernes to "einkleiden" ; and then 
 to hear the finally fatal news of Russia s refusal 
 with the swarming crowds on Unter den Linden, 
 hysterical from both fervor and anxiety. If ever 
 there was a tense and tragic moment, when des 
 tiny seemed concentrated into a few seconds of 
 time, it was that 5 p. M. on the afternoon of Aug 
 ust first, at the corner of Unter den Linden and 
 Friedrichstrasse, in Berlin. 
 
 A midnight flight to Sweden, with a motley 
 
 horde of scared Russians and Scandinavians, and 
 
 two weeks in the distressed and anxious northern 
 
 countries ended my year. Nothing but the war; 
 
 [263] 
 
regiments of flaxen-haired Danish boys, mobiliz 
 ing along the country roads of Denmark, the Land- 
 sturm lolling along the Stockholm streets, even the 
 Norwegians drilling against none knew what pos 
 sible attack. The heavens had fallen. An inter 
 view with Herr Branting, the Swedish Socialist 
 leader, and the depth of his personal feeling and 
 the moving eloquence with which he went over the 
 wreck of socialist and humanitarian hopes, gave us 
 the vividest sense of the reverberations of the 
 shock on a distinguished cosmopolitan mind. 
 The librarian of the Royal Library in Copen 
 hagen, the pastor of the Swedish church, and the 
 editor of "Dagens Nyheter," in Stockholm, whom 
 we were able to talk with, very kindly answered 
 our questions on Scandinavian affairs. And we 
 have the pleasantest memories of Herr Hambro in 
 Christiania, editor of the leading Conservative 
 daily, who had just finished La Follette s auto 
 biography, and would have preferred to talk about 
 America even to showing us how the Radical par 
 ties in Norway were lording it over their oppon 
 ents. One got the sense in these countries of the 
 most advanced civilization, yet without sophistica 
 tion, a luminous modern intelligence that selected 
 
 [264] 
 
and controlled and did not allow itself to be over 
 whelmed by the chaos of twentieth-century possi 
 bility. There was a mood of both gravity and 
 charm about the quality of the life lived, some 
 thing rather more Latin than Teutonic. This is 
 an intuition, reinforced by a sense that nowhere 
 had I seen so many appealing people as on the 
 streets of Copenhagen. Valid or not, it was the 
 pleasantest of intuitions with which to close my 
 year. 
 
 This sketch, I find, has, in fact, turned out much 
 more impressionistic than I intended. But im 
 pressions are not meant to be taken as dogmas. I 
 saw nothing that thousands of Americans have not 
 seen; I cannot claim to have brought back any or 
 iginal contribution. There was only the sense of 
 intimate acquaintance to be gained, that feeling of 
 at-homeness which makes intelligible the world. 
 To the University which made possible the rare 
 opportunity of acquaintance with these various 
 countries and cultures, the contact with which has 
 been so incompletely suggested in this sketch, my 
 immeasurable thanks! 
 
 [265] 
 
TRANS-NATIONAL AMERICA 
 
 No reverberatory effect of the great war has 
 caused American public opinion more solicitude 
 than the failure of the "melting-pot.*" The dis 
 covery of diverse nationalistic feelings among our 
 great alien population has come to most people as 
 an intense shock. It has brought out the un 
 pleasant inconsistencies of our traditional beliefs. 
 We have had to watch hard-hearted old Brahmins 
 virtuously indignant at the spectacle of the immi 
 grant refusing to be melted, while they jeer at pa 
 triots like Mary Antin who write about "our fore 
 fathers." We have had to listen to publicists 
 who express themselves as stunned by the evidence 
 of vigorous nationalistic and cultural movements 
 in this country among Germans, Scandinavians, 
 Bohemians, and Poles, while in the same breath 
 they insist that the alien shall be forcibly assim 
 ilated to that Anglo-Saxon tradition which they 
 unquestioningly label "American." 
 [266] 
 
As the unpleasant truth has come upon us that 
 assimilation in this country was proceeding on 
 lines very different from those we had marked out 
 for it, we found ourselves inclined to blame those 
 who were thwarting our prophecies. The truth 
 became culpable. We blamed the war, we 
 blamed the Germans. And then we discovered 
 with a moral shock that these movements had been 
 making great headway before the war even began. 
 We found that the tendency, reprehensible and 
 paradoxical as it might be, has been for the na 
 tional clusters of immigrants, as they became more 
 and more firmly established and more and more 
 prosperous, to cultivate more and more assiduously 
 the literatures and cultural traditions of their 
 homelands. Assimilation, in other words, instead 
 of washing out the memories of Europe, made 
 them more and more intensely real. Just as these 
 clusters became more and more objectively Ameri 
 can, did they become more and more German or 
 Scandinavian or Bohemian or Polish. 
 
 To face the fact that our aliens are already 
 strong enough to take a share in the direction of 
 their own destiny, and that the strong cultural 
 
 movements represented by the foreign press, 
 
 [267] 
 
schools, and colonies are a challenge to our facile 
 attempts, is not, however, to admit the failure of 
 Americanization. It is not to fear the failure of 
 democracy. It is rather to urge us to an investi 
 gation of what Americanism may rightly mean. 
 It is to ask ourselves whether our ideal has been 
 broad or narrow whether perhaps the time has 
 not come to assert a higher ideal than the "melt 
 ing-pot." Surely we cannot be certain of our spir 
 itual democracy when, claiming to melt the na 
 tions within us to a comprehension of our free and 
 democratic institutions, we fly into panic at the 
 first sign of their own will and tendency. We act 
 as if we wanted Americanization to take place 
 only on our own terms, and not by the consent of 
 the governed. All our elaborate machinery of set 
 tlement and school and union, of social and po 
 litical naturalization, however, will move with 
 friction just in so far as it neglects to take into 
 account this strong and virile insistence that Amer 
 ica shall be what the immigrant will have a hand 
 in making it, and not what a ruling class, descend 
 ant of those British stocks which were the first per 
 manent immigrants, decide that America shall be 
 made. This is the condition which confronts us, 
 
 [268] 
 
and which demands a clear and general readjust 
 ment of our attitude and our ideal. 
 
 Mary Antin is right when she looks upon our 
 foreign-born as the people who missed the May 
 flower and came over on the first boat they could 
 find. But she forgets that when they did come 
 it was not upon other Mayflowers, but upon a 
 "Maiblume," a "Fleur de Mai," a "Fior di Mag- 
 gio," a "Majblomst." These people were not 
 mere arrivals from the same family, to be wel 
 comed as understood and long-loved, but strangers 
 to the neighborhood, with whom a long process of 
 settling down had to take place. For they 
 brought with them their national and racial char 
 acters, and each new national quota had to wear 
 slowly away the contempt with which its mere 
 alienness got itself greeted. Each had to make its 
 way slowly from the lowest strata of unskilled la 
 bor up to a level where it satisfied the accredited 
 norms of social success. 
 
 We are all foreign-born or the descendants of 
 foreign-born, and if distinctions are to be made be 
 tween us they should rightly be on some other 
 
 [269] 
 
 IMOTfc 
 
 I 
 
ground than indigenousness. The early colonists 
 came over with motives no less colonial than the 
 later. They did not come to be assimilated in an 
 American melting-pot. They did not come to 
 adopt the culture of the American Indian. They 
 had not the smallest intention of "giving them 
 selves without reservation" to the new country. 
 They came to get freedom to live as they wanted 
 to. They came to escape from the stifling air and 
 chaos of the old world; they came to make their 
 fortune in a new land. They invented no new 
 social framework. Rather they brought over bod 
 ily the old ways to which they had been accus 
 tomed. Tightly concentrated on a hostile fron 
 tier, they were conservative beyond belief. Their 
 pioneer daring was reserved for the objective con 
 quest of material resources. In their folkways, in 
 their social and political institutions, they were, 
 like every colonial people, slavishly imitative of 
 the mother-country. So that, in spite of the 
 "Revolution," our whole legal and political sys 
 tem remained more English than the English, pet 
 rified and unchanging, while in England itself 
 law developed to meet the needs of the changing 
 times. 
 
 [270] 
 
It is just this English-American conservatism 
 that has been our chief obstacle to social advance. 
 We have needed the new peoples the order of the 
 German and Scandinavian, the turbulence of the 
 Slav and Hun rto savejs from ur own 
 
 tion. I do not mean that the illiterate Slav is 
 now the equal of the New Englander of pure de 
 scent. He is raw material to be educated, not 
 into a New Englander, but into a socialized Amer 
 ican along such lines as those thirty nationalities 
 are being educated in the amazing schools of Gary. 
 I do not believe that this process is to be one of 
 decades of evolution. The spectacle of Japan s 
 sudden jump from medievalism to post-modern 
 ism should have destroyed that superstition. We 
 are not dealing with individuals who are to 
 "evolve." We are dealing with their children, 
 who, with that education we are about to have, 
 will start level with all of us. Let us cease t< 
 
 think of ideals like democracy as magical quali- 
 t i cs inherent in certain peoples. Let us speak, not 
 of inferior races, but of inferior civilizations. \Ve 
 are all to educate and to be educated. These peo 
 ples in America are in a common enterprise. It is ~ 
 not what we are now that concerns us, but what 
 
 [271] 
 
this plastic next generation may become in the 
 light of a new cosmopolitan ideal. 
 
 We are not dealing with static factors, but 
 with fluid and dynamic generations. To contrast 
 the older and the newer immigrants and see the 
 one class as democratically motivated by love of 
 liberty, and the other by mere money-getting, is 
 not to illuminate the future. To think of earlier 
 nationalities as culturally assimilated to America, 
 while we picture the later as a sodden and resistive 
 mass, makes only for bitterness and misunder 
 standing. There may be a difference between 
 these earlier and these later stocks, but it lies 
 neither in motive for coming nor in strength of 
 cultural allegiance to the homeland. The truth J 
 that no more tenacious cultural allegiance to the. 
 mother country has been shown by any alien na 
 tion than by the ruling class of Anglo-Saxon de- 
 1 scendants in these American States. English 
 snobberies, English religion, English literary 
 styles, English literary reverences and canons, 
 English ethics, English superiorities, have been 
 the cultural food that we have drunk in from our 
 mothers breasts. The distinctively American 
 spirit pioneer, as distinguished from the reminis- 
 
 [272] 
 
cently English that appears in Whitman and 
 Emerson and James, has had to exist on sufferance 
 alongside of this other cult, unconsciously belit 
 tled by our cultural makers of opinion. \ No coun- JIAA 
 try has perhaps had so great indigenous genius 
 which had so little influence on the country s tra 
 ditions and expressions. The unpopular and 
 dreaded German-American of the present day is a 
 beginning amateur in comparison with those fool-, 
 ish Anglophiles of Boston and New York and 
 
 " "* -,..;% 
 
 Philadelphia whose reversion to cultural type sees 
 uncritically in England s cause the cause of Civ 
 ilization, and, under the guise of ethical independ 
 ence of thought, carries along European traditions 
 which are no more "American" than the German 
 categories themselves. 
 
 It speaks well for German-American innocence 
 of heart or else for its lack of imagination that it 
 has not t turned the hyphen stigma) into a "Tu 
 quoque!" If there were to be any hyphens scat 
 tered about, clearly they should be affixed to those 
 English descendants who had had centuries of 
 time to be made American where the German had 
 had only half a century. Most significantly has 
 the war brought out of them this alien virus, show- 
 [273] 
 
 I 
 
ing them still loving English things, owing alle 
 giance to the English Kultur, moved by English 
 shibboleths and prejudice. It is only because it 
 has been the ruling class ia this country that be 
 stowed the epithets that we have not heard copi 
 ously and scornfully of "hyphenated English- 
 Americans." But even our quarrels with Eng 
 land have had the bad temper, the extravagance, 
 of family quarrels. The Englishman of to-day 
 nags us and dislikes us in that personal, peculiarly 
 intimate way in which he dislikes the Australian, 
 or as we may dislike our younger brothers. He 
 still thinks of us incorrigibly as "colonials." 
 America official, controlling, literary, political 
 America is still, as a writer recently expressed 
 it, "culturally speaking, a self-governing domin 
 ion of the British Empire." 
 
 The non-English American can scarcely be 
 blamed if he sometimes thinks of the Anglo-Saxon 
 predominance in America as little more than a pre 
 dominance of priority. The Anglo-Saxon was 
 ^merely the first immigrant, the first to found a col 
 ony. He has never really ceased to be the de 
 scendant of immigrants, nor has he ever suc 
 ceeded in transforming that colony into a real na- 
 
 [ 274 ] 
 
tion, with a tenacious, richly woven fabric of na 
 tive culture. Colonials from the other nations 
 have come and settled down beside him. They 
 found no definite native culture which should star 
 tle them out of their colonialism, and consequently 
 they looked back to their mother-country, as the 
 earlier Anglo-Saxon immigrant was looking back 
 to his. What has been offered the newcomer has 
 been the chance to learn English, to become a 
 citizen, to salute the flag. And those elements of 
 our ruling classes who are responsible for the pub 
 lic schools, the settlements, all the organizations 
 for amelioration in the cities, have every reason to 
 be proud of the care and labor which they have 
 devoted to absorbing the immigrant. His oppor 
 tunities the immigrant has taken to gladly, with 
 almost a pathetic eagerness to make his way in the 
 new land without friction or disturbance. The 
 common language has made not only for the neces 
 sary communication, but for all the amenities of 
 life. 
 
 If freedom means the right to do pretty much 
 as one pleases, so long as one does not interfere 
 with others, the immigrant has found freedom, 
 and the ruling element has been singularly liberal 
 
 [275] 
 
in its treatment of the invading hordes. But if 
 freedom means a democratic cooperation in de 
 termining the ideals and purposes and industrial 
 and social institutions of a country, then the im 
 migrant has not been free, and the Anglo-Saxon 
 element is guilty of just what every dominant race 
 is guilty of in every European country : the imposi 
 tion of its own culture upon the minority peoples. 
 The fact that this imposition has been so mild 
 and, indeed, semi-conscious does not alter its qual 
 ity. And the war has brought out just the degree 
 to which that purpose of "Americanizing," that is 
 to say, "Anglo-Saxonizing," the immigrant has 
 
 failed. 
 
 . 
 
 For the Anglo-Saxon now in his bitterness to 
 turn upon the other peoples, talk about their "ar 
 rogance," scold them for not being melted in a pot 
 which never existed, is to betray the unconscious 
 purpose which lay at the bottom of his heart. It 
 betrays too the possession of a racial jealousy sim 
 ilar to that of which he is now accusing the so- 
 called "hyphenates." Let the Anglo-Saxon be 
 proud enough of the heroic toil and heroic sacri 
 fices which moulded the nation. But let him ask 
 himself, if he had had to depend on the English 
 
 [276] 
 
descendants, where he would have been living to 
 day. To those of us who see in the exploitation 
 of unskilled labor the strident red leit-motif of our 
 civilization, the settling of the country presents a 
 great social drama as the waves of immigration 
 broke over it. 
 
 Let the Anglo-Saxon ask himself where he 
 would have been if these races had not come? 
 Let those who feel the inferiority of the non-An 
 glo-Saxon immigrant contemplate that region of 
 the States which has remained the most distinc 
 tively "American," the South. Let him ask him 
 self whether he would really like to see the for 
 eign hordes Americanized into such an American 
 ization. Let him ask himself how superior this 
 native civilization is to the great "alien" states of 
 Wisconsin and Minnesota, where Scandinavians, 
 Poles, and Germans have self-consciously labored 
 to preserve their traditional culture, while being 
 outwardly and satisfactorily American. Let him 
 ask himself how much more wisdom, intelligence, 
 industry and social leadership has come out of 
 these alien states than out of all the truly Ameri 
 can ones. The South, in fact, while this vast 
 Northern development has gone on, still remains 
 
 [277] 
 
an English colony, stagnant and complacent, hav 
 ing progressed culturally scarcely beyond the early 
 Victorian era. It is culturally sterile because it 
 has had no advantage of cross-fertilization like the 
 Northern states. What has happened in states 
 such as Wisconsin and Minnesota is that strong 
 foreign cultures have struck root in a new and fer 
 tile soil. America has meant liberation, and Ger 
 man and Scandinavian political ideas and social 
 energies have expanded to a new potency. The 
 process has not been at all the fancied "assimila 
 tion" of the Scandinavian or Teuton. Rather has 
 it been a process of their assimilation of us I 
 speak as an Anglo-Saxon. The foreign cultures 
 have not been melted down or run together, made 
 into some homogeneous Americanism, but have re 
 mained distinct but cooperating to the greater 
 glory and benefit, not only of themselves but of all 
 the native "Americanism" around them. 
 
 What we emphatically do not want is that these 
 distinctive qualities should be washed out into a 
 tasteless, colorless fluid of uniformity. Already 
 we have far too much of this insipidity, masses 
 of people who are cultural half-breeds, neither as 
 similated Anglo-Saxons nor nationals of another 
 
 [278] 
 
culture. Each national colony in this country 
 
 seems to retain in its foreign press, its vernacular 
 
 .^^ ^^ ******""" i * Bi ***** li ***^**M*fc<tf^ 
 
 literature, its schools, its intellectual and patriotic 
 leaders, a central cultural nucleus. From this nu- 
 
 ^.r -*"* " " " " 
 
 cleus the colony extends out by imperceptible gra 
 dations to a fringe where national characteristics 
 are all but lost. Our cities are filled with these 
 half-breeds who retain their foreign names but 
 have lost the foreign savor. This does not mean 
 that they have actually been changed into New 
 Englanders or Middle Westerners. It does not 
 mean that they have been really Americanized. 
 It means that, letting slip from them whatever na 
 tive culture. they had, they have substituted for it 
 only the most rudimentary American the Ameri 
 can culture of the cheap newspaper, the "movies," 
 the popular song, the ubiquitous automobile. 
 The unthinking who survey this class call them 
 assimilated, Americanized. The great American 
 public school has done its work. With these peo 
 ple our institutions are safe. We may thrill with 
 dread at the aggressive hyphenate, but this tame 
 flabbiness is accepted as Americanization. The 
 same moulders of opinion whose ideal is to melt 
 the different races into Anglo-Saxon gold hail this 
 
 [279] 
 
poor product as the satisfying result of their al 
 chemy. 
 
 Yet a truer cultural sense would have told us 
 that it is not the self-conscious cultural nuclei that 
 sap at our American life, but these fringes. It is 
 not the Jew who sticks proudly to the faith of his 
 fathers and boasts of that venerable culture of his 
 who is dangerous to America, but the Jew who has 
 lost the Jewish fire and become a mere elementary, 
 grasping animal. It is not the Bohemian who 
 supports the Bohemian schools in Chicago whose 
 influence is sinister, but the Bohemian who has 
 made money and has got into ward politics. Just 
 so surely as we tend to disintegrate these nuclei 
 of nationalistic culture do we tend to create hordes 
 of men and women without a spiritual country, 
 cultural outlaws, without taste, without standards 
 but those of the mob. We sentence them to live 
 on the most rudimentary planes of American life. 
 The influences at the center of the nuclei are cen 
 tripetal. They make for the intelligence and the 
 social values which mean an enhancement of life. 
 And just because the foreign-born retains this ex 
 pressiveness is he likely to be a better citizen of the 
 American community. The influences at the 
 
 [280] 
 
I 
 
 fringe, however, are centrifugal, anarchical. 
 They make for detached fragments of peoples. 
 Those who came to find liberty achieve only li 
 cense. They become the flotsam and jetsam of 
 American life, the downward undertow of our civ 
 ilization with its leering cheapness and falseness 
 of taste and spiritual outlook, the absence of mind 
 and sincere feeling which we see in our slovenly 
 towns, our vapid moving pictures, our popular 
 novels, and in the vacuous faces of the crowds on 
 the city street. This is the cultural wreckage of 
 our time, and it is from the fringes of the Anglo- 
 Saxon as well as the other stocks that it falls. 
 America has as yet no impelling integrating force. 
 It makes too easily for this detritus of cultures. 
 In our loose, free country, no constraining national 
 purpose, no tenacious folk-tradition and folk- 
 style hold the people to a line. 
 
 The war has shown us that not in any magical 
 formula will this purpose be found. No intense 
 nationalism of the European plan can be ours. 
 But do we not begin to see a new and more adven- 
 turous ideal? Do we not see how the national 
 colonies in America, deriving power from the, deep 
 cultural heart of Europe and yet living here in 
 
 [281] 
 
mutual toleration, freed from the age-long tangles 
 of races, creeds, and dynasties, may work out a 
 federated ideal? America is transplanted Eu 
 rope, but a Europe that has not been disintegrated 
 and scattered in the transplanting as in some Dis 
 persion. Its colonies live here inextricably min 
 gled, yet not homogeneous. They merge but they 
 do not fuse. 
 
 VTJ.T" . V 
 
 America is a unique sociological fabric, and it 
 
 bespeaks poverty of imagination not to be thrilled 
 
 ti at the incalculable potentialities of so novel a 
 
 7 f I v union of men. To seek no other goal than the 
 
 -^ - 4 . -^--^Hu* fc^^^^y** 1 *"***^^^ 
 
 weary old nationalism, belligerent, exclusive, in 
 breeding, the poison of which we are witnessing 
 now in Europe, is to make patriotism a hollow 
 sham, and to declare that, in spite of our boastings, 
 America must ever be a follower and not a leader 
 of nations. 
 
 n 
 
 If we come to find this point of view plausible, 
 
 we shall have to give up the search for our native 
 
 " "American" culture. With the exception of the 
 
 South and that New England which, like the Red 
 
 Indian, seems to be passing into solemn oblivion, 
 
 282 
 
there is no distinctively American culture. It is 
 apparently our lot rather to be a federation of cul 
 tures. This we have been for half a century, and 
 the war has made it ever more evident that this is 
 what we are destined to remain. This will not 
 mean, however, that there are riot expressions of 
 indigenous genius that could not have sprung from 
 any other soil. Music, poetry, philosophy, have 
 been singularly fertile and new. Strangely 
 enough, American genius has flared forth just in 
 those directions which are least understanded of 
 the people. If the American note is bigness, ac 
 tion, the objective as contrastejd with the reflective 
 life, where is the epic expression of this spirit? 
 Our drama and our fiction, the peculiar fields for 
 the expression of action and objectivity, are some 
 how exactly the fields of the spirit which remain 
 poor and mediocre. American materialism is in 
 some way inhibited from getting into impressive 
 artistic form its own energy with which it bursts. 
 Nor is it any better in architecture, the least ro 
 mantic and subjective of all the arts. We are in 
 articulate of the very values which we profess to 
 idealize. But in the finer forms music, verse, 
 the essay, philosophy the American genius puts 
 
 [283] 
 
forth work equal to any of its contemporaries. 
 Just in so far as our American genius has ex 
 pressed the pioneer spirit, the adventurous, for 
 ward-looking drive of a colonial empire, is it rep 
 resentative of that whole America of the many 
 races and peoples, and not of any partial or tradi 
 tional enthusiasm. And only as that pioneer note 
 is sounded can we really speak of the American 
 culture. As long as we thought of Americanism 
 in terms of the "melting-pot," our American cul 
 tural tradition lay in the past. It was something 
 to which the new Americans were to be moulded. 
 In the light of our changing ideal of Americanism, 
 we must perpetrate the paradox that our American 
 cultural tradition lies in the future. It will be 
 what we all together make out of this incompar 
 able opportunity of attacking the future with a 
 new key. 
 
 Whatever American nationalism turns out to 
 be, it is certain to become something utterly differ 
 ent from the nationalisms of twentieth-century 
 Europe. This wave of reactionary enthusiasm to 
 play the orthodox nationalistic game which is pass 
 ing over the country is scarcely vital enough to 
 last. We cannot swagger and thrill to the same 
 
 [ 284 ] 
 
national self-feeling. We must give new edges to 
 our pride. We must be content to avoid the un 
 numbered woes that national patriotism has 
 brought in Europe, and that fiercely heightened 
 pride and self-consciousness. Alluring as this is, 
 we must allow our imaginations to transcend this 
 scarcely veiled belligerency. We can be serenely 
 too proud to fight if our pride embraces the crea 
 tive forces of civilization which armed contest nul 
 lifies. We can be too proud to fight if our code of 
 honor transcends that of the schoolboy on the 
 playground surrounded by his jeering mates. 
 Our honor must be positive and creative, and not 
 the mere jealous and negative protectiveness 
 against metaphysical violations of our technical 
 rights. When the doctrine is put forth that in 
 one American flows the mystic blood of all our 
 country s sacred honor, freedom, and prosperity, 
 so that an injury to him is to be the signal for 
 turning our whole nation into that clan- feud of 
 horror and reprisal which would be war, then we 
 find ourselves back among the musty schoolmen of 
 the Middle Ages, and not in any pragmatic and 
 realistic America of the twentieth century. 
 
 We should hold our gaze to what America has 
 
 [285] 
 
done, not what mediaeval codes of dueling she has 
 failed to observe. We have transplanted Euro 
 pean modernity to our soil, without the spirit that 
 inflames it and turns all its energy into mutual 
 destruction. Out of these foreign peoples there 
 has somehow been squeezed the poison. An 
 America, "hyphenated" to bitterness, is somehow 
 non-explosive. For, even if we all hark back in 
 sympathy to a European nation, even if the war 
 has set every one vibrating to some emotional 
 string twanged on the other side of the Atlantic, 
 the effect has been one of almost dramatic harm- 
 lessness. 
 
 What we have really been witnessing, however 
 unappreciatively, in this country has been a thrill 
 ing and bloodless battle of Kulturs. In that 
 arena of friction which has been the most dramatic 
 between the hyphenated German-American and 
 the hyphenated English-American there have 
 emerged rivalries of philosophies which show up 
 deep traditional attitudes, points of view which 
 accurately reflect the gigantic issues of the war. 
 America has mirrored the spiritual issues. The 
 vicarious struggle has been played out peacefully 
 here in the mind. We have seen the stout resis- 
 
 [286] 
 
tiveness of the old moral interpretation of history 
 on which Victorian England throve and made it 
 self great in its own esteem. The clean and im 
 mensely satisfying vision of the war as a contest 
 between right and wrong; the enthusiastic sup 
 port of the Allies as the incarnation of virtue-on- 
 a- rampage; the fierce envisaging of their selfish 
 national purposes as the ideals of justice, freedom 
 and democracy all this has been thrown with in- 
 tensest force against the German realistic inter 
 pretations in terms of the struggle for power and 
 the virility of the integrated State. America has 
 been the intellectual battleground of the nations. 
 
 in 
 
 The failure of the melting-pot, far from clos 
 ing the great American democratic experiment, , 
 means that it has only just begun. Whatever 
 American nationalism turns out to be, we see al 
 ready that it will have a color richer and more ex 
 citing than our ideal has hitherto encompassed. 
 In a world which has dreamed of internationalism, 
 we find that we have all unawares been building 
 up the first international nation. The voices 
 which have cried for a tight and jealous national- 
 
 [287] 
 
ism of the European pattern are failing. From 
 that ideal, however valiantly and disinterestedly 
 it has been set for us, time and tendency have 
 moved us further and further away. What we 
 have achieved has been rather a cosmopolitan fed 
 eration of national colonies, of foreign cultures, 
 from which the sting of devastating competition 
 has been removed. America is already the world- 
 A A / federation in miniature, the continent where for 
 the first time in history has been achieved that mir 
 acle of hope, the peaceful living side by side, with 
 character substantially preserved, of the most het 
 erogeneous peoples under the sun. Nowhere else 
 has such contiguity been anything but the breeder 
 of misery. Here, notwithstanding our tragic 
 failures of adjustment, the outlines are already too 
 clear not to give us a new vision and a new orien 
 tation of the American mind in the world. 
 
 " It is for the American of the younger genera 
 tion to accept this cosmopolitanism, and carry it 
 along with self-conscious and fruitful purpose. 
 In his colleges, he is already getting, with the 
 study of modern history and politics, the modern 
 literatures, economic geography, the privilege of 
 a cosmopolitan outlook such as the people of no 
 
 [288] 
 
other nation of to-day in Europe can possibly se 
 cure. If he is still a colonial, he is no longer the 
 colonial of one partial culture, but of many. He 
 is a colonial of the world. Colonialism has grown 
 into cosmopolitanism, and his motherhood is not 
 one nation, but all who have anything life-enhanc 
 ing to offer to the spirit. That vague sympathy 
 which the France of ten years ago was feeling for 
 the world a sympathy which was drowned in 
 the terrible reality of war may be the modern 
 American s, and that in a positive and aggressive 
 sense. If the American is parochial, it is in sheer 
 wantonness or cowardice. His provincialism is 
 the measure of his fear of bogies or the defect of 
 his imagination. 
 
 Indeed, it is not uncommon for the eager Anglo- 
 Saxon who goes to a vivid American university to 
 day to find his true friends not among his own race 
 but among the acclimatized German or Austrian, 
 the acclimatized Jew, the acclimatized Scandina 
 vian or Italian. In them he finds the cosmopol 
 itan note. In these youths, foreign-born or the 
 children of foreign-born parents, he is likely to 
 find many of his old inbred morbid problems 
 washed away. These friends are oblivious to the 
 
 [289] 
 
repressions of that tight little society in which he 
 so provincially grew up. He has a pleasurable 
 sense of liberation from the stale and familiar 
 attitudes of those whose ingrowing culture has 
 scarcely created anything vital for his America 
 of to-day. He breathes a larger air. In his new 
 enthusiasms for continental literature, for un- 
 plumbed Russian depths, for French clarity of 
 thought, for Teuton philosophies of power, he 
 feels himself citizen of a larger world. He may 
 be absurdly superficial, his outward-reaching won 
 der may ignore all the stiller and homelier virtues 
 of his Anglo-Saxon home, but he has at least 
 found the clue to that international mind which 
 will be essential to all menand women of good-^ 
 will if they are ever to save this Western world 
 of ours from suicide. His new friends have gone 
 through a similar evolution. America has burned 
 most of the baser metal also from them! "M^ing 
 now with this common American background, all 
 
 JuJHdBtffiAMflMMHMHBHHHHMVMBMflWV^^ - - ^ i _^ LIT - m< 
 
 * of them may yet retain that distinctiveness of 
 their native cultures and their national spiritual 
 slants. They are more valuable and interesting 
 to each other for being different, yet that differ 
 ence could not be creative were it not for this 
 [290] 
 
new cosmopolitan outlook which America has 
 given them and which they all equally possess. 
 
 A college where such a spirit is possible even to 
 the smallest degree, has within itself already the 
 seeds of this international intellectual world of 
 the future. It suggests that the contribution of 
 America will be an intellectual internationalism 
 
 which goes far beyond the mere exchange of 
 scientific ideas and discoveries and the cold re 
 cording of facts. It will be an intellectual sym 
 pathy which is not satisfied until it has got at the 
 heart of the different cultural expressions, and felt 
 as they feel. It may have immense preferences, 
 but it will make understanding and not indigna 
 tion its end. Such a sympathy will unite and not 
 divide. 
 
 Against the thinly disguised panic which calls 
 itself "patriotism" and the thinly disguised mili 
 tarism which calls itself "preparedness" the cos 
 mopolitan ideal is set. This does not mean that 
 those who hold it are for a policy of drift. They, 
 too, long passionately for an integrated and dis 
 ciplined America. But they do not want one 
 which is integrated only for domestic economic 
 exploitation of the workers or for predatory 
 [291] 
 
economic imperialism among the weaker peoples. 
 They do not want one that is integrated by 
 coercion or militarism, or for the truculent asser 
 tion of a mediaeval code of honor and of doubtful 
 rights. They believe that the most effective in 
 tegration will be one which coordinates the diverse 
 elements and turns them consciously toward work 
 ing out together the place of America in the 
 world-situation. They demand for integration a 
 genuine integrity, a wholeness and soundness of 
 enthusiasm and purpose which can only come 
 when no national colony within our America feels 
 that it is being discriminated against or that its 
 cultural case is being prejudged. This strength 
 of cooperation, this feeling that all who are here 
 may have a hand in the destiny of America, will 
 make for a finer spirit of integration than any 
 narrow "Americanism" or forced chauvinism. 
 In thjs,jeiIx&tjKej3ia^ form 
 
 of that dual citizenshi 
 
 articulate horror among us. Dual citizenship we 
 
 may have to recognize as the rudimentary form 
 of that international citizenship to which, if our 
 words mean anything, we aspire. We have as 
 sumed unquestioningly that mere participation in 
 
 [292] 
 
the political life of the United States must cut 
 the new citizen off from all sympathy with his old 
 allegiance. Anything but a bodily transfer of 
 devotion from one sovereignty to another has been 
 viewed as a sort of moral treason against the Re 
 public. We have insisted that the immigrant 
 whom we welcomed escaping from the very ex 
 clusive nationalism of his European home shall 
 forthwith adopt a nationalism just as exclusive, 
 just as narrow, and even less legitimate because it 
 is founded on no warm traditions of his own. 
 Yet a nation like France is said to permit a formal 
 and legal dual citizenship even at the present time. 
 Though a citizen of hers may pretend to cast off 
 his allegiance in favor of some other sovereignty, 
 he is still subject to her laws when he returns. 
 Once a citizen, always a citizen, no matter how 
 many new citizenships he may embrace. And 
 such a dual citizenship seems to us sound and 
 right. For it recognizes that, although the 
 Frenchman may accept the formal institutional 
 framework of his new country and indeed become 
 intensely loyal to it, yet his Frenchness he will 
 never lose. What makes up the fabric of his 
 soul will always be of this Frenchness, so that 
 [2931 
 
unless he becomes utterly degenerate he will al 
 ways to some degree dwell still in his native 
 environment. 
 
 Indeed, does not the cultivated American who 
 goes to Europe practise a dual citizenship, which, 
 if not formal, is no less real? The American 
 who lives abroad may be the least expatriate of 
 men. If he falls in love with French ways and 
 French thinking and French democracy and seeks 
 to saturate himself with the new spirit, he is 
 guilty of at least a dual spiritual citizenship. He 
 may be still American, yet he feels himself through 
 sympathy also a Frenchman. And he finds that 
 this expansion involves no shameful conflict 
 within him, no surrender of his native attitude. 
 He has rather for the first time caught a glimpse 
 of the cosmopolitan spirit. And after wandering 
 about through many races and civilizations he may 
 return to America to find them all here living 
 vividly and crudely, seeking the same adjustment 
 that he made. He sees the new peoples here with 
 a new vision. They are no longer masses of 
 aliens, waiting to be "assimilated," waiting to be 
 melted down into the indistinguishable dough of 
 Anglo-Saxonism. They are rather threads of 
 
 [294] 
 
living and potent cultures, blindly striving to 
 weave themselves into a Viovel internationaljcia- 
 tign^the first the world has seen. 1 In an Austria- 
 Hungary or a Prussia the stronger of these cultures 
 would be moving almost instinctively to subju 
 gate the weaker. But in America those wills-to- 
 power are turned in a different direction into 
 learning how to live together. 
 
 Along with dual citizenship we shall have to 
 accept, I think, that free and mobile passage of 
 the immigrant between America and his native 
 land again which now arouses so much prejudice 
 among us. We shall have to accept the immi- 
 grant s return for the same reason that we con 
 sider justified our own flitting about the earth. 
 To stigmatize the alien who works in America 
 for a few years and returns to his own land, only 
 perhaps to seek American fortune again, is to 
 think in narrow nationalistic terms. It is to ig 
 nore the cosmopolitan significance of this migra 
 tion. It is to ignore the fact that the returning 
 immigrant is often a missionary to an inferior 
 civilization. 
 
 This migratory habit has been especially com 
 mon with the unskilled laborers who have been 
 
 [295] 
 
pouring into the United States in the last dozen 
 years from every country in southeastern Europe. 
 Many of them return to spend their earnings in 
 their own country or to serve their country in war. 
 But they return with an entirely new critical out 
 look, and a sense of the superiority of American 
 organization to the primitive living around them. 
 This continued passage to and fro has already 
 raised the material standard of living in many 
 regions of these backward countries. For these 
 regions are thus endowed with exactly what they 
 need, the capital for the exploitation of their 
 natural resources, and the spirk>-^,,.xc^^^rke^ 
 America is thus educating these j laggard peoples 
 from the verybottom 61 iJUl itiy up, awaking vast 
 masses to a new-born hope for the future. In the 
 migratory Greek, therefore, we have not the para 
 sitic alien, the doubtful American asset, but a 
 symbol of that cosmopolitan interchange which 
 is coming, in spite of all war and national ex- 
 clusiveness. 
 
 Only America, by reason of the unique liberty 
 of opportunity and traditional isolation for which 
 she seems to stand, can lead in this cosmopolitan 
 enterprise. Only the American and in this cate- 
 
 [296] 
 
gory I include the migratory alien who has lived 
 with us and caught the pioneer spirit and a sense 
 of new social vistas has the chance to become 
 that citizen of the world. America is coming to 
 be, not a nationality but a trans-nationality, a 
 weaving back and forth, with the other lands, of 
 many threads of all sizes and colors. Any move 
 ment which attempts to thwart this weaving, or to 
 dye the fabric any one color, or disentangle the 
 threads of the strands, is false to this_cosmopol i tan 
 vision. I do not mean that we shall necessarily 
 glut ourselves with the raw product of humanity. 
 
 It would be folly to absorb the nations faster than 
 
 ./ 
 
 we could weave them. We have no duty either 
 to admit or reject. It is purely a question of ex 
 pediency. What concerns us is the fact that the 
 strands are here. We must have a policy and an 
 ideal for an actual situation. Our question is, 
 What shall we do with our America?- JHowjare 
 we likely to get the more creative America by 
 confining our imaginations to the ideal of the 
 melting-pot, or broadening them to some such 
 cosmopolitan conception as I have been vaguely 
 sketching? 
 
 We cannot Americanize America worthily by 
 [297] 
 
sentimentalizing and moralizing history. When 
 the best schools are expressly renouncing the ques 
 tionable duty of teaching patriotism by means of 
 history, it is not the time to force shibboleth upon 
 the immigrant. This form of Americanization 
 has been heard because it appealed to the vestiges 
 of our old sentimentalized and moralized patriot 
 ism. This has so far held the field as the expres 
 sion of the new American s new devotion. The 
 inflections of other voices have been drowned. 
 They must be heard. We must see if the lesson 
 of the war has not been for hundreds of these 
 later Americans a vivid realization of their trans- 
 nationality, a new consciousness of what America 
 means to them as a citizenship in the world. It 
 is the vague historic idealisms which have pro 
 vided the fuel for the European flame. Our 
 American ideal can make no progress until we do 
 away with this romantic gilding of the past. 
 
 All our idealisms must be those of future social 
 goals in which all can participate, the good life of 
 personality lived in the environment of the Be 
 loved Community. No mere doubtful triumphs 
 of the past, which redound to the glory of only 
 one of our trans-nationalities, can satisfy us. It 
 
 [298] 
 
must be a future America, on which all can unite, 
 which pulls us irresistibly toward it, as we under 
 stand each other more warmly. 
 
 To make real this striving amid dangers and 
 apathies is work for a YQunfier intelfe^^ -^, 
 America. Here is an enterprise of integration 
 into which we can all pour ourselves, of a spiritual 
 welding which should make us, if the final menace 
 ever came, not weaker, but infinitely strong. 
 
 I 299 ] 
 
FRAGMENT OF A NOVEL 
 
 GILBERT was almost six years old when they 
 all Mother, Olga, and baby went to live with 
 Garna in her tall white house. And his expand 
 ing life leaped to meet the wide world, with its 
 new excitements and pleasures. It was like a res 
 cue, like getting air when one is smothering. 
 Here was space and a new largeness in things. 
 Gilbert was freed forever from the back-street. 
 
 Garna s house was ridiculous but it was not de 
 spicable. For your meals you went down into a 
 dark basement dining-room, behind a blacker 
 kitchen. And the outhouse, buried in Virginia 
 creepers and trumpet-vine, was down a long path 
 bordered by grape-vines, where you went fearfully 
 at night. Gilbert was afraid of this dark, long 
 after he was old enough to be ashamed that his 
 mother must come with him and stand protectingly 
 outside. In winter, the stars shone at him with 
 [300] 
 
icy brilliancy, and the vines made a thick menac 
 ing mass around him. 
 
 Back of the house was a pump, painted very 
 bright and green, where the water came up cold 
 and sparkling and ran suddenly out of its spout 
 over your shoes unless you were careful. And 
 when they had finished pumping, the well would 
 give a long, deep sigh, whether of fatigue or satis 
 faction, Gilbert never knew. In the dark kitchen, 
 which you entered down a flight of stone steps, 
 there was another pump, but it brought forth, 
 after long persuasion, only rain-water which to 
 Gilbert tasted uninteresting, and which he was 
 not allowed to drink, but which they carried in 
 zinc pails up two long spidery flights, and for 
 Aunt Nan s room, three, so that you could wash 
 your face in the morning. Only on wash-day was 
 that pump interesting when the servant filled great 
 wooden tubs out of it, and created huge foamy 
 waves in them, and beat and rubbed, and then 
 filled long clothes-lines with damp white garments 
 which coiled around you clammily and disgust 
 ingly if you ran too close under them when you 
 were playing. 
 
 The dining-room always had a musty smell, and 
 [301 ] 
 
was always cold in winter, though the door into the 
 warm kitchen was propped open with a brick. 
 Gilbert would eat his breakfast and run out 
 quickly to warm his hands at the shining black 
 range. In the summer, it was close and stuffy, for 
 it was lighted only by two windows at the top 
 which were level with the ground and opened into 
 a little depression, so that the shutters would move 
 freely. In the great thunder-storms of summer, 
 this hollow would fill with water and as Gilbert 
 sat there eating his lunch, thrilling at the loud 
 claps and the darting lightning, the water would 
 begin to stream over the sill and down the walls. 
 Then Annie would have to be hastily called, and 
 with many ejaculations she would throw her apron 
 over her head, and rush out with a dish-pan to 
 bail out the hollow. Gilbert would stand on a 
 chair and see dimly through rain-streaming panes 
 this huge slopping figure, throwing pails of water 
 into the path. But ordinarily nothing happened 
 in the dining-room. Sometimes in the summer, 
 an odious snail or two would come out of the 
 walls and leave his track across the worn carpet. 
 In a vast closet were stored rows of jellies which 
 Garna had put up, and which Gilbert and Olga 
 [ 302 ] 
 
would sometimes get a taste of, for a treat. Be 
 hind the dining-room was the cellar, gratefully 
 warm in winter with its glowing furnace, and cool 
 in summer with its whitewashed walls. Gilbert 
 loved to spend long summer afternoons there 
 watching Annie turn the ice-cream freezer, and 
 waiting anxiously until the top was taken off to 
 be tested, and you got a taste of the fresh churned 
 cream, or licked the dasher when it was all over. 
 Or sometimes, in winter while Annie shovelled 
 coal into the furnace, Gilbert stood fearfully by 
 and saw the blackish flame shoot up through the 
 new coal. But on the whole, the basement was 
 not a pleasant place. The furnace, so hot when 
 you stood by it, sent only feeble currents of air up 
 to the little registers that opened into the vast 
 rooms above. And always, the year round, there 
 was that musty dining-room to descend into three 
 times a day, with its old frayed chairs, its uncer 
 tain carpet, its stained brown walls. 
 
 Nor did the creatures who inhabited the base 
 ment attract him. Annie changed her guise, but 
 not her nature. And she scarcely changed her 
 guise. If his mother had ever had a servant in 
 the back-street, Gilbert did not remember it. But 
 [303] 
 
in Garna s house one naturally had a servant, and 
 one naturally had a Polish girl. Gilbert did not 
 at first understand what Annie was doing in the 
 kitchen, this queer, whitish young woman with 
 many skirts and vast breasts, who gave a sort of 
 growl-smile when you spoke to her, and always 
 started incontinently, with alacrity, to do some 
 thing without knowing what it was. Gilbert 
 would come in from the garden into the fragrant 
 kitchen on baking-day to look for cookies, and 
 find his mother moving about, with her serious, 
 anxious expression, while Annie sprawled about, 
 cutting up potatoes, and listening to his mother s 
 earnest expostulations. In a few months there 
 would be another Annie; her mouth was perhaps 
 crookeder and her hair yellower, but she would 
 plunge clumsily about in the same old way, and 
 would take up her education not where the other 
 Annie had left off, but precisely in that brutish 
 ignorance where she had begun. To Gilbert s 
 mother, the living and successive tissue of Annies 
 became the absorption of life, but Gilbert was not 
 absorbed in Annies. They were not pretty, and 
 they had a stale odor which Gilbert avoided when 
 he could. He associated the unpleasantness of 
 [304] 
 
this strong, docile creature, who relapsed in each 
 transformation to her original brutish ignorance, 
 with the whole unpleasantness of that downstairs 
 floor, the dining-room which remained always the 
 same, whose dull squalor nobody ever did anything 
 to take away, for which Gilbert could not do any 
 thing, and for which perhaps nothing could be 
 done. 
 
 Upstairs, Gilbert liked Garna s house better. 
 The front parlor was a vast and cavernous room, 
 the mysteries of which Gilbert penetrated only 
 slowly. The back parlor was much more compre 
 hensible. Here the sun shone in, and people sat 
 and lived. When you entered the front parlor, 
 you involuntarily lowered your voice, and you 
 moved around subdued, as if someone had died 
 there. Garna never opened the windows, and the 
 shutters of the bay which looked towards the east 
 were always kept tightly closed. But in the back 
 parlor on bright winter days you sent the shade 
 flying up to the top, and let the sun stream in 
 over the floor all the way to the monster of a 
 horsehair-covered sofa which stretched along the 
 wall. 
 
 Horsehair made you feel almost as puckery as 
 [305] 
 
matting to touch it, and, besides, you could not 
 climb up its slippery edges very easily. And once 
 you were perched up there, you began to slide and 
 slide until you would fall in a heap ignominiously 
 off that ungainly and inhospitable bulk of a sofa. 
 So you would go over and sit at Garna s feet, as 
 she rocked slowly in her great chair, which you 
 must never tip too far back for fear of the grand 
 father s clock that stood in the corner behind it. 
 The clock had a loud and lovely bell which struck 
 the hours. Gilbert could always tell when it was 
 going to strike, for a minute or two before the 
 hour there was a sharp click. Then a little later 
 would begin a vast rumbling from the very chest 
 of the old clock, as if it were taking a long, deep 
 breath for its pealing song. When Gilbert was 
 in the room, he always stopped and listened for 
 the whole long satisfactory performance. It was 
 slow, it was prepared, it was beautiful, and when 
 Garna got a clock for the dining-room which 
 rattled off a quick little tinkle of a stroke, Gilbert 
 despised it, and would have covered his ears if he 
 had not thought it would be silly. 
 
 Upstairs the rooms were just as vast. There 
 was Mother s room, into which the sunlight 
 
 [306] 
 
poured, and which was the warmest in winter, 
 though you took turns rushing to the register to 
 dress where it was warm, before washing in the 
 cold water of the wash-bowl. Just off from 
 Mother s room was a little room, with nothing in 
 it but a huge bed, where Olga and Gilbert slept, 
 and a dresser, in which Gilbert s clothes were kept. 
 On the wall were two old pictures, one represent 
 ing a donkey in the midst of illimitable and in 
 effable summer pastures, and marked, "Everything 
 Lovely," the other showing him in the blizzard 
 before a locked stabledoor, with "Nobody loves 
 me!" Against the tall window, at the foot of 
 the bed, were rows and rows of shelves, on which 
 stood flower-pots all winter long, geraniums and 
 begonias, and heliotrope plants, so that they could 
 catch the full warmth of the winter sun and keep 
 green for summer, when Mother took them out of 
 the pots and put them in rows in the garden again. 
 The window was almost smothered in rich green 
 ery, and sometimes when Gilbert would wake up 
 early on a winter morning, when the light was just 
 beginning to come through the leaves, he would 
 find that the shelves had become a black silhouet 
 ted tracery of amazing figures. Queer outlandish 
 
 [307] 
 
heads, fierce dragomans with pipes in their 
 mouths, Chinamen with queues, policemen with 
 round helmets, or animals such as Gilbert had seen 
 at the Zoo camels with misshapen humps, ele 
 phants with long trunks, the head of a lion. It 
 was very startling to wake up, lying on one s back 
 and gazing out where this faint light appeared in 
 the crevices between these weird figures. The 
 pleasant green plants with which they had gone 
 to bed had given place to queer apparitions. Yet 
 they must be plants. But how could plants look 
 so terrify ingly like heads?- Everywhere he looked 
 there appeared a bristling, clear shape. The win 
 dow was a vast tracery of strangeness. Gilbert 
 was never quite sure how real they were, and he 
 was always grateful when the advancing light 
 gradually brought out the greenness of the leaves, 
 and finally threw them into relief, so that the 
 menacing head would finally dissolve into the 
 utterly meaningless juncture of two geranium blos 
 soms, and the elephant trunk became a familiar 
 begonia frond. Then he was cheered, and he 
 wondered how he had ever seen anything else. 
 No wildest forcing of his imagination could make 
 him see the things he had seen. 
 
 [308] 
 
It was in this room that Gilbert s mother put 
 the children to bed every night, and then took out 
 the lamp to her room, leaving the door just slightly 
 ajar, so they would not be afraid. Everything 
 was so cozy and comfortable during the undress 
 ing. Then would come the frightening thought, 
 "Perhaps this comforting presence is going to be 
 withdrawn !" For sometimes you would wake up 
 suddenly with a little clutch at the heart. The 
 dim light would be burning through the crack of 
 the door, but there would be a vast stillness. You 
 knew that the house was empty, that somehow it 
 was the middle of a night that would never end, 
 and everybody, Garna, Mother, and Annie, had 
 gone off to some distant muffled cavern and would 
 never come again. Olga, sleeping in a little 
 round ball at your side, her eyes seraphically 
 closed, was of no avail. The light burned steadily 
 on, only deepening the terror of eternity, of being 
 lost. Should you call ? What would be the use *? 
 They were infinitely far away, in a sort of Buddha- 
 like trance. So you cried a little, and fell off 
 asleep. 
 
 Or if you did not go to sleep, you waited 
 dumbly, and, after aeons of time, you heard an un- 
 [309] 
 
mistakable door close softly downstairs, and in a 
 minute Mother was looking in at you, to see if 
 you were safe. And you said, "Mother!" in a 
 half-choking voice, while great waves of relief and 
 happiness surged through you, and you went sound 
 asleep. So Gilbert got in the habit of asking his 
 mother every night whether she was going out. 
 And what assurance and peace there was when she 
 said she was not! He was safe, no matter how 
 long the night lasted. 
 
 In Gilbert s new house, you could go upstairs in 
 two ways the front-stairs, and the back-stairs. 
 The front-stairs were very straight and very long 
 and very steep, and were covered with a thick 
 carpet. They went straight down to a little 
 narrow hall and the front door. The back-stairs 
 were crooked and narrow and covered with oil 
 cloth. They ran down to a little passageway 
 which connected the back parlor with the "side- 
 door," right at the opening of the dark, steep 
 flight that went down into the dining-room. All 
 these regions and passages in Gilbert s house had 
 names. Gilbert soon learned that he must never 
 go down the front-stairs, but must always use the 
 back ones. But one unfortunate day, his cousin 
 
George, who was eight, showed him the delights 
 of sliding down the banisters, and Gilbert, al 
 though he could never walk down the front-stairs 
 without a feeling of the most awful guilt, let him 
 self be seduced into this new and amazing adven 
 ture. The rapturous slide down the long, straight, 
 polished wood was so safe and gave him such a 
 thrill that he tried it again and again. But Olga, 
 who by this time was all of five years old, insisted 
 on riding too, and threatened so instant and tumul 
 tuous a devastation of tears, that Gilbert and 
 George, in a panic at being discovered, held her up 
 and, having adjusted her little legs and cautioned 
 her as to the way one let one s fingers slide along 
 the slippery rail, let her go. 
 
 Now there was attached to the wall by a bracket 
 a lamp, which Gilbert s legs just cleared, although 
 he was always conscious of a fine potential crash. 
 But as Olga went slipping down the rail, it was 
 inevitable that she should choose just that place 
 to fall off, which Gilbert had all the morning 
 been thrillingly avoiding. She fell floppily into 
 the hall, carrying the lamp-shade with her, and 
 making a crash which brought Mother and Annie 
 from the kitchen and Garna from her room above. 
 
Then there were tears and scoldings in a great 
 flood, and a few reluctant whacks; George was 
 sent home, and the banisters were never slid on 
 again, at least not by Olga. Gilbert used them 
 only as a special treat to himself and only in his 
 most unwatched moments. It was one instance 
 where his fiercely clutching guilt melted away be 
 fore the thrill of that slide. 
 
 Gilbert s house, however, afforded few excite 
 ments. Garna s big room you did not often enter, 
 though you might on Sunday while she was put 
 ting on her veil and bonnet to take you to church. 
 Gilbert did not care very much how the rest of 
 .the family got to church, but it was one of the 
 most important things in his life that he should 
 go with Garna. At nine o clock the church-bell 
 would begin to ring, gayly, quickly, sometimes the 
 long peals almost falling over each other in their 
 eagerness. Then it would stop, with a final long 
 echo. Now the whole town knew that it was 
 Sunday. Then at ten o clock the great bell would 
 ring again, not quite so gayly nor so quickly, to 
 let the people know that there would be church 
 that day. Then at twenty minutes after ten the 
 bell would begin its real earnestness, slow and 
 
solemn strokes, each one ringing its lull sonorous 
 note and dying away before the next one began. 
 
 At the first stroke of the ten o clock bell, Glbert 
 would rush to Garna s room, where he would find 
 her putting on her black silk dress and little lace 
 collar. Her black bonnet with its long crepe veil, 
 which Gilbert soon learned meant that grand 
 father was dead, would be spread out on the bed. 
 When the last bell began to ring, and Garna had 
 not yet put on her bonnet, an icy fear gripped 
 Gilbert s heart. They would be late ! The mad 
 dening slowness with which Garna put the last 
 touches to her bonnet used to send Gilbert into a 
 delirium of anxiety. Finally they were out on 
 the elm-shaded streets, Gilbert fairly tugging and 
 straining to get them there before service began. 
 Mother and Olga were always late, but that was 
 because Olga cried. He could abandon them. 
 He did not know what would happen to Garna 
 and him if they were late, but he felt that it would 
 be something namelessly awful. 
 
 But they were never late. They would sit 
 
 there in the pew several minutes while the organ 
 
 played and the great bell boomed outside, up in 
 
 the tower. Then the minister would come in, and 
 
 [313] 
 
a sense of security and peace would steal over 
 Gilbert, listening to the hymn and looking up at 
 Garna, so glossy and placid next him in the pew. 
 
 In prayer-time, Gilbert would have liked to put 
 his head down on the pew-rail in front of him, 
 just as Garna and all the other people did, but 
 he could not reach it. So he had to be content 
 with ducking his head into his hand, and holding 
 his eyes very tightly shut until he heard the 
 "Amen" which sent them all upright again. Why 
 people had to conceal their faces while they prayed 
 Gilbert did not know, but it gave him a very 
 solemn feeling to keep his eyes closed, and an even 
 more solemn one to open them surreptitiously and 
 look over the wilderness of bent backs. 
 
 The ceiling was very far away, and very blue, 
 with queer indented squares that shot out reddish 
 lines. Out of it came two enormous chandeliers 
 of brass, with a ring of lights around, which were 
 sometimes lighted on a dark day and made a chain 
 of dancing lamplight. There were galleries run 
 ning down each side of the church, held up by 
 slender white pillars. Outside, just at the top of 
 the pillars, ran a narrow ledge. Gilbert s imagi 
 nation would perform perilous adventures along 
 
 [SHI 
 
that ledge. You would walk along, along, and 
 around the back and up the other side, dizzily 
 perched above the congregation, clinging to the 
 brass rail, and you would come to the choir behind 
 the minister s desk. From the ledge to the choir 
 was a gap of a few feet, but Gilbert saw himself 
 jumping it, and his heart would beat faster. And 
 then he would return painfully, exhilaratedly, 
 around that ledge, holding on so tightly. 
 
 When Gilbert got tired of this play he would 
 look up at the strange figures that were fastened 
 to the under side of the ledge. They looked like 
 playing-cards, little square raised blocks marked 
 with black points, at regular intervals down the 
 gallery. Gilbert sometimes imagined that they 
 were really cards, and that a hooded figure mov 
 ing down the aisles would touch them with a 
 wand, and they would lose their frozen state and 
 fall to the floor. From where Gilbert sat, lines 
 went out from him in all directions: lines of the 
 pews, lines of the aisle ahead which went along 
 under the gallery, angles of the walls, lines of the 
 windows. Sometimes, as his gaze wandered 
 around the church, the line of a pillar would co 
 incide with the line of a window, and Gilbert 
 
 [315] 
 
would hold them there together, getting a sudden 
 satisfaction out of holding them in coincidence, 
 and letting them go reluctantly, only when his eye 
 would mount to the queer people in the gallery, 
 whose bonnets and eyes and noses you could just 
 see over the brass railing. 
 
 Sometimes in the summer when Uncle Marcus s 
 family was away, Garna and Gilbert sat in their 
 pew at the back of the gallery, a pew that was as 
 big as a house, with great arm-chairs and cushions 
 for your feet. In front of you was the clock, the 
 face of which you could not see, for it looked out 
 straight towards the minister, but whose ticking 
 you could hear. Gilbert felt very public and self- 
 conscious when he sat there, under the high ceil 
 ing, with two long arms of the gallery, crowded 
 with its two tiers of people, stretching away on 
 either hand. Yet it was all very august, and re 
 ligion seemed to have attained its most solemn 
 worthiness when you sat in Uncle Marcus s pew. 
 
 The minister was very large and very loud, and 
 he wore a white tie. Gilbert did not altogether 
 like him when he laid his moist and unctuous hand 
 on Gilbert s head, as he sometimes did in Sunday 
 School. For after you had gone to church with 
 
 [316] 
 
Garna, you let her go home, and you stayed to 
 Sunday School. You went into an old brick 
 building, which stood a little distance from the 
 church. The light poured through the big win 
 dows, and you could see the lilac-bushes outside. 
 The room swam with very fluffy little girls, but 
 when they had sung several hymns, Gilbert and 
 half a dozen other little boys were shepherded 
 into a corner and sat on their little chairs in a 
 circle around Miss Fogg, while she taught them 
 the lesson for the day. Gilbert always knew his 
 golden text, and he was often the only little boy 
 who did. Miss Fogg would smile at him, which 
 would make him uncomfortable, and he would be 
 glad when they all stood up and marched around 
 the room to drop their pennies into a basket which 
 Miss Fogg held while they sang: 
 
 "Hear the pennies dropping, 
 Listen while they fall, 
 Every one for Jesus. 
 He will have them all." 
 
 Gilbert did not doubt that Jesus would have 
 them all, and he was not in the least interested in 
 what Jesus did with them when he had them. It 
 was part of the ceremony, to which you resigned 
 
 [317] 
 
yourself unquestioningly, and when the penny- 
 dropping was over, Gilbert ran home as fast as he 
 could go, to the wonderful dinner of roast beef 
 and potatoes that Mother had for them on Sun 
 days. 
 
 Sunday School was a neutral, colorless event in 
 his life. Every Sunday as they left the Sunday 
 School, each child would receive a little leaflet; 
 those who had known their golden texts would get 
 a card with a golden star on it. Gilbert always 
 cried a little if he lost his card while running 
 home, and he cherished his leaflet for a day or two. 
 But he never tried to read it, and he soon mislaid 
 his golden star. Good boys, after they had got 
 a prodigious number of golden stars, were each 
 supposed to receive as a reward a Bible all of his 
 own. But when Gilbert was seven years old, 
 Garna gave him a beautiful thick black Bible, 
 with his name Gilbert Shotwell Harden 
 stamped on the cover in golden letters. Besides, 
 it did not appeal to him to grub along for a prize. 
 Far better to have things, glorious, imposing, come 
 to you out of the blue sky Once Aunt Shotwell 
 promised him fifty cents if he would learn the 
 Westminster Catechism, but Gilbert never got 
 
farther than "The chief end of man is to glorify 
 God and enjoy him forever." Something obscure, 
 unconscious, revolted in him at the base commer- 
 ciality of the transaction, and although he did not 
 question that this was the chief end of man indeed, 
 he did not want to be bribed into proclaiming it. 
 
 Things were better in the stories he learned from 
 Miss Fogg: that Adam had eaten the apple and 
 been expelled from Eden; that Noah had built 
 and taken his cruise in the ark; that Abraham had 
 offered up Isaac, and Jacob served seven years; 
 that Moses had led the Israelites into the wilder 
 ness, and Joshua made the sun stand still; that 
 David should have loved Jonathan and killed 
 Goliath; that Samson should have been shorn of 
 his strength, and Esther gotten Haman hanged 
 higher than the housetops; all in order to teach 
 little boys and girls to be good, to obey their 
 fathers and mothers and go regularly to church 
 and Sunday School, seemed to Gilbert entirely 
 plausible, at least as it was expounded by the 
 patient and smiling Miss Fogg. He read the 
 stories in his new Bible, but he did not wonder 
 much about them. 
 
 Every now and then there was a temperance 
 
 [319] 
 
lesson, when Miss Fogg would horrify the little 
 boys with her pictures of the evils of strong drink. 
 Gilbert had never seen any spirituous liquors, and 
 he could hardly identify them in his mind, but 
 through the vivid and scandalized exhortations of 
 the minister and Miss Fogg, Gilbert conceived 
 liquor as a dark, evil-smelling brew, a sort of re 
 ligious urine, which foul and wicked men put into 
 their stomachs, so that at once homes were wrecked, 
 and mothers and children brought to abject want. 
 The process by which this result arrived was vague 
 in his mind, but the earliest genuine crime of which 
 he had knowledge and felt with a shuddering 
 realization of the existence of sin was this crime 
 of entering a saloon, or of drinking down wine or 
 beer. One of the golden texts was a special favor 
 ite with Gilbert and Olga, and she would declaim 
 it with great eclat, in a broad, free-verse style: 
 
 "Wine is a maw-aw-ker, 
 Strong drink is ray-ay-ging, 
 And whoever is deceived there-by-y, 
 Is not wise !" 
 
 But sin, on the whole, was a very vague idea 
 to Gilbert. He early learned that God had sent 
 His Son Jesus down to earth to save us from our 
 
sins, and that this was the central fact of life. 
 Garna told him about it, and so did Miss Fogg, 
 when they later had lessons in the New Testament. 
 We must all love God very much, and especially 
 Jesus, who had done so much for us. And in the 
 solemn Sunday afternoons, when Gilbert was told 
 to take his Bible and sit by the window in the 
 back-parlor and read a chapter, he would some 
 times wonder if he loved God enough, or if he 
 loved Jesus. God was a majestic old gentleman 
 with a white beard, reclining on white cumulous 
 clouds, and Jesus he knew equally well as a young 
 man in an archaic blue robe, holding a lamb in 
 one arm, and followed by others. He had seen 
 their pictures long ago, and whenever either of 
 them was mentioned, these images popped into 
 his mind, faintly colored by a sense of awe, as in 
 the case of God, and of tenderness, as in the case 
 of Jesus. But did he love them? The pastor 
 was certainly a very poor caricature of God, and 
 yet with his beard and square head and loud words, 
 there must be a faint resemblance. Gilbert cer 
 tainly did not like him. 
 
 Much more nearly like God was his father s 
 father, whom he had once been taken to see and 
 
whom he remembered now as a white-haired, 
 white-bearded man, very solemn, and yet with 
 something cold and repellent about him whenever 
 Gilbert had touched him. Gilbert did not feel 
 that he loved this God, and yet he knew that he 
 ought to, that it was the most important thing in 
 life that he could do. So he would sit there and 
 try to screw his heart into an attitude of loving. 
 He would grow very serious and tighten his mus 
 cles, and fix his thought on the majesty reclining 
 on the white cloud, and, pretty soon, he would feel 
 that indeed he now loved God, and he would be 
 kept from sin. Jesus, who was tenderer, he might 
 have found easier to love, but for the fact of those 
 lambs. Gilbert had never seen young men carry 
 ing lambs, and the picture, whose authenticity he 
 did not question, aroused no emotion within him. 
 But after he had come to love God, he tightened 
 his heart towards the benignant being in the blue 
 robe. 
 
 He was always present, because before every 
 meal they would all put down their heads, so that 
 they breathed upon their plates, and they would 
 ask Jesus to bless their food. Sometimes Gilbert 
 would say it, sometimes Olga, and the food un- 
 [322] 
 
blessed would have tasted bad in their mouths. 
 Gilbert would have had a vague presentiment of 
 something evil. Did Garna and Mother love 
 God? Garna must, because every day she would 
 put on her gold-rimmed spectacles and read a 
 chapter in her Bible, and mother would kneel 
 down with Gilbert and Olga at night while they 
 said their prayers, and often murmur something 
 fervently with them. The prayers, they under 
 stood, were addressed directly to God in heaven, 
 and were necessary if you were to show your grati 
 tude to the Heavenly Father and ensure for your 
 self a peaceful and secure night. You asked God 
 also to bless all those people you were fond of, 
 and you knew that if they should die before they 
 woke, their souls also would be taken to Heaven 
 with yours. 
 
 If it was only with painful effort that Gilbert 
 in his early days of church and Sunday School 
 loved God and Jesus, whom did he love*? Did 
 he love Mother? He did not know. He loved 
 her very much at night when he felt her protect 
 ing presence in the house, but in the daytime she 
 was a strange being who did not seem interested 
 in Gilbert and Olga. She spent most of her time 
 [323] 
 
with little brother, or, if he were asleep, she would 
 be lying stretched across the foot of the bed, with 
 her face in her hands. Often there were tears in 
 her eyes, and if Gilbert wanted her to do some 
 thing for him, she would say piteously that she 
 was not well. There were no more walks on the 
 village green, but this did not make any difference 
 to Gilbert, for the wonderful yard in which 
 Garna s house stood was a region that could never 
 be explored or exhausted. 
 
 The one person that Gilbert knew he loved was 
 Garna. You could not always see her, for she 
 would be shut up in her room ; but when you were 
 let in, how inexhaustible she was, how comfortable 
 you felt, playing about on the floor while Garna 
 sat always by the window, sewing, always sewing, 
 looking so wise and jolly and good out of her 
 gold-rimmed spectacles. Garna was always the 
 same, and always good to be with and look upon. 
 Gilbert loved to sit in her lap, and touch her hair, 
 brushed to such silky smoothness and parted in 
 the middle. As she bent over, he would run both 
 hands back over it from her forehead, and laugh 
 as she laughed and pretended to arrange it again. 
 
 Gilbert liked to have Garna all to himself, and 
 
 [324] 
 
it was fortunate that Olga was not much interested 
 in Garna. She did not seem to half appreciate 
 her or her wonderful room. But once in a while 
 she would take a perverse desire to come in with 
 Gilbert when he went to see Garna. Olga would 
 have to be prevented with all his weight and force. 
 How could he stand so outrageous an invasion of 
 his rights? And Olga would probably hit him, 
 concentrating all her round little pugnacity into 
 one stout blow, and Gilbert would hit back, and 
 Olga would scream, and Mother would come run 
 ning, and there would be many tears, and Eden 
 would be spoiled, if not altogether denied him, 
 for that afternoon. On the very threshold, Olga, 
 who did not really care to be with Garna, had 
 ruined his day with her! Hateful little Olga! 
 And all the time, Garna would be inside, behind 
 the closed door, serene, unheeding, letting her 
 daughter, Gilbert s mother, settle the whole affair, 
 as far away as if she were in Pampelune. Gilbert 
 felt the perversity of Fate, the inexorable aloof 
 ness of the gods, the fragility of happiness. 
 Going eagerly to taste this sweet exhilaration of 
 an afternoon with Garna, the cup, without any 
 warning whatever, would be fatally dashed from 
 
 [325] 
 
his lips. But he could not have it shared with 
 Olga! 
 
 Between Garna s chair and the window was a 
 high, chintz-colored box which opened into a 
 voluminous cavern of sheets and white things. In 
 the corner just behind Garna s chair was the tall 
 secretary-desk, with its big doors above that 
 opened on shelves full of books, and its heavy 
 writing-lid which folded down and rested horizon 
 tally on two supports that pulled out on each side. 
 You could sit on the high chintz-box and write on 
 the secretaire. Gilbert thought this was one of 
 the most satisfactory spots in the whole world. 
 At your right was the window looking down 
 through the black-walnut trees to the street below; 
 just behind you sat Garna, busily knitting or sew 
 ing; you had all the flat, shiny surface of the lid 
 to make your puzzles on, or practise writing, or 
 draw on ; your legs hung down over the chintz-box, 
 high above the ground; you were shut in to the 
 most delicious privacy. At the back of the secre 
 taire were innumerable compartments and pigeon 
 holes in which Garna kept her letters and papers; 
 there were old diaries and account-books, which 
 Gilbert puzzled over, and one compartment Garna 
 
 [326] 
 
gave Gilbert for his very own, so that he could 
 keep his pencils and paper there, and anything he 
 chose, safe for ever from the depredations of the 
 marauding Olga, who seemed to Gilbert, when 
 ever he thought of her at all from his safe retreat, 
 as a very imp of lawlessness, of restless and de 
 vastating mischief. Sometimes, to make sure that 
 no one interrupted him, he would silently turn 
 the keys in the doors. But Garna did not like 
 that very much, and it was awkward if Mother or 
 Aunt Nan really came and wanted to come in, and 
 Garna had to wonder hew the doors could ever 
 have become locked. 
 
 In the summer afternoons Garna would take 
 her waist off, and sit sewing in her bare arms. 
 Gilbert liked to lean over and rub his face against 
 the expanse of cool flesh, lay his head on the cool 
 shoulder, and listen to Garna s stories of when 
 she was a little girl. Gilbert learned about her 
 father s house in Burnham, which he should some 
 day see, but it was a long distance from where 
 they lived now; about his mill-pond and his mill, 
 where great mahogany logs that came from the 
 West Indies were sawed up for furniture; about 
 the canal that was dug, when she was a little girl, 
 [327] 
 
through their very front yard, and on which they 
 saw the very first boat sail grandly by, the grand 
 father of those boats that Gilbert had loved to 
 watch from the porch of the house in the back- 
 street, and which he had almost forgotten now 
 that he had come to live with Garna. 
 
 So he would lean there against her arm, strok 
 ing her plump elbow with its dimples that so 
 fascinated him, and listening to her stories until, 
 in the drowsy summer air, he sank away indis 
 tinctly, and knew nothing until he woke up 
 towards supper-time on Garna s high bed. Every 
 now and then, as a great distinction and event, 
 Gilbert would be allowed to sleep with Garna. 
 How different and solemn it was from any other 
 sleep! When Gilbert said good-night to Garna 
 in her big chair in the back-parlor, it was with a 
 "I m going to sleep with you to-night !" Then he 
 would get, not into the hard little bed with Olga, 
 but into the great feathery soft bed in Garna s 
 room. He would sink off to sleep in billows and 
 oceans of soft pillows and sheets. Along towards 
 morning he would half wake, perhaps, and there 
 would be the huge, comforting, dear presence of 
 Garna filling the bed beside him, as he lay pressed 
 
 [328] 
 
against her warm night-gown. And when he 
 woke again, Mother would be there standing by 
 the side of the bed, and she would whisk him off 
 to her room to be dressed. And life would go on 
 as before. 
 
 Aunt Nan seemed to love Garna as much as 
 Gilbert did. And she liked Gilbert. Often, on 
 summer days, she would take him up to her room 
 in the third-story, a region to which Gilbert never 
 ventured alone, for there were queer, pitchy-black 
 closets and alcoves that led far back under the 
 sloping roof, and contained trunks and boxes, in 
 which and behind which you never knew what 
 menacing forces of evil might be hidden. At the 
 top of the stairs was a little hall, lighted by a sky 
 light, through which you saw the blue sky. Aunt 
 Nan s room was shaped like an L, but the ceiling 
 on one side ran down so steeply that Gilbert could 
 stand against the wall and touch the line where 
 it joined the ceiling. Aunt Nan would fix up a 
 pallet on the floor, soft and comfortable, and on 
 hot days Gilbert would roll half-naked on it, 
 while Aunt Nan rubbed his hot arms with a sweet- 
 smelling balsam. Then she would sit and read 
 a great shiny new book, which Gilbert spelled 
 
 [329] 
 
out as "Psychology. James." She had several 
 books on shelves over her desk, and a great bunch 
 of programs stuck together on an iron hook that 
 hung on the wall. In the winter Aunt Nan was 
 not in the house. Mother said she was a teacher, 
 and lived in New York. 
 
 Aunt Nan was very tall and slender and very 
 straight, and she had very black hair that came 
 over her forehead in a kind of bang. She always 
 wore black and white dresses, and she always had 
 a bright fierceness about her that Gilbert liked. 
 She was several years younger than Mother, and 
 she was very proud. There was a stiff exhilara 
 tion in her walk and in her laugh that daunted 
 Gilbert a little, but made him like to be with her. 
 Sometimes she would put the tennis-net across the 
 green lawn and play with a neighbor, darting so 
 swiftly, like a long black bird, across the green, 
 hitting the ball so straight and true, and blazing 
 so fiercely with her black eyes when she missed, 
 that Gilbert sat enthralled, motionless, until the 
 set was over and they went in to supper. On 
 those days he would help her mark the court, go 
 ing to the little barn and watching her fill the 
 marker with white powdery lime, and then help- 
 
 [330] 
 
ing her push it over the closely-mown grass. The 
 long summer days were full of Aunt Nan. She 
 loved the garden, with its flower-beds, and she 
 loved to see the paths all clipped and weeded and 
 raked. Once a week, a black man would come 
 from somewhere, and spend the whole day with 
 Aunt Nan, mowing the lawn, digging the vege 
 table garden, and weeding the flowers. That was 
 a glorious day for Gilbert and for Aunt Nan. 
 How much there was to be done. They all 
 seemed to be wrestling with the whole yard, to 
 turn it up, to bring it to a bright, shiny newness. 
 At the end of the day, Gilbert would walk about 
 the garden on the gravelly paths with Aunt Nan 
 to survey their handiwork. She would be im 
 mensely contented. Her bright black eyes would 
 soften; she would be weary and her hands would 
 be dirty, but Gilbert would feel the peace that 
 radiated from her at the sight of this freshly bur 
 nished garden. The grass would be smooth like a 
 carpet, the flower-beds and the vegetable-garden 
 all dark and tumbled with their upturned earth. 
 The paths would be straight brown indented 
 tracks, or, where they went around the house, 
 beautifully curved tracks, with the marks of the 
 
 [331 ] 
 
rake on the fine earth where George had worked 
 it over. During the week the grass would grow 
 longer, the weeds shoot up in the flower-beds, the 
 paths become bedraggled at the edges, the grass 
 grow up rank on the lawns. But soon Saturday 
 would come with George, and the fine renovation 
 would take place all over again. 
 
 Aunt Nan was neat and quick in her movements. 
 She had a cold scorn for dirty faces and dirty 
 hands, and Gilbert sometimes became a little 
 weary trying to satisfy her demands. He was al 
 ways a little intimidated by her, but at the same 
 time fascinated by her vibrancy, her restless pas 
 sion. He loved to see her coming towards him, 
 because he knew that she would snatch him away 
 to something interesting. But he was a little 
 fearful, too; subdued by that decisiveness that 
 made him realize how little what he wanted would 
 count. She did not kiss or fondle Gilbert much. 
 She would take him on her lap and put her arms 
 around him. 
 
 Mother was never like that. She did not seem 
 to know what she wanted. Every incident was a 
 crisis. Gilbert found that he and Olga could re 
 sist her by delaying. Dirty faces could be grudg- 
 [332] 
 
ingly and slowly cleaned. One could come in the 
 utmost disapproving reluctance when one was 
 called. Mother was always distressed that you 
 did not obey her; she was always distressed about 
 what to do with you. She would implore you to 
 be good, and you would be good with a certain 
 chilly haughtiness, because it seemed somewhat 
 humiliating to see Mother so distressed and un 
 certain. Olga did not usually obey, but kicked 
 and screamed. Gilbert soon got the habit of 
 ignoring his mother s expressed desires and wear 
 ing out her decisiveness. Then he would be left 
 alone to follow his own desires. 
 
 That yard, which Aunt Nan loved so much, was 
 for Gilbert a domain, a principality. It was 
 years before he had really explored it thoroughly 
 or searched out all its delights. At first it was a 
 rich and bountiful collection of all the things that 
 Gilbert had missed in the back-street. He did not 
 know that he had missed them, but now that he 
 had found them, something down very deep in 
 him told him that this was what his restlessness 
 and sadness had craved. 
 
 You rushed out the side-door for the front 
 door was just as heavily interdicted as the front 
 
 [333] 
 
stairs and you tumbled into a bed of myrtles and 
 wistaria which climbed out of the flower-bed in 
 thick stalks and grew steadily over the corner of 
 the house. Across the path were two tall pine 
 trees, whose branches brushed Gilbert s shutter by 
 his bed when the wind blew loud. Beyond the 
 trees lay the green, unbroken lawn, covered with 
 velvety grass that even the lawn-mower could not 
 keep from growing thick and soft like a carpet. 
 The lawn went straight up towards the neighbor s 
 fence, but just before it reached there it turned 
 into a long flower-bed, with rose-bushes and 
 tangled flowery vines that climbed over and pre 
 tended that there was no fence there at all. To 
 the right, and up near the street corner of the yard 
 were three more lordly pines set in a triangle, 
 which Gilbert had promptly named "Three Trees 
 Grove." The floor was covered with needles. 
 It was shady and spacious, almost as big as Gil 
 bert s room. It could be turned into a house, or 
 a shop or a church, at a moment s notice. The big 
 trunks stretching up above Gilbert s head gave 
 it an air of delightful majesty, and he could not 
 play there enough with Olga and Cousin Ethel. 
 At the other end of the broad lawn were the 
 
 [334] 
 
grape-arbors, six or seven lines of them, where 
 you walked between the overflowing vines and 
 looked longingly at the green bunches which took 
 endless seons, all through the long golden summer, 
 to ripen, while Gilbert went every day to ex 
 amine them. Behind that was the barn, from 
 which the horses and carriage had vanished, though 
 when Grandfather was alive, Garna told him, 
 they had their horses and Aunt Nan had ridden 
 one of them, and so had Uncle Rob, who was 
 far off in Texas now. Gilbert could see traces 
 of the carriage road which had led out through the 
 side-gate to the side-street, but which was now all 
 grass-grown. The barn was now full of rakes 
 and hoes and wheel-barrows, but there were deep 
 bins where still remained a peck or two of oats 
 and a measure, and there was a manger which 
 swung back and forth from the stall to the bin, 
 so you could fill it and then turn it in to the horse. 
 Gilbert wished that there were still horses to play 
 with, but it was fun turning the manger and mak 
 ing Olga and Ethel pretend to be horses. 
 
 If you went on beyond the barn you came to a 
 clump of currant and gooseberry bushes which ran 
 out in a thin line to the fence, which by this time 
 
 [335] 
 
had lost its rose-bushes and become a pricky tangle 
 of blackberries. Enclosed by the blackberries and 
 the currants was the broad expanse of the vege 
 table garden, with corn in summer that Gilbert 
 could get quite lost in, and an amazing variety of 
 good vegetables to eat. The vegetable garden 
 ran up to Uncle Marcus s barn and his garden. 
 Straight down back of Garna s house, through the 
 middle of the yard, ran a path, part way through 
 a grape-arbor of its own, and then past the cur 
 rant bushes. At the end of the garden it joined 
 a path in Uncle Marcus s yard. Along the foot 
 of the path, where it passed the garden, was a row 
 of rhubarb, and on the other side Aunt Nan s 
 sweet-peas, which she planted every spring. On 
 the other side of the path was an open meadow 
 where the grass was not cut, and where Gilbert 
 sometimes lay on cool summer days and looked up 
 at great white clouds floating past in the blue sky. 
 Nearer the house you came to a wilderness of fruit- 
 trees, pears of all kinds and apples, and as you 
 approached the street the yard broke into flower 
 beds and shrubs and bushes. Close to the house 
 grew lilies-of-the-valley, and a curious ribbon- 
 grass which Aunt Nan could take between her 
 
 [336] 
 
fingers and blow shrill whistles on. Along the 
 path which went past the dining-room window 
 were beds of pink and white peonies and tall white 
 lilies which had a smell so sweet that Gilbert felt 
 almost faint when he touched them. And along 
 the whole side of the yard was a beautiful 
 japonica hedge, with its white and red flowers in 
 the spring, which turned into sweetly smelling 
 green balls in the summer. There were great 
 maples interspersed in the hedge that threw down 
 their keys in the spring. And all along the front 
 of the yard, close to the house, ran a white wooden 
 fence just within which was a line of graceful 
 black-walnut trees, with their thin green clustered 
 leaves and the green nuts which fell in heaps on 
 the ground. Aunt Nan and Gilbert would col 
 lect them in sacks and put them in the barn. 
 There they would grow all black, so that you 
 could strip off the covering and find the crinkled 
 nutshell within. Then you cracked them on a 
 stone. 
 
 The yard was wonderful to Gilbert. The win 
 ter was one long torpor when, as he played with 
 his blocks in the great stretch of sunlight in 
 Mother s room, the days passed almost in a dream. 
 
 [337] 
 
It was only when spring came, and he could run 
 about and see the buds and the flowers come out 
 one after another, that he felt alive again. And 
 it was good in the endless summer days to have 
 so much to attend to. He could be playing in 
 Three Trees Grove, and yet have running in an 
 undercurrent of his mind the sense of the gar 
 den or the japonica hedge, or the manger in the 
 barn. He could go down to the cherry-tree to see 
 if the cherries were ripe, or to the currant-bushes, 
 or he could prick his fingers on the rose-bushes, or 
 get himself stuck in the gum of the pine-trees. 
 The yard was a world, and only very dimly did he 
 imagine anything beyond it. What his mother 
 did in the kitchen or about the house only very 
 dimly concerned him. What they had to live on 
 never entered his mind. His sorrows were con 
 cerned almost entirely with the rebellions of Olga, 
 or the calamities of weather which would keep 
 them all home from a walk to the kind lady who 
 lived up the street and gave them cookies when 
 they went to see her. Or the hornets and yellow- 
 jackets. Sometimes on very hot days, when 
 Mother kept them in the darkened back parlor and 
 the big clock ticked menacingly, insistently at 
 
 [338] 
 
them, and Gilbert felt sleepy and could not go 
 to sleep, the tsedium vitae would overwhelm him 
 in a great drenching wave. He was suddenly 
 conscious of time, endlessly flowing and yet some 
 how dreadfully static. Nothing was ever going 
 to happen again; he was as if alive in a tomb. 
 The flies buzzed; the clock ticked; Mother was 
 taking an exhausted nap; Aunt Nan and Garna 
 were away for a vacation. The world was a great 
 vacuum with nothing to experience and nothing to 
 do. 
 
 And if a summer afternoon could produce so 
 appalling a sense of eternity, what must heaven 
 be like, where you went so infallibly when you 
 were dead*? Either because lovely Garna and 
 mild Miss Fogg had kept Gilbert from the terrors 
 of hell, or it was his natural ego, it never occurred 
 to him that he was not destined for heaven, or 
 that there was any way of avoiding it. And the 
 thought of eternal life seemed to fuse itself with 
 the long and empty summer afternoon. The 
 tedium vitce was transmuted into the colossal ennui 
 of heaven. Not as a pearly municipality of 
 golden streets and white-robed choirs did Gilbert 
 imagine heaven, but always in the guise of those 
 [ 339 ] 
 
white clouds on which God rode. He saw him 
 self clearly, seated infinitely high above the earth, 
 to which he should never be able to come again. 
 Perhaps there was the intimation of a harp, but 
 what seized Gilbert s imagination was the vast 
 emptiness of the space around him, the disorienta- 
 tion of everything. Time and space were no 
 longer fluid and mobile, but frozen; and in the 
 hot, sticky afternoon, his slightly feverish body, 
 all alert and sensitive at every pore of time that 
 dripped past him, would be terribly conscious of 
 this horror that awaited him, of this immobile time 
 in empty space. It was not the dark or stillness 
 that he feared. On the contrary, he saw this fu 
 ture state as floating in the clearest, most luminous 
 light. On certain days, when he happened to look 
 at the sky, he would see just that pale infinite blue 
 into which you could look on and on and never 
 reach the end. When it was really blue or cloudy, 
 it curved comfortingly over you, near and definite 
 like a bowl. But when it was of a certain pale 
 ness, the bowl seemed to have been removed and 
 you looked through, out into nothingness. And if 
 in this nothingness there were white majestic 
 clouds floating, that looked solid as if they could 
 
 [340] 
 
bear you away, then over Gilbert would sweep 
 again this ennui of heaven, lost and forgotten per 
 haps since that last afternoon in the darkened par 
 lor. And a vague feeling of homelessness and of 
 fear would fall upon him. His play would flag 
 until the clouds drifted away again and he forgot 
 that they had come. 
 
 The first break in Gilbert s world came when his 
 mother decided that he and Olga ought to go to 
 school. Gilbert was seven years old, and when 
 his mother told him rather worriedly about it, he 
 felt at first rather pleased at the idea of something 
 so important. What would they teach him? 
 Mother said Miss Waldron would teach him. He 
 knew how to read and write and he could spell 
 all the words he wrote. He read all the books he 
 was given and sometimes looked into Hawthorne s 
 Wonder Tales, and read a page or two. When he 
 went back for the book, however, he would for 
 get where he had left off. So he would read a 
 page anywhere. What did it matter? He read 
 his Bible in the same haphazard way. He knew 
 his multiplication table, and he liked to recite it. 
 And he knew all about the calendar and the 
 hymn-book. Most of these things he had known 
 
 [341] 
 
since he was four or five, and what good did they 
 do him? 
 
 But in the morning he liked taking Olga by the 
 hand, and leading her out the gate under the big 
 black-walnut trees, and down the street. Mother 
 always kissed them good-bye with such a serious 
 and anxious air that Gilbert felt he was setting out 
 on a genuine mission. At the crossing he would 
 restrain Olga from rushing ahead; then he would 
 carefully look up and down the street to see if 
 there were any horses and wagons coming. Then 
 he would dash across, pulling Olga precipitately 
 behind him. They would go along the upper 
 green, under the great railroad bridge, and come 
 to Miss Waldron s. 
 
 To Gilbert the school was an enormous joke. 
 He could not take Miss Waldron seriously. Her 
 tall, bony frame and her sad, fierce eyes touched 
 no springs of affection in him. A lesson or two 
 unlocked all the latent cruelty in him. She was 
 there to teach Gilbert and Olga and the half-dozen 
 other little children who came to the school-room 
 over the kitchen, and she was determined to teach 
 them. She knew that children under seven 
 needed to be taught to read and write and spell. 
 [342] 
 
So she gritted her teeth, and came every morning to 
 her hard and bitter work. 
 
 But Gilbert by that time had read so many 
 books at home that it seemed absurd that he should 
 be taught to read, and he would rattle through 
 the lesson while the younger children fidgeted and 
 then tried painfully to puzzle it out. Gilbert 
 could spell, too, and he raced through the words, 
 and when he was asked the meaning of words he 
 would say that "retire" meant "go to bed," be 
 cause he had seen it mean that in a book he had 
 read. And Miss Waldron would say he was a 
 saucy boy, and plead with him to answer nicely. 
 Then he would mimic her, and watch her fight 
 back the temper in her sad, fierce eyes. She would 
 stand him in the comer, with his back to the class, 
 and he would look round and wink at the other 
 children to make them laugh. Miss Waldron s 
 sisters would come up from the kitchen below, 
 where they were baking, and beg Gilbert not to 
 make the teacher so unhappy, and promise him a 
 cookie if he would be good. And Gilbert, drunk 
 with power, would refuse everything, and ride his 
 high horse until the mill-whistles blew twelve 
 o clock, and they all went home for the day. 
 [343] 
 
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