THE WILL of THE PEOPLE BY FRANCIS SULLIVAN LOS ANGELES THE RAY PUBLISHING CO. 1919 GIFT OF THE WILL of THE PEOPLE BY FRANCIS SULLIVAN LOS ANGELES THE RAY PUBLISHING CO. 1919 Copyright, 1919, by The Ray Publishing Co. THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE Reflections on an Unfinished Task CONTENTS Chap. Page I A Strong Castle Without Windows 3 II The Penalty of a Low, or No Standard 1 2 III Superiorities and Inferiorities 19 IV Nationalism and Internationalism 25 V The State and Education 33 VI An Injurious Conception of the Func- tions of the State 46 VII Other Things We Forgot 55 VIII Patrons of Art and Letters 62 IX The Eternal in Time 70 X The State and Religion 78 415614 "~Un livre est une lettre ecrite & tous les amis inconnus que Von a dans le monde." THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE CHAPTER I A STRONG CASTLE WITHOUT WINDOWS The world at large seems now more disposed than ever before to enter into an examination of the democratic form of government with a view to practice. Many of the advantages of democracy are quite obvious. It is agreeable to the mind of man to conceive that he is governing himself. It adds a good deal of dignity to the part he plays in the world. He is, in truth, at length conceded to be a rational animal who may be entrusted with his own control. Surely there can be no disputing that democracy is the most flattering to the in- dividual intelligence of any of the systems de- vised for the regulation of man in society. Then again, democracy is plainly in harmony with a pronounced material well-being for a great many. This is apparent if one contrasts the dis- tribution of riches created or acquired in the development of the north and south halves of the American continent. In the case of South Amer- ica, under monarchy, great riches were accumu- lated, but their distribution was highly restricted, while in the peopling of North America, a repub- lic, so very many have been admitted to share in its wealth that a common notion seems to pre- vail in Europe that every American is a nabob. Abstractly considered, the prevalence of the will of the majority seems to be the most philo- sophic principle which can obtain in civil govern- ment. With so much that is attractive about it one must always approach the side of defect with a sympathetic interest. 4 * THE' 'WILL' OF THE PEOPLE And perhaps the chief failing of popular gov- ernment, as we find it at present, will be a want of vitality. This will proceed not so much from the common faults which have been imputed to it, such as a tendency to dishonesty in public of- ficials, a want of coherency in times of stress, or a childish fondness for change and novelty, but rather, chiefly, from an incapacity for distinction. It sounds fanciful that a fault so apparently wiredrawn, so far removed from the actualities of sufficient food to eat, and clothes to wear, and houses to live in, and security at home and peace abroad in a word, an objection so apparently effeminate -could be the greatest menace which threatens the richest and in many respects the most envied civilization in the world. Yet, such is our conviction and in what follows an endeavor has been made both to account for the presence in modern democracy of this peril and to lay be- fore the reader proposed avenues of escape from a universal dominion of the commonplace and inferior. People who concede the reality of the evil might say, "You have an easy solution. Substi- tute a monarchy.** But there are doubtless many millions of us, who, granting the efficacy of such a remedy (which we are by no means prepared to do), will not listen to the advice. And if we should ever be brought to so fell a condition it would be only by the working of some deep, in- exorable law of human nature, but not with our individual consents. For we are tainted with a passion for the democratic ideal, defective and partial as it may at present be. We have no de- sire to go back into the house of bondage. We are at bottom idealists a republican is, in the very nature of things, the greatest idealist alive. THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 5 We cherish the notion in the abstract, we love it in the particular of a man governing himself, being his own king and magistrate through the intellectualism of a ballot. To our minds, never did the philosophers of Greece, in that flowering time of the human spirit, nor never will the philo- sopher in any conceivable future be able to evolve any political notion which shall have attached to it so much dignity and intelligence as the demo- cratic ideal. We would not consent to do away with democracy we desire to further perfect democracy. We are persuaded that there are certain imperative demands of human nature which the democracy we possess does not appear capable of satisfying. But this is not to say that a reconstructed and perfected democracy would not satisfy them . We believe it would. And some of us, at least, are desirous of experimenting in order to see if such a result cannot be achieved. While the philosophic principle of democracy, as we have said, appears to us forever beautiful, forever attractive, we are at the same time per- suaded that the practical tendency of the rule of the many in modern societies has been toward the illiberal and commonplace. A calamity thus identified, we think, arises from such democracy having too much followed its line of least resist- ance. To this line of least resistance, the most definite characteristic of which is inactivity of the intellect, we would oppose as the sufficient rem- edy, mental culture. Not mental culture as furtively nibbled at by bewildered solitaries, but mental culture as the serious concern of the state. We do not claim everything for culture. We do not affirm that it will heal the body or save the soul, but we do believe that culture is the chief source and fountain in human life of the inter* 6 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE esting. The unrest, dissatisfaction, ennui, which one now sees so largely on every hand, and which is apt to be attributed to so many random agen- cies, we believe to be but an indication that in our present scheme of political and social well-being something has been left undone. And that that something is the provision by the state of the means for satisfying fundamental cravings in the human soul for beauty, order, distinction in a word, the interesting. To those who do not sympathize with our en- thusiasm for what is rare, fine, elevated or dis- tinguished, but who yet would like to preserve democracy, we would say that in following some such notion as is adumbrated in these pages, they may at last be but obeying the instinct of self- preservation. One might remind those who wish to see this present democracy in North America persist, that in time, if they do not take suitable action, the mere accumulation of wealth will mechanically settle the matter. Not wealth while in the hands of the original possessors of it. Be- cause they have not had the leisure which the suc- cession to that wealth will provide, they are scarcely to be reckoned with at all. But their grandchildren and their grandchildrens* children will be quite another race. Inherited wealth gives time for reflection and meditation, which, in turn, almost lead mathematically to certain so- cial results. For people thus circumstanced it be- comes annoying and baffling to pass their lives with a second best when they might have the best. As time mellows their circle they will be apt to cast their eyes about, and if anywhere in the world they observe the noble and brilliant things of life in higher honor and esteem, they will sigh for that civilization. And here the danger for THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 7 democracy is, that so far, incontestably, these superior things which maintain a thrall over all fine souls, and even over all fashionable souls, have been fostered and revered more in modern monarchies than in modern republics, and these seekers after the reign of politeness and taste may perhaps be too impatient to inquire carefully, and to distinguish between a necessary consequence and accidental circumstances, but fly to the con- clusion that monarchy is in its nature more suit- able to the flourishing of culture than democracy, is the true soil of culture. Or they may not care about the merits of what they consider a mere detail, and have eyes only for their goal. And the people who arrive at this temper of mind, whenever the time does come, are not to be ignored, because they will be in possession of the great accumulations of the country's wealth, and the influence and power which ever accompany them. While numerically they may amount to but a fraction of the population, yet in all great national upheavals such always have been and al- ways will be the ones who gain their end event- ually. Even when they are in the wrong they prevail when they have attractiveness and a cry of nature on their side, how certainly will they prevail ! Thus, if from no other than a utilitarian stand- point (and utilitarian standpoints are said to be especially beloved of not democrats but of democracy) it seems that it would be a wise pre- caution with popular governments to forward learning and culture and intellectual distinction as much, and to endeavor as much for their establish- ment and renown, as any monarchy ever did. The doctrine of equality enters quite prom- inently into the economy of democracy. It is, 8 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE doubtless, a subject demanding a great deal of discretion. "All created equal" yes, political- ly equal, if you will, but here the equality quite ends. And the tendency of the democratic ideal is to endeavor to extend this equality to other de- partments, indeed, all the activities of life. But what is the law and intent of nature in this mat- ter? Nature seems to have had no eye at all to the theory, or rather, a fixed determination to the contrary. Nothing is more certain than that man- kind possesses anything rather than an equality of talents. Does not one observe daily, even in the humbler affairs of life, in handicrafts and the useful arts, how pre-eminently one man's bent and skill exceeds his fellow's? And how often and to what a pronounced degree, is this superiority, far from being the result of familiarity or practice, purely an arbitrary gift. With mental endow- ments, as with bodily dexterity, the same rule holds good. In such matters nature, far from contemplating an equality seems to delight in in- equality. Thus it is easy, in the atmosphere of a free commonwealth to push the doctrine of equality into provinces which always have been and always will be strangers to its operation. In practice the result of such a philosophy is to propose as an axiom that one man's opinion is as good as another man's opinion, any man's veto as important as any other man's veto. Of course this is not so. And, could all have enjoyed the same advantages of education and position, it still would not be so. Nature has interfered in the politician's plan for uniformity with a certain number of superiorities. Without culture these favored individuals would enjoy a pronounced advantage over their fellow mortals; with the re- THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 9 finement of the intellect and feelings added, the distance separating them is still further increased. The final problem then for democracy seems to be to invent some machinery for enabling it- self to possess the fruits of the great talents among its citizens, instead of satisfying itself with the average or mean, and still remain democracy. And to this end it appears that one solution might lie in a division of labor in carrying out its mani- fold functions. We are all more effective in pursuits in which we have had some experience than in others. In democracies in America, to take America for a convenient illustration nearly every one is "the architect of his own fortune." Now the economic and financial requirements of a commonwealth fall so within the province of almost every citi- zen's daily experience in a great modern in- dustrial community, that it appears the majority may in this matter be entrusted with power to the greatest attainable benefit of all concerned. The number of persons who have sound notions of finance, and are respectable judges of an econo- mic policy is, in America, surprisingly large. In practical politics, likewise, in what we may call the ordering of the common civic routine, the majority in America is singularly calm, philo- sophic, capable. Thus far the average or mean may well retain power and direction exclusively in its own hands. But it is in what one might entitle the extra- ordinary or ornamental concerns of existence that a doubt of the adequacy of the average intelli- gence and abilities may be reasonably entertained. In the domain of education, of taste, of the fine arts, nothing like the value attaches to the con- victions of the average man as is the case with 10 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE the economic departments of the state. Here superiorities are everything. This is why mon- archies so often have appeared intellectually more distinguished than modern democracies. The choice of the best talents to instruct the people was in the hands of one man influenced by the opinion of a few enlightened advisers. A most radical educational programme or patronage could be launched practically without consulting any one of the millions to be affected by it or who were to support it. But popular governments must have their "majorities" for every move. And among the masses there is a distinct repugnance to being led out of themselves, and it is difficult to get major- ities for this kind of a proceeding. Yet the major- ity in a popular government is incontestably master. There is no ignoring majorities. The majority's power is supreme everywhere. Before the least advance can be made one must treat with the majority. The matter, then, seems to resolve itself into a voluntary concession on the part of the majority to a selected minority best fitted to preponderate in the nation's intellectual con- cerns. Under this arrangement the majority would continue to act where it is strong and its hand sure, that is, in shaping and controlling the economic destiny of the commonwealth. In a more restricted province, that of education, it would concede powers plenipotentiary, or almost so, to a lesser body best able to act with success within that sphere. If we concede that those best fitted to direct the financial affairs of the commonwealth are the many, let us as freely own that those most useful to it as intellectual guides are the few. These wisest and most accomplished, then, who would THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 11 never be able to carry their projects by "major- ities," must, in their restricted sphere of action, be given a great deal more power than mere numerical importance would entitle them to. In accordance with such a theory two departments in the national government might be exempted, as far as possible, from the operation of the law of survival by majority. These would be a De- partment of Education and a Department of Fine Arts. Such bureaus instead of resembling in their organization and operation those already existing would be bodies constituted after the model of our Supreme Court. Each might consist of a dozen members, with life appointments, just as is the case with the Supreme justices. But vacancies, instead of being filled by presidential nomination, would be filled by an elective selection on the part of the bodies themselves. Thus divorced from politics, and with a tenure of office secure from the anxieties of varying popular favor these de- partments might pursue their aims with that seri- ousness and fixity of purpose so necessary to the accomplishment of any large permanent results. The most eminent scholars which the country might produce, its men of creative talents and genius, would be attracted by such a provision and esteem it a peculiar honor to be thus invited to assist in the intellectual advancement of their countrymen. And this would be an immense gain to have the worthiest for the task established in power and influence, and, within their own sphere, supreme. 12 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE CHAPTER II THE PENALTY OF A LOW OR NO STANDARD If by neglecting to avail itself of those measures which would insure to it dignity and distinction, a democracy proceeds along its line of least re- sistance, and rests in intellectual and spiritual satisfactions which are not only in the mass medio- cre, but in many things base and ignoble if a democracy thus permits the things of the mind to shift for themselves, is there apt to be any particular penalty? Probably there is. To begin with, people are always comparing monarchy and republicanism. And if monarchial institutions should produce in each thousand of the population a higher percentage of intellectual- ly superior people it will exert a dissolvent force in time upon its great rival. In the long run, the most distinguished societies or institutions will be the most fashionable. Such has always been the case, and doubtless, such always will be. The richer people grow and the more of the affluent there are to be found, the less will an ex- clusively commercial supremacy satisfy them. Material luxury cannot for long be maintained without creating a demand for intellectual luxury. The great-grandson of a man with no pretensions to taste who has acquired millions, does not have the same outlook on life as his perhaps more active ancestor. Too much leisure has intervened in three generations, too much opportunity for observation and reflection. And with reflection comes the enquiry, What is most worth while in life? And then follows investigation as to what enlightened opinion through the ages has to say THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 13 on this point. Finally the enquirer is apt to sur- render to the weight of authorities. It should be borne in mind in speculating upon the future of democracy as now established that an actually new polity has entered upon the thea- tre of the political regulation of mankind. Little to the purpose, it seems, can be learned from an examination of the tendencies and fortune of popular government in ancient or medieval times. And this because all of the previous trials of so- called free government which have any im- portance in history, such as democracy at Athens, the Roman republic, or the medieval Italian cities, were, either technically or in effect, not what the modern world understands by democracies or republics, but oligarchies. Always there were the two classes in the state, nobles and commons, patrician and pleb. The feature of current democracy which was incomprehensible to the ancient mind is universal equality. One may indeed say that before the establishment of the common- wealth of the United States of America, such an experiment on any imposing or adequate scale had never been attempted. This is perhaps the chief reason why the course which the United States is to run will have so deep a significance, as time passes, for the student of political and social development. In all the older democracies which we know of there was invariably this "upper" or ruling class. It was always an intrenched class with more or less of a prescriptive authority. The concerns of culture were in its hands so that in those ages it was not nearly so important what the view of the masses in matters intellectual happened to be as it is now. Today there are no nobles to act as the fosterers, custodians and introducers of refine- 14 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE ment. And whatever may be said of their use- fulness to society in other directions, has not their patronage of the fine arts, and of the things of the mind been, in truth, a real claim which may be urged for them to the gratitude of mankind? To this extent they were a happy machinery in the scheme of things. They set the tone and that tone was always higher than the common taste of the body of the people. But we have done away with all that. There are no more nobles to set the tone. But the interests of culture may not wisely be left to take care of themselves. They are not like the instinct for wealth, for instance, which needs no encouragement from any quarter but seems to exist in its perfection without conscious cultivation. What makes a people illustrious in the long run is intellectual distinction, and any political philo- sophy which leaves this matter out of account will be admitting into its policy a subtly disin- tegrating element. Despite people's apparent dis- regard of what is rare and fine, there is in human nature the seed of a fixed intolerance of the com- monplace. And with the increase of ease and material prosperity this ennui but becomes more real and definite. Thus it is conceivable that in time, should a political system ignore that part of its office which is concerned with making life interesting, that is, fostering distinction in thinking and acting which renders a civilization illustrious, it is conceiv- able, that notwithstanding manifold unques- tioned material benefits, its adherents would come to regard it with indifference^ and live in a state half ready to welcome some rival system which was wiser in regard to instincts so deeply im- planted in the human soul. THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 15 Therefore, as an element of permanence and strength, democracy should contemplate not only bestowing upon its beneficiaries the maximum of personal liberty, the maximum of material well- being, but the adoption of measures designed to lend an intellectual eclat to its tenure of office. If it does not, if democracy, in time, shall come to be regarded as an exclusively mercantile con- ception of the power and office of government it will probably fail to permanently satisfy the more enlightened bodies of mankind. And yet, democracy, in its idea, is undoubtedly the most purely intellectual theory of social organization which humanity has so far formulated. It is of the essence of the mind, and the sovereignty of the mind, to govern oneself. And in a democracy one is nearer to being his own lawgiver than in any other variety of civil regulation. Democracy, then, not only for that noble sort of pleasure which it has within its power to con- fer upon its citizens, but perhaps for its very pre- servation as an active influence in the world, must conclude an alliance with culture. The forces of culture, within their sphere, must, far from being ignored or condemned, be allowed a real power and a real play. Freedom and liberty are price- less things, yet, strange to say, history seems to tell us that man will live for ages with almost no freedom nor liberty, but that he will not willing- ly exist for any great length of time in a world of monotony. And you may give a civil society the widest measure of individual freedom and liberty and yet condemn it to monotony. Assuredly when a state has merely provided a large measure of individual freedom and liberty it has not pro- vided enough. To genuinely succeed, after the hardships of mere animal existence have been 16 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE softened, after personal safety and personal in- dependence are guaranteed, there remains the task of making life interesting. People will say, 'This is an individual affair. Let each citizen, within the laws, establish for himself any sort of a world he chooses. Let him live, if he likes, in his closet with Sophocles and Plato; in his fancy revivify and repeople Old Greece, and surround himself with its splendors." But this is idle. Whatever a man loves or admires, to afford him its fullest measure of satisfaction, must, as far as possible, be alive. It must vibrate in the atmosphere he breathes, it must palpitate in other minds. Man is by nature too social to find his highest happiness an exclusive happiness. Too much of the pleasure in the noblest satis- factions is in communicating or receiving, at any rate, in common possession. Furthermore, the very mechanics of the reign of culture require a constant and splendid monetary assistance which is only conveniently arrived at in the co-operation of all the citizens of a commonwealth. Adequate exterior manifestations of distinction and a sense for beauty and appropriateness, such as public buildings and monuments, are as essential as they are beyond the powers or prerogative of the in- dividual. Of this much we can be sure: When the men of reflection and taste are solitaries, having no influence upon their generation, no hand in the general scheme of things, shunning what they see and hear, and flying to a more bearable but far from satisfactory seclusion, general society is not in a happy posture. And men cannot well come at this intellectual community of interests, so in- dispensable in a generally polished and attractive civilization, without the aid and sympathy of the THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 17 state. Nothing is supposed to be more inde- pendent than genius, and yet even genius does not seem to arise when the attitude of the state is distant or hostile towards its designs. The domestic problem, then, for an intelligent civil polity, is to make life under its sway, full, complete, interesting. And making life brilliant and interesting, in the sense here sought to be conveyed, is the work of culture. Whatever is beautiful, whatever is rare and fine in the liberal arts, in social life and manners, in the individual character, there for mankind is the source of the interesting. And culture is an effort to make beauty and fineness more and more prevail, and to do away with the ennui inseparable from the reign of the commonplace and ignoble, from rawness and deformity. Hence, nothing is more en- lightened in a government than an eye to the blessings and benefits which may be conferred by the best culture. Thus far in the world's history much has been done toward keeping alive and in estimation the memory of the men of action, such as military conquerors and subjugators. But in the time to come, when the misnamed glories of rapine and violence will more and more recede from an evil prominence in the eyes of mankind, when the ad- justment of all international difficulties will be ar- rived at through arbitration, when slaughter will not be tolerated in such junctures because it is unintelligent, then will the men of thought, the heroes of a more beneficent genius, be more and more celebrated in the councils of an enlightened and grateful society. To promote this happy con- summation is the part of culture. For the worthiest portion of the race an instrument of such promise will always have an irresistible attraction. A 18 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE wise policy will seize on the importance of so fundamental an inspiration of the human mind and heart. A short-sighted policy, a policy fore- doomed, we may believe, to failure, will ignore or undervalue it. THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 19 CHAPTER HI SUPERIORITIES AND INFERIORITIES With all the various kinds of aristocracies which have existed in the world very little has ever been done towards establishing in power and place that one which is least artificial, which is least repugnant to the leveling tendencies of man- kind the aristocracy of intellect. The most doctrinaire emancipator will tell you that if any class should be set above any other class in this cosmic cauldron, the world, it should be the body of those who possess the greatest degree of intell- igence and learning. This willingness on all sides to grant, in the abstract, precedence to the most handsomely furnished minds, comes, no doubt, in part from the conviction that it is the reward of deserving merit, that it is a distinction honestly earned, if not by the sweat, at least by the con- traction of the brow. It is readily conceded that the superiority of such persons is a real superiority, an actual and palpable pre-eminence, whereas the pretensions of blood, for instance, many deem to be not only often illusory but in their nature arbitrary and unjust. Doubtless, one disadvantage the aristocracy of intellect has had to contend with in its endeavor to attain a respectable position among the other aristocracies is that so frequently it does not descend. Another defect it labors under, for all strict segregationists, is that it cannot be confined within accustomed hallowed precincts. A credit- able aristocracy is supposed to dwell within the limits of Mayfair or Belgravia, but the aristocracy of intellect is just as apt to be found in any alarm- ing quarter of town, South Kensington or even 20 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE Barnes. Moreover, it cannot be even moderately freed from the disadvantage of "new men." Its limits, potentially, are co-existent with the sum total of society. In a word, it is too democratic in its nature to be an aristocracy at all. Yet, if any precedence is to be acknowledged within the social fabric, which one has a more enlightened or philosophical title to the indulgence of man- kind? In a mentally and spiritually prosperous so- ciety, the number of additions to this illustrious but disinherited order is continually increasing. A great many may qualify themselves for admis- sion and be received into the happy family, and rest in the hope of a serene and elevated equal- ity. But once within they will begin to but the more clearly perceive what they may be disposed to look upon as the unkindness of nature. Nature cares nothing for equality. With nature's intent, if every man turned out, to employ the familiar expression, to be "just as good as the next man" one can conceive nature reeling with astonish- ment. Of course, what is possible, and what may be accomplished, is for all of us to reach a desirable state of aesthetic respectability. In order to effect the greatest progression in this laudable design it is the part of wisdom to avail ourselves cheer- fully and thankfully of the talents of those su- periorities which nature has sown amongst us. Taste, or a talent for seeing and seizing the truth in the domain of grace and beauty, is as actually an instinctive gift of nature as consum- mateness in literary expression, or music, or the arts of design. True, taste can no more be brought to its ultimate perfection without study and laborious comparison than can poetry, music, THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 21 or painting, but at the same time it is not wholly an acquired possession, as many are apt to esteem it. Now, in our plan of amelioration of the aesthe- tically hard lot of the many, we have more of an eye to the man of taste than we do to the admitted genius in the arts just mentioned. First, because the man of taste is of a more frequent growth, and for our purpose we require multitude. Then again, his sphere of activities is broader. A master of poetry will be a sovereign authority for us in poetry, but in other manifestations of the beautiful, or the appropriate, in companion arts, in an adequate philosophy of life and manners, his shortcomings may be prodigious. The man of taste, on the contrary, professes no one art as the limits of his contemplation. His interest centres in the sum total of all the arts, of all those mani- fold exertions in humanity to introduce a gracious, harmonious, intelligent spirit into the deliberations and actions of man in society. The man of taste, when his gift is eminent in degree, is the critic. Our great critics have been the flowering of the man of taste. Now, is it not the part of wisdom, for those left to their own wills, as people are in a democracy, to seek for their guides in intellectual matters among the men of taste? We do not learn in these high concerns from our inferiors nor our equals, we learn from our superiors. Through study and application and native talents our one- time superiors may, indeed, become our equals or our inferiors, but when they were most valu- able to us, when they were essential to us, they were our superiors. In popular governments, due no doubt to a deeply rooted belief in the bene- ficence of equality in the strict political sphere, 22 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE it seems there is a tendency to regard it with a large tolerance in other spheres. To have the teacher no more than the equal of the pupil seems not to be a painful anomaly. In truth, what can be more fruitless, more futile, than for seekers after knowledge to be applying themselves to their equals? That is, sitting at the fount of the average wisdom of their society? It is an attitude worse than that of pure inertia or intellectual stagnation because this average wisdom, receiving no aid from above, tends to become lower, in- stead of ascending or remaining stationary. What must be called into play if there is to be any common progression, in fact to avoid retro- gression, is the best talent available for the purposes of educating and refining general so- ciety. Now, the more a man knows he is right, the less willing he is to be interfered with. And the people of culture, the most enlightened indi- viduals in a commonwealth, have this well-found- ed conviction in an eminent degree. There is no such thing about them as the hesitancy of mis- trust. Of course, in all these observations it must be understood that we are confining the matter, for all practical purposes, to the concerns of the mind, taste, the polite arts, social distinction. At the outset we have thrust to one side utilitarian activities, what is called "getting on in the world." This latter is a task which may safely be left to primal instincts of every son of Adam. By the vast preponderance of the race it is never lost sight of, it will never be neglected. Only, it is really a pity that every one is so concerned about it, beyond supplying the reasonable comforts and conveniences of life, seeing how many constantly do and are always destined to miss wealth. THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 23 Culture is more like virtue, with an earnest effort no such failure is possible. We were saying that the most enlightened al- ways know they are the most enlightened and are apt to be a little impatient at much hampering. If their liberty of action is too greatly restricted, if they are subjected to too much and to too fre- quent inquisitorial supervision by those knowing less of their subject, they do not, in general, long submit to this annoyance but retire from the field. But to have them retire from the field, or not to venture into the field, is fraught with the gravest consequences for their countrymen. To have all our native Platos lurking under their walls in a cloud of hostile dust of our creating would be the real tragedy of democracy. It must be confessed that so far our national attitude towards those best equipped to do us good has been far from cordial. Some of these, like Colonel Astor, (I do not pre- sent him as the ideal specimen, but he might have been useful to us) have taken up their abode abroad. Others, like Major Higginson of Boston, still struggle against currents bearing us on to the dead sea of mediocrity. Human nature is so constituted that we must follow some one, and, alas, if we could but get it well settled in our national consciousness that it is of enormous significance whether we follow the superiorities or the inferiorities who offer them- selves as our guides! If we could only perceive clearly that the inferiorities will always be quite willing to do what we want done, and that the superiorities will stand fast for doing what ought to be done. If we could be convinced that the superiorities come into the world with a work to perform from which all may profit but which they alone are most capable of accomplishing, and that 24 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE by preferring complaisant and spurious prophets we are defeating the very object of our hope, which is to set up under democracy an enduring and illustrious civilization. If our arrangements for the diffusion of knowl- edge and taste, as now constituted, do not do more than present to us conclusions of the mean or average minds amongst us, then there is every rea- son for remodeling that machinery in the hope of arriving at something better. I call the average minds inferiorities, and in this sense there is no more discredit attached to the characterization than there is to not being a great painter, or a genius in poetry. I call the superiorities, men of destiny, men only very partially, if at all, to be esteemed the creators of their special talent. Choice spirits, in whom a love and enthusiasm for what is fine, a passion for searching out and hold- ing in honor the best which has appeared in the world, is a precious and divine gift with which they were born to the profit and delight of man- kind. There is no discredit in not having been thus singled out by nature, but there is discredit in not establishing such men in place and power over our intellectual concerns; in following, rather, either the bent of our own unintelligent and way- ward inclinations or the popular persuasions of some confident mountebank who promises to make ignorance fashionable. THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 25 CHAPTER IV NATIONALISM AND INTERNATIONALISM About the close of the middle ages a marked enthusiasm for the idea of national pre-eminence, as contrasted with a lively interest in the welfare of the Christian world as a whole, seems to have seized men's minds everywhere. Previously the influence and policy of the Church had tended to keep up a community of feeling among the various peoples of Europe. Europe was, in effect at least, much more like a confederation of states than it has ever been since. A common religion did much to foster mutual in- terest and good will at a time when, if one may judge, religion occupied a far greater share of men's thoughts than it does now. But at the Reformation when so many of the states of Europe relinquished their allegiance to the Church, nationalism received a final impulse which is yet far from spent. Instead of esteeming themselves units in a widely spread civilizing movement, nations now began to consider them- selves distinctly opposed segregations. Whether it is that in the human heart there is an innate yearning for national identity and development, or whether the princes of that age perceived a dis- tinct personal advantage in the spread of the new politics, remains an attractive subject of specula- tion. At any rate, a love of country, a little in- compatible with the love of other countries, was certainly forwarded to the best of their abilities by those in possession. Very little fanning pro- duced a great deal of flame and a good deal of fanning produced a conflagration. From thence, 26 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE it seems, proceeds the intense national patriotism of our own day which in so many amounts to a religion. Or perhaps, where people have so largely lost faith in the supernatural, it is more accurate to say, it takes the place of a religion. Almost no check was presented to this passion which had so powerfully fascinated men's minds until the general diffusion in the last century of the principles of socialism, prominent among which, as every one knows, is an aspiration for the political unification of mankind. But social- ism has many and powerful enemies and perhaps we need not look for it to gain possession of the world for a long time to come. From the point of view of practical politics, nationalism possesses unquestionable advantages. It seems agreeable and refreshing to human na- ture, at any rate human nature in its present de- gree of development. For purposes of admin- istration the division of the earth into plots of convenient size has heretofore appeared almost a necessity. Too far removed from the seat of government, people seem to forget they have any government at all. An order in council, by the time it has proceeded half way round the earth is apt to get wrangled out of all resemblance to what it was where discussion is not so in- dispensable an institution. Again, populations, through the machinery of nationality, often have it in their power to exert a wholesome economic pressure on neighboring populations which threaten their commercial supremacy. And there are manifest advantages of internal admin- istration which might also be mentioned. Doubt- less, then, he would be a bold advocate who, in the spheres of practical politics or of mercantile THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 27 expediency, should endeavor to make out a case against the ardent nationalism of the present day. But there is a sphere in which nationalism, as opposed to internationalism, is fatal. In dealing with the things of the mind, one must of necessity contemplate the world as a whole. If our aspira- tion is to be acquainted with the best that has been produced anywhere, and culture is not satisfied with less pretentions, it is absurd to confine our- selves to the best that has been produced in this country or that country. If, from motives of patriotism, we wish to restrict ourselves to a tin dipper made in America or made in England or in Germany, it is, indeed, no great matter. Else- where, perhaps, better dippers may be obtain- able than this particular holy dipper, but it is of no eminent consequence whether we are content with a merely serviceable dipper, an excellent dipper, or the best obtainable dipper. But if we are enquiring as to whether certain acts or states of mind should be regarded as gracious, harmonious, polished, intelligent, then we cannot afford to rest in what America, or England or Germany says about it, for the truest or most valuable opinion on this particular matter may proceed from some other centre of thought, or it may be requisite for our purpose to form a judgment from the collective best thought every- where. What we require in such instances, and nothing less will suffice, is not the best which has been said or ascertained of a thing in our own country, but the best anywhere. Thus in all liberal studies, in the fine arts, in the province of the beautiful, the graceful, the ap- propriate in social life and manners, there is sim- ply no escape from internationalism. If Italy is renowned for its pre-eminence in painting, it is 28 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE surely absurd for one to limit his artistic horizon to the chefs-d'oeuvre of Abyssinia merely because he happens to be a native of that respectable po- litical division. For us in America there was for a long time the form of an excuse offered for not applying to the older and riper communities of Europe for assistance in our problems of an in- tellectual or aesthetic character. It was said that Europe is, in the main, monarchical in political complexion; that it could have little patience and no sympathy with the aspirations of a free people, and that such evil communications would be apt to corrupt good democracy. It was, of course, not profound reasoning, but it had an uncommon vogue among us. Happily now, however, this phantom terror is rapidly dissolving. Politically, Europe seems at length to be coming round to our side. Could any one desire to see her more coy than she is at present towards her new lover, Democracy. Every lumber room in Europe seems on the point of being crammed with a throne, and kings of affording the type and pat- tern of persistent travelers. For the unfettered development of single-class democracy the geographical isolation of America has been, doubtless, an advantage. We were left alone by the rest of the world like the wild ass in the desert, whereas, had there been less salt water intervening, the forces of tradition or imi- tation might have proved too strong for us and our essay in self rule not have maintained that distinctly novel character with which it was born. But while the insularity resulting from our great distance from the centres of European cul- ture may have been useful in guaranteeing a free and untrammeled development of those striking political theories which are now coming to be ac- THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 29 cepted everywhere, for the concerns of the in- tellect (speaking narrowly), the separation has not been entirely happy. In the things of the mind, in matters of taste, in the refinements of social intercourse, is it not reasonable to suppose that communities with a leisure class which for upwards of a thousand years has had scarcely any other business to mind but fixing upon what is most graceful, elegant and harmonious, should have arrived at conclusions of the highest value for the seeker after perfection? Again, is it not reasonable to suppose that for a society whose energies so far have been largely occupied, thus to speak, with the blazing of trails and the clear- ing of forests is it not reasonable to suppose that for such a society the enunciations of old- world civilizations must be of singular utility? Yet, because Europe is so far away, because so few Americans in proportion to the mass, come in contact with European usage at first hand, these two great civilizations have been visibly drifting apart, and in many things Americans are setting up for themselves standards which are to be found nowhere else in the world. People, in a new society, are apt to think they make quite novel discoveries in social arrange- ments, when the truth is they are merely going through a rudimentary experience of older com- munities. A concrete example or two will serve to illustrate. Americans fancy that their custom of allowing young women to go about without the chaperon common in Europe is a step in advance of transatlantic progress, whereas, the fact of the matter probably is, that the various European countries tried this plan some hundreds of years ago, and when they were quite young, and gradually discarded it for the present mode be- 30 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE cause they perceived they got a distinct result (which they valued) with the institution of duen- nas, and did not get it without. The same with the present American female preference for equestrianism en cavalier. In England in the time of Queen Elizabeth, women, at any rate in hunt- ing, rode astride. But when England became more polite it was agreed upon all hands that this was not the most graceful fashion in which the gentler sex could embellish the equine species and so the observance was abolished. Similarly it is probable the Egyptians and Assyrians went through the same aesthetic evolution. But the question arises Where is the utility of trying each rude beginning for oneself? Why not take it for granted in such matters that what the maturest and politest civilizations are doing is what we also will wish to do when we come to be mature and polite, and so seek to imitate them at once rather than spend some ages in unneces- sary rawness? In the realm of ideas, one may rest assured, there is no permissible allegiance less than that of a citizen of the world. This was the determina- tion of Athens in her glory and is to be reckoned among those imperishable apperceptions which have left the Greek mind amiable and fruitful for lovers of light while the world shall last. In the things of the intelligence anything less than this universal interest tends directly to provinciality. And provinciality always stamps a civilization as of other than the first order. I have ever fancied this willingness, nay, eagerness to learn from the best masters was one of the most striking mani- festations of the true greatness of imperial Rome. There is almost a kind of pathos in the anxiety of the Romans in their best period to sit at the THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 31 feet of Greek teachers. They were lords of the world, as far as the lance and fasces could carry them, and yet, far from trying to make their ruder speculations fashionable, far from trying to make them prevail, they perceived at once what they were not masters of and went in humble search of it. If the Romans could bear to learn of others, where is the kingdom or commonwealth since whose place in history justifies it in going ex- clusively by its own light? Why have the French long been esteemed the most enlightened na- tion in Europe? Because ages before the others they sought and revered the treasures of Greece and Rome and for centuries have passionately cultivated that openness to ideas which has only lately become fashionable among their neighbors. In truth, were the position not temerarious toward that profound moral development, the customs, one would be disposed to say that for persons whose powers of reflection have received some encouragement there is but one country in the world. Its boundaries therefore are not ex- tremely difficult to trace it stretches from Green- wich to Greenwich again. For lovers of light it is of much less interest whether a man is a French- man, an Englishman, an American or a Senegam- bian, than whether he is a person of a first-rate intelligence or not. Most national boundaries are largely imaginary lines, and that in more senses than one, and as the imagination becomes cooled and the intelligence warmed it is probable that imaginary lines will tend rather to lose their sig- nificance outside of the domain of pure mathe- matics. Granting, then, that a spirit of nationalism, though it be, perhaps, not the largest or most adequate conception of even the political possi- 32 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE bilities of mankind, is convenient for adminis- trative purposes, is commercially profitable, and is not necessarily inimical to the best culture, it should be our care to see that it does not usurp provinces manifestly superior to it. In this sense the world of ideas is super-political. In that ele- vated atmosphere the ordinary phenomena of patriotism are a little expanded ; it is patriotic to prefer not what chances to flourish between certain parallels of latitude and longitude, be- cause it does flourish there, but the best that can be found anywhere, and because it is the best that can be found anywhere. THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 33 CHAPTER V. THE STATE AND EDUCATION It has been said that our race is not yet enough civilized to justly entrust education to the hands of the state. That men will never be really civil- ized while fanaticism and intolerance in one of their most serious concerns, religious belief, con- tinue in any moving strength to stalk through the world. And, indeed, until we can separate the proper business of this life from our hatreds and strifes over the conditions of the next, one does succumb for an instant to a kind of misgiving. It is undeniable that in recent times where edu- cation has been handed over to the state, often the state has abused its office and been frantically busy indoctrinating irreligion. This has in truth proved a catastrophe not only for believers in the supernatural, but for the cause of justice and in- telligence. A fanatic in irreligion is surely as un- lovely and unilluminated a being as a fanatic for its opposite, and he has the added disadvantage that in the sum of things he stands for human nature's following its line of least resistance, which has always proved a singularly fatal affair for human nature. But is this hostility of the state to virtue and religion, in our day so aften unmistakable, at bot- tom more than accidental? May we not reason- ably hope with the increase of a fuller light now gilding the horizon to observe such sinister illu- minations eclipsed and quite blotted out? It is to be devoutly hoped this is our portion, for democracy can ill afford to do without so power- ful an instrument as is the word of God in shaping 34 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE its destiny. And, perhaps, after all, the right spot upon which to lay the blame for state intol- erance is not upon ministerial functionaries, but upon the temper of the people. Why are the uni- versities of Paris and Heidelberg unfriendly to Christianity and the university of Oxford not un- friendly to it? The temper of the people. And if you appear to lose your people through the action of the state, is not the fact quite otherwise, and that you had already lost them the moment the state began to tyrannize over belief? For the state is no alien or superior force, it is ever the creature of the people; even in an autocracy, the power of the state is but a child to the power of the people. And this quite without revolution but only through the pressure of serious interest. Of course, for the Christian or other believer, freedom of religion and worship is paramount even to the interests of culture, and if, in ex- tending the action of the state in order that intel- ligence might more widely prevail, he should per- ceive that the malice of men would always warp this power to the detriment of the supernatural, he would undoubtedly prefer to let things go on in the less effective channel in which they are at present. But we will assume that we have got rid of re- ligious interference from the state, as it is, in- deed, probable we shall, and our surest guar- anty for this rests in the fact that intolerance is unintelligent, and men will finally come to see that it is. The notion of the instruction of youth being a public function, while in theory of a most re- spectable antiquity, is in practice rather a recent conviction. Even long after the Church lost that predominance in education which it once exer- THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 35 cised, the state had not greatly exerted itself in the matter and almost all elementary instruction was in the hands of the self-appointed school- master. He was a resident small merchant of popular learning. He taught pretty much what came into his head on the spur of the moment. He developed an independence of curriculum the tradition of which has come down to our own days and is exemplified in the existence and pow- ers of local boards of education. There are two principal objections to having public instruction under the control of provincial authority the lack of uniformity in the courses of study and the liability that executive direction will not be in the hands of those best equipped for the task. With a centralized system of state edu- cation both of these would disappear. Begin- ning with the grammar schools the programme for each grade might be issued from a Depart- ment of Public Instruction at Washington. In place of the thousand text books for a given sub- ject and term now in use throughout the country, there would be but one. That one, however, would be the best obtainable for the purpose. Under this arrangement there should be little complaint of public education not being as good in one part of the country as another. It is in the literary portion of the programme of studies that most would be accomplished in thus entrusting the supervision of all public instruc- tion to a central bureau. The multiplication table is not apt to be materially improved by the solici- tude of high government officials, but school read- ers and histories are. All of the exercises in reading (and a good deal more time would be given to reading that at present) would be taken from the masters of literature in every age and 36 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE country. There are too many names in the world which are celebrated to leave room for one not a celebrity. Thus from the time he began to read at all, every youth who was state educated would be familiar at least with some fragment from all the great names in letters. Then, when later in life he really began to acquire a first-hand acquaint- ance with the best that has been thought and said in the world, which would be when his school days were quite over, he would not find staring him in the face an entirely new republic of let- ters, but, as far as names went at any rate, feel himself among old friends. As to the objection that many of such selections compiled from works of genius must be beyond childish apprehension, it is better for the pupil to read masterpieces and not understand two sentences together than to be a perfect exegetist and scholiast of shabby stuff from an inferior hand prepared with a view to his supposed ca- pacity. The writings of the most eminent authors are full of passages of simple directness and with grace and beauty added. It is not desirable to seek for a literature more elemental than may be had in such extracts. Far more fortifying would it be to let the youthful understanding grow up to these models, reading mechanically, if need be, until such time as their merits were perceived by it. And the crowning good of thus being exclu- sively confined to the best is that if there is any capacity for distinction in thought or emotion in the student's soul it will unconsciously begin to assert itself. As a contrast to this settled purpose of learn- ing from the best models only, we have heard of a school text book on literary composition which is made up exclusively of leaders taken THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 37 from an American monthly magazine. Think of the mendacity of thus dedicating the most vivid and impressionable years of a lifetime to the commonplace and the feeble! Under the guardianship of an enlightened cen- tral authority for public education such a misdi- rection of energies would be impossible. Pro- vincial individuals or bodies, inadequately equipped for the task, would not then be called upon to choose either manuals or subjects of study. Instead, throughout the length and breadth of the land, from the grammar school to the uni- versity, the youth of the nation should be apply- ing its faculties exclusively to the best that had been thought and said and done in the world. Tall talk about one's own country which is so retarding and unintelligent would be gradually and good-naturedly banished by exhibiting its ab- surdity. To this end, in the particular case of the United States, such a corrective work as Matthew Arnold's essays on America, for instance, might be introduced into the public schools as a text- book. Th'- present tendency in various parts of the republic towards dropping Greek and Latin from the course of study in these institutions, or leav- ing the pursuit of them optional with the stu- dent, is an instance of the weakness and inad- equacy of provincial supervision of the interests of education. People not the best equipped for judging take into their hands the decision of whether the classic tongues and classic literature shall be any longer taught the youth within their jurisdiction. Men come into power and office who believe that the reason Greek and Latin have been a part of high school and college training is that the practice is a survival of the middle age 38 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE when there were no other literatures worth know- ing; but that now we have something equivalent or superior to them in modern languages, indeed, in our own tongue ; or they believe that all proper education must propose some directly useful end and that dead languages fail to establish such a claim; or they have themselves missed the advan- tages of a classical discipline and upon grounds no higher than personal uneasiness bear a kind of hostility to it. Now, with the control of public education en- trusted to those best adapted to the office, instead of allowing the opinions of such men to prevail, people might be brought to see why culture has so deep and abiding an interest in Greek and Latin. It would be explained to them that as to mere facts, or practical information, or even as to the excitation of the bare animal functions of laughter or tears, it is true that we might ignore the literary productions of Greece and Rome and not be greatly the worse off for it. But that there is another sort of benefits which somehow are secured by the perusal of classic models, and to which the study of the finest modern produc- tions in no like measure contributes. The Greeks and the Romans possessed in their languages in- struments of singular intrinsic beauty. With these instruments, doubtless as much the development of their peculiar genius as the ideas which they afterwards served to immortalize, they were able to achieve a calmness, largeness and elevation of effect which seem likely to remain for all time the highest degree of excellence attainable in lit- erary art. In an exquisiteness of feeling for pro- portion, harmoniousness, urbanity, modern litera- tures have exhibited no capacity for dispossessing the best Greek and Latin models. It is, indeed, THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 39 only because their authors have had the advan- tage of such models that modern productions are as good as they are. Why is the university of Ox- ford the most distinguished institution in the English-speaking world? Because Oxford has most firmly seized this truth of the inestimable value of Greek and Latin remains in any fruitful pursuit of intellectual distinction. An intelligent perception of just why classic antiquity means so much to culture is the bright particular tradition of Oxford and will publish its fame, even when, if such should be, the darkness of these times shall have installed conchology and aerostatics in the chairs of Sophocles and Horace. The direction of public education, then, is an immense power, a power far too precious for the ends of culture to be allowed to remain in its present diffuse, confused, opposed, inchoate state. The very act of making education a function of the central government will lend to it a character and dignity quite absent when it is administered by the local authority of the several states. It is apt to be asserted by some that if public instruction be entrusted to the exclusive care of the people of culture there is danger of liberal studies being too much pursued aud useful studies not enough. This objection will doubtless resolve itself into a matter of party. Believers in the pre- dominant theory of education hitherto current will say that they entertain the gravest doubts as to whether any technical instruction, as it is called, should be imparted in schools for youth. They will maintain that a state school is properly a place where training is supplied in the liberal branches, that such a school should not be a work- shop. They will say that handicrafts, in fact, all gainful pursuits and occupations, are best ac- 40 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE quired, not in a school, but in an apprenticeship to a working master in such crafts. This is the "articling" and "apprenticeship" of our fore- fathers, so highly regarded in former ages, and the road by which most acquired preliminary train- ing in their daily avocations. It is, indeed, the method by which the greater part of mankind still gains adeptness in callings pursued chiefly to get money. Lately, however, a party has sprung up with a new philosophy to the effect that an initiation into the sublimities of the hum- blest callings should begin in the nursery. The mechanic in futuro should be set, as soon as ever his apprehension shows signs of breaking through his skull, to contemplate an anvil or a revolving saw; the grocer by dedication, to weigh and sort little packets. Doubtless, without the greatest caution, the principles of this sect may tend to a very mean way of thinking. But even if the lovers of light, rather than of wheels and pistons, had the upper hand and the youth of the country got very little else but polite learning up to the age of sixteen or seven- teen, would it be such a hard destiny, and would there not be plenty of life left in which to culti- vate faculties to serve the daily needs of the body? And in any event, let us not despair of an ample spirit of concession and compromise on the part of our enemies, the men of culture, they having been kept out of any participation in public activ- ities until their spirits must be mightily reduced and chastened. People often praise the effectiveness of our present Post Office Department with its inter- twinings amongst all sorts of local authority, and yet possessing, as a bureau of the national gov- ernment, a powerful coherency and directness of THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 41 acting. So, too, in public instruction might we look for parallel excellent results by confiding the care of education to such a national Department of Education as has been previously mentioned. Public enlightenment not being mere mechancial routine, as is the conduct of the post office, a life tenure of office in this national board of education, so to speak, is of the highest importance. Life tenure is a means for keeping superiorities in power. In most other public employments, such as the one just alluded to, the post office, talents of a much more common order being sufficient, there are always a large number of men in the country who could successfully direct them, and the service suffers little or not at all from frequent rotation in office ; but in education such as we have been supposing, the number of those qualified to administer is enormously decreased, the time required to achieve conspicuous results much longer and a frequent change of advisers apt to be distinctly disadvantageous. If successive political administrations are al- lowed all the departments of government but two as legitimate spoils of office, and these two, new creations, instead of subtractions from the sum of their present reward, it seems that no great rup- ture with tradition need be involved in setting up a Department of Education and a Department of Fine Arts upon the basis of life tenure of office. We have a luminous analogy in the United States Supreme Court, so no really novel de- parture in our governmental system is implied. Doubtless in a very short time -these two depart- ments would be regarded with the same equanim- ity and satisfaction as is that august body. Perhaps it would be found desirable to select teachers for the state schools by some such com- 42 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE petitive system as is suggested in the idea of West Point cadetships. Nominees for the post of in- structor might be similarly chosen and then sent to a great teachers' college situated preferably in the metropolis, as from the beginning every even accidental circumstance is to be taken advantage of in ridding the future teacher of any taint of provinciality. Thus a familiarity with the aims and tradition of the department, an esprit de corps, might be instilled which would be of the greatest advantage in securing effective co-operation. In America the universal passion for newspaper reading makes the press scarcely less important as a factor in popular education than the public school. For a surprising number the daily jour- nals furnish the only intellectual stimulus with which they are acquainted. For them all the genius of Greece and Rome and modern Europe has labored in vain. The year one of the world for them is, circa, A. D. 1900. So many people seem to have lost sight of the fact that from the very circumstances of its preparation a modern newspaper cannot amount to anything as a liter- ary production, but is properly only a convenient method of placarding current intelligence. There- fore, the common satisfaction exhibited over huge Sunday issues because they will afford a whole day's reading, or several days' reading, thus usurping the proper office of a library, is a melan- choly apparition for the champions of the doc- trine of "the best that has been thought and said in the world." All of this best except an infinitesi- mal quantity, a minute stream which trickles forth as the final contribution of each passing decade (and some decades seem to contribute nothing at all) is on library shelves. Thus until newspapers choose to reprint the best books in THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 43 their columns they can have no standing at all as a substitute for serious reading. And this would be still true, even did their pages represent the labor of intelligent, informed and gifted men, (which now they scarcely ever do), because no one could write so rapidly as is exacted of the pro- ducers of newspapers and do it well; because the newspaper writer is not free to condemn what he knows to be false, if his editor desires mis- statement. And this is especially true in the sphere of criticism and taste. A false tone, a false tendency, is praised or extenuated by a news- paper writer, even while he knows it to be false, because he understands he is paid for writing what he is told to write. He realizes that the alpha of his calling is not to offend the suscepti- bilities of either the ignorant or the learned. But if he cannot avoid offending one or the other, to offend the learned. They will forgive him sooner, and if they do not their enmity is much less ter- rible. In short, his office in life is to make ignor- ance fashionable. It is truly pathetic to observe the current newspaper proprietor's anxiety not to put ignorance and falsity out of counte- ance. Nothing can exceed it in tristfulness unless it be the fashion in which so many learn all that the sun and light of heaven have for them through this very man's daily sinuosities, venalities, hy- pocrisies, ineptitudes. In contemplating all of which one is tempted to wish for some sumptuary enactment in the interest of print paper one could hardly hope to get it moved in the interest of intelligence limit- ing the size of daily journals to eight pages of news and as many additional pages as might be required for advertisers' announcements. Thus the newspaper would be reduced to what it ought 44 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE to be, a bulletin of current events. There never was such a newsful day in the world's turning, that, as news, its occurrences could not be ade- quately chronicled in eight pages of the size com- mon to daily journals. Across the top of the front sheet, also by virtue of enactment, would always appear, in fair characters, some such legend as this: "We beseech our readers to observe that this is merely a bulletin of news, and is in no sense to be considered a literary production, nor to war- rant the bestowing of many minutes upon its con- tents. Most of the items herein contained are either of no importance, or disgraceful and should not have appeared at all, or through the exigencies of mercantile survival have been either wholly manufactured or tampered with. Consequently, we earnestly advise any one who has more than an instant of time for reading, to apply himself to some worthy book/* But as this sumptuary enactment may appear a little Utopian in the present state of our emer- gence, one hastens back to undisputed practica- bilities. When a population, then, seems deter- mined to receive all its light from newspapers, the thought suggests itself, Is it possible for us to get on without improving those newspapers! It is a tradition of daily journalism in America how great and salutary was the influence, within the fra- ternity, of one publication, the New York Sun in its good days when under the direction of Charles Dana. Taking the hint from this cir- cumstance, perhaps the establishment of half a dozen daily journals in cities so selected as to geographically cover the country might afford just so many norms of what a newspaper ought to be. Such journals should bask in the rose THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 45 light and warmth of a government subvention. Thus miraculously freed from a slavish depend- ence upon the good will of advertisers, the bane and death warrant of contemporary journalism, these publications could make an honest effort to see things in the light of reason. Instead of being, as at present, less than the meanest subscriber, (for they fear to offend his preconceptions ever so slightly) they would be above the sum total of readers, an indispensable condition for pos- sessing any value at all, from the standpoint of the intelligence. No longer canting approvers of con- ventional sophisms, venal propagators of a mean habit of thought, they might civilly take their place as a respectable convenience. A newspaper can never be more. 46 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE CHAPTER VI AN INJURIOUS CONCEPTION OF THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE There appears to be in current democracy a dis- position to contract the sphere of the state's laud- able activities, to limit it within strictly utilitarian bounds. One would fancy that when the people got power into their own hands they would not rest content with having only a measure of their necessities satisfied but would ask their ministers to assume all of the functions essential to a full, attractive and adequate national existence. Where the powers of government are so obviously but a mere piece of machinery for the execution of the will of the people as they are in a modern democracy, this non-participation of the state in a nation's intellectual concerns must, it seems, rest upon a fundamental misconception of most serious character. What else can it be taken to indicate but that people's ideal of satisfactory political administration is an instrumentality concerned only with securing to them the highest attainable degree of material well being. They appear to have conceived a government responsible for securing a due observance of statutes, for for- warding the interests of property and trade within a commonwealth, and extending them abroad, for developing such common conveniences as will contribute to the ease, comfort or financial profit of the people at large, but as scarcely remotely concerned with the intellectual prosperousness of its citizens. This matter is left to the individual. Whether it is thought that intellectual culture is too unimportant to freight the ship of state, or whether, like religion, it is considered a subject THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 47 of too much delicacy to permit of interference with individual conscience, or whether it is believed the state could not lend effective assistance in such a juncture, the fact remains, that one of the most powerful forces for the humanization and happiness of society is left quite out of any calculation of the public good. The posture of the case seems to indicate that there is a hesitancy in the popular mind about the rationale of the question a suspicion that there may be two or several bests, or that what is best at one time may not be at another, or that what each individual likes is the best for him, and so forth. The clear doctrine that there is only one best, and that the united consent of mankind in the long run has the gift of infallibility in seizing this best, seems still to require much preaching among the children of modern democracy. But while any such prejudices continue to exist, it may be of service to emphasize the fact that in our proposals for admitting to more prominence amongst us the visible works of culture, we urged the setting apart from the central din and tempest of state machinery our two suggested depart- ments of Education and Fine Arts. If people in general could be brought to consider them some- thing off by themselves, something beyond the sphere of depredation of the practical politician, indeed, even something minor, if that would tend to preserve their integrity, one might be well satisfied. This would be in keeping with the fact that their administration was entrusted to a minority, not in contravention of, but as a refinement of application of the republican for- mula, and save the busy man and the thought- less man the necessity of tormenting themselves 48 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE as to whether they were right or wrong, of corn- ing to decisions in a province a little outside the course of their studies. In short, it is just because there exists this con- fusion in the public mind as to the propriety of the state's interference in the interests of culture that the two proposed departments are apt to be so helpful to the man who is not a specialist. They will remove all necessity of his acting but once, i. e., in assenting to their establishment. This done, their function will be to afford those who have the capacity, the means of judging and en- joying if they be prepared, or of study and light if their opportunities have been less than was desirable. And even those who seem to be born with no capacity for delighting in beauty, harmo- niousness, serenity, elevation, perspective, will be the better for these departments, for they cannot avoid having it thrust upon them that their world is not the fairest goal which humanity proposes to itself, but an inferior resting inadequate to many of the demands of the human spirit, and whose unhappy destiny is to be ever really losing the day even while it seems to triumph. It is one of the sorrowful facts of life that whatever, involving any outlay in money, is rare or fine, cannot stand of itself, and whatever in like circumstances is commonplace, hideous or base, flourishes like the proverbial bay tree. Com- panies of players devoting their talents exclu- sively to the production of masterpieces soon find themselves in difficulties; the maintenance of a collection of statuary like that in the Louvre re- quires government aid, while a waxworks exhi- bition, a chamber of horrors, has within it that which immortalizes. Thus it falls out that those whose tastes are unformed or low need never be THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 49 at a loss for suitable entertainment and stimulus. No one need trouble himself about looking out for their satisfactions. They will be taken care of forever they will take care of themselves they are Commerce. But when one has chosen and followed reso- lutely for a long time what is elevated, noble, uncommon, he is apt, under popular governments, to find that he has, so to speak, disposed of his birthright. He can no longer receive pleasure from what suffices for the majority of his coun- trymen, he can no longer enjoy what he was born to; he can no longer enjoy what he can get, and there is no means of getting what he could enjoy. If people in general knew what a real addiction and in the present posture of things, inconvenience an addiction to choiceness is, if they could con- ceive of it freed from the shadow and suspicion of affectation, as it frequently exists, doubtless they would be more patient with the complaint of the minority that it, as well as the victorious ma- jority, should be afforded means of gratifying in- tellectual needs. While there might at first sight seem some injustice (according to the strict republican for- mula) in asking all of the people to contribute to the maintenance of institutions which only a re- stricted number would be likely to use or enjoy, this is more specious than actual. To illustrate from analogy. People are taxed for the care and improvement of harbors and waterways, and not with special regard to a vicinity benefited, but all Americans pay for such public works thousands of miles from their homes and in places of which they perhaps have never even heard the names. But the opportunities thus created are open to all, are at least indirectly beneficial to all, and, if per- 50 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE chance an individual has an insuperable repug- nance to navigation, he, as the lawyers say, "will not be heard to complain." Again, every one assists in the support of our state universities, and yet how many never avail themselves of their benefits. One hears no complaint on this score that the universities are an unfair burden or a kind of class privilege. The obscurest is free to attend if he chooses, and the advantages of having the means of higher education close at hand are thought to justify the taxation for their support of thousands who will never employ them. In this latter instance the injustice, if injustice could be supposed, might be even more keenly felt ; for, being excluded in one significant moment at the threshold of life, there is never afterwards any redress. Once the swift years of youth are past, in the ordinary course, the doors of the university are closed to one forever. For thousands, severity of fortune has left no opportunity in its proper season, and when, if so be, early struggles issue in altered circumstances, the improvement has come too late. But in the halls of such happy lyceums as we propose the enquirer will, indeed, never be too old to learn. Demanding no abstention from necessary avocation, accommodating themselves happily to his hours of freedom, there they would stand forever, invitations in sculptured marble to sooner or later tease his curiosity into investiga- tion, and then by the power of visible state and beauty charm his rough nature to a rarer love for that which is perfect though susceptible of being only felt or conceived. In the towns and cities of the middle ages men commonly lived in what we would call little more than huts, all except a handful, but they had THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 51 one consuming passion, their cathedral must be their glory. And so they created a single build- ing as great and beautiful as it was given to hand and brain to rear. Left, each to his own re- sources, scarcely any among them might command the least pretentious abode, and so they combined their goods and their energies and ever afterwards all lived in the shadow of a Parthenon. And the happiness of the middle age, and the greatness of the middle age is the history of that cathedral and the love of beauty and order and nobleness and strength which it wrought in the hearts of those who lived within sight of its towers. The day is gone for us to combine in the rais- ing of cathedrals. But there is still the oppor- tunity to unite in the rearing of two or three noble public buildings in every considerable city, to be devoted to the purposes of art. Such structures must be splendid in dimension and as handsomely wrought as we can fashion them. No considera- tions of cost should deter us. If it be deemed expedient, even let successive generations be called upon to bear a share of this burden. They will pay it cheerfully and thank us for having been born amidst the monuments of ancestors so enlightened. Such repositories and temples of art, though variously distributed, would in our proposed plan, be under the control and supervision of an arm of the general government the Department of Fine Arts. All expense, both in their erection and maintenance, would, likewise, be borne by the country at large. A tax for this purpose might be imposed upon incomes beyond a certain aggre- gate or the general taxes so apportioned as to include the necessary funds. There might be two classes of such public buildings, first and second. 52 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE The first class, on a somewhat ampler scale than the other, would be provided for cities of over five hundred thousand inhabitants. When a place rose to such dignity and population it would be the business of this department to erect in that municipality a state library, a state theatre, and a state gallery of art. The proceeding would much resemble what now takes place when a city de- sires a central postoffice building. Designs for these structures would be com- petitive and of course all the world would be desired to compete. Suggestions from Mr. Bubb would not come more highly recommended than from others merely because Mr. Bubb was an ornament of the local art or architectural horizon and "had a stake in the country," and, moreover, Mr. Bubb's host of friends were in favor of "home industries." As for Mr. Bubb or Mr. Bubb's local confreres exclusively being allowed to enter the lists, such a proceeding would not be even dreamed of. Democracy has been far too deeply injured already by this kind of patriotism. Instead, those in authority would never tire of explaining to Mr. Bubb's friends that an industry is an indus- try, and an art is an art, and begging them not to confuse the two, and cautiously letting them into the secret that if an Italian or a Frenchman or a Senegambian could design a more beautiful or worthy building than any one else they could get track of, all that was wanted was to know his address. Then, besides filling this library with the best that had been thought and said in the world, and the art gallery with the best carbon photographs of the most celebrated statues and paintings and other monuments of art that had been made in the world, and as choice a collection of originals THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 53 as could be had for reasonable outlay, the De- partment of Fine Arts would train for each of its theatres an orchestra for serious music and a com- pany of players. Besides these, it would keep in its service several troupes of opera singers which should at convenient seasons appear successively at its different theatres of both classes. It must be superfluous to hint what a discriminating and jealous eye the department would keep on the scores these musicians rendered, the dramas these actors performed, and the operas these singers made vocal. And then the manner in which its artists should acquit themselves of their various tasks! What scholarly understanding of the work they had to do, what refinement of feeling, what sympathy, what sensibility to the precious heritage bequeathed to us by genius! And to the living author how splendid a reward for the long appren- ticeship of his talents to excellence, that his pro- duction should be included in the permanent art resources of so elegant an institution. At present the almost total absence of such public memorials of society's interest in the beau- tiful, true and abiding must strike foreigners visit- ing our country as one of the gravest shortcom- ings of democratic dominion. For our part, we would like to fancy that the common titles these blessings go by in the old world, such as, the Royal Library, the Royal Gallery, the King's Theatre, may have inspired in the children of those just come out of bondage a kind of panic, unreasoning night-fear of art foundations which the high noon of freedom will soon dissipate and clear away. We would cling to anything rather than believe that Americans have deliberately de- cided these things are unnecessary. In the first case, to vary our metaphor, the tares and brambles 54 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE might be smoothed away; in the latter, the ster- ility of the soil would defy the husbandman for- ever. Let us rather imagine that the possessors of this fair and boundless land of America, when the thrill and hurry of sounding its inexhaustible nat- ural resources shall have a little abated, and the hot blood of such pacific and enthralling con- quest is succeeded by the genial glow of a meri- dian bountifully supplied with all the delights of the body let us believe that these ambitious populations will then turn with an equal ardor to satisfying the demands of the soul. Let us be- lieve that we shall then see rise in a score of opu- lent cities testimonies in granite and marble that a free and happy commonwealth can confer upon genius and learning all of the lustre which they ever extorted from royal master. THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 55 CHAPTER VII. OTHER THINGS WE FORGOT In surveying the work of the men who first charted our course of empire one is apt to be a little astonished at the absence of any provision for the fostering of art by the strong arm of the state. How so admirable a polity could have been conceived, and yet one of the most obvious agencies for rendering a civilization distinguished and illustrious overlooked, is perhaps only to be reasonably accounted for by the fever and inse- curity of those troubled times. A programme for civil society concerted in fugi- tive assemblies while a price rested upon the heads of its movers has every claim to our indulgence even though we may believe an essential to its ultimate serviceableness was omitted. Doubtless the intrepid innovators to whom we all owe so much felt that if they did but make a beginning in securing to mankind those untold blessings which ought to flow from putting off forever the iron collar, successive generations of Americans would rejoice in a destiny which gave into their hands the pleasant task of chiseling with tracery the plain-cut granite of their forefathers. The dawn of our political history was a time of struggle atvay from things almost as much as towards them, away from kings, away from nobles, away from that strange alliance of the church with the state. And in this anxiety to be relieved of what they felt unwise restraints upon the body and the spirit, our early legislators might be pardoned for falling into distrust of almost all European preconceptions. Those unsettled days 56 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE were evidently not favorable to nice discrimina- tion and what had made Europe splendid was very apt to be lumped with what had troubled her ease for centuries. The noble enthusiasm for befriending the struggles and triumph of genius which in the old world has so distinguished those in authority from the times of Pericles and Augustus to our own age, seems to have been one of the good things which slipped our minds dur- ing the slight stiffness of that powder-choked good-bye. It being human nature, it seems, to revere some- body, and a regard for the man of talent or genius having somehow unaccountably got lost in our hasty withdrawal from transatlantic influences, as has been said, it was not long before we ten- dered our homage to a new and showy, if less imposing candidate the man of wealth. It is strange how in a democracy this worship should have proved so attractive. Perhaps it but indi- cates the deep inextinguishable craving in the human heart for distinction, and having parted with the observances and tradition which might have furnished us with intellectual and nobler re- sources for its satisfaction, we were left with no alternative but to fall down before idols of silver and gold. But really how much more precious to a com- monwealth is a man of genius than a man of wealth. How much more the man of genius can give us than the richest nabob. It is said that America has at the present time at least one citi- zen possessed of a billion dollars. Let us suppose that, struck like Herostratos with the idea of per- petuating his name by some strange extravagance, he should decide to distribute his treasure equally amongst his countrymen. There would be the THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 57 sum of ten dollars for each. How slight then are the resources of the most princely fortune. But the proprietor whose riches are in ideas undergoes no such shrinkage in the distribution of his wealth. He can divide his possessions between us and give every one of us all he has nay, not only can he thus befriend his own countrymen but all the world may equally take of his bounty. Even posterity, those countless millions yet unborn, are alike co-heirs. The author of a great book, the painter of a great picture, the creator of lofty harmonies, the humanizer of our sentiments, the improver of our manners, discoverers in the liberal and useful sciences, inventors in the mechanic arts all con- fer upon the state not only material blessings but a renown above any calculation in terms of the market place. Yet frequently such men, so val- uable to others and to society at large, strange as it must seem, find the providing of the bare necessaries of life interfere sharply with the nobler work which they came into the world to do. Often many of their best years are thus consumed in harassing struggle for little more than food and drink. They do not do all that they might have done and it is probable that much which they do accomplish is the worse for it, less finished or less gracious, because of these long-continued priva- tions. Thus is their youth and maturity oppres- sively spent, and the reward of some of the most striking services to society, when it does arrive, often comes merely in the isolated commendation of the judicious, rather than any improvement of worldly circumstance ; or, as not infrequently hap- pens, any recompense at all is withheld until death remove them from the frowning scene of their labors and tardy fame lay upon the cold sepulchre 58 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE the wreath of immortality. How many rare spirits whose gift, though not commercially profit- able, was none the less precious for mankind, have spent the last years of their lives, not only without honor or applause, but in actual want! There are some things the state cannot do for poet or sage. It cannot much hasten the slow, toilsome, baffled effort of humanity to seize upon truth or beauty ahead of its years to appropriate to itself additions of light which will be the com- mon property of a succeeding age. But there is one thing it can do, and that is to be sure that at least a mere money reward is received by those whose labors and talents have in any marked degree merited the recognition of their countrymen. And to this end what is needed is some arrangement whereby a permanent fund should be at the dis- posal of government to provide suitable rewards and pensions for those who, in letters, the arts of design, scientific research, mechanical invention, have made any notable contribution to the sum of their country's knowledge, wisdom, taste, or po- liteness. And in order to employ usefully and beneficently means privately bequeathed for the advancement of learning, which we now so often see left under fantastic or ill chosen conditions, let the managers of this fund be empowered to re- ceive legacies from all lovers of light who may wish to remember it in the disposition of their property. Doubtless in some quarters proposals of this character will meet with no great favor. With many the sole test, alas, of merit, the sole appeal to their sympathies, is a favorable appearance in the day-book and ledger. Any art or any sci- ence, any work, or any aim which is not self-sup- porting has upon it the visible marks of the father THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 59 of iniquities. Such people will be apt to cry out against what they term literary paternalism and exclaim that any poor man who benefits society, unless it is previously willing to pay for the bene- fits, is violating a first principle of sound morals and commerce and that instead of rewards, pun- ishment is what he is likely to get, and justly, for thus presuming to interfere with heaven's highest law, the law of supply and demand. To these conscientious objectors we can only reply that we originate nothing; that all states which have greatly told in history have found it to their advantage to encourage a love and quick- ness for national grandeur in the domain of the arts and sciences, of intelligence, flexibility, lucidity; and that this is one of the means which they have profitably employed. There is abun- dant testimony that in proportion as a people is highly civilized, sensitive to obligations, not only does it recognize a peculiar propriety in recom- pensing, either by occasional grants or periodic allowances, those who have distinguished them- selves in its interest, but that wherever the things of the mind are thus esteemed by the state they are apt, even for the meanest of its citizens, to as- sume an importance and reality which is of the highest value to culture. And this we freely own is the end of all our speculations, to set up the in- telligence, and the things of the intelligence, in high estimation and to surround the pursuit and diffusion of them with such adjuvant circum- stances of material pomp and power that their mere externals shall excite the enthusiasm and curiosity of mankind. Rights in literary property and other produc- tions of taste and genius, have to some extent al- ready received attention. But here, too, we may 60 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE profitably borrow a hint from the temper of the most enlightened Europeans. The term of our copyright is too brief. Were it fixed at one hun- dred years instead of fifty-six, it would at least have the advantage that no author should outlive his proprietorship. Often the more valuable a literary work is, the slower will be its progress in the world, so it may be just beginning to gain that universal currency which its merits have finally assured to it when the present period of copy- right protection expires. The years during which it was confined for an audience to the small circle of the judicious, years during which for the most part it reposed on booksellers' top or back shelves, its thin years, are amply protected, but when at length the harvest approaches, the author's right of property in it may almost have disappeared. Even if a writer should not live long enough to himself gather in the pittance of his industry and genius, let us at least arrange it so that his children or legatees may. And this brings us to a consideration which at present, we own, infringes on the speculative. Should an author be permitted to dispose of his copyright at all during his lifetime? Publishers perhaps will be disposed to murmur at the incon- venience occasioned by constituting an author's right in his productions a kind of privilege some- thing like an entail abroad ; and doubtless lawyers clever enough to defeat any benefits which he might thereby experience, will be found, but we must remember that an author who is at all worthy of our endeavors has really two callings to mind in place of the single one which engages most of the rest of us, he must create beautiful things and he must get money. So let us not be too nice about stretching a point for him, should it prove THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 61 that his welfare would be forwarded by such ex- pansive indulgence. That a universal international copyright under- standing should have so long troubled men's minds to arrive at is one of the wonders of a push- ing age. One would as soon have expected in- telligent societies to be still waiting for the Berne convention. To have writers and publishers shak- ing their ink-stained fists at each other from op- posite shores of the Atlantic was a downright scandal in the republic of letters. No man, reader or publisher, was ever yet injured by royalties paid to authors and the contention that he was is partial and interested pleading. The attitude, then, of a nation in abetting its meaner sort of printers and chapmen in thus pilfering from other nations, is something that the new democracy should be too high-spirited to tolerate. Doubtless many other wise and gracious serv- ices to art and learning might be appropriately undertaken by the state, and in time will be. Only democracy must first become wise in its gener- ation and see and seize truths in this province which, long ago perceived by monarchy and even by tyranny, gave them and still give them a kind of dangerous fascination even for the children of popular rule. For, and it cannot be repeated too often, the human spirit loves distinction, and goes counter to its deepest instincts when it rests in the vulgar and commonplace, and a na- tion, although perhaps unconscious of its malady, may see the day when this neglect of the advice of the philosophers and sages shall sap the foun- dation of empire, and men exclaim, despite a thousand visible blessings, "Away with all this ennui, let us return to the Golden Age!" 62 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE CHAPTER VIII PATRONS OF ART AND LETTERS The introduction of some adequate machinery, whatever it be, into the wisdom of single-class democracy some saving instrumentality which will recognize that man does not live by bread alone this grace will come finally, but it will not come soon. And the operation of the state in the concerns of culture the only strong, constant, adequate action possible in a modern community will perhaps be postponed indefinitely unless lovers of light exert themselves earnestly, even passion- ately, in its behalf. I suppose the first thing to be done in getting people in general to see that the state is important to culture, and culture is important to the state, is to get them to see that culture is important at all. It is becoming more and more the custom in America for men of wealth when they withdraw from active business to cast about for some means of being serviceable in a large way to the society in which they live. This inclination is a most hopeful sign of our progress in ripeness and savor. Even young heirs often are no longer content to derive all their fame from the mere presence of so much gold, like a Treasury building, but are anxious to transmute a part of it into active benevolence. Doubtless the future of culture in Ainerica rests largely in the hands of such persons. They are in a position of great advantage for bringing their countrymen to see, first that culture is important, THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 63 and then that its demands in their fullness cannot be successfully met by any power less than the state. In the doing of which they are serving their own purposes as certainly as those of the humblest citizens, because even the possession of a colossal fortune will not make possible to them certain pleasures, until a great many other people are also bent upon enjoying them. They will have no fine theatres nor intelligent, cultivated players until there are audiences for them. They will not experience that reflected elegance and taste in general society which flows from acade- mies and learned associations until academies are regarded otherwise than as the extravagance of a few infatuated visionaries. In other words, with all his wealth, and its power, the rich man is not sufficient for himself. That is to say, his happiness is not rounded in the existence of a specimen of culture, but in an atmosphere of culture. Even though we place no reprehension in the self- ishness of it, his private playhouse with himself alone for an auditory is not enough. He will never receive the full measure of the beauty and comeliness of fine things until he has others to enjoy them with him, until there is a diffused sym- pathy for them. So much for the enlightened rich man ; as for the enlightened poor man, he of course cannot have even the bare mechanics of fine things he cannot have his masterpieces even in an empty theatre. He can have only desolation fretting in the wilderness. And by the mere alchemy of numbers he might possess what even the rich man cannot buy! Thus the first task of the enlightened rich man and the enlightened poor man is to make other enlightened men, both rich and poor, until they 64 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE are in such numerical respectability as to demand something for themselves. Individuals are almost nothing, but a calm, determined, clear-thinking minority is always a thorn to the most intrenched and victorious majority. It wears down, (and sooner than we would imagine), the fluctuating, passionate, unreasoned opposition of its enemies, until at length in very impatience they are quite willing to treat with it. When the people of culture have got this steady, serene, indomitable minority, where now we find only despairing individuals, then they may proceed to attack the final citadel, the participa- tion of the state. In working for the minority which is to do so much for us, the enlightened rich man must act first. The enlightened poor man will support him and strengthen his arm by ap- plause, gratitude, adhesion and such small change as commonly falls to the lot of a necessitous philosopher. The curtain rises, then, on a few resolute, en- lightened rich men. In olden and less diplomatic times they would have put on bucklers, sallied forth and brought people either to culture or perdition. But we have changed all that. The day for commanding populations to do things is gone forever. Americans believe that in a really polite and high-spirited age when you address the people, you asfc them to do things. So these seven new champions of Christendom, in place of battle axes, are going to employ sheets of paper, and in lieu of battering rams, sextuple printing presses. In their great elucidative drama of preparing the way they purpose issuing books and periodical publications. They will publish a monthly review. This, doubtless contrary to the reader's expecta- THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 65 tion, will not be crammed from cover to cover with the one text. To the eye of the ordinary seeker for the delights of pavement literature it will present no great difference in outward ap- pearance or variety of contents from the common treasures pf newsmen's stalls, but somewhere in every number of this magazine will lurk the poi- soned pill, the propagandist article, the reason for the publication's existence disguised perhaps under a hundred shapes, but always there. Of course nothing will appear in the periodical which is not as worthy and artistic as can reasonably be procured, but only one sermon to an issue. The final effect of this publication is apt to be in its perpetualness. Men may come and men may go, but it will appear forever. Ancients shall mum- ble over it who as children spelled their letters from its pleasant type, for it will be subsidized, and unlike mortal journals, the only readers it must have are proofreaders. Other perusers it will always welcome in its genial, serene way, but their defection, if such be, will touch it not. Cir- culation figures, that Plutonian arithmetic which gnaws at the heart of self-propelled gazettes will be to it but a pale jest to lighten a winter after- noon. The price to the public will be as low as possible, ten cents, perhaps, and the distribution general, so that there will be no considerable town or free library where it is not obtainable. The seven new champions of Christendom will also publish freshly written books. And this chiefly because people will not read the old books. In stating the case for culture there is almost nothing new to be said, there is scarcely a new way left to say what is old. If people would go to a few of the Greeks and Romans and some half score of the moderns they would have everything 66 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE there is to be written, and written better than it can be at present. But almost nobody but scho- lars will go to these sources, and of course the seven new champions have on their side ajl scholars already (not to mention that "majorities" are not gained with scholars.) Readers will not go to the masters, not because these authors are difficult or they dislike them, but because they are not new authors. Well, the seven champions are Fabians, and are disposed to make the best of this perversity of contemporary populations, and so they will endeavor to have the case for culture often re-stated by living writers, since the present punishment for literary immortality is not to be read. The supporters of these books and periodicals will, however, be quite fixed and stern on one point with all of those who supply their presses. And that is, that invective, and angry declama- tion, and all varieties of violently insisting must be forborne. Moreover, from Plato to Ruskin, it has been the custom to testify to a sense of dis- appointment and chagrin that proposals were not more eagerly taken up and acted upon by the multitude. This pensive attitude will be elegantly avoided by our present crusaders because they will not set their hearts upon getting anything at all done. If they can but induce a few in their generation to examine and reflect upon the grounds for doing the things which they advocate, they will feel that a great gain has been accom- plished. They will be persuaded that if a large number of the people would familiarize them- selves with noble and adequate ideal conditions, even if they should never set on foot any actual reformations, nothing but good could come of it. They will have faith that if men carry about in THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 67 their fancies a fair and lofty ideal civilization, what they do in the world of the actual will be the better for it. Our protagonists will, at first at any rate, not be anxious to have their canvases very detailed and minute, profiting by the fate of the social efforts of two or three distinguished English writers of the last century, who, laying down a programme of reconstruction detailed to the last jot and tittle, seem to fail to excite the interest and sympathy of succeeding generations as deeply as they might had they contented themselves with merely trying to infuse the spirit of progress and amelioration. Readers coming afterwards want patience for all this fancifulness, this exactness and concreteness of application, or the proposals become old fash- ioned, or prove illusory, whereas, the noble and elevated ideas which underlie and prompted them, remain fresh and attractive always. This avoid- ance, as far as may be, of all immediacy, of all petulance, and scolding, and the common uneasi- ness of *'a man with a mission," will, doubtless, bring them round to their object by the shortest way, for nothing is more Greek (which is to say, in intellectual matters, finally fruitful) than an attitude of serenity, elevation and detachment. Of course it may be objected that this habit of mind is in itself, in our modern world, almost genius, but it will at least be the ideal of our con- templated propaganda. Scarcely anything is more injurious, particularly to a man of great lit- erary abilities, than the fear that if he does not get a thing done in his own lifetime he will not get it done at all. In a concern so delicate and difficult as the practical works of intellectual cul- ture this anxiety is apt to be well-nigh fatal. Con- sequently, if for a long time the seven new cham- 68 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE pions (or seventy if may be) do not get anything done they will not be disconcerted, only if they may get a little thought. They will endeavor, as far as possible, to confine their activities to the things of the mind, freely owning that they have no programme to offer as to material well-being, or increase of it, in this commonwealth, the wis- dom of its governors in such respect having been tested for upwards of a hundred years, the work of their hands growing more imposing every day ; but insisting patiently that they have suggestions to make for the intellectual well-being of this com- monwealth which under present influences, like- wise in operation for upwards of a hundred years, has been growing shabbier every day. Thus standing against false tendency, which heretofore has had the field so largely to itself, if for a while no more is accomplished than to promote a toler- ance in the population for views opposed to its own, something will have been done. For Amer- icans have been fast becoming the most thin- skinned race of the earth and soon would have no skin at all, the full tragedy of which can per- haps only be apparent to the medical fraternity. Having presented to intending patrons of art and letters this new field, in which some of them could, perhaps, be more conspicuously useful to culture than by the common method of endowing private institutions of learning and research, our final emphasis with respect to means is not on their ambitiousness nor extent of distribution, but on their permanence. If such publications are not from the beginning guaranteed a long life inde- pendent of the exigencies of commercial survival, then, perhaps, nothing is to be gained by attempt- ing them. Not the Maecenas who is impatient for any sudden practical results, is called to this labor, THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 69 but he who can drop his acorn quietly, proceed on his way rejoicing, content in the knowledge, that whether he contributes to any practical changes or not, he will at least supply an elegant entertainment to some hundreds or thousands of cultivated men and women, who in their turn will scarcely be apt to leave unsung the praises of their benefactor, nor his memory without honor. 70 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE CHAPTER IX THE ETERNAL IN TIME The science of the beautiful and appropriate, contrary to what appears to be the impression of many at the present time, may scarcely be said to be a progressive science. Though not quite fixed and stationary, such as are some of the depart- ments of mathematics, for instance, yet indeed, its laws, boundaries and objectives may be regarded, for practical purposes, as settled, immutable, definitive. And, doubtless, a great deal of the popular disinclination to seek after and be governed by the conclusions of the past in this province, springs from just the persuasion that what is called taste, and a right and adequate conception of the appro- priate and distinguished in the fine arts, in social fife and manners, in the individual's moral and intellectual attitude toward himself, are matters of uncertain stability, perhaps as susceptible of progress and refinement as is applied chemistry or mechanical invention. But, in truth, the case is far otherwise. Rela- tively early in our present society's development (if we conceive this period of development as co- incident with the beginnings of credible history) it was given to mankind to arrive at deductions and productions in the province of the beautiful, harmonious and amiable, which have not lost their authority nor pre-eminence to the present day, and which, if one may judge at all of anything in the course of human destiny, will never be dethroned from the place which they have occupied for more than two thousand years. Perhaps it is not THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 71 too much to say that at this happy epoch the race reached a degree of perfection in some capital aspects of the noble, elevated and rare, which it has not only been unable to realize since, but which it will never again equal, surely never ex- ceed. That is to say, man in that age succeeded in fixing for himself the limits of what is possible to the species. Thus it is apparent that if one follows anything else but what was valued by the best minds of such an epoch, he is following something /ess, and that he cannot be doing otherwise than fol- lowing something less. Consequently it is diffi- cult to lay too much stress on the significance that the aesthetic conclusions of classical antiquity must always have for succeeding ages. It is, then, profound as they are, and perfect as they are, not the individual productions in themselves, even of the noblest minds of Greece and Rome, which are of the supremest value to us, it is the intel- lectual atmosphere from which they sprang, which made them possible. In the arts of design, noth- ing could, perhaps, be more elegant and flawless than the Hermes of Praxiteles or the Parthenon, and yet it is not this visible perfection of line and proportion which renders these productions so precious a heritage of the race, it is the intellectual and spiritual aroma out of which they grew, and which they possess the unique virtue of transmit- ting in some degree to posterity. Similarly the history of Thucydides, the Republic of Plato, a drama of Sophocles, are not to be finally regarded as a history, a sociological treatise, a play, they are to be valued as supreme art works which keep alive and in the world a largeness of view, grandeur of conception, sensitiveness to beauty and perfection of form, which can be kept in 72 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE the world by no other means, and which, once out of the world, leave the world rather a sorry humdrum place, such as it was before they came into it. It is perhaps a tribute to the imperativeness there is deep in human nature for beauty and an escape from the commonplace, that once a society has submitted itself to the refinements of civiliza- tion, its first intellectual impulse is thus towards the development and expansion of those ideas of order, proportion and harmony, in which the spirit finds its peculiar satisfaction, and among the vis- ible fruits of which are the arts of design, music, and poetry. Whether the fact was that man could not well rest, or direct his energies into other paths until he had first given expression in this province to his matured powers, or whether the nature of the subject lends itself to consummate- ness in a shorter space of time, at any rate, what happened has left the theory of the beautiful and appropriate upon more secure foundations than perhaps any other important subject of philosoph- ical inquiry. In this connection it is interesting to observe how much more man's views as to what is just or unjust, moral or immoral, are subject to change, than his conviction as to what is beautiful, dis- tinguished, harmonious, or hideous, common- place, banal. Aristotle's distinctions as to pas- times and pursuits which are elegant or 'liberal'* and others which, though useful, are illiberal, in the main holds good today after more than two thousand years of social experiment, while the institution of human slavery which seemed a ne- cessity to the most enlightened of the Athenians, has long since excited the indignation of civilized societies. Thus, outside of the exact sciences, in THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 73 perhaps no department of human endeavor, has it seemed possible to arrive at such a degree of final- ity as in the province of the beautiful, harmo- nious, and appropriate. Even in religion, that supremely important effort of humanity to reach definite and immutable conclusions as to super- natural aspects of its duties, obligations and des- tiny, it appears that nothing like the same degree of unanimity has been attainable. And in theo- ries of civil polity we have similar illustration. How long has the world debated whether prop- erty is best held in individual ownership or in common? and the question is not yet settled. But what, in the fine arts, was beautiful and har- monious to the oligarch in the age of Pericles, is beautiful to the communist today. And not only classic antiquity, but the pol- ished portions of medieval and modern Europe, have for centuries contributed a slow, premedi- tated affirmation to those ideas of grace, pro- priety, elegance, distinction, which have so at- tracted enlightened societies everywhere. The chivalry of the Middle Ages seems to have been in its essence a widespread and picturesque effort to bring back into the lives of men the lofty and urbane conceptions which in the tur- moil and confusion incident to the fall of Roman civilization had quite disappeared from active so- ciety. Culture shared the fate of imperial do- minion, but the human spirit could not for long remain satisfied with the merely vegetative ex- istence which it was invited to embrace. A world without poetry, for distinction is the ap- plication of poetry to the ordinary concerns of human experience, was found to defy the powers of endurance of any but a savage. Wanting the sure taste and sense of proportion which charac- 74 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE terized their classical ancestors, the inventors of chivalry were, it is true, led into a thousand ex- travagances, but their very appearance among men serves as a testimony that the splendid, the elevated, and rare, though they lose dominion for a time, will ever retake their conquests when society emerges from the wild state. It is well, then, to remember in these days of unsettlement and progress in so many of the physical and social sciences and in the mechanic arts, that we possess in the enunciation of the beautiful, graceful and harmonious, conclusions, so to speak, abiding and eternal. And it should be a source of peculiar gratification to those who desire to see culture and its works spread and prevail, that this is so. Surely it is the happiness of society that in an agency so immediately con- cerned with relieving our daily existence, with making it full and interesting, there is presented to the seeker after a humane life so much that has been finally determined, so little that is tenta- tive or provisional. Followers of culture will, in the nature of things, be friends to the past. They will resolutely com- bat the popular temptation in times so largely and radiantly given over to a general confusion of ideas, that the past must be in the wrong merely because it is the past. They will be disposed to expostulate with the champions of an exclusive modernity and to exclaim that if the physical sciences, economics, politics, the mechanic arts, and even religion, seem all laid at the feet of the deity of revolution, surely these might be thought enough to satisfy its busy apostles and stay their restless hands in a field quite incapable of im- provement from hasty and undisciplined genius. Believing, as they do, that other ages have be- THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 75 queathed to us an imperishable good in a province so important and so essential to man's happiness, they will be ever jealous to preserve such labors, enhance their reputation, and extend the range of their operation. Innovators will fare but poorly at their hands. In America, for instance, they will bend all their energies to prevent the polite going upon record as unreservedly endorsing the present level of taste. They will stoutly maintain that it should be with the greatest hesitation that we declare the essays of our present men of genius, Mr. Cohan's dramatic productions, for instance, more capable of affording intellectual satisfaction than those of Sophocles, and the glories of Mr. Budd Fisher's pencil better suited to our apprehensions than those of Raphael's. If successful in influencing us in this, they might, after heated passions on both sides had somewhat subsided, even scan the horizon for some bold and infatuated adventurer capable of promoting a conspiracy against our comfort to the extent of a re-introduction of Sophocles and Raphael. The term re-introduction is employed design- edly because people are apt to tell us that the United States are a new country, that they will mellow in time, and that then intellectual culture will come into its own. But the facts seem to be that instead of acquiring age, the United States are, as time passes, contrary to all hitherto ascer- tained natural laws, acquiring youth are, indeed becoming a newer country every year. They seem to have grown prodigiously newer than they were several generations ago when their chief men of letters were writers such as Washington Irving and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The latter were, in- deed, men somewhat impressed with the debt 76 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE of art and civilization to preceding centuries, and if, relatively speaking, they lived in log cabins, their intellectual environment was of stone and marble, whereas today, Americans appear, physic- ally to occupy abodes of stone and marble, and, intellectually, log cabins. And the log cabins seem in a fair way to shade off to tepees. If then, we in America possessed such friends as we have been supposing, they would, doubt- less, do their best to persuade us that it is a calam- ity to forget that of all man's efforts to arrive at truth and finality, those concerned with estab- lishing the definition of what is eventually grace- ful, appropriate, harmonious, distinguished, ele- gant, both in the beautiful arts and in social life and manners, have been incomparably the most brilliant and successful. That it is a calamity for any civilization to be unacquainted with this truth, or to knowingly disregard it, and through an un- lovely sort of self-assertion go counter to the voice of accumulated centuries. That a society would sadly confuse its terms which should bend itself to the creating of a new, and, necessarily lesser, intellectual world, because it had found itself capable of establishing a brighter mechanical and material, or wood and wire world. In fine, such beneficent antagonists would be apt to represent to us that our present national need, as far as things of the mind are concerned, is not to discover something new, but to discover something old. And that the more we familiarize ourselves with the best that has been already ac- complished, the more will we be impressed with its peculiar excellence and consummateness, until at length we will experience not only a willingness but an anxiety to submit our own wayward judg- ments and performances to those critical touch- THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 77 stones, sublimated of all ages, which have reared splendid and imperishable monuments in what- ever societies they have been earnestly cultivated and sincerely revered. 78 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE CHAPTER X. THE STATE AND RELIGION There are many people who are persuaded of the benefits to the cause of culture which must flow from the strong arm of the state being em- ployed in its behalf, yet who confess a genuine uneasiness in one particular. They apprehend that to extend and exalt the supervisory powers of the central government is to endanger com- plete liberty of religious profession and worship. And, in truth, to judge from some aspects of the question in the past, nay, from what with no great effort we discern going on about us, such fears may not be entirely groundless. But a new philosophy must be born in this matter, doubtless is at the moment being born in this matter. In the first place, every one examin- ing the course of history during the last twenty- five hundred or three thousand years, must be now satisfied that an amicable and genuine sep- aration of Church and State is for the best inter- ests of mankind; is, in truth, imperative. In past ages not only has the state been hampered and embarrassed by the willingness of religions and churches to be at the helm of things in general and in particular, but religion, too, has suffered grievously because of its close connection with the state. On the whole, notwithstanding the vociferation on the other side, it is perhaps not going too far to affirm that in this impracticable alliance, religions and churches have sustained deeper wounds than states. It has been, it is, and it doubtless always will be, an impracticable alliance. The difficulty is not THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 79 quantitative, it is qualitative. The state is a mun* dane institution, subject to all the limitations, inconveniences and passions of things earthly. The state will be ruthless at times, the state will be unjust at times, the state will at times even concede its unrighteousness and yet persist in the accomplishment of its ends. No genuine religion nor honest church can do this. The character of the institution will not tolerate a stooping to the common weaknesses of man, the nature of gov- ernments will. In short, the divine imprint is too deep on true religion to permit of such a partner- ship as that of church and state being a fair or workable arrangement. A church, or the officer of a church, cannot successfully interfere in the secular concerns of a commonwealth without, as the expression is, "meeting competition/' Some of the commonwealth's competitors will be un- scrupulous, a great part of the commonwealth itself will be unscrupulous; therefore, it will be enough to drive an honest church or churchman to distraction to steer a blameless course through such a torrent, and still satisfy anybody, and still be successful. In truth, if the past be any help to us, it seems the part of religion and the church must be ex- clusively directive and advisory, never adminis- trative or executory. In the long run, no matter what religion, or the ministers of religion may think about it, it proves a great mercy to religion to have it so. Scarcely anything can be more discomforting than to observe the efforts of a saint and a brigand to get on amicably under the same roof. Their mutual concessions must be legion, and each concession calls for an added wrench and lays up a new addition of uneasiness. The saint at every turn feels; his soul slipping to 80 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE perdition, while the brigand begins to wonder if even nerves of steel can for long endure in such a casuistical madhouse. Observe the pathos of their situation. Jf the saint will consent to par- ticipate in a slight murder, the brigand will not only fast a certain number of days, but he will impose this fast upon his band. Thus it goes on, both torn, both compromised, both unhappy. It is the old baffling aqueous and oleaginous ex- periment. How difficult has it ever been for even the true religion, when in the secular saddle, to re- frain from being unjustly coercive. And we will gladly give the reader leave to choose as he pleases the particular title of this true religion, without fear of imperiling our position. Some excellent devout man conceives this moral maxim: * 'Truth and reality have an inherent and intrin- sic right to be protected against falsehood and error." Now if, girt with such an engine, even the upright have ever been in the gravest danger of falling into the perpetration of grievous injustice, how must men fare when this weapon nerves the arm of designing villainy? No matter what marvels, no matter what ab- surdities a man or a party of men believe about the Unseen World, it is enough that they but seek to enjoy this belief in peace and not to forcibly impose it upon the rest of society. They may, indeed, endeavor to persuade others to it, but the persuasion must really be persuasion, not veiled coercion. Humanly speaking, the grounds of supernatural data, if one may be allowed the expression, are too little demonstrable to warrant compelling anybody to their acceptance, even were the doctrine of compulsion in general, in more favor than it is. One may have the liveliest THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 8i faith in these matters imaginable, but he must al- ways remember that at the last, it is but faith. And even if we were sure, as we may be, for in- stance, in mathematics, of the truth of what we hold, how can we conceive any decent warrant for imposing it upon others against their wills? If God from the beginning has left faith in Him a matter of free choice, if God will let a man save himself or lose himself, according to his pleasure, can not the propagators of religion rest satisfied in this issue with the divine wisdom and provi- dence? Of course the same rule holds good with regard to irreligion. If I can show no valid divine or human commission to compel men to religion, neither can I show any to compel them to irre- ligion. In fact, if any compelling at all were justi- fiable, the balance would be a little in favor of the religionists, because their programme inclines more toward what the best of humanity, theistic or otherwise, have always thought laudable and praiseworthy, than that of the irreligionists. But in the new philosophy there must be no thought on either side of compelling in matters theological. We must premise that such an idea has gone out of the world; that it escaped some- how beyond the limits of our sphere of gravita- tion, and is bounding and swerving through in- comprehensible space, nevermore to come into collision with any worlds which are inhabited. In the new dispensation which we presuppose, the church will not be allowed to administer secular affairs, and the state will not be permitted to meddle in religious affairs. The state will no more harass the church than it will harass the Water Colour Society. Here and Hereafter will be two distinct subject matters always kept clearly 82 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE apart. Our governors will assume, for all pur- poses of action, that we do not know and cannot know demonstrably what will happen to a man if he contravenes heaven-made laws, but that we can and do know what is going to happen to him if he ignores man-made obligations. But these man-made obligations will be quite careful to con- fine themselves to the knowable and demonstra- ble. Beyond this our functionaries will not trouble themselves. As to what an individual chooses to conceive as his duty to a Superior Power, with that, as long as it does not interfere with good cit- izenship, the state will not remotely concern itself. It will be content with establishing humane, lib- eral, enlightened regulations looking to the con- duct of men here, not their situation hereafter. It will not interest itself, either to approve or dis- countenance an individual's theological specu- lations or beliefs so long as they do not com- promise the action of the state within its proper sphere. Above all, it will not be an avowed enemy to religion. It will, on the contrary, re- spect and revere all honest attempts of men to raise themselves as far as may be above the base- nesses of their common nature, it will cherish genuine piety as its excellent friend and powerful ally, as the bright source and inspiration of almost all in human life and human conduct which lifts man above the animal and the automaton. It will regard true religion and the pretensions of religion as the interpretation of man's existence on this doubtful earth, (with its inevitable dispropor- tionate pains for so many), in contentment, and peace of mind, and grateful obedience to the in- spirations of an Unseen Guide. Warmly will it scorn the petty tyranny of coercing a man's in- tellect in concerns sacred far beyond anything THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 83 with which it has properly to do. Rather, it will take the academic ground of declining to inter- fere in matters, which, real to the eyes of faith, are, in physical formulary, as impalpable as shadows. From the thought of compelling a citizen to profess what he does not believe, it will shrink as from dishonor. How can it be inter- ested whether a man holds or does not hold that for which, scientifically speaking, one can furnish no adequate proof at all? Or, if he might, what warrant could it conceive for excursions into re- gions so far beyond its necessary and legitimate province? A soul of any real enlargement, and the soul of our state, if one may so speak, will be such, must always regard persecution for religious opinions, or coercion in regard to religious opin- ions, or any hag-born meddling in religious concerns, as perhaps the basest and meanest as- pect in which it is possible for human malevolence to exhibit itself. And conversely, as was said be- fore, persecution for no religion will be felt equally as monstrous as persecution for a religion. Believers in religion, in the good time which we like to picture to ourselves, will have more equanimity than perhaps they do now; they will have more confidence in the indestructibility of that which they keep at heart, and which the world at certain moments has seemed willing to do away with. They will have come to realize, that for the sum total of the race, religion has a permanence which is above and beyond the care its professors may employ for it which is, in- deed, something within itself. Never since man has taken account of himself has the human heart been able to long endure without religion. It is, in truth, as fundamentally a part of man's fibre 84 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE as the inevitable lower passions which bear him down. Often, indeed, in moments of intoxica- tion, he would put it away as inconvenient, he would be without it but he cannot. If he de- throne truth, falsehood will take its room, but only for a space, for truth will gradually work about and again stand compelling him with all the force of its legitimacy, power and beauty. Yet even in the interim he will adore something, he will construct some kind of a su- pernatural the one thing he can not do is to endure a spiritual vacuum. As we said, it seems likely that as the world ages, the man of religion will grow calmer. From a conviction born of the ever widening eddy of human experience, he will at length realize that religion always was in the world and that it will never be out of the world. He will be ever more inclined to regard the con- temners of religion with charity and indulgence, as one is led to compassionate even an ungen- erous opponent who is doomed to fail. And in this happy age, men who are not believers will come to see the absurdity and littleness of hound- ing a fellow being "beyond the stars*' so to speak. Intelligent mankind will grow heartily ashamed of intolerance, will shrink from it as something degraded, brutish, illiberal, mortifying. Then in- deed will our earth begin to take on the face of a free and happy landscape. Religionists no longer seeking by force of arms to rivet the iron mask of their particular formularies on the believing wayfarer; and for those preferring it, the pursuit of free-thinking as unhindered as the air they breathe. Truly, nothing is more astonishing to him who is elevated above the mysterious bigotry of creed, than that this ugly and weird phenomenon should THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 85 have been cast for so imposing a part upon the mundane stage. Of all the property which a man might well be left in undisturbed possession of, his property in another world surely may be al- lowed the most obvious. How could an abuse as ferocious as the desire to thwart one's kind in so sacred a private right ever have thus gained upon reasonable beings! But in our imaginary drama it is over. The curtain falls on this san- guinary act, the bills have been withdrawn, it will not be again performed. Yet it may scarcely be denied that in handing over to the care of the state the concerns of cul- ture, certain difficulties are encountered. Such an instance presents itself in the conduct of state schools. In the opinion of many excellent and wise men, religious instruction should be supplied daily along with profane learning in any academy the ultimate end of which is to produce virtuous as well as cultivated men and women. Moral ex- cellence without a theology is, they argue, at least for the greater part of mankind, a mere abstrac- tion. Ethics, so they believe, in times of severe stress, exerts far less restraining influence upon humanity than the exhortations and commands of a verile religion that the true science of con- duct is not ethics but rather religion. They hold, as Plato held long ago, that we have within us a many headed beast and a man. That whatever progress is possible toward starving the beast is best achieved with the aid of religion. They main- tain further, that in all other sciences it is a tolerably received maxim that a daily application to them is the surest way to their mastery, and that the fashion in which theology is left to be investi- gated on but one day in a week, if at all, would almost go to prove we are determined not to 86 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE acquire proficiency in it. Moreover, beyond the strict sphere of its practical utility, they are apt to urge yet other claims for the admission of religion as a branch of study in any adequate pro- gramme of intermediate or university education. Theology and the evidences of religion they hold to be a liberal department of human knowledge and are persuaded that neither in ancient nor in modern times was any distinguished education ever imparted ^vhere these subjects were divorced from the curriculum. How freely, they say, was the politest educa- tion of Athenian antiquity conversant with the- ology in the teachings of her most illustrious philosophers! And what lends more eclat or at- tractiveness to the universities of the middle ages, even at this distance, than the enthusiasm with which in this department such grandiose and lofty speculation was pursued. An education exclusively of the laboratory has, indeed, its penalties, though it be regarded but from the aesthetic, and not the moral side. It is apt to be something harsh, soulless, uninspired - in short, it is apt to lack distinction. This philosophy is perhaps somewhat new to America, but if time should show the champions of it to be in the right, our ideal of a strong and expansive state action, with at the same time the fullest separation of the Church and the State, can readily accommodate itself to such a view. Already abroad, in state schools, religious instruc- tion in several faiths is supplied during certain hours of the day to all who wish to receive it. The teachers of religion are selected by eccle- siastical authority presiding in the several denom- inations concerned. It has been found that where any serious degree of enlightenment prevails no THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE 87 incompatibility is involved in thus satisfying the demand for moral training even in populations of varying and opposed beliefs. Doubtless what has alarmed so many in the idea of the central government's control of public edu- cation is the fact that some countries are for making attendance at state schools compulsory upon all the inhabitants of school age. This pol- icy, of course, is an easy door for tyranny. Far be it from us to contemplate any such programme. All we desiderate is that any public education shall be in the hands of a central authority. Those who prefer a private education, an education of their own contriving, are to enjoy the completest liberty to pursue it. What we contend for is but to have the means at hand for the forming of an intellectual elite of the body (larger perhaps than one may fancy) of those who wish to be of an intellectual elite. The romantic notion of making the sum-total of any population an elite never entered our dreams. We are, alas, but able to think in prose. The state then, as we conceive it, will carry no terrors for any one's religion. In a modern repre- sentative government how can any just concept of expansive state action start such childish fears, reminiscent of the mythic terrors of the nursery; for is not the state but the people? It is not some mysterious engine of thralldom riveted to a cowed and shivering population. The state, vested with large powers, is thereby only the more highly in- telligent servant of the people, but it is still the servant. If, in modern society, the state is at times observed to be unjust toward religion, it is, in truth, only the too immediate reflection of the attitude of the population at large toward religion. Some are fond of pointing to the example of 88 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE France and exclaiming, "With a representation of thirty-nine millions of Catholics out of a total population of forty millions, see how the doctrine of the predominance of the state, drives, in that unhappy land, a Catholic from pillar to post!" But does any intelligent observer give credit to such an imputation? Does he for a moment believe that the position of Catholics in France is not what a majority of the inhabitants of France wish it to be? Doubtless the explanation of whatever apparent contrariety there is may be summed up in this wise: Initially, probably a good many less than thirty-nine millions of the population of France are enthusiastic Catholics. Then again, the sep- aration of Church and State in France has been a long, delicate and difficult business. It was foreign to the genius of the nation's early insti- tutions, but when once a society has decided that all cannot be of one mind on religious questions, that separation becomes imperative. In France, to effect it, a great wrench was required, and it seems that Frenchmen have been willing to swing the pendulum a good many degrees to the oppo- site side with not much other view than to at length achieve the vertical. But let not critics of state action forget that the majority in France is getting what it wants, as it always does in modern representative governments, and if enthusiastic Catholics fail to constitute the majority, is that any indictment of the beatitude of the sway o* numbers? Not that even a triumphant majority has any very clear commission to harry and per- secute an inoffensive minority, still, in practical politics one must draw the line somewhere, and modern society has drawn it at the prevalence of the will of the majority. But France is far too in- THE WILL OF THE 'PEOPLE '* : - '-fo^ telligent and generous to persevere for long in injustice towards Catholics or those of any other creed. And so likewise must be any other truly enlightened commonwealth. The state, then, let us repeat, with such powers as we would have reserved to it, will be some- thing officially uncognizant of, rather than inimical to, religion. It is in an abundant faith that in the improving condition of mankind such an ideal may be realized that it is so uncompromisingly set forth. We have said more than once before it is our matured conviction that the ends of cul- ture cannot adequately be achieved but with the assistance of the strong arm of the state, and the fruits of culture we are well persuaded are essen- tial to the happiness of man in this present life. But, great as are the blessings of mental enlarge- ment, the blessings of religion are greater; they are essential not only to happiness in this life but in an existence which, it is the trust of millions, dwarfs into inexpressible insignificance our pres- ent sojourning. Consequently the reluctance of those who hesitate to entrust plenipotentiary pow- ers to the state, because in the operation religious liberty might be endangered, is by no means to be derided; on the contrary, were their objection less easily encountered, it would justly engage the serious attention of intelligent and upright men everywhere. But is this difficulty not one which might, indeed, occur, but which, quite as certainly, need not occur? And this because the state in a repre- sentative government, even when acting most directly and with peculiar powers, is, in major concerns, as solicitous of the approval of its mas- ters as the state working mediately and loosely. And if the state prove tyrannous it must be at 90 THE 4 WiLL *OF THE PEOPLE bottom the will of the people it is thus deformed. And it if be the good pleasure of the majority that bigotry and oppression in religion stalk through the land, it matters little indeed whether the statutory powers of the state be great or small, intolerance will possess the earth. There is no legislative panacea for passion, in- justice, narrowness of mind, barbarity; these moist and fatal growths yield only to the purifying sun of Intelligence. For their disappearance from amongst men one can only wait in patience and good hope, his prayer for himself and his fellow wayfarers being epitomized in those sublime last words of the great Goethe, "Light, more light!" 1 t *. *., i I ?' . 2 * > >> S %- *