The American hope

II Class HHk ) L Book

Copyright N°,

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT.

BY

WILLIAM MORSE COLE

NEW YORK AND LONDON

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

'cA x

Copyright, 1910, by D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Published May, 1910

TO

CATRIONA AND ELIZABETH

IS DEDICATED

THIS EXPRESSION OF THEIR FATHER'S

PHILOSOPHY OF EVERY DAY

Stevenson, in his " Child's Garden of Verses/' says:

"The world is so full of a number of things I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings."

This is the song of childhood's observation and realization of the obvious good things of life.

Browning, in " Pippa Passes," gives Pippa this song:

"The year's at the spring And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn: God's in his heaven — All's right with the world!"

This is a song not merely of childhood's observation and realization, but of youth's conviction — conviction in spite of some contradictory observation. Some singers give up the song early in

vii their experience of life — when the spirit of youth has flown before its time. With some singers the spirit of youth remains long after the years of youth have sped, and the song still comes to the lips. By a few the song is sung even in the declining years. With most of us, the contradictions of life are too strong. We cannot see our way quite clearly through the labyrinth of experience. We choose a desirable thing, and then some other desirable thing shows itself absolutely incompatible with the first. We formulate a belief, and then another inevitable belief refuses to live with it. We hold to an ideal, and then another ideal shows itself contradictory of the first, or experience laughs at all ideals. We form a policy of conduct, and then another policy, necessary for our ends, interferes with it. Bewildered by the shows of things and by the very real facts of experience, we wonder what life means and some of us begin to wonder whether life is after all worth while.

I am far from convinced that life is for all persons worth while; but I am convinced that it may be made worth while for all, and that in it most of us may find zest. Common experience shows us that things are interesting just in pro-

viii portion as we understand them. One suspects that those who find life least worth while are those who least understand it. The reading of biography supports the suspicion. Clearly if one can see life as a whole — not only its origin and its purpose, but the big swing of its progress undistorted by temporary setbacks and divagations — one can better judge whether it is worth while and how it can be made best worth while. If one could comprehend the real history of every life since the earliest times, one would know life as it is; one might also fancy well what life will be. Our nearest approach to this is history, biography, and autobiography. Every man is contributing to mankind's knowledge of life just in proportion as he can let his fellows see the truth about himself, or help them to see the truth about themselves. If his place in the world has been big enough, autobiography may be his best contribution to his fellow-man; the charm may lie in the story, but the value will lie in his conclusions about life or in the light which his story casts on the meaning of life. Even if his place in the world is insignificant, he may have learned, possibly out of that insignificance, a meaning of life, and an interpretation of its contradictions, that shall

ix help his fellows to see new worth and new possibilities in it. To a realization of this fact this book owes its origin. Here are convictions which have grown not out of speculation, but out of the experience and observation of life in rather varied circumstances. Every conviction here is a mature judgment that has stood the test of years of critical comparison with life as I have found it. I have had no preconceived theories to defend, no propaganda to push. I have attempted to find in life a unity that shall bind all its parts together and reconcile apparent contradictions. I have sought to judge not only individual life but national life; and I find not only individual hope but national hope.

The autobiographical note I should like to eliminate altogether. As the conclusions given here are those of experience, however, the nature of that experience is of importance to the validity of the conclusions. It is so easy for the critic to say of the writer " He doesn't know what he is talking about/' that I desire to indicate at least something of the opportunity that I have had to know facts. I have omitted all personal reference in the text, but to show the sort of experience and observation out of which the conclusions were drawn, I here sum-

x marize the facts which, bearing directly on the conclusions of the text, will help to acquit or convict of prejudice: (i) as an economic member of society, my experience ranges from unskilled work, through the fields of skilled labor and clerical work, to executive position and professional standing (most of these, to be sure, of short duration, but long enough to give the spirit of the occupation), and I have been both city tenant and employing country landholder; (2) in residence, I have dwelt in the open country, in four villages, and in five cities; (3) in educational experience the range has been, as a student, from the common schools and high school, through a vocational school and college, to a professional school, and, as a teacher, from high schools in one of the liberal culture studies, and college in a culture subject, to a professional school in a very practical subject; (4) in family relations, my home has been under the parental roof, in bachelor quarters, and where I am the head of a household of two generations; (5) I have had my full share of bitter disappointments, of miscarried efforts, and even of calumny. These relations should lead to breadth of view. If that is lacking, I am convicted of blindness. The outcome of it all has been not a loss of faith

xi in mankind, not a shattering of ideals, not even passive submission to circumstance, but a conviction that here in America to-day life is better worth living than it was ever anywhere before — not because life is full of delight here, but because it is full of possibilities. This book expresses the grounds of that conviction.

Contents

INTRODUCTION I. — The Ground op Hope II. — The Power of Choice III. — The Springs of Progress IV. — The Marriage Tie V. — The Training of Powers VI. — The Pleasure in Things VII. — The Fraternal Bond VIII. — The Still, Small Voice . IX. — Living, or Getting a Living X. — The Will of the Community XL — Economic Freedom .

XII. — The Attitude toward Life INDEX

PAGE I

Introduction

j~>[ VERY age has had its own problem, and \*^ every age has solved some problem — either wisely or so foolishly as to furnish the horrible example for its successors; but we of to-day find ourselves compassed about with a new problem at every turn, so that, in whatever direction we plan to move, some problem is demanding solution before we take the first step. This is the characteristic feature of the twentieth century. This is what it means to be alive to-day. It is common to remark that really to live, to drink deeply of life, we must thrill to the primitive passions and give them sway. That is true; but to do merely that is to be behind the times — to live in antiquity. Merely to thrill to the primitive passions is not the fullness of life. The biggest life is to bring the primitive passions into such relation with the complex facts

I of to-day that those passions shall not defeat their own purposes, as often they do, but shall be effective. Then, indeed, when the tide of primitive instincts is brought into conscious conflict with the various interests and hopes and ambitions of modern civilization, life tingles with a flood of emotion that was beyond even the fancy of the early man. We read in romance and history of the loves and hates and tendernesses of the men of old, and we thrill at the bigness of them; we forget the stagnation of the intervals. There were days of passion so intense that the world and life itself were counted as nothing if they lay in the contrary scale; but there were weeks and months of lifelessness, or listlessness — such that the hibernation of the bear was nearly as interesting. It is true to-day that the primitive passions lead men to fling life itself as a bauble into the scale, but the bargain is far more thrilling because into it enter a hundred other considerations- — each with its tissues woven through the human heart — which were no part of the consciousness of the man of old.

It is common to say of a man that he takes life too seriously. The remark is a contradiction in terms. Never before had men the opportunity

INTRODUCTION

to live so richly as to-day; and the man who does not live richly is wasting an opportunity that no one before him ever had. It behooves him to take that opportunity seriously — not with a long face, but reveling in the joy in it, the laughter in it, the absurdity and nonsense in it, the struggle in it, the disappointments in it, the agonies that are a part of its discipline, the submergence of self in the bigness of it, the glory that may grow out of it.

It is the part of a man, then, to look in the face the problems of the twentieth century, to see how they may enter into his life, and how far he may get into the heart of them and thrill with the meaning of them. This is what the normal American is suddenly waking to find that he may do. It is singular, however, that he goes about it with so little plan. He plunges in where wise men fear to tread, and is wrapped in virtuous content if only he can assure himself that he means no harm. This is well as far as it goes, but we may wisely seek something better. There must be certain fundamental philosophical principles, dear however unconsciously to American hearts, upon which the American citizen who wishes to live deeply and solve problems wisely in this twentieth century may fall back in time of doubt. These he may hope to apply with some success in the handling of practical matters. The search for these is the most profitable work we may undertake.

In this book is no attempt to solve specific problems. We seek rather an acceptable philosophy that underlies all the problems of American life — one that can be expressed in common language and may, in that useful form, help us in these busy days to meet life squarely. In the attempt to discover fundamental principles in modern problems, we may have to deal often with alternatives. It may happen, indeed, that several ideals are each to be held loyally, and yet two of them in certain circumstances may be in conflict. It was a characteristic of old times that life was so slow-moving that men could devote themselves in leisurely fashion to one thing at a time. To-day we cannot stop for that. Life goes rushing by, and we must seize it now. We must decide which of two conflicting ideals is more fundamental. It chances, however, that in deciding we often find that one may be brought into accord with the other, without giving up its own fundamental beauty, and in the end we find a unity in what at first appeared to be irreconcilable diversity.

Chapter I

>^HE fundamental ground of American hope ^^ is the prevailing idealism of the American character. No doubt to many this statement sounds like a joke. They say that Americans have no ideals at all. Our first task is to determine whether this is true. Do we Americans as a people live to produce material things and to get sensuous pleasure, or do we live for ideals ? Do we live for things which are grasped chiefly by the five senses, or for ideals which primarily exist in our own minds — or, if one wishes to be more exact, in our own hearts and souls? It is true that American communities, more, probably, than any other communities in the world, are business communities. We seem to be devoted to the production of material things, and, from the profit that we get out of them, to the display of material resources and the enjoyment of material pleasures. The realistic novelist is undoubtedly correct in representing this sort of thing to be the conspicuous phase of American life, but he is correct only as he is a realistic novelist. The cold, hard facts are as he has pictured them ; but life is not made up of cold, hard facts. The real thing in any life is not what we get and what we show and what we do, but it is what we think and what we feel and what we aspire to. This does not mean that a man is judged by his intention rather than by his accomplishment, but simply that the real test of the man and of the man's life lies in what goes on inside of him and not in the things that we see and hear and feel about him.

If a man gets out of his business the same sort of enjoyment that the scientist gets from the quest after truth, the same sort that the painter gets from a great achievement, the same sort that the musician gets from a thrilling interpretation, his life is quite as full of ideals as theirs. The test of idealism is whether the enjoyment is in the ideal or in the thing. In the case of every one of these men the joy comes in only a slight degree from the thing in itself. It comes chiefly from the sense of power, from the sense of victory in struggle, from the human meaning of the thing accomplished.

With the business man of this type, ambition is directed chiefly toward a recognition in himself of the human qualities which give him attainment — rather than toward tangible things desirable for themselves. For this ambition only is he willing to work so hard and so long. The satisfactions are in the mind and the heart, as ideals attained; though it chances that the outward objects to which they appear to be attached are often very gross material. It chances, moreover, that the thing which he attains, though desirable chiefly as a sign of inward qualities, is in the mind of the common man a thing in itself to be desired. Whether it is his fault that his critical sense sees no unfavorable difference between a big awkward factory turning out its myriads of cheap, coarse commodities, and the piece of sculpture or the musical composition, which thrills and ennobles thousands of human souls, is a matter for examination later; it has nothing to do with the question whether the man is an idealist. The essential point here is that so far as he himself can see — and so far as we, taking for the moment his point of view, can see — his joy in life is quite as thoroughly an enjoyment of ideals as the joy of the painter, the sculptor, the literary man, the philanthropist. To be sure, these ideals often manifest themselves outwardly in things which an aesthetic critic calls abominations, but it is none the less true that to the owner they are ideals: so the owner is an idealist. Never before were so many noble ideals at the fore in governing human activity as in America to-day — charity not of the purse only but of the heart and the hand, uprightness not only in private life but also in business, self-sacrifice in the effort to serve the community as a whole, and, even among men whose aims seem most selfish, devotion to the immediate family. When the normal American whose life seems to be absorbed in the effort to get money is not influenced by the love of contest and the love of power as already suggested, he is usually actuated chiefly by a desire to make prosperous, and possibly envied as prosperous, those who are dear to him in his own family. The very restlessness, the very unwillingness to stop and enjoy life, of which Americans are commonly accused, are but tokens of an impelling ideal. If we cannot stop to enjoy what we have earned, it is obvious that the motive behind the earning is not materialistic or sensual, but is idealistic; and the only thing needed to make the whole situation wholesome is that the ideals shall be focused on something worth while, for now they are in pitiful degree dissipated in fruitless quests after specters of happiness or perverted in harmful efforts to do good.

Two general types of idealism exist in the human mind, the collectivistic and the individualistic. Often the two types meet in the same person ; and then a contest is likely to be in progress between them. The collectivistic ideal demands that everything shall be subordinated to the wish of society as a whole, that is, to the collection of individuals making up the whole community — whether that community be a neighborhood, a town, a state, a nation, or the world. The collectivist believes that no individual has a right to seek his own purposes in violation of the desire of the community. The individualistic ideal, on the other hand, demands that each individual shall seek the thing which seems to him best worth while, and shall do so unhampered by any regulations of society except as regulations are necessary to protect the rights of other individuals. The individualist believes that the community has no right to seek its purposes in violation of the desire of individuals. To express this in a more striking fashion, the collectivist believes that an individual notion or action cropping out from the mass of general notions and actions of the community is rather to be repressed than encouraged; but the individualist believes that such an outcropping is likely to be a manifestation of something bigger than the common experience and therefore especially worthy of consideration — at least until it has been fairly tested. To the collectivist, the common will is the highest manifestation of good; and that common will is nothing, in the last analysis, but public opinion. To the individualist, on the other hand, the most sacred thing is individuality, is that thing in which each man differs from his fellows; for that is the thing which must have come from a source bigger than man himself.

It is notable that few men are absolute collectivists or individualists: most of us cherish some ideals of each sort; and that is why most of us are inconsistent in both our thinking and our conduct. In a sense, every man is both a collectivist and an individualist in his ideals, and so far as he is thoughtful he must be so; and his task in the conduct of life is to see that he is each in the proper circumstances. The choice between them is always one of emphasis. Each is right in itself. In any case of practical conduct, that one must be preferred which in that particular case will bring the greater good. In our American life and history both are recognized, and in the common ideal of what we call " Americanism " they are mingled in delightful complexity; and each man puts the emphasis on one of them or the other according to his natural habit of mind. It is a part of our task to disentangle them and identify each in its various phases.

The common catch words of American idealism are liberty, brotherhood, and democracy. It chances that the second and the third of these are collectivistic, and the first individualistic. The first has been most talked about. The problem has always been, and still is, to provide liberty consistently with brotherhood and democracy. The reconciliation of them all lies in one simple ideal which is coming to be recognized as the true American characteristic — however deeply it may sometimes be hidden or overridden — namely, a sense of responsibility. There is no such thing as liberty for any man if a sense of responsibility does not check the exercise of liberty in other men. There is no such thing as an endurable democracy, or

ii government by the people, if a sense of responsibility does not control the people. There is no such thing as brotherhood if a sense of responsibility does not underlie the fraternal relations.

It is equally true, however, that this sense of responsibility has its tendencies toward individualism as well as toward collectivism. " To thine own self be true," Polonius's advice to Laertes, in " Hamlet," is the commonest form of recognition of individualism. The highest good I know is the good my consciousness, my conscience, my intelligence, my heart, tell me is the highest good. I am a traitor to myself, to the only authority my Maker gave me, if I accept anyone's else decision about my conduct or my ideas. I may distrust my own judgment, and deliberately transfer the decision to another, or to what I believe to be an inspired book; but in that case I am still carrying out my individuality in choosing the guide. For me to take any guidance thrust upon me from without, on the other hand, is to undo myself, is to forfeit my individuality, is to commit spiritual suicide. The thing that my personality, my individuality (which was created in me but not by me), declares to be best worth while, for me is best worth while. I cannot decide it otherwise, for such a decision could not emanate from me. To accept such a decision from any outside source, even though that source be the public opinion of a whole community, is to deny my Maker. A sense of responsibility to myself, therefore, demands as a mere matter of selfpreservation that I obtain liberty — liberty to fulfill my individuality in thoughts, emotions, conduct.

This demand for liberty, for individualism, is not merely egotism. Both the history and the hope of progress show it to be vital not only for the individual but for the community. As long as men are satisfied with conditions as they exist, taking either an average condition or a dead level of uniformity, no one makes any move to change. Every advance of the human race has been under the pressure of individual ideals more or less antagonized by the collective sense of the community. A strict sense of brotherhood and of democracy, neglecting the responsibility to the self, would have surrendered to that pressure; for if public opinion and the wish of one's brother are to determine conduct and belief, the dreamer of strange dreams must keep them to himself. It is the unlikeness of the individual to the mass, the outcropping of differences, that brings about change for better or for worse. The highest debt we can owe the community is to bring out those ideals which make life worth while to us, and give other men an opportunity to pass upon them and see how serviceable they may be to the community as a whole. Any compromise by which we yield to antagonizing claims of brotherhood, or of democracy, and suppress our ideals, may be treachery to that which our Maker has given us as our possible service to our day and generation. Thus the individualistic is interwoven with the collectivistic ideal.

It is easy enough for the pessimist to deny that it is worth while to make the mass see any new ideals. Men, he says, are not going to mend their ways; they cannot mend their ways; and the reformer is only wasting his strength, his substance, and his good nature, in an effort to make people accept any but the ideals which belong to them in the mass. This is a matter big enough for discussion in a chapter by itself. Before undertaking it, however, we may wisely consider in some detail just what is the status of a sense of responsibility in American life to-day.

There is no denying the fact that, taking the social organism as a whole, we have in America in the last few years shaken ofif much of the sense of responsibility which was common in the men and women of fifty years ago. Many observers believe that the blame for this can be laid largely at the door of our educational system. The common educational notion of to-day is that education must be primarily interesting, that the pupil must learn only what he likes to learn, and that he had better not do anything at all than do it with distaste. We have forgotten that in all education the proper aim is not to get the thing done, but to cultivate the pozver to do. We have made it so easy for the child to do the thing, that he has never learned to give the hard or distasteful obedience. He has lost the sense of responsibility. The school has come, moreover, to undertake tasks which not many generations ago were accomplished at home. In these respects, too, the school has been getting the thing done and has neglected to train the pupil in the power to do. The result has been a double weakening all along the line; the school by undertaking more things and undertaking to make them all easy has doubly reduced the number of things from which the pupil can learn to be responsible for hard or distasteful tasks well done. Making school more interesting has been a great achievement; but this remedy for an old disease has given rise to a very serious new disease, for which in practice the remedy has come to be further inoculation with the germ of the disease itself. Throughout the public school system, the pupil is practically never given a task and left to stand or fall on the accomplishment of that particular thing. Always he finds loopholes, excuses, apologies, makeshifts, other chances. The thing is arranged so that he doesn't have to do just that thing, just right, at just that time. He is never held responsible for any definite thing, and so he doesn't know what responsibility is. The teacher will pull him through, somehow. Each laxity, moreover, makes him more dependent, less responsible, for the next task.

This process has been particularly noxious because, while it has been going on, the population has been largely increased by immigrants who, however desirable they may be from the economic, moral, and racial standpoint, have had entirely different educational standpoints, or no educational standpoints at all. These peopie have come to look upon the state, and in educational matters its representative, the school, as the only depositary of responsibility. The state is in their minds supposed to safeguard the rights of all in such fashion that the individual has only to safeguard his own rights in ways in which the state seems a little deficient. It occurs to no one, therefore, to look out for the rights of others.

It would be easy to enumerate hundreds of ways in which this lack of responsibility affects most of our communities. The evil is enhanced by the concentration of population in cities where the individual is easily lost sight of. The unfortunate results range all the way from the wrecking of industrial organizations, railroads, and banks, to the vandalism of hoodlums and irritation aroused by the unthinking automobilist. The lack of control springs from our characteristic American good nature, which means that for fear of being unpopular we allow evils to go on until they become intolerable. We are like the weak parent who allows the child innumerable small disobediences, until the limit has been reached, and then awards for one offense no worse than the rest a punishment really adequate for the accumulation. This is not government, but despotism. We are discovering our weakness and we are mending our ways.

In view of all this, we have reason to find great confidence in the future of America; for in spite of the sapping influence of recent educational practice, which might well have destroyed all sense of responsibility among us, we remain a responsible people. We do rise to the occasion — when we see it. Our failure is to see the occasion until it is an eyesore. Our ideals are sound at bottom; our hearts are right; but as we aren't yet quite sure what we are driving at, and as we haven't stopped to see how our various ideals are related to one another, we are likely not to see quite straight, or to think quite straight about what we see.

We are fond of saying, and we surely have much ground for it, that public opinion can do anything in America. So long as that is true, and so long as a sense of responsibility is really the foundation of American ideals, as we have seen it to be, obviously the hope for our future is immense if we can only bring the public to some sort of agreement as to what we really wish this country to be.