American ideals, character and life

Front matter

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Preface

In the Preface to his illuminating volume "The Japanese Nation: Its Land and Its People," Dr. Inazo Nitobe explains concisely the circumstances which led to its publication: " The idea of sending public men of note unofficially from this country to Japan and from Japan to the United States, owes its inception to Mr. Hamilton Holt of New York City. When his plan had been developed to a certain degree of feasibility, the task of carrying it into effect was accepted by President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University, in whose hands the idea took the more practical, if the less ambitious, form of an exchange professorship, and he interested certain typical universities to join in putting it into effect. After the enterprise was fairly launched, the responsibility for its continuance was passed on to. and made a part of, the work of the Carnegie Peace Endowment."

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It may be added that one form of the work of this Endowment is an effort, by Exchange Professorships, or Lectureships, to make the different peoples better acquainted with one another, and to lay the foundations of international peace in international knowledge. Ignorance is the prolific source, of race prejudice and hostility; it creates the conditions which make race bigots, light-minded public men, and irresponsible newspapers dangerous foes to the highest interests of the world.

Dr. Nitobe was happily chosen as the first Exchange Professor from Japan, and his addresses delivered in six representative universities and before learned and popular organizations were listened to with great interest ; and, published in book form by Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, present an interpretation of the Japanese people at once deeply interesting and authoritative.

It was the good fortune of the writer of this book to be sent to Japan on the same Endowment as the first Exchange Professor, or, to be more accurate, Lecturer, from the United States, and to receive from government offi-

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cials, from the universities, from schools, from organizations, both public and private, and from numberless persons in private life, courtesies which gave kindness new qualities of charm and delicate consideration. In the course of six months' travel and the delivery of nearly eighty addresses in Japan, Korea, and Manchuria, there was never an hour of loneliness. From the day when wireless messages of welcome began to greet the visitors, three days out, to the day when they followed the home-coming steamer three days at sea, there was the unfailing consciousness of being surrounded by friends.

From the addresses delivered in the Imperial Universities of Tokyo and Kyoto, the privately endowed or supported universities of Waseda and Keio and the Doshisha, in many schools and before many popular audiences, the chapters in this book, with a single exception, have been selected and are presented substantially as they were delivered. The chapter on "The American in Art,'' reprinted by the courtesy of the editor of the Atlantic Monthly Magazine, is included to give greater

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completeness to this outline sketch of American society and life. It must not be forgotten that these addresses were delivered to audiences of unusual intellectual alertness and remarkable knowledge of the English language, but who were largely unfamiliar with American history and institutions. No attempt has been made to do more, on the historical side, than to sketch with a free hand and in large outline, the development of the American people, bringing into view only those events which have contributed to that development and disclose and interpret the American spirit. If this book shall serve as an introductory sketch of a nation which, like Japan, is often misrepresented and misunderstood, its purpose will be accomplished.

H. W. M.

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Contents

PAGE

I. Clearing the Way .... 1

II. Discovery and Exploration . . 34

II

The fortunes of the Far West have been interwoven with those of the Far East from the first discoveries. The peoples who traveled farthest from the plains of Asia lost touch with those who stayed nearer the earliest home of the race, but were never wholly severed from them. The separation of the different races in Europe during the Middle Ages was almost as great as the separation between Europe and Asia. After the final collapse of the Roman Empire, which made way for the development of modern nationalities, war was the chief form of intercourse between the rising communities that were becoming nations. At the close of that period the two centuries in which the crusaders stirred the imagination of Europe and 'disturbed the peace of the nearer Orient renewed an acquaintance which had become fitful and occasional, spread curiosity about

Oriental life, and made Europe aware of the art and luxury of the Far East. Trade between the two sections began to grow ; for, while Europe had only metals, woolens and minerals to sell, it was an eager purchaser of spices, cinnamon, pepper, ginger, of precious stones from India and Persia, of pearls from Ceylon, of drugs, perfumes and sweet-smelling woods from Borneo and Sumatra, of glass from Damascus and Samarcand, of porcelain from China, of silk, satins, tapestries, rugs from Cashmere and from half a hundred ancient cities. Oriental merchants became familiar figures in the Mediterranean ports, and the traffic in fragrant and beautiful things not only grew into an organized commerce, but gave the relations between East and West an element of romantic interest. Centuries later, when the ships built in the shipyards of New England made their long voyages to India and China, the boys who spent their half holidays on the old docks came to associate the Far East with the penetrating fragrance which was wafted ashore from hidden cargoes.

The commerce between Europe and Asia was in the last degree adventurous and perilous, but it developed into an extensive trade carried on along three routes. The southernmost, following the coast from Japan through the Malay Islands, touched at Ceylon, passed up the Arabian Sea and through the Persian Gulf to Persia ; or, crossing the Arabian Sea, reached Cairo and the Mediterranean by way of the Red Sea. This was an all-sea route, and, though beset with perils, was less dangerous and fatiguing than the more northern routes. Of these there were two. One started on the eastern coast of China, crossed that country to Turkestan, and, by means of a network of shorter routes, opened up the cities of Persia, of Palestine, of Asia Minor, and brought eastern Europe and western Asia into contact on the Bosporus and the Black Sea. The other and northernmost route started from Peking, crossed China on its northern boundaries, and by way of Kashgar, Bakhara and the shores of the Aral and Caspian seas, crossed the Volga and reached the Black Sea. These main lines of transportation were connected by short routes with the centers of European trade ; from the terminals on the Mediterranean goods from the Orient were carried by water to Pisa, Venice, Genoa, Barcelona, Marseilles, London and other English ports, and to Belgium ; whence they were sent by land to Germany, France and the Netherlands.

For many decades, by caravans of camels, on the backs of mules, or of stout carriers capable of almost incredible feats of strength in walking long distances with heavy loads, by seacraft and river boats of many shapes, the Far East traded with the West, and at the beginning of the fifteenth century European merchants had their quarters in many Eastern cities; and communication between East and West, though perilous, was well established and fairly regular.

Then the Turks appeared on the scene, and the control of the Eastern Mediterranean passed into their hands. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 was followed by the conquest of the territories held by Venice, of the islands of the Greek archipelago, of Lesbos and Chios, long under the rule of Genoa. Turkish fleets preyed on trading ships along the Levant, while the northern routes were disturbed by recurring wars. For a time goods from Asia were sent through the ports on the Red Sea and through Syria, but early in the sixteenth century this great territory fell into Turkish hands.

Few events have so rapidly made radical changes in the economic conditions of the world as the appearance of the Turks in Europe. The Italian cities, which had been the distributing centers of the old commerce, declined ; commercial supremacy passed from Venice to Amsterdam; trade between the East and the West was blocked, and the discovery of America became inevitable in the near future.

Many influences were at work which would sooner or later have brought the New World above the western horizon, but the barriers between East and West made it necessary to establish new routes of communication. Europe was rapidly increasing in wealth, the luxuries supplied by the East were increasingly valued ; and the love of beauty, stimulated by the Renaissance, craved the art of the East. To find a new passage to the Orient became the dream of the adventurous navigators of Italy, Portugal, Spain and England. Italian mathematicians' maps, charts, ships and sailors were ready, and when Italian commercial prosperity began to wane, Italian influence through the arts, through literature and science, rendered the world services of incalculable value. Italy played no such part in the actual discovery of America as Spain, Portugal, France and England; but she was the teacher of all these nations in the art of navigation, and she was the maker of their instruments. When the commerce of the East was taken out of her hands, she turned the mind of Europe westward and led the way to that enlargement of the world which has made East and West members of the community of nations.

The fact that America was discovered in the endeavor to find a new way of getting to the East, and that the newest world was brought into view incidentally by men on their way to the oldest world, is a striking evidence of an interrelation of races which neither ignorance nor selfishness can defeat; for the ends of the earth are bound together by conditions which have the force of laws of nature. When Columbus sailed from Palos in August, 1492, his object was to reach the Indies ; and on his last voyage, six years later, he was under the illusion that the eastern coast of South America was the western coast of Asia. He died in ignorance of the fact that he had discovered a continent. When John Cabot was wrecked on the rocky shores of Labrador in 1496, he was on his way to Japan and the countries from which caravans brought goods to Alexandria ; and in taking formal possession of the country he believed that he was extending the rule of the English king, Henry VII, into x\sia. Europe was obsessed, so to speak, with the conviction that there was a western passage to the East, and to the commercial necessity of such a passage was added the allurement of Eastern wealth and splendor in China, Japan and India, reported by Marco Polo and his brother, the daring Venetian travelers.

Cipango, as Japan was known in those and later days, was described as abounding in "gold, pearls and precious stones," its "temples and palaces covered with gold." Columbus called the inhabitants of the island in the group of the Bahamas on which he first landed, Indians, because he supposed he had found India; and he was convinced, first that Cuba, and later, Hayti, was the island of Cipango. So deeply rooted was the conviction that Asia had been reached across the western sea that the great discoverers and explorers of Columbus' day never knew that they had enlarged the world by a hemisphere ; and Amerigo Vespucci died in ignorance of the fact that his name was to be added to the list of names of continents.

It was not until 1541, half a century after the discovery, that the New World appeared on Mercator's map distinct and separate from Asia, and the first feeling which dominated Europe when the real significance of the discoveries in the West dawned on the Old World was poignant regret that the new lands interposed another obstacle between the

West and the East. These facts are dramatically significant in these days when Japan and the United States have become neighbors, and the Pacific Ocean is likely to become as familiar a highway between nations as the Atlantic has long been.

When the illusion that West was East and the New World part of the oldest world was dissipated, the mind of Europe was still under the spell of dreams of wealth to be found in the lands beyond seas. Stories of the treasures which the Spaniards had discovered in Mexico and Peru invested the entire Atlantic coast with irresistible interest for adventurers, gentlemen of fallen fortunes, and young men of restless ambition in England ; and the first English settlement in the country which is now the United States, at Jamestown, in Virginia, in 1607, was made by men who were in search of gold or of an open way to the Pacific Ocean. From these dreams the colonists awoke to the hard conditions of pioneers in a new world ; and, with the practical genius of their race, they began to raise tobacco ; they established local government ;

they discovered the value of the negroes brought to them by a Dutch ship in 1619, and slave labor found its earliest lodgment in American soil. At the start the new countries were a refuge from oppressive conditions in Europe, and the early colonies were primarily doors of escape from various forms of oppressive interference with religious faith, political conviction or individual activity.

The triumph of the Puritan party in England and the establishment of the Commonwealth sent to Virginia, between 1640 and 1660, a small army of men and women who were loyal to the monarchy, many of whom were of the Cavalier class. On the stones which mark the graves in the ancient churchyard in Williamsburgh, many old English titles are recorded. These emigrants had been landholders at home, and they became owners of great plantations in Virginia, and brought the habits of English country life into the wilderness. They were men of aristocratic temper ; they became masters of vast tracts of land cultivated by slave labor; they brought the Established Church of

England with them, and made the parish the unit of local government. Men of this class, isolated from one another and managing large estates, developed unusual abilities as organizers and leaders, and when the colonists threw off allegiance to the British Crown, they furnished many of the foremost leaders of the movement. From this class came Washington, Madison, Marshall.

The second settlement of Englishmen in North America was made at Plymouth in 1620 by the Pilgrims; the Puritans came eight years later and settled on the same coast fifty miles to the north. There were temperamental differences between these two groups of settlers of the New England colonists, but they shared certain fundamental convictions, they were impelled by the same motives, and were soon blended in a common endeavor to establish a new order of society in the New World. The withdrawal of the English Church from the communion of the Roman Catholic Church was partly political and partly religious. It was an assertion of the political as well as the religious independence of England from foreign authority. It began with a denial of the supremacy of the Pope ; it ended with a rejection of his title to the headship of the Christian Church and the rejection of many of the doctrines, practices and rites which had come into the Church since the establishment of the Papacy. But this reassertion of the authority of the English Church against the claims of the Church of Rome did not end with the recovery of religious independence ; it became a powerful movement for the liberation of the English mind. It did not stop short of a searching inquiry into the nature of authority in matters of religious belief, into the soundness of the statements of faith, into the forms of worship.

The decrees of the councils of the church, long accepted without question, and the formularies of theology which had become, not statements of faith, but its foundations, were subjected to free and rigid scrutiny. A marvelously fresh and inspiring translation of the Bible put into the hands of the English people the text of a book of which they had received only authoritative interpretations, and they were in a position to ask and answer for themselves questions which went to the very foundations of the claims of ecclesiastical authority and of the creeds. The Bible had, moreover, this great and distinguishing quality among books which claim to be revelations of the Divine nature : it was not a body of principles, maxims and regulations ; it was a revelation in terms of history ; it was not a philosophical solution of the problems of life, but a disclosure of the nature of the power behind the universe as that nature was expressed in the experience of the race. It affirmed the authority of certain moral laws, and it showed how those laws had been enforced in the experience of many hundred years. And this story of the Divine unveiling itself in the souls of men and in the events of history culminated in the biography of a Teacher whose supreme power resided neither in maxims nor in deeds, but in a nature of such divine purity and of such love for, and sympathy with, humanity that He spoke with the authority of the truth itself.

This noble literature — sixty-six books of history, biography, prophecy, poetry, mora) teaching, religious aspiration, bound between the covers of a single volume — spoke to the awakened mind and heart of the English, not only with the authority of religion, but with the power of great literature. The liberating energy of a book charged with vitality went out of it into the imagination and conscience, and it became and remains the most powerful influence in the civilization of the English speaking peoples.

The separation of the English from the Roman Church was inevitably followed by a sharp division of parties within the English Church. There were those who held that the supremacy of the Pope having been rejected, the traditions, the practices and the faith of the Roman Church should be preserved ; and there were those who insisted on a radical revision of doctrine and of ritual, and that the simplicity of the apostolic age should be restored. The mind of the nation was deeply stirred; debate grew more acrimonious; differences of point of view became more radical; the attempt to compel uniformity of worship failed; the Protestant party became more aggressive; oppressive measures were adopted with the usual results. As time went on, the differences became irreconcilable.

The Puritans, as the radical reformers came to be called, protested not only against the mass and the authority of the priest, but against vestments, ritual, written prayers, altars, saints' days, the observance of Christmas. It was a struggle to the death, for the idea of religious toleration did not occur to either party ; the alternative to establishment of one's convictions was their total abandonment. The declaration of national independence in religion ended in the banishment or withdrawal of a large number of Puritans, the civil war and the downfall of the Stuart dynasty, the founding of powerful colonies beyond the sea, and contributed largely to the impulses which brought on the American Revolution.

Puritanism went far before it exhausted itself. It set itself against all authority in religion except the Bible interpreted by the individual conscience, against the conception of the Church as having any authority beyond that of voluntary organization, against the priest as clothed with any greater power than that of a religious teacher specially set apart to the work of teaching. It revolted against forms of all kinds, although it inevitably developed a form of its own; it rejected art and laid its ban on beauty; and it finally attempted to organize a society on a religious basis, in which only people who subscribed to the Puritan creed could exercise the rights of citizenship. It became in the end the most radical expression of extreme individualism.

But with many limitations of vision and much hardness of heart it had deep sources of strength. It insisted on purity of life and laid unescapable and invigorating emphasis on character; it asserted the supremacy of the law in private and public life; it taught the reality of a man's direct responsibility to God and the authority of the individual conscience; it held education in great reh 49 spect, and many of its leaders were men of university training ; it made the Bible the textbook of English civilization ; it made men strong because they believed the divine power was behind them; self-denying and indifferent to hardship because they believed in the supreme value of things of the spirit. It made them sober in life, tireless in industry, and of a sturdy independence of spirit. Notwithstanding its narrowness and intolerance in religion and its rigidity of life, the spirit of Puritanism was the spirit of freedom, and both in England and in America it was a mighty force, in the struggle for liberty. No study of American society is intelligent without some understanding of the Puritan movement and spirit. As the head of one of the foremost American universities, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, has said: "Puritanism built New England, and for nearly a hundred years New England powerfully influenced the United States. . . . The fact must not be overlooked that New England Puritanism, built on the rock of Geneva, is the secure theological and philosophical foundation on which all that is distinctive in American life and culture has been built. . . . This fact explains much of the narrowness and lack of sympathy with strange customs and views which one observes among Americans, and ii explains also much of the determination and energy of the American temperament. Devotion to duty for its own sake, and a determination to persevere to the end in any undertaking simply because it has been undertaken, are almost universal American applications of Calvinism."

The Pilgrims, driven into exile, found a refuge in Holland; a little country with a passion for liberty, and hospitable to men who were persecuted for their religious opinions. The struggle through which the Dutch had passed in defense of their country and of their faith had not only developed a splendid vigor of character in them, but had given them a sense of leadership in the fight for religious freedom in which western Europe was deeply concerned.

The Dutch were also daring adventurers, traders and far-seeing merchants, and it fell to them to found the commercial metropolis of the New World and to make a notable contribution to its citizenship and ideals. In 1609, two years after the founding of the Virginia colony, Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the service of the Dutch East India Company, who had made two attempts to reach Asia by the way of the Polar Sea, sailed up the river which now bears his name in the endeavor to find the elusive Northwest Passage, and was disappointed to discover that it was not a waterway to the Far East. Fourteen years later, in 1623, a Dutch colony was planted on the island which has long been known as the city of New York. The colonists were sturdy men, with a genius for trade; they bought the island from the Indians for about one hundred and twenty-five dollars, and were soon engaged in a profitable business in buying furs and selling them in Europe. The great trading companies which not only broadened the area of commerce in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but were intrusted with governmental powers, had much to do with the early settlement of

America, and were especially influential in the Dutch colonies on the Hudson River. A monopoly of trade in these colonies was granted to the New Netherland Company, which was speedily succeeded by the much more ambitious West India Company, which was clothed with almost sovereign powers. It named all the public officers and could remove them, administered justice, built forts, made treaties, and was required to build and keep a small fleet of war vessels in commission. England and Holland had a common foe during the early period of exploration and colonization. Both had gone through life-and-death struggles with Spain ; which, until her defeat by the two rising Protestant nations, had been the foremost Power in Europe. The enormous revenues which Spain received from her colonies in Central and South America had supplied her with means to carry on the struggle against England and Holland, and after her efforts to subjugate both countries had been defeated, the war was transferred to the other side of the Atlantic and became a struggle for supremacy in the

New World. The founding of colonies was therefore, so far as these governments were concerned, not only a commercial enterprise, but a war measure. It is interesting to remember that the fight to keep the control of the New World out of Spanish hands, begun in the sixteenth century, did not reach its ultimate conclusion until the retirement of the Spanish from Cuba in 1898.

A fort was constructed on the water front of the island of Manhattan, a modification of the Indian name, a row of log houses built, and two hundred immigrants became the forerunners of the Greater New York of to-day, with a population of over four millions. Trade prospered, great estates were created under a system of landholding which was essentially feudal ; but the political affairs of the colony were not well managed, and in 1664 it passed under English control.

One of the main streams of French immigration reached New York and contributed very attractive qualities to its social life. The Huguenots, the Protestants of France, although sorely persecuted and finally exiled,

£4 did not lose those qualities which have developed in France what Matthew Arnold happily called "the power of social life.' 5 They were men and women of deep-seated conviction and dauntless courage, but they never lost their aptitude for the amenities of life.

The Pennsylvania colony, which was neighbor on the south to the Dutch colony, was founded in 1682 by William Penn and the group of people who called themselves Friends, and were called derisively Quakers. Their characteristics were simplicity of dress and speech, absolute toleration of opinion, and faith in the equality of all men and women before the law. The root both of their faith and practice was the belief that in every human soul the Divine Spirit is present and gives direct inspiration and guidance. This illumination they called the Inner Light. They were persecuted both in England and in New England, and in weak or unbalanced minds their faith naturally took radical and sometimes fantastic forms of expression ; but they were a high-minded people, who hated war and slavery. Their leader was one of the most influential men in the early history of the country, and the city which bears his name was one of the centers of intellectual and educational influence from the beginning. The government was paternal, peace was made and kept with the Indians, and the proprietary system with Penn as lord proprietor worked well throughout the colonial period. The liberal policy of Penn secured a rapid increase in the number of colonists, and attracted not only people of English birth, but the vigorous and hardy Scotch-Irish, the Dutch, the French and the Swedes.

Maryland, which lies next south of Pennsylvania, was also organized under a proprietary government, — a form of government which survived from feudal times in England, under which the overlord was a kind of viceroy and was clothed with almost regal powers. In this way Maryland was ruled for sixty years by successive Lords Baltimore, who, although Roman Catholics, pursued a policy of such liberality that the colony was for a time the refuge of people of widely different creeds. It was, however, too early in the education of the colonists to maintain this large and wise freedom, and the later history of Maryland as a colony was marred by bitter strife for supremacy among the different faiths.

To the south of Virginia lay the two Carolinas. The first settlement made in North Carolina was by a company of Virginians ; a little later a group of English planters from the Barbadoes cast in their fortunes with the colony. A plan of government said to have been devised by the English philosopher, John Locke, was tried in North Carolina; but the settlers, who were of a vigorous, independent temper, refused to accept it, and it was abandoned. In later years the population contained large accessions of Germans and Scotch-Irish. The conditions of life in the colony long remained those of the frontier; there were no cities; the farmers and woodmen who laid the foundations of the future towns were men of great independence of spirit, impatient of restraint, lovers of the wilderness; a hardy, manly people who hated taxes and desired only to be let alone.

The early population of South Carolina was also English, but the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685 sent a large emigration of Huguenots to this colony ; a people of heroic temper, of whom it has been said that they "had the virtues of the English Puritans without their bigotry."

Colonial history in America closed with the first movement of emigration from the seaboard at the close of the War for Independence. The thirteen colonies which faced the Atlantic from New England to the Carolinas were settled by men of English, Dutch, French, blood; with a mixture of Scotch- Irish, German and Swedish blood, — vigorous races who sent their most vigorous, independent and adventurous representatives to face the perils and master the difficulties of the exploration and settlement of a new world. They were drawn to that world by three or four of the major motives which stir men to undertake new enterprises and to risk the "hazards of new fortune." The earliest discoverers were one and all seekers after a westward way to the Far East, and they died in the belief that they had found the eastern shores of Asia. This misapprehension hung over the mind of Europe for several decades ; when it disappeared it was succeeded by other illusions, — that the seaboard rivers ran to the westward sea and so made navigation to India, Japan and China possible ; that the new countries were full of cities of vast wealth and the country of inexhaustible mines ; that there were streams in the Far West in which, if a man bathed, his vanished youth returned.