The Promise of American Life Part 18

Jefferson's example has been warmly approved by many subsequent intellectual leaders. Before Emerson and after, mere consistency has been stigmatized as the preoccupation of petty minds; and our American superiority to the necessity of making ideas square with practice, or one idea with another, has been considered as an exhibition of remarkable political common sense. The light-headed Frenchmen really believed in their ideas, and fell thereby into a shocking abyss of anarchy and fratricidal bloodshed, whereas we have avoided any similar fate by preaching a "n.o.ble national theory" and then practicing it just as far as it suited our interests or was not too costly in time and money. No doubt, we also have had our domestic difficulties, and were obliged to shed a good deal of American blood, because we resolutely refused to believe that human servitude was not entirely compatible with the loftiest type of democracy; but then, the Civil War might have been avoided if the Abolitionists had not erroneously insisted on being consistent. The way to escape similar trouble in the future is to go on preaching ideality, and to leave its realization wholly to the individual. We can then be "uplifted" by the words, while the resulting deeds cannot do us, as individuals, any harm. We can continue to celebrate our "n.o.ble national theory" and preserve our perfect democratic system until the end of time without making any of the individual sacrifices or taking any of the collective risks, inseparable from a systematic attempt to make our words good.

The foregoing state of mind is the great obstacle to the American national advance; and its exposure and uprooting is the primary need of American education. In agitating against the traditional disregard of our full national responsibility, a critic will do well to dispense with the caution proper to the consideration of specific practical problems.

A radical theory does not demand in the interest of consistency an equally radical action. It only demands a sincere attempt to push the application of the theory as far as conditions will permit, and the employment of means sufficient probably to accomplish the immediate purpose. But in the endeavor to establish and popularize his theory, a radical critic cannot afford any similar concessions. His own opinions can become established only by the displacement of the traditional opinions; and the way to displace a traditional error is not to be compromising and conciliatory, but to be as uncompromising and as irritating as one's abilities and one's vision of the truth will permit.

The critic in his capacity as agitator is living in a state of war with his opponents; and the ethics of warfare are not the ethics of statesmans.h.i.+p. Public opinion can be reconciled to a constructive national programme only by the agitation of what is from the traditional standpoint a body of revolutionary ideas.

In vigorously agitating such a body of revolutionary ideas, the critic would be doing more than performing a desirable public service. He would be vindicating his own individual intellectual interest. The integrity and energy of American intellectual life has been impaired for generations by the tradition of national irresponsibility. Such irresponsibility necessarily implies a sacrifice of individual intellectual and moral interests to individual and popular economic interests. It could not persist except by virtue of intellectual and moral conformity. The American intellectual habit has on the whole been just about as vigorous and independent as that of the domestic animals.

The freedom of opinion of which we boast has consisted for the most part in uttering acceptable commonplaces with as much defiant conviction as if we were uttering the most daring and sublimest heresies. In making this parade of the uniform of intellectual independence, the American is not consciously insincere. He is prepared to do battle for his convictions, but his really fundamental convictions he shares with everybody else. His differences with his fellow-countrymen are those of interest and detail. When he breaks into a vehement proclamation of his faith, he is much like a bull, who has broken out of his stall, and goes snorting around the barnyard, tossing everybody within reach of his horns. A bull so employed might well consider that he was offering the world a fine display of aggressive individuality, whereas he had in truth been behaving after the manner of all bulls from the dawn of domestication. No doubt he is quite capable of being a dangerous customer, in case he can reach anybody with his horns; but on the other hand how meekly can he be led back into the stall by the simple device of attaching a ring to his nose. His individuality always has a tender spot, situated in much the same neighborhood as his personal economic interests. If this tender spot is merely irritated, it will make him rage; but when seized with a firm grip he loses all his defiance and becomes as aggressive an individual as a good milch cow.

The American intellectual interest demands, consequently, a different sort of a.s.sertion from the American economic or political interest.

Economically and politically the need is for constructive regulation, implying the imposition of certain fruitful limitations upon traditional individual freedom. But the national intellectual development demands above all individual emanc.i.p.ation. American intelligence has still to issue its Declaration of Independence. It has still to proclaim that in a democratic system the intelligence has a discipline, an interest, and a will of its own, and that this special discipline and interest call for a new conception both of individual and of national development. For the time being the freedom which Americans need is the freedom of thought. The energy they need is the energy of thought. The moral unity they need cannot be obtained without intensity and integrity of thought.

III

ATTEMPTS AT INDIVIDUAL EMANc.i.p.aTION

Americans believe, of course, that they enjoy perfect freedom of opinion, and so they do in form. There is no legal encouragement of any one set of opinions. There is no legal discouragement of another set of opinions. They have denied intellectual freedom to themselves by methods very much more insidious than those employed by a despotic government. A national tradition has been established which prevents individuals from desiring freedom; and if they should desire and obtain it, they are prevented from using it. The freedom of American speech and thought has not been essentially different from the freedom of speech which a group of prisoners might enjoy during the term of their imprisonment. The prisoners could, of course, think and talk much as they pleased, but there was n.o.body but themselves to hear; and in the absence both of an adequate material, discipline, and audience, both the words and thoughts were without avail. The truth is, of course, that intellectual individuality and independence were sacrificed for the benefit of social h.o.m.ogeneity and the quickest possible development of American economic opportunities; and in this way a vital relation has been established for Americans between the a.s.sertion of intellectual independence or moral individuality and the adoption of a nationalized economic and political system.

During the Middle Period American individual intelligence did, indeed, struggle gallantly to attain freedom. The intellectual ferment at that time was more active and more general than it is to-day. During the three decades before the war, a remarkable outbreak of heresy occurred all over the East and middle West. Every convention of American life was questioned, except those unconscious conventions of feeling and thought which pervaded the intellectual and moral atmosphere. The Abolitionist agitation was the one practical political result of this ferment, but many of these free-thinkers wished to emanc.i.p.ate the whites as well as the blacks. They fearlessly challenged substantially all the established inst.i.tutions of society. The inst.i.tutions of marriage and the state fared frequently as ill as did property and the church. Radical, however, as they were in thought, they were by no means revolutionary in action. The several brands of heresy differed too completely one from another to be melted into a single political agitation and programme.

The need for action spent itself in the formation of socialistic communities of the most varied kind, the great majority of which were soon either disbanded or transformed. But whatever its limitations the ferment was symptomatic of a genuine revolt of the American spirit against the oppressive servitude of the individual intelligence to the social will, demanded by the popular democratic system and tradition.

The revolt, however, with all the sincere enthusiasm it inspired, was condemned to sterility. It accomplished nothing and could accomplish nothing for society, because it sought by individual or unofficial a.s.sociated action results which demanded official collective action; and it accomplished little even for the individual, because it was not the outcome of any fruitful individual discipline. The emanc.i.p.ated idea was usually defined by seeking the opposite of the conventional idea.

Individuality was considered to be a matter of being somehow and anyhow different from other people. There was no authentic intellectual discipline behind the agitation. The pioneer democrat with all his limitations embodied the only living national body of opinion, and he remained untainted by this outburst of heresy. He deprived it of all vitality by depriving its separate explosions, Abolitionism excepted, of all serious attention. He crushed it far more effectually by indifference than he would have by persecution. When the shock of the Civil War aroused Americans to a realization of the unpleasant political realities sometimes a.s.sociated with the neglect of a "n.o.ble national theory," the ferment subsided without leaving behind so much as a loaf of good white bread.

For practical political purposes it exhausted itself, as I have said, in Abolitionism, and in that movement both its strength and weakness are writ plain. Its revolt on behalf of emanc.i.p.ation was courageous and sincere. The patriotism which inspired it recognized the need of justifying its protestantism by a better conception of democracy. But the heresy was as incoherent and as credulous as the ant.i.thetic orthodoxy. It sought to accomplish an intellectual revolution without organizing either an army or an armament--just as the pioneer democrat expected to convert untutored enthusiasm into acceptable technical work, and a popular political and economic atomism into a substantially socialized community. In its meaning and effect, consequently, the revolt was merely negative and anti-national. It served a constructive democratic purpose only by the expensive and dubious means of instigating a Civil War. If any of the other heresies of the period, as well as Abolitionism, had developed into an effective popular agitation, they could have obtained a similar success only by means of incurring a similar danger. The intellectual ideals of the movement were not educational, and its declaration of intellectual independence issued in as sterile a programme for the Republic of American thought as did the Declaration of Political Independence for the American national democracy.

In truth all these mid-century American heretics were not heretics at all in relation to really stupefying and perverting American tradition.

They were st.u.r.dily rebellious against all manner of respectable methods, ideas, and inst.i.tutions, but none of them dreamed of protesting against the real enemy of American intellectual independence. They never dreamed of a.s.sociating the moral and intellectual emanc.i.p.ation of the individual with the conscious fulfillment of the American national purpose and with the patient and open-eyed individual and social discipline thereby demanded. They all shared the illusion of the pioneers that somehow a special Providential design was effective on behalf of the American people, which permitted them as individuals and as a society to achieve their purposes by virtue of good intentions, exuberant enthusiasm, and enlightened selfishness. The New World and the new American idea had released them from the bonds in which less fortunate Europeans were entangled. Those bonds were not to be considered as the terms under which excellent individual and social purposes were necessarily to be achieved. They were bad habits, which the dead past had imposed upon the inhabitants of the Old World, and from which Americans could be emanc.i.p.ated by virtue of their abundant faith in human nature and the boundless natural opportunities of the new continent.

Thus the American national ideal of the Middle Period was essentially geographical. The popular thinkers of that day were hypnotized by the reiterated suggestion of a new American world. Their fellow-countrymen had obtained and were apparently making good use of a wholly unprecedented amount of political and economic freedom; and they jumped to the conclusion that the different disciplinary methods which limited both individual and social action in Europe were unnecessary. Just as the Jacksonian Democracy had finally vindicated American political independence by doing away with the remnants of our earlier political colonialism, so American moral and intellectual independence demanded a similar vindication. This geographical protestantism was in a measure provoked, if not justified, by the habit of colonial dependence upon Europe in matters of opinion, which so many well-educated Americans of that period continued to cherish. But it was based upon the illusion that the economic and social conditions of the Middle Period, which favored temporarily a mixture of faith and irresponsibility, freedom and formlessness, would persist and could be translated into terms of individual intellectual and moral discipline. In truth, it was, of course, a great mistake to conceive Americanism as intellectually and morally a species of Newer-Worldliness. A national intellectual ideal did not divide us from Europe any more than did a national political ideal. In both cases national independence had no meaning except in a system of international, intellectual, moral, and political relations.

American national independence was to be won, not by means of a perverse opposition to European intellectual and moral influence, but by a positive and a thorough-going devotion to our own national democratic ideal.

The national intellectual ideal could afford to be as indifferent to the sources of American intellectual life as the American political ideal was to the sources of American citizens.h.i.+p. The important thing was and is, not where our citizens or our special disciplinary ideals come from, but what use we make of them. Just as economic and political Americanism has been broad enough and vital enough to make a place in the American social economy for the hordes of European immigrants with their many diverse national characteristics, so the intellectual basis of Americanism must be broad enough to include and vigorous enough to a.s.similate the special ideals and means of discipline necessary to every kind of intellectual or moral excellence. The technical ideals and standards which the typical American of the Middle Period instinctively under-valued are neither American nor European. They are merely the special forms whereby the several kinds of intellectual eminence are to be obtained. They belong to the nature of the craft. Those forms and standards were never sufficiently naturalized in America during the Colonial Period, because the economic and social conditions of the time did not justify such naturalization. The appropriate occasion for the transfer was postponed until after American political independence had been secured; and when occasion did not arise, the naturalness of the transfer was perverted and obscured by political preconceptions.

The foregoing considerations throw a new light upon the mistake made by the American heretics of the Middle Period. In so far as their a.s.sertion of American intellectual independence was negative, it should not have been a protest against "feudalism," social cla.s.sification, social and individual discipline, approved technical methods, or any of those social forms and intellectual standards which so many Americans vaguely believed to be exclusively European. It should have been a protest against a sterile and demoralizing Americanism--the Americanism of national irresponsibility and indiscriminate individualism. The bondage from which Americans needed, and still need, emanc.i.p.ation is not from Europe, but from the evasions, the incoherence, the impatience, and the easy-going conformity of their own intellectual and moral traditions. We do not have to cross the Atlantic in order to hunt for the enemies of American national independence and fulfillment. They sit at our political fireside and toast their feet on its coals. They poison American patriotic feeling until it becomes, not a leaven, but a kind of national gelatine. They enshrine this American democratic ideal in a temple of canting words which serves merely as a cover for a religion of personal profit. American moral and intellectual emanc.i.p.ation can be achieved only by a victory over the ideas, the conditions, and the standards which make Americanism tantamount to collective irresponsibility and to the moral and intellectual subordination of the individual to a commonplace popular average.

The heretics of the Middle Period were not cowardly, but they were intellectually irresponsible, undisciplined, and inexperienced. Sharing, as they did, most of the deeper illusions of their time, they did not vindicate their own individual intellectual independence, and they contributed little or nothing to American national intellectual independence. With the exception of a few of the men of letters who had inherited a formative local tradition, their own personal careers were examples not of gradual individual fulfillment, but at best of repet.i.tion and at worst of degeneracy. Like the most brilliant contemporary Whig politicians, such as Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, their intellectual individuality was gradually cheapened by the manner in which it was expressed; and it is this fact which makes the case of Lincoln, both as a politician and a thinker, so unique and so extraordinary. The one public man of this period who did impose upon himself a patient and a severe intellectual and moral discipline, who really did seek the excellent use of his own proper tools, is the man who preeminently attained national intellectual and moral stature. The difference in social value between Lincoln and, say, William Lloyd Garrison can be measured by the difference in moral and intellectual discipline to which each of these men submitted. Lincoln sedulously turned to account every intellectual and moral opportunity which his life afforded. Garrison's impatient temper and unbalanced mind made him the enthusiastic advocate of a few distorted and limited ideas. The consequence was that Garrison, although apparently an arch-heretic, was in reality the victim of the sterile American convention which makes willful enthusiasm, energy, and good intentions a sufficient subst.i.tute for necessary individual and collective training. Lincoln, on the other hand, was in his whole moral and intellectual make-up a living protest against the aggressive, irresponsible, and merely practical Americanism of his day; while at the same time in the greatness of his love and understanding he never allowed his distinction to divide him from his fellow-countrymen. His was the unconscious and constructive heresy which looked in the direction of national intellectual independence and national moral union and good faith.

IV

MEANS OF INDIVIDUAL EMANc.i.p.aTION

We are now in a position to define more clearly just how the American individual can a.s.sert his independence, and how in a.s.serting his independence he can contribute to American national fulfillment. He cannot make any effective advance towards national fulfillment merely by educating himself and his fellow-countrymen as individuals to a higher intellectual and moral level, because an essential condition of really edifying individual education is the gradual process of collective education by means of collective action and formative collective discipline. On the other hand, this task of collective education is far from being complete in itself. It necessarily makes far greater demands upon the individual than does a system of comparative collective irresponsibility. It implies the selection of peculiarly competent, energetic, and responsible individuals to perform the peculiarly difficult and exacting parts in a socially constructive drama; and it implies, as a necessary condition of such leaders.h.i.+p, a progressively higher standard of individual training and achievement, unofficial as well as official, throughout the whole community. The process of educating men of moral and intellectual stature sufficient for the performance of important constructive work cannot be disentangled from the process of national fulfillment by means of intelligent collective action. American nationality will never be fulfilled except under the leaders.h.i.+p of such men; and the American nation will never obtain the necessary leaders.h.i.+p unless it seeks seriously the redemption of its national responsibility.

Such being the situation in general, how can the duty and the opportunity of the individual at the present time best be defined? Is he obliged to sit down and wait until the edifying, economic, political, and social transformation has taken place? Or can he by his own immediate behavior do something effectual both to obtain individual emanc.i.p.ation and to accelerate the desirable process of social reconstruction? This question has already been partially answered by the better American individual; and it is, I believe, being answered in the right way. The means which he is taking to reach a more desirable condition of individual independence, and inferentially to add a little something to the process of national fulfillment, consist primarily and chiefly in a thoroughly zealous and competent performance of his own particular job; and in taking this means of emanc.i.p.ation and fulfillment he is both building better and destroying better than he knows.

The last generation of Americans has taken a better method of a.s.serting their individual independence than that practiced by the heretics of the Middle Period. Those who were able to gain leaders.h.i.+p in business and politics sought to justify their success by building up elaborate industrial and political organizations which gave themselves and their successors peculiar individual opportunities. On the other hand, the men of more specifically intellectual interests tacitly abandoned the Newer-Worldliness of their predecessors and began unconsciously but intelligently to seek the attainment of some excellence in the performance of their own special work. In almost every case they discovered that the first step in the acquisition of the better standards of achievement was to go abroad. If their interests were scholarly or scientific, they were likely to matriculate at one of the German universities for the sake of studying under some eminent specialist. If they were painters, sculptors, or architects, they flocked to Paris, as the best available source of technical instruction in the arts. Wherever the better schools were supposed to be, there the American pupils gathered; and the consequence was during the last quarter of the nineteenth century a steady and considerable improvement in the standard of special work and the American schools of special discipline. In this way there was domesticated a necessary condition and vehicle of the liberation and a.s.sertion of American individuality.

A similar transformation has been taking place in the technical aspects of American industry. In this field the individual has not been obliged to make his own opportunities to the same extent as in business, politics, and the arts. The opportunities were made for him by the industrial development of the country. Efficient special work soon became absolutely necessary in the various branches of manufacture, in mining, and in the business of transportation; and in the beginning it was frequently necessary to import from abroad expert specialists. The technical schools of the country were wholly inadequate to supply the demand either for the quant.i.ty or the quality of special work needed.

When, for instance, the construction of railroads first began, the only good engineering school in the country was West Point, and the consequence was that many army officers became railroad engineers. But little by little the amount and the standard of technical instruction improved; while at the same time the greater industrial organizations themselves trained their younger employees with ever increasing efficiency. Of late years even farming has become an occupation in which special knowledge is supposed to have certain advantages. In every kind of practical work specialization, founded on a more or less arduous course of preparation, is coming to prevail; and in this way individuals, possessing the advantages of the necessary gifts and discipline, are obtaining definite and stimulating opportunities for personal efficiency and independence.

It would be a grave mistake to conclude, however, that the battle is already won--that the individual has already obtained in any department of practical or intellectual work sufficient personal independence or sufficiently edifying opportunities. The comparatively zealous and competent individual performer does not, of course, feel so much of an alien in his social surroundings as he did a generation or two ago. He can usually obtain a certain independence of position, a certain amount of intelligent and formative appreciation, and a sufficiently substantial measure of reward. But he has still much to contend against in his social, economic, and intellectual environment. His independence is precarious. In some cases it is won with too little effort. In other cases it can be maintained only at too great a cost. His rewards, if substantial, can be obtained as readily by sacrificing the integrity of his work as by remaining faithful thereto. The society in which he lives, and which gives him his encouragement and support, has the limitations of a clique. Its encouragement is too conscious; its support too willful. Beyond a certain point its encouragement becomes indeed relaxing rather than stimulating, and the aspiring individual is placed in the situation of having most to fear from the inhabitants of his own household. His intellectual and moral environment is lukewarm. He is encouraged to be an individual, but not too much of an individual. He is encouraged to do good work, but not to do always and uncompromisingly his best work. He is trusted, but he is not trusted enough. He believes in himself, but he does not believe as much in himself and in his mission as his own highest achievement demands. He is not sufficiently empowered by the idea that just in so far as he does his best work, and only his best work, he is contributing most to national as well as personal fulfillment.

What the better American individual particularly needs, then, is a completer faith in his own individual purpose and power--a clearer understanding of his own individual opportunities. He needs to do what he has been doing, only more so, and with the conviction that thereby he is becoming not less but more of an American. His patriotism, instead of being something apart from his special work, should be absolutely identified therewith, because no matter how much the eminence of his personal achievement may temporarily divide him from his fellow-countrymen, he is, by attaining to such an eminence, helping in the most effectual possible way to build the only fitting habitation for a sincere democracy. He is to make his contribution to individual improvement primarily by making himself more of an individual. The individual as well as the nation must be educated and "uplifted" chiefly by what the individual can do for himself. Education, like charity, should begin at home.

An individual can, then, best serve the cause of American individuality by effectually accomplis.h.i.+ng his own individual emanc.i.p.ation--that is, by doing his own special work with ability, energy, disinterestedness, and excellence. The scope of the individual's opportunities at any one time will depend largely upon society, but whatever they amount to, the individual has no excuse for not making the most of them. Before he can be of any service to his fellows, he must mold himself into the condition and habit of being a good instrument. On this point there can be no compromise. Every American who has the opportunity of doing faithful and fearless work, and who proves faithless to it, belongs to the perfect type of the individual anti-democrat. By cheapening his own personality he has cheapened the one const.i.tuent of the national life over which he can exercise most effectual control; and thereafter, no matter how superficially patriotic and well-intentioned he may be, his words and his actions are tainted and are in some measure corrupting in their social effect.

A question will, however, immediately arise as to the nature of this desirable individual excellence. It is all very well to say that a man should do his work competently, faithfully, and fearlessly, but how are we to define the standard of excellence? When a man is seeking to do his best, how shall he go about it? Success in any one of these individual pursuits demands that the individual make some sort of a personal impression. He must seek according to the nature of the occupation a more or less numerous popular following. The excellence of a painter's work does not count unless he can find at least a small group of patrons who will admire and buy it. The most competent architect can do nothing for himself or for other people unless he attracts clients who will build his paper houses. The playwright needs even a larger following. If his plays are to be produced, he must manage to amuse and to interest thousands of people. And the politician most of all depends upon a numerous and faithful body of admirers. Of what avail would his independence and competence be in case there were n.o.body to accept his leaders.h.i.+p? It is not enough, consequently, to a.s.sert that the individual must emanc.i.p.ate himself by means of excellent and disinterested work. His emanc.i.p.ation has no meaning, his career as an individual no power, except with the support of a larger or smaller following. Admitting the desirability of excellent work, what kind of workmanlike excellence will make the individual not merely independent and incorruptible, but powerful? In what way and to what end shall he use the instrument, which he is to forge and temper, for his own individual benefit and hence for that of society?

These questions involve a real difficulty, and before we are through they must a.s.suredly be answered; but they are raised at the present stage of the discussion for the purpose of explicitly putting them aside rather than for the purpose of answering them. The individual instruments must a.s.suredly be forged and tempered to some good use, but before we discuss their employment let us be certain of the instruments themselves. Whatever that employment may be and however much of a following its attainment may demand, the instrument must at any rate be thoroughly well made, and in the beginning it is necessary to insist upon merely instrumental excellence, because the American habit and tradition is to estimate excellence almost entirely by results. If the individual will only obtain his following, there need be no close scrutiny as to his methods. The admirable architect is he who designs an admirably large number of buildings. The admirable playwright is he who by whatever means makes the hearts of his numerous audiences palpitate. The admirable politician is he who succeeds somehow or anyhow in gaining the largest area of popular confidence. This tradition is the most insidious enemy of American individual independence and fulfillment. Instead of declaring, as most Americans do, that a man may, if he can, do good work, but that he _must_ create a following, we should declare that a man may, if he can, obtain a following, but that he _must_ do good work. When he has done good work, he may not have done all that is required of him; but if he fails to do good work, nothing else counts. The individual democrat who has had the chance and who has failed in that essential respect is an individual sham, no matter how much of a shadow his figure casts upon the social landscape.

The good work which for his own benefit the individual is required to do, means primarily technically competent work. The man who has thoroughly mastered the knowledge and the craft essential to his own special occupation is by way of being the well-forged and well-tempered instrument. Little by little there have been developed in relation to all the liberal arts and occupations certain tested and approved technical methods. The individual who proposes to occupy himself with any one of these arts must first master the foundation of knowledge, of formal traditions, and of manual practice upon which the superstructure is based. The danger that a part of this fund of technical knowledge and practice may at any particular time be superannuated must be admitted; but the validity of the general rule is not affected thereby. The most useful and effective dissenters are those who were in the beginning children of the Faith. The individual who is too weak to a.s.sert himself with the help of an established technical tradition is a.s.suredly too weak to a.s.sert himself without it. The authoritative technical tradition a.s.sociated with any one of the arts of civilization is merely the net result of the acc.u.mulated experience of mankind in a given region. That experience may or may not have been exhaustive or adequately defined; but in any event its mastery by the individual is merely a matter of personal and social economy. It helps to prevent the individual from identifying his whole personal career with unnecessary mistakes. It provides him with the most natural and serviceable vehicle for self-expression. It supplies him with a language which reduces to the lowest possible terms the inevitable chances of misunderstanding. It is society's nearest approach to an authentic standard in relation to the liberal arts and occupations; and just so far as it is authentic society is justified in imposing it on the individual.

The perfect type of authoritative technical methods are those which prevail among scientific men in respect to scientific work. No scientist as such has anything to gain by the use of inferior methods or by the production of inferior work. There is only one standard for all scientific investigators--the highest standard; and so far as a man falls below that standard his inferiority is immediately reflected in his reputation. Some scientists make, of course, small contributions to the increase of knowledge, and some make comparatively large contributions; but just in so far as a man makes any contribution at all, it is a real contribution, and nothing makes it real but the fact that it is recognized. In the Hall of Science exhibitors do not get their work hung upon the line because it tickles the public taste, or because it is "uplifting," or because the jury is kindly and wishes to give the exhibitor a chance to earn a little second-rate reputation. The same standard is applied to everybody, and the jury is incorruptible.

The exhibit is nothing if not true, or by way of becoming or being recognized as true.

A technical standard in any one of the liberal or practical arts cannot be applied as rigorously as can the standard of scientific truth, because the standard itself is not so authentic. In all these arts many differences of opinion exist among masters as to the methods and forms which should be authoritative; and in so far as such is the case, the individual must be allowed to make many apparently arbitrary personal choices. The fact that a man has such choices to make is the circ.u.mstance which most clearly distinguishes the practice of an art from that of a science, but this circ.u.mstance, instead of being an excuse for technical irresponsibility or mere eclecticism, should, on the contrary, stimulate the individual more completely to justify his choice. In his work he is fighting the battle not merely of his own personal career, but of a method, of a style, of an idea, or of an ideal. The practice of the several arts need not suffer from diversity of standard, provided the several separate standards are themselves incorruptible. In all the arts--and by the arts I mean all disinterested and liberal practical occupations--the difficulty is not that sufficiently authoritative standards do not exist, but that they are not applied. The standard which is applied is merely that of the good-enough. The juries are either too kindly or too lax or too much corrupted by the nature of their own work. They are prevented from being incorruptible about the work of other people by a sub-conscious apprehension of the fate of their own performances--in case similar standards were applied to themselves. Just in so far as the second-rate performer is allowed to acquire any standing, he inevitably enters into a conspiracy with his fellows to discourage exhibitions of genuine and considerable excellence, and, of course, to a certain extent he succeeds. By the waste which he encourages of good human appreciation, by the confusion which he introduces into the popular critical standards, he helps to effect a popular discrimination against any genuine superiority of achievement.

Individual independence and fulfillment is conditioned on the technical excellence of the individual's work, because the most authentic standard is for the time being const.i.tuted by excellence of this kind. An authentic standard must be based either upon acquired knowledge or an accepted ideal. Americans have no popularly accepted ideals which are anything but an embarra.s.sment to the aspiring individual. In the course of time some such ideals may be domesticated--in which case the conditions of individual excellence would be changed; but we are dealing with the present and not with the future. Under current conditions the only authentic standard must be based, not upon the social influence of the work, but upon its quality; and a standard of this kind, while it falls short of being complete, must always persist as one indispensable condition of final excellence. The whole body of acquired technical experience and practice has precisely the same authority as any other body of knowledge. The respect it demands is similar to the respect demanded by science in all its forms. In this particular case the science is neither complete nor entirely trustworthy, but it is sufficiently complete and trustworthy for the individual's purpose, and can be ignored only at the price of waste, misunderstanding, and partial inefficiency and sterility.

A standard of uncompromising technical excellence contains, however, for the purpose of this argument, a larger meaning than that which is usually attached to the phrase. A technically competent performance is ordinarily supposed to mean one which displays a high degree of manual dexterity; and a man who has acquired such a degree of dexterity is also supposed to be the victim of his own mastery. No doubt such is frequently the case; but in the present meaning the thoroughly competent individual workman becomes necessarily very much more of an individual than any man can be who is merely the creature of his own technical facility and preoccupation. I have used the word art not in the sense merely of fine art, but in the sense of all liberal and disinterested practical work; and the excellent performance of that work demands certain qualifications which are common to all the arts as well as peculiar to the methods and materials of certain particular arts and crafts. These qualifications are both moral and intellectual. They require that no one shall be admitted to the ranks of thoroughly competent performers until he is morally and intellectually, as well as scientifically and manually, equipped for excellent work, and these appropriate moral and intellectual standards should be applied as incorruptibly as those born of specific technical practices.

A craftsman whose merits do not go beyond technical facility is probably deficient in both the intellectual and moral qualities essential to good work. The rule cannot be rigorously applied, because the boundaries between high technical proficiency and some very special examples of genuine mastery are often very indistinct. Still, the majority of craftsmen who are nothing more than, manually dexterous are rarely either sincere or disinterested in their personal att.i.tude towards their occupation. They have not made themselves the sort of moral instrument which is capable of eminent achievement, and whenever unmistakable examples of such a lack of sincerity and conviction are distinguished, they should in the interest of a complete standard of special excellence meet with the same reprobation as would manual incompetence. It must not be inferred, however, that the standard of moral judgment applied to the individual in the performance of his particular work is identical with a comprehensive standard of moral practice. A man may be an acceptable individual instrument in the service of certain of the arts, even though he be in some other respects a tolerably objectionable person. A single-minded and disinterested attempt to obtain mastery of any particular occupation may in specific instances force a man to neglect certain admirable and in other relations essential qualities. He may be a faithless husband, a treacherous friend, a st.u.r.dy liar, or a professional bankrupt, without necessarily interfering with the excellent performance of his special job. A man who breaks a road to individual distinction by such questionable means may always be tainted; but he is a better public servant than would be some comparatively impeccable nonent.i.ty. It all depends on the nature and the requirements of the particular task, and the extent to which a man has really made sacrifices in order to accomplish it. There are many special jobs which absolutely demand scrupulous veracity, loyalty in a man's personal relations, or financial integrity. The politician who ruins his career in climbing down a waterspout, or the engineer who prevents his employers from trusting his judgment and conscience in money matters, cannot plead in extenuation any other sort of instrumental excellence.

They have deserved to fail, because they have trifled with their job; and it may be added that serious moral delinquencies are usually grave hindrances to a man's individual efficiency.

From the intellectual point of view also technical competence means something more than manual proficiency. Just as the master must possess those moral qualities essential to the integrity of his work, so he must possess the corresponding intellectual qualities. All the liberal arts require, as a condition of mastery, a certain specific and considerable power of intelligence; and this power of intelligence is to be sharply distinguished from all-round intellectual ability. From our present point of view its only necessary application concerns the problems of a man's special occupation. Every special performer needs the power of criticising the quality and the subject-matter of his own work. Unless he has great gifts or happens to be brought up and trained under peculiarly propitious conditions, his first attempts to practice his art will necessarily be experimental. He will be sure to commit many mistakes, not merely in the choice of alternative methods and the selection of his subject-matter, but in the extent to which he personally can approve or disapprove of his own achievements. The thoroughly competent performer must at least possess the intellectual power of profiting from this experience. A candid consideration of his own experiments must guide him in the selection of the better methods, in the discrimination of the more appropriate subject-matter, in the avoidance of his own peculiar failings, and in the cultivation of his own peculiar strength. The technical career of the master is up to a certain point always a matter of growth. The technical career of the second-rate man is always a matter of degeneration or at best of repet.i.tion. The former brings with it its own salient and special form of enlightenment based upon the intellectual power to criticise his own experience and the moral power to act on his own acquired insight. To this extent he becomes more of a man by the very process of becoming more of a master.

The intellectual power required to criticise one's own experience with a formative result will of course vary considerably in different occupations. Technical mastery of the occupation of playwriting, criticism, or statesmans.h.i.+p, will require more specifically intellectual qualities than will be demanded by the competent musician or painter.

But no matter how much intelligence may be needed, the way in which it should be used remains the same. Mere industry, aspiration, or a fluid run of ideas make as meager an equipment for a politician, a philanthropist, or a critic as they would for an architect; and absolutely the most dangerous mistake which an individual can make is that of confusing admirable intentions expressed in some inferior manner with genuine excellence of achievement. If such men succeed, they are corrupting in their influence. If they fail, they learn nothing from their failure, because they are always charging up to the public, instead of to themselves, the responsibility for their inferiority.

The conclusion is that at the present time an individual American's intentions and opinions are of less importance than his power of giving them excellent and efficient expression. What the individual can do is to make himself a better instrument for the practice of some serviceable art; and by so doing he can scarcely avoid becoming also a better instrument for the fulfillment of the American national Promise.

To be sure, the American national Promise demands for its fulfillment something more than efficient and excellent individual instruments. It demands, or will eventually demand, that these individuals shall love and wish to serve their fellow-countrymen, and it will demand specifically that in the service of their fellow-countrymen, they shall reorganize their country's economic, political, and social inst.i.tutions and ideas. Just how the making of competent individual instruments will of its own force a.s.sist the process of national reconstruction, we shall consider presently; but the first truth to drive home is that all political and social reorganization is a delusion, unless certain individuals, capable of edifying practical leaders.h.i.+p, have been disciplined and trained; and such individuals must always and in some measure be a product of self-discipline. While not only admitting but proclaiming that the processes of individual and social improvement are mutually dependent, it is equally true that the initiative cannot be left to collective action. The individual must begin and carry as far as he can the work of his own emanc.i.p.ation; and for the present he has an excuse for being tolerably unscrupulous in so doing. By the successful a.s.sertion of his own claim to individual distinction and eminence, he is doing more to revolutionize and reconstruct the American democracy than can a regiment of professional revolutionists and reformers.

Professional socialists may cherish the notion that their battle is won as soon as they can secure a permanent popular majority in favor of a socialistic policy; but the constructive national democrat cannot logically accept such a comfortable illusion. The action of a majority composed of the ordinary type of convinced socialists could and would in a few years do more to make socialism impossible than could be accomplished by the best and most prolonged efforts of a majority of malignant anti-socialists. The first French republicans made by their behavior another republic out of the question in France for almost sixty years; and the second republican majority did not do so very much better. When the republic came in France it was founded by men who were not theoretical democrats, but who understood that a republic was for the time being the kind of government best adapted to the national French interest. These theoretical monarchists, but practical republicans, were for the most part more able, more patriotic, and higher-minded men than the convinced republicans; and in all probability a third republic, started without their cooperation, would also have ended in a dictators.h.i.+p. Any substantial advance toward social reorganization will in the same way be forced by considerations of public welfare on a majority of theoretical anti-socialists, because it is among this cla.s.s that the most competent and best disciplined individuals are usually to be found. The intellectual and moral ability required, not merely to conceive, but to realize a policy of social reorganization, is far higher than the ability to carry on an ordinary democratic government. When such a standard of individual competence has been attained by a sufficient number of individuals and is applied to economic and social questions, some attempt at social reorganization is bound to be the result,--a.s.suming, of course, the constructive relation already admitted between democracy and the social problem.

The strength and the weakness of the existing economic and social system consist, as we have observed, in the fact that it is based upon the realities of contemporary human nature. It is the issue of a time-honored tradition, an intense personal interest, and a method of life so habitual that it has become almost instinctive. It cannot be successfully attacked by any body of hostile opinion, unless such a body of opinion is based upon a more salient individual and social interest and a more intense and vital method of life. The only alternative interest capable of putting up a sufficiently vigorous attack and pus.h.i.+ng home an occasional victory is the interest of the individual in his own personal independence and fulfillment--an interest which, as we have seen, can only issue from integrity and excellence of individual achievement. An interest of this kind is bound in its social influence to make for social reorganization, because such reorganization is in some measure a condition and accompaniment of its own self-expression; and the strength of its position and the superiority of its weapons are so decisive that they should gradually force the existing system to give way. The defenses of that system have vulnerable points; and its defenders are disunited except in one respect. They would be able to repel any attack delivered along their whole line; but their binding interest is selfish and tends under certain conditions to divide them one from another without bestowing on the divided individuals the energy of independence and self-possession. Their position can be attacked at its weaker points, not only without meeting with combined resistance, but even with the a.s.sistance of some of their theoretical allies. Many convinced supporters of the existing order are men of superior merit, who are really fighting against their own better individual interests; and they need only to taste the exhilaration of freedom in order better to understand its necessary social and economical conditions. Others, although men of inferior achievement, are patriotic and well-intentioned in feeling; and they may little by little be brought to believe that patriotism in a democracy demands the sacrifice of selfish interests and the regeneration of individual rights. Men of this stamp can be made willing prisoners by able and aggressive leaders whose achievements have given them personal authority and whose practical programme is based upon a sound knowledge of the necessary limits of immediate national action. The disinterested and competent individual is formed for constructive leaders.h.i.+p, just as the less competent and independent, but well-intentioned, individual is formed more or less faithfully to follow on behind. Such leaders.h.i.+p, in a country whose traditions and ideals are sincerely democratic, can scarcely go astray.

V

CONSTRUCTIVE INDIVIDUALISM

The preceding section was concluded with a statement, which the majority of its readers will find extremely questionable and which a.s.suredly demands some further explanation. Suppose it to be admitted that individual Americans do seek the increase of their individuality by competent and disinterested special work. In what way will such work and the sort of individuality thereby developed exercise a decisive influence on behalf of social amelioration? We have already expressly denied that a desire to succor their fellow-countrymen or an ideal of social reorganization is at the present time a necessary ingredient in the make-up of these formative individuals. Their individual excellence has been defined exclusively in terms of high but special technical competence; and the manner in which these varied and frequently antagonistic individual performers are to cooperate towards socially constructive results must still remain a little hazy. How are these eminent specialists, each of whom is admittedly pursuing unscrupulously his own special purpose, to be made serviceable in a coherent national democratic organization? How, indeed, are these specialists to get at the public whom they are supposed to lead? Many very competent contemporary Americans might claim that the real difficulty in relation to the social influence of the expert specialist has been sedulously evaded. The admirably competent individual cannot exercise any constructive social influence, unless he becomes popular; and the current American standards being what they are, how can an individual become popular without more or less insidious and baleful compromises?

The gulf between individual excellence and effective popular influence still remains to be bridged; and until it is bridged, an essential stage is lacking in the transition from an individually formative result to one that is also socially formative.

Undoubtedly, a gulf does exist in the country between individual excellence and effective popular influence. Many excellent specialists exercise a very small amount of influence, and many individuals who exercise apparently a great deal of influence are conspicuously lacking in any kind of excellence. The responsibility for this condition is usually fastened upon the Philistine American public, which refuses to recognize genuine eminence and which showers rewards upon any second-rate performer who tickles its tastes and prejudices. But it is at least worth inquiring whether the responsibility should not be fastened, not upon the followers, but upon the supposed leaders. The American people are what the circ.u.mstances, the traditional leaders.h.i.+p, and the interests of American life have made them. They cannot be expected to be any better than they are, until they have been sufficiently shown the way; and they cannot be blamed for being as bad as they are, until it is proved that they have deliberately rejected better leaders.h.i.+p. No such proof has ever been offered.

Some disgruntled Americans talk as if in a democracy the path of the aspiring individual should be made peculiarly safe and easy. As soon as any young man appears whose ideals are perched a little higher than those of his neighbors, and who has acquired some knack of performance, he should apparently be immediately taken at his own valuation and loaded with rewards and opportunities. The public should take off its hat and ask him humbly to step into the limelight and show himself off for the popular edification. He should not be obliged to make himself interesting to the public. They should immediately make themselves interested in him, and bolt whatever he chooses to offer them as the very meat and wine of the mind. But surely one does not need to urge very emphatically that popularity won upon such easy terms would be demoralizing to any but very highly gifted and very cool-headed men. The American people are absolutely right in insisting that an aspirant for popular eminence shall be compelled to make himself interesting to them, and shall not be welcomed as a fountain of excellence and enlightenment until he has found some means of forcing his meat and his wine down their reluctant throats. And if the aspiring individual accepts this condition as tantamount to an order that he must haul down the flag of his own individual purpose in order to obtain popular appreciation and reward, it is he who is unworthy to lead, not they who are unworthy of being led. The problem and business of his life is precisely that of keeping his flag flying at any personal cost or sacrifice; and if his own particular purpose demands that his flying flag shall be loyally saluted, it is his own business also to see that his flag is well worthy of a popular salutation. In occasional instances these two aspects of a special performer's business may prove to be incompatible. Every real adventure must be attended by risks. Every real battle involves a certain number of casualties. But better the risk and the wounded and the dead than sham battles and unearned victories.