The average American is nothing if not patriotic. "The Americans are filled," says Mr.
Emil Reich in his ‘Success among the Nations,’ "with such an implicit and absolute confidence in
their Union and in their future success that any remark other than laudatory is unacceptable to the majority
of them. We have had many opportunities of hearing public speakers in America cast doubts upon the very
existence of God and of Providence, question the historic nature or veracity of the whole fabric of Christianity;
but never has it been our fortune to catch the slightest whisper of doubt, the slightest want of faith,
in the chief God of America—unlimited belief in the future of America." Mr. Reich’s method of emphasis
may not be very happy, but the substance of what he says is true. The faith of Americans in their own
country is religious, if not in its intensity, at any rate in its almost absolute and universal authority.
It pervades the air we breathe. As children we hear it asserted or implied in the conversation of our
elders. Every new stage of our educational training provides some additional testimony on its behalf.
Newspapers and novelists, orators and playwrights, even if they are little else, are at least loyal preachers
of the Truth. The skeptic is not controverted; he is overlooked. It constitutes the kind of faith which
is the implication, rather than the object, of thought, and consciously or unconsciously it enters largely
into our personal lives as a formative influence. We may distrust and dislike much that is done in the
name of our country by our fellowcountrymen; but our country itself, its democratic system, and its prosperous
future are above suspicion.
Of course, Americans have no monopoly of patriotic enthusiasm and good faith. Englishmen return thanks
to Providence for not being born anything but an Englishman, in churches and ale-houses as well as in
comic operas. The Frenchman cherishes and proclaims the idea that France is the most civilized modern
country and satisfies best the needs of a man of high social intelligence. The Russian, whose political
contemporaries, secretes a vision of a mystically glorified Russia, which condemns to comparative insipidity
the figures of the "Pax Britannica" and of "LaBelle France" enlightening the world.
Every nation, in proportion as its nationality is thoroughly alive, must be leavened by the ferment of
some such faith. But there are significant differences between the faith of, say, an Englishman in the
British Empire and that of an American in the Land of Democracy. The contents of an Englishman’s national
idea tends to be more exclusive. His patriotism is anchored to the historical achievements of Great Britain
and restricted thereby. As a good patriot he is bound to be more preoccupied with the inherited fabric
of national institutions and traditions than he is with the ideal and more than national possibilities
of the future. This very loyalty to the national fabric does, indeed, imply an important ideal content;
but the national idealism of an Englishman, a German, or even a Frenchman, is heavily mortgaged to his
own national history and cannot honestly escape the debt. The good patriot is obliged to offer faithful
allegiance to a network of somewhat arbitrary institutions, social forms, and intellectual habits—on the
ground that his country is exposed to more serious dangers from premature emancipation than it is from
stubborn conservatism.
France is the only European country which has sought to make headway towards a better future by means
of a revolutionary break with its past, and the results of the French experiment have served for other
European countries more as a warning than as an example.
The higher American patriotism, on the other hand, combines loyalty to historical tradition and precedent
with the imaginative projection of an ideal national Promise. The Land of Democracy has always appealed
to its more enthusiastic children chiefly as a land of wonderful and more than national possibilities.
"Neither race nor tradition," says Professor Hugo Müsterberg in his volume on The Americans,
"nor the actual past, binds the American to his countrymen, but rather the future which together
they are building." This vision of a better future is not, perhaps, as unclouded for the present
generation of Americans as it was for certain former generations; but in spite of a more friendly acquaintance
with all sorts of obstacles and pitfalls, our country is still figured in the imagination of its citizens
as the Land of Promise. They still believe that somehow and sometime something better will happen to good
Americans than has happened to men in any other country; and this belief, vague, innocent, and uninformed
though it be, is the expression of an essential constituent in our national ideal. The past should mean
less to a European than it does to an American, and the future should mean more. To be sure, American
life cannot with impunity be wrenched violently from its moorings any more than the life of a European
country can; but our American past, compared tothat of any European country, has a character all its own.
Its peculiarity consists, not merely in its brevity, but in the fact that from the beginning it has been
informed by an idea. From the beginning Americans have been anticipating and projecting a better future.
From the beginning the Land of Democracy has been figured as the Land of Promise. Thus the American’s
loyalty to the national tradition rather affirms than denies the imaginative projection of a better future.
An America which was not the Land of Promise, which was not informed by a prophetic outlook and a more
or less constructive ideal, would not be the America bequeathed to us by our forefathers. In cherishing
the Promise of a better national future the American is fulfilling rather than imperiling the substance
of the national tradition.
When, however, Americans talk of their country as the Land of Promise, a question may well be raised as
to precisely what they mean. They mean, of course, in general, that the future will have something better
in store for them individually and collectively than has the past or the present; but a very superficial
analysis of this meaning discloses certain ambiguities. What are the particular benefits which this better
future will give to Americans either individually or as a nation? And how is this Promise to be fulfilled?
Will it fulfill itself, or does it imply certain responsibilities? If so, what responsibilities? When
we speak of a young man’s career as promising, we mean that his abilities and opportunities are such that
he is likely to become rich or famous or powerful; and this judgment does not of course imply, so far
as we are concerned, any responsibility. It is merely a prophecy based upon past performances and proved
qualities. But the career, which from the standpoint of an outsider is merely an anticipation, becomes
for the young man himself a serious task. For him, at all events, the better future will not merely happen.
He will have to do something to deserve it. It may be wrecked by unforeseen obstacles, by unsuspected
infirmities, or by some critical error of judgment. So it is with the Promise of American life. From the
point of view of an immigrant this Promise may consist of the anticipation of a better future, which he
can share merely by taking up his residence on American soil; but once he has become an American, the
Promise can no longer remain merely an anticipation. It becomes in that case a responsibility, which requires
for its fulfillment a certain kind of behavior on the part of himself and his fellow-Americans. And when
we attempt to define the Promise of American life, we are obliged, also, to describe the kind of behavior
which the fulfillment of the Promise demands.
The distinction between the two aspects of America as a Land of Promise made in the preceding paragraph
is sufficiently obvious, but it is usually slurred by the average good American patriot. The better future,
which is promised for himself, his children, and for other Americans, is chiefly a matter of confident
anticipation. He looks upon it very much as a friendly outsider might look on some promising individual
career. The better future is understood by him as something which fulfills itself. He calls his country,
not only the Land of Promise, but the Land of Destiny. It is fairly launched on a brilliant and successful
career, the continued prosperity of which is prophesied by the very momentum of its advance. As Mr. H.
G. Wells says in The Future in America, "When one talks to an American of his national purpose,
he seems a little at a loss; if one speaks of his national destiny, he responds with alacrity." The
great majority of Americans would expect a book written about "The Promise of American Life"
to contain chiefly a fanciful description of the glorious American future—a sort of Utopia up-to-date,
situated in the land of Good-Enough, and flying the Stars and Stripes. They might admit in words that
the achievement of this glorious future implied certain responsibilities, but they would not regard the
admission either as startling or novel. Such responsibilities were met by our predecessors; they will
be met by our followers. Inasmuch as it is the honorable American past which prophesies on behalf of the
better American future, our national responsibility consists fundamentally in remaining true to traditional
ways of behavior, standards, and ideals. What we Americans have to do in order to fulfill our national
Promise is to keep up the good work—to continue resolutely and cheerfully along the appointed path.
The reader who expects this book to contain a collection of patriotic prophecies will be disappointed.
I am not a prophet in any sense of the word, and I entertain an active and intense dislike of the foregoing
mixture of optimism, fatalism, and conservatism. To conceive the better American future as a consummation
which will take care of itself,—as the necessary result of our customary conditions, institutions, and
ideas,—persistence in such a conception is admirably designed to deprive American life of any promise
at all. The better future which Americans propose to build is nothing if not an idea which must in certain
essential respects emancipate them from their past. American history contains much matter for pride and
congratulation, and much matter for regret and humiliation. On the whole, it is a past of which the loyal
American has no reason to feel ashamed, chiefly because it has throughout been made better than it was
by the vision of a better future; and the American of to-day and to-morrow must remain true to that traditional
vision. He must be prepared to sacrifice to that traditional vision even the traditional American ways
of realizing it. Such a sacrifice is, I believe, coming to be demanded; and unless it is made, American
life will gradually cease to have any specific Promise.
The only fruitful promise of which the life of any individual or any nation can be possessed, is a promise
determined by an ideal. Such a promise is to be fulfilled, not by sanguine anticipations, not by a conservative
imitation of past achievements, but by laborious, single-minded, clear-sighted, and fearless work. If
the promising career of any individual is not determined by a specific and worthy purpose, it rapidly
drifts into a mere pursuit of success; and even if such a pursuit is successful, whatever promise it may
have had, is buried in the grave of its triumph. So it is with a nation. If its promise is anything more
than a vision of power and success, that addition must derive its value from a purpose; because in the
moral world the future exists only as a workshop in which a purpose is to be realized. Each of the several
leading European nations is possessed of a specific purpose determined for the most part by the pressure
of historical circumstances; but the American nation is committed to a purpose which is not merely of
historical manufacture. It is committed to the realization of the democratic ideal; and if its Promise
is to be fulfilled, it must be prepared to follow whithersoever that ideal may lead.
No doubt Americans have in some measure always conceived their national future as an ideal to be fulfilled.
Their anticipations have been uplifting as well as confident and vainglorious. They have been prophesying
not merely a safe and triumphant, but also a better, future. The ideal demand for some sort of individual
and social amelioration has always accompanied even their vainest flights of patriotic prophecy. They
may never have sufficiently realized that this better future, just in so far as it is better, will have
to be planned and constructed rather than fulfilled of its own momentum; but at any rate, in seeking to
disentangle and emphasize the ideal implications of the American national Promise, I am not wholly false
to the accepted American tradition. Even if Americans have neglected these ideal implications, even if
they have conceived the better future as containing chiefly a larger portion of familiar benefits, the
ideal demand, nevertheless, has always been palpably present; and if it can be established as the dominant
aspect of the American tradition, that tradition may be transformed, but it will not be violated.
Furthermore, much as we may dislike the American disposition to take the fulfillment of our national Promise
for granted, the fact that such a disposition exists in its present volume and vigor demands respectful
consideration. It has its roots in the salient conditions of American life, and in the actual experience
of the American people. The national Promise, as it is popularly understood, has in a way been fulfilling
itself. If the underlying conditions were to remain much as they have been, the prevalent mixture of optimism,
fatalism, and conservatism might retain a formidable measure of justification; and the changes which are
taking place in the underlying conditions and in the scope of American national experience afford the
most reasonable expectation that this state of mind will undergo a radical alteration. It is new conditions
which are forcing Americans to choose between the conception of their national Promise as a process and
an ideal… |
