LIBRARY OF CONGRESS QDDDBHaSflS? .-^' ^^ ... •^^^^ " » », iP"*. V »'•. ^"•^'i^^X i^„.<^' /SiK- V.^^'.-iSSiA'; V..-^' - %. ^^^ .;v o^^.^^--"^- ^^^0^ ^4^-^ i> . ^ • ,*".. ^'% ^w ^^''•^- '"%^* /\ •:^'^.* *' O ^j"*■ ^-..^^ .^^ -^Ao^ ^oV^ w ^^% ' * ^' - , -^.^ -"<* ^yiW: .<&' ^^. o A-i>^ yJ^r^^ >^ C^ ^* 0^ ^^^^. - ^^0^ K^^ °«> -i-"^ ^u^.^' V- AMERICAN TRAITS FEOM THE POINT OF VIEW OF A GERMAN HUGO MUNSTERBERG rA q^ BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY (Siht mi'otmtt ptt^^y Cambtibge 1901 Co 'v>^ THF LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Two Copiee ftccFivcp NOV. 7 1P01 CLASS «. XXa N«. COPY A. COPYRIGHT, I90I, BY HUGO MUNSTERBERG ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published November, igor To FREDERICK WILLIAM HOLLS Member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague ideal type of the American of German Descent PREFACE The following essays are not scholarly studies, but light sketches di^awn in leisure hours by a German who has pitched his tent among the Americans and become interested in the differ- ences between the Americans and the Germans. But my interest in that contrast is not merely a theoretical one : I believe that these two nations can and ought to learn from each other, and that in this case even the protectionists of national civiHzation ought not to favor a prohibitive tariff on foreign ideals. Such mutual instruction has been hindered by prejudices and misunderstand- ings : the two nations do not know each other sufficiently, although they are connected by in- numerable ties from the past and will need each other's good will still more in the years to come. To root out such prejudices and to facihtate mu- tual benefit, it becomes a duty to measure critically the culture of the one country by the ideals of the other. vi PREFACE In this small volume the topic is discussed only from one side, for this book is written for Amer- icans, and for Americans only. The problem is, therefore, not what Germany ought to learn from the United States, but rather, how far a fuller understanding of German ideals can be service- able to American culture. Of course this point of view has limited from the beginning the circle of problems to demand consideration ; thus it has not been necessary to speak of commerce and in- dustry and a hundred other topics with regard to which Germans and Americans might be com- pared. And the choice of subjects has been fur- ther influenced by factors in the life of the author. Schoolboy, student, and later university professor in Germany, and now for seven years a professor in America, I have been of course more closely in contact with certain sides of civilization than with others ; it is thus natural that the problems of education and scholarship take somewhat the cen- tral place in my discussions. Even the special seat of observation must have had its influence on my impressions : I was hardly surprised to read the other day that I see the American world PREFACE vii through German eyes with Harvard astigma- tism. That I see it with German eyes is certainly true : it is the only reason which gives, perhaps, to these small sketches a right to exist ; if I saw America with the eyes of an American I should hardly hope to notice features which possibly my neighbors overlook. It is the contrast which brings out the lines, and that fact alone excuses my speaking to Americans on American subjects after so short a period of acquaintance; had I waited longer I should have seen my surroundings more nearly with American eyes and should have perceived less the characteristic differences. I think I can say at least that I have made the best use of these years of American life to come in contact with its infinite variety. While the Har- vard life in Boston offers in itself a good oppor- tunity to meet men and to feel the pulse of American civihzation, I have traveled again and again over the country and have tried to experi- ence the national Ufe in all its important or char- acteristic phases. These informal pages, of course, cannot show viii PREFACE wholly what American life has meant to me, inas- much as my topic forces me to the side of the op- position. If it is my aim to point to those features of American life on which a comment in the light of European ideals seems allowable, the picture which I draw must appear one-sided, as the task gives me no chance to linger on the superiorities of American culture which do not need the re- touching by foreign ideals. I am thus obliged to put in all the shadows and to brush out the lights ; therefore no one ought to imagine that it has been my intention to draw a complete picture of American life as it appears to me. This preponderance of adverse criticism brings an unavoidable result : I must express opinions which are antagonistic to widely favored opinions of the day, to pet theories, and to flourishing customs. I have already experienced the conse- quences. All the five essays have appeared pre- viously, the first three in the " Atlantic Monthly," the last two in the " International Monthly," — I reprint them with the kind permission of the magazines, — and their isolated appearance has every time given rise to a public discussion of PREFACE ix unexpected vehemence. Especially the paper on education, which I had pubhshed under the title of " School Eeform," brought forward ever new rejoinders which often indicated that I had touched a sore point. I have finally decided nevertheless to reprint all the papers with but slight alterations ; I felt that my papers would become valueless if I ever shaded them for the purpose of escaping antagonism. And further, if I look backward I cannot forget how much larger was the number of those who encouraged me to stand for my side of the case, and who insisted that it was the right time to raise a voice against the tendencies of the day. Only one criticism has appeared in those utter- ances which seems to have weight, or at least seems certainly to be in order. It has been often ques- tioned whether I am right in fighting merely against American shortcomings from a German point of view, and in trying to destroy prejudices on this side of the water ; whether it is not in a still higher degree my duty to attempt the same for the other side; for German prejudices con- cerning the United States are certamly not less X PREFACE severe and the points in which Germany might learn from American culture not less numerous. The question is fair, and I should acknowledge its force had only my critics first made sure that I am not doing exactly what they urge. I have done it unceasingly and with my best energies ever since I came here : I have published on the other side scores of articles and essays, and shaU soon put before the German public an entire book on American life, a book which is far less fragmentary than this, and deals in a detailed way with the political, economic, intellectual, and social aspects of American culture. Its purpose is to illuminate and to defend a culture which I have learned to admire and which is so greatly misunderstood over there ; it seeks to interpret systematically the democratic ideals of America. It will be written for Germans only. I know this method of double entry exposes me to the possibihty, when detached paragraphs of my German essays are brought over here and published in translation, of seeming inconsistent or even insincere. And yet contradictions exist merely for the superficial observer; both state- PREFACE xi ments express equally a sincere conviction. A little strip of gray paper appears white on a black background and black on a white one; so my statements can express the same truth on both sides only if the peculiarities of pubHc opinion they encounter are considered beforehand. What I write in Germany to counteract the prejudices against America would sound on American soil like cheap flattery, and would be not only useless, but would stand in the way of reform ; on the other hand, that which I publish here would sound there like utter condemnation, it would reinforce unfriendly opinions, and would be in fact misleading, since it would be exaggerated by the existing prejudices and would not be supple- mented by a knowledge of the really salient high lights. The wrong would thus be done not by the author who emphasizes the good points of America over there, and criticises the weak ones here, but by those who detach such studies from their background. My last word is, therefore, a serious request that no one, especially no German-American who agrees with me as to the need of good relations xu PREFACE between the two countries, should quote or trans- late from this little book in a German paper over in the fatherland. So far as I can help it, no copy of the book shall reach the European continent ; and I can promise in return also to take pains when I publish my German book on America that none of the amiabilities T may have to pro- mulgate over there shall recross the ocean and duU my criticism here. HUGO MUNSTERBERG. Cambridge, Mass., October, 1901. CONTENTS Pagb I. THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS .... 1 II. EDUCATION 43 HI. SCHOLARSHIP 81 IV. WOMEN 128 V. AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 173 AMERICAN TRAITS I THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS During the last years, and especially since the beginning of the Spanish war, scarcely a month has passed which has not brought to public no- tice some fancied friction between the Americans and the Germans, and again and again the scare- heads of sensational newspapers have suggested the possibiHty of a clash. Since England is no longer a bogy to frighten the Americans, the Germans have to be the target of all the suspi- cion and bad feeling which some Americans like to cultivate against Europe, a feeling always en- couraged by those politicians who want to bolster up new schemes by vague allusions to a threat- ening danger beyond the sea. Whether Captain Coghlan or an agrarian in the fatherland has talked inconsiderately, whether Dewey and Die- drichs or Chaffee and Waldersee are the actors, whether Samoa or China, the West Indies or Bra- 2 AMERICAN TRAITS zil is in question, whether meat inspection and the importation of American apples or a tariff change on this side is under discussion, whether in Congress or the Reichstag the industrial develop- ment of the future is forecast, the facts are each time pointed out to us as dangerous clouds whose lightnings may strike us before the next news- paper edition. All this, however, is politics ; whether serious conflicts were really impending or not, why should a student of social psychology concern himself with the situation ? But may we not be deceiving ourselves if we think that the real trouble has been in Manila or Apia or Pekin, or that it will ever take its rise in the market places of the world where American and German industry are in competition ? Is it not rather the mental state of the two nations that is the only possible source of any danger ? The object of quarrel is insignificant; it is the inner attitude which counts. If Americans and Germans like one another and have sympathy for one another's character, the whole of China will be too small to cause a conflict ; but if there is an antipathy between them, if neither trusts the nature of the other, the tiniest rock in the ocean may suffice to bring on a war which shall set the globe ablaze. Does not all this give an excuse to the psychologist who, though far from the THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS 3 mysteries of politics, ventures to take an impar- tial view of this interesting emotional ease ? To live up to all the opportunities of scholarly display which this chapter of social psychology offers, I ought to go back to the seventeenth cen- tury or at least to Frederick the Great, whose en- thusiasm for the American struggle for independ- ence furnishes plenty of material for all who like to make such introductions. But I am afraid that the usual fine quotations which show the absence of American-German frictions in earlier times have hardly any direct bearing on our present case. The Germans of a generation ago did not look much beyond the ocean in any case, and the German imagination pictured the land rather than the nation, — the land where gold was lying in the streets, and where every newcomer still found the chance of a free life. The American as a special type of man had not been discovered ; neither favorable nor unfavorable information about him was diffused, simply because nobody asked for it. On the American side it was some- what different. MilHons of German immigrants had poured into the land, and had become an hon- est and most industrious part of the population. Moreover, while they were bringing the spirit of the German working classes, thousands of young Americans were going abroad to bring home the 4 AMERICAN TRAITS spirit of educated Germany. German music and German philosophy, German joyousness and Ger- man university spirit, came to these shores ; and yet, just as the American land of gold and liberty remained to the imagination of the German some- thing far and strange, so the Teutonic land of thinkers and poets remained to the American im- agination remote and vague. No one thought of comparison or of rivalry, because the two worlds seemed in different dimensions. But all this has changed overnight : the dreamy German and the adventurous American are sitting close together on the same bench, feeling that they must be either friends or foes. Wonderfully as the cables and twin-screw steamers have dimin- ished the distance in space between the two peo- ples, the diminution of the inner mental distance has been still more surprising and unexpected on both sides. Germany has become strong, rich, and powerful, and its politics have turned into reahstic paths. On the other hand, the United States, since the country has come to ma- turity economically, has put its gigantic resources into the service of education and art and sci- ence. They are both thus moving in the same sphere, and the question is merely. Will they move shoulder to shoulder, or be ever at vari- ance ? Their feelings and emotions, even their THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS 5 moods, will decide about that : how do they feel to-day ? No sincere observer can deny that the two peo- ples in some respects do not like each other. It is by no means hate nor even animosity which separates them ; it is a kind of antipathy, a haK- ethical, half -aesthetic aversion. It would be super- ficial and wrong to deny this feehng, and to main- tain that their dislike means commercial rivalry ; both are too fair and broad-minded — indeed, I may say, too idealistic — to dislike each other on account of wheat and sugar and pork ; they might struggle about the tariff, but tariff struggles be- come noisy and undignified affairs only because the masses lack mutual respect. Neither Germans nor Americans are accustomed in then' social life to treat the neighbor who happens to be a fair competitor as an enemy. Competition is to them a stimulant, but not a poison which paralyzes the good will. The nations feel, hke private citizens, that the respect cannot be hurt by a divergence of economic interests, and that even friendship is possible in spite of emulation. But even those who accept unhesitatingly the materialistic theory of history, according to which economic factors alone determine the development of human rela- tions, have no case here, as in all essentials the past relation of the two countries has been one of 6 AMERICAN TRAITS mutual economic help, the one nation needing just that which the other supplied, and thus offer- ing all the conditions for a solid union ; only the predictions of the future speak of rivalry, apd they can certainly not account for the popujaff lack of sympathy in the past. The sharpness arid unfriendliness of speech which is remarked some- times on both sides in political and commercial matters is not the cause of the national attitude, but its effect. It is not an objective irritating situation which forces on the two peoples an an- gry emotion ; it is the underlying emotion which too easily gives to every indifferent situation a touch of antagonism. The feeling is the primary factor, and its source is a certain misapprehension of character. The citizens of the two nations do not like one another because they do not regard one another as gentlemen : the American thinks the German servile and reactionary, narrow- minded and narrow-hearted ; the German thinks the American greedy and vulgar, brutal and cor- rupt. As long as large circles of the population have such a feeling, all the diplomacy of the two governments can merely apply plaster to the wounds, but cannot thoroughly heal them. Only one course is open for an organic improvement : the two nations must learn to understand each other and to feel the inner accord of their real characters. THE MIERICANS AND THE GERMANS 7 n Caricatures are not portraits, but they can be helpful in recognizing the essential features which the designer really believes himself to see in the original. The caricature of the German, popular from the Atlantic to the Pacific, is moreover not confined to the comic papers, but is excellently represented in the serious editorials of many news- papers ; and the funny German in a second-class American theatre is much less amusing than that absurd creature which in parlor gossip and club talk is quite seriously substituted for the inhab- itant of the fatherland. An American who has never been abroad invited me, the other day, to a German luncheon. I had to work my way through a series of so-called German dishes, which I had never tasted or smelled before ; and when finally imported sauerkraut appeared, and I had to confess that I had never tried it in my life and had never seen any one else eating it, my host assured me that I did not know anything about Germany : it was the favorite dish of every Prussian. The habits of this Prussian sauerkraut- eater are well known. He goes shabbily dressed, never takes a bath, drinks beer at his breakfast, plays skat, smokes a long pipe, wears spectacles, reads books from dirty loan libraries, is rude to 8 AMERICAN TRAITS the lower classes and slavishly servile to the higher, is innocent of the slightest attempt at good form in society, considering it as his object in life to obey the policeman, to fill blanks with bureau- cratic red tape, and to get a title in front of his name. Most of this genus fill their time with training parade step in the barrack courts ; the others either make bad lyrical poems or hve im- moral lives, or sit in prison on account of daring to say a free word in politics. But their chief characteristic comes out in their relations to wo- men and to the government. With calculating cruelty, they force women to remain uneducated and without rights ; in marriage they treat them hke silly playthings or servant-girls ; a woman with intellectual or aesthetic interests is, like every- thing which suggests progress, a horror to their minds. And lastly, their government : it is hard to understand why, but it is a fact that they in- sist on living without any constitution, under an absolute autocrat, and it is their chief pride that their monarch is an irresponsible busybody, whose chief aim is to bother his patient subjects. This is the "Dutchman" in American eyes; but how does the Yankee look in the imagination of my countrymen ? In the German language the adjective " American " is usually connected with but three things. The Germans speak of THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS 9 American stoves, and mean a kind of stove which I have never seen in this country ; they speak of American duels, and mean an absurd sort of duel which was certainly never fought on this conti- nent ; and finally, they speak of American hum- bug, and mean by it that kind of humbug which flourishes in Berlin just as in Chicago. But the American man is of course very well known. He is a haggard creature, with vulgar tastes and brutal manners, who drinks whiskey and chews tobacco, spits, fights, puts his feet on the table, and habitually rushes along in wild haste, absorbed by a greedy desire for the dollars of his neigh- bors. He does not care for education or art, for the public welfare or for justice, except so far as they mean money to him. Corrupt from top to toe, he buys legislation and courts and govern- ment ; and when he wants fun, he lynches inno- cent negroes on Madison Square in New York, or in the Boston Public Garden. He has his family home usually in a sky-scraper of twenty-four stories; his business is founded on misleading advertisements; his newspapers are filled with accounts of murders, and his churches swarm with hypocrites. It is true that on both sides of the ocean there are some who know a Httle better ; but if the milhons who enjoy the New York Journal and 10 AMERICAN TRAITS the Berliner Lokalanzeiger have such character sketches in mind, how small is the influence on public opinion of that little set which relies on the New York Evening Post and the Nationalzeitung ! And even these best classes, are they really so much freer from prejudice ? After all, the Ameri- can clings to the belief that the German is reac- tionary and subservient, without a manly desire for freedom and independence, — that his Emperor is irresponsible, and the average subject no gentle- man ; while the American remains to German eyes dollar-thirsty and corrupt, vulgar and selfish, — on the whole, also, no gentleman. So when an Enghsh cable agency sends news to Germany that the Americans have fallen upon the poor Cubans to fill the pockets of senators, and are kiUing in the Philippines mostly women and children, and sends news to America that the Germans are slyly interfering with the navy in Manila or plundering Pekin or preparing a revolution in South America, is it surprising that the worst finds the readiest behef, and that public opinion in both countries cries, " How dare they, the rascals ! " That which alone seems surprising is that the brambles of prejudice can grow so exuberantly while the ocean steamers are crowded, going and coming. The hundreds of students who go yearly to German universities, the thousands of Ameri- THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS 11 can sight-seers who go every summer on pilgrim- ages from Heidelberg to Cologne, the millions of German immigrants who have been poured into this country, and the billions of newspaper pages which are printed on both sides every year, — are they all unable to disseminate the truth ? But we cannot deny that the psychological conditions are more favorable to the survival of the false view, in spite of the blessed work of the Associated Press. The Americans who cross the ocean can- not see much of Germany and cannot teach much about America. A friend assured me once that there is only one classification of Americans which it is worth while to make, — those who have been abroad and those who have not. I cannot agree with him. I have met many whose minds have spanned the world, though they have never left the New England States, and many more who have strolled over the whole of Europe, and yet are as narrow and provincial as if they had never looked over the fence of then* own back yards. A man may heartily enjoy the architecture of Niirnberg or Hildesheim, the paintings of Dres- den, the operas of Baireuth, the scenery of the Black Forest, and the uniforms of the lieutenants of the guard, and yet leave the country with all the absurd prejudices which he carried there. We are incUned by psychological laws to perceive 12 AMERICAN TRAITS merely that which we expect to perceive ; we do not voluntarily suppress the remainder, but it does not exist for us at all. Germany has no freedom : thus the most harmless policeman on the street corner appears to be a tyrant, and brings before the mind of the traveler the terrors of mediaeval- ism. And when the bicycles must have a num- ber by day and a lantern by night, who can help thinking sentimentally of the free home over the sea, where everybody has the liberty to run over his fellow ; and where the landlady gives chops for breakfast, and not eggs alone; and where plenty of blankets, not feather beds, await you ; and where ice water flows and mince pies abound ? The httle differences trouble the stranger and they swell in his imagination, while every good thing that does not fit with his anticipations fades away and is soon forgotten. Very few Americans come into a sufficiently intimate contact with the real German life to 'get their traditional errors eradicated. But the usual Europe-trotter, on the other hand, does not help much to propagate the belief in American culture. He goes his way quietly, and no one will blame him for enjoying the view from Heidelberg Castle down to the Neckar Valley with- out making a speech for the glory of his coun- try. He remains unobserved ; but when a puffed- THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS 13 up parvenu from the West comes along, with noisy manners, he is observed, and he alone, — though one among scores, — is then " the Ameri- can ; " and if he puts his feet on the table in the hotel corridor, there are certainly a dozen men in the neighborhood who will never after relinquish the opinion that all Americans are hopelessly vul- gar and disgusting. Ill The Germans who travel to America either are on a journey or have come to stay. The first group contains few : they go, for the most part, from New York through Florida and the City of Mexico to San Francisco, and through the Yellow- stone Park, Chicago, and Quebec back to Hoboken. If they have done that in six months, they write only one or two magazine articles about the Amer- icans ; but if they have succeeded in doing it in six weeks, then they write a book, and a big one. They have of course seen everything : they have shaken hands with the President, have witnessed a prize fight at an athletic club, visited the stock yards and the Indian schools, studied polygamy in Utah and the Chinese quarters in San Fran- cisco ; they have even met some one in the Pull- man car who knew all about the silver question and the next presidency. And when they have 14 AMERICAN TRAITS added their own experiences in the barber shops and in the barrooms, the book will contain all that Germans can desire to know about America. They have not the remotest idea that this nation can show greater achievements than its hotels and railways. They have seen all the Bsedeker stars, and do not guess that the tourist attractions of this country represent its real energies much less than do those of Europe. Europe, with its relics of history and art, may speak to the eye ; Amer- ica speaks to the understanding ; whatever na- tional life is here apparent to the eye is mostly but an imitation of Europe. The traveler is accustomed to open his eyes only, and to close his ears ; he descants for the thousandth time on the Eocky Mountains and Niagara, but he does not learn anything about the inner life, with its mountains of accompHshment and its cataracts of problems. There are plenty of excellent Ger- man monographs about special economic features of American Hf e which can be studied from the outside ; the studies on the more internal func- tions of education or religion are much more superficial, and nothing which really analyzes the inner man with full understanding has ever been carried home by the German traveler. On the other hand, he is too rare a guest to add anything by his appearance here to American ideas about THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS 15 the Germans. He remains the more unobserved because there is no lack of German nature already at hand to be inspected under the most various conditions ; for New York and Chicago have each more Germans than any German city except Ber- lin. Thus only the Germans who hve here are able to represent their native country in the New World, and to take back to Germany true ideas about the inner American life. How has it hap- pened that even these millions have not dispelled the dense fog of Continental ignorance about the Yankees? How has it happened that the real America is still as undiscovered by the educated German as if Columbus had never crossed the ocean ? The German immigrant can justly claim to be a respectable and very desirable element of the American population : he has stood always on the side of soHd work and honesty ; he has brought skill and energy over the ocean, and he has not forgotten his music and his joyfulness ; he is not second to any one in his devotion to the duties of a citizen in peace and in war, and without his aid many of America's industrial, commercial, and technical triumphs would be unknown. But all that does not disprove the fact that he is often somewhat unfit to judge fairly the life which sur- rounds him. First, he belongs almost always to 16 AMERICAN TRAITS a social stratum in which the attention is fully absorbed by the external life of a country, and which is without feeling for the achievements of its mental hfe; he was poor in his fatherland, and lives comfortably here, and thus he is enthu- siastic over the material hfe, praises the railroads and hotels, the bridges and mills, but does not even try to judge of the libraries and universities, the museums and the hospitals. On the other hand, he feels socially in the background; he is the "Dutchman," who, through his bad English, through his habits and manners, through his tastes and pleasures, is different from the major- ity, and therefore set apart as a citizen of second rank, — if not slighted, at least kept in social iso- lation. On the side of the German, the result of this situation is often an entire ignorance of the Anglo-American life; he may go his way here for thirty years without ever breaking bread at the table of any one outside of the German circle ; he may even have become rich, and yet he is not quite in the social current. His ignorance is there- fore too easily coupled with unfairness ; the Ger- man who feels himself slighted tends to minimize the effect of the unfriendly attitude of the Anglo- American by sharp criticism : everything which seems strange is in his talk distorted into a defect, and every real weakness grows to a vice. Of THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS 17 course, there are not a few exceptions, not a few who are fully received, even if we disregard that less worthy class which buys recognition by dis- avowal of the fatherland, of whom some, in the interest of city politics, are said to be ambitious of becoming Irishmen. The large mass, however, continues in that social separation which makes its judgment an odd mixture of ignorance as to the inner life, unfairness as to the personal qualities, and blind admiration for the wealth and economic greatness of this country. In such a form the gossip of a hundred thousand family letters and saloon conversations pours into Germany, and naturally reinforces there, through that which it praises almost as much as through that which it blames, the feeling of antipathy toward the United States. Such German-Americans are not only unfit to judge Americans ; they are also, unfor- tunately, unfit to correct the traditional ideas of Americans about Germans. If they hved up to their highest duty, they would work out in them- selves the noblest type of German ideals, in order to impress Americans with the best of the German nature, and thus make moral conquests for their old home. So did the generation of 1848 with a cii'cle of admirable leaders, of whom Carl Schurz became the best known representative. But no new generation has appeared after them to take 18 AMERICAN TRAITS up the work, no new set has come in which has felt itself called upon to add to the glory of the fatherland. A few high-minded newspapers have faithfully shown the way ; Conried's Irving Place Theatre has been a source of inspiration with noble influence on the American stage ; ja^ few eminent scholars are sprinkled over the countryT^ But on the whole the German- American masses of to-day show little of the German tendency to higher aims. They are surprisingly indifferent ; their clubs and associations lack more and more the inspirations of earlier days, and they are satisfied to praise honesty as their peculiar German virtue instead of feeling it to be a matter of course. Alarmingly few men of individual power have grown up among those miUions. What characterizes the German at home, the tendency to idealism and the desire for intellectual life, has evaporated ; the artisan or the farmer, whose highest wish at home would have been to send his son to the gymnasium, and per- haps even to the university, is here glad if his boy becomes a clever business clerk as quickly as possible. It seems too often as if he imitated by preference the bad features of his surroundings. The exceptions merely confirm the rule that the average German- American stands in some respects below the level of the average German at home. This is hardly a result of the bad quahty of the THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS 19 immigrants ; on the contrary, the factors which determine the individual to cross the ocean make it probable that, in most cases, the stronger and more energetic personalities seek the wider field of a new country ; the lowering of the average must be the result of the new conditions of life, and not of the selection of the material. It seems, then, that the German-Americans have done but little to make the Germans under- stand America better, and perhaps still less to make the Americans understand the real Ger- mans ; they have given little help toward awak- enmg in the two nations the feeling of mutual sympathy ; and yet, as we have said, this alone is the way for an organic improvement of their political relations. If they had lived up to their duties in the last twenty years as they did in the fifties and sixties, the branches of the Teutonic race would have been united by a more cordial feeling, and many occurrences of the last two years would have been impossible. They alone have seen both countries with lov- ing eyes and loyal hearts, and they ought, there- fore, to be able to do justice to the true intentions of both parties. In their hands is the flag of truce. They must embody in themselves the best side of the German spirit, and they must open the eyes of Germans at home to what is 20 AMERICAN TRAITS best in the American nature. Their work must of course be futile if they ignore the facts and tell fairy tales about the two countries. What is needed is nothing but the truth, freed from the traditional phrases of short-sighted prejudice. To be sure, the atmosphere in which the preju- dices take shape would have been different if the Americans of the old stock had shown a deeper understanding or a fairer appreciation of all the desirable features which the German immigration has added to the general American physiognomy. For the last three months of every presidential campaign the German voter is praised up and down as a model citizen and what not. But when the election is over, the Yankee feels him- self again as the host who alone has the full right to set standards, and the American " with a hyphen " is the guest who is tolerated, but who has to adjust his ideals to the English ways. He forgets too easily that the American nation is not a nation of Englishmen, but a new EngUsh-speak- ing people, in which the most various elements are fused into something new and original. This new nation, which is so decidedly un-English, not least in its smartness and its humor and its ora- torical flow, and which willingly accepts negro songs as its national melodies, ought to welcome gladly the infusion of German blood, instead of THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS 21 avoiding the social mixture. It is easy to make light of the music and the Christmas tree or to denounce the German breweries, but even the beer is a gain if it displaces the ruinous whiskey, and the music and the Christmas tree are merely symbols of characteristics which were certainly desirable additions to the temperament of the new nation. But there were more important fac- tors, — industry and civic vii'tues, which, brought over from Germany, helped to build up the land and the nation, and it is unfair to stamp the Ger- man-American as a citizen of second rank and thus to isolate him socially. It is really n,ot surprising that the Germans in America dislike every approach to England, be- cause they feel instinctively that an Anglo-Ameri- can union reinforces the feeling that the Americans are an Anglo-Saxon nation in which other Teu- tonic elements are strangers. It was thus only natural that the rumors of an Anglo-American alliance a short time ago were the occasion — the first for many years — of gigantic demon- strations on the part of the Germans in the coun- try. It was not, as they themselves believed it to be, a fight against imperialism, as in the question of imperialism the Germans are just as divided as any other group of citizens ; and it was still much less, as the newspapers of Germany believed it to 22 AMERICAN TRAITS be, a demonstration against England in favor of Germany, but it was simply a reaction against the emphasis of the Anglo-Saxon character of the American nation, which means a social humil- iation for the German- Americans. The fault is thus clearly on both sides ; the native Americans and the German-Americans have participated equally in bringing about this separation. But for us it is not a question of blame, merely a question of fact; and the fact remains, that the German- American has lived in an isolation which has made him on the whole unfit for the role which would be most natural to him, that of giving to the Germans at home and to the Americans here a deeper mutual understanding of their real characters. IV I may perhaps be allowed to point out, as illus- trations, those two prejudices with regard to the character of the two peoples which strike me as an impartial observer most strongly, and which are really the root of the misunderstandings. I mean the traditional German opinion that the Americans have no idealism, but are selfish realists, and the American belief, that the Germans have no spirit of freedom. The belief that the Americans have no spark of idealism in their souls has done THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS 23 more harm to the relations of Continental nations with the United States than any protective tariff or any commercial competition. The largest newspaper of Berlin wrote the other day in a character sketch of the American : *^ The Ameri- can does not hesitate to cheat his best friend, but the most astonishing expression of the American lack of conscience is given in politics, which has been transformed by him into a swamp of cor- ruption, detestable as that of Russia and Cliina. Every pubHc office in America is for the office- holder merely an arrangement to steal and to fill his own pockets at the expense of the com- munity. That is the ideal purpose of life for everybody, from the simple alderman up to the senator in Washington. The American is always ready to sacrifice all the interests of the commu- nity to his private interests ; the non olet of the Emperor Vespasian has changed for him into It smells delightfully ! " For this chance quotation might easily be substituted a hundred others of exactly the same spirit. And such ideas, ham- mered daily into the mind of the German nation, for whom the honesty and integrity of the civil service is the basis of public life, must necessarily produce an antipathy which makes any under- standing difficult. It has surrounded every act of America with a cloud of selfishness and meanness 24 AMERICAN TRAITS by which even the most harmless action becomes repugnant to sound feelings, and by which the most guileless man is made a prey to the news- papers of Europe. Granted that an American action can never have idealistic motives, it is- not difficult to distort daily occurrences and historical events so that everything appears disgusting to a country which believes itself to have a prior claim upon every sort of idealistic feeling, and this emotion of the crowd then becomes the spring of pohtical reactions. I think this attitude is utterly groundless. More than that, I think the true American is an idealist through and through. I perceive, to be sure, that his idealism is often loose and lax and ineffective, but it remains idealism nevertheless, and he de- ceives himself when he poses as a realist, like his English cousin. What most quickly misleads is, doubtless, his consuming interest in money- making, together with the sharp struggle for ex- istence, the gigantic scale of his undertakings, his hasty, impulsive movements, his taste for strong sensational stimuli, his spoils politics, and the influence of corporations upon his legislation. But is not all that merely the surface view ? The American is not greedy for money ; if he were, he would not give away his wealth with such a liberal hand, and would not put aside all the unidealistic THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS 25 European schemes of money-making which exclude individual initiative, as, for instance, the puisuit of dowries, or, on a lower level, the tipping sys- tem. The American runs after money primarily for the pleasure of the chase ; it is the spirit of enterprise that spurs him on, the desire to make use of his energies, to realize his personality. And there is one other factor : in a country where political conditions have excluded titles and orders and social distinctions in general, money is in the / end the only means of social discrimination, and , financial success becomes thus the measurement of the ability of the individual and of his power to realize himseK in action. That the strugfg-le for existence is sharper here than in Europe is simply a fairy" tale. In a country where the great- est enterprises are undertaken in the service of charity, and where the natural resources of the land are inexhaustible, even the lowest classes do not struggle for existence, but, seen from the Continental standpoint, merely for comfort; of this the lyrical character of the discussions of social problems here compared with their dramatic character in Germany gives the fullest evidence. The manners and tastes of individuals are also easily misinterpreted. Those hasty, pushing move- ments look Hke an overflow of realistic energies, but they are simply the outcome of a lack of co- 26 AMERICAN TRAITS ordination and adjustment. The quiet move- ments of the Englishman are expressions of strength and energy ; the hasty movements of the Yankee and his motor restlessness, manifested in the use of rocking-chairs and chewing-gum, are mere imperfections of the motor coordinating centres, an inability to suppress and to inhibit. In the same way, the demand for strong stimuli is not at all a symptom of over-irritation, as those usually claim it to be who consider American life a nerve-wearing clash of selfish energies. No, it is only insufficient training through the lack of aesthetic traditions. While over-irritation would demand that the stimuli gi'ow stronger and stronger, experience shows that they soften and become more refined from year to year, stamping to-day as vulgar the acknowledged pleasure of yesterday. But the most amusing misunderstand- ing arises when the American himself thinks that he proves the purely practical character of his life by the eagerness with which he saves his time, on the ground that time is money. It strikes me | that, next to the public funds, nothing is so much wasted here as time. Whether it is wasted in reading the endless newspaper reports of murder trials or in sitting on the base-ball grounds, in watching a variety show or in lying in bed, in waiting for the elevator or in being shaved after THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS 27 the American fashion, in attending receptions or in enjoying committee meetings, is quite unessen- tial. The whole scheme of American education is possible only in a country which is rich enough not to need any economy of time, and which can therefore allow itself the luxury of not asking at what age a young man begins to earn his own living. The American shopkeeper opens his store daily one hour later than the German tradesman, and the American physician opens his office three years later than his German colleague of equal education. This may be very good, but it is a prodigality of time which the Germans would be unable to imitate. Still another prolific source of European com- ment is the anti-idealistic character of American politics ; but the critics overlook certain essential points when they deduce from it the intellectual state of the average citizen. It is, for instance, not at all fair to compare the political German news- papers with those of America, and to consider them as mirrors of the nation. In Germany all the newspapers which have a political value are ex- clusively for the educated classes, while in Amer- ica every paper, and especially those which are seen most, is written for the masses. Social eco- nomic conditions make that necessary ; and it is, therefore, natural that the American paper makes 28 AINIERICAN TRAITS concessions to vulgarity which would be impossi- ble on the other side. Moreover, the critics over- look the fact that the machine politicians are not the representative men of this country. The same complex historical reasons which have made the party spoils system and the boss system prac- tically necessary forms of government have often brought representatives of very vulgar instincts into conspicuous political places; but that does not mean that the higher instincts are absent, still less that the alarming accusations which fill the press have more than a grain of truth in a bushel of denimciation. And, finally, it must be considered that poUtics in the narrower sense of the word, problems of government and of international relations, which occupy the central place in European pubUc life, have been here, on the whole, in the background as compared with economic questions. These economic ques- tions, the tariff or silver or trusts, naturally ap- peal to the selfish interests of different groups; and schemes and methods which would be low if applied to controversies genuinely political do not exclude idealism if appHed to economic struggles. Wherever such and similar factors are eliaiiuated, the American in poHtics proves himself the purest ideahst, the best men come to the front, the most sentimental motives dominate, and almost no one THE AMERICANS AXD THE GERMANS 29 dares to damage his cause by appealing to selfish instincts. Recent events have once more proved that beyond question. Whatever the senators and sugar men may have thought about it, the people wanted the Cuban war for sentimental reasons ; and if the uninformed Continental pa- pers maintain that the desire for war had merely selfish reasons, they falsify history. Is not the whole debate over expansion carried on with highly idealistic arguments on both sides ? Did not even the Anglo-American alliance get hold of the na- tion when the masses found an idealistic halo for it, discovering that those Englishmen whom they wanted to fight two years before were of the same blood and the same traditions as themselves? Is it not entirely sentimental to use Washington's Farewell Address to-day as a Hving argument with which to determine practical questions? Even the most natural, selfish, and practical instinct can be overcome with the typical American by a catchy sentimental argument. This high spirit of the indi^-idual in poHtics repeats itself much more plainly in private life, where helpfulness and honesty seem to me the most essential characteristics of the American. Helpfulness shows itself in charity, in hospitahty, in projects for education or for pubhc improve- ments, or in the most trivial ser\4ces of daily life ; 30 AMERICAN TRAITS while silent confidence in the honesty of one's fel- low men controls practical relations here in a way which is not known in cautious Europe, and could not have been developed if that confidence were not justified. Add to it the American's grateful- ness and generosity, his elasticity and his frank- ness, his cleanliness and his chastity, his humor and his fairness; consider the vividness of his religious emotion, his interest in religious and metaphysical speculation, his eagerness always to realize the best results of science, — in short, look around everywhere without prejudice, and you cannot doubt that behind the terrifying mask of the selfish realist breathes the idealist, who is con- trolled by a belief in ethical values. Unde- niably, every one of these characteristics may develop into an absurdity: gratitude may trans- form the capture of a merchant vessel into a naval triumph, speculative desire may run into the blind alleys of spirituaHsm, fairness may lead to the defense of the most cranky schemes, and the wish for steady improvements may chase the re- former from one fad to another ; and yet it is all at bottom the purest idealism. Whenever I have written about America for my German country- men, I have said : " You are right to hate that selfish, brutal, vulgar, corrupt American who fives in your imagination ; but the true American is at THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS 31 least as much an idealist as yourself, and Emerson comes nearer to representing bis spirit than do the editorial writers of the New York Journal." If I had to draw the American with a few lines, I should emphasize three mental elements. All the essential features of his public life spring from the spirit of self-determination, which was developed by his separation from his mother country ; the features of his economic life, from the spirit of self-activity which was developed by his pioneer life ; and the features of his intellec- tual life from the spirit of self-perfection, w^hich has a partly utiHtarian, partly Puritan origin. Every one of these three strong tendencies involves dangers, but essentially they are forces of purely idealistic power. To-day I am writing for American readers only, and they would not show that fairness which I have just praised if they allowed me to prove the fallacy of prejudices merely when the preju- dices exist on the other side, and not when they are themselves at fault. I may, therefore, be per- mitted to touch at least one of the many precon- ceived ideas with which the Americans regard the German nation. I choose, as one case among many, the settled opinion that the Germans, the 32 AMERICAN TRAITS poor suffering subjects of Emperor "William, have no liberty ; that the men oj)press the women, the higher classes oppress the lower classes, the no- bility oppresses the people, the army oppresses the civihans, and the Emperor oppresses all together. It must seem to the American newspaper reader as if India and Russia and Turkey had combined to invent the machinery of German civilization, in which the soldiers are tortured, the laborers imprisoned, the radicals treated as criminals, the women treated as slaves or as dolls, and the king treated as infallible. To be sure, such a text is not unknown in Germany itself ; the orators of the Social Democratic party would heartily applaud it, but it would not be the most effective party cry of the demagogues if the spirit of freedom were not the deepest element of the German nature, and the warning that their freedom is threatened the most exciting stimulus. Those, however, who do not wish for a distortion of the facts are sure that there is no people under the sun with more valuable inner freedom than the Germans, who, since Luther and Kant, have started every great movement toward freedom, and who would not have been at the head of the world of science for centuries had not freedom of thought been their hfe element, and the German miiversity the freest place on earth. THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS 33 Moreover, if I consider the outer forms of life, I do not hesitate to maintain that Germany is even in that respect freer than the United States. The right to insidt the President, and to cross the railroad tracks where it is dangerous, and to ignore the law if a great trust stands behind one, and to spread the poison of anarchis- tic doctrines, is not freedom, but lack of social development, the survival of a lower civilization, a pseudo-freedom whose symptoms, fortunately, are disappearing from year to year in this country also. And they will disappear still more rapidly now, since the echo of the shot in Buffalo will not die out soon. The people will understand that not only the Polish and Italian fanatics who shoot and stab are guilty, but those who allow anarchy to be preached. However, the suppression of such doctrines of lawlessness is impossible if the principle is not acknowledged that the state has the right and the duty to limit speech for the pro- tection of its possessions, — and no possession is greater than the authority belonging to our high- est office, which is impugned not by the anarchist only, but by every one who uses vile language against the President, freedom is not absence of limitations^ The social intercourse of the well- mannered is not less free than that of ill-bred men, though they obey many more rules, and the 34 AMERICAN TRAITS expression of thought is not less free when we obey the laws of good language; no, it is freer than the expression of those who speak slang. Germans live under more complicated and sys- tematized rules than Americans, and for this very reason they have greater freedom than is possible in the less restrained rush of American life. The most typical case is, of course, that of the political government. The American takes it for granted that the republican state form represents a higher level than the monarchical one, and that therefore the German who comes to these shores must feel as if he were coming out into the fresh air from a prison. The educated Germans at home feel that it is with the monarchy as with the church. Too many men are adherents of the church from low motives, from fear and supersti- tion and laziness. When such narrow-minded per- sons become freethinkers and reject the church, they manifest individual progress ; but that does not mean that destructive skepticism represents the highest possible relation to the church, and that to become an adherent of the church means fall- ing back to the lower stage. On the contrary, the step from skeptical enlightenment to an eth- ical belief is in every respect progress : it is the step from rationalism to idealism. The church can thus stand for the lowest and for the highest. THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS 35 and those who are in the middle, and have not yet reached the last stage, may well think that the highest is below their level. Just this manifold- ness of stages, the Germans maintain, character- izes the forms of states. To be sure, the mob is monarchical from low motives, and those who hold that the business of the state must be in the hands of a man whom the majority has selected certainly represent a higher moral stratum than those who support the throne from selfishness and laziness and cowardice. But again, a higher standpoint is possible. The true belief in monarchy means the belief in symbols which characterizes historical thinking as over against naturalistic thinking. And a monarch, as the historical symbol of the emotional ideals of a nation, wholly outside of the field of political struggles and elections, needs that symbolic protection against reproach which ap- pears, seen from a purely materialistic point of view, as the ridiculous punishment of lese-majeste. The same is true of all the symbolic values which radiate from the centre : the titles and degrees and decorations representing social differentiation seem childish to an eye which sees the world merely as a naturalistic mechanism, but invaluable to the eye which traces the outlines of the historical spirit in the world. Without differentiation there can be no complicated social Uf e ; until the stage 36 AMERICAN TRAITS of symbolic thinking is reached, quantitative dif- ferences must furnish the tags, and money furnish the only standard. But the flag is more than a piece of cloth, and the higher development of symbols means a higher civilization. The Ameri- can who, from the standpoint of his naturalistic thinking, looks down contemptuously on the Ger- man social and political organization hinders, so it seems to the foreigner, the progress of his own country ; America has become too great to stop at a social philosophy characteristic of the eigh- teenth century. An heroic revival is at hand, im- periaHsm awakens echoes throughout the land, and days are near when Americans will under- stand better what we mean by the symbols of German history, and that it is not lack of free- dom that prevents us from believing overmuch in majority votes and the dogma of equality. But I am not at all afraid to turn the discus- sion from the philosophical to the practical side, from the idea of monarchy to the present Em- peror. I think there is no other man with whom the American newspapers have been so successful in substituting the caricature for the real portrait. The irony of the case lies in the fact that the hun- dreds of amusing stories about the Emperor all come from the camp of those bureaucrats with whom the Americans would sympathize least of THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS 37 all. There is nothing more incompatible with the American spirit than the temper of the pedants whose petty purposes the papers here have fur- thered, while there is nothing more in accord with the American mood than the true nature of the Kaiser. The one living American whose per- sonaHty most closely resembles that of the Em- peror William is the brilliant young President of the United States, who would have been elected as leader of the nation a few years hence if fate had saved his beloved predecessor. The Germans feel in the same way ; if Germany were to be- come a republic, the people would shudder at the thought of having one of the parliamentary leaders of to-day or an average general become President, but they would elect the present Em- peror with enthusiasm as the first President ; he is the most interesting, energetic, talented, in- dustrious, and conscientious personality of our public life. Those, however, who maintain that the Emperor is an autocrat do not understand how closely the German monarchy, not only through the constitutional and parliamentary limitations imposed upon it, but still more in its inner forces, is identical with the national will. The powers of the American President, far greater than those of the English King, are especially with respect to foreign politics not at all less than those of the 38 AMERICAN TRAITS German ruler. A President whose ministers can- not be interpellated by the parliament, and whose word can practically turn peace into war and alli- ance into annexation, in short, with tremendous powers, parties in the grasp of bosses, city admin- istrations under the whip of spoilsmen, the eco- nomic world under the tyranny of trusts, and all together under the autocracy of yellow-press edi- tors — No, I love and admire America, but Germany really seems to me freer. I have tried to show that it is equally one-sided and unfair for the Germans to maintain that the Americans have no idealism, and for the Ameri- cans to maintain that the Germans have no sense of freedom ; the two cases served merely as chance illustrations, instead of which I could have chosen many others. Wherever we look we find the same fact ; that the two great nations see each other through distorting spectacles, and do not understand each other's real character. They mis- interpret mere gestures, and therefore do not see the deeper similarity of their natures and their ideals. All this, of course, does not suggest that they are without important differences, but the differences seem to me much more the results of outer conditions than of character. In the outer conditions no stronger contrast is possible, — the Americans with a new national culture in an un- THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS 39 developed realm of immense material resources ; the Germans in a realm of limited resources, but with an old traditional culture. An old tra- ditional culture signifies a system of institutions in which the best spirit of past efforts is con- densed, and into which the individual is put by birth. The individual may be low-minded, and yet he must move in the given tracks, and is thus shaped to ends nobler than his own. The result is that, in Germany, the institutions are often bet- ter than the individuals, the forms of civilization higher than their wearers, the public conscience wider awake than the private. In the United States, with its new culture, just the opposite con- dition must prevail; the individuals are better, much better, than the institutions ; the individu- als are thoroughly idealistic, while the external forms of social life are by no means penetrated to the same degree with the idealistic spirit; they are still too often the survivals of the time when the new land had to be opened in a severe struggle for livelihood, and the commercial resources had to be developed at all costs. Consequently, these forms are now on as great a scale as the resources themselves, but they appeal still too often to the lower instincts, and too often tend to pull men down instead of raising them up. The individual conscience is here higher than the pubhc con- 40 AMERICAN TRAITS science ; individual initiative and responsibility are wonderful, but the encouragement and inspira- tion which come to the individual from his public institutions are inadequate. The psychical effect of this situation is a neces- sary one. In Germany, where the institutions take the lead, the result is that the average man too easily believes he has fulfilled his duty when he appears to satisfy the pubhc requirements, and the spu'it of individual initiative therefore slum- bers. In America this danger certainly does not exist, but the dangers resulting from the lack of inspiring energy in the centre are not less. In- stead of reinforcing the highest emotions, the in- stitutions adjust themselves to the lower instincts, and the psychological effect is that the higher energies are repressed, and the feeling of duty becomes less urgent in public life. We see the newspapers crowded with matter adapted to the lowest tastes of the mob, political results deter- mined by appeals to the most selfish desires, the theatres relying upon the cheapest vaudeville, the churches fiUed and sermons made attractive by sensational and trivial matters, — everywhere the same willingness to do what the public likes, and nowhere the question what the public ought to have. And this spirit must slowly undermine every public function. Such a system inevitably THE AMERICANS AND THE GERMANS 41 provides a hothouse of mediocrity ; where there exists no social premium upon the highest efforts toward ideal interests, where no general appre- ciation stimulates individual energies, there is no maximum effect to be expected. The good per- sonal material secures a high average, but no great men ; everywhere fair solid work, nowhere a mas- terpiece ; ten thousand excellent public lectures every winter, and not one great thought. The social psychologist who begins to analyze the re- spective national characters has thus no reason for mere eulogy ; he sees shortcomings and de- fects on both sides, and sees still more clearly how much the two nations might learn from each other. But he does not find traces of those char- acteristics which in each arouse the disrespect and disgust of the other. The Germans are not ser- vile and reactionary, the Americans are not cor- rupt and materialistic and brutal. The two peo- ples are different, but the differences are of a kind, which suggests mutual supplementation and in- terest in each other, not antipathy and aversion. Neither one is made up of angels, but of men who would like each other most sincerely if their foolish narrow-minded prejudices were removed. These prejudices alone in regard to character, and no objective reason, have brought about the mood that occasions petty quarrels and unnecessary f ric- 42 AMERICAN TRAITS tion between Germans and Americans, that is, be- tween the two most healthy, most vigorous, most promising, and at the same time most similar na- tions of all which have entered on the twentieth century. II EDUCATION I I FEEL myself on the whole pretty free from autobiographical tendencies ; I am quite ready to double the number of my years, at least, before I begin on memories and confessions. At one point only has the desire for an autobiographical erup- tion grown in me steadily : I am impelled to tell the story of my school time. I remember exactly how the impulse took shape in my mind. It was at a teachers' meeting. The teachers were discussing how to relieve the over- burdening of the school children, and how to make tolerable the drudgery of the classroom. Some demonstrated that all the trouble came from the old-fashioned idea of prescribed courses : if the courses were freely chosen, according to the talents and interests of the pupils, their sufferings would be ended. Others maintained that the teachers were guilty : that they did not know enough about educational aims, about child study and psychology and the theory of education. What else than drudgery was to be expected, 44 AMERICAN TRAITS under such inadequate pedagogues ? The fight between the two parties went on with an inspiring fullness of argument, and thus I fell into a deep and sound sleep. And the sleep carried me away from the elms of New England to my dear old home on the shore of the Baltic Sea, where I spent my school days. I saw once more my classmates and my teachers ; I strolled once more, as a little boy with my schoolbooks, through the quaint streets of Danzig ; I passed again through the feelings of more than twenty years ago. Sud- denly I awoke at the stroke of the gavel of the chairman, who solemnly announced that the ma- jority had voted for a compromise : the com- munity ought to see to it that both free election and the pedagogical information of the teachers were furthered. At this point the meeting was adjourned, and the teachers went to the next hall for luncheon : there some minor speeches were served up, on the pernicious influence of the clas- sical languages, and on the value of stenography and typewriting for a liberal education. It was then that the autobiography budded in my mind. My instinct told me that I must make haste in the undertaking; for if I should hear for some years to come all these sighs of pity for those who were instructed without election and pedagogy, I might finally get confused, and extend the same EDUCATION 45 pity to my own childhood, convinced that my school life was a deplorable misfortune. I hasten, therefore, to publish this chapter of my life's story as advance sheets, some decades before the remainder, at a period when the gap of time is still small enough to be bridged by a fair memory. My great-grandfather Uved in Silesia. But perhaps it may be too long a story if I develop my case from its historical beginning ; I will shorten it by saying at once that I entered the gymnasium in Danzig at nine years of age, and left it at eighteen. I had previously attended a private preparatory school, and subsequently I went to the universities of Leipzig and Heidel- berg. It is the gymnasium period of which I wish to speak. I have no right to boast of it ; I was a model neither of industry nor of carefulness. I was not quite so bad as some of my best friends among my classmates, but I see, with real repent- ance, from the reports which I have carefully kept together, that I was not attentive enough in Latin grammar ; it seems that in the lower classes, also, my French did not find the full appreciation of my teachers, and I should feel utterly ashamed to repoW what their misled judgment recorded of my singing and drawing. I was just a fair aver- age. The stages of knowledge which we reached may most easily be characterized by a comparison 46 AMERICAN TRAITS with the standards of New England. At fifteen years I was in Untersekunda ; and there is not the sHghtest doubt that, at that stage, all my classmates were prepared to pass the entrance examinations for Harvard College. As a matter of course, Ger- man must here be substituted for English, German history and hterature for the English correspond- ents. We should have chosen, at our entrance, that scheme in which both Latin and Greek are taken. The Abiturientenexamen at the end of the school time, the examination which opens the door to the university, came three years later. It was a difficult affair, somewhat more difficult than in recent years ; and, from a pretty careful analysis of the case, I can say that very few Har- vard students have entered the senior class who would have been able to pass that examination re- spectably. In the smaller colleges of the coun- try, the senior might be expected to reach that level at graduation. No doubt, even after substi- tuting German for English, almost every senior may have taken one or many courses which lie fuUy outside of the circle in which we moved. The college man who specializes in political econ- omy or philosophy or chemistry from his fresh- man year knows, in his special field, far more than any one of us knew ; but if we take a composite picture of all seniors, the boy who leaves the gym- EDUCATION 47 nasium is not at a disadvantage in the comparison of intellectual physiognomy, although far less ma- ture, conformant to his much lower age. If any man in Dartmouth or Amherst takes his bache- lor's degree with that knowledge in mathematics, history, geography, Hterature, Latin, Greek, French, and physics which we had on leaving school, he is sure to graduate with honors. Our entrance into the university can thus be compared merely with the entrance into the post-graduate courses. Our three highest gymnasium classes alone correspond to the college; and whoever compares the German university with the Ameri- can college, instead of with the graduate school, is misled either by the age of the students or by the external forms of student life and instruction. I reached thus, at the end of my school time, as a pupil of average standing, the scholarly level of an average college graduate in this country. I was then eighteen years of age; the average bachelor of arts is at least three years older. How did that difference come about ? The natural ex- planation of the case is that we poor boys were overburdened, systematically tortured by a cruel system of overwork, which absorbed all our ener- gies for the one goal, the passing of the examina- tion. I do not dare to contradict this. But the one thing I may claim in favor of this scheme of over- 48 AMERICAN TRAITS loading is the wonderful skill with which the school administration was able to hide these evi- dent facts so completely from our eyes that nei- ther my classmates nor I, nor our parents, nor our teachers themselves, ever perceived the slightest trace of them. The facts were so shamelessly concealed from us that we poor deceived boys thought all the time that the work was a pleasure, that we had leisure for everything, and that we were all as happy as the day was long. I think that I spent, during all those ten years, about three hours a day in the fresh air, walking and playing, swimming and skating ; yet I found time from my ninth year to practice on the violon- cello one hour every day, and the novels which I wrote may have lacked everything else, but they never lacked length. Besides such individual schemes to fill our vacant time, we cooperated for that purpose in clubs, from the lowest classes to the highest : at ten years we played instructive games ; at twelve years we read classical dramas, each taking one role ; at fifteen we read papers on art and literature ; and at seventeen we had a regular debating club. And all the time, at every stage, there were private theatricals, and excursions into the country, and dancing lessons, and horseback-riding, and coeducation with the education left out; for the poor overburdened EDUCATION 49 girls helped us to bear the load by suffering in common. Every one of us had, of course, the minor spe- cial interests and amusements which suited his own taste ; there was no lack of opportunity to follow up these inclinations ; to use the terminol- ogy of modern pedagogy, we ^^ found " ourselves. I found myself, too ; but — and in this respect I did not behave exactly according to the prescribed scheme of this same pedagogy, I am sorry to say — I found myself every two or three years, as some one very different from the former individual whom I had had the pleasure to discover. In the first years of my school time botany was all my desire. We lived in the summer in a country house with a large garden, and a forest near the garden ; and every minute I could spare belonged to the plants which I collected and pressed. It became a boy- ish passion. If I had to write a novel, this feature of the botanical enthusiasm of the boy would be a very poor invention, if the final outcome were to be a being who has hardly the talent to dis- criminate a mushroom from an apple tree, and for whom nothing in the world appears so dry as squeezed plants. But I have not to invent here : I am reporting. I thus confess frankly my weakness for dissected vegetables : it lasted about three years. Then came my passion for physical 50 AMERICAN TRAITS instruments : an uncle gave me on my birthday some dainty little electrical machines, and soon the whole house was overspun with electrical wires. I was thus, at twelve years, on the best road to discover the patent-hunter in my per- sonality, when a friend with theological inclina- tions interfered : we began to study comparative religion, Islamism in particular. Thus, at fifteen years of age, we learned Arabic from the gram- mar, and read the Koran. Now, finally, my true nature was found ; my friend wrote prophetically in my album that we should both go out as mis- sionaries to the Arabs, — and yet I missed the connection, and went to Boston instead of to Mecca, and forgot on the way all my Arabic. But trouble began soon afterward, — friends of mine found, in digging on their farm, an old Slavic grave containing interesting urns. I be- came fascinated by ethnological discoveries, and, as important excavations were going on in the neighborhood of my native town, I spent every free afternoon and whole vacation weeks in the ethnological camp, studied the literature of the subject, and dug up ui'ns for our town museum, and wrote, at the age of seventeen, a never pub- lished book on the prehistoric anthropology of West Prussia. Then the happy school days came to an end, and yet I had not found myself. 1 EDUCATION 51 have never digged any more. I did not become an ethnologist, and if a visitor to Cambridge insists on my showing him the Harvard sights, and we come into the ethnological museum, the urns bore me so utterly that it is hard for me to believe that in earlier days they made all my happiness. I went, then, to the university with something like a Hberal education ; supplemented the school studies by some broader studies in lit- erature, science, and pliilosophy; and when, in the middle of my philosophical studies, I came to psychology, the lightning struck. Exactly ten years after leaving school, years devoted to psy- chological studies and psychological teaching in German universities, Harvard called me over the ocean as professor of psychology. I thus found my life work ; and in all these years I have never had an hour in which I doubted that it was my life work. Yet I did not approach it, in spite of all those various fanciful interests, before I reached the intellectual level of the graduate school. II I have spoken of these boyish passions not only to show that we had an abundance of free time and the best opportunities for the growth of individual lildngs, but for the purpose of empha- sizing — and I add this with all the gratitude of 62 AMERICAN TRAITS my heart to my parents, my teachers, and the com- munity — that the school never took the smallest account of those inchnations, and never allowed me to take the slightest step aside from the pre- scribed school work. My school work was not adjusted to botany at nine years because I played with an herbarium, and at twelve to physics because I indulged in noises with home-made electric bells, and at fifteen to Arabic, an elec- tive which I miss still in several high schools, even in Brookline and Roxbury. The more my friends and I wandered afield with our lit- tle superficial interests and talents and passions, the more was the straightforward earnestness of the school our blessing; and all that beautified and enriched our youth, and gave to it freshness and liveliness, would have turned out to be our ruin, if our elders had taken it seriously, and had formed a life's programme out of petty caprices and boyish inclinations. I still remember how my father spoke to me, when I was a boy of twelve. I was insisting that Latin would be of no use to me, as I should become a poet or a physicist. He answered : " If a lively boy has to follow a counti'y road, it is a natural and good thing for him to stroll a hundred times from the way, and pick flowers and run for butterflies over the fields on both sides of the road. But if we say to EDUCATION 53 him, ' You need not keep the road ; follow your butterflies/ where will he find himself at night- faU?" My question was, how our German school made it possible to bring us so much more quickly, without overburdening us, to the level of the American senior. I have given so far only a negative characteristic of the school in saying that it made no concession to individual likings and preferences : that is, of course, not a sufficient explanation. If I think back, I feel sure that the chief source of this success was the teachers. But in regard to the teachers, also, I may begin with a negative statement : our teachers did not know too much about the theory of education, or about the history of pedagogy or psychology; and while I heard about some of them gossip of a rather mahcious kind, I never heard that any one of them had read a book on child study. The other day I found in a paper on secondary educa- tion a lamentation to this effect : that the Ameri- can schools have still many teachers who have no reflective theories on the aim with which they teach their subjects, and the educational values which belong to them. The author said : " I shall not soon forget the surprise with which an intelligent teacher said to me, not long ago, ' An aim ! I have no aim in teaching ; that is a new 54 AMERICAN TRAITS idea/ " " Such teachers of Latin and algebra," the author compassionately added, "meant that the choice of these subjects as fit subject-matter of instruction was no concern of theirs; they taught these subjects as best they could, because these subjects were in the course of study." Ex- actly such old-fashioned teachers were ours. My literature teacher was never troubled by the sus- picion that literature may be less useful than meteorology and organic chemistry, neither of which had a place in our school ; and if some one had asked my Greek teacher, " What is the value of the instruction in Greek ? What is your aim in reading Sophocles and Plato with your young friends in the class?" he would have answered that he had never thought about it, any more than why he was willing to breathe and to Hve. He taught his Greek as best he could in the place to which he was called, but he certainly never took it as his concern to reflect whether Greek instruc- tion ought not, after all, to be discontinued ; he left that to the principal and to the government. His Plato and his Sophocles, his Homer and his Thucydides, were to him life and happiness, and to share them with us was an instinctive desire, which would have lost its enthusiasm and inspira- tion if he had tried to base it on arguments. But this thought has led me from the negative EDUCATION 55 characteristics of my teachers to a positive one, — yes, to the most positive one which I felt in them, — to the one which was the real secret of our Ger- man school : my teachers were enthusiastic on the subjects they taught, as only those who know them thoroughly ever can be. I had no teacher who hastily learned one day what he must teach me the next ; who was satisfied with second-hand knowledge, which is quite pretty for entertain- ment and orientation, but which is so intolerable and inane when we come to distribute it and to give it to others. I had from my ninth year no teacher in any subject who had not completed three years' work in the graduate school. Even the first elements of Greek and mathematics, of history and geography, were given to us by men who had reached the level of the doctorate, and who had the perspective of their own fields. They had seen their work with the eye of the scholar, and thus even the most elementary mate- rial of their science was raised to the height of scholarly interest. Elements taken for themselves alone are trivial and empty everywhere, and to teach them is an intolerable drudgery, which fills the schoolroom with dullness and the pupils with aversion. Elements as the introductory part of a scholarly system are of ever new and fasci- nating interest, more promising and enjoyable 56 AMERICAN TRAITS than any complex problems. A great poet once said that any man who has ever really loved in his youth can never become quite unhappy in life. A man who has ever really taken a scholarly view of his science can never find in that science any- thing which is quite uninteresting. Such en- thusiasm is contagious. We boys felt that our teachers believed with the fullness of their hearts in the inner value of the subjects, and every new bit of knowledge was thus for us a new revelation. "We did not ask whether it would bake bread for us. We were eager for it on account of its own inner richness and value ; and this happy Hving in an atmosphere of such ideal belief in the inner worth and glory of literature and history, of science and thought, was our lib- eral education. I know it would be wrong to explain our being three years ahead of a New England boy merely from the scholarly preparation of our teachers. A second factor, which is hardly less important, stands clear before my mind, too, — the help which the school found in our homes. I do not mean that we were helped in our work, but the teachers were silently helped by the spirit which prevailed in our homes with regard to the school work. The school had the right of way; our parents reinforced our belief in the work and our respect EDUCATION 57 for the teachers. A reprimand in the school was a shadow on our home hfe ; a word of praise in the school was a ray of sunshine for the house- hold. The excellent schoolbooks, the wise plans for the upbuilding of the ten years' course, the hygienic care, the external stimulations, — all, of course, helped toward the results ; and yet I am couAdnced that their effect was entirely secondary compared with these two features, — the scholarly enthusiasm of our teachers and respect for the school on the part of our parents. No man can jump over his shadow. I can- not suddenly leave all my memories and experi- ences behind me, and when I behold the onward rush of our school reformers, I cannot forget my past ; I may admire their good will, but I cannot accept their bad arguments. I do not speak here as a psychologist ; I know quite well that some consider the psychologist a pedagogical expert, who brings the profoundest information directly from his laboratory to the educational witness stand. No such power has come to me. I do not know whether my professional brethren have had pleasanter experiences, but I have always found psychology silent as a sphinx, when I came to her with the question of what we ought to do in the walks of practical life. When I asked her about the true and the false, she was 58 AMERICAN TRAITS most loquacious ; but when I came to her about the good and the bad, seeking advice and help, she never vouchsafed me a word. I confess that I have, therefore, slowly become a little skeptical as to whether she is really more communicative with my psychological friends, or whether they do not simply take her perfect silence for a welcome affirmation of all their own thoughts and wishes. I thus come to the question of school reform with- out any professional authority ; I come to it sim- ply with the warm interest of a man who has children in the schools, who has daily contact with students just out of school, and who has not for- gotten his own school time. Ill The most essential feature of all recent school reforms — or, with a less question-begging title, I should say school experiments — has been the tendency toward elective studies. But I am in doubt whether we should consider it really as one tendency only ; the name covers two very different tendencies, whose practical results are externally similar. We have on one side the desire to adjust the school work to the final purposes of the indi- vidual in practical life ; which means beginning professional preparation in that period which up to this time has been given over to liberal educa- EDUCATION 59 tion. We have on the other side the desire to adjust the school work to the innate talents and likings of the individual, which means giving in the school work no place to that which finds inner resistance in the pupil. In the first case the university method filters down to the school ; in the second case the kindergarten method creeps up to the school. In the one case the hberal education of the school is replaced by profes- sional education ; in the other case the liberal education is replaced by liberal play. If one of the two tendencies were working alone, its imminent danger would be felt at once ; but as they seem to cooperate, the one working from the bottom and the other from the top, each hides for the moment the defects of the other. And yet the coincidence is almost accidental and en- tirely superficial ; both desire to make concessions to individual differences. Peter and Paul ought not to have the same school education we are told; but the essential question of what, after all, Peter ought to learn in school must be answered very differently, according as we look at it from the point of view of the kindergarten or from the point of view of professional fife ; as there is indeed a difference whether I ask what may best suit the taste and hking of Peter, the darling, or whether I ask what Peter, the man, will 60 " AMERICAN TRAITS need for tlie battle of life, in which nobody asks ■what he hkes, but where the question is how he is liked, and how he suits the tastes of his neigh- bors. The one method treats the boy as a child, and the other treats the boy as a man. Nothing is common to them, after all, except the result that boyhood loses its opportunity for a liberal education, which ought to borrow from the kin- dergarten merely its remoteness from practical professional life, and from professional work merely its seriousness. Neither tendency stands alone in our social life. In short, the one fits the mercenary spirit of our time, and the other fits its spirit of selfish enjoy- ment. From the standpoint of social philosophy, mercenary utilitarianism and selfish materialism belong together; everywhere do they grow to- gether, and everywhere do they fight together against the spirit of idealism. But while they fight together, they march to the battlefield on very different roads. Practical life demands division of labor, and, therefore, the specializa- tion of the individual. The argument which urges the earliest possible beginning of this spe- ciahzation is thus a natural one, and the convic- tion that the struggle for existence must become more difficult with the growing complexity of modern life may encourage the view that the EDUCATION 61 remedy lies in professional training at the expense of all other education. The lawyer and the phy- sician need so many facts for the efficiency of their work that it seems a waste of energy to bur- den the future lawyer with the knowledge of nat- ural sciences, and the future physician with the knowledge of history. If this is true, however, we ought to begin still earher : on the first day in the kindergarten, I should show my little lawyer two cakes, and explain to him that one is his cake, and the other is not, — social information which does not He in the fine of my little naturalist ; and I should tell the other little fellow that one cake has plums and the other has not, — scientific instruction which is without value for the future lawyer. But even if I shape my school according to such schemes, do I really reach, after all, the goal at which I am aiming? Does not the utili- tarian spirit deceive itself ? And even if we do not acknowledge any other standpoint than the mercenary one, is not the calculation very super- ficial ? The laborer in the mill may be put, some- times, by the cruelty of the age of steam, in a place where his personality as a whole is crippled, and only one small function is in use ; but the higher the profession, the more nearly is the whole man working in every act, and the more, therefore, is a broad general education necessary 62 AMERICAN TRAITS to practical efficiency. The biologists tell us. that the play of animals is a biologically necessary pre- paration for the struggle of existence, and that in a parallel way, the playing of the child is the wise scheme of nature to prepare man in some respect for the struggles of life. How infinitely more necessary for the battles of manhood, though seemingly of no more practical use than such play, is the well-planned liberal education ! The higher the level on which the professional speciaHzing begins, the more effective it is. I have said that we German boys did not think of any specialization and individual variation before we reached a level corresponding to the college graduation here. In this country, the college must stiU go on for a while playing the double role of the place for the general education of the one, and the workshop for the professional training of the other ; but at least the high school ought to be faithful to its only goal of general education without professional anticipations. Moreover, we are not only professional wage-earners ; we live for our friends and our nation ; we face social and pohtical, moral and religious problems ; we are in contact with nature and science, with art and literature ; we shape our town and our time ; and the experience is common to every one, to the banker and the manufacturer, to the minister EDUCATION 63 and the teacher, to the lawyer and the physician. The technique of our profession, then, appears only as a small variation of the large background of work in which we all share ; and if the educa- tion must be adapted to our later life, all these problems demand a uniform education for the members of the same social community. The division of labor lies on the outside. We are speciaHsts in our handiwork, but our heart work is uniform, and the demand for individuahzed education emphasizes the small differences in our tasks, and ignores the great similarities. And after all, who is able to say what a boy of twelve years will need for his special life work ? It is easily said in a school progTamme that the course will be adapted to the needs of the partic- ular pupil with respect to his later life, but it would be harder to say how we are to find out what the boy does need ; and even if we know it, the straight line to the goal is not always the shortest way. The one need of my individual fate, compared with that of other German boys, is the EngHsh language, and the one great blank in the pre- scribed programme of our gymnasium was the total absence of instruction in English. Yet I have such unlimited confidence in the wisdom of my teachers that I cannot help thinking they knew 64 AMERICAN TRAITS quite well how my case stood. I can imagine that when I was twelve years old, the principal of the school said in a faculty meeting : " This boy will need the English language later, to philosophize on the other side of the ocean, and he ought to begin now to learn it, in time for his professional work : to o:et the free time for it we must elimi- nate the Greek from his course." But then my dear little gray-haired Greek teacher must have arisen and have said with indignation : " No, sir : the bit of English which is necessary to lecture to students, and to address teachers' meetings, and to write for the Atlantic Monthly can be learned at any time, but Greek he will never learn if he does not learn it now ; and if he does not have it, he will never get that inspiration which may make his scholarly work worth caUing him over the ocean. Only if he studies Greek will they call him to use English ; but if he learns only Eng- Hsh, he never will have the chance to use it." That settled my case, and so came about the curi- ous chance that I accepted the professorship at Harvard without having spoken a single word of English in my life ; and I still thank my old Greek teacher, who is long since dead, for his decision. Yes, as I think it over, I am inclined to believe that it is just so in most cases : if we prepare for the one thing, we shall have a chance EDUCATION 65 for the other ; but if we wisely prepare at once for the other, our chance for it will never come. Life is, after all, not so easily manufactured as the advertising circular of a private boarding school, in which everything is exactly adapted to the individual needs. This elective adjustment of the studies to the later professional work and business of the man plays a large part in the theoretical discussions, and there acts effectively on the crowd through the promise of professional success ; but it strikes me that this utilitarian appeal works, on the whole, for the interest of that other kind of electivism which promises ease through the adjustment of the school to the personal inchnations. It seems to me that, in the practical walks of education, this is by far the stronger impulse to election. Even in the college, where most boys have at least a dim idea of what they want to do in Hfe, the election with reference to the later occupa- tion usually plays a secondary role ; liking is the great ruler. The university method were power- less in the school reform, did it not act as agent for the kindergarten method. This leading plea for electives takes the following form : All instruction must be interesting ; if the pupil's interest is not in it, the whole instruction is dead matter, useless vexation. Everything which appeals to the nat- 66 AMERICAN TRAITS ural tastes and instincts of the child is interest- ing. Instruction, therefore, must be adjusted to the natural instincts and tastes. The logical fallacy of this ought to be evident. All instruction which is good must be interest- ing ; but does it follow therefrom that all in- struction which is interesting must also be good? Is it not possible that there are kinds of interest which are utterly bad and destructive ? All that appeals to the natural tastes and instincts is inter- esting ; does it follow that nothing is interestuig which goes beyond the natural instincts ? Is it not savage life to follow merely the instincts and natural desires ? Is not all the meaning of education just to discriminate between good and bad desires ? to suppress the lower instincts, and to reinforce the higher ; above all, to awake new desires, to build up new interests, to create new instincts ? If civilization, with its instruments of home and school education, could not overcome our natural tastes and instinctive desires, we should remain forever children whose attention is captured by everything that excites and shines. The street tune would expel the symphony, the prize fight would overcome the drama, the yellow press and the dime novel would be our literature ; our social hfe would be vulgar, our public life hysterical, and our intellectual life a mixture of EDUCATION 67 cheap gossip and sensational news with practical schemes for comfort and advertisement. Yes, instruction must be full of interest ; but whether instruction is good or bad, is in the spirit of civi- lization or against it, depends upon the question what sort of interest is in the play, — that which \vulgarizes, or that which refines ; that which the street boy brings from the slums to the school, or that which the teacher brings from the graduate school to the country classroom. The more inter- nal the motives which capture the attention, the higher the mental functions to which we appeal, the more we are really educators. The platform is no variety show ; the boys must be inspired, but not amused. I am not afraid to push my heresy even to the point of seeing with serious doubts the rap- idly growing tendency toward the demonstrative method in scientific instruction. No doubt all such illustrations strongly appeal to common sense ; our happy children, the public thinks, see and touch everything, where we had only words on words. But the words appealed to a higher power than the demonstrations, — those spoke to the understanding, these to the perception ; those gave us the laws, these the accidental realiz- ations. No demonstration, no experiment, can really show us the totahty of a law ; it shows us 68 AMERICAN TRAITS always only one special case, which as such is quite unimportant. Its importance lies in the necessity which can be expressed merely by words, and never by apparatus. The deeper meaning of naturalistic instruction is by far more fully pre- sent in the book than in the instrument ; and while it is easier to teach and to learn natural science when it appeals to the eye rather than to the reason, I doubt whether it has, from a higher standpoint, the same educational value, just as I doubt whether the doll with a silk dress and a phonograph in the chest has the same value for the development of the child at play that the sim- ple Httle wooden doll has. The question of scien- tific instruction is, of course, far too complex to be analyzed here ; the method of demonstrations has some good features ; and above all, the other kind of instruction, to be valuable at all, needs much better teachers than those whom the schools have at their disposal. I wish only to point out that even here, where the popular agreement is unanimous, very serious hesitation is possible. I have spoken of the damage to the subject- matter of instruction, which results from the lim- itation of the work to personal taste ; but there is also a formal side of education, which is to me more important. A child who has himself the right of choice, or who sees that parents and EDUCATION 69 teachers select the courses according to his tastes and incHnations, may learn a thousand pretty things, but never the one which is the greatest of all : to do his duty. He who is allowed always to follow the paths of least resistance never develops the power to overcome resistance ; he remains ut- terly unprepared for life. To do what we like to do, — that needs no pedagogical encouragement : water always runs downhill. Our whole public and social life shows the working of this impulse, and our institutions outbid one another in cater- ing to the taste of the public. The school alone has the power to develop the opposite tendency, to encourage and train the belief in duties and obligations, to inspire devotion to better things than those to which we are drawn by our lower instincts. Yes, water runs downhill all the time ; and yet all the earth were sterile and dead if water could not ascend again to the clouds, and supply rain to the field which brings us the harvest. We see only the streams going down to the ocean ; we do not see how the ocean sends up the waters to bless our fields. Just so do we see in the streams of life the human emotions following the impulses down to selfishness and pleasure and enjoyment, but we do not see how the human emotions ascend again to the ideals, — ascend in feelings of duty and enthusiasm ; and yet without this upward move- 70 AMERICAN TRAITS ment our fields were dry, our harvest lost. That invisible work is the sacred mission of the school ; it is the school that must raise man's mind from his likings to his belief in duties, from his instincts to his ideals, that art and science, national honor and morality, friendship and religion, may spring from the ground and blossom. IV But I go further : are elective studies really elected at all ? I mean, do they really represent the deeper desires and demands of the individual, or do they not simply express the cumulation of a hundred chance influences ? I have intentionally lingered on the story of my shifting interests in my boyhood ; it is more or less the story of every halfway-intelligent boy or girl. A Httle bit of talent, a petty caprice favored by accident, a con- tagious craze or fad, a chance demand for some- thing of which scarcely the outside is known, — aU these whirr and buzz in every boyhood ; but to follow such superficial moods would mean the dissolution of all organized life, and education would be an empty word. Election which is more than a chance grasping presupposes first of all acquaintance with the object of our choice. Even in the college two thirds of the elections are haphazard, controlled by accidental motives ; elec- EDUCATION 71 tion of courses demands a wide view and. broad knowledge of the whole field. The lower the level on which the choice is made, the more exter- nal and misleading are the motives which direct it. A helter-skelter chase of the unknown is no election. If a man who does not know French goes into a restaurant where the bill of fare is given in the French language, and points to one line and to another, not knowing whether his order is fish or roast or pudding, the waiter will bring him a meal, but we cannot say that he has " elected his courses." From whatever standpoint I view it, the ten- dency to base the school on elective studies seems to me a mistake, — a mistake for which, of course, not a special school, but the social consciousness is to be blamed. I cannot think much better of that second tendency of which I spoke, — the tendency to improve the schools by a pedagogic- psychological preparation of the teachers. I said that, just as I had no right of election over my courses, my teachers did not base my education on theories of pedagogy and psychology. I do not think that they would have been better teachers with such wisdom than without it. I doubt, even, whether it would not have changed things for the worse. I do not beheve in lyrics which are writ- ten after the prescriptions of aesthetics ; I have 72 AMERICAN TRAITS the fullest respect for the scholar in poetical the- ory, but he ought not to make the poets believe that they need his advice before they dare to sing. Psychology is a wonderful science, and pedagogy, as soon as we shall have it, may be a wonderful science, too, and very important for school organ- izers, for superintendents and city officials, but the individual teacher has little practical use for it. I have discussed this point so often before the public that I am unwilling to repeat my argu- ments here. I have again and again shown that in the practical contact of the schoolroom the teacher can never gain that kind of knowledge of the child which would enable him to get the right basis for psychological calculation, and that psychology itself is unable to do justice to the demands of the individual case. I have tried to show how the conscious occupation with peda- gogical rules interferes with instinctive views of right pedagogical means ; and, above all, how the analytic tendency of the psychological and pedagogical attitude is diametrically opposite to that practical attitude, full of tact and sympathy, which we must demand of the real teacher ; and that the training in the one attitude inhibits free- dom in the other. And when I see that teachers sometimes interpret my warning as if I wished merely to say, " I, as a psychologist, dislike to EDUCATION 73 have any one approach the science with the purely practical question whether it bakes bread, instead of with a purely theoretical interest," I must ob- ject to that interpretation. I did not wish merely to say that the bread question woidd better be de- layed ; no, the teacher ought to know from the beginning that if he takes the bread which psy- chology bakes, indigestion must follow. Yet I do not mean to be narrow. I do not think that if teachers go through psychological and pedagogical studies they will really suffer very much ; they will do with them what they do with most studies, — they will forget them. And if they forget them, what harm, then, — why all this fighting against it, as if a danger were in question ? This brings me, finally, to my last but chief point : I think, indeed, that great dangers do exist, and that the psycho-pedagogical move- ment does serious damage, not so much because it affects the teacher, but because it, together with the enthusiasm for elective studies, turns the at- tention of the public from the only essential and important point, upon which, I feel deeply con- vinced, the true reform of our schools is depen- dent, — the better instruction of our teachers. That was the secret, I said, in our German schools ; the most elementary teaching was given by men who were experts in their field, who had 74 AMERICAN TRAITS the perspective of it, and whose scholarly interest filled them with an enthusiasm that inspii-ed the class. To bring that condition about must be the aim of every friend of American school life. That is the one great reform which is needed, and till this burning need is removed it is useless to institute unimportant changes. These little pseu- do-reforms become, indeed, a wrong, if they make the pubHc forget that true help and true reform are demanded. If a child is crying because it is ill, we may keep it quiet for a while by a piece of candy, but we do not make it well ; and it is a wrong to quiet it, if its silence makes us omit to call the physician to cure it. The elective studies and the pedagogical courses are such sweetmeats for education. The schools were bad, and the public was dissatisfied ; now the elective studies relieve the discomfort of the children, in the place of the old vexation they have a good time, and the parents are glad that the drudgery is over. And when, nevertheless, a complaint arises, and the parents discover that the children do not learn anything and that they become disrespectful, then there comes the chance for the man with the psy- chological — and pedagogical — training ; he is not a better teacher, but he can talk about the purposes of the new education till all is covered by beautiful words; and thus parents and chil- EDUCATION 75 dren are happily satisfied for a while, till the time comes when the nation has to pay for its neglect in faiHng really to cure the sick child. Just as it has been said that war needs three things, money, money, and again money, so it can be said with much greater truth that education needs, not forces and buildings, not pedagogy and demonstrations, but only men, men, and again men, — without for- bidding that some, not too many of them, shall be women. The right kind of men is what the schools need; they have the wrong kind. They need teachers whose interest in the subject would banish all drudgery, and they have teachers whose pitiable unpreparedness makes the class work either so superficial that the pupils do not learn anything, or, if it is taken seriously, so dry and empty that it is a vexation for children and teachers alike. To produce anything equivalent to the teaching staff from whose guidance I benefited in my boy- hood, no one ought to be allowed to teach in a grammar school who has not passed through a college or a good normal school ; no one ought to teach in a high school who has not worked, after his college course, at least two years in the grad- uate school of a good university ; no one ought to teach in a college who has not taken his doc- tor's degree in one of the best universities ; and 76 AMERICAN TRAITS no one ought to teach in a graduate school who has not shown his mastery of method by powerful scientific publications. We have instead a misery which can be characterized by one statistical fact : only two per cent of the schoolteachers possess any degree whatever. If the majority of college teachers are hardly prepared to teach in a second- ary school, if the majority of high-school teachers are hardly fit to teach in a primary school, and if the majority of primary-school teachers are just enough educated to fill a salesgirl's place in a millinery store, then every other reform is self- deceit. I do not feel at all surprised that many of my brethren who are seriously interested in the pro- gress of education rush forward in the wrong direction. They have been brought up under the prescribed system, with teachers who did not know pedagogy, and they feel instinctively that the schools are bad and need reform. It is only natural for them to think that the prescriptive system is guilty, and that pedagogy can help us ; they are so filled with aversion to the old-fash- ioned school that they think only of the matter which they were taught and the method after which they were taught ; but as they have no standard of comparison in their own experience, they never imagine that it may have been the men alone, the EDUCATION 77 teachers, who were responsible for the failures. These friends have never experienced what my classmates and I enjoyed, — prescribed courses with expert teachers. They do not and cannot imagine the revolution which comes into the schoolroom as soon as a teacher stands on the platform who has the inspiring enthusiasm for his science which springs from a profound scholarly knowledge. No pedagogical technique can be substituted for this only real preparation of the teacher ; and I fear that pedagogy must become a hindrance to educational progress, if it ever causes the principal or the school board to prefer the teacher who has learned pedagogy to the teacher who has learned the subject he is going to teach. My German memories, however, not only arouse in me a pessimism with regard to those pseudo- reforms ; they give me also most optimistic views with regard to a point which may be raised as an objection to my views. The teaching staff is bad indeed, it has often been said, but how can we hope for an improvement ? The boys leave the high school at eighteen years of age, the college at twenty-two ; how can we hope that an average high-school teacher will devote a still larger part of his life to the preparation for his professional work, and will spend two or three years more in 78 AMERICAN TRAITS a graduate school before he begins to earn his living? This argument is utterly wrong, as it neglects the interrelation of the different factors. If we had thoroughly prepared teachers, the aims of the school would be reached here just as quickly as in Germany, where, as I have shown, the level of American high-school graduation is attained at fifteen years, and the level of average American college graduation at nineteen. Time which, with the teachers of to-day, is hardly suffi- cient to bring a man through a good high school would then be enough to give him a college edu- cation, and the time which to-day is necessary to pull him through college should be enough to give him three years in the graduate school. I was twenty-two when I took my doctor's degree in Leipzig, and so were most of my friends. The change cannot come suddenly; but as soon as the public recognizes in what direction true re- form of education must lie, it can be brought about by a slow, persistent pushing along that line. If the schools insist more and more on the solid scholarship of the teachers, the time in which the ends of the school are reached will be- come shorter and shorter : this will give more and more room for the continuation of study on the part of the future teachers, and thus we should enter upon a beneficial revolution which would EDUCATION 79 in a short time supply the whole country with effi- cient teachers. If we look at the situation from this point of view, we can hardly doubt that even those who have only the utilitarian interest in mind, — yes, even those who think of the mer- cenary aspect only, — that even those must pre- fer this true reform to the efforts of the " new education " men who operate with pedagogy and elective studies. Those three years which every American boy loses through the bad preparation of his teachers represent a loss for the practical achievement in later life which cannot be compen- sated for by an early beginning of professional training through electives. It is a loss for the man, and an incomparable loss for the nation. I merely indicated one other feature of our German education when I disclosed the secret of its efficiency. I said that our parents reinforced in us respect for the school, and that the home atmosphere was filled with behef in the duties of school life. Our parents did not need mothers' clubs and committees for that, and there was httle discussion about what children need in ahstracto ; but they made their cliildren feel that the home and the school were working in alhance. We boys took all that as a matter of course, and what it meant I never quite understood before I crossed the ocean. I feel inclined to say that what our 80 AMERICAN TRAITS schoolchildren need is not only good teachers, but also good parents. They need fathers -who feel the responsibility- to be the ultimate moral guides of the youth and who do not undermine by care- lessness the patient work of the teacher. They need mothers who through all their love and in- dulgence steadily insist on the seriousness of duties and who are not misled by the superficial theories of half-educated educators to beheve that persua- sion only and never command has to enter the nursery. They need parents who understand what they are doing when they keep their chil- dren at home from school on rainy days or let them omit the school work when guests are com- ing, when they allow their youngsters to be idle through the whole long vacations, when they urge the school to reduce and reduce the daily home work, and when they enjoy the jokes of the child on the teacher. It is a noble thing that Ameri- cans put millions into new schoolhouses, but to build up the education in the classroom without a foimdation in the serious responsible aid of the parents, is not better than to build those magnifi- cent buildings of brick and stone on shifting sand. Ill SCHOLARSHIP I The idea of continental Europe in regard to the productive scholars of the New "World can be as easily as briefly stated : there is none. A widely read German history of civilization says this about American scholarship : " American universities are hardly more than ordinary schools in Germany. It is true, they receive large sums of money from rich men ; but they cannot attain to anything, because the institutions either remain under the control of the church, or the professors are ap- pointed on account of their poHtical or personal connections, not on account of their knowledge. The professors therefore have, naturaUy, more interest in money-making than in the advance- ment of science. Not a single one of these insti- tutions has reached a scientific position." And if this expresses the opinion of the pubhc at large, it must be admitted that the scholars are seldom much better informed. They see hundreds of American students migrating to Germany every year, and feel sure that they would not come in 82 AMERICAN TRAITS such streams if America had anything of com- parable value to offer. American publications cross the ocean in a ridiculously small number ; in the world of letters no Columbus has yet dis- covered the other side of the globe. Is it necessary to defend myself against the suspicion that I share this European prejudice ? I have my witnesses in print. Since I resigned my German professorship to enter Harvard Univer- sity, I have heartily welcomed every opportunity to write for German readers about my delightful surprises in the academic world here, and about the contrast between the facts here and the fables current over there. Last summer I had a glorious opportunity. A well-known naturalist of Swit- zerland, whose opinions are often heard in Ger- man magazines, came here for scientific purposes, and spent his vacation in various places. When he returned, he gathered his impressions in an essay published in the most widely read review, and condensed his opinions on American univer- sities as follows : " The American universities are of unequal value ; some are simply humbug. They are all typically American, illustrating in every respect the American spirit : they have an essentially practical purpose. The American wishes to see quick returns in facts and suc- cesses; he has scarcely ever any comprehension SCHOLARSHIP 83 of theory and real science. He has not yet had time to understand that scholarly truth is like a beautiful woman, who should be loved and hon- ored for her own sake, while it is a degradation to value her only for her practical services : a Yankee brain of to-day cannot grasp that," — and so on. I pubHshed at once in the same mag- azine an extended reply. I demonstrated therein how easily the foreigner is misled by the use of the word " university " for institutions which are nothing but colleges, and that, therefore, a fair comparison with German universities is possible only for the dozen institutions which are adjusted to postgraduate work. I pointed out that in these leading universities the opportunities offered stu- dents are not inferior to those abroad ; that the theoretical courses, not the practical ones, are favored by the students ; and that, especially in unpractical fields, as astronomy, geology, eth- nology, Sanskrit, English philology, philosophy, very valuable work has been done. I claimed with full conviction that the doctor's degree of our best universities is superior to the average degree in Germany, and that our libraries and equip- ments are not seldom better than those on the other side. I showed with enthusiasm what an increasing number of scholarly magazines is sent out by our institutions, how great is the output 84 AMERICAN TRAITS of new books in every field, how the academies and scholarly associations flourish. Yes, I became pathetic, and sentimental, and ironical, and en- thusiastic, and my friends maintained that I made my point ; and yet in my heart I was glad that no one raised the other question, whether I really believed that American scholarship is to-day all that it ought to be. I should have felt obliged to confess that I did not ; and as I speak now to Americans only, I may add here all that I forgot to tell my German readers. I do not want to disclaim a single word of my German plea for the American world of learning. The situation is infinitely better than Europeans suppose it to be, — in certain branches of know- ledge excellent work has been done ; and yet I am convinced that the result stands in no proper proportion to the achievements of American cul- ture in all the other aspects of national life, a fact which the best American scholars every- where frankly acknowledge and seriously deplore. Yes, America now has scholarship, as well as Germany ; but it is just as when the Germans claim that they, as well as the Americans, play football, — they do play it, to be sure, but in cut- aways and high collars. Many Americans consider that there is nothing amiss with the condition of scholarship here, and some are even proud of it ; SCHOLARSHIP 85 a nation which has to " do " things ought not to care much for knowledge. But there are others who see the dangers of such an attitude. They beheve that there is no ideal of learning and searchino; for truth which is too higrh for the American nation. They think, as Emerson said, that " our days of dependence, our long appren- ticeship to the learning of other lands draws to a close ; the millions that around us are rushing into life cannot always be fed on the remains of foreign harvests." And as the first necessary condition of such a change they seek a clear in- sight into the causes which lie at the root of this shortcoming. To these it may perhaps appear not quite useless to try to throw light on those causes from the standpoint of a comparison between the American and the German conditions for produc- tive scholarship. In America, as in Germany, the question of productive scholarship is essentially a university question, as in both countries the chief advancers of knowledge have been at the same time profes- sional daily teachers of academic youth. This relation is in itself not at all necessary, and cer- tainly does not hold true for other countries, such as France and England. In England and in France, a great part of the finest scholarly work has been done by men who had no relations to 86 AMERICAN TRAITS academic institutions; and if they filled univer- sity positions, their role was, on the whole, a decorative one, while the real daily teaching was done by minor men. Here, as in Germany, the union of scholar and teacher in one person is the rule ; the scholars who are not teachers are in both countries the exception. I do not over- look the fact that such exceptional cases exist on both sides ; historians hke Rhodes, Fiske, Lodge, Roosevelt, and others stand outside of academic life. A similar situation is occupied by some economists and some naturalists, especially those connected with the government institutions in Washington ; there are physicians and inventors, lawyers and ministers, who aim, outside of the institutions of learning, toward real advancement of knowledge, and yet they form here, exactly as over there, such a small minority that they do not determine the character of the scholarship of the country, while in England and France they are its most important factor. Here, too, the work of the outsiders will be measured by the standards set by the universities. Every advantage and disadvantage, every reform and every danger for scholarship, is in America, therefore, as in Ger- many, first of all a university problem. To give to our inquiry narrower limits, I shall omit from consideration the law school, medical SCHOLARSHIP 87 school, and divinity school. The law schools es- pecially are, on account of the differences o£ law, so absolutely unlike here and abroad that they may be totally eliminated. If we thus confine ourselves, on the whole, to the humanistic and sci- entific studies, to philology and history, economics and philosophy, literature and the fine arts, math- ematics and physics, biology and chemistry and geology, and so on, we compare similar mat- ters. And on this basis now arises the question at issue : Why has Germany's productive scholar- ship attained the power to mould the thoughts of the world, while America's, so far, has not ? Why are the German universities such fertile ground that in them even the smallest talent comes to flower, and the American universities such sterile ground that here often the finest energies are destined to wither ? II One reason offers itself at once : in Germany, the very idea of a university demands productive scholarship as the centre and primary interest of all university activity ; in America it is essentially an accessory element, a secondary factor, almost a luxury, which is tolerated, but never demanded as a condition. But this fact itself has deeper reasons, and we must understand the whole spirit 88 AMERICAN TRAITS of the universities there and here to understand why it is so, and why it must be so under the conditions that obtain to-day. In Germany, the spirit of the university is absolutely different from that of the preceding stage, the gymnasium ; in America, the university work is mostly a continu- ation of the college work, without any essential qualitative difference. The postgraduate work is more difficult than the undergraduate work, the teachers are expected to know more, the subjects are more advanced and specialized; but all the changes are of quantitative character, and there is nothing new in principle. The university is a more difficult college, — a college which presup- poses a greater amount of information, and where the best informed teachers of the country are teaching ; but its spirit is on the whole the col- lege spirit, merely on a more elaborate scale of instruction. In Germany, there is no greater difference than exists between the spirit of the university period and that of the school time. The gymnasium fur- nishes education and information ; the university brings to the younger generation the scholarly, scientific spirit. The gymnasium distributes the knowledge which has been collected ; the univer- sity teaches the student to take a critical attitude toward all collected knowledge. The gymnasium SCHOLARSHIP 89 teaches facts and demands text-books ; the univer- sity teaches method and presupposes all that can be found in books by independent study. The gymnasium gives to the boy of nineteen nothing different in principle from -what the boy of nine receives ; the university offers to the student of twenty something absolutely different from what he received a year before. The teacher of the gymnasium must, therefore, be a man who has learned a great deal, and has a talent for impart- ing what he has learned ; the teacher of the uni- versity must be a master of method. But there is only one test to prove that a man has mastered the methods of a science : he must have shown that he is able to advance it. The teacher of the university is, therefore, above all, a productive scholar, while to the gymnasium teacher produc- tive scholarship is something non-essential. This higher type of institution, this qualitatively new principle of instruction, has thus far not been completely realized in America. I am speak- ing, of course, of the ideal and of the theory. In practice, there are many German university pro- fessors whose lectures run down to mere school- teaching, and there are many brilliant American professors whose invaluable scholarly lectures and research courses are fully inspired by the highest university ideal. But while the former simply do 90 AMERICAN TRAITS not fulfill their duty, and remain below the level of public expectation, the latter transcend the offi- cial and generally accepted ideal of university life. The official ideal of the American university is, as it has been expressed with emphasis, an institution in which " everybody can learn everything." And yet nothing is further removed than this from the ideal of that other university where not every one is admitted as a student, but only the one who has reached a maturity in which he can go over from mere learning to criticism ; and where not everything is to be learned, but one thing alone, the highest intellectual grasp of the scholarly spirit. A young man who is mature enough to enter the university ought to be able to learn " everything " for himself ; but the method of dealing with anything, not as a fact, but as a problem, he can gain only from a master. The college may teach " things ; " the graduate school ought to teach the stating of problems. The college teaches dogmatically ; the graduate school ought to train in critical thinking. The college is for intellectual boys ; the university ought to be for intellectual manhood ; as the college makes the students dependent upon the authorities, while the university ought to teach them to be self-dependent, to stand on their own feet. This is the point where American intellectual SCHOLARSHIP 91 culture betrays its limitations : American institu- tions do not show sufficient insight into the funda- mental fact that the highest kind of knowledge is not wide, but self-dependent. Yes, Americans, who are so proud of their spirit of initiative and independence, too often overlook the fact that the highest independence of character can go hand in hand with the most slavish intellectual de- pendence, and that all which is merely "learned," all text-book information, all knowledge with- out mastery of method, is good for boys, but poor for intellectual men. And yet such a self- dependent attitude is never the result of a mere skeptical incredulity or of defiant contradiction of the authorities, but can be gained only by the fullest training in methodological criticism. No one, even in his special field, can really examine everything himself, but he is not self-dependent till he fully knows how to do it ; that is, till at least in one point he has proved to himself that he is able to go beyond all that mankind has hitherto known about it. If he is able to master the methods for one problem, then he has the power to do so for others ; he may now follow a leader, but he knows that he does not follow simply be- cause there is a chain on his leg which pulls him along. No amount of information can be substi- tuted for training, and a university course which 92 AMERICAN TRAITS deals with the history of ten years from a really critical point of view is therefore more important than another which pictures a thousand years from a dogmatic standpoint. Self-dependence in knowledge thus never means ignoring the author- ities, and even in the natural sciences does not come from a direct appeal to Nature, as the science teachers of the schools too often believe. Nature answers always only those questions which we ask her ; and the whole history of science — that is, the authorities — must teach us first how to ask our questions of Nature. Self-dependence means the power to understand the authorities, and to deal with them critically. As I have said, the only possible teacher for this highest kind of intellectual activity must be a scholar who is himself a master of scientific method, and as such a master only is the produc- tive scholar tested. That is the reason why pro- ductive scholarship is the very informing spirit of German universities, and why no teacher is ever appointed as university docent who has not proved his power over methods by publications which have at some point advanced human knowledge. Productive scholarship will never reach a really high level in America till it becomes the inform- ing spirit of the American universities also ; and it cannot be their spirit till the difference between SCHOLARSHIP 93 the ideal of the university and the ideal of the college, between the critical and the dogmatic attitude in knowledge, is fully grasped by the community. As long as the university is essen- tially a better equipped college on a more elabo- rate scale, the appointment of university teachers must be determined by the same considerations that influence the usual choice of a college teacher. As it is, — given, of course, the moral qualities, — a man is sought who has learned much about his subject and is an efficient teacher. But whether he has produced anything of scholarly value is, on the whole, a secondary question. The situation in our colleges is similar to that in the German gymnasiums. The gymnasium teacher is not at all unproductive. Most of his productions, to be sure, are just as in the colleges here, merely text-books ; but many gymnasium teachers publish scholarly investigations, and as almost every one has written his doctor's thesis, many go on with their productive university stud- ies ; some have published excellent books. And yet their publications are in a way their private affairs, not their official duty ; their professional work can be conceived as complete without any effort in that direction ; there are even principals of gymnasiums who look with a certain suspicion on the too productive teacher, because they are 94 AMERICAN TRAITS afraid that he may neglect his class duties, or may- raise the level of instruction too high for the pu- pils. But in any case, if productive scholarship were in the hands of these gymnasium teachers only, science and scholarship would be the same lukewarm affair that it is here in the hands of college men, — a professional luxury, relegated to the scarce leisure hours of an overworked man who has little to gain from it, and whose career and professional standing are hardly influenced thereby. How different the university man, if university instruction is rightly understood as the teaching of method, of criticism, of self-dependence ! What other way is open to prove the possession of a power than the use — and the successful use — of it ? A singer who does not sing, a painter who does not paint, and a university scholar who does not advance human knowledge, stand then on ex- actly the same level. Of course it is not neces- sary that the productive work should appear directly under the name of the author ; here, as in Germany, some of the finest scholars put forth their thoughts through the publications of their advanced students, for whose work they take the responsibility. But if the instructor does not pub- lish in one way or another, directly or indirectly, theoretical assurances will not suffice. To say SCHOLARSHIP 95 that a man might have advanced human know- ledge, if he had not preferred to give all his time to teaching by lectures or by popular books and articles, is absurd, if he never had an opportunity to be tried. He might just as well say that he would have been skillful in walking the tight rope, if he had not preferred his life long to walk on the floor. The fact that he is a good teacher has, of course, no bearing on the point. If we want to find a man who is a master of critical methods, we cannot be satisfied if the man shows that he has much information, and skill in im- parting it. For that we need the original mind, while the merely imitative thinker may make a most excellent teacher. Any one who has a per- sonality, a forcible way of presentation, and an average intellect will be able to be a fine teacher of any subject at six weeks' notice. The student cannot judge whether the thoughts brought for- ward in the lecture are the instructor's own thoughts or a rehash of the contents of half a dozen text-books; or even if they are his own thoughts, whether they have any legs to stand on. Whether the teacher's thoughts are cheap repro- ductions or valuable critical studies can be deter- mined only by a jury of his peers, and the only way to communicate with them is by publications. The teacher's papers and books alone decide 96 AMERICAN TRAITS whether he is or is not in possession of that power of scholarly grasp which the university student is to learn from him, and thus whether he is or is not fit to be a university teacher. Ill No one ought to interpret this to mean a lack of appreciation for the receptive scholarship and the fine teaching qualities of a good college in- structor who wants to be a teacher only, or a writer of pleasant and helpful popular books. I do not at all claim that his function is less noble, or that his achievement is less important for the community, and I know, of course, that " distri- bution " of knowledge is not at all an easy or a mechanical task when it is well done ; the really good teacher needs many gifts and qualities which may be absent in great scholars. I maintain merely that the two professions are different, — as different as that of the photographer from that of the artist. A good photographer is certainly a more useful being than a bad artist ; but no photographer understands the meaning of art who thinks that he and Sargent are in principle doing the same thing. As long as. productive scholar- ship is not recognized by the public consciousness as something absolutely different from receptive scholarship, its development must remain an acci- SCHOLARSHIP 97 dental one^ and can never reach the level which American civilization has reached in so many other directions, and which might be expected from the large external resources of the higher institutions of learning. That the outcome in important work is disappointing, no one can deny ; nor will any one seriously doubt that the igno- rance of Europe in regard to American work will disappear rapidly as soon as really fundamental work is done. As soon as a Darwin or a Helm- holtz, a Virchow or a Bunsen, a Spencer or a Pas- teur or a Mommsen speaks in the smallest New England college, the whole world will find him out and listen ; but he must speak, as his European colleagues have spoken, in the service of produc- tive scholarship only, while he will remain unheard if he follows the leadings of his surroundings, becomes merely a good teacher, writes text-books and magazine essays and popular lectures. There is another point on which I must not be misunderstood. In Germany, the gymnasium, as the place of receptive scholarship, and the uni- versity, as the place where the productive scholar teaches critical method, are sharply separated. I do not mean that this external separation is in itself necessary, or, under American conditions, either desirable or possible. Such a complete sep- aration can be made only where the government 98 AMERICAN TRAITS guarantees an equality of standard, and where con- ditions are equal throughout the land. In the United States, the system of sliding scales, of in- finitesimal differences, of transitions from low forms to higher ones without sharp lines of demarcation, has shown itself to be the soundest in all educational matters; the smallest institu- tion must have the possibility of growing up to the highest requirements, and each local founda- tion must be able to adapt itself to special needs. In a country where the greatest educational pro- gress comes through private initiative and through the slow raising of the standards of requirements in the social consciousness, the system of sliding transitions offers the best chance for healthful development; and the raising of the graduate schools to the plane of real universities can come only as the fruit of such a system, just as the present graduate school has developed itself nat- urally by that system out of the average college. What is necessary is only the development of the new ideal in the social mind. On the other hand, so long as the real principle is not acknowledged, the mere imitation of external forms or the arti- ficial construction of new schemes cannot bring about an improvement. For instance, the drop- ping of the college department represents no progress at all, if the remainder is in itself on no SCHOLARSHIP 99 higher level than the average graduate school. The claim of an institution that it is in the lead because it has no coUes^e is without basis as long; as its teachers are in no way superior, as produc- tive scholars, to the average instructors of other universities. The omission of the lower forms is no gain, and has at present great disadvantages. I do not believe that the development of the highest forms is to be expected along this line. I remember I once saw in the far West two insig- nificant institutions in the same county. One called itself, modestly, a college; the other, a university. As I saw clearly that the university was lower in its standards of graduation, I asked the director about the designation ; and he answered that they called themselves a university because they were of so much higher grade than the neighboring college. I asked hmi in what respect they were of higher grade, as they had no graduate school, no law school, and no medical school. " No," he said, " we have not all these, but we are higher because we have no prepara- tory school." The functions of the student stand, of course, in immediate relation to the functions of the instructor. If the instructor gives information, the student is expected to learn facts ; and he shows best by examinations whether or not he has suc- 100 AMERICAN TRAITS ceeded. If the task of the instructor is to teach the method of scholarly criticism, the student aims at getting a scholarly grasp ; and whether or not he has succeeded he can prove only by show- ing that in one little point, at least, he can advance human knowledge. Original research then be- cames the backbone of his university work, and the publication of a doctor's thesis its natural goal. This aspect of student's work grows among us from year to year, and yet it has not won sufficient strength to stand alone against all attacks. There are still institutions which do their research work as a concession to a doubtful fashion, imported from Germany, and necessary as an advertisement in the struggle of university competition ; there is still a majority which does not beHeve in it at all ; and there are still leading universities here which do not require the print- ing of the doctor's thesis. It is a very curious fact that the most effective argument brought for- ward here again and again, in the 'fight against the doctor's thesis, is the cheap scholarship of many of the German doctor-dissertations. At the basis of this there is a misunderstanding, as the German doctor's thesis cannot be compared with the American one. In Germany the doctor-exam- ination is, on the whole, a purely decorative affair for the gaining of a title which has not the slight- SCHOLARSHIP 101 est consequence for the career of a man, but only the social value of a personal address. All open- ings to the career of teacher, as well as to that of lawyer or physician, are dependent on the very se- vere state examination, which shows clearly whether or not the candidate has acquired the scientific view of his subjects. The man who has passed the state examination may thus pass with a low mark the doctor-examination, even if he presents merely a hasty, superficial piece of research, just to sat- isfy traditional regulations. As the degree has no practical bearing, and as it is always given with one of four marks, there is no danger in sometimes letting the thesis work run down. In America, however, the doctor-examination is the one goal of the post-graduate studies; it is the one entrance gate to the best positions ; and it has thus the function of the German doctorate together with that of the German state examina- tion. The small group of men for whom the doc- tor's degree in Germany has a practical bearing is the circle of those who enter the university career ; that is, those who seek to become privat- docents of a university, and not teachers of a gymnasium. The entrance on a university career is indeed dependent on the " doctor " only, and not on the state examination ; but for this pur- pose it is required to gain the doctor's degree 102 AMERICAN TRAITS with one of the two highest marks, and no thesis which has been marked with summa or magna cum laude is of that cheap kind of unthinking research which is so often shown here as a dread- ful example. Only these excellent theses can thus be fairly compared with those in question for American universities, and they are certainly of a kind to encourage production and publication. But more than that. Even if the dissertations were in themselves valueless for human know- ledge, if they were unworthy of publication, if they were unnecessary as tests for the students, original research, with the goal of a definite special problem to be settled by really scientific methods, would continue to be nowhere more needed than here, as the one great stimulus which our graduates get to active scholarly interest. In Germany they find these incentives through all their lives, in a hundred forms ; here everything comes together to work in the other direction, and to keep men away from the really scien- tific attitude. The small tasks of original re- search of the students in the university time are the httle fountains in the woods, whose waters unite in the brook which is seen by the world ; and only if they are plentiful will the brook ever become a river. It is well known that the begin- nings of productive scholarship in this country, SCHOLARSHIP 103 thirty or forty years ago, were due to those who came home from such research work in German uni- versities, and that these beginnings have been rein- forced and developed by the hundreds who have gone abroad for their studies during the last de- cades, till only recently the time has come when the American graduate can find the same oppor- tunities in the best American universities. These stimulations of the student time are the real influ- ences which will decide the future of American scholarship ; and whoever belittles the value and retards the development of the students' research and of the doctorate must understand that he is helping to destroy the real scholarship of the coim- try, or to make it dependent upon that of other nations. At present there seems no occasion to fear for the standard of the degree ; the standard is kept high, but the number of those who seek it is far too small. No one who intends to teach in a college, or even in a high school, ought to end his academic years before he has attained the degree. He has not, like the university teacher, to teach the methods of scholarship, and, there- fore, is under no necessity to lead the life of a pro- ductive scholar, but the spark of active scholarship must have touched him; if he has remained throughout merely a receptive scholar, merely a good college boy, even with his Master of Arts, his teaching will be sterile drudgery. 104 AMERICAN TRAITS IV I have said that after the student days every- thing militates against scholarly production, in this country ; that our young man enters into a world which does not care for his original work. No one can understand the conditions of produc- tive scholarship here who does not consider the path which our young scholar has to follow. I have at present in my psychological seminary at Harvard twenty-six advanced graduate students, — on the average better prepared for scholarly work than the members of a seminary in a Ger- man university, as the men here are more mature from their more advanced age, and as the stricter regulation of attendance and course-examinations has laid a larger basis of information. What can I now hope from these young men with regard to their chances of making use of their scholarly power in the next twenty years, compared with the chances which just such a set of young men would have in Germany ? Over there, the best of them, the more talented ones, the more am- bitious ones, and, I may at once add, the socially stronger ones would choose the career of produc- tive scholarship ; and while the majority would be satisfied to jog along the road of the gymna- sium teacher, doing the prescribed daily work, SCHOLARSHIP 105 without any original effort, some would enter the university career as privat-docents. There might be only three or four in such a group who were ready to do so, but no instructor would feel dis- appointed if he knew that there was at least one among his students in whom the seed would bring fruit. Once admitted to the university as such privat-docents, they can teach as much as they want to, and, above all, can teach whatever they choose, even the most specialized topic in which they are interested ; they live in an academic atmosphere, devoted exclusively to productive thought, and so they wait till a vacancy of a pro- fessorship occurs, knowing that it will be filled by the man who has done the most valuable piece of scholarly work. Their whole ambition is thus directed toward the advancement of science. Of course the choice has to be made by men, and thus human prejudices and passions must enter. It is not always the best scholar who gets the place, — cliques and parties obscure the ideal there as everywhere ; but at least the principle is safe, and certainly a local candidate has no ad- vantage over any one else, for the outlook covers all docents who have entered the arena of schol- arly literature. And further, while in democratic America the appointments are made by the presi- dent and by the trustees of the institutions, with- 106 AMERICAN TRAITS out the official cooperation of tlie faculty, in mon- archical Germany no government can appoint a professor who has not been proposed by the fac- ulty, — that is, by the professional scholars, who have no more important interest than that of keeping high, by their cooperation, the level of productive scholarship in their university. All the academic premiums await there the young scholar who develops his scientific powers, and thus the institution of docents becomes the real backbone of German university work. How different here ! Our young men, when they have left our research courses, some of them with a fresh Ph. D. degree in their pockets, have no other prospect before them than to enter into a college as instructors. I do not speak of those who choose another profession, become perhaps school superintendents or technical specialists; nor do I speak of those whose work was not satis- factory enough to secure them a college position, and who must be contented with lower school positions. I speak of the best, — those who get all our blessings in the form of superlative let- ters to teachers' agencies and college presidents. Even these are satisfied when they get decent in- structorships or assistant professorships in a col- lege ; and they are delighted if the college is by chance not too remote in the Southwest, and SCHOLARSHIP 107 i£ it is not so denominational that they have to sacrifice their convictions, and if it is not so deep in debt that half of the promised salary cannot be paid on time. Let us take, again, the best cases. A good man goes into a good college. We all know what he has to expect. He finds an abundance of work, which crushes by its quantity his good will to go on with schol- arly interests. The young man who has to con- duct twenty " recitations " a week, and to read hundreds of examination books, and to help on the administrative life of his place, begins by postponing his scientific work to the next year, and the year after next, when he shall be more accustomed to his duties. But after postponing it for a few years more his will becomes lame, his power rusty, his interest faded. The amount of work, however, seems to me the least important issue, and I think it a mistake to regard it as the chief obstacle to production. After all, the day has twenty-four hours, and the year has fifty-two weeks ; a young man with full vitality can carry a heavy burden. I have known men who taught more than twenty hours weekly, and yet consid- ered the teaching as filling the leisure hours be- tween the periods of real work, which was their scholarly production. Much more essential seems to me the quality of the duties. A young scholar 108 AMERICAN TRAITS ought to devote himself to special problems, where he can really go to the sources : instead of that, our young instructor has to devote himself to the widest fields, where it is impossible to aim at anything but the most superficial acquaintance. The experienced master can remain scholarly even when he gives the general elementary courses ; the beginner, who has no chance ever to focus on one point, but must all the time teach merely the outlines of his subject, will quickly sink to a cheap undignified interpretation. At first he is troubled in his scholarly conscience, remembering the spirit of the graduate school ; but soon he grows accustomed to the prostitution of science, shame disappears, he gets to be satisfied with a method of thinking which makes his courses effective and his work easy, and the possibility of his own production fades out of sight. And he has plenty of excuses on his lips : the library of his college is so poor ; his small laboratory gives him no opportunity ; his salary is too meagre to let him buy books for himself. Above all, he wants to earn a little additional money. Schol- arly papers in scientific magazines are not paid for. But several convenient roads are open. He may write a short text-book ; as the students must buy it, the publisher can pay for it. Now the scholar knows that there is nothing more dif- SCHOLARSHIP 109 ficult and nothing more easy than to write text- books. The great scholar, who has tried his power in scores of special investigations, may try, at the height of his work, to connect his thoughts about the whole field into one system, and to translate it into the simple terms of a book for beginners. That is the sort of text-book which helps the world, — nothing is more difficult and more noble ; every line written therein stands for pages. But if a beginner comes and adds to twenty text-books the twenty-first, it is scientific reporter work, enervating and ruinous for the scholarly seriousness of the author. Another way is that of popular lectures — preferably be- fore women's clubs — and articles for popular magazines. All that is poison for the beginner, who loses increasingly the power to discriminate between what is solid and what is for effect, as he moves away from the criticism of scholars, and addresses audiences which applaud every catchy phrase. Yet the young sufferer who has all those mo- tives as his conscious excuses, and who thinks that he could do original work if he had less lectur- ing and more money, is mostly unconscious of the strongest factor which pulls him down, as it is a negative factor, which is felt merely by com- parison with the situation abroad. This negative 110 AMERICAN TRAITS factor is the absence of a decided premium upon scholarly production. If he is a fine man, with vitality, he wants to get on ; the safest way is to cHmb up in his own institution, since the possi- bility of being called to other places depends largely upon chance. But in any case here the advancements and the appointments are made almost without any reference to original produc- tion. The men who busy themselves with ad- ministrative troubles, who are favorites with the elementary students, who are pleasant speakers, who show themselves industrious by manufactur- ing books for class use, win the premiums in the competition. And all these are merely the ideal factors : there are plenty of factors the reverse of ideal working besides. Yes, with the exception of the leading universities, the young scholar sees productive work so lightly valued that he must consider it a very unsafe investment of energy ; and if his passionate zeal and ardent delight in searching out truth hold him fast to the path of scholarship, he feels dimly that he is damaging his chances with the trustees of his little college, and thus, in the majority of cases, working against his own interest. What can be expected from the productive output of a young generation laboring under such conditions, compared with the possibilities in Germany, where in the twenty- SCHOLARSHIP 111 one universities more than seven hundred privat- docents are at present working, every one of whom adjusts his teaching to iiis pleasure, — perhaps one or two hours a week on a subject in which he is absorbed ; every one of whom has no other ambition, and really no other hope, than to draw the attention of the scholarly public to his schol- arly productions, knowing that he loses his chance for advancement if he indulges in superficiahties ? It is just on account of this period of trial which lies before our young doctors that it becomes so essential to require the printing of the doctor's thesis. That little printed sheet has once for all brought the beginner before the scholarly world ; and while his daily work belongs to his unappre- ciative surroundings, his intimate interests connect him in his lonely place with the great outer world of truth-seekers. He follows up the magazines to see the traces of his little publication, he remains interested to defend his budding theory, he goes on to develop the incomplete parts of it ; and thus his dissertation becomes the one thread which binds him in his days of instructorship to the ideals of his graduate-student time. But let us take for comparison the most favor- able case under our conditions. Our young man is vigorous and successful ; he becomes a professor in a real university after ten or twenty years. Is 112 AMERICAN TRAITS he there finally in an atmosphere where the greatest possible output of all that his energies allow is encouraged by the conditions of the insti- tution? Of course the situation is now more favorable for his serious work than in the small college, — the standard is much higher, the atmo- sphere more dignified ; the outer means for work, books, instruments, are plentiful ; advanced stu- dents are ready to follow him ; his teaching is reduced to a very reasonable amount, — perhaps one or two hours a day. Everything seems en- couraging, and yet he feels instinctively that the fullest stimulus which he had hoped for is even here not found ; he feels as if, under other condi- tions, more might be attained with his energies ; yes, even here it is as if he had to do his produc- tive work, in a way, against outer influences which pull him back. I return therewith to the point whence I started. Our friend who has successfully found his way from the little college to the university finds, per- haps with surprise, that, after all, here, too, at all decisive points, the college spirit overcomes the university spirit; that the whole academic com- munity is controlled by the ideal of the perfect distribution of knowledge, and not by respect for productive scholarship and the imparting of method. He sees that the vital forces here also SCHOLARSHIP 113 are the good teachers, and not the great think- ers. He sees himself, perhaps, in a faculty where real scholars mingle with men who have not the slightest ambition to advance human knowledge, but who have simply done on a great scale all that the men in his fresh-water college did on a narrow scale. He feels as if his productive scholarship were merely tolerated, or at least con- sidered unessential, as no one demands it from the others as an essential condition of theii* pre- sence. How surprised he is when he sees the alumni of the university meet, and Hstens to their speeches in praise of the alma mater ! He hears beautiful words about patriotism and hberal edu- cation, about athletics and gifts of money, about the glorious history and the gifted sons who have become men of pubhc affairs ; but that the univer- sity is a place for productive scholarship he does not hear mentioned. He had thought that the advances of human knowledge by the members of his university were the milestones in its history, like the battles which a regiment has fought ; he had thought that, as in Germany, the great schol- arly conquests of the members of the faculties were the common pride of the old students ; and now he sees that here, too, no one officially val- ues his cherished ideals. They still remain his private luxury, apart from human ambition and 114 AMERICAN TRAITS social premiums. And his greatest disappoint- ment comes when he sees that even here the activ- ity of productive scholarship adjusts itself to the financial situation, and that all the material con- ditions push the teachers away from productive scholarship just as strongly in the large univer- sity as in the Httle college where the instructor was paid like a car conductor. Whenever in Greek-letter societies, among sol- emn speeches, some one makes an academic oration about the profession of the scholar, one feature is never forgotten : the scholar does not care for money. That sounds certainly very uplifting, but it seems hardly true to any one who sees how the great majority of American professors seek money-making opportunities that have a varnish of scholarship, but no pretense of scholarly aims. In a hundred forms, of course, the temptation comes, and by a hundred means does it creep into the scholar's life, to absorb every hour of leisure which ought to belong to purely ideal pursuits. He will not do anything that will bring money, but he will do few things that bring no money ; and as the really scholarly books never bring any income, he deceives himself by all kinds of com- promises, — writes popular books here and arti- SCHOLARSHIP 115 cles for an encyclopsedia there, makes schoolbooks and writes expert's testimonials, works in univer- sity extension and lectures before audiences whose judgment he despises. Some energetic men can stand all that without the slightest injury to their higher work ; for the greater number it means surrender as productive scholars. And yet it is all justified ; unjustified alone is the social situa- tion which forces upon a serious scholar such self- destructive activity, and unjustified is the procla- mation of the maxim that the scholar ought not to care for a better material fate. To be sure, it is most honorable in a scholar to accept such a situation in dignified silence ; but often, while it is bad to speak about a thing, it may be worse not to speak about it. It must be said in all frankness that a financial situation in which America's best scholars — that is, those who are called to instructorships of the leading universities — are so poorly paid that they feel everywhere pushed into pursuits antagonistic to scholarship, thus crushing the spirit of produc- tive scholarship, is not only an undignified state of things, but one of the greatest dangers to the civilization of the country. The scholar is not to be reproached as a greedy materialist for yielding. As long as the present situation of scholarship holds, the overwhelming majority of those who 116 AMERICAN THAITS go into teaching will have only narrow private means, and yet they will seek a comfortable life, and they ought to seek it as a background for creative work. They do not envy the rich banker his yachts and horses and diamonds, but they want a home of aesthetic refinement, they want excellent education for their children, they want a library well supplied, they want pleasant social inter- course and refreshing summer life and comfort- able travel ; and they ought to have all that with- out doing more than their normal university teaching, bemg thus free to devote the essential part of their time and thought to the advance- ment of productive scholarship. Exactly that is the situation in Germany, and no similar freedom of mind can be reached here by the scholar if every university professor, called to his place for real university work, has not a salary which cor- responds to the income of the leading professors abroad. But to reproduce the benefits of the German situation and its influence on scientific production, it is not enough to raise the level of salaries ; it is, above all, desirable to stop the mechanical equality which exists here generally, and which shows most clearly that, administra- tively, the American university still stands fairly under the ideal of the old college type, where the schoolman reigns and the scholar is a stranger. SCHOLARSHIP 117 The raising of the level o£ salaries may free the mind of the scholar from the search for opportu- nities to earn money, and thus from the corrupt- ing influence of pseudo-scholarly temptations, but it is clearly a negative factor only ; the inequality of salaries is a positive stimulus, provided that the highest salaries are really given to secure the ser- vices of the greatest scholars. In Germany, it not seldom happens that the income of one mem- ber of the faculty is five times larger than that of a colleague. There the school-teachers of the gymnasium have equal salaries, and their income grows according to seniority. That is entirely suitable, and a college cannot do otherwise. But to apply that principle to the valuation of schol- arly production seems to the Germans not more logical than to fix the prices for all portrait paint- ers according to the square inches of their can- vas and their years of service. With them, many professors have much higher incomes than the highest officers of the state, who are their admin- istrative superiors. Germany would never have reached that leading position in scholarship which is hers if she had treated her scholars like clerks or school-teachers, for whom the demand and supply can regulate the price mechanically, be- cause the demand exists as a necessary one. The demand for higher scholarship has to be devel- 118 AMERICAN TRAITS oped, and the supply has thus to be furthered beyond the present demand by a protective policy. But America needs to offer large, even very large salaries on still another ground. The free- ing of the scholar's mind from financial cares, and the stimidation of his productive energies, by a system which gives the highest rewards to the best scholarly work, the New World would share with the Old ; but there is a third reason, which holds for America alone. It is to my mind the most important ; and I confess that I should not have cared to touch the difficidt salary problem at all if this point, which will decide the future of American scholarship, were not involved. We need high salaries, because at present they offer the only possible way to give slowly to productive scholarship social recognition and social stand- ing, and thus to draw the best men of the land. Without great social premiums America will never get first-rate men as rank and file in the uni- versity teachmg staff ; and with second-rate men productive scholarship which is really productive for the world can never be created. The greater number of those who devote them- selves to higher teaching in America are young men without means, too often, also, without breeding ; and yet that would be easily compen- sated for if they were men of the best minds, but SCHOLARSHIP 119 they are not. They are mostly men with a passive, almost indifferent sort of mind, without intellectual energy, men who see in the academic career a modest, safe path of hf e, — exactly the kind of men who in Germany become gymnasium teachers. But those who in Germany become docents of the university are for the most part of the opposite type ; they are, on the whole, the best human material which the country has. They come mostly from well-to-do families, and seek the career because they feel the productive mental energy and the ambition to try their chances in a field of honor. Indeed, while the profession of the gymnasium teacher stands in the social estimation of the German below that of the lawyer and the physician, the banker and the wholesale merchant, the high respect of the Ger- man for productive science and art brings it about that the profession of the university teacher, to- gether with the aristocratic professions of officer and diplomat, stands as the most highly esteemed socially. Titles and decorations, as symbolic forms of pubHc appreciation, add another to the outer stimulants to the greatest efforts. Thus the social honor of the career, the large income, and, above all, the delights of a life devoted purely to the clean enjoyment of production, work together to draw into the nets of the universities the very 120 AMERICAN TRAITS best human material ; and as, after all, personality is everywhere the decisive factor, the high quality of this human material secures the immense suc- cess of the work. Nothing similar stands as yet as a temptation before the mind of the young American, and it would be to ignore the nature of man to believe that while all social premiums, all incentives for ambition and hopes, are absent, a merely theoret- ical interest will turn the youth to a kind of life which offers so little attraction. Can we really expect many brilliant young men of good families to enter a career which will for years demand from them superficial teaching in the atmosphere of a httle college, with no hope, even in the case of highest success, of a salary equal to the income of a mediocre lawyer, and in a professional atmo- sphere in which the spirit of scholarly interest is suppressed by the spirit of school education ? Our best young men must rush to law and bank- ing, and what not. The type of man who in Germany goes into the university career is in this country the exception among the younger instructors. Those exceptions must become the rule before the whole level of production will be raised. As soon as the first-class men are drawn to it, no quantity of work will harm them ; men of that stamp have the vitality to do first-class SCHOLARSHIP 121 work under any circumstances. America cannot bring it about by means of decorations and titles, and, as in England, baronetcies ; and it cannot start with social prestige, as social prestige is naturally only a consequence of first-class work and of the participation of first-class men. High salaries are, therefore, at present, the only means which the country has at its disposal. I well remember a long conversation which I had with one of the best English scholars, who came over here to lecture when I had been only a short time in the country, and was without ex- perience in American academic affairs. We spoke about the disappointingly low level of American scholarship, and he said : " America will not have first-class scholarship, in the sense in which Ger- many or England has it, till every professor in the leading universities has at least ten thousand dol- lars salary, and the best scholars receive twenty- five thousand dollars." I was distinctly shocked, and called it a pessimistic and materiahstic view. But he insisted : " No, the American is not anxious for the money itself ; but money is to him the measure of success, and therefore the career needs the backing of money to raise it to social respect and attractiveness, and to win over the finest minds." My English acquaintance did not con- vince me at that tune, but the years have con- 122 AMERICAN TRAITS vinced me : the years which have brought me into contact with hundreds of students and instructors in the whole land ; the years in which I have watched the development of some of the finest stu- dents, who hesitated long whether to follow their inclination toward scholarship), and who finally went into law or into business for the sake of the social premiums. As soon as the best men are attracted and ex- cellent work is really done, the development will be a natural one. On the one hand, the commu- nity will begin to understand the great meaning of productive scholarship, and its world-wide dif- ference from receptive and distributing scholar- ship ; university work will thus get its social re- cognition, and the ambition to be a productive scholar — not merely a pleasant author — will be the highest stimulus in itself, and will secure for all time the highest standard. Then, also, the question of salaries will become quite secondary. America has no difficulty in filling the positions of ambassadors, even though the expenses are not seldom three times greater than the salaries. In the same way, Germany would be able to fill its professorial chairs if they brought no salary at all ; the honor of the place rewards its holder, but at first this honor must be made clear to the community. On the other hand, as soon as the SCHOLARSHIP 123 really best men go into the work, they must break that too narrow form which is the relic of an un- productive past : teaching in a college cannot be then any longer the necessary preparation for a real university position. Something like the Ger- man institution of the docent, which keeps the young scholar from the beginning in the large university, with work according to his own taste, must become the rule. That would bring second- ary changes in the administration, which would make the difference between college and university still more marked. The graduate school would be- come more and more the place for real intellectual independence, and reinforcing in the university teachers the spirit of scholarly production. And this, again, would set higher standards for those college teachers who feel the stimulus to creative scholarship ; as candidates for the university pro- fessorships, these men would stand in Hne with the docents, as every vacant chair would be filled by the author of the most important contributions to human knowledge. Thus a mutual stimulation would bring about a new academic situation, in which American scholarship would become equal to the best European production ; but that con- dition can never be reached as long as the univer- sity keeps up artificially the forms and the spirit of the college. 124 AMERICAN TRAITS Of course all such considerations lose their power and meaning as soon as the end and purpose is contested. Whoever imagines that productive scholarship is a kind of dreamy idleness, which is of no use for a busy nation, can have no interest in anything which goes beyond a liberal education, and he will be quite willing to import from Europe the material of new thoughts for that liberal edu- cation. This is not the place to repeat all the commonplaces which point out the utter absurdity of such a view. I do not care to demonstrate here that even material welfare, industry, and commerce and war, health and wealth, are from year to year increasingly dependent upon the quiet work of scholars and scientists, — work done without direct practical aim, done merely for the honor of truth. And still less do I desire to enter upon sounding declarations that the real civilization of a nation is expressed, not by its material achievements, but by the energies which are working in it toward the moral life and the search for truth and the creation of beauty. I have spoken here only to those who agree that America must not stand behind any nation in its real productive scholarship, in its intellectual creation, in its power to mould the thoughts of the world. The only sound objection seems the familiar one that Americans have no talent for scholarship. SCHOLARSHIP 125 It has been said that, just as England has no great composer, America will never have a great scholar. I do not believe that. At the middle of the sev- enteenth century all the nations of Europe had great philosophers, — Bacon and Hobbes in Eng- land, Descartes and Malebranche in France, Gro- tius and Spinoza in Holland, Bruno and Cam- panella in Italy; and only Germany had the reputation of having no talent for philosophy. It was just before Leibnitz appeared on the hori- zon, and Kant and Fichte and Hegel followed, and Germany became the centre of philosophy. As soon as the right conditions are given, here too new energies will rush to the foreground. In caref uUy watching, year after year, American stu- dents, I am fully convinced that their talent for productive scholarship is certainly not less than that of the best German students. Compared with them, our students have an inferior training in hard systematic work, as their secondary school edu- cation is usually inferior ; but I do not wish to touch again upon that dangerous chapter. And secondly, they have infinitely poorer chances for scholarly work in their future, as I have fully pointed out. With a more strenuous preparatory training behind them, and a more favorable oppor- tunity for productive work before them, these stu- dents would be the noblest material from which to develop American scholarship. 126 AMEEICAN TRAITS And I gain my strongest conviction and belief in American scholarship from my admiration for all that the scholars of the past and of the present have done. Indeed, it is with enthusiasm that I look upon the personal achievements in schol- arship all over the land. Not only in Harvard, where I see the memory of noble scholars like Agassiz and Peirce, Gray and Child, honored and imitated, and where in my own philosophical de- partment colleagues of eminent creative power set the standard ; no, in the most different universities, and often even in small colleges, I have admired the productiveness of brilliant scholars. Yet I have always felt instinctively how much more of lasting value these scores of scholars might have produced, had not all the social factors, all the external conditions, all the public institutions and public moods, worked against them, and hindered and hampered their splendid work. Yes, I should not have expressed any of these considerations did I not hope that it will be clear to every one that all my criticism is directed merely against the sys- tem, and never against persons. American scholar- ship as a whole is so far weak, and not to be com- pared with America's achievements in technique and industry, in commerce and public education ; inferior even to its poetry and architecture. But it is merely because the institutions are undevel- SCHOLARSHIP 127 oped ; the best musicians cannot play a symphony on a fiddle and a drum. Yet it is wonderful how much has been done in the last twenty years against and in spite of the public spirit ; how much, after all, has been produced while every- thing was crushing the zeal for production. This fact, that America has accomplished something, even under the most adverse circiunstances, strongly inspires the hope that it will do great things when once the circumstances shall be as favorable as they are in Germany ; that is, when the university work is by its aims clearly separated from the work of the lower college classes, when the calls to university chairs are made first of all with reference to scholarly production, when the young scholar has a chance to remain as docent from the beginning in advanced university work, and when the social side of the profession is so developed that it attracts the best men of the country. The development of the institutions, on the other hand, has been such a rapid one in the last years that certainly the hope is justified that the last step will soon be taken : the time is ripe for it. Then the universities will become the soul of the country, and productive scholarship will be the soul of the universities ; the best men will then enter into their service, and the produc- tive scholarship of the country will be gigantic in just proportion to its resources. IV WOMEN Not long ago, I had an enjoyable call from a young German whose purpose in crossing the ocean was to catch a glimpse of American life. Very naturally we talked, as fellow countrymen do, of the impressions which the New World makes upon the foreigner who has just reached its shores. I asked him whether he kept a diary. He declared that he did not have time for that ; but he showed me a httle pocket registry in which he was accustomed, as a man of business, to enter his debits, credits, and doubtful accounts. Further on in it, he had instituted a similar reck- oning with America. He explained that this was the briefest way of grouping his impressions. I have forgotten the most of these, since the record was one of considerable length ; but of the cred- its I remember distinctly such items as the parlor cars, oysters, waterfalls, shoes, autumn leaves, libraries, after-dinner speeches, the city of Bos- ton, the ice-cream, the hospitality, the " Atlantic WOMEN 129 Monthly," etc. Then came the doubtful accounts : the newspapers, mince pies, millionaires, sleeping cars, furnaces, negroes, receptions, poets, the city of New York, etc., etc. And finally came the debits : monuments, politicians, boarding houses, the spring weather, servants, street cleaning, com- mittee meetings, pavements, sauces, and at least three pages more. But what impressed me most of all — and by reason of which the little book comes to my mind at this moment — was a simple " family division " that I found there : under the debits the children, under the doubtful accounts the men, and under the credits the women. It gave in so simple a formula what all of us had felt during our first months in the New World ! We were all amazed at the pert and dis- respectful children, and we were all fascinated by the American women. Now and then arose in our souls, perhaps, a slight suspicion as to whether these two things can really go together : it seems so much more natural to expect that a perfect woman will provide also for a perfect education of her children ; but whenever we met this woman herself, whenever we saw her and heard her, all skepticism faded away ; she was the perfection of Eve's sex. And one group always attracts our attention the most keenly, — the college bred woman. There are beautiful and brilliant and 130 AMERICAN TRAITS clever and energetic women the world over, but the college girl is a new type to us, and, next to the twenty-four story buildings, nothing excites our curiosity more than the women who have their bachelor's degree. Some mingle with their curiosity certain objections on principle. They remember that the woman has some grains less of brain substance than the man, and that every woman who has learned Greek is considered a grotesque bluestocking. But even he who is most violently prejudiced is first reconciled, and then becomes enthusiastic in theory or married in practice. He wanders in vain through the col- leges to find the repulsive creature he expected, and the funny picture of the German comic papers changes slowly into an enchanting type by Gibson. And when he has made good use of his letters of introduction, and has met these new creations at closer range, has chatted with them before cosy open fires, has danced and bicycled and goKed with them, has seen their clubs and meetings and charities, — he finds himself dis- couragingly word-poor when he endeavors to describe, with his imperfect English, the impres- sion that has been made upon him ; he feels that his vocabulary is not sufficiently provided with complimentary epithets. The American woman is clever and ingenious and witty ; she is briUiant WOMEN 131 and lively and strong ; she is charming and beau- tiful and noble ; she is generous and amiable and resolute ; she is energetic and practical, and yet idealistic and enthusiastic — indeed, what is she not? And when we are in our own country once more, we of course play the reformer, and join heartily the ranks of those who fight for the rights of women and for their higher education. I have myself stood in that line. Some years ago, — after my first visit to America, the pro- blem of women and the universities was much discussed in Germany, and about one hundred university professors were asked for their opin- ions, which were published in a volume entitled " The Academic Woman." And when I sat down to furnish my own contribution to this subject, there appeared before my grateful imagi- nation the lovely pictures of the college yards which I had seen from New England to Califor- nia; I saw once more the sedate Hbrary halls where the fair girls in light-colored gowns radi- ated joy and happiness ; I saw before me the Ivy procession of the Smith College students ; I saw again the most charming theatrical performance I have ever enjoyed, the Midsummer Night's Dream, given by Wellesley students on a spring day in the woods by the lake ; I saw once more 132 AMERICAN TRAITS the eager students in cap and gown in front of Pembroke Hall, at Bryn Mawr, and I saw once more the Kadcliffe Philosophy Club, where we prolonged our discussions through so many de- hghtful evenings. A German Wellesley and Bryn Mawr, I exclaimed, a German Smith and Vassar, — that is the pressing need of our father- land ! My enthusiastic article was reprinted and quoted in the discussions, up and down the land ; thus I found myself suddenly marching in hne with the friends of woman's emancipation ; and I was proud that I — the first one in my German university to do so — had admitted women as regular students into my laboratory, years before I came to America. All that was long ago. I do not now see American life with the eyes of a newcomer. That does not mean that I to-day admire Ameri- can women less than before, nor does it mean that I falter in my hopes that Germany will ab- sorb American ideas in the realm of higher edu- cation for girls. All these feehngs remain the same, and yet, since the surface view of the tour- ist has been replaced by insight into the deeper mechanism, my creed has changed. I believe to- day that it is no less important for America to be influenced by the German ideals of a woman's life than for Germany to learn from America. WOMEN 133 Of course when I speak of German ideals, I do not mean that witless parody which decorates the speeches of woman suffragists. I mean the real German woman, who is to Americans who have a chance to come into full contact with German life mostly something of a surprise. They expected a slave or a doll, a narrow-minded creature with- out intelligence and interests, and now their ex- perience is Hke that of a lady from Boston, — if I may be allowed to make use of her home letter, — who finds that every woman with whom she becomes acquainted in Germany has her serious special interests ; that they are all quite other than she had imagined them. And what is much to the point, the Germany of to-day is not that of twenty years ago. The immense industrial devel- opment of the whole country, which has brought wealth and strength and fullness of life into the whole organism, and which has raised the stand- ard of social existence, has left no sphere of Ger- man Hfe untouched. The efforts of this new Germany in the in- terests of the woman have taken four different forms, — four tendencies which naturally hang together, but externally are sometimes even an- tagonistic. The first movement, which applies to the largest number of individuals, is that which tends to soften the hardships of the female wage- 134 AMERICAN TRAITS earner, especially among the laborers. The sec- ond seeks to raise the character of the general education of girls in the higher classes. The third endeavors to open new sources of income to the better educated women of narrow circum- stances, and the fourth has as its aim the clearing of the way for women of special talent, that they may live out their genius for the good of human- ity. I have said that these impulses move partly in opposite directions ; to widen the horizon of the women of the higher classes and to prepare them for professional work means to draw them away from the hearth, while all the efforts in be- half of the women in the mills and shops tend to brinof them asrain to the hearth of the home. The one group gave too much time to the mere household, in its narrowest sense ; the other group had too httle time for this. The progress in all four directions is almost a rapid one ; the legisla- tion in the interest, and for the protection, of working-women is a model for the world ; and — to point to the top of the pyramid — the conser- vative universities have opened wide their doors. Last winter 431 women were admitted to the University of Berlin alone. These four tendencies, which ought to remain clearly separated in every discussion, as the usual mixing of them brings confusion, have neverthe- WOMEN 135 less a single background of principles. One of these, which sounds of course utterly common- place, is, that it must remain the central function of the woman to be wife and mother ; and the other is that public life and culture, including poHtics, public morality, science, art, higher edu- cation, industry, commerce, law, literature, the newspaper, and the church, are produced, formed, and stamped by men. I do not mean that every woman, or even every man who works for wo- man's rights in Germany to-day is ready to ac- knowledge these two principles. The social-demo- cratic party, whose spokesman, Bebel, has written a most striking book on the woman, would reject these principles decidedly ; and whoever plunges into the literature of the more radical wing must hear at once that free love is the only decent rule, and that every blunder in civilization has come from the old-fashioned notion that men may med- dle with public affairs instead of trusting them to the judgment of women. But all these de- clamations have accomplished nothing ; they have not removed a single pebble from the path of the woman. Every tendency that strikes against those two fundamental principles of German con- viction has been paralyzed by the spirit of the country. It may be said, without exaggeration, that all the efforts towards the solution of the 136 AMERICAN TRAITS woman question in Germany strengthen and re- inforce the family idea. The only exceptions to this are the hberal provisions for the highest development of women of unusual talent; but genius must always be treated as an exception, and such exceptions have existed at all times. The few who take the doctor's degree, and who feel the mission for productive work in scholar- ship, can thus be set aside in the discussion, while the situation as a whole suggests most clearly the irregularity of such a vocation, and does not push the average woman into such a path. The three remaining movements alone have a typical value. But there cannot be the slightest doubt that all that tends to uplift the lot of the working-woman protects first the home as a whole in protecting the individual girl or wife or mother. The central endeavor is to give her time for the household cares, and for her functions as a mem- ber of the family. The higher education, on the other hand, in so far as it does not aim at the exceptional achievements of the highest scholar- ship, is almost wholly in Germany of a character to make the young women better fitted for mar- riage. That the average girl attains to the fulfillment of her hopes only in marriage is a practical dogma which finds in the wide masses there no doubters ; and that, in the better classes. WOMEN 137 the education of the woman was for a long time so much inferior to that of the man that it seriously interfered with a deeper intellectual comradeship in married life, also cannot be denied. The suc- cessful efforts to raise the standard of female education, and to bring it nearer to the level of that of young men, has thus the tendency to give new attractiveness to the family life, and to make the girl more marriageable. In the atmosphere of the present German social views, — others may call them prejudices, — these efforts do not contain the least factor that operates against the crystal- lization of households. The more the horizon of the man widens with the new wealth and expan- sion of the modern Germany, the more this ena- bles the girl, in the struggle for married existence, to bring into the home a richer intellectual hfe, for which the need was less felt in the more idyllic and provincial German homes of the past genera- tion. Finally, the increased opportunities for German women to earn their own living make not at all in the Fatherland against the establishment of the home. These opportunities lift, indeed, from many homes the burdens of misery, and make many empty and wasted lives useful ; but, under the existing conditions of pubHc opinion, there is no fear that they will ever have any chances as substitutes for marriage. They re- 138 AMERICAN TRAITS main, for the large masses, necessarily the second best choice ; a question, on the whole, merely for those who have had no chance to marry, or who are afraid that they will not marry, or who hope that it will somehow help them to marry. In Ger- many, where the female sex outnumbers the male in such a high degree, and where, besides, about ten per cent of the men prefer to stay in their "bachelor quarters, a million women have to seek other spheres than that of the wife ; but no aver- age German girl desires to be one of that million, even did the new opportunities that are constantly opening up offer a little better salary than is the case to-day. And, finally, does any one who has obtained even a glimpse of German civilization need any further proof that the whole public culture there is stamped by man's mind? No reasonable German considers the function of wo- man in the social organism less important or less noble than that of man, but the public questions he wishes to have settled by men. Man sets the standard in every public discussion, for poKtics and civil life, for science and scholarship, for educa- tion and religion, for law and medicine, for com- merce and industry, and even for art and litera- ture. Women are faithful helpers there in some lines, — they assist and disseminate, and in art and literature their work may reach the highest level ; WOMEN 139 but the landmarks for every development are set by men, and all this -will outlast even the most energetic movements for the higher education of woman, unless the whole structure of German ideals becomes disorganized. II In both respects, in relation to the home and in relation to the standards of pubhc culture, the movements in the interest of women have in America exactly the opposite tendency from those in Germany ; even the same facts have, under the different social conditions, an absolutely different meaning : the whole situation here militates against the home and against the mascuhne control of higher culture, and seems to me, therefore, antag- onistic to the health of the nation. I shall con- sider first the influence on the home. I am not so unfair as to deduce my conclusions from the radi= cal speeches of ill-balanced reformers, or from the experimental extravagances of social iconoclasts ; I do not speak of those who want to see the chil- dren brought up in government institutions from the first days of life, or of those who consider marriage as the only surviving slavery. No ; I do not think of dreams and revolutions ; I have the actual, present situation in mind, the facts as they are welcomed by the conservative population. 140 AMERICAN TRAITS And yet, with tliis alone in mind, I feel convinced that serious forces are at work to undermine the home, and to antagonize the formation of families. Of course I will not warm up the old-fashioned argument, which is repeated so often in Europe, that the higher learning makes a girl awkward and ill-mannered, and that the man will never be drawn to such a bluestocking : I take for granted that no American girl loses in attractiveness by passing through a college, or through other forms of the higher and the highest education. But we have only to look at the case from the other side, and we shall find ourselves at once at the true source of the calamity. The woman has not become less attractive as regards marriage ; but has not marriage become less attractive to the woman? and long before the freshman year did not the outer influences begin to impel in that direction ? does it not begin in every country school where the girls sit on the same bench with the boys, and discover, a long, long time too early, how stupid those boys are ? Coeducation, on the whole unknown in Germany, has many desirable features, — it strengthens the girls ; it refines the boys ; it creates a comradeship be- tween the two sexes which decreases sexual ten- sion in the years of development ; but these fac- tors make, at the same time, for an indifference WOMEN 141 toward the other sex, toward a disillusionism, which must show in the end. The average Ger- man girl thinks, I am sorry to say, that she will marry any one who will not make her unhappy ; the ideal German girl thinks that she will marry only the man who will certainly make her happy ; the ideal American girl thinks that she can marry only the man without whom she will be unhappy ; and the average American girl approaches this standpoint with an alarming rapidity. Now, is not the last a much more ideal point of view ? does it not indicate a much nobler type of woman, — the one who will have no marriage but the most ideal one, as compared with the other, who in a romantic desire for marriage takes the first man who asks her ? But in this connection, I do not wish to approve or to criticise ; we may post- pone that until we have gathered a few more facts and motives. Coeducation is only one ; a whole corona of motives surrounds it. Coeducation means only equality ; but the so- called higher education for girls means, under the conditions of the American life of to-day, de- cidedly not the equality, but the superiority of women. In Germany, even the best educated woman — with the exception once more of the few rare and ambitious scholars — feels her edu- cation inferior to that of the young man of the 142 AMERICAN TRAITS same set, and thus inferior to the mental training of her probable husband. The foundations of his knowledge lie deeper, and the whole structure is built up in a more systematic way. This is true of every one who has passed through a gymnasium, and how much more is it true of those who have gone through the university ! Law, medicine, divinity, engineering, and the academic studies of the prospective teacher are in Germany all based essentially upon a scholarly training, and are thus, first of all, factors of gen- eral education, — powers to widen the horizon of the intellect. All this is less true in America : the lawyer, the physician, the teacher, the engineer, obtain excellent preparation for the profession : but in a lower degree his studies continue his general culture and education ; and the elective system allows him to anticipate the professional training even in college. And, on the other side, as for the business man who may have gone through college with a general education in view — how much, or, better, how little of his culture can be kept alive? Commerce and industry, finance and politics absorb him, and the beautiful college tune becomes a dream ; the intellectual energies, the factors of general culture, become rusty from disuse ; while she, the fortunate col- lege girl, remains in that atmosphere of mental WOMEN 143 interests and inspiration, where the power she has gained remains fresh through contact with books. The men read newspapers, and, after a while, just when the time for marriage approaches, she is his superior, through and through, in intellec- tual refinement and spiritual standards. And all this we claim in the case of the man who has had a college education ; but the probability is very great that he has not had even that. The result is a marriage in which the woman looks down upon the culture of her husband; and, as the girl instinctively feels that it is torture to be the wife of a man whom she does not respect, she hesi- tates, and waits, and shrinks before the thought of entering upon a union that has so few charms. And can we overlook another side of the de- lightful college time ? No noise of the busthng world disturbed the peace of the college campus ; no social distinctions influenced the ideal balance of moral and intellectual and aesthetic enersfies : it was an artificial world in which our young friends Hved during the most beautiful years of their lives. Can we be surprised that they instinc- tively desire to live on in this peculiar setting of the stage, with all its Bengal lights and its self-centred interests ? They feel almost uncon- sciously that all this changes when they marry, when they are mistresses of a household, — a sit- 144 AMERICAN TRAITS uatlon which, perhaps, means narrowness and social limitation. They feel that it would be like an awakening from a lofty dream. There is no need to awake ; the hfe in the artificial setting of remote ideals can be continued, if they attach themselves, not to a husband and children, but to clubs and committees, to higher institutions and charity work, to art and literature ; if they re- main thus in a world where everything is so much more ideal than in that ungainly one in which children may have the whooping-cough. Of course all these are not motives that pro- hibit marriage ; they may not even, in any individ- ual case, work as conscious considerations ; they are only subconscious energies, which show their effects merely if you consider the large groups ; they are the little forces, the accumulation of which pushes the balance of motives perhaps so Httle that they remain unnoticed by the girl who is undecided whether to accept him ; and yet they are efficient. The college studies do not merely widen the horizon ; they give to many a student a concrete scholarly interest, and that is, of course, still truer of the professional training. The woman who studies medicine or natural science, music or painting, perhaps even law or divinity, can we affront her with the suggestion, which would be WOMEN 145 an insult to the man, that all her work is so su- perficial that she will not care for its continuation as soon as she undertakes the duties of a married woman? Or ought we to imply that she is so conceited as to believe that she is able to do what no man would dare hope for himself ; that is, to combine the professional duties of the man with the not less complex duties of the woman ? She knows that the intensity of her special interest must suffer ; that her work must become a super- ficial side-interest; that she has for it but rare leisure hours ; and no one can blame her, how- ever much she may love her own home, for loving still more the fascinating work for which she was trained. All these tendencies are now psychologically reinforced by other factors which have nothing to do with the higher education as such, but are characteristic of the situation of the woman in general. The American girl, well or carelessly educated, fives in the midst of social enjoyments, of cultured interests, of flirtations, and of refine- ments — what has she to hope at all from the change which marriage brings ? Well, the one without whom her heart would break may have appeared — there is then no use of further discus- sion. But it is more probable that he has not appeared, while she, in the meanwhile, flirts with 146 AMERICAN TRAITS half a dozen men, of whom one is so congenial, and another such a brilliant wit, and the third such a promising and clever fellow; the fourth is rich, and the fifth she has known since her childhood, and the sixth, with the best chances, is such a dear, stupid Httle thing ! What has she really to gain from a revolution of her individual fate ? Is there anything open to her which was closed so far ? Between the social freedom of a German girl and a German wife there is not that gulf which separates the two groups, for instance, in France ; and yet the change from the single to the married hfe is an absolute one. Even in Ger- many, the joys of girlhood have something of the provisional in their character, like the temporary filhng of a time of preparation for the real life. In this country the opposite prevails. Every for- eigner sees with amazement the social liberty of the young girl, and admires no great American invention more than the unique system of the chaperon. He is thus hardly surprised that the American girl almost hides the fact when she be- comes engaged ; she has to give up so many fine things, — a period almost of resignation has to begin, and no new, untried social enjoyments are in view. WOMEN 147 III But the American girl has not only no new powers to expect ; she has in marriage a positive function before her, which she, again unlike her European sister, considers, on the whole, a bur- den, — the care of the household. I do not mean that the German woman is enraptured with de- light at the prospect of scrubbing a floor ; and I know, of course, how many American women are model housekeepers, how the farmers' wives, espe- cially, have their pride in it, and how often spoiled girls heroically undertake housekeeping with nar- row means, and that, too, much more often than in Germany, without the help of servants. And yet, there remains a difference of general attitude which the social psychologist cannot overlook. The whole atmosphere is here filled with the con- scious or unconscious theory that housework is somewhat commonplace, a sort of necessary evil which ought to be reduced to a minimum. I do not ask whether that is not perhaps correct; I insist only that this feeling is much stronger here than in Germany, and that it must thus work against domestic Hfe. I point merely to a few symptoms of this phenomenon. I think, for in- stance, of the boarding-house life of married peo- ple, an anti-domestic custom which has such wide 148 AMERICAN TRAITS extension in America, and whicli is not only un- known, but utterly inconceivable in Germany. But also where a house is kept, the outsider has the feeling that the young wife enjoys her home as the basis of family life and as a social back- ground, but that she is not trained to enjoy it as a field of domestic activity. The German girl anticipates, not as the smallest enjoyment of marriage, the possession of a household after her own domestic tastes, and according to her talent for housework. Her whole home education is a preparation for this, and here the German mo- ther finds a large share of her duties. All this may be, in a way, an unpractical scheme ; it may be wasted energy ; it may be better to learn those functions in a more mature age, in which the mind approaches them more theoretically; but this at least is certain, that the German way de- velops a more instinctive incHnation toward the home life. The general American tendency to consider housework as a kind of necessary evil, which as such cannot appeal to those who have free choice, is not less evident in the lower strata of the com- munity. The conviction of every American girl that it is dignified to work in the mill, but undig- nified to be a cook in any other family, would never have reached its present intensity if an WOMEN 149 anti-domestic feeling were not in the background. Exactly the same tendency appears, therefore, when work for the parents is in question. The laborer's daughter has, of course, not such a com- plete theory as the banker's daughter ; but that it is dull to sit in the kitchen and look after the little sister, she too knows. In consequence, she also rushes to the outside life as saleswoman, as industrial laborer, as office worker : it is so excit- ing and interesting ; it is the richer life. The study of the special cases shows, of course, that there are innumerable factors involved ; but if we seek for the most striking features of woman's work, here and abroad, from a more general sur- vey of the subject, it would seem that the aim of the German woman is to further the interests of the household, and that of the American woman to escape from the household. Germany, with its very condensed population, was not able to do without the help of female muscle in running the economic machine ; Amer- ica, with its thin population and its great natural richness, does not really need this. In Germany almost a fourth of the women are at work; in America hardly more than a tenth. Above all, in Germany the women are doing the hard work, two and a half millions being engaged in agricul- ture against half a million here, of whom the 150 AMERICAN TRAITS greater part are negroes. The condition of the country as a whole does not demand woman's aid ; man's labor can support the households of this country, and, economically, the country would be better off if female labor were almost entirely suppressed, both by prejudice and by in- stitutions, since it lowers the wages of the men, and wastes domestic energies which, in a more intensified effort, would save the more. If, in spite of these economic conditions, woman's labor, other than of a domestic character, has become a socially necessary factor, it must have been, first of all, because the American woman feels that it is easier to perform the labor of the man than to make an increased domestic effort. It is the dis- inclination to domestic cares that has slowly created the present situation, and this situation, itself, with its resulting distribution of wages, has necessarily the effect of reinforcing this motive, and of pushing the woman from the hearth to the mill and the salesroom, the office and the classroom. I have mentioned merely mental factors which are to be taken into account in their subconscious cooperation against family life ; but the mental strain and excitement to which young girls are subjected, and the lack of social restraint, the constant hurry, and, above all, the intellectual WOMEN 151 over-tension must influence the nervous system, and the nervous system must influence the whole organization of that sex which nature, after aU, has made the weaker one. The foreigner cannot see these charming American girls without a con- stant feeling that there is something unhealthy in their nervous make-up, an over-irritation, a patho- logical tension, not desirable for the woman who is preparing herself to be the mother of healthy children. The vital statistics tell the whole story. The census of 1890 showed that there were born per thousand of the whole population in Prussia 36.6, in Massachusetts 21.5 ; and this diminished birth rate is still much lower in the native fami- lies here than in those of foreign birth, — the Irish or Swedish or German. If we will consider this social background, this general social situation, we shall perhaps see the problem of higher education from another point of view ; we shall begin to feel that under these conditions, which in themselves work so clearly against the home, it must be doubly dangerous to reinforce those tendencies in woman's higher education which, as such, impel toward a celi- bacy of spirit; and we foreigners ask ourselves then instinctively, " Is the woman question really solved here in the most ideal way ? " The answer which every one of my American 162 AMERICAN TRAITS friends, male and female, lias ready on his lips is very simple. Can you deny, they ask, that the woman whom you accuse is a higher t3rpe of hu- man being than any other ? Do you want her to be untrue to her ideals, to seek marriage just for marriage's sake, instead of waiting for the man of her higher hopes ? But such answers do not help me at all. It may be that I am willing to concede that place of honor to the individual girl here, in comparison with the girl of other nations, but the real problem cannot be even approached as long as the individual is in question. Here lies the point where, according to German con- victions, the shortcomings of American civiliza- tion arise : to the American mind the community is a multitude of individuals, to the German mind it is above all a unity. The American sees in the state an accumulation of elements of which each ought to be as perfect as possible ; the Ger- man sees in it an organism in which each element ideally fulfills its role, only in so far as it adjusts itself to the welfare and perfection of the whole. It is the atomistic idea of the community as against the organic one ; the naturahstic aspect as against the historical ; the state as a sandhill where every grain is independent of every other, against the state as a living being where every cell is in internal connection with every other. WOMEN 153 If it were really the goal of civilization to inspire the individuals that are now alive with as high aims as possible, the American system would be, at least with regard to the women, an ideal one ; but if, to mention at first this single point, such a system works against the creation of substitutes for the individuals who have outlived their life, and thus destroys in the nation the power of re- juvenation, it is clear that the goal was wrongly chosen, and that the standard of perfection can- not be made dependent merely upon personal achievement. Indeed, not the slightest reproach attaches to the individual girl who does not wish to marry because her education and her social surround- ino^s have oriven her ideals which she can fulfill only in celibacy ; she stands individually much higher than the other, who with the same \dews of life nevertheless marries, and perhaps becomes untrue to her ideals, sacrificing her lofty scholarly ambitions for mere idle comfort. But the re- proach must be directed against the community which gives to the girls an education and an m- spiration which lead to such a conflict, and thus antagonize the natural energies of a healthy na- tion. Such a system is made according to an artificial ideal; there is in the world of experience no individual which rests and reposes in or on it- 154 AMERICAN TRAITS self : the natural unity is the family. Every system of public spirit which in its final outcome raises the individuals, but lowers the families, is antagonis- tic to the true civihzation of the people, and its individualistic, brilliant achievements are dearly bought illusions of success. No one will dare say to a woman. This is the best, but you, for one, ought to be satisfied with the second best. But we have the right to demand from the com- munity that the woman be taught to consider, as the really best for her, what is in the highest in- terests of the whole of society, even if it be sec- ond best for the individual. What can be done ? Is it necessary to lower the standard of woman's education in all levels of society in order to reinforce the family feeling ? Must we throw away all that is achieved for the self-preservation of the race ? or is there possibly a way to maintain this glorious individual per- fection, and yet to serve the purposes of the or- ganic community ? But the answer to this prac- tical question may be postponed until we have considered, more briefly, the other factor to which I have already referred. I affirmed that in Ger- many all the movements in the field of the wo- man question are not only in harmony with, and in the interest of, the family, but that, above all, the whole public life bears, as a matter of course, the WOMEN 155 stamp of the man. That is, in my opinion, the second great difference. The American system injures the national organism, not only because it antagonizes the family life, and thus diminishes the chances for the future bearers of the national civilization, but it has, secondly, the tendency to feminize the whole higher culture, and thus to in- jure the national civihzation itself. IV If I speak of public life here, I do not mean poHtics in the technical sense. The arguments for and against the participation of women in politics, the reasons for and against woman suf- fragOj are certainly of a peculiar kind ; I have often listened to both sides in these discussions, and have always, as long as one side was pleading its cause, felt strongly in favor of the other side. If I am, on the whole, opposed to woman suffrage, it is because it belongs to those factors which we have discussed : it would help to draw the inter- ests of individual women away from domestic life. But I do not think that it would have a serious bearing on that point which we have now to con- sider, the effemination of public life. Politics would certainly be influenced as to its character if woman suffrage existed everywhere, — it would, in some ways, probably suffer through hysterical 156 AMERICAN TRAITS sentimentality, illogical impulses, and the lack of consistent obedience to abstract law ; but it would probably be, on the other hand, in many respects ennobled and moraHzed, softened and elevated. There would be, on the whole, no serious disad- vantage to be feared for political life itself, be- cause the men would always remain the backbone of the pohtical parties. Politics in America so immediately and directly penetrates man's whole welfare, his commerce and industry, his income and his expenses, his rights and his duty, that there is no danger that he would ever allow the political life to pass from his hands into those of the woman ; a real effeminizing of political life is thus no probable danger. Of course, so long as only four of the less developed States of the Union have introduced woman suffrage, the ques- tion is of no practical importance. The public life that I have in mind is the pub- lic expression of the ideal energies, the striving for truth and beauty, for morality and reHgion, for education and social reform, and their embod- iment, not in the home, but in the public con- sciousness. In Germany no one of these func- tions of public life is without the support and ennobling influence of active women, but decid- edly the real bulk of the work is done by men ; they alone give to it character and direction, and WOMEN 157 their controlling influence gives to this whole manifolclness of national aims its strenuousness and unity ; to carry these into the millions o£ homes and to make them living factors m the family, is the great task of the women there. Here, on the other hand, the women are the real supporters of the ideal endeavors : in not a few fields, their influence is the decisive one ; in all fields, this influence is felt, and the whole system tends ever more and more to push the men out and the women in. Theatre managers claim that eighty-five per cent, of their patrons are women. No one can doubt that the same percentage would hold for those who attend art exhibitions, and even for those who read magazines and literary works in general. And we might as well con- tinue with the same somewhat arbitrary figure : can we deny that there are about eighty-five per cent of women among those who attend public lectures, or who go to concerts, among those who look after public charities and the work of the churches ? I do not remember ever to have been in a German art exhibition where at least half of those present were not men, but I do remember art exhibitions in Boston, New York, and Chicago where according to my actual count the men in the hall were less than five per cent of those pre- sent. As a matter of course, the patron deter- 168 AMERICAN TRAITS mines the direction which the development will take. As the political reader is more responsible for the yellow press than is the editor, so all the non-political functions of public life must slowly take, under these conditions, the stamp of the feminine taste and type, which must have again the further effect of repelling man from it more and more. The result is an effemination of the higher culture, which is antagonistic to the devel- opment of a really representative national civiliza- tion, and which is not less unsound and onesided than the opposite extreme of certain Oriental na- tions, where the whole culture is man's work, and the woman a slave in the harem. The woman, and sometimes even the indolent man who wants to get rid of the responsibility of something he does not care about, says simply that this is all right. As the facts show — they argue — that the woman is not inferior in intel- lectual and aesthetic energies, not inferior in ear- nestness and enthusiasm, why not intrust her with the national culture, why not give her full charge of art and literature, education and science, moral- ity and religion — man has a sufficient number of other things to do. But it is simply not true, and cannot be made true by any dialectics, that the minds of man and woman are equal, and can be substituted the one for the other, without WOMEN 159 changing the entire character of the mental pro- duct. It is not true that men and women can do the same work in every Hne. Earnestness cer- tainly the women have. However large the nmn- ber of those who may meet their public duties in a spirit of sport or amusement or ennui, the ma- jority take these duties seriously ; and the college girl especially comes home with a large amount of earnestness in the cause of reform and of the higher functions of the national life. The only misfortune is that earnestness alone is not physi- cal energy, that good will is not force, that devo- tion is not power. But her lack of physical power and strength would be less dangerous to the undertaking if her intellectual ability were equal to that of the man. But here the social psychologist can feel no shadow of a doubt that neither coeducation nor the equality of opportu- nities has done anything to eliminate those char- acteristic features of the female mind which are well known the world over, and which it is our blessing not to have lost. The laws of nature are stronger than the theories of men. To express the matter in a psychological for- mula, on which the observations of all times and all nations have agreed : in the female mind the con- tents of consciousness have the tendency to fuse into a unity, while they remain separated in the 160 AMERICAN TRAITS man's mind. Both tendencies have their merits and their defects ; but, above all, they are differ- ent, and make women superior in some functions, and man superior in some others. The immediate outcome of that feminine mental type is woman's tact and aesthetic feeling, her instinctive insight, her enthusiasm, her sympathy, her natural wis- dom and morality ; but, on the other side, also, her lack of clearness and logical consistency, her tendency to hasty generalization, her mixing of principles, her undervaluation of the abstract and of the absent, her lack of deliberation, her readi- ness to follow her feelings and emotions. Even these defects can beautify the private life, can make our social surroundings attractive, and soften and complete the strenuous, earnest, and consistent public activity of the man ; but they do not give the power to meet these public du- ties without man's harder logic. If the whole national civilization should receive the feminine stamp, it would become powerless and without decisive influence on the world's progress. On the surface, it seems otherwise. Every one thinks at once of some most talented women, whose training in strenuous thought is not infe- rior to that of men, and every one knows that our female students are as good scholars as the male ones. Those few exceptions I need not to WOMEN 161 discuss here, — the genius is std generis ; but the case of the female university students does not at all suggest to me a belief in their intellectual equality with men. Certainly the average female student ranks as a pupil equal to the young man, but that does not exclude the fact that her achievements and his are profoundly different ; she is more studious, and thus balances certain undeniable shortcomings, and the subjects in which she excels are other than those in which he is most interested. Above all, — and here I touch an important point too much neglected, — the difference between the students appears rela- tively small here, because the historic develop- ment of the American college has brought it about that the whole higher study bears far too much the type of the feminine attitude towards scholarship ; and this is the reason why the schol- arly outcome has so far been on the whole unsat- isfactory. In Germany, the university professors who are opposed to the admission of women to the university take for granted that the women will be industrious and good pupils, but insist that they will lower the standard of the really scholarly work, because they will take, in accord- ance with the feminine mind, a passive, receptive, uncritical attitude toward knowledge, while the whole importance of German scholarly life lies in 162 AMERICAN TRAITS its active criticism, its strength of research and inquiry. All that the German professors now fear from the intrusion of women was precisely the habitual, characteristic weakness of the Amer- ican college until a decade or two ago. These colleges were excellent as places for the distribu- tion of knowledge, but undeveloped as places of research ; they were controlled by a passive belief in intellectual authorities, but little prepared to advance the knowledge of the world ; in short, they took the receptive, feminine attitude — no wonder that the women could do as well as the men. But in recent time the American univer- sity strives with vigorous efforts toward the real- ization of the higher ideal ; the test of the ques- tion whether the dogmatic mind of the average woman will prove equal to that of the average man, in a place controlled by a spirit of critical research, has simply not been made so far. If I except the few rare talents, which have been left out of our discussion, since they do not require that systems be adjusted to them, I cannot say that I have gained the impression that the spirit of research would be safe in the hands of the woman. But what a calamity for the country if this great epoch in the life of the universi- ties were ruined by any concessions to the femi- nine type of thinking ! The nearer America ap- WOMEN 163 proaches a state of university work that corre- sponds to the highest achievements of European universities, the more it develops real universities beyond the collegiate institutions for receptive study, the more the equality of the two sexes must disappear in them, — the more must they become, like the European institutions, places for men, where only the exceptional women of special talent can be welcomed, while the average woman must attend the woman's college with its receptive scholarship. If we keep up an artificial equality through the higher development of the present day, American intellectual work will be kept down by the women, and will never become a world power. How differently, when compared with that of men of the same class, the female mind works, we see daily around us when we turn our eyes from the educated level down toward the half -educated multitude. Here we are confronted with the wo- man who antagonizes serious medicine through her belief in patent medicines and quackery, the woman who undermines moral philosophy through her rushing into spiritualism and every supersti- tion of the day, the woman who injures the pro- gress of thought and reform by running with hysterical zeal after every new fad and fashion introduced with a catchy phrase. A lack of re- 164 AMERICAN TRAITS spect for really strenuous thought characterizes woman in general. Dilettantism is the key-note. The liaK-educated man is much more inclined to show an instinctive respect for trained thought, and to abstain from opinions where he is ignorant. But the half-educated woman cannot discriminate between the superficial and the profound, and, without the slightest hesitation, she effuses, hke a bit of gossip, her views on Greek art or on Dar- winism or on the human soul, between two spoon- fuls of ice-cream. Even that is almost refresh- ing as a softening supplement to the manly work of civilization, but it would be a misfortune if such a spirit were to gain the controlling influence. That such effemination makes alarming pro- gress is quickly seen if we watch the develop- ment of the teacher's profession. I have seldom the honor of agreeing with the pedagogical schol- ars of this country, but, on this point, it seems to me, we are all of the same opinion : the disap- pearance of the man from the classroom, not only of the lower schools, but even of the high schools, is distinctly alarming. The primary school is to- day absolutely monopolized by woman teachers, and in the high school they have the overwhelm- ing majority. The reason for this is clear : since the woman does not have to support a family, she can work for a smaller salary, and thus, as in WOMEN 165 the mills the men tend more and more toward the places for which women are not strong enough, in the schools, too, female competition must, if no halt is called, bring down salaries to a point from which the supporter of the family must retreat. It would be, of course, in both cases better if the earnings were larger, and more men were thus enabled to support families, while in the school- room, as in the mill, the female competitor brings the earnings down to a point where the man is too poor to marry her, — a most regrettable state of affairs. But the economic side is here not so important as the effect on civilization. Even granting, what I am not at all ready to grant, that woman's work, preferred because it is cheaper to the community, is just as good as man's work, can it be without danger that the male youth of this country, up to the eighteenth year, is edu- cated by unmarried women ? Is it a point to be discussed at all that " nascent manhood requires for right development manly inspiration, direction, and control " ? Where will this end ? That very soon no male school-teacher of good quaHty will survive is certain, but there is no reason to ex- pect that it will stop there. We have already to-day more than sixty per cent of girls among the upper high-school classes, and this dispropor- tion must increase. Must we not expect that in 166 AMERICAN TRAITS the same way in which the last thirty years have handed the teacher's profession over to the wo- men, the next thirty years will put the ministry, the medical calHng, and, finally the bar, also into her control ? To say that this is not to be feared because it has never happened anywhere before is no longer an argument, because this develop- ment of our schools is also new in the history of civilization. There was never before a nation that gave the education of the young into the hands of the lowest bidder. The comic papers prophesy alarming results for the man ; while the woman teaches and preaches and argues before the court, he will have to do the cooking, mending, and nursing at home. That is absurd. There is enough room for the development of man in the present direction. Commerce and industry, politics and war, will fur- nish no lack of opportunities for the employment of all his energies ; but one thing is certain : he will be a stranger to the higher culture of the nation. And this condition, in which the pro- fessional callings, the whole influence on the de- velopment of the younger generation, all art and science and morality and religion, come to be moulded and stamped by women, is precisely the WOMEN 167 one which some call equality of the sexes ! The truth is evident, here as everywhere, that equality cannot be brought about artificially. To force equality always means merely shifting the inequal- ity from one region to another ; and if the primary inequality was the natural one, the artificial sub- stitute must be dangerous if it be more than a temporary condition. Nature cannot act other- wise, because nature cannot tolerate real equality. Equality means in the household of nature a wasted repetition of function ; equality, there- fore, represents everywhere the lower stage of the development, and has to go over into differentia- tion of functions. Nature cannot be dodged, and the growth of nations cannot escape natural laws. To say that man and woman must be equal de- mands a natural correction by bringing in the differentiation of function at some other point : you may decree equality to-day, but nature takes care that we shall have, in consequence, a new kind of inequality to-morrow. The nation has decreed that the differences of sex shall be ignored in education and in the choice of callings, and the outcome is a greater inequality than in any other country, an inequality in which men are turned out of the realms of higher culture. But as soon as we take the point of view of social philosophy, we understand at once the 168 AMERICAN TRAITS deeper meaning of the whole phenomenon and Its probable development. This cry for equality, with its necessary results in a new form of crass inequality, then manifests itself as a great scheme of nature in the interests of the conservation of the race, in keeping with the special condi- tions under which the nation has received its growth. Under the ordinary conditions, the ma- terial opening and settling of a country move parallel with the development of the inner cul- ture, and the man is thus able to meet the re- quirements of this twofold public task ; he gives his energies to the material and political necessi- ties so long as the mental and spiritual culture is low, and in proportion as he is freed from the rudimentary needs that pertain to the support of the nation, he turns to the inner culture, that of education and art, and so on, while the woman, at every stage, cares for the private life of the fam- ily. In America, this normal course was changed, because the material opening of the country, the unfolding of its natural resources, coincided with the possession of a most complex inner culture brought over from Europe ready-made, not grown of the soil. Hence a new division of labor had to be discovered to meet those material exigen- cies which demanded man's full energy and man's side-function, the work of the higher culture, WOMEN 169 also. This side-function had to be assumed by the woman ; she had to care for the inner cul- ture of the nation, that the arms of the man might be free for the more immediate work, the settling of the continent, the political organization, and the development of the national wealth. This was, under these unusual conditions, the only way of preserving and fostering the high European culture ; if women had not temporarily taken this function from man, it would have been wholly lost in the wear and tear of the commercial and political adolescence of the nation. It was, then, the special mission of the American woman to become the bearer of the higher, inherited culture of the nation by the artificial development of an intellectual superiority over the man. But if this be true, it is clear that such vicari- ous fimctioning must cease as soon as those two peculiar conditions should arise which manifestly exist at the present time. The first of these conditions is that this female superiority should reach a point where it begins to effeminate the higher culture, and where it becomes antagonistic to family life ; thus positively injuring the organ- ism of the race. The other condition is that the material establishment of the country should have attained its completion ; the ground mastered, the sources of national wealth sufficiently developed 170 AMERICAN TRAITS to allow room for man's effort in other directions. No doubt this condition also is fulfilled to-day, — the West is opened ; the whole continent is economically subjugated ; a net of transportation covers the whole land ; wealth abounds in a suffi- cient number of families, down to the second and third generations, to insure the building up of a leisure class ; and the time has come when the American man can take his share, like the Eu- ropean, in the spiritual culture of his country. If the American man will but turn his real ener- gies to the world of spiritual goods, then the two great evils which we have discussed will both be cured by the one remedy, and at one time, while the woman will not in any respect be the loser. If man takes the part that belongs to him in the higher culture, this, instead of being emasculated, will show that perfect blending of human ener- gies in which the strength of the man will be softened by pure womanhood, and, at the same time, the woman, who will feel the greater strength in the man of equal culture, will shrink no longer from marriage, and will feel attracted by that truer companionship in which the real labor is divided, the public function given to the man, the domestic function to the daughter and sister, to the wife and mother. That is the state at which we aim in Germany ; much has still to WOMEN 171 be done there to give to the average German wo- man the thorough education of the American ; but that will soon come. In any case, even the best training of the woman must support in Ger- many the family idea, and the man will continue to be the mainstay of the ideal culture. We Ger- mans feel sure that this will not be endangered, even if we fully imitate the splendid college life of American girls. Therefore, no one can sug- gest that woman's education in this country ought to take any steps backward ; all the glorious op- portunities must remain open, and only one prac- tical change must come in response to the urgent needs of our period : the American man must raise his level of general culture. In short, the woman's question is in this country, as ultimately perhaps everywhere, the man's question. Reform the man, and all the difficulties disappear. We know that in Paradise, Eve followed the seducing voice of the serpent, and ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge, and gave of it unto Adam. The college-bred Eve has no smaller longing for the apple of knowledge ; but the ser- pent has become modern, and his advice has grown more serpent-like than ever : " Eat of the apple, but give not unto Adam thereof." The Bible tells us that when they both ate, they were cast out from Paradise, but saved the race. How- 172 AMERICAN TRAITS ever it may be with the modern paradise, the race will be saved only on the condition that Adam receive his share of the fruit. Listen not to the serpent, but divide the apple ! AMERICAN DEMOCRACY I A German who has seen the world and tries to make his thinking free from the chance influences of his surroundings may easily ask himself whether it would not be most desirable that all nations should become republican democracies after the American model. If he does not ask the question himself, he is sure to be asked it by an American friend who happens not to agree with the last speech of the German Emperor, and who, there- fore, takes for granted that an educated German, outside of the reach of the German state-attorney, will frankly confess that monarchy is a mediaeval relic and that democracy alone is life. When one of my friends approached me the other day with such an inquiry, I was in a hurry, and my answer had to be short. I told him, first, that the achieve- ments of democratic America are not the achieve- ments of American democracy ; secondly, that democracy in itself has as many bad tendencies as good ones, and is thus not better than aristocracy ; 174 AMERICAN TRAITS thirdly, that the question whether democracy or aristocracy is better does not exist to-day ; fourthly, that Germany daily becomes more democratic, while America steadily grows aristocratic ; fifthly, that there is no difference between the two nations anyway. My friend insisted that my argument stood on the same level with the oath of the woman who was accused before the court of breaking a pot which she had borrowed from her neighbor, and who swore, first, that the pot was not broken when she returned it ; secondly, that the pot was broken when she borrowed it ; and, thirdly, that she had not borrowed the pot. Well, that may be ; but my haste alone was to blame, as I could not explain in the few words I had time for that de- mocracy can cover very different tendencies. Thus I promised, when I had leisure, to disentangle my twisted argument, and to illustrate, perhaps even to establish it. The following remarks are, as far as possible, a fulfillment of my promise, and they follow exactly the order of the argument. I must begin, therefore, with the inquiry whether the present civilization of America in its good and glorious features is to be considered as evidence in favor of democracy as against aristo- cracy, of republican institutions as against mon- archical. The eulogists and the critics of American de- AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 175 mocracy, nowadays, often make their enterprise quite easy by praising or attacking it for quali- ties which certainly belong to democratic Amer- ica, but which are not characteristic of American democracy. The trouble, of course, begins at the very outset, with the difficulty of defining what democracy really is. Democracy is equality ; and yet we are familiar with the argument of those who insist that equality is a foreign and un-Amer- ican conception, and that American democracy is not equality, but liberty. Democracy is govern- ment by those who are governed ; but why, then, no woman suffrage in America? Democracy is government by majorities; and yet a thousand people in the State of New York do not count, as voters for the Senate, more than a dozen in Nevada, and even the President may be chosen by a mmority. Democracy means universal suffrage, and yet every constitutional monarchy in Europe is based on universal suffrage. Democracy is brotherhood, but those who know Russia assure us that there is no more brotherly people than that of the Czar. A democracy is a republic ; and yet we hear that the American colony was already democratic before the Revolution, that England is, after all, to-day a democracy, and that France is pseudo-democratic only. It is easy to praise democracy in America if it 176 AMERICAN TRAITS is contrasted merely with the demoralized aristo- cracy of the Louis Quatorze period. The only defect of the argument is that such an aristocracy does not exist anywhere to-day, and that every word of the eulogy thus fits, just as well, any other non-republican country. And it is easy to de- preciate American democracy if it be compared with an ideal construction of pubhc hfe, which is nowhere realized under the most complex condi- tions of modern society. The criticism, again, can be turned against any other country where, under different forms, the defects of modern cul- ture and the weaknesses of human character bring about similar evils. It happens easily that the American puts into the ledger of democracy too many items which simply belong to the times in which we live. The unfairness of such a substitution is felt most strongly when America is compared with Germany. Germany has become in the hterature of democracy the most convenient object of de- monstration for the difference between the New and the Old World system. Comparison with England leads too quickly to the sentiment that the monarchy is there merely decorative ; com- parison with France is dangerous, since France pretends to be a democracy like America ; com- parison with Russia is out of the question, partly AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 177 because Russian life is so little known in America, and partly because its political institutions seem to an American beneath discussion. Germany re- mains thus in the vast literature of the subject al- ways the one easiest to point to among the leading nations. The popular argiunent runs as follows : America has all these fine things ; America is a democracy ; Germany is not a democracy ; poor Germany, that cannot have all these fine things ! But Germany might very well have them, because they do not necessarily pertain to a democracy as such. It is thus, perhaps, natural to begin a study of American democracy by a comparison of the achievements usually claimed for this country with those of the German Empire, which, as Mr. Brad- ford in his recent large work on " The Lesson of Popular Government," assures us, " is almost as much under military and imperial despotism as three centuries ago." It might be difficult to reach a general agree- ment on any proposed list of reasons for the pride and satisfaction and happiness that result from the public life of this wonderful country, but I have certainly nowhere found in the literature of the subject a more complete enumeration than in the noble essays of Charles W. Eliot, in his recent volume, "American Contributions to Civilization." If I understand him correctly. President Eliot dis- 178 AMERICAN TRAITS tinguishes ten different features in our public life, each one of which deserves the respect and the admiration of the world. Let us consider these features one by one, as compared with conditions in Germany. " The first and principal contribu- tion," says President EHot, " is the advance made in the United States, not in theory only, but in practice, toward the abandonment of war as a means of settling disputes between nations, the substitution of discussion and arbitration, and the avoidance of armaments." That was written in 1896. But it is to the credit of England and not to that of America that the Venezuela conflict did not lead to war in that same year. And since those days we have gone to Cuba, we have gone to the Philippines, and, worse than all, we have heard through the whole scale, from the editorials of the yellow press to the orations of leading senators, the voice of that aggressive temper which waits for an opportunity to show American superiority to the world by battles and not by arbitration. Germany, on the other hand, has now kept the peace for thirty years, peace in a time which was filled to overflowing with inter- national irritations, peace which was paid for with immense expenditures, a peace that almost no one dared to hope for, and which was cer- tainly not a product of chance, but the result of AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 179 most persistent efforts — it may be added in the same breath, efforts on the part of the government much more than on the part of the people, since in all Europe times have so fully changed that princes are much more peaceably inclined than nations. "The second eminent contribution which the United States," according to President Eliot, " have made to civilization is their thorough acceptance, in theory and in practice, of the widest religious toleration." "The constitutional prohibition of religious tests as qualifications for office has given the United States the leadership among the na- tions in dissociating theological opinions and political rights." But again we must ask, is it otherwise in Germany? What office in Ger- many is dependent upon a religious test ? Just as the Protestant population of Saxony loves its Cathohc king, and just as the CathoHc population of Southern Baden adores the Protestant Grand Duke, so the whole public and political life of Germany shows a peaceable intermingling of all creeds, exactly as in America. If the Americans, to emphasize the contrast with Europe, point to the religious persecutions of the Jews in Russia, we have to consider this as an evidence of race antagonism ; and mob violence against other races is certainly not unknown in large parts of America. 180 AMERICAN TRAITS On the other hand, the struggle between the Ger- man government and the ultramontane Centrist party ought never to be misconstrued as religious intolerance; it is a strictly political fight for power. But religious toleration has not only the political aspect, in which all the leading nations are to-day on the same footing, but also a social aspect ; and it may be doubted whether Germany is not superior to America in its willingness to accept the social personality without any intermed- dling into the particular way of arranging private relations to the problems of eternity. There is endlessly more personal gossiping about our neigh- bor's religion here than in Germany. In smaller towns, especially, the social intolerance in rehgious matters reaches a degree utterly unknown in con- tinental Europe. The American Sunday laws would appear to Germans as an intolerable lack of religious freedom. There is no doubt that even an avowed atheist would find his path much freer in Germany than here. A third characteristic feature, as is claimed, of American civilization has been the successful de- velopment of a manhood sufPrage. But every one knows that the legislative bodies of Germany are products of universal suffrage, too, and that the local administration is a highly developed self- government. In both countries universal suffrage AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 181 is the great school of political education, the great vehicle for the feeling of responsibihty in the masses, the means of disseminating public interests ; but in both countries it needs a com- plex artificial organization, to be practically man- ageable, and above all it needs constitutional limitations to avoid the evident dangers and evils. All the differences have to do merely with these forms of adjustment and means of warding off the dangers. The German system insures, through the instrumentality of the hereditary monarchy, those advantages which the founders of the American Republic secured through the many conservative features of the American form of government, where especially the Senate, per- haps not as it is, but as it was planned, and the prescribed slowness of the governmental proced- ures, act as an effective restraint upon popular excitements. If democracy be understood as a form of government which represents the will and energies of the people, the German and the American systems are equally democratic, and it is wrong to make hght of German suffrage because the highest executive, as representative of the national wiU, is not selected by a majority vote, but by the universal, spontaneous loyalty to one who stands above parties. On the other hand, it is not less unfair when English authors are pleased 182 AMERICAN TRAITS to call tlie constitutional the true democracy, and the American system a pseudo-democracy only. But so much may be said, indeed, — that the Ger- man citizen, when he goes to the ballot-box, re- ceives the educational influences of universal suf- frage more directly than his American colleague. There is no machine, there is no " boss," there is no two-party system, which often makes the choice merely a somewhat demoralizing decision between two evils, or demands a vote on issues which make no appeal to the personal interests or intelhgence of the voter. The large number of parties in Germany, on the contrary, lends to the decision a much more individual character. A fourth point, which is an occasion of pride to every American, is " that property has never been safer under any form of government." But has any one ever owned a pfennig in Germany behind which the majesty of the German nation did not stand ? Certainly it is not otherwise here, but it cannot be denied that Americans themselves everywhere reinforce the widespread notion that the financially weak man cannot find justice in America against the powerful influences of rich corporations, a prejudice which has taken much stronger form in Europe, and has there spread abroad the erroneous opinion that the American civil court is a seat of corruption. How much AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 183 depends in such questions upon the point of view is shown by the interesting experience of a large association founded in New York by German- Americans. This association gives legal aid to immigrants, and has in this way been widely ben- eficial, but when the society recently celebrated an anniversary, the discussions showed that there was some difference of opinion as to what they were really accomplishing. One party believed that their purpose was to aid the immigrant, who, by reason of his training in Europe, has not yet risen to the height of the American doctrine of equal rights for all ; and the other party, on the contrary, believed that they were to help the immi- grant in obtaining justice, because one who is accustomed to its administration in European courts will not know how to obtain the " pull " that is necessary in the unreliable courts of his new home. If we free ourselves from arbitrary interpretations of facts and look at the principles, we shall be sure of the safety of property on both sides of the ocean. Is it not a parallel case with the fifth assertion, " that nowhere have the power and disposition to read been so general"? The schooling of the nation has been for a hundred years the greatest honor of the fatherland, and, while the completely illiterate have disappeared in Prussia, it is well 184 AMERICAN TRAITS known how large a percentage of native born whites in the United States are illiterate still, in how many country districts education is alarm- ingly crippled, and how often in city schools the accommodation is insufficient. On the surface, the case looks better for the sixth point, " that nowhere have property and well-being been so widely diffused." It is certainly true that the lower classes are better off in some parts of the United States than in Germany ; America is the wealthier country. But there are a few points which we must not overlook. On the one hand, well-being is a relative affair, more dependent upon the changes in social life, whether up or down, than upon the given status; and the change upwards, the raising of the standard in the last twenty years, is much more to be felt in the fatherland than here ; moreover, well-being there is much less dependent upon wealth than in the distinctly commercial atmosphere of this country ; and the socialistically colored insurance laws of Germany diminish the social hardships. On the other hand, if the diffusion of American wealth is accentuated, can it be denied that the extremes are greater here than anywhere else, — that the army of the unemployed is swelling while the billion-dollar trusts are formed, that the rich- est men are richer than any European, while the AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 185 slums of New York show a misery that is unknown in Berlin ? A seventh reason for satisfaction with Amer- ican democracy is " that no form of government ever inspired greater affection and loyalty." But can it be truly affirmed that the German nation feels less loyalty and affection for its constitu- tional monarchy, which does not appeal merely to the moral personality, but also to the aesthetic imagination ? and does the affection for the form of government not fuse with loyalty for the highest representative of the nation? And yet, while the German is brought up from his child- hood to loyal affection for the bearer of the crown, almost the half of the American popula- tion sees in the White House the man against whom their party effort was directed and whom they hope to fight again a few years hence. There are no fewer grounds for questioning the eighth point of this presupposed superiority, " that nowhere has governmental power been more ade- quate to levy and collect taxes, to raise armies and to disband them, to maintain pubHc order, and to pay off great public debts." But in what, in this respect, does the inferiority of the German government appear ? Is it not usually conceded, even by the most fervent admirers of the demo- cratic system, that the strong side of the European 186 AMERICAN TRAITS governments is their smooth working, due to the incomparable preponderance of experts and spe- cialists ? It has been asserted, again and again, that all the smooth effectiveness of expert gov- ernment is morally less valuable than the rough working of a democratic machinery. Whether that is true is not the question now, but the asser- tion implies that at least the technique of govern- ment in America cannot be claimed as superior. It has been maintained with full right that a further ground of the glory of American demo- cracy — our ninth — is the way in which people of the most various races and nations have been absorbed by the vigorous organism of the United States. There is no doubt that no other country can show a similar achievement, but it is, at the same time, a fact that no other country has had the opportunity to try its skill in the solution of such a problem. The case of the immigrants who arrive on our shores with the full intention of becoming loyal Americans can scarcely be com- pared with that of the Polish or French or Danish population, which is unwillingly, and by the chance of history, amalgamated with the German nation. Those foreign elements which came by their own choice to Germany have been as thor- oughly assimilated by the monarchy as the Ameri- can immigrants by the democracy. America's AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 187 whole success in that direction is determined by- its geographical and economical situation, but not by its form of government. The tenth point — it may be our last — is the noble progressiveness of the democratic nation. It has been said " that no people have ever wel- comed so ardently new machinery and new inven- tions generally." But even if we consider pro- gress merely from the narrow point of view of technique, it seems that Americans have fallen into certain misconceptions. Typical of these were the editorials of the press of the whole coun- try when the report came that the United States' exhibition at the Paris World's Fair won the largest number of prizes. The triumph over Ger- many was at that time celebrated in all its varia- tions. Only later came the commentary. The United States had, indeed, the largest number of awards, but, as the President of the American Manufacturers' Association declared, most of them were of secondary value, while the largest num- ber of first prizes went to Germany. From the 121 groups into which the exhibition was divided, Germany triumphed in fifty-one, the United States in thirty-one, in spite of the fact that the number of German exhibits was only 2500, while those from the United States numbered 6564. On their incomparably broad scientific basis, 188 AMERICAN TRAITS German industries, especially the chemical and electrical ones, have made the same rapid progress which American industries have enjoyed on the basis of greater wealth and commercial enterprise. In the same way the introduction of new inven- tions into the daily life has been not less charac- teristic of Germany. Moreover, progress means more than the production and introduction of machinery. Can it really be said that the genius of American democracy is more progressive than that of the German nation, if the word be taken in its broader sense ? Does not the whole history of civilization show that the real decisive progress has always come from the great personalities, while it is characteristic of democracy to raise the average, but to keep down the great man ? The democratic masses are progressive in the sense that if great men have opened a new way, they rush eagerly on ; they want more and more of a given reform or of a given improvement, but to find a method of improvement or reform which is really new in principle is never their immediate concern ; and yet that alone means progress from the standpoint of the world's history. But this point in the discussion would lead us beyond our goal ; our aim was at first not to criticise democracy, but merely to show that not every good thing in the United States can be AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 189 accredited to the existence of democracy. If it be taken for granted that the love of peace, rehgious toleration, the diffusion of education, universal suffrage, the assimilation of foreign elements, the safety of property, the love for the government, the efficient working of the adminis- tration, the wide extension of well-being, and the spirit of progress, — that all this because it is pre- sent in the United States is a product and char- acteristic of democracy, then any critical study of the nature of democracy is superfluous. But such an assumption would beg the question. We had to ask, therefore, at the threshold of our inquiry, whether monarchical Germany is inferior in these points of distinction, and we have seen that the facts speak against such an arbitrary hypothesis. The value of democracy cannot be proved by reference to qualities which are to the same degree, in some respects perhaps even still more strongly, present in a so-called aristocracy. It has thus been our preparatory task to clear from the way of the dis- cussion the popular notion that because America is a glorious country under democratic govern- ment, therefore every American success must be to the glory of democracy. With the same right, the same reasons for satisfaction and pride might be construed in Germany as arguments for the superiority of the monarchical system. A fair 190 AMERICAN TRAITS discussion will refuse such assistance and will consider the problem as a theoretical one. II A theoretical discussion of all sides of democracy was not our aim. We set out to answer the ques- tion of the American, whether the German ought not to prefer democracy. The question involves logically a full belief in the merits and advantages of democracy ; the answer which has to explain why the German negatives the question is thus not bound to restate the arguments in favor of demo- cratic government; they are considered as well known to the questioner, and the other side alone is in debate. No one, indeed, can be blind to the enormous moral advantages of democracy. It re- inforces individual initiative, and through this the feeHng of responsibility, it secures a high average of development, it stimulates every man to an equality of effort; and each one of these influences is worth being paid for in high sacrifices. Further, it makes an absolute change of poUcy possible, if the nation is dissatisfied with the old course ; it reinforces the moral truth of the equality of men, and it avoids arbitrary and unjust standards of comparative valuation ; in short, its ideal aim is moral, just, educative, and effective. But have these merits not also their defects ? is AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 191 the realization of these ideal ends probable or even possible ? are not certain other ideals of equal value totally neglected ? The German who seeks to in- quire thus into the logical meaning and working of democracy may, of course, feel from the first disinclined to get his information from the United States, inasmuch as the experiment was made there under exceptionally favorable conditions. There was nothing typical in its development, and that unique combination of splendid possibilities might have made a noble showing, even if democracy had been the most deplorable form of government, and if everything had had to be achieved against the spirit of democracy. Here, in a land which, by its enormous possibilities, its abundant wealth, its freedom from traditions, attracted millions of the most energetic men of all nations, their combined efforts, not dissipated by the miHtarism which results from the geographical conditions of the European powers, must be effective in spite of any governmental scheme. To learn a lesson in com- parative sociology the German, therefore, looks more naturally to France, where the periods of monarchy were not the least prosperous ones of the century ; or to Brazil, where everything turned from good to bad when the regime of the old em- peror was exchanged for a republic. But even if we take all our demonstrations of the practical re- 192 AMERICAN TRAITS suits from the United States, how much power to convince belongs to those principles? If we begin with the most seducing tenet of de- mocracy, its belief in the equahty of men and their equal right to determine the fate of the nation, we cannot doubt that the dangerous error of the a]3peal is hidden merely by the glittering gener- ality of the term equality. That man is equal in so far as every one is equal before God is not a new doctrine ; it did not have to wait for the state philosophers of the eighteenth century. Every man's good will has the same intrinsic, absolute value, but this moral truth does not involve any consequences as to the nature of man. The ine- quality of his strength and beauty, his talents and intellect, is more certain than his similarities ; and power to determine by a logical decision the wisest course of national action is, of course, dependent upon his intellect, his insight, and his character ; in short, dependent upon the unequal characteristics, and without any internal reference to the aspect in which man is really equal. The only excuse for political equality is thus not that it expresses the real equality, but that it is impartial to the different kinds of inequality. Every adjustment of political rights to the existing inequahty of men is open to the reproach of unfairness and arbitrariness. If such adjustment were made according to educa- AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 193 tion, it would be easy to insist that the most edu- cated are not necessarily the purest characters ; if according to wealth or birth, it could be shown that the rich man or the nobleman is not necessa- rily the most intelligent and the most educated. Every system, in a word, involves some injustice, and the only advantage of mechanical equality is not that it is freer from injustice, but that it min- gles all possible kinds of injustice, — without any preference for a special one, indeed, but therefore, also, without the possibility of securing at least the partial justice of every other system. But this small neg'ative merit brino^s with it an abun- dance of defects and dangers, which must be clearly felt by every unprejudiced observer of American life. A by-product, visible on the sur- face, is the empty conventionality which finds its ideal in likeness to one's neighbor. The constant desire of the democratic American is to avoid an individual standpoint, to accept a pattern in his social and aesthetic and intellectual life, to dress and to read, to travel and to talk like everybody else. But the dogma of equality entrains much greater evils. One is chronic dilettantism. In a democratic community every one can do every- thing ; whether he is on a school board or in an embassy, in a legislative or in an administrative position, his guileless freedom from the influences 194 AMERICAN TRAITS of technical preparation, together with the fact that he is a democratic citizen, fits him for the job. The need of specialized experts is not felt, and the result is an ineffective triviality which repels the best men and opens wide the door to dishonesty. The career of experts in all functions of public activity is the pride of Germany, — where the school committeeman or the mayor or the diplo- mat climbs up step by step, and reaches the great- est effectiveness by his lifelong speciaHzation. But worse even than democratic dilettantism is the lowness of aims which results from the be- lief in equality. If everybody's judgment is of equal value, only that is valuable which appeals equally to everybody. This is an indirect and yet a logically necessary consequence, which shows its practical results with an alarming clearness. There are only two good things which appeal to every- body, because they address the lowest instincts : money and physical strength. The result is that commercialism and athletics absorb the energies of men. That does not mean that those who hunt for wealth or indulge in sport do so in every case because their lower instincts are involved ; but it does mean that ends which appeal to the higher tendencies only remain ineffective as stimuli for the national life. The final outcome must be that commercialism, if left alone, would devastate AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 195 science and art, education and society, law and politics ; city government and State legislatui'e would go over into the hands of men who cared for the little money which was honestly in it, or for the much money which was in it dishonestly, and the national poHtics would become tainted by the influence of commercial corporations. But all this has also another side. Where the belief in inequality somewhat discredits those pre- miums which appeal to the lower instincts, and which are, therefore, desirable for every human being, a certain outer organization of the national life under the point of view of the aristocratic values also becomes necessary. A kind of ideal coin must be stamped which can circulate in daily practical life like money ; a system of degrees, of titles, of honors, of decorations must result which give distinction without the power to satisfy the lower instincts. They are based on examinations, on creditable service, on the judgment of experts, on excellence in all those directions where the ap- preciation of the masses stops. The consequences are clear. The more this ideal coin gains credit, the freer its owner becomes from the necessity of appealing to the masses and of attracting the atten- tion of the half -educated and the quarter-educated : his title carries in a condensed form the apprecia- tion of the experts. Where the democratic spirit 196 AMERICAN TRAITS makes such coining impossible, man must appeal again and again to the masses, who have no mem- ory and no refined discrimination. The result is not necessarily, as Europeans often wrongly imag- ine, a general mob-like vulgarity, but the more civ- ilized forms of vulgarity : a bumptious oratory, a flippant superficiality of style, a lack of sesthetic refinement, an underestimation of the serious spe- cialist and an overestimation of the unproductive popularizer, a constant exploitation of immature young men with loud newspaper voices and com- plete inability to appreciate the services of older men, a triumph of gossip, and a crushing defeat of all aims that work against the lazy liking for money-making and comfort. On the other hand, in an aristocratic country, the existence of a sys- tem of honors becomes secondarily a new form of appeal, even to the masses. As soon as people feel that the distinction of such honors given for intrinsic worth outweighs the distinction of wealth, the honors themselves become objects of desire, even for those to whom the ideal ends in themselves do not appeal. The development of a system of symboHc honors thus draws the peo- ple more and more away from commercialism and reinforces the striving towards higher aims and ideals. In its last results democracy must thus lower the aims of the best to the standard of AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 197 the masses, while aristocracy must push the masses with their lower instincts into a striving towards higher ends. The foreo^oinsf stands in close relation to an- other feature of pui-e democracy, — the conspic- uous absence of great men. Democratic leaders are mostly men who take control of the move- ments of the masses, but not men who have the inner greatness to lead the masses into new direc- tions. This is true for every field, for science and literature, just as well as for internal and exter- nal politics. The whole system must necessarily push into the foreground the skillful manager who appeals to the average man, and must keep down the really great man, who goes the unpop- ular way of new purposes. No one can rise whose working cannot be understood in every phase by the man behind the plough. And yet it is an illusion to imagine that the great men can ever be replaced by the liigh average of the masses. A really great thought, a really great inspiration, has never come from the diffused mtelligence of an ag-o^reo^ation or from the zeal of a multitude. A parliament is an effective vehicle for acknow- ledged ideas, but it never gave rise to a new thought ; no philosophical or religious inspiration ever came to the world by a majority vote. The democratic situation will make great work possi- 198 AMERICAN TRAITS ble merely where this is the result of a gigantic cooperation, as demanded by commerce and in- dustry, or where individual premiums in the form of great wealth stand as temptations, as in the case of practical inventions. It is not by chance that while American inventions are in line with the best inventions of Europe, they are none the less for the most part based on scientific discov- eries made in Europe. Where cooperation is use- less, as in every case of intellectual or sesthetical or moral effort, and where no commercial pre- mium is offered, a democratic society must remain sterile and commonplace, since it has no means of stimulating the truly great men in their necessary solitude. Where a genius is needed, democracy appoints a committee. Perhaps still more closely are defect and virtue bound together in the case of the democratic spirit of individual activity. Every one feels himself lawmaker and authority ; the immediate result is the tendency to disregard every other authority but one's own self. 'A lack of reve- rence pervades the whole community and controls the family, the school, the pubHc life. The pert American boy who does just what he pleases may thus get an early training in democratic politics ; but while he wastes the best of the home and of the classroom, he gets at the same time the worst pos- AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 199 sible training for the duties of life, all of which demand that he do later quite other things than those which he likes to do. He will learn too late that it is a great thing to command, but a greater thing to obey, and that no one can sign early enough the declaration of dependence. Where no subordination is learned, no self-sacrifice and no enthusiasm can be expected, and all institu- tions of the land must slowly adjust themselves to the much-lamented influence of those who seek merely pleasure and success. But does not the individual independence in democracy involve at least the highest degree of liberty? When Lecky, in his famous book, coupled the two conceptions, his " Democracy and Liberty " meant rather Democracy versus Lib- erty. And Democracy remains the defendant from whatever standpoint we may consider it. If we approach it from the side of social philosophy, we must understand that, philosophically, freedom means self-determination, but that self-determina- tion is characterized not only by the absence of outer determining factors, but by the harmoniza- tion of all the inner energies. A man is not free, in a moral sense, when he is a slave of his passions and lower instincts, when he is unable to control his impulses by his higher ideas. In the same way a social body gains no real Uberty simply by 200 AMERICAN TRAITS the overthrowing of external forces, but merely by an organization in which the higher elements control the lower ones, in which the representa- tives of social ideals supersede the forces of selfish social instincts and vulgar impulses. A social organism will thus be the more free, the more the influence of the best men, of the noblest charac- ters, and of the best educated personalities sup- presses a system of equalization. The outcome is the same if we come to the question from a practical side. Democracy has, first, a necessary tendency to abundant lawmaking of a casuistic character, to restrictions and pro- hibitions, and a continuous meddling with private affairs, inasmuch as that is the only remedy for evils at the disposal of such a community and the only opportunity for the political representative to prove his right to exist, not to mention some reasons of less dignity. In democracies, more easily than anywhere else, all kinds of protection and prohibition interfere with the social and economic liberties of the population. Further, democracy, when it is not the question of a small country, as in ancient Greece or in modern Switzerland, but of scores of millions, must neces- sarily bring into existence the party machine, and finally the party boss. That the machine and boss system repels the best men from public life AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 201 and attracts the cheapest elements to politics, that it opens the doors for corruption and selfishness, is only one side of the shield; that it destroys civil liberty is the other. The rule of the ma- chine is more tyrannical and more absolute than that of a king. The party rule in America, with its methods of nomination, deprives the individual of his political powers more completely than any aristocratic system, and the despotism of the boss easily turns into the tyranny of a group of cap- italists. History has shown that this tyranny in democracy not seldom takes even the govern- mental form of a political dictatorship. That out- come is not to be feared in America, but simply because the American masses lack the aesthetic sense for the beauty of imperial pageantry, that sense which fascinates the French when Boulanger returns on his black horse from the parade. Demo- crats are always inchned to take bad sesthetical taste for good moral feehng. Is the government of democracy at least an effective political instrument ? Of course a gov- ernment behind which the wealth and strength and power of a gigantic nation stand, is effective by its mere weight ; but the question is whether it gains an additional advantage by the Demo- cratic-Republican machinery. Has it, for instance, an advantage in political effectiveness over the 202 AMERICAN TRAITS opposite extreme, — the government of Russia? Ttie Czar has had certainly no reason to be dis- satisfied with the comparative success of his cabi- net. To be sure, the democratic nation has this great advantage, that the discontented majority can break up the pohcy of the day and substitute a new one ; but in itself it is no improvement simply to try the other party, and a state in which all efforts at reform must necessarily take the shape of seeking to throw overboard the existing government, chooses, at least, a very indirect way for the improvement of public affairs. In foreign politics, too, the government naturally suffers in several respects. It cannot have secrets ; it must play all the time an open hand. It must make continual concessions to public moods and caprices. Further, it has not sufficient time at its disposal to enter into far-reaching enterprises, as it cannot rely on its own continuance. Nor can it, finally, awaken in outsiders the confidence which an in- dependent continuity of government engenders. What do all the foregoing arguments prove ? Carthaginem esse delendam? That democracy is an evil? Certainly not. We have emphasized the great moral and educational and practical achievements of the democratic spirit, and no intelHgent student of social philosophy can over- look the dangerous possibilities and the evil ten- AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 203 dencies o£ aristocratic society. The principles of equality and inequality are, then, both one-sided tendencies with immense energies and possibilities for good, but encompassed by dangers, both open to compromises with human selfishness and to demoralization by the masses or by the classes. The logical superiority of democracy is out of the question, and just as no American wishes to see Dewey or Roosevelt estabHshed as emperor, so no sane German wishes to see a political party leader become president of a German repubhc. What open-minded men on both sides wish can be merely that the unhealthy tendencies which are involved in each form of public hfe may be avoided and suppressed ; but, in itseK, the one state form does not stand higher than the other. The form of government under which a nation lives — so the educated average German would argue — depends upon the conditions of its his- toric development: a colony of men who went out as pioneers and who separated themselves from the mother country could not find unity and self-dependence under another form than that of the American democracy, while a land which hammers out its unity in welding a multitude of states, each with a long history under kings and princes, needs as its highest symbol the crown of an emperor. 204 AMERICAN TRAITS If in these two lands everything were to be moulded by the form of the state alone, the final outcome would be the greatest possible difference in the national life of the two, — one thoroughly democratic, the other thoroughly aristocratic. But the other possibility is open, that each land sup- plements those tendencies which are a necessary consequence of its external form of public life by compensatory functions which reinforce the other side ; if democracy counterbalances the evils of the crowd by social efforts of the aristo- cratic type, and if monarchy overcomes its intrin- sic one-sidedness by democratic reforms and im- pulses, the differences will be unessential, and both countries will show a profound harmony of national instincts. Exactly that situation seems from day to day more the case of the United States and Germany. They become more and more aHke, and the fact that one is by birth, and desires to remain, a monarchy, while the other desires to remain a republic, appears secondary and unessential. How is that possible ? A hundred years ago the question of pohtical government moved the world and determined the greatest dif- ferences. How has it become so unessential that no one to-day seriously considers the problem whether democracy or monarchy is the " better " form of state? And if the progress of history AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 205 has abolished that problem, how does it happen that the new life in the two lands moves in op- posite directions, — that on monarchical ground towards greater equality, that on democratic groiuid towards greater aristocracy, and both thus towards the same type of social existence, in spite of the important individual characteristics and differences? To understand this whole situation we must take a more general point of view, perhaps even the most general one which the philosophy of his- tory suggests. Ill If we try to bring order into the manif oldness of tendencies which characterize a period, we must seek the deeper motives and the underlying ener- gies, as the mere classification of outer phenomena is easily misleading. For a newspaper editorial it may do, for instance, to call the nineteenth cen- tury the period of natural science, but the super- ficiality of such an appellation becomes clear to every one who examines more carefully the first half of the century, or, better, considers the pro- gress of natural science and technique in periods that have gone before. When Schiller, one hun- dred years ago, praised the man of the eighteenth century, he called him the man who had mastered 206 AMERICAN TRAITS nature, and who was fascinated by tlie victory- over the energies of nature. We cannot under- stand the times better if we choose another outer mark for the characterization of the time ; we must proceed from external to internal factors. It is so everywhere in scientific classifications. The child divides the animals into those of the air and those of the water, those of the air into such as fly and such as do not fly. The zoologist neglects such external resemblances, and divides them into those with a backbone and those with- out a backbone ; and among the vertebrates, he distinguishes the mammals from the non-mammals, and so his classification separates much that seems to belong together. If we seek such principles of internal division for the phenomena of civiliza- tion, we find only one which is deep enough to allow us to comprehend the true connections : it is the division into realism and idealism. I know that some realist would at once be inclined here to think of the zoological classes we have just mentioned, and to consider the realists as beings with, and the idealists as beings without, a back- bone. But we have at first not to praise and not to blame, but simply to separate the different types of human interests. The realist seeks reality in objects, the idealist seeks it in ideas. The realist considers, therefore, AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 207 that which is as final, and the idealist that which ought to be. The realist, therefore, relies on perception, the idealist on feeling. The one seeks to understand the world, the other to ennoble the world. The one works with the understanding, the other by means of inspiration. Realism, there- fore, urges on to science, idealism to philosophy and religion ; and in the scientific realm the real- ist works inductively, the idealist deductively: the realist prefers natural science, the ideaHst his- torical science. The realist emphasizes technique, tries to master nature, and produces material for exchange ; the idealist finds his mission in art, masters nature by the inner liberation of his mind, and creates symbols. In art the realist is natural- ist, the ideaHst comes in the garb of romanticism, of symbolism, or classicism. The realist seeks the essence of human life in pleasure and pain, the idealist in man's will. Therefore morality is, for the realist, based on utility : for the idealist, on the idea of good. For one the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the criterion, for the other the idea of duty, independent of happiness and majorities. As all men have equal capacities for pleasure and pain, the realist considers all men equal. The realist thus believes in the masses, the idealist in the hero and the genius. The real- ist is, therefore, democratic, the idealist aristo- 208 AMERICAN TRAITS cmtic : the realist is cosmopolitan and humani- tarian, the idealist is national and imperialistic ; the reahst seeks his goal in liberty, the idealist in justice. Realism and Idealism are the two j)oles of man- kind, and just as the realism of the man and the ideahsm of the woman supplement each other in every noble home, so these two great tendencies have always cooperated in the history of the peo- ples. We have only to look to the two greatest men of ancient Greece, the two men who con- trolled the thought of more than a thousand years, Plato and Aristotle, to feel at once the typical ex- pression of the two great tendencies. "Plato," says Goethe, " penetrates the world to fill it with his own ideals ; he does not wish to analyze the world, but to bring it into harmony with the good and the true and the beautiful. Aristotle, how- ever, approaches the world Hke a master builder ; he examines the ground and brings material to- gether and arranges it to build up his solid pyra- mid." As long as men will take a systematic view of the world and of human life, it will be ultimately Platonic or Aristotelian. Such a cooperation of the two tendencies does not mean simply their fusion, but rather their al- ternation ; and when they work together, — that is, when they reach a compromise in a special case, AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 209 — a state of equilibrium ensues, and the problem is then relatively solved. But so long as there is to be development, the one or the other must prevail. As we cannot move towards the right and towards the left at the same time, so the social mind cannot turn, at the same time, to national- ism and cosmopolitanism, to naturalistic and to symbolistic art, to inductive and to philosophic science, to atheism and to religion. And such an alternation is the necessary outcome of the mental structure : every psychic movement has a tendency to go to an extreme, and the extreme has a tendency to produce a reaction in the oppo- site direction, which must itself go to the extreme again. If the tendencies alternate, it is clear that one alone does not mean progress and the other regress; both are indispensable to development, and it is absurd to imagine that the realistic movement, for example, is alone progressive and the idealistic energy a hindrance to civilization. Whoever stands, in the battle of the day, on one side must see the enemy on the other side ; but from the standpoint of social philosophy, both energies, realism and idealism, are equally impor- tant and valuable. It is unfair to imply that reahsm is selfish and idealism unselfish : the utili- tarian morality of the realist is not less unselfish than the intuitional morality of the idealist ; real- 210 AMERICAN TRAITS ism is not in its nature egoistic, just as idealism is not unpractical. And both sides can be equally inhuman and base. It was realism which sharp- ened the blade of the guillotine, and idealism which set fire to the funeral piles of the Middle Ages ; it was realism which at times brought the mill laborers to the misery of starvation, and ideal- ism which shot down the helpless lower races in the dark countries. Great and small men, clever and stupid men, noble and base men, have been always on either side. If this alternation characterizes the progress of civilization, it is further clear that the movement cannot be a simple pendulum movement. The pendulum always swings again to the same point ; civilization, on the other hand, moves forward. If civilization is realistic, then idealistic, then realistic again, it is not the same realism for a second time. The past is not simply repeated ; the new movement arises from the same moral energies, but the whole foregoing development is included in the new position. Every phase of this gigantic counterplay brings certain problems to rest and fulfillment by a compromise, and new problems come to the front. Realism takes up one problem and carries its one-sided solution to an extreme; then awakes the idealistic counter- movement and becomes powerful. Idealism takes AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 211 up new impulses and reinforces them till a real- istic counter-movement begins ; but the first pro- blem, since both sides have fought for it and have defended their extreme positions, comes in the mean time to a compromise, and thus ceases to be a problem. It is thus less a pendulum movement than a spiral movement. It is as if we should climb up a tower by a spiral staircase ; we are then looking from the windows of the tower, now to the north and now to the south, but we never look twice through the same window : whenever the stair brings us back to the same side, the window lies higher, the view has become more extended. Such alternations took centuries in the slow rhythm of earlier civilization, but the changes have come more and more swiftly, and in the last hundred years they have followed each other with the rapidity of generations, in so far as the great fundamental movements of a world-civilization are in question. Of course, whenever one wave begins to swell, it does not mean that the after- effects of the foregoing wave have disappeared ; while one world-tendency is at its maximum, the movement of the last, and perhaps even of that before the last, may still be felt, and the slow be- ginning of the next wave may already be percep- tible to the sensitive mind. And, secondly, this 212 AMERICAN TRAITS great fundamental up and down of realism and idealism in the world's civilization does not exclude the possibility that the same change of realistic and idealistic energies may continue in narrower circles, in local realms, in special problems, inde- pendently of the great world-movements ; a local realistic movement may thus coincide with a gen- eral realistic tendency, and thus reinforce it, or may fall together with a general idealistic wave, and thus inhibit it, or limit it to certain regions. This change from generation to generation is reflected very clearly in the alternating phases of philosophical thought. The middle of the eighteenth century was controlled by a realistic view of the world : experience and analysis were the methods — sensualism, skepticism, materialism were the results ; the spirits of Locke and Hume, of the French encyclopsedists and Voltaire, were in the foreground. The reaction came with the German idealism of the end of the eighteenth century ; Kant emphasizes the " ought " as against the " is," and the idealistic philosophy, in its increasing energy from Kant to Fichte, to Schelling, and finally to Hegel, conquers the phi- losophical world. Hegelianism represents the ex- treme which demands a realistic reaction ; before the middle of the nineteenth century is reached, idealism lies again in the dust, a new realism AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 213 triumphs, positivism and materialism push to the foreground, Comte and Spencer become the spokes- men of an unphilosopliic age, and natural science, with Darwin and Helmholtz as leaders, absorbs the philosophizing interest of the time. But be- fore the nineteenth century came to an end, the situation changed once more : for about ten years philosophy has been again on the idealistic track. While realistic philosophy ran to its extreme, from materialism to psychologism and sociologism, a serious idealistic reaction began in the midst of empirical scientists who had despised philosophy for forty years. The leading thinkers, the world over, plunged again into epistemological inquiries, Kant and Fichte were revived, and an ethical vol- untarism grew from year to year. The situation of the world's scholarship of to-day shows decid- edly in every line the philosophical, idealistic trend, notwithstanding that it has found so far no overwhelming classic expression : the wave is only swelling to-day, its highest j)oint may be ten or twenty years hence. This up and down of real- ism and idealism in philosophical thought is not a chance feature, nor even a by-product of civiliza- tion, but the clearest expression, and perhaps most central factor, of the world's development through- out that period. The French philosophy of the eighteenth century cannot be separated from the 214 AMERICAN TRAITS French Revolution or from the American Decla- ration of Independence. The anti-idealistic move- ment of the post-Hegelian time, with its overesti- mation of the natural sciences, cannot be separated from the development of modern industry and modern technique. And thus in every way the philosophical movements were both the moving powers and the indicators of the whole rhythm of civilization. The Western civihzation, as a whole, shows, indeed, a realistic character in the second half of the eighteenth century, an idealistic wave in the first third of the nineteenth, a new realism since the middle of it, and the beginning of a new idealism near the close of the nineteenth cen- tury. We might just as well have followed it in the movements of art and literature. Can it be doubted that the realistic period of naturalism in art is over, and that, since the days of the new symboKsm, a young idealism is passing through the art exhibitions of all countries ? or that the period of Zola's realism is a thmg of the past, and that Ibsen and Tolstoy and Hauptmann and Kip- ling approach, from very different quarters, the realm of idealism ? or can we overlook the corre- sponding alternation between realistic cosmopoli- tanism and idealistic nationalism, and, nearly con- nected therewith, the alternating phases of human belief in the equality and in the inequality of AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 215 men? The former breaks tlie chains of the slaves, the latter takes up the burden of the white man. Our own period, as it presses towards philosophy and religion in its thought and towards idealism in its art, must be nationahstic and ex- pansionistie. But the strongest feature of this movement of the last hundred and fifty years has not been pointed out so far. The realism of the eighteenth century was first of all democratic, the reaction in the nineteenth was necessarily aristocratic, mon- archic, imperialistic : the outcome was a compro- mise, for Europe the constitutional monarchy ; and by this compromise, as always happens, the movement itself came to an end, the problem ceased to exist. In the second half of the nine- teenth century the form of political government was no longer a question which moved peoples. How far otherwise was it considered in the eigh- teenth, and how narrowly connected with all the other phases of the realistic movement, with its philosophy and its religion, its literature and its social life ! It was the great period of enlight- enment, which worked with sober clearness, with skeptical understanding, with humanitarian com- mon-sense. Such a period must have one aim above all, not to allow any illusions. And as the foregoing idealistic period had left a world full of 216 AMERICAN TRAITS illusions and symbols of a religious and historical character, the chief energy of the time had to be- come destructive, and to turn against the authority of the church and of the state : equality and lib- erty sounded in all the streets. It was a period rich in its inheritance for the following century, full of humanitarian and civil impulses, and yet it was narrow and Philistine, as is every enlighten- ment of the understanding alone : it was anti-his- torical, anti-religious, anti-artistic, with no imagina- tion, no emotion, no great historical consciousness ; and the idealistic reaction was unavoidable. The time of Hegel and Goethe and Beethoven had to be the time of Napoleon and of Prussia's war for its national independence ; it was the time when romanticism and Gothic art awoke again, and mankind thought more of the genius than of the masses. The fusion of these two great antago- nistic tendencies ehminated this problem. When the great reaction against romanticism came, it could not again be a return to the stand- point of the eighteenth century, but it brought new problems forward as the old ones had reached a compromise. The new problems came from the new realism, which meant natural science, modern industry and commerce and transport and medi- cine. But here, again, the movement had to work itself to an end, to reach an extreme which de- AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 217 mands reaction. We stand in the middle of it. The new discoveries are no longer solutions of life-problems, but luxuries ; the phonograph is not what the telegraph was. Above all, modern industry brought up the question of modern labor, the social conscience awoke, a new type of man, the mill laborer, stood before the world ; and man- kind recognized that he was helpless, and must become daily more helpless, in the presence of combined capital. The idealistic reaction began, the social question absorbed the thinking world, and thus the great antagonism of energies, of the same mental energies which fought a hundred years ago over the problems of state form, are concentrated to-day on the problems of the social question. The idealistic reaction in which we hve will grow to a point where a compromise will be reached, and the social problem will then become as obsolete and indifferent as the political problem of monarchy or republic is to-day ; and while the alternation of ideahsm and realism will go on, new and ever new problems will offer themselves as the results of the new fields which are opened up by these antagonistic energies. 218 AMERICAN TRAITS IV We have answered our first question, bow it has come about that the question of monarchy or repubhc has been laid on the table in the congress of nations ; but we have not answered the second question, why the republic of America and the monarchy of Germany approach each other by a movement in opposite directions, — the Uni- ted States moving towards aristocracy, Germany towards democracy. But the foregoing reduction of all human efforts to the alternation of realistic and idealistic energies contains, also, the explana- tion of this second phenomenon. We emphasized from the first that the great progress of general civilization of the whole Western world is not the only illustration of that counterplay of energies : the world-movements are accompanied by local movements of far-reaching independence. The French Revolution, Darwinism, electro-technique, and the labor question are world-movements which cannot be localized ; but other waves are Hmited by the boundaries of a nation, others even by the walls of a town or of a set or of a group : any social unit may have its independent alternation of realistic and idealistic energies. While the general world-movements show to-day the ebbing of a great realistic wave, which was at flood tide twenty years AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 219 ago, and the slow upward swelling of an idealistic wave, which has not yet broken, there is a local realistic democratic movement just now sweeping over Germany and an idealistic tendency over the United States. Both are determined by local con- ditions, but both work towards a surprising simi- larity of the two forms of national life, inasmuch as they are necessarily diminishing those differ- ences which resulted from the different forms of the historical constitution. It may sound paradoxical, and yet it can hardly be doubted that, within a certain limit, it is on both sides the same cause which has had an oppo- site effect. It is the accumulation of wealth which creates the aristocratic movement in America and which spreads a democratic spirit over Germany. The strenuous pioneer life, where wealth begins merely in the first generation, has no room for class discrimination and for aristocratic fashion, culture, art, and taste ; on the other side, in the society in which the nobleman is the rich land- owner and high officer and state official, with all the power in his traditional rights, while the pop- ulation is poor, and therefore powerless, there is no chance for democratic ideas. But if inherited wealth and a leisure class grow up on the one side of the ocean, and if commerce and industry bring wealth to the middle classes on the other side, then the time for a change has come. 220 AMERICAN TRAITS Two recent novels, one American and the other German, throw light on the contrasts of the situa- tion. " In this country we are all free and equal," says Selma in Robert Grant's " Unleavened Bread," and Flossie retorts, " Yes, there is some- thing of the sort in the Declaration of Independ- ence, but that was put in as a bluff to console salesladies. . . . People here are either in society or out of it, and society itself is divided into sets. There 's the conservative aristocratic set, the smart rapid set, the set which has not much money, but has Knickerbocker or other highly respectable an- cestors, the new millionaire set, the literary set, the intellectual philanthropic set, and so on. . . . Most of the people in these different sets are somebodies because either theii* grandfathers or they have done something well — better than other people — and made money as a consequence. And when a family has made money or won distinction by its brains, and then has brushed its teeth twice a day for two generations, the members of it, even though dull, are entitled to respect, don't you think so ? " And now as a contrast to Grant's ironical sketch, so full of truth, let me quote the splendid novel of Georg von Ompteda, — " Eysen." It is the life portrait of the family von Eysen, an old noble family which has belonged for centuries to AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 221 the aristocratic set which has controlled social life by holding the high positions in state and army and owning the great country estates. It now sees that a new time is coming, and feels that the land is passing into the hands of the new mer- chants and bankers and industrials and that the higher standard of the middle classes, with their hard work and intellectual energy, is bring- ing them more and more to power and leadership. The General von Eysen is conscious that he has overcome his old prejudices : he has given per- mission to his only son to become neither officer nor state official, but engineer ; and at a reunion in which he meets the younger members of his family he says in his toast: "Above all — you must work ; who does not work, must sink. Be everywhere — not only where we could be found in the past — on our own ground, in the state service, in the army. . . . We hve in a new time and a new time demands new conditions; give honor to the tradition, but do not become its slaves. If you look only backward to the history of the past, you will lose your freedom. . . . No, my young relatives, we old families do not want to be submerged. Go into art, into science and medicine, sit on the merchant's stool, guide your ships into foreign seas for the honor and advan- tage of the German name ; enter life not only as 222 AMERICAN TRAITS state officers, but as lawyers, or as architects; "wherever in the world money is to be gained by the exertion of commerce and industry, go and take part ; money in the right hand gives free- dom." Yes, a new time has come for Germany ; in thirty years of undisturbed peace it has grown rich, it has changed from an agricultural country into an industrial country, the standard of life has been raised with an undreamed of rapidity, the horizon has been widened, the new industry has pushed trade over the ocean, a colonial system has grown up, and all has had only one effect in common, — the rise of the democratic spii-it in the noblest meaning of the word. It has not taken anything from the aristocratic power of the empire, has not touched all the noble achieve- ments of an aristocratic army and state service, has even reinforced the German's love for his king and his princes ; and yet, as General von Eysen said, the new time has come. The symptoms are felt wherever we turn. The raising of the social level of the business man, the merchant, and the industrial man, together with the sinking of the social level of the landowner, is certainly one of the most prominent features. The power which the great representatives of industry and com- merce and banking and the market have to-day AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 223 in the state organism of Germany could not have been dreamt of twenty years ago, and the num- ber of high officials who seek business positions grows rapidly. There is a certain analogy in the steady raising of the practical professions, that of the engineer and the scientist, in comparison with the Hterary professions ; the entire education is being turned, and not least through the Emper- or's influence, in the direction of practical, tech- nical achievements as over against the classic traditions. It is the same principle which eman- cipates the woman, a movement which, after a long time of waiting, to-day perhaps overhastens its progress : the democratic desire for equahty must demand the same rights for women. But the principle of emancipation applied to the busi- ness world, the practical professions, the women, cannot be hmited to the middle classes; the same tendency must help the lower classes also. No- where, perhaps, does the " new time " appear more clearly. The social-democratic party, which was, even ten years ago, considered and suppressed as an enemy of the state, becomes daily more and more a cooperating member of the social organism, while the material fate of the laborer is protected by the state socialism, which has become law. And, above all, the intellectual and sesthetic inter- ests of the masses are growing with the higher 224 AMERICAN TRAITS standard of the whole population. The reading of papers, the formation of clubs and societies, discussions and lectures, reach wider and wider circles, while rich men begin, in growing measure, to devote large gifts to public benefits. Add thereto the new enthusiasm for the sea, for naval affairs, for foreign lands beyond the ocean, a widening of the horizon which necessarily has a democratic tendency, and which greatly reinforces the spirit of independence and individual activity ; add the immense development of technique, of transportation, of means of communication, all thoroughly democratic factors, since they put men more on an equal footing and bring progress within the reach of every one ; add the whole increase of the yearly saving, which means better food and better houses, health and cleanliness and enjoyment, — and if we sought to compress all into one word, we might say, Germany has be- come in the last ten years Americanized. The thoroughly aristocratic nation, with all its appre- ciation for the historical forces and symbols, for arts and education, for the leadership of the edu- cated, and for the acknowledgment of authority, has added to itself since the coming of the new time the individual activity and the equahty of the ideal democracy. And America ? Is Flossie right, — has equality AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 225 become only a bluff for the consolation of sales- ladies ? Certainly not ! Democracy is still to-day the rock on which the United States is built, and will remain so, exactly as Germany in its deepest structure will remain monarchical ; and yet, if it is true that Germany becomes democratic, in a thousand respects it is still more true that Amer- ica becomes aristocratic : a new time has come for America, too. Of course I do not have in mind here those pseudo-aristocratic and pseudo-mon- archic tendencies which work against the demo- cratic institutions by dishonest means and intol- erable abuses : bossism is merely the caricature of aristocracy ; and while it is true that Quay and Croker and their likes are tyrants without a con- stitutional background, whose whims lead men on to fortune or destroy them, this tyranny is the outgrowth of democracy and not at all the legacy of aristocratic impulses. But even when we turn to the really aristocra- tic symptoms of national life, the question is not whether we welcome or deprecate them ; we are interested merely in the question whether the phe- nomena exist. Thus it cannot be our task here to inquire whether the United States is wise or unwise in its policy of aggressive expansion, whether it would be better to remain loyal to the principles of the past, which reduced the chances 226 AMERICAN TRAITS of friction with other nations, and thus saved to the land the burdens of mihtarism, or whether the progress of the country demands that new responsibilities be courageously faced. For us it is sufficient that imperialism is a symptom of the aristocratic attitude towards man, and that impe- rialism is the creed of the country. ImperiaHsm means the belief in the inequality of men, which, as we emphasized from the beginning, follows the logic of idealism. It is true that only one of the two great parties stood for the imperialistic poHcy in the last presidential election ; but the social psy- chologist cannot doubt that the Democrats were anti-imperialistic only because the RepubHcans had chosen otherwise beforehand ; while the Demo- cratic masses, before the campaign had hammered the issue into their minds, were not less carried away by the Kipling mood than the other half of the nation. But it was not even necessary to wait till the Philippine issue was brought before the American consciousness. The suppression of the Chinese in California, the barriers erected against the undesirable types of immigrants from Europe, above all, the adroit laws to deprive the negro of his vote, — all speak the same language, all demonstrate the same way of feeling : the aristocratic morality of a powerful and noble nation, what Nietzsche called the morals of mas- AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 227 ters — so different from the democratic morals of slaves, wlio try to make the world believe that all men are equal. But does this undemocratic spirit turn against the outsider only ? Where is the equahty in the inner life of America ? Of course it is true that we have public schools where all are equal ; the only difficulty is that they are not in use. Yes, there is no doubt that we are fast approaching a state where nobody in a city sends liis children to the public schools when his means allow him to pay for the instruction of a private school. " Tout comme chez nous ! " The whole educational sys- tem is rapidly becoming aristocratic. This case is similar to that of travel by rail. Americans who go to Europe like to ridicule the class differ- ences in the European trains and boast that Ameri- can railroads have only one class ; but on inquiry it appears that it is hard to find any one of your acquaintance who travels in America, from one large city to another, without carefully avoiding that single class by sitting in the parlor car. And this exclusiveness of the passenger reflects the character of society. The plan after which the smart set, and not in New York and Newport alone, celebrates its festivities and weds its brides is not only the pattern of fashion and luxury, but a conscious imitation of aristocracy. A typical 228 AMERICAN TRAITS expression is found in the immense growth of the pedigree craze. The marriages of American heir- esses with European fortune hunters of the nobil- ity seem to me un-American, and thus not typical : it is the fancy of individuals and not a symptom of national life. But the genealogical passion, " the pedigree spleen," grows out of the best ma- terial of the nation, and yet it is thoroughly anti- democratic. If a single family of Connecticut needs three volumes of 2740 quarto pages to print its own history; if the Daughters of the Kevolution have 27,000 members ; if the genea- logical societies like the Colonial Dames, the Daughters of the Holland Dames, the Mayflower Descendants, and so on, multiply with every year, — the aristocratic undercurrent cannot be doubted. It is thus not by chance that the old Southern aristocracy just now begins to become somewhat reconciled : public life begins to move more and more in their direction. And all this is reflected in the pubHc hfe. We know the simphcity, according to the tradition at least, with which that President of the past went on horseback alone to the Capitol to take the oath of office, and tied his horse to the post ; we know the military pageantry which accompanied the last presidential inauguration. And this aristo- cratic desu'e for the outer symbolic decoration AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 229 percolates through all layers of society, down to the car conductor and the elevator boy, who are proud of their distinguishing- uniform, while, only a short time ago, as I am informed, a free Amer- ican still objected to wearing any uniform in civil life. The tendency to develop more refined and polished manners belongs necessarily to the change ; the spitting and chewing decrease from year to year, and the men who put their feet on the table and the women who rock while they are talking become rarer specimens. But these are matters of external life. It is the inner vitality in which the really important changes are felt, changes which are essentially beyond difference of opinion, changes which can- not be disposed of as snobbish, and which none the less are decidedly aristocratic. Here belongs the steadily increasing influence of college-bred men in public life; the fact itself has recently been often demonstrated with full statistics, and its meaning is clear : the men of superior education are brought to that superior position which aris- tocracy wilHngly offers them, and which demo- cracy finally cannot deny them, in spite of the flagrant inconsistency of the act. ParaUel with this movement there necessarily goes a twofold development : the growth of the f eehng of public duties and responsibilities and the substitution 230 AMERICAN TRAITS of sestlietic and intellectual ideals for those of a merely commercial character. There will, of course, always be pessimists who lament that the present is worse than the past ; and for editorials with a point against Tammany or against Wall Street, it is the right thing to begin by declaiming that politics has reached its lowest moral ebb, or that the whole hfe of the land is sacrificed to commercialism. This may be effective, but it is not true. The stronger current of the nation is at present setting in the opposite direction. The number of men who, unselfishly and with high ideals, serve the community in a thousand forms is undoubtedly increasing every day. The Roosevelt type is increasing in politics, but far more outside of politics. If the feeling of duty led merely to financial bequests, it ought not to count for too much in a country in which — compared with Germany, for instance — the rich men pay so small a tax ; but those men should count who give their time and effort, their intel- lect and honesty, to public trusts. "Noblesse oblige " is daily more felt ; but it presupposes, of course, the " noblesse," the aristocracy. That the new time means a new Hfe for art and science must impress every one. The rapid growth of our graduate schools, with their goals far beyond the reach of the college, demands an understand- AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 231 ing of the value of pure knowledge, which offers it- self at first only as a luxury of the leisure classes : truth for truth's sake belongs to an aristocratic society. And since the days of the Chicago Fair and the Washington and Boston Hbraries, the wave of American art is swelling. AU the conditions are surely favorable to it. History has always shown that art comes to fullest flower whenever wealth is abundant, so that a leisure class may exist, and when, at the same time, a characteristic national development arises. The leisure class is as yet made up for the most part of women, but the more wealth comes into the second and third generation, the more men are joining their ranks. And the more the new pol- itics brings the country into relations with other nations, the more it becomes conscious of the spe- cific national characteristics of its civihzation. This beautifying impulse, which is so strictly an- tagonistic to the utilitarian aspect of democracy, brightens the whole country. Ten years ago the railroads were no less well equipped, but the rail- road stations were painful to a European eye ; the new stations built in the last ten years in the lead- ing cities reflect the whole development of a na- tion which is passing through an aristocratic period. Not the narrowness of the farmer, but the aesthetic taste of the educated controls the outer forms of 232 AMERICAN TRAITS public life, and the marble of the public halls teaches the masses that they must refine their manners. Still more evident is a growing refine- ment in the industrial arts and in the decoration of the home. Democratic wealth admires silver- ware and jewelry; aristocratic life does not care for the value of the material, but appreciates the form, the idea, the soul : Tiffany glass and Rook- wood pottery would have been impossible in America twenty years ago. One other position democracy begins slowly, too slowly, to surrender : the democratic beHef that everybody can do everything, if he only will, is slowly fading, and the public, not less than every corporation, demands expert talent for its busi- ness, with the necessary changes on all sides. It demands, first of all, civil service reform and a pension system. The pension system, outside of the army, is undemocratic, and thus foreign to the United States till recent years ; it is one of the greatest blessings of the aristocratic wave that it carries the pension system into the most different fields of life, and thus creates the repose of faith- ful service which knows itself protected and is not obliged to push itself constantly before the attention of the masses. Even in the highest classes of service, like university work, the pension idea is only five years old. On the other hand, AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 233 there are symptoms that the salary question, also, in all walks of public hfe, will be settled in the near future. To-day the judges of the Supreme Court, the Vice-President, the members of the Cabinet, and correspondingly all the lower offi- cials, are paid according to the naive democratic idea that the salary must be large enough so that some one who is ready to take the job can be found for it. This farmer's economy is disap- pearing, and the public is learning an aristocratic lesson from the big trusts and corporations. This undemocratic behef in the authority of the ex- pert brings the regular army steadily forward in public estimation, while the volunteers are losing ground. The demand for a diplomatic career, for a systematic schooling for consular and diplo- matic service, daily becomes louder ; the time for democratic dilettantism has gone ; since America has become a world-power, it has too much to lose. The government cannot play any longer with a hand always open to the criticism of every editorial writer, and its diplomats need the pre- paration of a lifetime; in short, America daily becomes more like the others, and among the " others " especially like Germany, where the be- lief in the superiority of expert work and expert judgment has found its fullest development and reaHzation. 234 AMERICAN TRAITS Germany is Americanizing and America is Ger- manizing, and nothing at this stage can stop the further development in that direction ; it has be- come necessary as an outlet for energies which were artificially kept down by aristocracy in Ger- many and by democracy in America. Only since these two national movements have supplemented the existing tendencies, are both countries fully prepared for their roles as leaders on the globe. Germany will remain a monarchy, America a re- publie and democracy in its entire political struc- ture, and yet this political difference will be daily less felt, because, as we have seen, the poHtical questions of the state forms have lost their charac- ter as problems. They have not lost their import- ance, but they have, like morality, become a matter of course, which is not under discussion, and which must be understood from historical conditions ; the constitutional difference no longer means any difference of opinion. The "problem" has be- come a social one, and it is just this field in which, as we have seen, the development of the last years has brought about in both countries the same re- sult. The same end-point, a complete harmoni- zation of aristocratic and democratic energies, has been reached from two opposite starting points. There is no third country for which that is equally true. It points to the profound similarity between AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 235 the Americans and the Germans, a similarity which was a long time hidden by the dissimilarity of occu- pations. Now, however, that the pioneer period of America is over and that Germany is entering into the world-market, the time has come when the deep harmony of their natures can fully show itself. This kinship of character is the best secu- rity for a future of lasting peace, not free from competition and rivalry in all fields of commerce and industry, of science and art, of culture and ideals, but free from animosity and ill will. What- ever fate may bring, the present conjunction of the stars would seem to betoken that Americans and Germans will never again forget that they belong together. ElectroiyPed and printed by H. O. Hoiightoti &' Co. Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. 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