AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 GAM AL) EL BRADFORD. JR 
 

 
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TYPES 
 
 AMERICAN CHARACTER 
 
 BY 
 
 GAMALIEL BRADFORD, JR. 
 
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 MACMILLAN AND COMPANY 
 
 AND LONDON 
 I8 95 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1895, 
 BY MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 J. S. Gushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith 
 Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IT is not pretended that the sketches 
 of character contained in this little 
 volume present more than a few phases 
 of American life, and those not the 
 most prominent. That life, so new in 
 its conditions, so varied and rich and 
 full of interest, offers an inexhaustible 
 field of study to the critical observer, 
 and anything like an adequate presen 
 tation of it would require a wider 
 acquaintance with men and things than 
 I can ever hope to lay claim to. I 
 have simply studied a type here and 
 there as they came within my reach. 
 
 228459 
 
vl PREFACE. 
 
 The American Pessimist and The 
 American Epicurean are certainly not 
 to be met with every day. The Ameri 
 can Idealist is perhaps somewhat local, 
 at least as I have sketched him. The 
 American Man of Letters deals rather 
 with the conditions of a literary life 
 than with a literary man. The Ameri 
 can Philanthropist alone is a type at 
 once widely represented and distinctly 
 American. 
 
 In treating these subjects I have 
 unavoidably been brought in contact 
 with the most far-reaching philosophi 
 cal problems. Whether it is possible 
 to deduce consistent opinions in regard 
 to these problems from anything I have 
 said, I do not know ; but if the reader 
 succeeds in accomplishing this, he will 
 do more than I can do myself. My 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 wish is rather to suggest and stimulate 
 than to conclude : in the present state 
 of science and philosophy it seems to 
 me the more useful function. 
 
 I am afraid that some of the essays 
 breathe a spirit of gloom and melan 
 choly. This I am sorry for ; for I have 
 come to feel that the two things most 
 desirable and most to be cultivated in 
 this world are love and joy, and I be 
 lieve that it is possible to cultivate these 
 things far more than we now do. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE AMERICAN PESSIMIST . . i 
 
 II. THE AMERICAN IDEALIST ... 22 
 
 III. THE AMERICAN EPICUREAN . . 53 
 
 IV. THE AMERICAN PHILANTHROPIST 87 
 V. THE AMERICAN MAN OF LETTERS 118 
 
 VI. THE AMERICAN OUT OF DOORS . 153 
 
 VII. THE SCHOLAR 185 
 
Of the Essays contained in this volume, three, 
 " The American Pessimist," " The American Ideal 
 ist," and " The American Out of Doors," have 
 appeared in the Atlantic Monthly and are re 
 printed with the permission of Messrs. Houghton, 
 Mifflin & Co. The others are now printed for 
 the first time. 
 
TYPES OF 
 AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 THE AMERICAN PESSIMIST. 
 
 PESSIMISM is a philosophy greatly 
 in repute just now. Schopenhauer 
 and Hartmann are in the mouths of 
 many people who have not read their 
 works at all, and of some who have 
 read them with very little understand 
 ing. Many people who call themselves 
 pessimists, however, hardly go the full 
 length, or are conscious what they are 
 proclaiming. To believe deliberately 
 that the whole universe exists for noth 
 ing but evil, misery, and suffering ; that 
 there is a power, or an unconscious 
 B i 
 
2 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 force, which finds a pleasure, or follows 
 a natural tendency, in the mere causing 
 of destruction, is to believe something 
 very contrary to the natural inclinations 
 of humanity. For this is more, far 
 more, than simple materialism; more 
 than the mere belief that nature is a 
 vast, inexorable machine, indifferent 
 to the welfare of the sentient world. 
 Materialism is consistent with a philoso 
 phy of great calmness and resignation, 
 if not of joy. But to be a pessimist 
 philosophically is to feel one s self in 
 fierce and deadly antagonism with the 
 universe, to hate with redoubled hatred 
 all that is manifestly pernicious, and to 
 see in all that is apparently alluring 
 nothing but the hollow magic of a 
 snare. 
 
 Nor is it easy to think that pessimism 
 has ever been a prevalent system of 
 philosophy, or indeed, until to-day, an 
 
THE AMERICAN PESSIMIST. 3 
 
 elaborated system of philosophy at all, 
 at least among Western peoples, and 
 outside of some vast and shadowy 
 dream-vision of Asia. A theory so 
 enervating could not have flourished 
 among the pushing and practical races 
 of Europe : it is too inconsistent with 
 all action, too blighting to force and 
 vitality of will. But pessimism as a 
 mood, not as a system, is as old as 
 the world, and as lasting as the think 
 ing animal itself. ^We are all optimists 
 and pessimists by turns. We all have 
 our after-dinner dreams, when life is 
 suffused with a glow of rose. We all 
 have our moments of dejection and 
 despair, caused perhaps at times by 
 some great grief, but full as often the 
 result of a little over-fatigue, a jarring 
 of the nerves, an indigestion, and we 
 become temporarily as black pessi 
 mists as LeopardiTj 
 
4 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 Yes, it is coeval with the birth of 
 thought itself, the wild and sobbing 
 shriek of overburdened grief, the cold 
 sigh of indifference and ennui. We 
 hear it in Job with a burst of passion: 
 
 lat is born of a 
 few days, and full of trouble^. He 
 cometh forth like a flower, and is cut 
 down : he fleeth also as a shadow, and 
 continueth not." We hear it in the 
 terrible verdict of Ecclesiastes : " For 
 who knoweth what is good for man in 
 this life, all the days of his vain life 
 which he spendeth as a shadow? for 
 who can tell a man what shall be after 
 him under the sun? " Lucretius over 
 flows with it: 
 
 " Surgit amari aliquid medio de fonte leporum." 
 
 Nor is this tone less familiar to the 
 Christian than to the antique mind. 
 Religious writers often dwell on the 
 
THE AMERICAN PESSIMIST. 5 
 
 misery of this world to bring out the 
 attractions of the next, but the misery 
 of this seems the prominent feature. 
 
 Nor is the cry of agony confined to 
 dark and melancholy souls. It is 
 more frequent with them, but the great 
 master spirits of the world give way 
 at times. Even Shakspere, bright 
 magician, skilled in loveliness and 
 charm, had his moments of despair, 
 moments unknown to us except for 
 the sonnets : 
 
 " Tired with all these, for restful death I cry." 
 
 Even Emerson, most optimistic of 
 men, has touches here and there, if 
 one looks for them, of vast discourage 
 ment. 
 
 When the warm autumn evenings 
 settle down, who can resist this mood; 
 or in the first days of bursting spring, 
 when the world is flooded, drenched, 
 
6 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 with vitality, and one asks one s self 
 in terror, almost, For what is it all, for 
 what, for what? so resistless is the 
 flow and tide of nature, so aimless and 
 incomprehensible, so vast. The frail 
 intelligence of man seems diluted in 
 this wider element of semi-nothing 
 ness, of unprecipitated being. Again, 
 on some clear October or January 
 morning, it is as if the will of the 
 universe were concentrated in the 
 muscles of one s own right arm. 
 Strange uncontrollable shifting of our 
 moods and purposes ! 
 
 But there is a pessimism which is a 
 matter neither of mood nor of theory, 
 but of temperament. Most men are 
 born with a moderate view, taking 
 things as they come, but some with a 
 natural tendency to see the world all 
 white or all black. Who does not 
 know the constitutional optimist, who 
 
THE AMERICAN PESSIMIST. 7 
 
 is always well, always has been well, 
 or always is going to be well; who is 
 pleased with the present, satisfied with 
 the past, full of gorgeous hope for the 
 future; for whom it never rains, or 
 shines, or blows, except for the benefit 
 of some one; who sees what he calls 
 the good side in all events, in all 
 people; who makes one wish, some 
 times, that some misfortune would 
 befall him signal enough to make him 
 "curse God and die"? Who does 
 not know the constitutional pessimist, 
 to whom the opposite of this descrip 
 tion applies; who may not have intelli 
 gence or knowledge enough to accept 
 the theories of Schopenhauer and Leo- 
 pardi, but who carries them out in 
 practice? Every inauspicious glance 
 of Nature is especially for him. The 
 dust flies for him, the frost bites for 
 him, the whole planetary system re- 
 
8 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 volves with the sole end of frustrating 
 his purposes. One wearies, at times, 
 of the optimist, but, except for those 
 who are obliged to tolerate him, a pro 
 longed cohabitation with such a pessi 
 mist becomes simply intolerable. 
 
 This is but a crude form of consti 
 tutional pessimism, however, a form 
 of indigestion, perhaps I should 
 rather say, peculiarly attendant on 
 the combination of a vigorous tem 
 perament with a lack of occupation. 
 There is another manifestation of the 
 tendency, infinitely finer and more 
 subtle, the only one, as I think, 
 really worthy of the name. This spe 
 cies of pessimism is found, I suppose, 
 all over the world; most intellectual 
 maladies are, though this may never 
 have been so highly developed as in 
 our nineteenth century. But it has 
 especially come under my observation 
 
THE AMERICAN PESSIMIST. 9 
 
 here in our own America; and it is as 
 it exists here that I wish to describe 
 it. Not that it is very common. 
 Many of my readers will say they do 
 not know such a person as I am por 
 traying; but some will be able to lay 
 their fingers on one instantly. The 
 disease, too, is important, not from 
 its quantity, but from its quality; it 
 attacks some of the very clearest and 
 richest and subtlest minds among us. 
 This pessimism is wholly different 
 from the crude discontent and lack of 
 harmony with surroundings that I have 
 referred to above. Such a man as we 
 are speaking of has too much philoso 
 phy, if I may call it so, too much 
 pride, too large a view, to set himself 
 in a pitiful and petty antagonism with 
 the ample and eternal forces which go 
 to make up what we call Nature. He 
 has a suave indifference to small dis- 
 
10 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 comforts that at times leads superficial 
 people to confound him with the opti 
 mist; for he has few of those turbulent 
 and fleeting bursts of temper which 
 overcome the serenest of us. He 
 faces great misfortunes and even small 
 annoyances with the same inexplicable, 
 unalterable smile, a smile more fitted 
 to move the looker-on to tears than to 
 any outbreak of accordant mirth. 
 ^No, the modern pessimist, the true, 
 incurable pessimist, is not, perhaps, a 
 pessimist at all. He does not rail, or 
 curse God, or despise man. If his 
 state of mind can be described, it is 
 by saying that he has thought, not 
 himself, but everything besides him 
 self, into a shadow. He is a man who 
 has embarked on the wide sea of in 
 tellectual discovery, and has found 
 that for him it is a barren sea, blank, 
 desolate, a sea shoreless, where the 
 
THE AMERICAN PESSIMIST. II 
 
 traveller voyages on aimlessly forever 
 in a misty void. } He is a man for 
 whom the fevereB, passionate whirl of 
 life, so fierce, so intense, so real, to 
 other men, is but a disordered dream, 
 a dream of which no one knows the 
 beginning, and no one can prophesy 
 the end. He is a man to whom the 
 present is a reality only in comparison 
 with the utter darkness of the future 
 and the past, a man to whom faith 
 and hope are shadows, and charity 
 is the emptiest and vainest of super 
 structures, from which all foundation 
 has been eaten away. \ 
 
 But, some one says, this is not pes 
 simism. You are misusing the word, 
 and disguising in flowery rhetoric 
 something which should go by another 
 name. But no other name will quite 
 cover what I mean. Practical Epi 
 cureanism is a philosophy very popular 
 
12 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 among us, as indeed it has been popu 
 lar at all times and everywhere, though 
 not always so openly proclaimed and 
 without veil as it is to-day. The prac 
 tical Epicurean is quite as much with 
 out belief as the pessimist I speak of; 
 he is quite as free from prejudices as 
 to morals or religion, quite as ready 
 to disclaim adherence to inherited 
 ideas. But he simply flings all these 
 things aside. From his want of be 
 lief, when he reasons at all, he draws 
 a solid and comfortable conclusion: 
 Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for 
 to-morrow we die. That conclusion 
 is the basis, conscious or unconscious, 
 of a vast deal of American life to-day, 
 modified only by the fact that the 
 American has not yet really learned 
 how to enjoy himself, and seeks dis 
 traction in endless and feverish mental 
 excitement rather than in the subtle 
 
THE AMERICAN PESSIMIST. 13 
 
 and judiciously husbanded pleasures 
 of the senses. 
 
 Now, the life of our pessimist is as 
 far from this as possible. Qt is true 
 that he has lost all faith, if he ever 
 had any. He has long ago recognized 
 that the intellect is a will-o -the-wisp, 
 kindling its fitful gleam, now here, 
 now there, in the vast plashy meadow 
 of perceptive existence, but leading to 
 no sure and solid foothold, drawing 
 the weary wanderer only deeper and 
 deeper in the mire. Yet, knowing 
 this, he cannot resist the fatal charm. 
 He has tasted the alluring sweets of 
 abstract reverie, and he can never give 
 them up. Once caught in the toil of 
 that enchantress, there is no escape, 
 she, the true Circe, who, instead of 
 enslaving men to the joys of sense, 
 turns those joys themselves into the 
 shadow of a shade-JYes, even if the 
 
14 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 pessimist would shut up the cavern of 
 his mind and strew it over with the 
 roses and the charm of life, he cannot. 
 Still, still he is haunted with the con 
 sciousness of the drear abyss beneath. 
 It is true to him, too true, that to 
 morrow we die, and, in the face of 
 that fact, how can he eat, drink, and 
 be merry? 
 
 But am I not describing an agnos 
 tic? To a certain extent, yes. The 
 pessimist, in this sense, does deny the 
 possibility of real knowledge, cogni 
 tion of the Absolute, as does the ag 
 nostic. Yet no! He does not deny 
 or assert anything. He himself knows 
 nothing about the Absolute, but others 
 may. After all, the agnostic belongs 
 to a sect, a dogmatic sect, a sect ready 
 for the most part to decry what it 
 calls the superstitions of other people. 
 Now, to our pessimist, dogmatism is, 
 
THE AMERICAN PESSIMIST. 15 
 
 of all things, hateful. Just because 
 he believes nothing, he is alive to 
 the possibility of believing anything 
 or everything. The most monstrous 
 superstition, except as it involves in 
 tolerance and cruelty, is to him as 
 worthy of respect as the refined ab 
 stractions of the Hegelian. As faiths, 
 they mean to him nothing; as phe 
 nomena of the human intelligence, 
 they are alike curious objects for the 
 ceaseless play of thought. 
 
 It is true that we might fall back on 
 the term "sceptic." But that, also, 
 implies a system, bears with it some 
 inference of Pyrrhonism, and a hard 
 ened determination to question every 
 thing whatever. So natural are theory 
 and a creed to humanity that it erects 
 even its profoundest doubt into a 
 dogma. 
 
 Therefore, until something better is 
 
1 6 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 suggested, we still must call the sub 
 ject of our examination a pessimist. 
 He is not a shrieking fanatic, like 
 Leopardi or Schopenhauer, who pa 
 rades his own despair in the eyes of 
 an unsympathetic world. Such dem 
 onstrations seem to him crude and 
 unwarrantable. The deepest mystery 
 of things is too august to be hailed 
 with such abuse as a fretful child 
 showers upon its nurse. But his pes 
 simism is rather an indefinable shade 
 of gray which pervades his whole view 
 of life, silent, uncomplaining, but 
 profoundly hopeless. 
 
 It is here that the peculiarity of the 
 American type must be taken into 
 account. Men such as I have been 
 describing are to be found all over 
 Europe, all over the civilized world. 
 In France they are very numerous, 
 and the great French literature of to- 
 
THE AMERICAN PESSIMIST. If 
 
 day is largely built up by them. In 
 deed, the tradition of the race began 
 long ago in France, in more or less 
 disguised forms; clad in gorgeous 
 rhetoric in Chateaubriand, touched 
 with fevered passion in Senancour, 
 nursed to his own destruction by 
 Maurice de Gue"rin. It is the ground 
 tone of the great French realistic 
 novelists, Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, 
 the De Goncourts, Zola, the half- 
 French Turgeneff ; and, in the younger 
 generation, of such men as Paul Bour- 
 get and Guy de Maupassant. But 
 there is an immense distinction be 
 tween these men and their Ameri 
 can fellow. He is as profoundly and 
 completely sceptical as they are; but, 
 owing to a difference of race, or, it 
 may be, to the traditions of Puritan 
 ism that still linger in his blood, he 
 is less brutal than they, is, in fact, 
 c 
 
1 8 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 as far as possible from brutality. 
 From their complete disbelief in all 
 moral law, they deduce a profound 
 viciousness and uncleanness of tone 
 and habit, not from any great pleasure 
 in the enjoyments of the senses, but 
 simply from hatred of the conven 
 tional, the bourgeois. To him such 
 licentiousness is wholly repulsive, it 
 offends his taste; he lives and thinks 
 as purely as a fanatic. 
 
 Yes, he has inherited many things 
 from his Puritan ancestors, this child 
 of the nineteenth century, whom they 
 would spurn and scorn more even than 
 the fiercest heretic or the most godless 
 debauchee. Their glowing love of a 
 saintly ideal still lingers in his veins, 
 possesses him at times with a wild 
 desire for the beauty of holiness, mak 
 ing the void only blacker and bleaker 
 when it fades away. He has inherited 
 
THE AMERICAN PESSIMIST. IQ 
 
 from them a fastidious scrupulosity 
 of conscience, which haunts him in 
 minute details, even when conscience 
 itself has become to him an idle illu 
 sion. Vices he has none. Faults he 
 may have, arising from indifference 
 and lack of enthusiasm; but the more 
 passive virtues, gentleness, tenderness, 
 mildness, infinite toleration, no one 
 has them more than he. These things 
 make him beloved in spite of the chill 
 which he casts over everything, for he 
 is ready to listen to other people s joys 
 and woes, and not burden them with 
 his own. Indeed, simply to meet him 
 and talk with him, you would never 
 become aware of the profound dark 
 ness at the bottom of his heart. You 
 would think him ready to agree with 
 your own Methodism, or Episcopalian- 
 ism, or what not. Only rarely, if you 
 are unusually penetrating, there would 
 
20 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 be a glance that would put you on your 
 guard. 
 
 Is he then hypocritical, inconsist 
 ent? Inconsistent, yes. I have heard 
 a Philistine described as one "who 
 lives from convention, not from con 
 viction." If the definition is accurate, 
 our pessimist is a thorough Philistine; 
 for he abhors convictions, and has 
 none of any kind whatever. Yet the 
 poor man must live. 
 
 And he does live. If you ask him, 
 he will probably say that life brings 
 him, on the whole, more misery than 
 happiness, by far. Yet he lives, either 
 because he is mistaken, or because the 
 tremendous unreasoning instinct that 
 makes us cry out for life life, good 
 or bad predominates over him as 
 over the rest of us. He lives, often, 
 to a gray old age, and sees his children 
 around him. There are bright spots, 
 
THE AMERICAN PESSIMIST. 21 
 
 too, even for him, sunny nooks in an 
 autumn day, where he can fly the cold 
 north and dream that there is some 
 thing that is not a dream; something 
 stable, worth grasping, worth loving; 
 something that will not fade away. 
 But, for the rest, he bears his lot as 
 he can, without murmur or complaint; 
 looking on at the vast and varied ban 
 quet of the world, from which he alone 
 goes away unsatisfied; gazing, an idle 
 and yet not an uninterested spectator, 
 at the curious and futile show which 
 the vagaries of language and the tra 
 ditions of our ancestors have taught 
 us to call life. 
 
THE AMERICAN IDEALIST. 
 
 THE word " idealism " is in many 
 minds connected with a philo 
 sophical system that is mainly nega 
 tive. The critical and destructive 
 portion of Kant s work has become so 
 widely known as the basis of German 
 philosophy that an idealist is supposed 
 to be one who believes the whole em 
 pirical world to be a delusion; who 
 sees no reality but his own thought, 
 and cannot rest even that reality on a 
 solid foundation; a nihilist, in short. 
 Could anything be more mistaken? 
 Is there a philosophy more trium 
 phant, more overflowing with faith, 
 more world-storming, than true ideal- 
 
 22 
 
THE AMERICAN IDEALIST. 23 
 
 ism? Is there a man whose convic 
 tions are firmer, more self -asserting, 
 more vigorous, more joyous, than 
 those of the true idealist? Instead of 
 doubting the existence of things, he 
 is penetrated with the intensity, the 
 self -demonstrating sureness, of reality; 
 he cannot resist it if he would; every 
 moment of life is to him crowded and 
 packed with certainty, though perhaps 
 not so much with the certainty of 
 material phenomena as with that of 
 moral and spiritual facts, of ideas. 
 He is by nature a believer. Every 
 thing shows, I think, that Kant 
 himself, in spite of his "world-over 
 turning " speculations, was the pro- 
 foundest of believers. 
 
 At the same time something can be 
 said for the common view. If the 
 idealist does not dissolve the world in 
 his own mind, he projects his own 
 
24 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 mind upon the world. He lives 
 among theories, among types, to 
 which facts must accommodate them 
 selves or suffer for it. He does not 
 love inductive methods, prefers work 
 ing a priori. How can things be 
 except as they ought to be? Every 
 idealist constructs in his own way a 
 skeleton like the great logical schemes 
 of Plato or Hegel, round which the 
 world of perception must flow gently, 
 and shape itself in a fleshly garment, 
 sometimes beautifully draped and 
 adjusted, sometimes falling in harsh 
 folds with a melancholy stiffness. In 
 this sense it may be said that the 
 idealist destroys the world, and builds 
 it for himself anew. 
 
 The division on these lines into 
 idealist and realist absorbs all human 
 ity. There are the men who see things 
 as they are and the men who see them 
 
THE AMERICAN IDEALIST. 25 
 
 as they would have them. To put it 
 more fairly, there are those who take 
 each fact of experience by itself, let 
 ting it get connected with other facts 
 as it can; there are those who find for 
 every fact its proper place in the vast 
 and perfect order of nature. These 
 two different classes can never quite 
 understand each other or work to 
 gether. In one the subjective is sub 
 ordinated to the objective; in the 
 other the subject rides triumphant and 
 supreme, the object being reduced to 
 servile insignificance. 
 
 The scientific tone of mind, the 
 modern critical spirit, is distinctly 
 realist. It aims to make" itself a mere 
 passive instrument, played upon, like 
 an ^olian harp, by all the influences 
 of the outer world. Indeed, the in 
 tellect pure and simple does not favour 
 idealism, which springs essentially 
 
26 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 from the moral side of our nature. 
 The intellect is always striving to be 
 impersonal; the heart, the emotions, 
 are what drive us, with feverish inten 
 sity, to assert ourselves. Now, the 
 intellect has become more predomi 
 nant in the nineteenth century than it 
 has ever been before in the history of 
 the world. 
 
 Yet what a curious illustration of 
 nature s revenges is the spread of pes 
 simism side by side with this mighty 
 development of the intellect ! Pessi 
 mism is idealism turned inside out. 
 Every pessimist has in him the ele 
 ments of an enthusiastic idealist; for 
 if he did not imagine a more perfect 
 world, why should he find so much 
 fault with this? Only the clear-eyed 
 intellect thinks the ideal world hope 
 lessly far away; and the dull, muddy 
 world about us seems vile in compari- 
 
THE AMERICAN IDEALIST. 2f 
 
 son. A French critic remarks: "I 
 wrote it twenty-five years ago, the 
 supernatural " let us read, the ideal, 
 
 " is the sphere of the soul, and I 
 see no reason for changing my mind. 
 The only thing I would add now is 
 this melancholy reflection, that one 
 may demand the Absolute without 
 being sure of getting it. The child, 
 also, cries for the moon, when it has 
 seen the reflection in a well." 
 
 Of the numerous spiritual types that 
 humanity presents, some are perma 
 nent and some are transitory. A good 
 example of the latter is the miser. 
 There is plenty of meanness, of nig 
 gardliness and foolish sparing, in the 
 nineteenth century; but you do not 
 often find, in this country, at any rate, 
 a man who hoards gold simply for the 
 pleasure of counting it, of eyeing it, 
 
 who grudges equally the spending 
 
28 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 of one dollar and of a thousand. 
 People seek to acquire money, as they 
 have always done, because money 
 gives the means for gratifying their 
 passions, because it gives power; but 
 they do not often seek it for the actual 
 accumulation of precious metal. This 
 may be owing to the colossal size of 
 modern fortunes, which makes money 
 less a reality than a dream j it is more 
 probably caused by the introduction of 
 paper currency and the banking sys 
 tem. The clink of gold affords a 
 pleasure not to be found in fingering 
 greenbacks. Certain literary figures 
 have lost their interest for us on ac 
 count of this change, figures like 
 Moliere s Harpagon and the heroes of 
 many of La Fontaine s fables. 
 
 On the other hand, some types 
 belong to this century only, or to this 
 and the preceding. The philanthro- 
 
THE AMERICAN IDEALIST. 29 
 
 pist is one of these, the man who 
 devotes his life to working for man 
 kind not from any lofty religious prin 
 ciple, sometimes even with no great 
 belief in the goodness or worth of 
 humanity; doing it either from pure 
 sympathy and love, or because he has 
 no other means of satisfying a restless 
 desire for action. Another modern 
 type is the critic, perhaps I should 
 say the scientist, who has reduced his 
 own personality to a minimum, and 
 lives on curiosity; who thrusts him 
 self into the spiritual garments of 
 other men, or probes the secrets of 
 nature, drawing into his own veins 
 the blood and life that circulate else 
 where. 
 
 But idealists are confined neither to 
 the ninth century nor to the nine 
 teenth. The first man who framed for 
 himself another life beyond this world 
 
30 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 or outside of it, the first man who 
 laboured and toiled with hand and 
 brain to bring about a paradise in the 
 future, or dreamed of a paradise in 
 the past, was the first idealist. In 
 spite of all negations, of all icono- 
 clasms, of the downfall of this creed 
 and of that creed, the world will never 
 see the last. The ideal is infinite in 
 its persistence, infinite in its protean 
 power of reembodiment, remanifesta- 
 tion. All it demands is faith in some 
 thing, belief in something, beyond the 
 passing sensuous impression: give it 
 that, and it will conquer the world. 
 For its advantage over positivism and 
 scepticism consists in its being affirm 
 ative, in its perpetual self-assertion. 
 Those who follow it follow undoubt- 
 ing, absolutely mastered. In Heine s 
 words, and let me remark that 
 Heine wrote " Idea," and not " ideas," 
 
THE AMERICAN IDEALIST. 3! 
 
 as it stands in the epigraph of one of 
 our magazines : " We do not seize upon 
 the Idea; the Idea seizes us, and en 
 slaves us, and lashes us into the arena, 
 where we fight for it like gladiators, 
 whether we will or no." What a mas 
 querade this worship of the Idea gives 
 us, sweeping down in bright order 
 through the shadowy past! The ob 
 stinate hope of the Jews for their Mes 
 siah, the patriotism of the Greeks at 
 Thermopylae, the Christian martyrs, 
 the glittering Crusades, the Renais 
 sance, the sanguinary passion of the 
 French Revolution, these are the 
 gleaming points in the great web of 
 enthusiasm for all causes and all faiths. 
 Believe! Believe! Only believe! And 
 all things shall be added unto you. 
 
 It will be seen from the above enu 
 meration that nations are idealists as 
 well as individuals. Is not the Bible 
 
32 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 the monument of indomitable idealism 
 in a whole race? a race narrow, 
 indeed, in its conceptions, not much 
 concerned with the intellectual prob 
 lems that please the Aryans, yet in 
 tensely and fiercely moral, and showing 
 its idealism in the positive force of its 
 morality, in not being content with 
 perfecting itself, but in being deter 
 mined to overcome the whole world. 
 Has idealism ever been manifested 
 with more energy and splendour than 
 in the lament of Job, or the denuncia 
 tion of David, or the lovely visions 
 of Isaiah? "For, behold, I create 
 new heavens and a new earth : and the 
 former shall not be remembered, nor 
 come into mind." Is not that the 
 text of the idealist everywhere ? " But 
 unto you that fear my name shall the 
 Sun of righteousness arise with healing 
 in his wings." For that rising not 
 
THE AMERICAN IDEALIST. 33 
 
 only Jew but Gentile waits, has waited, 
 and will wait forever, with the fervour 
 of an unconquerable hope. 
 
 A blind enthusiasm of the same sort, 
 though grosser in its materialism, was 
 at the bottom of the great Mohamme 
 dan movement. The intenser form of 
 idealism, at least in religious matters, 
 seems to be found outside the Aryan 
 races, which agrees with what I said 
 above as to the results of intellectual 
 development in individuals. Even 
 among Aryan nations, however, there 
 are, as one can see, vast differences 
 in this respect. Perhaps, taking into 
 account the fact that we must live in 
 this world as it is, with all its imper 
 fections, the Greeks, in their best 
 days, came as near to a just harmo 
 nizing of the real and the ideal as is 
 possible. The Romans, on the other 
 hand, were, as a people, positivists 
 D 
 
34 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 beyond any the world has seen; posi- 
 tivists to such a point that, with the 
 exception of two great poems, even 
 those largely imitative, they alone 
 of all important nations, ancient or 
 modern, left behind them no trace of 
 original work in any one of the fine 
 arts. 
 
 Among modern European nations, 
 the English are most like the Romans, 
 in this as in other things. Their 
 poetry saves them from the same de 
 gree of reproach; yet their poetry is at 
 its best in the drama, and the drama 
 is the form of poetry that lends itself 
 least to idealistic purposes. The 
 French are more distinctly idealist. 
 Indeed, we may safely say that, gen 
 erally speaking, the Kelts always are 
 so, while the Teutonic races are 
 soberer, more practical. A moment s 
 consideration of English history and 
 
THE AMERICAN IDEALIST. 35 
 
 character compared with French or 
 Irish will suffice to prove this. 
 
 To return to individuals. This en 
 thusiasm, faith, takes naturally very 
 different forms in different minds. In 
 some it is calm, serene, gentle; works 
 upon mankind by mild and sweet per 
 suasiveness, by an influence that 
 spreads unconsciously, yet all the more 
 powerfully. In others it is stormy, 
 impetuous, rejoicing in difficulties, 
 rejoicing in struggle and sacrifice, 
 seeming to acquire firmer conviction 
 by the sense of victory hardly earned. 
 We need not go far for examples of 
 both these classes. Where could we 
 find the contrast better illustrated than 
 in the Founder of Christianity and its 
 greatest apostle? Paul cries, not 
 once, but again and again, in varying 
 words : " For I delight in the law of 
 God after the inward man : but I see 
 
36 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 another law in my members, warring 
 against the law of my mind, and 
 bringing me into captivity to the law 
 of sin which is in my members. O 
 wretched man that I am! who shall 
 deliver me from the body of this 
 death?" How different, ah, how dif 
 ferent is this other tone ! " Take my 
 yoke upon you, and learn of me. . . . 
 For my yoke is easy, and my burden 
 is light." 
 
 Examples of such opposite tenden 
 cies might be multiplied infinitely. 
 In literature, take, for instance, Byron 
 and Shelley. Byron was certainly an 
 idealist in his way; but he would have 
 been inclined to mend the world by 
 shattering it to pieces. Shelley, 
 whose "passion for reforming the 
 world " marks him as one of the most 
 intense idealists of our century, was 
 the sweetest of men. 
 
THE AMERICAN IDEALIST. 37 
 
 It is clear enough that the idealist l 
 is not necessarily either moral or re 
 ligious. What he must have is an 
 abiding and inspiring enthusiasm for 
 something that demands devotion and 
 sacrifice; this something may be re 
 ligion, it may be humanity, it may be 
 beauty, it may be one s country, it 
 may be power, it may be wealth. The 
 distinction lies not so much in the 
 object as in the spirit with which it is 
 pursued. Alexander was an idealist; 
 Caesar was not. Shakspere, so far as 
 we can judge, was not; Milton was. 
 Napoleon, in spite of his hatred of 
 ideologues, was an idealist himself. 
 There is no way to make this felt more 
 clearly than by contrasting him with 
 Wellington, in whom the genius of his 
 country may be said to have been em 
 bodied, as, in a certain sense, that of 
 France was in Napoleon. The ideal- 
 
38 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 ist may, then, be selfish in as high a 
 degree, as absolutely, as he may be 
 virtuous. Indeed, even when his pre 
 occupation is wholly with what is high 
 and pure, he may be caustic, crabbed, 
 unlovable, to those about him. He 
 often is so, with his impatience at not 
 being understood, his keen percep 
 tion of the woful difference between 
 the world as it is and the world as he 
 would have it. 
 
 This is the limitation, the negative 
 side. Conviction, in this world, so 
 often brings intolerance. The French 
 writer I quoted just now says else 
 where: "The fundamental dogma of 
 intolerance is that there are dogmas; 
 that of tolerance, that there are only 
 opinions." But the Idea is more than 
 a dogma, it is a fact, in the mind of 
 the believer. How can he look upon 
 it as a mere opinion, discutable, dis- 
 
THE AMERICAN IDEALIST. 39 
 
 putable? How can he put himself in 
 the place of another, disown his own 
 position, admit even the possibility of 
 being wrong? He works by sight, not 
 by faith; by an intuition that allows 
 no question and no doubt. Hence 
 the sweetest of idealists must think 
 you ignorant and to be pitied, if you 
 differ from him. He will not abuse 
 or revile you, but he will regard you 
 at best as an object for conversion. 
 The idealist who is not sweet will not 
 refrain from expressing his opinion. 
 To come to what is properly Ameri 
 can. The ty2ical American is, or 
 was, English in his origin, and I have 
 said that the English are not idealists. 
 Furthermore, it was the Puritans who 
 emigrated to this country, and the 
 Puritans embodied what was least 
 idealistic in the English nature. It 
 is bold, perhaps, to say so, but I am 
 
40 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 convinced that what makes the Puri 
 tans unattractive, in spite of their vir 
 tues, is this very fact, that they were 
 not idealists. For the most part, the 
 English religious movement of the 
 seventeenth century was a revolt of 
 common sense, as indeed was the 
 Reformation in general. The English 
 political movement of the seventeenth 
 century was of the same nature, as 
 one may see by contrasting it with 
 the French Revolution, Hampden 
 with Robespierre. It may be said 
 that if this be the case the English 
 were blessed in not being idealists. 
 With that we have nothing to do in 
 this simple search after facts. What 
 I have asserted above is exactly what 
 Matthew Arnold meant when he spoke 
 of Luther as the " Philistine of genius 
 in religion," Bunyan as the "Philis 
 tine of genius in literature," Crom- 
 
THE AMERICAN IDEALIST. 41 
 
 well as the "Philistine of genius in 
 politics," all taken from the group 
 of men connected with new-born 
 Protestantism. 
 
 The Puritans who left England for 
 America were perhaps more idealistic 
 than those who remained at home; 
 yet the most striking thing about the 
 founders of New England is their 
 stern good sense. It has stuck by 
 their descendants till the present day. 
 The characteristic religion of New 
 England, Unitarianism, is the relig 
 ion of good sense, the least idealistic 
 religion that has ever professed to 
 connect itself with Christianity. 
 
 The American of to-day, however, 
 either from race intermixture or from 
 influences of climate or of institu 
 tions, is manifestly different from his 
 English progenitor. He is quicker, 
 keener, less conservative, though still 
 
42 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 conservative. His intelligence is in 
 ventive, and proverbially seeks rapid 
 ways to come at things. He is ex 
 tremely practical, more than that, 
 material; dazed, it would seem, by 
 the immense resources of his coun 
 try, by the immense opportunities it 
 affords for accumulating wealth, and 
 with it power. He is, for the pres 
 ent, wholly absorbed in the means; 
 careless of the end, if there be an end 
 at all. Yet his spiritual eye is shut 
 rather than blinded. If you can open 
 it, it is wonderfully quick and pene 
 trating. He is restless, too, dissatis 
 fied with traditions, with old-world 
 beliefs, doctrines, ideas. He half 
 thinks there should be a new relig 
 ion, as vast and modern as his needs. 
 We perceive the same restlessness in 
 the later Roman world, with some 
 what similar conditions. Men were 
 
THE AMERICAN IDEALIST. 43 
 
 dissatisfied with their old faith; all vi 
 tal belief in it had disappeared; every 
 where they were doubting, wondering. 
 Before the spread of Christianity, all 
 sorts of religions from the East 
 Mithraism, for instance found nu 
 merous followers. In such a soil 
 Christianity could not but grow vigor 
 ously. The Roman world resembled 
 us, indeed, only in the sudden in 
 crease of material prosperity. The 
 newness of conditions is far more 
 general with us than it was with them. 
 Yet here, too, what a hold has been 
 taken by Spiritualism, by Christian 
 Science, by the mystical philosophies 
 of India, even where they are only 
 half, if at all, understood ! 
 
 When the American is possessed 
 by the Idea, he is possessed by it 
 thoroughly; not with a Celtic unrea 
 son, but with an enthusiasm that 
 
44 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 seems quite out of harmony with his 
 ordinary half-sceptical self, and that 
 goes great lengths. The most inter 
 esting point in the history of Ameri 
 can thought is the transcendental 
 movement of the first half of this cen 
 tury, which was idealism incarnate. 
 Practically, it showed itself in that 
 curious experiment, Brook Farm, 
 which was an attempt to realize what 
 has been in one form or another the 
 social Utopia of all idealists; an 
 attempt to overcome the biting stress 
 of individualism, to "pool," as the 
 railroad men say, the interests of all 
 humanity; an attempt which failed. 
 What was far more serious, and what 
 did not fail, was the great antislavery 
 movement, as truly a result of ideal 
 ism here as was the French Revolu 
 tion in Europe, and managed in a far 
 purer spirit. It has been argued, to 
 
THE AMERICAN IDEALIST. 45 
 
 be sure, that the English got rid of 
 slavery with less idealism, but without 
 bloodshed. The cases were, however, 
 very different. 
 
 The list of great names connected 
 with all these movements is not a 
 short one. Active in the antislavery 
 agitation, we have Garrison, Phillips, 
 Sumner. More especially connected 
 with transcendentalism, we have the 
 group that centred in Concord: Al- 
 cott, about whom critical judgments 
 differ most; Margaret Fuller, pathetic 
 in her actual fate without any addition 
 of romance; Thoreau, robust, self- 
 asserting, not to say egotistical, 
 more arrogant than some of his com 
 rades, but touched with a fine and 
 peculiar genius most nearly allied to 
 the greatest of them all. Lastly, ris 
 ing with his whole figure above these, 
 who are only grouped about the pedes- 
 
46 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 tal upon which he stands, comes the 
 representative American idealist, 
 one may almost say the representative 
 idealist of all times and nations; the 
 man who came nearest to uniting the 
 high enthusiasm of the saint with 
 the calm vision of the seer, who 
 touched with a holy fire the specula 
 tions of Plato and Hegel, who blended 
 the philosophy of Germany with the 
 mysticism of Asia; the man who, for 
 the first time in nineteen centuries, 
 owned the all-importance of religion, 
 and yet looked forward, and not back, 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson. No doubt 
 the Puritan lack of imagination does 
 make itself felt in Emerson, at times 
 almost repulsively; no doubt minds 
 of another type do and must weary of 
 his eternal optimism; but never was 
 there a truer servant of the Idea than 
 he; never has the high enthusiasm of 
 
THE AMERICAN IDEALIST. 47 
 
 that service been better voiced than it 
 so often was by him. 
 
 "The soul is not a compensation, 
 but a life. The soul is. Under all 
 this running sea of circumstance, 
 whose waters ebb and flow with per 
 fect balance, lies the aboriginal abyss 
 of real Being. . . . Nothing, False 
 hood, may indeed stand as the great 
 night or shade on which, as a back 
 ground, the living universe paints 
 itself forth, but no fact is begotten by 
 it; it cannot work, for it is not; it 
 cannot work any harm; it cannot work 
 any good. It is harm inasmuch as it 
 is worse not to be than to be. 
 
 " In a virtuous action I properly 
 am; in a virtuous act I add to the 
 world; I plant into deserts conquered 
 from Chaos and Nothing, and see the 
 darkness receding on the limits of the 
 horizon. There can be no excess to 
 
48 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 love, none to knowledge, none to 
 beauty, when these attributes are con 
 sidered in the purest sense. The soul 
 refuses limits, and always affirms an 
 optimism, never a pessimism." 
 
 Essay after essay is but one con 
 tinuous joyous proclamation of the 
 permanence, the inexhaustible vital 
 ity, of the Idea. 
 
 As was natural, this vigorous and 
 potent personality influenced a great 
 number of people. Many of them 
 sought an expression for their enthu 
 siasm in literature, some success 
 fully, the majority not so. But there 
 were others who were contented to 
 live quietly in the calm and pure 
 light of their high faith, making no 
 attempt to communicate it, unless 
 indirectly by a certain spiritual atmos 
 phere that constantly surrounded 
 them. One such I have in mind: a 
 
THE AMERICAN IDEALIST. 49 
 
 man who was for many years, for life 
 almost, an intimate friend of Emer 
 son s; who had imbibed his spirit 
 thoroughly, yet united with it a pecu 
 liar gentleness and sweetness all his 
 own. His nature was feminine in 
 its delicacy, subtly sensitive to all 
 impressions, morbid in some ways, 
 unquestionably. He was at times the 
 slave of a conscientiousness that ruled 
 him tyrannically, exposing him to ridi 
 cule from those who did not under 
 stand; but the fine purity of his 
 character, his imaginative sympathy, 
 his infinite patience, tolerance, readi 
 ness to find excuses even for those he 
 disapproved of, his loyalty and devo 
 tion to the people and the ideas he 
 loved, above all his supreme unworld- 
 liness and indomitable conviction of 
 the truth, when shall we look upon 
 his like again? 
 
50 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 The men of that generation have 
 passed away. Have their enthusiasms 
 vanished with them? I do not believe 
 it. Material prosperity has lured us 
 all more or less from the things of the 
 spirit. The high light of thought and 
 devotion seems obscured by the mist 
 of lower passions, sordid rivalries, 
 eager greed. But, as a people, we 
 are not as yet we are not cor 
 rupted or decadent. We are ever on 
 the watch for what points upward, 
 full of generous impulses, ready sym 
 pathies. Above all, we are hopeful; 
 we look forward. We feel in a man 
 ner bound to grow to the great desti 
 nies of a great country. All sorts of 
 speculative opinions find a ready 
 acceptance. I have alluded to Chris 
 tian Science, and the fascination exer 
 cised by half-mystical theories about 
 new discoveries in the nature of 
 
THE AMERICAN IDEALIST. 5! 
 
 mind. Politically, the idealistic ten 
 dency shows itself in the projects 
 of the Nationalists, the followers of 
 George and Bellamy. It shows itself 
 also in agitations for woman s rights 
 and objects of that nature. Indeed, 
 it may be said, in passing, that the \ 
 most typical American idealist is a \ 
 woman; idealism, with its merits and I 
 defects, being more natural to women / 
 than to men. 
 
 No, from whatever source derived, 
 whether it be a reflection of Divinity 
 in the human heart, or a mere figment 
 of the imagination projected on the 
 realm of "Chaos and old Night," the 
 Idea can never die, never lose its in 
 fluence over mankind, never cease to 
 be the mainspring of all that is ac 
 complished in the world, of all prog 
 ress, of all virtue, of all happiness. 
 It clothes itself in many forms. It 
 
52 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 puts on and casts off religions and 
 philosophies like worn and faded gar 
 ments. All these change, but the 
 Idea remains the same. Something 
 outside, something beyond, something 
 larger than itself, humanity must have 
 to strive for, to hope for. It would 
 be useless to oppose this tendency, 
 even if it were desirable. The pessi 
 mist will revile it, cherishing it all 
 the while more than any one else. 
 The critic will find in it an ever- 
 changing and infinitely curious object 
 of study. The wise statesman will 
 seek to guide it and profit by it. But 
 he who is a born idealist himself will 
 see in its vitality its justification. He 
 will bow down with his whole heart 
 and soul in infinite worship before the 
 unchanged, immortal spirit of virtue, 
 loveliness, and truth, which, under 
 neath the shifting illusion of the world, 
 is all that is firm, all that is abiding. 
 
THE AMERICAN EPICUREAN. 
 
 DISTINCTION is the mightiest 
 implement of the wise, and the 
 plaything of the idle. Allow me to 
 amuse myself with it for a moment. 
 An Epicurean is one who enjoys life, 
 who lives, so far as possible, by and 
 for enjoyment, and who at the same 
 time analyzes his pleasure and philos 
 ophizes about it after his own fashion. 
 Epicurean and materialist are often 
 confounded; but the materialist is sim 
 ply absorbed in what is external and 
 material. He does not philosophize 
 about it ; he does not even always en 
 joy it. He may be bound down and 
 tyrannized over by it, so that he hates 
 53 
 
54 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 it, but cannot escape from it, like some 
 men of business, or even some phil 
 anthropists ; for I have known philan 
 thropic materialists, but never a 
 philanthropic Epicurean. Nor are Ep 
 icureanism and paganism identical. 
 Here, too, there is the difference of 
 underlying analysis and thought, which 
 makes, as it were, the lining of the Ep 
 icurean s pleasure, and gives it a sort 
 of bitter-sweet of its own. He observes 
 and studies himself even in the midst 
 of the keenest delight. The pagan, on 
 the other hand, enjoys without obser 
 vation or analysis. He has the frank, 
 free gaiety of the fauns of Rubens, who 
 pass unremittingly from sleep to laugh 
 ter, and from laughter to sleep, if, in 
 deed, they sleep at all. 
 
 It is a notable, though perhaps not 
 wholly enviable, title to reputation to 
 have given one s name to a sect like 
 
THE AMERICAN EPICUREAN. 55 
 
 this ; and it is to be wished that we 
 knew something more definite of the 
 life and doctrines of Epicurus, which 
 have come to us only through the dis 
 torting media of his disciples writings. 
 We have, however, every reason to 
 believe that he was a gentle and toler 
 ant man, which is an excellent thing in 
 a philosopher, and for my part I am 
 happy to accept the portrait given us 
 in Lander s celebrated dialogue, where 
 we find, indeed, certain amiable weak 
 nesses, but altogether outweighed by 
 attractiveness and charm. 
 
 When we pass to Epicurus greatest 
 disciple, what a difference ! And how 
 little we find in the De Rerum Natura 
 those qualities which we associate *with 
 the Master, and still more with the 
 name Epicurean in modern times. Is 
 it probable that Lucretius ever en 
 joyed himself in the mild sense in 
 
56 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 which the word is used by ordinary 
 mortals ? Perhaps he knew the fierce 
 delight of struggling with great mental 
 problems, of toiling up vast slopes of 
 argument from the summit of which, 
 when one has reached it, one beholds 
 nothing but barrenness and death, of 
 moulding and straining a hard language 
 into magical harmonies and long waves 
 of echoing sound. But Epicurean 
 where is the softness, where the grace, 
 where the roses and the smiles? Lu 
 cretius rushes at pleasure, battles with 
 it, crushes it, kills himself in seeking 
 to possess it. Some of us do that 
 to-day, but we are not called Epi 
 cureans. 
 
 Bat there is a classical representative 
 of the habits, if not always of the doc 
 trines, of Epicurus, who harmonizes 
 much better with our preconceived 
 ideas on the subject; I mean, of 
 
THE AMERICAN EPICUREAN. 57 
 
 course, Horace. It is a pity that 
 Horace is out of fashion just now. 
 When we read Latin at all, we read 
 Catullus and Lucretius, which is well. 
 But perhaps Virgil and Horace will 
 some day come in again, without the 
 others going out. No one claims for 
 Horace the lyrical passion of Catullus ; 
 but he has lyrical qualities of his own, 
 flawless grace, a perfect hold on his 
 subject, a style perhaps more subtly 
 and delicately intellectual than that of 
 any other writer, unless it be Petrarch. 
 Above all, he had precisely the Epi 
 curean quality we are speaking of, of 
 taking all the pleasures of life, great 
 and small, as they came within his 
 reach, and at the same time that he 
 enjoyed them with the keenest zest, of 
 reflecting on them, classifying them, 
 appreciating, too, their fleetingness, 
 and emptiness, and vainness, if only 
 
58 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 there were anything better to replace 
 them. What profound wisdom he has 
 with what endless tolerance and sym 
 pathy ! He does not rant and tear a 
 passion to tatters, unless, alas, when 
 hired to write conventional morality 
 by the powers that be ; and even then 
 you feel that he sings a little after the 
 fashion of Dodor in Trilby, when enter 
 taining his inamorata with psalmodic 
 selections. 
 
 We shall hardly, I imagine, find 
 much Epicureanism in the Europe of 
 the Dark and Middle Ages. Material 
 ism and brutal paganism, brutality even 
 beyond paganism, of course, abound. 
 We shall see enough of the love of 
 pleasure, but very little of philosophy ; 
 unless we imagine to ourselves hidden 
 away in the dim corner of a mediaeval 
 monastery some friar of orders gray, 
 who has fled thither as to a quiet 
 
THE AMERICAN EPICUREAN. 59 
 
 refuge from a turbulent and barbarous 
 world, who passes his days in reading 
 the classics, with a flask of red wine 
 and a flask of white, a pretty niece, 
 and a gentle smile at the follies and 
 vagaries of mankind. 
 
 When we come to the Renaissance, 
 on the other hand, we shall find Epi 
 cureanism in its fullest flower. Even 
 here we must distinguish it from 
 paganism ; for the great characteristic 
 of the Renaissance is chiefly a wild 
 rush for the delights of life so long 
 obscured and hid away. Every one 
 thrust in for his share, and the com 
 mon herd then, as always, did not 
 examine nor inquire into the nature of 
 its deeds. But the fifteenth and six 
 teenth centuries were peculiarly a time 
 when men of intellectual power plunged 
 into every kind of extravagance and 
 excess, and then they all, more or less, 
 
60 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 in the true meaning of reflection, turned 
 to look back upon themselves. Chief 
 among these stands Montaigne. We 
 know Montaigne as a sceptic. It is 
 the name under which Emerson has 
 treated him, and doubtless represents 
 accurately a part of his mental attitude. 
 But Epicurean suits him better still. 
 Epicureanism does, indeed, presuppose 
 a certain amount of theoretical scepti 
 cism ; but the typical sceptic, even if 
 he is not a professional philosopher 
 like Pyrrho, is surely much more 
 philosophical than Montaigne. Scep 
 ticism implies constant and consistent 
 thought, a contact with the great 
 problems of life, which is too apt to 
 bring a pale brow and an anxious eye. 
 The rich, rubicund nature of Mon 
 taigne and Horace has nothing more 
 akin to philosophical scepticism than 
 a good-natured mistrust of dogmas 
 
THE AMERICAN EPICUREAN. 6 1 
 
 whether one s own or other people s, 
 and a fancy for amusing oneself at the 
 fireside by stripping the idols both of 
 cave and market-place down to a bare 
 skeleton of nothing. But that keen ob 
 servation of human life coupled with an 
 endless delight in it, which is the charm 
 of Horace, reappears in Montaigne, 
 free from any trammels of poetical 
 form, abundant, varied, lighted up with 
 infinite humour, illustrated by bound 
 less learning, now playing wantonly on 
 the surface of common needs, now 
 plunging down into the deep recesses 
 of wayward passions, but always smiling, 
 always serene, always tolerant, always 
 free from conventional prejudice. 
 
 The nearest English equivalent of 
 Montaigne is Robert Burton of the 
 Anatomy of Melancholy. That won 
 derful book, bristling with quotation 
 and illustration, is an epitome of the 
 
62 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 Renaissance in many ways. At the 
 same time Burton s description, depic 
 tion of the pleasures of life, is not, like 
 Montaigne s, that of a man who has 
 touched and tasted ; it is that of a 
 scholar and something of a pedant, 
 who eyes the promised land wistfully 
 from without, who listens eagerly to the 
 enthusiasm of others, and very much 
 exaggerates in imagination the possibil 
 ities of what he might enjoy, but him 
 self never quite dares enter. Nor is 
 Burton singular in this. Epicureanism 
 is not thoroughly to the Anglo-Saxon 
 taste. The English life may have its 
 period of brutal and unthinking self- 
 indulgence, but there comes a moral 
 reaction from the ever-present Philis 
 tine within us, of which the grandest 
 example is the respectable old age of 
 Shakspere as a worthy, harmless, re 
 vered, and thrifty burgess of Stratford. 
 
THE AMERICAN EPICUREAN. 63 
 
 In this rapid survey we can touch 
 only the summits. If we pass over 
 the seventeenth century with its group 
 of men of letters, of whom so many, 
 in France at any rate, deserve the title 
 of Epicurean, we shall find in the 
 eighteenth much less tendency in this 
 direction. Voltaire, though he had no 
 dislike for the pleasant side of life, 
 seems too petulant, too narrow, too 
 dry for the true Epicurean spirit. 
 Rousseau and those who followed in 
 his wake were enthusiasts, and there is 
 no such deadly enemy of enthusiasm 
 as the Epicurean. You may be a fa 
 natic for good or evil, you may preach 
 salvation or destruction, you may rave 
 over optimism or pessimism, and the 
 Epicurean will smile at you, not with 
 the bitter mockery of Voltaire, but 
 with a patronizing expression, as who 
 should say : " My dear Sir, how soon 
 
64 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 all this will boil over into the cool dust 
 of the grave." 
 
 At the threshold of the nineteenth 
 century we meet with Goethe, and it 
 would be curious to examine why we 
 can set him down so definitely as un- 
 Epicurean. He is not a Christian, 
 surely, he whom Heine called the great 
 pagan of the century. Yet as surely 
 we cannot call him pagan as we call 
 Ariosto pagan or Boccaccio. Is there, 
 perhaps, after all in Goethe a little 
 touch of the pedant? Or had he, too, 
 his enthusiasm, that of the artist, burn 
 ing in him as a clear and constant 
 flame, rather than as the devouring 
 fire which ate away the hearts of Flau 
 bert and Leopardi ? 
 
 But, so far as literature is concerned, 
 we shall find our most interesting ex 
 amples of the modern Epicurean in 
 contemporary France. Perhaps it 
 
THE AMERICAN EPICUREAN. 65 
 
 would not be wholly fair to apply the 
 name to Sainte-Beuve. If not, it 
 would be because he laboured with an 
 earnestness almost amounting to en 
 thusiasm at the art which he had 
 chosen. Yet his general way of look 
 ing at life comes perilously near that 
 of some authors we have been con 
 sidering, especially when we take into 
 account not only his formal criticism, 
 but his detached thoughts and the 
 record of him that has come to us 
 through his friends. He himself tells 
 us that he arrived at wisdom, not by 
 the road of Spinoza and Hegel, but 
 by that of Solomon and Epicurus, 
 something, I suppose, like the broad- 
 gated way that leadeth to other things 
 besides wisdom. Among the critics 
 who have succeeded Sainte-Beuve we 
 might look even more successfully for 
 men who illustrate precisely what I 
 
66 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 mean by the modern Epicurean. But 
 the best example of all is the great 
 writer whom France has recently lost, 
 Ernest Renan. If we compare Renan 
 with Montaigne, we shall get all the 
 difference between the nineteenth and 
 the sixteenth century, difference in 
 manners, difference in traditional mor 
 als, difference in intellectual pursuits. 
 It is quite impossible to imagine Mon 
 taigne finding his pleasure in the ac 
 quisition of a profound knowledge of 
 Hebrew, or the study of the Semitic 
 peoples. It is impossible to imagine 
 Montaigne in a dusty class-room, lec 
 turing spectacled to a small assembly 
 of pedantic students, to imagine Mon 
 taigne a professor. But down under 
 neath the superficial difference we 
 come to the Epicurean basis common 
 to both ; the complete disregard of a 
 formalized system of philosophy, the 
 
THE AMERICAN EPICUREAN. 67 
 
 endless delight in the play of humanity 
 and life, the universal toleration and 
 indulgence for the enthusiasms and the 
 follies of others. And it is perfectly 
 conceivable that if Montaigne had lived 
 three hundred years later he would 
 have come to see how merely barbar 
 ous were all his pursuits, beside the 
 exquisite pleasure of baffling the Philis 
 tine journalist with touches of irony 
 finer and subtler than that of Aris 
 tophanes or Heine. 
 
 Now let us cross the Atlantic in 
 pursuit of our Epicurean of America. 
 If we confound Epicureanism with ma 
 terialism or paganism, we shall find 
 it scattered broadcast in this beloved 
 country of ours. I suppose we must 
 look upon business as one of the forms 
 of materialism, though naturally one 
 may engage in it without being ma 
 terialized. And if I wished to draw 
 
68 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 the most universal and most truly 
 American type possible, I should begin 
 with the Man of Business. We see 
 him everywhere, do we not, and every 
 where substantially the same ? To be 
 sure, in Boston, he generally speaks 
 good English and may be a college 
 graduate ; in the Far West he is apt to 
 be rough in manner and of cosmopol 
 itan extraction ; in Chicago he is over 
 flowing with a joyous confidence in the 
 city of his choice ; in the South he has 
 a certain dignified slowness, a pride of 
 caste, whatever be his occupation, and a 
 rooted hatred of " niggers " ; and every 
 where he has one great tie of common 
 humanity, business. See him on a 
 street-corner waiting for a car, ab 
 sorbed as Archimedes. Does he look 
 at sun, moon, and stars ? His eyes are 
 turned within. He sees nothing but 
 pools and combinations, stocks, bonds, 
 
THE AMERICAN EPICUREAN. 69 
 
 mortgages, bulls, bears, corners, shorts, 
 margins. His face is wire-drawn, anx 
 ious, does not respond to yours unless 
 he sees business in your eye. Fortu 
 nate, if he can go home to his slippers 
 and paper, or his prayer-meeting, and 
 not dream all night of what has filled 
 his thoughts all day. So far as the 
 forgetting of all Gods but Mammon 
 goes, this gentleman is as Epicurean as 
 Epicurus -j but has he the least idea of 
 pleasure in any sense of the word? 
 That is the bitterest irony of his lot, 
 that he accumulates and accumulates 
 and what for ? The little delights of 
 life are spoiled for him by absorption 
 in business, the great seem mere ex 
 travagance ; and truly the last condi 
 tion of that man is worse than the 
 first. 
 
 Nor can there be any question about 
 the supply of paganism. It does not, 
 
70 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 indeed, run riot in the streets. The 
 flaunting worship of the older gods and 
 the wild revelry of Dionysus have given 
 place to labour- manifestations and the 
 parades of the Salvation Army. This 
 incapacity for pleasure that I have just 
 referred to hinders many a pagan from 
 following out the desire of his heart 
 which frames itself instinctively in the 
 old burden : Eat, drink, and be merry, 
 for to-morrow we die. Yet the spirit 
 of the decaying pagan world is every 
 where. We cling with voluptuous terror 
 to the delights of this life, not knowing 
 what may come after in the dark gulf 
 which science points out before us. And 
 this paganism is found, perhaps, less in 
 the middle class, where inherited con 
 ventions have a stronger hold ; less in 
 New England, where life is built on a 
 more artificial model. It is the vast 
 lower stratum, which in this country is 
 
THE AMERICAN EPICUREAN. Jl 
 
 always pressing upward, the half- edu 
 cated multitude suddenly let loose from 
 the bonds and trammels of an older 
 civilization, conscious of new life, of 
 new strength, and at the same time 
 touched by no religion, by no care or 
 thought for morals or for love it is 
 this vast, disorderly mob which is essen 
 tially pagan, and which never having 
 tasted the pleasures of this world, knows 
 not their vanity, and labours passion 
 ately to possess itself of them. This is 
 not the paganism of the rich and idle, 
 but the terrible, hungry paganism of 
 the poor, raging like fierce beasts of 
 prey. Communism is paganism, anar 
 chism is paganism, latent paganism, 
 threatening to dissolve society in a mist 
 of blood and tears. 
 
 But we do not forget that our Epicu 
 rean is neither materialist nor pagan. 
 He loves money as the means of pro- 
 
72 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 curing almost everything in this world. 
 He loves pleasure in every form and 
 pursues it with the keenest zest, but a 
 large part of his pleasure consists in 
 contemplation, and his training has 
 generally been such that everything 
 brutal is revolting to him. It is just 
 here that we come across the peculiar 
 ity of the American type. For what 
 distinguishes American Epicureanism, 
 as well as many other American varie 
 ties, is the combination of vast scepti 
 cism with a strong habit of inherited 
 morality, not to say religion. Are we 
 not, indeed, as a nation a rather curious 
 spectacle of strong moral principles 
 which go back for their origin two or 
 three hundred years, crusted about a 
 body of theoretical or practical agnos 
 ticism with which they have nothing to 
 do ? Are not our churches apologetic, 
 our creeds hidden with a cloud of ex- 
 
THE AMERICAN EPICUREAN. 73 
 
 planation ? Are not our priests largely 
 occupied with the attempt to show 
 that our fathers did not believe what 
 every one knows they did believe, though 
 we do not ? At any rate, the American 
 Epicurean believes very little indeed, 
 though he has no desire to parade his 
 unbelief, partly because it would result 
 in his own discomfort, and partly be 
 cause he may come to believe a good 
 many things some day. At the same 
 time he has a habit of morals which 
 restrains him usually from any gross 
 fault, indiscretion, he would call it. 
 He looks upon a thief very much as 
 he looks upon a dog who steals a bone 
 from another clog, yet he feels the most 
 uncomfortable qualms of conscience 
 if he forgets to return a borrowed 
 umbrella. His theories of pleasure and 
 of virtue are those of a joyous and 
 Falstaffian debauchee ; but his air and 
 
74 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 manner are sometimes hard to dis 
 tinguish from those of a professor or 
 even of a saint. He looks with a mild 
 and contemptuous indifference on all 
 forms of government and political ques 
 tions ; yet he is oftentimes a useful and 
 occasionally an active citizen, in the 
 spirit of a French writer s excellent 
 paradox, // n y a que le sceptique pour 
 etre honnete homme et bon citoyen. In 
 short, it is because he is made up of so 
 many contrasts that he is so interesting. 
 But, you ask, where does the Epicu 
 reanism come in ? It is easy to under 
 stand the scepticism of the man you are 
 describing, but where are his pleasures ? 
 Has he really more of them than the 
 man of business ? Is not he, too, anx 
 ious, care-worn, incapacitated for enter 
 ing into the sweet of life ? Doubtless, 
 to a certain extent, he is. His enjoy 
 ment is very largely a matter of theory 
 
THE AMERICAN EPICUREAN. 75 
 
 instead of practice. Nor is it wholly 
 on moral grounds that he flees far away 
 from the disorders and tempestuous pas 
 sions of a worldly life. He remembers, 
 alas, he is too often reminded of that 
 sentence of Anatole France, which may 
 serve as a motto for so many Epicu 
 reans of to-day : "Je riai qu un seul 
 plaisir et je conviens qdil rfest pas 
 vif, c est la meditation: avec un mau- 
 vais estomac il den faut pas chercher 
 d autres" Yes, the American Epicu 
 rean must, and does for the most part, 
 content himself with the pleasures of 
 meditation : and perhaps they are, after 
 all, not so much inferior to others ; 
 they are certainly more enduring. 
 There is the delight of beauty, even 
 if one cannot create it for oneself, the 
 plastic arts, music, poetry. There is 
 the witchery of nature, always at hand, 
 always varied. Above all, there is the 
 
76 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 vast and shifting scene of human life. 
 As it was expressed for us three hun 
 dred years ago : " A mere spectator of 
 other men s fortunes and adventures, 
 and how they act their parts, which, me- 
 thinks, are diversely presented unto me 
 as from a common theatre or scene. I 
 hear new news every day, and those 
 ordinary rumors of war, plagues, fires, 
 inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, 
 meteors, comets, spectrums, prodigies, 
 apparitions, of towns taken, cities be 
 sieged in France, Germany, Turkey, Per 
 sia, Poland, etc., daily musters and prep 
 arations and such like, which these tem 
 pestuous times afford; battles fought, 
 so many men slain, monomachies, ship 
 wrecks, piracies, and sea-fights, peace, 
 leagues, stratagems, and fresh alarms. 
 . . . New books every day, pamphlets, 
 currantoes, stories, whole catalogues of 
 volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, 
 
THE AMERICAN EPICUREAN. 77 
 
 opinions, schisms, heresies, contro 
 versies in philosophy, religion, etc. 
 Now come tidings of weddings, mask- 
 ings, mummeries, entertainments, jubi 
 lees, embassies, tilts and tournaments, 
 trophies, triumphs, revels, sports, plays ; 
 then again, as in a new shifted scene, 
 treasons, cheating tricks, robberies, 
 enormous villainies in all kinds, funer 
 als, burials, deaths of princes, new dis 
 coveries, expeditions ; now comical, 
 now tragical matters. To-day we hear 
 of new lords and officers created, to 
 morrow of some great men deposed, 
 and then again of fresh honours con 
 ferred ; one is let loose, another im 
 prisoned ; one purchaseth, another 
 breaketh ; he thrives, his neighbour 
 turns bankrupt ; now plenty, then 
 again dearth and famine ; one runs, 
 another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps, 
 etc. Thus I daily hear and such like, 
 
78 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 both private and public news. Amidst 
 the gallantry and misery of the world : 
 jollity, pride, perplexities and cares, 
 simplicity and villainy ; subtlety, knav 
 ery, candour, and integrity, mutually 
 mixed and offering themselves, I rub 
 on, privus privatus." These are the 
 words of an intellectual Epicurean of a 
 former age. But I am going to repeat 
 to you what was said to me in confi 
 dence the other day by a friend, who is 
 an American Epicurean, and who, being 
 somewhat older than I, conceives that 
 he is privileged to lay down the law for 
 my benefit. 
 
 " My dear Sir," he said, " I have no 
 desire to preach to you, for I am too 
 inconsistent and wandering to have a 
 pretentious philosophy; but if you like 
 to profit by my experience, you may. 
 When I was your age, indeed, from the 
 time I began to think much about any- 
 
THE AMERICAN EPICUREAN. 79 
 
 thing, I had vast literary enthusiasms, 
 immense ambition; I adored beauty 
 with the idolatry of Keats, I consecrated 
 myself to the service of letters with the 
 passion of Flaubert, I was going to 
 write immortal works, poems, novels, 
 criticism ; I lived, in short, in a sort 
 of delirium. As a result of this, all 
 the ordinary pleasures of life became a 
 burden. The society of my friends, 
 the little distractions, the delightful 
 nothings, which pass away idle hours, 
 were only stumbling-blocks in the path 
 of my aspiration. I had so much to 
 read, so much to write, more than I 
 could ever possibly accomplish; and 
 all that tended to interfere with my 
 work, was an annoyance, however 
 charming in itself. Well, one day it 
 came over me, How foolish all this 
 is ; will any reputation or success ever 
 satisfy me? shall I not be always as 
 
So TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 far from the goal as now ; indeed, am I 
 not getting farther and farther from it, 
 since every book I read and every page 
 I write, opens the possibilities of read 
 ing and study infinitely wider than they 
 were before ? And this might not be so 
 bad if I had hopes of an endless fu 
 ture, of possibilities of accomplishing 
 and perfecting in afiother world what I 
 must leave imperfect here. But with 
 no such hope I am wasting the sweet 
 of life for nothing, toiling and labouring 
 to a barren and unprofitable end. You 
 will easily understand that I did not 
 begin to cry out in this fashion until 
 I found that the grapes hung too high 
 for me, that I had not the health, or 
 the courage, or the genius to succeed. 
 
 " Then I made up my mind that I had 
 had enough of it, that I would tamper 
 no further with vain hopes and futile 
 ambitions, that I would no longer live 
 
THE AMERICAN EPICUREAN. 8 1 
 
 in a prison-house of dull abstraction, 
 with nerves exasperated and brain out 
 worn, simply to pursue an unattainable 
 and vanishing ideal. I would live on 
 the good, solid, dusty earth and ask no 
 more. And here comes in the value 
 of my experience for you, young friend. 
 For no sooner had I taken this resolu 
 tion, no sooner had I abandoned hun 
 gry labour, fierce aspiration, the vain 
 struggle of impossible desires, when 
 the aspect of the world was changed, 
 as if by enchantment. I who had 
 railed before at the monotony and bit 
 terness of life, who had proclaimed my 
 pessimism from the housetops, declar 
 ing that the world was stale and old, 
 that no pretence of diversion could 
 relieve the tedium of the gray hours 
 rolling heavily rivie after another, I, 
 the prophet of ennui, suddenly dis 
 covered that the common existence of 
 
82 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 every day was but a succession of little 
 delights, coming often so thickly that 
 one is embarrassed to choose among 
 them. Those of my pursuits and oc 
 cupations which had before seemed 
 to me a trivial and frivolous waste of 
 time, now became an endless source 
 of amusement and pleasure. For 
 merly, when a friend dropped in for 
 an hour s chat, I was haunted by the 
 page I might have written, I fretted 
 and fumed over his leisurely depart 
 ure. Now I take a cigar with him 
 and a glass of wine, put my feet on 
 the table, and babble about the latest 
 novel and the taxes. I love books 
 as did Montaigne on the shelves, 
 and with the delightful feeling that I 
 can read them when I wish to, rarely 
 reading them. I us./, to think cards 
 a squandering of human life, and bil 
 liards a device of the devil whom, 
 
THE AMERICAN EPICUREAN. 83 
 
 you remember, I did not believe in. 
 Now I take a cue or a hand at whist 
 whenever I can find any one so idle 
 as myself. You, my friend, who know 
 nothing about these things and walk 
 through life simply blind, as I did, 
 cannot realize what a wealth of joy 
 in small change you are throwing 
 away. You cannot stop to look at a 
 sunset, because you must write a son 
 net on it. I thrust my hands in my 
 pockets and gaze till the last glow has 
 fled away and then turn to amuse 
 myself with something else. Like the 
 old mystic, 
 
 " On some gilded cloud or flower 
 My lingering soul would dwell an hour. 
 
 The laughter of children, what old Bur 
 ton found so amusing, the quarrelling 
 of bargemen, the nodding of a blossom 
 in the wind, the change of shadow and 
 
84 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 sunlight, the singing of a bird, the fall 
 ing of a star, the love of young men 
 and the folly of old ones, the smiles 
 and tears of women, fashions, freaks, 
 politics, philanthropy, temperance and 
 intemperance, the vanity of men s seri 
 ous pursuits, and the woful seriousness 
 of their vain ones, in all these things 
 there is infinite matter for more than 
 a May morning, if only one is not 
 tortured and broken by preoccupa 
 tions and cares that seal one s eyes 
 with lead. 
 
 "And the beauty of these lighter, 
 slighter pleasures is, that they are not 
 subject to disappointment. In this 
 endless round of small delights one 
 does not look forward to long, one 
 does not look backward to compare. 
 If one amusement fails, there are a 
 thousand others at hand ready to make 
 one forget it. In short, it is the old 
 
THE AMERICAN EPICUREAN. 85 
 
 parable of the children and the King 
 dom of Heaven. Take life as a child 
 takes its playthings. Enjoy each one, 
 and be ready to pass at a moment s 
 notice to another. And, above all 
 things, do not trouble about death. 
 That is another advantage of this dis 
 enchantment which brings a double 
 enchantment with it. If you are 
 struggling for a high ideal, if you 
 have a great work to accomplish, you 
 are in constant fear of death, of los 
 ing your object, of being cut off just 
 as you are about to attain. There is 
 but one thing that can hamper or 
 annoy you more in your efforts than 
 life, and that is death. Now, this 
 sweet Epicureanism that I am preach 
 ing to you, makes death all but an 
 indifferent matter. This endless round 
 of little interests and pleasures serves 
 very well to pass away the time, but 
 
86 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 you are willing enough to leave it. 
 That strange curiosity with which 
 death tickles us has full play, so that 
 even in the very midst of pleasures we 
 are as ready as mortality can be, to lift 
 the black curtain and step out into dim 
 night. Yes, my friend, take my word 
 for it, the Epicureanism I recommend 
 to you is the Epicureanism of Epicurus 
 and the true philosophy of life." 
 
 I listened respectfully, and said to 
 myself : " It may be, I suppose, an 
 excellent philosophy for him who has 
 no better." 
 
THE AMERICAN PHILAN 
 THROPIST. 
 
 VERY century," says Sainte- 
 Beuve, " has its hobby : that 
 of the nineteenth century is charity." 
 This does not mean that the various 
 moods and theories included under 
 that name were unknown before, but 
 that the nineteenth century has made 
 the most of them, has become absorbed 
 in them to a degree earlier periods 
 would have found it difficult to under 
 stand. Now anything peculiar to the 
 nineteenth century is likely to find its 
 fullest development in the United 
 States.^ We are people of our time, 
 stamped with its very form and pres 
 sure ; and we are not clogged and 
 87 
 
88 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 retarded, as Europe is, by old habits 
 and inherited traditions. 
 
 It is a laudable custom to attribute 
 everything good that has appeared in 
 
 / the world in the last eighteen hundred 
 years to the influence of Christianity 
 
 \ philanthropy included. Even those 
 who are not quite satisfied with this 
 method are at least obliged to admit 
 that every great spiritual movement 
 since the advent of Christianity is inti 
 mately connected with it. The most 
 attractive way of representing the mat 
 ter philosophically is to regard Chris 
 tianity as a vital element in the great 
 progress of the human race, at once 
 conditioning and conditioned by the 
 other elements that play about it. 
 Some people, however, deny the fact 
 of progress altogether. "We gain," 
 they say, " in one direction ; we lose in 
 another ; and humanity in its essential 
 
THE AMERICAN PHILANTHROPIST. 89 
 
 traits remains the same." This view 
 requires some distinctions. It is, in 
 deed, true that the basis of our nature, 
 the assertion of self, which has been 
 summed up in the reproductive instinct 
 and the instinct of self-preservation, 
 continues unchanged. As long as we 
 are animals, it is difficult to conceive 
 of anything else. But who can com 
 pare the world of to-day with the 
 world of the Jews or the world of the 
 Greeks and Romans and not say that 
 the intellectual progress has been 
 enormous? Any theory of evolution 
 necessarily implies such a progress \ 
 but mere empirical observation surely 
 proves it without regard to theory. 
 Now the moral nature of man involves 
 a combination of intellect with the 
 animal instincts ; therefore, as regards 
 morals, if there has not been progress, 
 there must at least have been change. 
 
90 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 Of course, it would be absurd to 
 deny that the elements of charity or 
 philanthropy existed in the world be 
 fore the nineteenth century, or, indeed, 
 as far back as we know anything of 
 history. How can we imagine a think 
 ing human being destitute of the im 
 pulse to give bread to the hungry and 
 to relieve the wretched from oppres 
 sion? The oldest literature abounds 
 in instances of such sympathy and ten 
 derness. There is not, however, much 
 evidence that the doctrine of human 
 brotherhood, of the solidarity of man 
 kind as such, was popular, or even 
 known, among the Greeks, for instance. 
 With the Romans it is something the 
 same ; but the vast extent of the 
 Roman Empire, the multitude of dif 
 ferent races living in harmony together 
 under that one sway, the toleration in 
 duced by this, did much to overcome 
 
THE AMERICAN PHILANTHROPIST. QI 
 
 the narrowness of ancient ideas of 
 nationality, to emphasize the value of 
 the individual human soul. Perhaps 
 no classical quotation is more famous 
 than the Homo sum : humani nil a 
 me alienum puto. The philosophers 
 of the Stoic School Seneca, Epictetus, 
 Marcus Aurelius exerted a great in 
 fluence in the same direction ; but 
 philosophers unfortunately do not think 
 much of those who are not philoso 
 phers good creatures, but so igno 
 rant ! Besides, how was it possible 
 for the brotherhood of man to make 
 headway in a nation whose whole 
 political system was based on slavery? 
 Here comes in the influence of 
 Christianity. The most superficial ex 
 amination of even traditional Chris 
 tianity must show that its fundamental 
 principle is the value of the human 
 soul as such. "To the poor the gos- 
 
92 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 pel is preached." "The last shall be 
 first, and the first last." "For I am 
 come not to call the righteous but 
 sinners to repentance." Here is no 
 distinction of class, no promise held 
 out to the great and noble only, no 
 salvation offered as a premium to 
 wealth or to superior intelligence. 
 "Blessed are they that mourn, for 
 they shall be comforted." At last 
 there shone upon the earth a light that 
 was to lighten spirits in darkness, and 
 to heal those who seemed beyond all 
 cure. 
 
 Well, Christianity, in spite of its 
 philanthropy and its democracy, got 
 along very comfortably with the des 
 potism of Rome and the despotism of 
 Constantinople, with the tyranny of the 
 Dark Ages, and the bigotry of mediae 
 val Catholicism. It may be said that 
 the teachings of Christ were abused 
 
THE AMERICAN PHILANTHROPIST. 93 
 
 rather than used by all these powers 
 of evil ; yet it seems strange enough 
 that such a tremendous influence 
 should not have produced a result 
 earlier, if its tendency was really in 
 the direction suggested above. The 
 explanation is simple enough. Chris 
 tianity did, indeed, teach the absolute 
 equality of all men, the perfect equiva 
 lence of one soul with another, whether 
 rich or poor, wise or unwise, but 
 and here is the point this equality 
 was not in relation to this world ; it 
 was in relation to another. It was the 
 application of this principle that at 
 once enabled the lower classes to bear 
 at all the terrible anarchy of the Dark 
 Ages and disposed them to bear it 
 patiently. For the peasant, who at 
 one blow saw house and family torn 
 away from him, there was at least the 
 consolation of feeling that all these 
 
94 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 woes would be soon drowned in the 
 light of a joy which was open to high 
 and low alike, and which would come 
 not to the oppressor, but to the op 
 pressed. On this account Christianity 
 may be regarded rather as at least 
 negatively the enemy of political 
 freedom and republicanism, of the 
 attempt to improve the condition of 
 humanity here on earth, than as the 
 friend of all these things. For these 
 things require a preoccupation with the 
 affairs of this world which is apt to 
 interfere very considerably with devo 
 tion to another. Whether justifiably 
 or not, the formula, "Render unto 
 Caesar the things which are Caesar s," 
 has been made and can be made to 
 support almost any kind of arbitrary 
 government. 
 
 Therefore, it is in a sense correct 
 to attribute the philanthropy of the 
 
THE AMERICAN PHILANTHROPIST. 95 
 
 nineteenth century to Christianity, in 
 another sense it is incorrect. The 
 true account of the genesis of that 
 mighty force is, I think, something 
 like this. After the feudal oppression 
 of the Dark Ages we come to the 
 Renaissance, the awakening of the 
 human spirit from its lethargy of a 
 thousand years. The merely animal 
 life in this world, brutal in its en- 
 joyment, stupid in its misery, the 
 earth-forgetting, transfiguring life in 
 the next world, began to give way to 
 a great reaction, which substituted for 
 the play of muscular force the applica 
 tion of intellect to all the varied inter 
 ests of human existence as we find 
 it on the green earth here about us. 
 The old Greek and Roman civiliza 
 tion reappeared, modified, deepened, 
 and enlarged by the influence of 
 Christianity. Freed from the bonds 
 
g6 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 of ecclesiastical slavery and political 
 anarchy, men gave themselves up in 
 ecstasy to taking possession of all the 
 new sources of joy offered them by the 
 present and the past. A great drama 
 in England, Spain, and France, a great 
 school of painting in Italy, gave vent to 
 the re-awakened creative imagination 
 which had fed upon Greek thought, 
 upon Christian feeling, above all, upon 
 Nature and human life, as they were 
 presented to human life then and 
 there. This gorgeous carnival lasted 
 longer in some countries than in oth 
 ers, but it lasted everywhere in its gen 
 eral effects through the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries down to the 
 eighteenth. Then there was a cool 
 ing off. The glow of imagination 
 faded a little, and reflection, coming 
 to look into things, found that the 
 world was not yet altogether perfect ; 
 
THE AMERICAN PHILANTHROPIST. 97 
 
 indeed, in many respects quite far from 
 it. It was evident that art and the charm 
 of society were very well for those who 
 could get them ; but there seemed to 
 be such a large portion of humanity 
 that never did get them, was, in fact, 
 quite as badly off as when these things 
 *were not heard of in the world at all. 
 
 Here we come to the dawn of 
 modern philanthropy. The theoretical 
 doctrines on the subject came from 
 %.ousseau and the philosophers of the 
 eighteenth century. Those philoso 
 phers were no friends to the Christian 
 Religion, and to give them all the 
 credit in the matter might seem like 
 disregarding the part of Christianity 
 altogether. The fact is, however, sim 
 ply this : Rousseau and his friends 
 took from the religion of Jesus the 
 essential principle of the equality of all 
 men, but as their eyes were fixed on 
 H 
 
98 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 this world rather than on the other, 
 they applied it to the affairs of this 
 world, as Christianity never had cared 
 to do. 
 
 With the eighteenth century, then, 
 the history of philanthropy begins, 
 that is, of the doctrine of the uni 
 versal brotherhood of man, of the 
 elevation of the race as a whole, oi 
 the sacred right of all men to certain 
 elementary privileges, of the duty and 
 pleasure of associating others with one s! 
 own joys, of associating oneself with 
 others suffering and misery. It is 
 impossible to separate this moral doc 
 trine from the political theories that 
 have resulted in universal suffrage; 
 and the best guarantee of the perma 
 nence of the political theories is the 
 impossibility of any return from the 
 moral standpoint. How can the civil 
 ized world ever go back to the idea 
 
THE AMERICAN PHILANTHROPIST. 99 
 
 that one class of men exists only for 
 the benefit of another? The theory 
 of political equality may prove very 
 difficult of application, so difficult that 
 a state of things quite opposed to this 
 theory may be brought about here 
 and there again and again. But noth 
 ing short of the complete extinction 
 of our present civilization can make 
 mankind forget the lesson it has been 
 so long in learning. 
 
 Other elements besides reasoning 
 do, however, enter into the doctrine 
 of human fellowship. The restless 
 imagination of the Renaissance set 
 itself at first to create innumerable 
 beings in the world of art, beings 
 that might afford an outlet for its 
 new tide of passionate emotion. But 
 after this resource was partially ex 
 hausted, or, more properly, after rest 
 lessness and curiosity had spread from 
 
100 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 the artists among those who had no 
 particular creative gift, a flood of 
 human sympathy began to pour over 
 the whole of animate and inanimate 
 nature. The mind, grown too vast, too 
 noble for any satisfaction that the 
 body, the life of the immediate indi 
 vidual, could afford it, longed to ex 
 tend its sphere of sensation, to feel 
 not only in its own limited range 
 but in the personality of others, nay, 
 in the vast and varying forms and 
 moods of nature. The literature of 
 the end of the eighteenth century and 
 the beginning of our own, the so- 
 called romantic movement, is a proof 
 of this. When had there ever been 
 before such an enthusiasm for reviv 
 ing the history and the life of the 
 past, when had there been such a 
 passion for the natural world, such a 
 wild ; strange longing for identification 
 
THE AMERICAN PHILANTHROPIST. IOI 
 
 with the life of life, for some escape 
 from the narrow, confining prison of 
 ourselves ? The Greeks had been con 
 tent with the calm and moderate en 
 joyments offered by social and national 
 existence. The men of the Renais 
 sance had thrown themselves feverishly 
 but yet joyously into the whirl of the 
 senses. But the Senancours, the Cha- 
 teaubriands, the Byrons, the Shelleys, 
 looked and longed for some satisfaction 
 not to be found here, some larger, 
 deeper grasp on being than is possible 
 with the limitations of our sensual 
 bodies. In the words of the pro- 
 foundest of them : " The jonquil or 
 the jessamine would be enough to tell 
 us that such as we are we might 
 sojourn in a better world." 
 
 The restlessness, the fever, of that 
 generation has passed away. A philo 
 sophical acceptance of limitations has 
 
102 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 spread more and more widely. The in 
 tellect, attempting no more to take the 
 senses with it in its wanderings, has 
 turned into the ways of science, has 
 schooled itself to understand nature 
 rather than feel it, to accept, since per 
 force it must, analysis instead of pas 
 sion, curiosity instead of sympathy. 
 Only the keen apprehension and com 
 prehension of other people s lives can 
 never be lost. We may not succeed 
 very well in entering into their pleas 
 ures ; but we are condemned, so long 
 as the world shall endure, to feel their 
 pain. 
 
 It is the combination of abstract 
 doctrines as to the rights of man with 
 this infinite sympathy, this acute sen 
 sibility, that makes philanthropy the 
 swift and mighty force it grows to be. 
 All of us, so many of us, at any rate, 
 say with Shelley : 
 
THE AMERICAN PHILANTHROPIST. 103 
 
 ;"Me who am as a nerve o er which do creep 
 The else unfelt oppressions of this earth." 
 
 We realize in our very bodies the 
 suffering of the poor and wretched, to 
 an extent beyond the conception of 
 a Greek, or Roman, or Elizabethan. 
 We are ready sometimes to cry in 
 despair with Se"nancour : " How can a 
 life be happy passed in the midst of 
 those who suffer?" Even the calmest 
 and sanest have at times an uneasiness, 
 almost a sense of guilt, when they find 
 themselves comfortable and well-off 
 with poverty and misery about them. 
 
 Nowhere, probably, is this tendency 
 so strong, nearly so strong, as it is in 
 America. In Europe, inherited dis 
 tinctions of class make certain differ 
 ences natural to the rich and tolerable 
 to the poor. Here we all feel that the 
 very theory of our government demands 
 equality, not only political but social; 
 
104 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 and the struggle to maintain it is pas 
 sionate. Another thing that makes 
 philanthropy a prominent feature of 
 our civilization, is the new and im 
 mense activity of women. The great 
 amount of practical energy brought 
 out in them by education, combined 
 with their natural sensibility and enthu 
 siasm, makes them leaders and guides 
 in all humanitarian movements. When 
 they do not take the control of things 
 into their own hands, they stand in 
 the background and urge on the men. 
 How many objects which men have 
 deemed hopeless have been attained 
 by the indomitable idealism, the tire 
 less persistence, of women ! 
 
 Certainly, the philosopher of three 
 hundred years ago would note among 
 us first of all the extraordinary number 
 of charitable societies, of private benev 
 olent institutions of all kinds. There 
 
THE AMERICAN PHILANTHROPIST. 105 
 
 is no end to them : missionary societies 
 abroad among all nations and among 
 all classes at home, temperance socie 
 ties, associated charities, societies for 
 the aid of men, of women, of chil 
 dren, soldiers, sailors, animals, socie 
 ties to protect the uncontaminated and 
 convert the corrupt, societies to do 
 anything and everything that the imag 
 ination of man or woman can in 
 vent, and his ingenuity execute. The 
 extension of this universal sympathy 
 beyond man, even to animals, is well 
 known, as are also the immense results 
 achieved in that direction. For the 
 logical extreme of this we must go to 
 the episode in the Light of Asia, where 
 Buddha is represented as offering his 
 life-blood to quench the thirst of an 
 exhausted tiger. The Occidental not 
 only shrinks from this ; his serene good- 
 sense teaches him to laugh at it. Nev- 
 
106 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 ertheless, it shows that philanthropy, or 
 rather self-renunciation, has its limita 
 tions, and perhaps is not such a uni 
 versal panacea as, like other hobbies, 
 it is sometimes assumed to be. 
 
 In short, no amount of sentiment 
 will cover up the fact that the principle 
 of absolute self-sacrifice is based on a 
 contradiction. The first instinct of the 
 human animal, like every other, is the 
 satisfaction of immediate desire, ap 
 petite, if you will. The development of 
 the intellectual faculties, however, soon 
 shows the insufficiency of any satisfac 
 tion appealing only to the senses. The 
 next step is to construct an ideal of 
 happiness beyond and outside of this 
 present world, which shall be attained 
 by the subdual and humiliation of 
 desire in this, by self-sacrifice and 
 even martyrdom. The enthusiasm of 
 primitive Christianity, of mediaeval 
 
THE AMERICAN PHILANTHROPIST. 107 
 
 Christianity, was based on such a 
 system. But a further process of de 
 velopment shows the insufficiency of 
 even this postponement of happiness, 
 and higher and more sensitive natures 
 begin to repudiate distinctly the idea 
 of buying a selfish bliss in the future 
 by self-sacrifice in the present. Good 
 must be done, not for gain, but for the 
 sake of doing it. We are here, as I 
 heard said the other day, to live for 
 others, to be useful to the world as a 
 whole ; when we cease to be so, we 
 have no right to live at all. After 
 traditional Christianity has been aban 
 doned, even after all definite belief in 
 dogmatic religion has faded away, we 
 find people making out of this devotion 
 to others a new religion, with the high- 
 sounding name of Altruism. It is said 
 that the child of a philosopher, hearing 
 one day much lecturing on this subject 
 
I08 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 of living for others, commented as 
 follows : " But, Papa, if everybody is 
 to live for others, who are the others?" 
 Out of the mouths of babes and suck- 
 ings 
 
 It must be kept in mind that the 
 principles of this religion are not those 
 of Christianity, though they may ac 
 cord with them in some points : the 
 Christian renounces self that he may 
 regain it more fully and freely, but 
 there is an immense difference between 
 this self-renunciation and self-annihila 
 tion. You become supremely indif 
 ferent to everything on earth, you be 
 come very misty about heaven; but 
 other people are less sceptical why 
 not give them all the happiness one 
 can? Nineteenth century philanthropy 
 is closely connected with a colossal 
 indifference, also peculiar to the nine 
 teenth century, a world-weariness, not 
 
THE AMERICAN PHILANTHROPIST. 1 09 
 
 passionate, not despairing, not blase", 
 but simply indifferent, which sums up 
 its philosophy in this direful phrase : 
 "The ideal of life is to be able to 
 have whatever you want and to want 
 nothing whatever." O, poor humanity, 
 which, seeing strewn before it the gray 
 ashes of burnt-out pleasures, deludes 
 itself a little longer by bustling about 
 to fan, if possible, the lingering coals 
 into a glow ! 
 
 Of course, neither this indifferentism 
 nor genuine ideal enthusiasm accounts 
 for all philanthropy. Self is not so 
 entirely dead among those who busy 
 themselves with the welfare of others. 
 We must allow something to the im 
 perative demand for activity that is born 
 in us, the constant and intense need of 
 applying our mental energy to one form 
 or another of the stolid resistance offered 
 by nature animate or inanimate. In the 
 
1 10 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 Middle Ages this restless force ex 
 pended itself in destruction. Those 
 who to-day are philanthropists and save 
 lives in the fourteenth century destroyed 
 them. Would not Hotspur have made 
 an admirable philanthropist, Hotspur, 
 " that kills me some six or seven dozen 
 of Scots at a breakfast, washes his 
 hands, and says to his wife : Fie upon 
 this quiet life ! I want work "? How 
 often one is disgusted with the egotism, 
 the arrogance, the pettiness of philan 
 thropists. With what righteous scorn 
 they affect to regard any one who goes 
 his own way quietly, peacefully, not 
 injuring the rest of mankind and not 
 over-anxious to destroy himself in their 
 service ! And what supreme confi 
 dence has the philanthropist in his 
 methods, what sovereign indifference 
 for the methods of nature ! After one 
 has suffered and suffered long under 
 
THE AMERICAN PHILANTHROPIST. Ill 
 
 this infliction, can there be balm more 
 delicious than Emerson s quiet sen 
 tence : " Nature will not have us fret 
 and fume. She does not like our 
 benevolence or our learning much bet 
 ter than she likes our frauds and wars. 
 When we come out of the caucus, or 
 bank, or the Abolition-convention, or 
 the Temperance-meeting, or the Tran 
 scendental club into the fields and 
 woods, she says to us, So hot? my 
 little Sir? " 
 
 The truth is, now that war is done 
 away with, at least for the time, our 
 civilization offers no sufficient equiva 
 lent. Trade that more systematic 
 but quite as pitiless struggle is too 
 slow, too barren of occasions for dis 
 tinction, too openly and evidently ego 
 tistical. War, though founded on hatred, 
 does breed a spirit of union for one 
 cause, does afford numberless oppor- 
 
112 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 tunities for heroism, for all the higher 
 and purer virtues of self-sacrifice. 
 Trade in itself fosters only one thing, 
 pure, cold, calculating selfishness, and 
 encourages a system of morality which 
 gains nothing whatever by comparison 
 with that of war. Indeed, it is curious 
 to notice how there has grown up side 
 by side with philanthropy and from the 
 same source a doctrine and method of 
 life entirely opposed to it, the most ex 
 treme and intense individualism. Men 
 are all equal : well, then let each one 
 take care of himself. Equal rights 
 imply equal ability to defend those 
 rights. Society is a mutual arrange 
 ment by which every man is enabled; 
 the most fully to struggle with every 
 other man for material advantages, not 
 a vast organization in which each per 
 son plays his subordinate part for the 
 benefit and happiness of the whole. 
 
THE AMERICAN PHILANTHROPIST. 113 
 
 There cannot be too much insistence 
 on the immense distinction between 
 republicanism as conceived by Plato, 
 for instance and democracy, between 
 the State as an ideal, organic principle, 
 and individualism, or in its logical ex 
 treme, anarchy. 
 
 Now in many cases philanthropy, 
 enthusiasm for benevolent objects, is 
 but a cover for this tendency to indi 
 vidualism, to colossal selfishness. Men 
 whose whole lives are spent in a pas 
 sionate struggle, their hand against 
 every man s, and every man s against 
 them, compound with conscience by 
 giving a thousand, or a great many 
 thousand dollars, or even what is more, 
 their time, to this or that missionary 
 society or charitable institution. It is 
 so much easier even to sell all one has 
 and give to the poor than to overcome 
 this lurking, poisoning, tempting, mas- 
 
114 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 tering devil, self. Money is so much 
 easier to give than love. But here we 
 have our Emerson again in a passage 
 that has been a puzzle and bewilder 
 ment to many a gentle and generous 
 soul: 
 
 " I tell thee, thou foolish philanthro 
 pist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, 
 the cent I give to such men as do not 
 belong to me and to whom I do not 
 belong. There is a class of persons 
 to whom by all spiritual affinity I am 
 bought and sold ; for them I will go to 
 prison if need be ; but your miscel 
 laneous popular charities ; the educa 
 tion at college of fools ; the building 
 of meeting-houses to the vain end to 
 which many now stand ; alms to sots, 
 and the thousand-fold Relief Societies ; 
 though I confess with shame I some 
 times succumb and give the dollar, 
 it is a wicked dollar, which by and 
 
THE AMERICAN PHILANTHROPIST. 115 
 
 by I shall have the manhood to with 
 hold." 
 
 In good truth there are times when 
 one grows infinitely weary of this cant, 
 which persists in taking the manner for 
 the matter, the letter for the spirit, the 
 hand for the heart. 
 
 Is there, then, nothing more to be 
 said? After such a cold analysis, is 
 there no palinode to be sung? It 
 seems almost a crime to sit idly in 
 one s study and dissect, perhaps falsely, 
 at any rate uselessly, the most real, the 
 most lasting, the most ennobling of all 
 the interests that make life beautiful or 
 even tolerable. It is not the great 
 movements that count, the noise, the 
 ostentatious self-sacrifices, the flaunting 
 self-conscious activity; it is the quiet 
 lives of daily renunciation and denial, 
 the lives that are passed in shadow, 
 devoted to soothing pain, to ending 
 
Il6 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 strife, to spreading love by sweet ex 
 ample, without reward, often uncon 
 sciously. Who can overlook it, or 
 resist it, or put it away from him ? we 
 are not men, but man. What you 
 have suffered I may suffer, do suffer; 
 what you enjoy, enjoy. Do we not all, 
 all come back to those words of Shelley, 
 
 " Me who am as a nerve o er which do creep 
 The else unfelt oppressions of this earth " ? 
 
 He whose nerves do not thrill and 
 throb and burn at the thought of 
 tyranny or injustice injustice of hu 
 manity or the still fiercer injustice of 
 circumstances is not a man, but a 
 machine, does not exist. When we 
 are away from home, faces indifferent 
 there, or even disagreeable, become 
 sweet and full of kinship. So must it 
 be for man with man in the wide, un 
 certain desert of this world. As ship- 
 
THE AMERICAN PHILANTHROPIST. 117 
 
 wrecked sailors, in their hour of calm 
 and prosperity separated by jarring 
 interests, by petty quarrels, are yet knit 
 together in one great terror before the 
 face of death ; so we, as we look at 
 our individual, earthly existences, feel 
 no connection, no sympathy ; but when 
 we turn and meet the invisible, the un 
 known in which these frail habitations, 
 our bodies, are swayed like a bubble in 
 the wind, we cling together mutely, 
 passionately, sustained by that love 
 alone in the dim gulf of an enormous 
 night. 
 
THE AMERICAN MAN OF 
 LETTERS. 
 
 IT is difficult to define the man of 
 letters. He is one who lives for 
 literature, and generally by literature, 
 who makes it a serious pursuit and no 
 pastime; not a specialist, though he 
 sometimes deals with specialties; nor 
 a scholar, though he is sometimes 
 deeply read in many things. If he 
 writes on philosophy or history, he 
 must have a sense of style, of dra 
 matic construction and effect. Plato 
 was a man of letters, but can one say 
 the same of Aristotle? Tacitus was, 
 and Gibbon; but one hesitates to 
 apply the name to Mommsen or to 
 the late E. A. Freeman. 
 118 
 
THE AMERICAN MAN OF LETTERS. 1 19 
 
 There are some poets who hardly 
 seem to be men of letters, singers 
 of spontaneous and flowing genius, 
 who write as they breathe, and have 
 apparently no consciousness of effort: 
 Shakspere, Chaucer, Byron, Scott even, 
 in spite of his enormous production 
 and the labour involved in it. Virgil, 
 on the other hand, Dante, Milton, 
 above all, Goethe, are men of letters 
 first, poets afterward. 
 
 I have named a classical and a me 
 diaeval writer. Such men as Lucian 
 or Erasmus have certainly much of the 
 modern man of letters about them. 
 Yet it is with the seventeenth century 
 only that the type fully develops its 
 qualities. Dryden is an admirable 
 example: ready to turn his hand to 
 anything, swift in production, easy in 
 manner, free from pedantry, yet accu 
 rate, and careful of pure diction; 
 
120 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 proud of his profession, not treating 
 it as a plaything, like Byron and 
 Scott, yet a man of the world, with 
 his eyes open to what went on about 
 him. And in France we have Vol 
 taire, to whom pedantry was of all 
 things most abhorrent, yet who never 
 let his pen dangle nor forgot his art. 
 The ideal man of letters stands half 
 way between the poet and the literary 
 hack: he envies the poet s divine 
 fire, but dreads his frenzy; he scorns 
 vulgarity and the hasty patching of 
 the penny-a-liner. 
 
 The journalist is not necessarily a 
 man of letters, but the growth of 
 journalism has made a great differ 
 ence in the literary career. Before 
 the days of periodical literature men 
 wrote for a small, cultivated class, 
 whose criticism was always more or 
 less intelligent; they had not the 
 
THE AMERICAN MAN OF LETTERS. 121 
 
 pressure of a yawning column wait 
 ing to be rilled This hurry of pub 
 lication suits some quick and active 
 minds, which work readily, perhaps 
 work best, under the spur; but it is 
 not favourable to long, silent, patient 
 labour on a masterpiece. It is so 
 easy now for the best writers to slip 
 into criticism, into facile, graceful 
 comment on the works of others! 
 The magazines are open, and pay 
 well; easy writing makes easy read 
 ing; the public prefer what they can 
 catch at an idle moment, in a car, 
 between two naps. Perhaps great 
 geniuses do not fall into this error, 
 but it is strange if they do not. At 
 any rate, we are flooded with books 
 well worth reading, full of talent, 
 which may not be slighted, yet ephe 
 meral, not only from haste of compo 
 sition, but from their exclusive appeal 
 
122 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 to the taste of the day. Take, in 
 French literature, for instance, Sainte- 
 Beuve, a man of the most original 
 genius, penetrating insight, grace and 
 poetry of style. He has been dead 
 twenty odd years, and how old-fash 
 ioned he seems beside the French 
 criticism of to-day! I do not mean 
 that MM. Brunetiere, Faguet, Le- 
 maitre, France, are his superiors in 
 knowledge or skill, but they are near 
 to us, and he is remote, as they 
 will be twenty-five years hence. 
 
 The modern man of letters espe 
 cially if we confine ourselves to the 
 poet, novelist, dramatist, or critic 
 is sorely tried by the need of decid 
 ing between two alternatives. On 
 the one hand he has before him the 
 literature of the past, a huge, silent 
 treasure-house, which he must explore 
 more or less, which he can never ran- 
 
THE AMERICAN MAN OF LETTERS. 123 
 
 sack thoroughly, which, if he has the 
 conscience of his art, perpetually 
 haunts him. On the other hand he 
 has the spectacle of life, life infi 
 nitely varied, as in the modern world 
 it is, in any world, the bewilder 
 ing beauty of colour and movement, 
 the endless play of human passions on 
 each other, the million new shapes in 
 which old traits appear, morals and 
 immorals, the one as interesting as 
 the other, and none of these things to 
 be neglected. He needs the books 
 to throw light on the world, he must 
 have the world to vivify the books. 
 How can he have both? The modern 
 literature of Germany amply shows the 
 lack of the one. And those very 
 French critics I have been speaking 
 of show the want of the other; for, 
 varied and charming as they are, one 
 does not find them very deep in in- 
 
124 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 tellectual matters. Even when they 
 are familiar with their own literature, 
 it is really astonishing to an Ameri 
 can to see how ignorant they are of 
 the literatures of other countries. 
 Yet in the nineteenth century, to 
 know one literature one must know 
 all. 
 
 The tendencies of modern literary 
 life in France are illustrated in an 
 interesting way in the Journal of the 
 brothers De Goncourt, whose inti 
 mate and long-continued collabora 
 tion is one of the most curious cases 
 of a curious phenomenon. They 
 were men who chose their course 
 early. The past had little interest 
 for them and was soon cast aside. 
 Except in one or two periods history 
 had no lessons for them. They 
 cared only to keep their eyes and 
 ears open to what went on about 
 
THE AMERICAN MAN OF LETTERS. 125 
 
 them, to rivet all their senses on 
 the subtle yet significant phases of 
 contemporary life. By this method 
 they succeeded in obtaining very 
 curious, in some respects very admir 
 able, results; but their narrowness 
 and lack of sympathy annoys one 
 constantly. 
 
 Another difficulty for the man of 
 letters: there has never before been 
 any such competition as he is obliged 
 to contend with to-day. It is easy 
 to say that good work will always 
 come to the front, that genius will 
 make its way. But there are different 
 kinds of good work. The public has 
 never been so composite as it is now. 
 Before the universal triumph of de 
 mocracy literature was controlled by 
 educated people. They may not 
 have done all the reading, but they 
 did all the deciding. If they pro- 
 
126 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 nounced anything good, the herd 
 took that or nothing at all. Now 
 every one is educated so that there 
 are no longer educated people. What 
 is of more importance, every one is 
 busy. Literary work, to reach per 
 manence, must fight its way through 
 the mob of weary men and women 
 who read to be amused in the easiest 
 and most superficial manner. It must 
 not only have abiding qualities of 
 originality and power; it must have 
 superficial attractions, which are not 
 always combined with such qualities. 
 In other words, the candidate for 
 literary honours has to compete not 
 only with genius but with mediocrity. 
 This must have been always the case 
 to a certain extent, but it is of the 
 greatest consequence to-day. The 
 career of a novelist like M. Georges 
 Ohnet in France illustrates what I 
 
THE AMERICAN MAN OF LETTERS. 127 
 
 mean. He is apparently an author 
 of great cleverness, with an easy grace 
 of manner, and a faculty of writing 
 to please the average man because 
 he resembles him. Well, his success 
 has been enormous. He sells not 
 only editions, but tens of editions 
 with perfect ease, and it is amusing 
 to watch the wrath and scorn of the 
 French critics to whom it falls to 
 judge him. Possibly names of the 
 same kind might be picked out for 
 England and America. 
 
 One great advantage that medi 
 ocrity has in this race is fertility of 
 production. This is not always 
 denied to genius, as we see in the 
 cases of Scott and George Sand, 
 though it is to be wished that even 
 they had yielded a little less to the 
 pressure of popularity. But evidently 
 fertility is not a necessary element 
 
128 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 of great literary power, and to write 
 hurriedly is certainly not the best 
 way to write well. Now, writers like 
 M. Georges Ohnet, and many others, 
 whom I need not name, can produce 
 their literary wares, such as they are, 
 as readily as they breathe. The limit 
 to their work is set only by their in 
 dustry and their physical strength. 
 Conscientious, thoughtful, painstak 
 ing writers can not for a moment com 
 pete with them. 
 
 Imagine a young man who begins 
 with a determination to make litera 
 ture a profession, the business of his 
 life. He has high ideals, original 
 views of things. He has prepared 
 himself by careful study of great 
 thinkers and great masters of style, 
 and he is ready to study much more, 
 to make his work solid and worthy of 
 a place among the books he worships. 
 
THE AMERICAN MAN OF LETTERS. 129 
 
 He says to himself : " I will not trifle 
 with what is ephemeral. I will not 
 condescend to cheap work, hack work, 
 hasty work. I will not degrade my 
 genius, if I have one, by that of which 
 I should hereafter be ashamed." 
 What is such a man to do? If he is 
 poor and must earn his living, his 
 position is worst of all. But even 
 suppose him so situated that this is 
 not absolutely necessary. He must 
 get his name before the public and 
 keep it there. Thoughtful, serious 
 criticism will not do this for him. 
 Even fiction will not do it, unless he 
 has some special rattle for the public 
 imbecility. Poetry, if it were com 
 posed by all the nine Muses together, 
 would never reach the light of day. 
 I remember seeing it stated not long 
 ago, and I have no doubt correctly, 
 that there is not a publisher in Amer- 
 K 
 
130 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 ica who will take any risk with poetry 
 by an unknown author. Perhaps this 
 has been always more or less true. 
 Certain kinds of literature have never 
 had an extensive sale when first pro 
 duced; but supposing the sale of 
 them to have been in times past no 
 larger than it is to-day, and very 
 likely it was not so large, the damn 
 ing fact is that they are choked at 
 once by the enormous mass of more 
 popular work put in competition with 
 them. It may be that the wheat has 
 never prospered more abundantly than 
 now, but the crop of tares has in 
 creased a million fold. 
 
 Our young author, therefore, yields 
 to the temptation to sow tares of his 
 own, thinking that, just as people 
 plant quick-springing grain to protect 
 their lawns, and then get rid of it 
 afterwards, so he can bring forward 
 
THE AMERICAN MAN OF LETTERS. 13! 
 
 his good matter under cover of his 
 trash, and with years transform him 
 self from a jack-of-all-trades to a 
 passed master in the highest province 
 of art. It may happen so sometimes. 
 More frequently the man who thus 
 sets out falls more and more under 
 the rod of public tyranny. If he suc 
 ceeds in a popular line, it is hard to 
 give it up. If he fails, he is tied to 
 the wheel indefinitely. In any case, 
 he awakes some day to find his style 
 disfigured and corrupted, his ideas 
 scattered and deformed, his confi 
 dence in human nature wofully 
 shaken, his great literary ideal faded 
 and vanished, he knows not where. 
 
 But suppose he avoids this danger, 
 and, instead of putting on the yoke, 
 chooses an eremitic or Bohemian 
 wretchedness, with only his ideal to 
 adore. Suppose he avoids the mam- 
 
132 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 mon of popularity and closets him 
 self with some great work, which, 
 once published, shall bring him fame 
 and riches and everything that is 
 desirable. In the first place, a great 
 work carried on under these con 
 ditions is apt to come to nothing. 
 Without the spur of definite hope, a 
 man in such a case procrastinates 
 until the ideal of success seems so 
 far off that he prefers to nurse it for 
 itself rather than risk the loss of it 
 altogether. Even if he perseveres, 
 overcomes poverty and sickness and 
 heart-sickness by indomitable will, 
 makes his work his pleasure and shuns 
 everything that does not tend to for 
 ward it and perfect it, well, are the 
 chances great that he will ever get it 
 before the world, or that, when he has 
 dragged it from publisher to pub 
 lisher, and at last found a reluctant 
 
THE AMERICAN MAN OF LETTERS. 133 
 
 acceptance, he will ever get more for 
 it than scanty praise and scantier 
 pence? Of course, this "mute, in 
 glorious Milton" sort of thing is gen 
 erally rejected; people say that really 
 inspired production is always recog 
 nized. Perhaps it is; but how do 
 they know it? 
 
 The truth is, the uncertain fortunes 
 of literary work are a melancholy fact. 
 Not to mention the shifting fame of 
 even Dante or Shakspere, take Shel 
 ley, who paid for the publication of 
 his own poems, take these same De 
 Goncourts I mentioned above, who 
 also paid for the publication of their 
 earlier novels, and who afterwards 
 stood among the first writers of the 
 school. Perhaps one ought not to say 
 that everything refused by publishers 
 is good, but one may safely infer that 
 much is so. Not that they can be 
 
134 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 blamed. Plenty of people to-day 
 speak with enthusiasm of David 
 Grieve ; yet there are also plenty of 
 critics who, if one judges by their 
 tone, would not accept it offered 
 them by an unknown writer. 
 
 There are chances in all these 
 things. Flaubert worked years over 
 Madame Bovary, putting into it al 
 most incredible labour and care. It 
 had an enormous success. Neverthe 
 less, in the De Goncourts Journal we 
 find him complaining bitterly that 
 what made Madame Bovary succeed 
 was its cote vaudeville, that is its hav 
 ing what the French commonly call a 
 success of scandal. Indeed, no one 
 could for a moment imagine that 
 either La Tentation de Saint Antoine, 
 Salammbo, or L> Education Senti- 
 mentale would have made any im 
 pression on the public, if Madame 
 Bovary had not preceded them. 
 
THE AMERICAN MAN Ol LETTERS. 135 
 
 Those who do not mind the harsh 
 and monotonous pessimism of Leo- 
 pardi will find in his essay called 
 // Parini ovvero Delia Gloria a vigo 
 rous and passionate statement of the 
 difficulties with which the modern 
 man of letters has to contend. Leo- 
 pardi himself failed in the struggle 
 with them, or at least he could not 
 overcome them during his lifetime; 
 and what he thought of posthumous 
 reputation the reader will learn from 
 the essay referred to above. 
 
 What I have said thus far is gene 
 ral, and does not especially bear on 
 American conditions. One or two 
 things make the position of the Amer 
 ican man of letters quite different 
 from that of his French or English 
 brother. In the first place, though 
 it takes courage to say so, our pub 
 lic is more ignorant. That is easily 
 
136 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 explained. The public here includes 
 a far greater part of the population 
 than in European countries. Such 
 magazines as Harper s and The Cen 
 tury are read by every one. They 
 must therefore contain matter that 
 every one can read. I have heard 
 that the editor of a magazine more 
 literary in character than either Har 
 per s or The Century aims to take 
 nothing which will not be alike intel 
 ligible to his butcher and to a college 
 professor. The taste of one may be 
 as good as that of the other, but it 
 is something of a strain to have to 
 address oneself to both. The late 
 James Russell Lowell is credited with 
 saying that we were "the most com 
 mon-schooled and the least educated 
 people in the world." I doubt 
 whether that is true. But it is prob 
 able that education, taken in the 
 
THE AMERICAN MAN OF LETTERS. 137 
 
 sense not of common-schooling nor 
 of mere scholarship, but of thought 
 ful, trained knowledge of human life 
 based on a familiar acquaintance with 
 both the past and the present, never 
 had less influence over the fortunes of 
 literature, at any rate, and perhaps of 
 some other things, than it has in the 
 United States to-day. With this con 
 dition of affairs the American man of 
 letters has to contend. Well is it for 
 him, if he succeeds, as Lowell in a 
 measure did, in combining a talent for 
 catching the ear of the great, indolent, 
 capricious public with solid learning, 
 original thought, and literary charm. 
 Without the first of these requisites he 
 will give up his pursuit in disgust, or 
 he will struggle vainly, wearily, and 
 wreck at last, unhonoured and un 
 known. 
 
 Another difficulty the American 
 
138 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 man of letters has to overcome. He 
 has no literature behind him. It is 
 hardly possible for one who has not 
 given himself to a literary life to im 
 agine what this means. The French 
 or English historian, critic, novelist, 
 poet, has an immense past from which 
 he can draw matter sure to be inter 
 esting to his public, sure to command 
 a certain amount of sympathy from 
 its very nature. A critic like Sainte- 
 Beuve and, indeed, like most of 
 those of contemporary France may 
 bury himself entirely in French liter 
 ature, may know little or nothing of 
 the literature of other countries, and 
 have by that very fact a better claim 
 on the attention of his public. The 
 same is true of models as of matter. 
 A Frenchman or Englishman has 
 behind him the great masters of his 
 own literature, the study of whom is 
 
THE AMERICAN MAN OF LETTERS. 139 
 
 connected with all the circumstances 
 of his own intellectual development. 
 Every reminiscence of them is sure 
 to be familiar and acceptable to his 
 readers. Every association with 
 them gives an added charm to any 
 work of his own. 
 
 It will be said that we have at any 
 rate two hundred years of history 
 behind us. It is very true, and of 
 late excellent use has been made of 
 it. But if we take out two or three 
 wars, some of those not the most ex 
 citing ever heard of, no one will, I 
 think, maintain that our past is pict 
 uresque when compared with that of 
 Europe in the last two centuries; nor 
 has there been till very recently the 
 variety of manners or the movement 
 of life which is absolutely essential to 
 literary work intended to interest the 
 general public. 
 
140 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 For models, however, we are much 
 worse off than for historical material. 
 Irving and Cooper, Prescott and Mot 
 ley, are excellent writers, no doubt; 
 but there are not many more like 
 them, and no one will, I think, place 
 them with Shakspere or Voltaire. 
 We usually think of the literature of 
 England as belonging to us also; but 
 any one who has tried it knows how 
 hard it is to keep up this fiction, how 
 jealous people are inclined to be of 
 what is English, how far away from us 
 English manners and interests are, 
 while they are growing more distant 
 every day. 
 
 There ought to be some advantages 
 in not being hampered by a tradition 
 inherited from the past. If we have 
 no models to work from, we should in 
 all fairness have no standards to be 
 judged by. This is not, I think, 
 
THE AMERICAN MAN OF LETTERS. 14! 
 
 practically the case. A great part of 
 our literature consists of imitations 
 of old-world celebrities. And the 
 new schools which struggle after origi 
 nality are apt to show a painful effort 
 in the pursuit of it. Whitman, for 
 instance, is a man of genuine power; 
 yet it is hard to tell whether he is 
 more affected in his departure from 
 recognized standards or in his uncon 
 scious reproduction of them. 
 
 It will be asked why any one goes 
 into literature at all, when the pros 
 pect is so unattractive. But the 
 answers there are a number of them 
 are ready. In the first place, the 
 literary life is supposed by the out 
 sider to be an easy life. It is not an 
 easy life, but people are tempted into 
 it on that supposition. It is a com 
 paratively free life. That is, you 
 must work all the time, but you need 
 
142 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 work only when you wish to, if the 
 paradox be permissible. At any rate, 
 you have no one in authority over 
 you. 
 
 It is a life that requires no training, 
 or at least on this point also many 
 are misled by the popular idea of it. 
 It is certainly a lottery in which the 
 prizes are very great, and in which 
 they may and do fall where they are 
 least expected, if not least deserved. 
 In the other arts one never succeeds 
 without prolonged and patient effort. 
 In literature cases have been known 
 where great success attended the first 
 attempt. Most of us have a good 
 opinion of our own powers before we 
 have tried them. Why should not we 
 startle the world as well as others? 
 
 Great is the love of reputation. It 
 is agreeable to be bowed down to, and 
 in this country especially, a small 
 
THE AMERICAN MAN OF LETTERS. 143 
 
 amount of literary distinction goes 
 a great way. The popular corres 
 pondent of a newspaper, who very 
 possibly cannot spell, gets much more 
 incense than the author of a treatise 
 on philosophy. And where reputa 
 tion, numerical glory, is the object, 
 with whom is it not an object of 
 greater or less account? what more 
 dazzling ideal could be proposed 
 than literary success in the United 
 States. A public quantitatively so 
 great was never addressed by an 
 author before. A novelist, a novelist 
 who attains notoriety, can, I sup 
 pose, count on millions of readers. 
 Compared with the successes of two 
 hundred years ago, it really seems 
 like writing for posterity in your own 
 day. 
 
 Naturally, then, a good many men, 
 and a good many women, go into lit- 
 
144 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 erature, and as they go into it with 
 their eyes open, perhaps they deserve 
 no pity when they fail. Still, some 
 of them cherish the amiable delusion 
 that they are giving their lives to 
 benefit the human race, and one can 
 not refuse them a certain amount of 
 sympathy. Indeed, in so far as they 
 keep this ideal before them, they are 
 surely worthy of all respect and admi 
 ration. The man who refuses to sac 
 rifice his literary conscience, who 
 refuses to bow down before the altar 
 of cheap sensationalism, trivial gos 
 sip, machine politics, who does these 
 things not only from perhaps fantastic 
 notions about the service of art for 
 art, but from a sense of personal 
 dignity and self-respect, that man, 
 whether successful or unsuccessful, 
 deserves all honour, more than in 
 many instances he gets. He is the 
 
THE AMERICAN MAN OF LETTERS. 145 
 
 ideal American man of letters, and I 
 might have dwelt more fully on him. 
 His office is, or should be, a most im 
 portant one, and he must strive with 
 all the power in him to make it so. 
 
 One writer we have had who took 
 this position in an almost ideal way; 
 I mean Emerson. Emerson was not, 
 indeed, a man of letters in the nar 
 rowest sense. He was more than that. 
 He was a prophet, a sage, an inspirer 
 of other men, who used literature, 
 sometimes a little impatiently, as an 
 imperfect instrument for imparting 
 the truths he felt himself destined to 
 convey. But he had many qualities 
 the man of letters would do well to 
 imitate. He was essentially a mod 
 em man. He was familiar with the 
 past and loved many things about it; 
 but he was "up to the times" in the 
 fullest sense, in science, in theology, 
 L 
 
146 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 in politics. He looked forward and 
 not back; it cannot be too often em 
 phasized. Besides this, he was a 
 lover of truth and had his eyes open 
 to seek it. In this he recalls another 
 great writer, who from some points of 
 view may serve as the model man of 
 letters, Goethe. He it was who wrote 
 that sentence which should be the 
 motto one of the mottoes of every 
 one who devotes himself to a literary 
 life : " Wahrheitsliebe zeigt sich darin, 
 dass man uberall das Gute zu finden 
 und zu schatzen weiss" Love of 
 truth, hatred of insincerity and sham, 
 whether it means courting vulgar 
 tastes or shouting party watchwords, 
 openness, sympathy, these are, above 
 all, what the man of letters should cul 
 tivate in this or in any other country. 
 But here, where, in the uncertain state 
 of creeds and churches, he becomes a 
 
THE AMERICAN MAN OF LETTERS. 147 
 
 sort of guide, priest almost, he should 
 seek these things with all his heart and 
 soul, at the same time with a clear, 
 though somewhat melancholy, con 
 sciousness that other things will not 
 be added unto him. 
 
 I often ask myself probably many 
 others do likewise what will be the 
 first really great original literary devel 
 opment of this country. I suppose no 
 one will claim that we have, as yet, 
 done anything worthy of our name and 
 position in history. We have had 
 many good authors here and there, but 
 none of the first calibre or scope. 
 Will the coming writer be a novelist? 
 Certain things seem to indicate that 
 the novel, at least in the ordinary 
 form, has for the present had its day. 
 Genius can do anything, but it is dif 
 ficult for common minds to see how 
 any new departure in the way of 
 
148 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 a novel is possible. And it is safe 
 to predict now that the coming 
 writer will not be in the closest sense 
 a realist, if anybody can say what 
 that sense is. 
 
 Will there be a grand revival of the 
 drama? It is difficult to imagine. In 
 spite of some signs of improvement on 
 the American stage, the conditions are 
 unpromising. The supremacy of the 
 "common-schooled" is felt far more 
 in the theatre than in the publishing 
 house. More than that, the theatre 
 would seem to demand a metropolis 
 for its successful development. It is 
 essentially dependent upon a local 
 atmosphere. Plays intended for a 
 dozen capitals cannot take hold like 
 those written for Paris. It is also 
 argued that stage-settings are killing 
 the drama. About that there may be 
 more question. But it cannot be de- 
 
THE AMERICAN MAN OF LETTERS. 149 
 
 nied that there exists a separation 
 between actors and managers on the 
 one hand and the literary class on 
 the other, which makes a truly literary 
 drama seem almost hopeless. 
 
 Well and poetry? Some people 
 think poetry has disappeared from the 
 world forever. I am not of that num 
 ber. The enjoyment of metrical form, 
 and the peculiar excitement of style 
 that goes with it, do seem at a low 
 ebb among our practical countrymen. 
 But it has been so before. It was so 
 in the dark ages, when the world was 
 barbarous; it was so in the later 
 Roman age, when the world was bar 
 barous from over-civilization, as it 
 is now. But there comes a Renais 
 sance for all these things. The Muses 
 are, perhaps, the only deities who do 
 not at length abandon the children of 
 men. 
 
I5O TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 Yet it is not poetry that most often 
 suggests itself to me as the regenerator 
 of our literary reputation. I cannot 
 but think that the form of art which 
 would at once be most akin to certain 
 feelings of our people, and would also 
 be compatible with the demands of 
 literary excellence, would be some 
 great work of humour, of laughter. 
 We are too serious, we take ourselves 
 too seriously, our vices and our virtues 
 too seriously, life too seriously. The 
 defect of such a writer as Whitman is 
 that he cannot see in how many re 
 spects he is an enormous joke. We 
 have had humourists, it is true. I am 
 not sure but that their writings form 
 to-day the most original and charac 
 teristic literature we have; which is 
 not very creditable to us, for they are 
 extremely vulgar and extremely super 
 ficial, whereas the truly great literary 
 
THE AMERICAN MAN OF LETTERS. 151 
 
 humourist is free from all vulgarity 
 and profoundly deep. But some day, 
 before many years, he may be among 
 us now, there will come a true son 
 of Aristophanes and Rabelais and Cer 
 vantes, who will prick the bubble of 
 our vast self-satisfaction, without 
 bitterness, without harshness, with 
 none of the cynical satire of the 
 French pessimistic school. His first 
 principle will be laughter, but his 
 second will be love; and he will show 
 that we must take this good world as , 
 we find it, not complain because it is 
 not better, nor wear all the joy out of 
 ourselves trying to make it better. 
 He will ridicule a great many things : 
 politics, and patent medicines, and 
 temperance societies, and woman s 
 rights, and reform generally. He will 
 tread on a great many people s toes, 
 and turn the world upside down, and 
 
152 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 make us see the great glories of this 
 bustling age insignificant and jumbled 
 together like the glass in a kaleido 
 scope. He will spare no one, yet 
 every one will love him, because he 
 will be lovable, which is, after all, the 
 best reason for loving in the world. 
 And I should advise him to inscribe 
 on his title-page these charming 
 verses, which I borrow from M. Ana- 
 tole France, who has himself borrowed 
 them from I know not where, 
 
 " Les petites marionettes 
 Font, font, font 
 Trois petits tours 
 Et puis s en vont." 
 
THE AMERICAN OUT OF 
 DOORS. 
 
 WE are too prone to look at 
 modern life as cut off from 
 the past by a great gulf : it is so much 
 more important to us. A Greek, a 
 mediaeval Italian, seems spectral, im 
 possible. We cannot realize that 
 Athenians and Florentines loved and 
 hated, bought and sold, jested, wept, 
 talked scandal, suffered and died, 
 quite as men do nowadays. The 
 world is so old and yet so new. 
 These same commonplaces I am writ 
 ing have been written so many times 
 before and seemed just as common 
 place. Yet we forget them. 
 
154 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 Notwithstanding, certain differ 
 ences, marked differences, do sepa 
 rate the nineteenth century from the 
 past. Great forces have worked to 
 mould our civilization, some of them 
 external and material, yet even these 
 reacting on the internal and spiritual, 
 as the external, to a greater or less 
 degree, always must. To go some 
 way back, there is printing, a force 
 that made itself felt long ago; but the 
 development of printing in the daily 
 press is something absolutely modern, 
 and who can estimate its importance? 
 Then there is democracy, closely con 
 nected with the preceding; the belief 
 that the numerical majority of man 
 kind is not only entitled to equal 
 consideration by government, but 
 competent to control that govern 
 ment, almost, if not quite, directly. 
 Again, we have the great mechanical 
 
THE AMERICAN OUT OF DOORS. 155 
 
 discoveries, which fall within the last 
 hundred years: steam, the breaker- 
 down of barriers, the annihilator of 
 nationality, the agent that has tripled 
 man s control of nature and drawn 
 tighter the girdle of the world; elec 
 tricity, which already regards tele 
 graph and telephone as trifles, and 
 looks forward to producing in another 
 century a locomotive power that will 
 make us cast steam into a corner, 
 forgotten. 
 
 There are spiritual influences, too, 
 subtler and harder to investigate, 
 which may be considered either as 
 cause or as effect. For instance, 
 there is the extraordinary develop 
 ment of music, which in the modern 
 sense can scarcely be said to be three 
 hundred years old: music, so differ 
 ent from all the other arts in its com 
 bination of sensuous appeal with 
 
156 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 supersensual suggestion; so quick to 
 profit by mechanics, yet so far above 
 them; so capable of expressing all 
 moods and all passions; so various 
 in its methods and styles; in a word, 
 so pre-eminently modern. Another 
 influence, quite as modern and even 
 more powerful, is the love of nature. 
 Perhaps I should say, the scientific 
 study and comprehension of nature. 
 Neither expression by itself is suffi 
 cient. 
 
 All literature and history prove 
 that the character of a people is 
 largely modified by the topography 
 of the region it inhabits; and the 
 extremes to which a theory based on 
 this is carried by Taine and critics 
 of his school are well known. Most 
 nations have been conscious of the 
 part thus taken by their surroundings 
 in their moral development, and have 
 
THE AMERICAN OUT OF DOORS. 157 
 
 recognized it in one way or another. 
 This is, however, quite different from 
 scientific study. Observation, the 
 patient search after facts, seems to 
 be a late fruit of civilization, a fruit 
 that was very long in ripening. 
 Socrates, at least in Xenophon s re 
 port of him, anticipated Pope in pro 
 claiming that "the proper study of 
 mankind is man." Aristotle, with 
 his immense curiosity, discovered and 
 recorded many things; but the natural 
 history of the ancients is largely fabu 
 lous and a priori, as in the elaborate 
 work of Pliny; and the mass of de 
 duction and hearsay transmitted by 
 that industrious personage influenced 
 the science of the Middle Ages to an 
 astonishing degree. Those who are 
 familiar with Elizabethan writers are 
 well aware of this. The extravagant 
 zoology and botany which formed an 
 
158 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 important element in the style of 
 Lyly and the Euphuists have been 
 frequently ridiculed. Even Shaks- 
 pere is by no means free, as in his 
 
 " Sweet are the uses of adversity, 
 Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, 
 Wears yet a precious jewel in his head." 
 
 But patient scientific study had not 
 been wanting in the Renaissance, 
 amid all the riot of the imagination. 
 The great voyagers and explorers, 
 although they brought home new fic 
 tions of their own, yet destroyed many 
 of the old. Copernicus had revolu 
 tionized astronomy, and even among 
 the Elizabethans his discoveries were 
 beginning to have their effect on the 
 literary world. Bacon laid the foun 
 dation of modern scientific methods, 
 and the temper developed rapidly, as 
 we see in Browne s book on Vulgar 
 
THE AMERICAN OUT OF DOORS. 159 
 
 Errors, which admits some extraordi 
 nary conclusions, but shows a true 
 spirit of curiosity, of critical research, 
 and of respect, at least, for thorough 
 experiment. 
 
 In the eighteenth century such a 
 spirit spread everywhere, as reason 
 began to supplant imagination, and 
 poetry to give way to prose. The 
 eighteenth century was, however, too 
 busy with political and social prob 
 lems to concern itself seriously with 
 great scientific movements. Philoso 
 phy and political economy, the study 
 of man, took precedence of the study 
 of nature. With the nineteenth cen 
 tury the latter pursuit finally asserted 
 itself. The great mechanical inven 
 tions and practical applications of 
 science increased the facilities for 
 theoretical investigation, and made it 
 more attractive. The theories elabo- 
 
l6o TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 rated by Darwin were, as is well 
 known, in the air some time before 
 he formulated them. He is but the 
 representative of his age, at least in 
 that direction; nor would it be pos 
 sible to find a better example of the 
 ideal scientist than he. Patient, 
 spending years in the accumulation 
 of facts, never hastening, never fret 
 ting, putting results as far as possible 
 out of sight that they may not tempt 
 him from severe and unprejudiced 
 investigation, working for no end of 
 practical utility, and for fame only 
 carelessly and as a secondary object, 
 such a man personifies the best that 
 nature has to teach us. We learn 
 from him respect for details that 
 seem insignificant; we learn not to 
 jump at conclusions; we learn once 
 more the lesson alas, so often for 
 gotten of Newton, "picking up a 
 
THE AMERICAN OUT OF DOORS. l6l 
 
 shell here and there on the beach, 
 while the vast ocean of truth lay open 
 before him." Darwin is perhaps too 
 favourable an example of the natural 
 ist s modesty and simplicity, but 
 familiarity with nature appears to 
 breed these qualities more than some 
 studies peculiarly associated with 
 man. 
 
 What could be more important than 
 the change produced in our view of 
 the external world by the theories 
 which are generally connected with 
 Darwin s name? A French critic 
 writes: "Is it preposterous to say 
 that posterity will draw a line, a deep 
 line, in the history of human thought, 
 between the men who lived before and 
 those who lived after Darwin? It is 
 somewhat as the change that was for 
 merly brought about by the discovery 
 of America and of Copernican cos- 
 
 M 
 
1 62 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 mology." Whether this feeling be 
 true or false, it would be foolish to 
 deny the immense hold it has taken 
 on men s minds. We may not for 
 mally accept the principle of evolu 
 tion, but we are all of us inclined to 
 put man in a very different position 
 in nature from the one he occupied a 
 hundred years ago. He is no longer 
 a little god, with the rest of the uni 
 verse prostrate at his feet, but takes 
 his place among other beings, an 
 essential element, the most essen 
 tial, possibly, but still only an element 
 in the vast play of the organic and in 
 organic world. Nor is this view con 
 trary to philosophy as distinguished 
 from science, though the conclusion 
 may be reached along a different line. 
 To the Hegelian, as to the Darwinian, 
 man has ceased to be cut off and dis 
 sociated from nature; she has no 
 
THE AMERICAN OUT OF DOORS. 163 
 
 reality but in him, yet neither has he 
 reality but in her. It is evident that 
 to a man who has accepted these doc 
 trines the external world assumes a 
 new aspect : it is no longer something 
 indifferent, or an enemy to be kept 
 under and controlled; it is an inex 
 haustible store of facts, each bound 
 up with others and bearing upon 
 them, each pregnant with its own 
 teaching, and perhaps with a lesson 
 that no man can afford to overlook 
 or neglect. 
 
 I believe this new growth of inter 
 est in nature is nowhere so wide 
 spread as among the people of the 
 United States. The Teutonic and 
 Keltic races seem to take to it more 
 readily than the Latin, and even than 
 the Greek. Greek poetry is full of 
 allusions to natural objects, but these 
 are almost always referred to in illus- 
 
164 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 tration of human passions. The gift 
 of painting in clear lines and with 
 imaginative feeling, as we see it, for 
 instance, in Theocritus, which is 
 characteristic of the divine Greek 
 genius in everything, must not be 
 confused with the love of descrip 
 tion which has become conspicuous 
 in modern literature. Occasional 
 touches of outdoor life with an ex 
 quisite charm are to be found in 
 Lucretius, in Catullus, in Virgil; but 
 here, too, everything is subordinated 
 to man. It has been observed that 
 to the Romans Switzerland was merely 
 desolate and repulsive, which is 
 enough to show that they had not 
 the modern sense of the picturesque. 
 A somewhat careful study of the 
 Italian poet Leopardi has convinced 
 me that he had nothing of the pe 
 culiar sentiment of nature-worship so 
 
THE AMERICAN OUT OF DOORS. 165 
 
 striking in his contemporaries, Eng 
 lish, French, and German. Nor do 
 we find it in the great poets of Spain, 
 if a conclusion on the subject be per 
 mitted to one who has only entered 
 the skirts of the great forest of seven 
 teenth-century drama. The plays of 
 Calderon are full of roses and waves 
 and winds and nightingales. It would 
 be hard to surpass the melancholy 
 and Virgilian grace of his flowers, 
 
 " Durmiendo en brazos de la noche fria; " 
 
 but one does not find in him that 
 subtle observation combined with 
 imaginative colour which abounds in 
 Shakspere : 
 
 "A mole cinq- spotted, like the crimson drops 
 I the bottom of a cowslip." 
 
 " Daffodils, 
 
 That come before the swallow dares, and take 
 The winds of March with beauty." 
 
166 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 The love of the Kelts for nature, and 
 their method of interpreting her as 
 compared with the methods of other 
 races, are admirably analyzed in Mat 
 thew Arnold s Lectures on Celtic Lit 
 erature, one of his most charming 
 books. Whether it be indeed owing 
 to a difference of race instinct, or to 
 the close contact with the material 
 world induced by the necessity of 
 combat with it, the northern nations 
 of Europe are certainly more familiar 
 with that world than those of the 
 south. 
 
 Familiarity with nature takes two 
 forms, one exoteric, the other eso 
 teric: either nature is viewed in 
 detail, as an object of endless interest 
 and amusement, or she is deified 
 with a passionate and religious ado 
 ration. The first of these forms is 
 probably more general in the United 
 
THE AMERICAN OUT OF DOORS. l6/ 
 
 States than it has ever before been 
 anywhere. No other people read as 
 we do the current literature of the 
 day, newspapers, magazines. But 
 that literature is kept full of scien 
 tific speculation in every form. It 
 is in the air all about us. We imbibe 
 the chief fact of evolution from our 
 infancy, and look upon monkeys with 
 a weird interest and a superstitious 
 eye for ancestral traits. The discus 
 sion of these matters is not confined 
 to scholars and professors; one hears 
 it every day among men of business, 
 even among mechanics. 
 
 We are a nation of travellers. We 
 are not rooted and moss-grown, like 
 Europeans. Moving house and home 
 is the excitement of life, and a man 
 who dies where he was born is a curi 
 osity. Men and women work hard 
 all their lives, and at sixty set out to 
 
1 68 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 see the world. They go to California 
 or Mexico or Alaska for six weeks, 
 like it, and make a journey to India. 
 In one sense, this perpetual locomo 
 tion cuts us off from nature. It inter 
 feres with the forming of associations. 
 It abolishes the peculiar kinship that 
 knits up some fact of the past with 
 every tree and stone, making old 
 houses seem like old faces well be 
 loved. I do not think any of our 
 people have the attachment which, it 
 is said, in some European countries 
 binds the peasant to the soil; nor 
 indeed have we a peasantry, in the 
 European sense, anywhere within our 
 borders. 
 
 Yet if our acquaintance with nature 
 is not intimate, it is extensive. In 
 almost every company you will find 
 people who are familiar with the 
 swamps of Florida and the prairies 
 
THE AMERICAN OUT OF DOORS. 169 
 
 of Kansas, the Rocky Mountains and 
 the Yosemite Valley. It is important 
 to note that in our American journey 
 ing, at any rate, we look especially at 
 such natural objects because nothing 
 else is new. From Boston to San 
 Francisco man is substantially the 
 same. Variety must be sought in 
 nature. Curiosity can spend itself 
 no longer on manners and customs. 
 If we look from the car windows, we 
 have no eyes for the eternal John 
 Smith; he stands for insignificance 
 in the foreground of the picture. 
 The feeling thus fostered is, indeed, 
 often shallow and idle. These uni 
 versal sight-seers have no reverence, 
 not even a spirit of thoughtful and 
 sober inquiry. The scenery they are 
 whirled through becomes a panorama, 
 a theatrical spectacle, and their only 
 impulse is a longing for some higher 
 
1 70 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 mountain, or broader river, or wilder 
 valley, to rouse dull eyes once more 
 into a languid enthusiasm. They 
 have a catalogue, a collection of ob 
 jects of interest, and compare notes: 
 "Have you been there?" "Oh, you 
 ought to see that ! " Yet an effect re 
 mains. Petty prejudices and provin 
 cial notions are partially obliterated. 
 You cannot come in contact with 
 nature even in this superficial way 
 without gaining something of her 
 largeness and her calm. There is a 
 gain of sympathy, also. Perhaps we 
 are not naturally a sporting people, 
 like our English cousins. If we are 
 so, we have lost the taste to a great 
 degree, and acquired a dislike for 
 shooting, even for fishing. We pre 
 fer to live and let live, with beast as 
 well as man. A simple walk is 
 enough for us; the sight of birds and 
 
THE AMERICAN OUT OF DOORS. 171 
 
 animals pleases us more than the 
 destruction of them. We love the 
 open air for itself, and are contented 
 with it. How many of us revel in 
 that joyous cry of Emerson, "Give 
 me health and a day, and I will make 
 the pomp of emperors ridiculous " ! 
 
 This sweet, fresh renewal that comes 
 from contact with nature is felt even 
 by people who have little imagination 
 or sensibility, who abhor solitude, and 
 certainly would not choose the country 
 as an abiding-place. In summer the 
 whole population flock to the moun 
 tains and salt water, and they are not 
 quite the same there as at home. Mr. 
 Bradford Torrey, in his charming A 
 Rambler s Lease, says : " I hope I am 
 not lacking in a wholesome disrespect 
 for sentimentality and affectation; for 
 artificial ecstasies over sunsets and 
 landscapes, birds and flowers; the 
 
172 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 fashionable cant of nature-worship, 
 which is enough almost to seal a true 
 worshipper s lips under a vow of ever 
 lasting silence." Certainly there is a 
 great deal of such cant, and the canter 
 is only too apt to go away and forget 
 what manner of man he was. Yet 
 even the lightest, the most frivolous, 
 the most hardened, get something 
 from these things. The very exist 
 ence of the fashion shows a tendency. 
 A large class of people do, how 
 ever, take the matter more seriously. 
 The scientific views I have referred to 
 above give the study of nature an 
 interest which strikes deeper than a 
 mere desultory curiosity. There are 
 many men and women who have 
 picked up a smattering of botany or 
 ornithology in childhood, and find it 
 afterwards a never-failing occupation, 
 opening new vistas and revealing deep 
 
THE AMERICAN OUT OF DOORS. 173 
 
 secrets, always within reach and always 
 fascinating. Careful study of this 
 kind sometimes breeds a contempt 
 for large effects, keeps the eyes near 
 earth on microscopic beauty; but 
 how close it brings one to the intri 
 cate mystery of life ! 
 
 Science, too, has the great advan 
 tage of being accessible in fragments, 
 and not requiring lifelong familiarity 
 for the appreciation of its pleasures. 
 It is different from literature, which 
 demands a patient apprenticeship, 
 and is not open to the first comer. 
 A busy man can see a great deal out 
 of doors to interest him at odd mo 
 ments; but he is not likely to make 
 close friends of Homer and Dante. 
 
 I have not, I think, exaggerated 
 the importance of what external nature 
 has done and is doing for Americans; 
 but it may be exaggerated by confus- 
 
174 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 ing the two forms of familiarity with 
 natural objects that I have noted 
 above. One hears a good deal of talk 
 about the religion of nature, about a 
 worship which will put aside churches 
 and go into the woods, about a rever 
 ence which will associate itself more 
 deeply and truly with trees and flowers 
 and stars than with buildings fash 
 ioned by the hand of man, about a 
 devotion bred by quiet in the fields 
 rather than by liturgies or outgrown 
 creeds or dim cathedrals. We must 
 distinguish here. At the opening of 
 this century, in the passionate reac 
 tion against the social and religious 
 conventions of the last, poets and 
 men of letters were strongly moved to 
 substitute for certain traditional theo 
 ries of religion a deeper, ampler, and 
 vaguer sentiment. Beginning with 
 Rousseau, this tendency spread to 
 
THE AMERICAN OUT OF DOORS. 175 
 
 many men of a quite different stamp. 
 The poets of England, France, and 
 Germany poured forth upon natural 
 objects all the ecstasies of lovers. 
 The beauty of colour, sound, motion, 
 filled them, mastered them. They 
 lost themselves in the sway of great 
 winds, in the slow majesty of midday 
 clouds, in the undulation of grass 
 floating in the summer light. Eng 
 lish poetry will show us this better 
 than any other. Let us take Cowper, 
 still timid, still Christian in the sense 
 that made Sainte-Beuve say, "The 
 great Pan has naught to do with the 
 great Crucified One," yet striking 
 again and again notes passionate as 
 this : 
 
 " Lanes, in which the primrose ere her time 
 Peeps through the moss that clothes the haw 
 thorn root, 
 Deceive no student;" 
 
176 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 or Keats crying to the Nightingale : 
 
 " Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 
 To cease upon the midnight with no pain, 
 While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad 
 In such an ecstasy;" 
 
 or Wordsworth : 
 
 "The sounding cataract 
 Haunted me like a passion;" 
 
 or Byron : 
 
 " I live not in myself, I become 
 Portion of that around me; and to me 
 High mountains are a feeling;" 
 
 or, above all, Shelley, who drank more 
 deeply than any at the spring of 
 
 " that sustaining love, 
 
 Which, through the web of being blindly wove 
 By man and beast and earth and air and sea, 
 Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of 
 The fire for which all thirst." 
 
THE AMERICAN OUT OF DOORS. 177 
 
 These poets, each in his own way, 
 threw themselves into nature. They 
 were ready to say with Keats s 
 Uranus, 
 
 " My voice is but the voice of winds and tides." 
 
 This feeling was to them, indeed, a 
 religion. Yet in one form or another 
 they all looked " through nature to the 
 God of nature." They felt everywhere 
 the presence of some divine mystery 
 which was open to them in the sweet 
 language of the natural world. Some 
 kind of union with this they sought 
 passionately; and the imperfection of 
 what they were able to attain filled 
 them with sadness, with the delicate 
 melancholy which is an important 
 feature of their work. The religion 
 they cherished was a high and mysti 
 cal pantheism; only it is essential to 
 bear in mind the profound saying of 
 
178 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 Goethe, which should never be for 
 gotten when pantheism is in question : 
 "Everything Spinozistic in poetry 
 becomes in philosophy Machiavel- 
 ism." That is to say, the contumely 
 which universally attaches to panthe 
 ism soberly maintained as an intellec 
 tual theory is quite out of place in 
 judging poetry, where the same thing 
 is present as a desire, not as a creed. 
 Now, this element of passion, of 
 intense religious emotion, does not, I 
 think, belong to our American love of 
 nature. Even in England there has 
 been a change in the last half-cen 
 tury, a change not enough insisted 
 on. The difference between the 
 poetry of Shakspere and that of 
 Dryden is not greater than the differ- 
 *ence between the poetry of Byron and 
 Shelley and that of Tennyson and 
 Browning. With the former, intense, 
 
THE AMERICAN OUT OF DOORS. 1/9 
 
 absorbing personal feeling is every 
 thing. With the latter, there is a 
 complete effacement of personality. 
 Different as are Tennyson and Brown 
 ing in other respects, in this they are 
 alike; and though it would be a mis 
 take to say that passion is never found 
 without the intrusion of the poet s 
 own personality, the lack of passion 
 is unquestionably the most marked 
 defect of both these great poets. 
 Certainly it is the defect in their 
 rendering of nature. With Tenny 
 son, external nature becomes a mere 
 means of elaborate ornamentation; 
 with Browning, it is generally subor 
 dinated to the analysis of humanity: 
 in neither poet have we the peculiar 
 charm of the generation before. 
 
 In America, have we ever had pas 
 sion in any branch of literature or art? 
 It must not be forgotten that most of 
 
l8o TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 our great writers have come from Puri 
 tan stock; that is, from just that por 
 tion of the English race which had 
 the least imagination, the least sensi 
 bility; which was the most profoundly 
 penetrated with the moral view of 
 things; which mistrusted most pro 
 foundly any self-abandonment, any 
 compromise with the devil. A hun 
 dred years hence, the mixture of Ger 
 man, French, Irish blood will have 
 changed all this. The change is going 
 on; but up to this time Puritan 
 rationalism has predominated in the 
 view of nature as in most other things. 
 Take, for instance, Thoreau. No one 
 could be a more devoted observer of 
 nature; no one could record more 
 carefully her subtlest changes, her 
 moods serene or stormy, her infinite 
 variety. His knowledge of natural 
 history was, I 
 
THE AMERICAN OUT OF DOORS. l8l 
 
 wider and more accurate than that 
 of Shelley or Keats. But where in 
 Thoreau do you find touch or trace 
 of the passion we have seen in them, 
 the enthralling, absorbing worship 
 call it pantheism, or what you will 
 that pants and burns in Keats s 
 Nightingale or Shelley s West Wind? 
 Without any assumption of pessimism, 
 it may be said, as I have hinted 
 above, that one of the greatest charms 
 of nature in these poets is the subtle 
 and inexplicable melancholy that at 
 tends her; the vast and fleeting storm 
 of intangible suggestions and associa 
 tions that wait on a single simple 
 sound or odour, and vanish before we 
 can half imagine what they mean, as 
 when Obermann writes, "The jonquil 
 or the jessamine would be enough to 
 make me say that such as we are we 
 might sojourn in a better world." 
 
1 82 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 Penetrated with feelings like these, 
 one comes to Thoreau and finds him 
 proclaiming, "The voice of nature is 
 always encouraging." 
 
 The truth is, that for Thoreau, as 
 for his master, Emerson, Puritanical 
 stoicism has set up a barrier that cuts 
 him off from half of life. His creed 
 is not a conceited or presumptuous 
 one, it is too dignified; but it sets 
 the man on a pinnacle of self-satisfac 
 tion, which inclines him rather to 
 identify nature with himself than him 
 self with nature. One hears Thoreau 
 constantly saying, " Nature is delight 
 ful, delightful tome, Henry Thoreau." 
 He patronizes her. Now, this is in 
 consistent with passion of any kind. 
 To a man of that temperament the 
 study of nature may be an amusement, 
 even an interesting, absorbing occupa 
 tion; a religion never! This is 
 
THE AMERICAN OUT OF DOORS. 183 
 
 precisely the state of the case, not 
 only with Thoreau, but with most of 
 our American poets, and with the 
 greater number of the men and 
 women who are to-day engaged in 
 ransacking the fields and woods for 
 facts of natural history. 
 
 With the love of nature, as with so 
 many other things, the saying is pro 
 foundly true, "Unto every one that 
 hath shall be given." We get back 
 only what we give. As a humanizing 
 influence, as teaching patience, toler 
 ance, sympathy, the scientific appre 
 ciation of the natural world, the 
 intimate and daily contact with it 
 cannot be overestimated. But to 
 think that these things will ever re 
 place religion or poetry; to believe 
 that the senses of the average man, 
 though backed with all the botanies 
 and ornithologies ever written, will 
 
1 84 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 perceive as do those of the poet, will 
 create for themselves the energy and 
 intensity of feeling, the glow of imagi 
 native colour, the throng of associa 
 tions, which he can call forth in a 
 moment, in the twinkling of an eye, 
 is to be profoundly mistaken. 
 
THE SCHOLAR. 
 
 THE true scholar is something 
 quite different from the man of 
 genius or the mere writer. The genius 
 in literature, as in other arts, is intent 
 upon fame, 
 
 " the spur that the clear spirit doth raise. f 
 
 The keen goad of his inspiration urges 
 him, above all things, to create, not 
 to acquire. Whatever he takes from 
 others is simply assimilated, to be re 
 produced in a new mould and metal 
 of his own. Some geniuses have, 
 indeed, been scholars, Dante, Mil 
 ton, Leopardi, Coleridge, but by an 
 accident almost in their natures rather 
 than as a result of their creative power. 
 185 
 
1 86 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 The writer, on the other hand, the 
 modern man of letters, is generally 
 anything but a scholar. The mass of 
 matter which he pours out upon the 
 world in the shape of magazine arti 
 cles and essays requires a certain 
 breadth of information, if he is anx 
 ious to pursue his calling honestly. 
 But that information is apt to be hete 
 rogeneous, gathered from a vast num 
 ber of books on different subjects, 
 reviewed hastily, and cemented to 
 gether by a school knowledge of 
 standard authors now and then 
 brushed up and put in order. In 
 fact the specialist is so cut off from 
 the general public, which detests 
 specialties, that a man cannot be 
 thoroughly grounded in one subject 
 and be a popular writer at the same 
 time. 
 
 But the true scholar, the real devo- 
 
THE SCHOLAR. 187 
 
 tee of learning, hardly cares to be a 
 popular writer. The ephemeral gleam 
 of fame has rarely charm enough to 
 lure him from the nook where he has 
 ensconced himself in the half-lighted 
 caves of thought. It is difficult for 
 him to conceal his indifference, or 
 even contempt, for the ignobile vulgus 
 and the easily excited, easily diverted 
 curiosity of the magazine world. The 
 goddess he serves is so austere, so 
 thickly draped in the dim robes of 
 mystery, that he half shudders when 
 one more venturesome among his 
 colleagues lifts a corner of the veil 
 and exposes a secret to the vulgar 
 stare of the uninitiated and unde 
 serving. 
 
 I It will easily be seen that the con 
 ditions of American life are not over 
 favourable to such men as this. Yet 
 they are to be found here and there, 
 
1 88 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 and cannot be wholly crushed out. 
 The tradition of their race has per 
 sisted unbroken in far more trying 
 circumstances. It winds down in 
 labyrinthine obscurity from the starlit 
 plains of Chaldsea and the first astron 
 omers; it passes through the quiet 
 groves of Academe; it lingers among 
 the yellow papyri of Alexandria; it 
 hides its head in the Middle Age 
 among gray cloisters, poring over 
 scattered golden relics of Greek wis 
 dom instead of missal or vulgate; it 
 runs riot through the Renaissance, 
 mingling together the rites of Pallas, 
 Bacchus, and Apollo; it walks among 
 us to-day in men we half honour, half 
 laugh at, the treatment which has 
 fallen to the scholar s lot since there 
 have been scholars at all. How little 
 he cares ! With his eye turned inward, 
 " coming upon many ways in the wan- 
 
THE SCHOLAR. 189 
 
 derings of careful thought," how little 
 he cares for the ridicule of the world 
 or its respect ! 
 
 There is one scholar, however, who 
 does not hide his head in the nine 
 teenth century quite the contrary; 
 and that is the scientist. In some 
 respects he may be considered the 
 typical scholar of to-day, and some 
 people would look upon him as the 
 natural result of evolution from the 
 scholar of the past. At any rate, he, 
 too, is devoured by the passion for 
 knowledge; only in him it takes form 
 rather in the study of nature, and man 
 as an element of nature, than in an 
 investigation of matters concerning 
 the human intellect alone. This very 
 fact of the clearness and sharp defini 
 tion of the scientist s object takes 
 something away from the mystery of 
 his worship. Nature is to him merely 
 
IQO TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 a museum out of order, which he is to 
 arrange and classify, and so often he 
 has an air of patronage, as if it were 
 really very kind of him to do it. 
 Altogether, men of science are too 
 full of the pulse of modern life, too 
 active, too practical to stand well for 
 one s ideal of the scholar. And yet 
 to succeed they must have many of 
 his qualities : his patience, his enthu 
 siasm, his infinite self-sacrifice, his 
 readiness for martyrdom even, in the 
 cause he serves. One has only to 
 read the life of Darwin to be con 
 vinced of this. 
 
 The scholarship of the past, how 
 ever, the scholarship which to-day 
 lingers unknown in corners, has little 
 to do with science or the external 
 world. It has an old and worn-out 
 prejudice to the effect that "the proper 
 study of mankind is man," the thoughts 
 
THE SCHOLAR. IQI 
 
 of man and the products of his 
 thought. With its eye turned in 
 ward this scholarship passes unheed 
 ing and indifferent by the loveliness 
 of nature and the mysteries of her 
 existence, in regard to which it is 
 quite content with a priori views. It 
 busies itself perhaps with metaphysics, 
 culling wisdom in Plato, or uprooting 
 it in Aristotle and Hegel; or with 
 mathematics, that highest form of in 
 tellectual harmony, covering sheet 
 after sheet with endless computation 
 and cabalistic figures; or with phi 
 lology, tracing the riotous dance of 
 sounds and words from tongue to 
 tongue, or making conjectural emen 
 dations in texts that have been 
 thumbed and worn by the brains of 
 thousands long before. But in all 
 these varying forms the basis is the 
 same, an all-absorbing passion for 
 
IQ2 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 the pursuit of knowledge on the serene 
 heights of thought, a devout abstrac 
 tion from the cares and interests of 
 active human life, a love of solitary 
 contemplation, which in the intellec 
 tual world can only be compared with 
 the rapture of the Brahmin in the 
 spiritual. Who can understand it but 
 the adept, the joy of those solitary 
 midnight hours, when drowsiness has 
 given place to the second and intenser 
 wakefulness, when there is no disturb 
 ing sound but the ticking of the clock, 
 and it may be the rumble of a distant 
 train, when it seems as if one could 
 really make books into living per 
 sons, and come, oh, so much nearer to 
 them than to the very nearest of one s 
 friends who really live. 
 
 This abstraction of the scholar s 
 reacts upon his life everywhere, as is 
 natural. If he has the genuine zeal 
 
THE SCHOLAR. 193 
 
 of his profession, he looks upon him 
 self as a priest almost, serving a high 
 and exacting divinity, elevated by that 
 service above the common interests of 
 mankind. This lofty office of the 
 scholar was often dwelt on by Emerson. 
 "The name of the scholar is taken in 
 vain," he says. "We who should be 
 the channel of that unweariable Power 
 which never sleeps, should give our 
 diligence no holidays. Other men are 
 planting and building, baking and 
 tanning, running and sailing, heaving 
 and carrying, each that he may peace 
 fully execute the first function by 
 which all are helped. Shall he play, 
 while their eyes follow him from far 
 with reverence, attributing to him the 
 delving in great fields of thought and 
 conversing with supernatural allies." 
 But the true scholar needs no exhor 
 tation to the performance of his duty. 
 
194 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 It is a passion with him. Every di 
 version, every necessary call of the 
 human relations of life, is a hindrance, 
 to which he submits with vexation and 
 from which he escapes as soon as 
 possible. 
 
 It is for this reason that the scholar, 
 if he has his health, is better off un 
 married. In the first place, he cannot 
 afford to be rich. The cares and 
 annoyances induced by money are to 
 him abominable and not to be en 
 dured. If he accumulates or inherits 
 wealth, he is so apt to become that 
 thing, of the true scholar most hated, 
 a dilettante. There may have been 
 great scholars who have been rich, but 
 they are rare. Nay, even the distrac 
 tions of bread-winning in teaching, 
 for instance interfere less with these 
 pursuits than the alien and haunting 
 anxieties of wealth. 
 
THE SCHOLAR. 195 
 
 But marriage to the poor scholar is 
 but another name for misery. Other 
 men do their business during the day 
 away from home, and at night it is 
 their leisure and pleasure to withdraw 
 into the quiet sweetness of family life. 
 But the scholar must either work at 
 home among the thousand disturb 
 ances that make consistent appli 
 cation impossible; or, if he goes 
 away from home, half of his energy is 
 taken from him. He is in a strange 
 place, among strange faces, using 
 strange books. And he is haunted all 
 the time by the privations of wife and 
 children at home. 
 
 No, the heights of Parnassus are 
 cold and lonely. The intellect is 
 isolating. It is tyrannical. If you 
 give it anything, you must give it 
 all: heart and soul and strength. It 
 will not tolerate half-service. 
 
196 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 And then, if one may dare to whis 
 per it in these days, it is better for 
 the scholar not to marry, because 
 women are not scholars and have little 
 or no sympathy with the passion for 
 knowledge pure and simple. This 
 does not apply to men of letters, to 
 whom the sympathy of women in one 
 form or another is almost indispen 
 sable. To them women are willing 
 and ready to give it. The artistic 
 side of human nature, the passion for 
 beauty, they can enter into largely. 
 They can enter into the passion for 
 fame, longing for it as enthusiasts, 
 not on their own account, but for 
 those they love. But oh, so rarely, not 
 more than once or twice in a lifetime, 
 does one see a woman who loves 
 thought and study for themselves. In 
 Walter Pater s Sebastian Van Stork 
 there is a hint of this: "His mother 
 
THE SCHOLAR. 197 
 
 expostulated with him on the matter, 
 and she suggested filial duty. 
 Good mother, he answered, there 
 are duties toward the intellect also, 
 which women can but rarely under 
 stand." 
 
 Nevertheless, human nature must 
 unbend; even the scholar must have 
 his recreation and amusement, but 
 oftentimes it is of a singular nature. 
 For associates he loves those of his 
 own kind, of his own specialty, so 
 that he may share with them little 
 momentary jottings, may carry into 
 his diversion the preoccupations of his 
 graver hours, may season the passing 
 jest with a line from Horace or a some 
 what broad pun from Aristophanes. 
 And the diversion he seeks seems at 
 first inconsistent enough with his 
 tastes. It must be as external, as 
 ^intellectual as possible. He loves 
 
198 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 to ramble through the streets with a 
 congenial spirit, to gaze idly into 
 shop windows and read old signs, to 
 criticise women s dress, everything 
 which attracts the eye and soothes the 
 mind. If he goes to the theatre, he 
 does not want Shakspere or Ibsen. 
 Gilbert and Sullivan suit him better, 
 or even something approaching horse 
 play. With women it is the same. 
 Blue-stockings and school teachers he 
 abhors. He wants what is young, 
 fresh, full of animal energy and 
 gayety, jests, mockery, of himself, 
 even, if need be. When he comes out 
 of his solitude he wants nothing to 
 remind him of it, nothing external at 
 least, only an occasional reminiscence 
 welling up from his own thoughts. 
 So, in a manner, the scholar s life 
 is one apart, separate from that of 
 other men. It is perhaps more so in 
 
THE SCHOLAR. IQ9 
 
 this our hurried and hurrying Ameri 
 can world, but it has always been so. 
 The scholar is no misanthrope; but 
 he soon becomes aware that other men 
 regard him rather with respect than 
 affection, and he schools himself to it. 
 They have no interest for him except 
 as affording him an hour s relaxation, 
 like some painted, lifeless show, which 
 makes no impression on his soul. 
 From the very beginning he feels this. 
 For the passion for knowledge, for 
 pure acquisition, is born in him, a 
 passion so mighty and resistless that 
 it overwhelms all barriers and acci 
 dents of fortune and sweeps him on 
 ward in its course whither it will. 
 Nor does any rebellious instinct 
 prompt him to oppose it. There is 
 no deity so imperious, so all-control 
 ling. But her force comes from her 
 charm. Her siren seductiveness has 
 
200 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 no limit, no alloy. It enthralls youth> 
 it bewitches age. Still, still she calls, 
 urging the wanderer out into the track 
 less sea of thought, to which there is 
 no bound, from which there is no 
 return. 
 
 The uninitiated, the profane, can 
 appreciate results, but they abhor de 
 tails. They would gladly discover a 
 new manuscript of Aristotle, or a law 
 of evolution; but they recoil from the 
 endless accumulation of knowledge 
 little by little, the patient observation, 
 the infinite pains. To the scholar the 
 delight is in the means as much as in 
 the end. A happy conjectural read 
 ing or the discovery of a new micro 
 scopic insect fills him with as much 
 joy as any conclusion to which these 
 things may lead. It is the constant, 
 restless application of mind that he 
 seeks. So the matter worked on be 
 
THE SCHOLAR. 2OI 
 
 congenial, he cares but little for the 
 result achieved. He loves the atmos 
 phere he works in. If it be Greek 
 texts, he is unconsciously penetrated 
 with the spirit of his author. Homer 
 and Sophocles become to him neces 
 sary companions. If he is a natural 
 ist, even in the minutest research he 
 is in contact with the vast, loving per 
 sonality of nature. He cannot be 
 without her or away from her. Shut 
 up in cities his life is miserable. 
 
 Yes, it is a religion, this worship of 
 knowledge, perhaps the last religion 
 of a certain class of minds, who have 
 abandoned definite creeds and shut 
 their lives up in the sweetness of this 
 one worship, which most of all takes 
 them out of themselves. For there is 
 a sweetness in it, an intoxication. 
 Old Burton, himself a typical scholar, 
 says of it : " Such is the excellency of 
 
202 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 these studies " he is speaking of 
 mathematics "that all those orna 
 ments and childish bubbles of wealth 
 are not worthy to be compared to 
 them : crede mihi, saith one, exstingui 
 duke erit mathematicarum studio; I 
 could even live and die with such 
 meditations, and take more delight, 
 true content of mind in them, than 
 thou hast in all thy wealth and sport, 
 how rich soever thou art. . . . The 
 like pleasure there is in all other 
 studies, to such as are truly addicted 
 to them: ea suavitas (one holds) ut, 
 cum quis ea degustaverif, quasi poculis 
 Circeis captus, non possit umquam ab 
 us divclli ; the like sweetness, which, 
 as Circe s cup, bewitcheth a student, 
 he cannot leave off, as well may wit 
 ness those many laborious hours, days 
 and nights spent in the voluminous 
 treatises written by them; the same 
 content." 
 
THE SCHOLAR. 10$ 
 
 As with all other religions, there are 
 some devotees of this also, who are 
 ready for martyrdom, the martyrdom 
 of poverty, of hunger, of nakedness, 
 of scorn, contempt, and contumely, 
 the martyrdom of sickness and a lin 
 gering death, which attends, alas, too 
 surely, upon the neglect of the mate 
 rial for the spiritual, of the body for 
 the mind. Let me quote once more 
 from a contemporary of Burton, him 
 self also a robust though wayward 
 scholar, the great and too much neg 
 lected Ben Jonson: "I know no dis 
 ease of the soul but ignorance; not 
 of the arts and sciences, but of itself; 
 yet relating to these it is a pernicious 
 evil, the darkener of man s life, the 
 disturber of his reason, and common 
 confounder of truth; with which a 
 man goes groping in the dark no 
 otherwise than as if he were blind. 
 
204 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 Great understandings are most racked 
 and troubled with it; nay, sometimes 
 they will rather choose to die than not 
 to know the things they study for." 
 How many have so died and are so 
 dying, tortured by the fierce and un 
 quenchable desire to attain truth, so 
 that they cannot for a moment rest or 
 linger by the way, but still press un 
 remittingly, unflaggingly onward, till 
 the torch that has been burning more 
 and more brightly is extinguished for 
 ever in the chill dampness of the grave. 
 Yet one hears people say that 
 the scholar is selfish ! Those who 
 bring this charge are as often as not 
 men of business, politicians, pushing 
 and active in practical life, men whose 
 whole souls are absorbed in gratifying 
 their ambition or their greed, whose 
 interests do, indeed, bring them in 
 contact with other human beings, but 
 
THE SCHOLAR 205 
 
 who do not hesitate to tread those 
 human beings under their feet like 
 ants, if their ambition or their greed 
 demand it. If it be selfish to follow 
 with entire devotion the instincts of 
 one s nature, when those instincts do 
 not trespass on the rights of others, 
 the scholar is selfish. Nor can it 
 be denied that he pursues his studies 
 much more for his own gratification 
 than for any useful consequences they 
 may have to the world at large. At 
 the same time, they do have such con 
 sequences often, and when they do 
 not, there is an indirect influence 
 shed by such a life of austere thought 
 and occupation with the things of the 
 spirit, which, burning like a quiet, 
 pale light, pours a ray of pure sweet 
 ness on the world. The scholar is 
 not a philanthropist. He generally 
 cares little for charities, sometimes 
 
206 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 not very much for churches; but the 
 example of his high self-abandonment 
 to an ideal is worth the stir of a dozen 
 busybodies who seek to exalt them 
 selves by the show of benefiting 
 others. 
 
 The scholar is not selfish, but he is 
 self-absorbed. And here we begin to 
 lay our finger on his weakness. His 
 whole energy and vitality is given to 
 climbing the snowy sides of this high, 
 cold mount of knowledge, and when 
 he stands on the summit he is indeed 
 isolated and alone. The loveliness, 
 the charm of human companionship, 
 have faded away from him. The 
 natural affections have lost their 
 power. The heart-beat of passion has 
 ceased, and given place to thought at 
 once feverish and cold. While the 
 fever lasts he needs nothing, asks for 
 nothing but the object of his enthusi- 
 
THE SCHOLAR. 207 
 
 asm. But the chill comes, and there 
 are times when his brain is ready to 
 burst in that vacuum of silence and 
 the grave. This has always been the 
 case with those who have followed a 
 life of study; but it is even more the 
 case to-day than ever before. Up to 
 this century, or the last, the scholar s 
 province was universal knowledge. 
 He had entered a fraternity of which 
 all the members were bound together 
 by the common service and could 
 meet on a common ground. Now 
 the scholar must choose between two 
 courses : either he attempts all knowl 
 edge and becomes a superficial dilet 
 tante ; or he shuts himself up in one 
 cavernous specialty, and the further 
 he wanders in it the more he is ex 
 cluded from cheerful day and the 
 community of men. This evil is a 
 terrible one and is naturally on the 
 
208 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 increase. On the one hand, all 
 sciences are so interdependent, 
 "mutually folded in each others 
 orb," that one cannot be raised 
 securely save on the firm foundation 
 of all the others. On the other hand, 
 who can be a master even of the rudi 
 ments of all? Thus the biologist 
 argues incorrectly from lack of knowl 
 edge of metaphysics, and the meta 
 physician errs from his profound 
 ignorance of biology and his haughty 
 contempt for it. 
 
 It is these cross purposes in the 
 world which at times do, indeed, 
 make the scholar desperate. In his 
 moments of zeal and hope he pushes 
 on without looking behind him. What 
 does he care, if he can only gain one 
 step in advance, wrest one scrap more 
 from the close-locked fingers of Truth? 
 What does he care for love or sym- 
 
THE SCHOLAR. 2Op 
 
 pathy, if he can perform the task he 
 has set before him and satisfy him 
 self? But the inevitable pause comes, 
 with its gray discouragement. Of what 
 use is it? How little way can the 
 search-light of thought dive into the 
 impenetrable gulf of the unknown, yet 
 even for that little way it is a guide so 
 frail and so infirm! Why follow it? 
 Why leave on one side the real goods 
 of life riches, quiet, ease, love, 
 friends, content only to wear away 
 one s soul in the pursuit of an empty 
 phantom, unseizable, intangible, un 
 profitable? And he recalls the old, 
 old words of the Preacher : " Of mak 
 ing many books there is no end ; and 
 much study is a weariness of the 
 flesh." 
 
 Yet, after all, he goes on his way 
 and fulfils his destiny, sometimes 
 with hope again and confidence in 
 
210 TYPES OF AMERICAN CHARACTER. 
 
 himself, sometimes indifferent, some 
 times with vast scorn for the futility 
 of knowledge and the mockery of life. 
 He goes on, on still, utterly unable to 
 resist the overmastering intellect, 
 which always craves and hungers after 
 more, in the wild desire to get beyond 
 the limits of this earthly body, to en 
 franchise, to depersonalize, and so to 
 eternalize itself. 
 
THE USE OF LIFE 
 
 The Right Hon. Sir JOHN LUBBOCK, Bart., 
 M.P., F.R.S., D.C.L., LL.D. 
 
 Cloth, gilt top. izrno. $1.25. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The Great Question. 
 
 Patriotism. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Tact. 
 
 Citizenship. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 On Money Matters. 
 
 Social Life. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Recreation. 
 
 Industry. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Health. 
 
 Faith. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 National Education. 
 
 Hope. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Self -education. 
 
 Charity. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 On Libraries. 
 
 Character. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 On Reading. 
 
 On Peace and Happiness. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. Religion. 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., 
 
 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. 
 
 I 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE BEAUTIES OF NATURE 
 
 AND 
 
 THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD WE LIVE IN. 
 
 Cloth, gilt top. i2mo. $1.50. 
 
 " We know of none other better fitted to present the 
 beauties of nature and the wonders of the world we live 
 in, to the popular understanding and appreciation than 
 Sir John Lubbock, who is at once a master of his chosen 
 topic and of a diction unsurpassed for clearness and 
 simplicity of statement. It is a volume which the read 
 ing public will recognize and hail immediately as among 
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 tion in books. There is matter in it for the young and 
 mature mind. . . . One cannot rise from the perusal 
 of this volume, without a consciousness of a mind in 
 vigorated and permanently enriched by an acquaintance 
 with it." Oswego Daily Times. 
 
 "It is a charming book. . . . Few writers succeed in 
 making natural history, and indeed scientific subjects, 
 more than interesting. In the hands of most authors 
 they are intolerably dull to the general reader and 
 especially to children. Sir John Lubbock makes his 
 theme as entrancing as a novel. . . . The book is 
 magnificently illustrated, and discusses the wonders of 
 the animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms, the mar 
 vels of earth, sea, and the vaulted heavens. In the 
 compass of its pages an immense amount of knowledge 
 which all should know is given in a manner that will 
 compel the child who commences it to pursue it to the 
 end. It is a work which cannot be too highly recom 
 mended to parents who have at heart the proper educa 
 tion of their children." The Arena. 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., 
 
 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. 
 
 2 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 ON BRITISH WILD FLOWERS. 
 
 With Illustrations. Cloth. 12010. $1.25. 
 " All lovers of Nature must feel grateful to Sir John 
 Lubbock for his learned and suggestive little book, 
 which cannot fail to draw attention to a field of study 
 so new and fascinating." Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 FLOWERS, FRUITS, AND LEAVES. 
 
 With Illustrations. Cloth. i2mo. $1.25. 
 
 SCIENTIFIC LECTURES. 
 
 With Illustrations. Cloth. 8vo. $2.50. 
 
 CONTENTS: On Flowers and Insects. On Plants 
 and Insects. On the Habits of Ants. Introduction 
 to the Study of Prehistoric Archaeology, etc. 
 
 " We can heartily commend this volume, as a whole, 
 to every one who wishes to obtain a condensed account 
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 lively manner." Atheneeum. 
 
 THE ORIGIN AND METAMOR= 
 PHOSES OF INSECTS. 
 
 With Illustrations. Cloth. i2mo. $1.00. 
 
 POLITICAL AND EDUCATIONAL 
 ADDRESSES. 
 
 Cloth. 8vo. $2.50. 
 
 " Will repay the careful attention of readers who 
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 FIFTY YEARS OF SCIENCE. 
 
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MACMILLAN S 
 
 MINIATURE SERIES. 
 
 Issued Monthly. 
 Price 25 cents. Yearly Subscription $2.75. 
 
 Messrs. Macmillan & Co. beg to announce that they 
 will issue monthly, in paper covers, beginning May, 
 1895, under the title of 
 
 "MACMILLAN S MINIATURE SERIES" 
 
 The following popular and interesting works: 
 
 I. Shakespeare s England. By WILLIAM 
 
 WINTER May 
 
 II. The Friendship of Nature . By MABEL 
 
 OSGOOD WRIGHT June 
 
 III. A Trip to England. By GOLDWIN 
 
 SMITH Aug. 
 
 IV. From a New England Hillside. By 
 
 WILLIAM POTTS July 
 
 V. The Pleasures of Life. By Sir JOHN 
 
 LUBBOCK Sept. 
 
 VI. Old Shrines and Ivy. By WILLIAM 
 
 WINTER Oct. 
 
 VII. The Choice of Books. By FREDERIC 
 
 HARRISON Nov. 
 
 VIII. Gray Days and Gold. By WILLIAM 
 
 WINTER Dec. 
 
 IX. The Aims of Literary Study. By 1896 
 
 HIRAM CORSON, LL.D Jan. 
 
 X The Novel What It Is. By F.MARION 
 
 CRAWFORD Feb. 
 
 XI. Amiel S Journal. Vol. I. Translated 
 
 by Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD .... Mar. 
 XII. Amiel S Journal. Vol. II. Translated 
 
 by Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD .... Apr. 
 
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 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. 
 
 4