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RACE QUESTIONS, PROVINCIALISM
AND OTHER AMERICAN PROBLEMS

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RACE QUESTIONS
PROVINCIALISM
AND OTHER AMERICAN PROBLEMS

BY
JOSIAH ROYCE
PROFESSOR OF THK HISTORY OP PHILOSOPHY
IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Ne&t garfe
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1908
All rights reserved

COPTEIOHT, 1908,
Bt THE MACMILLAN COMPAUV.

Set up and electrotyped. Published October, xgo8.

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Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

PREFACE
The five essays which make up the present
volume were all, at some time, read, before
various audiences, as addresses. Each one
contains indications of the special occasion
for the sake of which it was first prepared.
Yet each one of them also states opinions
which, from my own point of view, make it a
part of an eflfort to apply, to some of our
American problems, that general doctrine
about life which I have recently summed up
in my book entitled " The Philosophy of
Loyalty." In the light of that philosophy I
therefore hope that the various special opin
ions here expressed may be judged. This
book I regard as an auxiliary to its more sys
tematic predecessor.
The closing essay of the present volume
contains, in fact, a summary of the theses
upon which my " Philosophy of Loyalty " is

PEEFACE
based, as well as a direct application of these
theses to a special practical problem of our
recent education.
The first essay here printed — that on
" Race Questions " — was read before the Chi
cago Ethical Society, in 1905. It was later
published in the " International Journal of
Ethics." It is an eflfort to express and to
justify, in the special case of the race-prob
lems, the spirit which I have elsewhere defined
as that of " Loyalty to Loyalty."
The second and fourth essays of this book
both relate to " Provincialism," — the one
discussing, in general terms, the need and
uses of that spirit in our American life ; the
other sketching, as well as I am able, the
bases upon which rests that particular form
of provincialism to which I, as a native Cali
fornian, personally owe most. The paper on
"The Pacific Coast " was prepared as early as
1898. The general essay on " Provincialism "
was read as a Phi Beta Kappa Address, at
the Iowa State University, in 1902. In the
"Philosophy of Loyalty" the importance of

PREFACE
an enlightened provincialism is discussed in
the course of the fifth lecture of that volume,
— a lecture whose general topic is : " Certain
American Problems in their Relation to Loy
alty." What I there merely sketched regard
ing provincialism is here more fully set forth.
In my own mind, meanwhile, the essay on the
" Pacific Coast "is a continuation of the
study which first took form in my volume on
the history of California, published, in the
Commonwealth Series, in 1886. In that work
I stated, in various passages, views about the
provincial aspects of loyalty, — views which
have later come to form part of the more gen
eral ethical doctrine to which I am now
committed. Loyalty is the practical aspect and expres
sion of an idealistic philosophy. Such a phi
losophy, in relation to theoretical as well as to
practical problems, I have long tried to main
tain and to teach. A familiar charge against
idealism, however, is, that it is an essentially
unpractical doctrine. Such a charge can be
fairly answered only in case an idealist is
vii

PREFACE
quite willing, not only to listen with good
humor to his common-sense critics, but also
to criticise himself and to observe the defects
of his tendencies. In such a spirit I have
tried to write the third of the essays here
printed. I should be glad to have this paper
read in the light of the lecture on " Con
science," in the "Philosophy of Loyalty."
Some passages in these papers show special
signs of the dates when they were written;
and therefore the reader may notice a few
allusions and illustrations — due to passing
events — which would be otherwise chosen or
stated were the papers composed to-day.
Thus, my sketch of conditions in Jamaica,
in the essay on " Race Questions," contains a
few s atistical and other data that were pub
licly reported in 1904, and that would need
some modification to adapt them to the pres
ent moment. But I believe that none of
these matters interfere with what my volume
attempts to be, — a series of illustrations, pre
pared in the course of a number of years, but
all bearing upon the application of a certain
viii

PREFACE
philosophical doctrine and spirit to some
problems of American life.
I have mentioned the Japanese, more than
once, in these pages. It is fair to say that
the characterization of their national spirit
which occurs in the essay on " Provincialism "
was written in 1902, and here appears sub
stantially unchanged.
Mrs. Royce has constantly aided me in pre
paring these essays for publication; and to
her help many things in this volume are due.
JOSIAH ROYCE.
Cambridge, Mass.,
October 16, 1908.

IS

CONTENTS
I. RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES . 1
Importance of the problem, 1—4. — Summary
statement of various questions about races, 5, 6. —
The defects of our present scientific knowledge
regarding racial psychology, 6-10. — The lesson
taught by Japan, 10-14. — The lesson taught by
Jamaica, 15—31. — The meaning of race in the
history of civilization : sceptical survey of the state
of our knowledge, 31-47. — The psychology of
racial antipathies, 47-52. — Conclusion, 53.
II. PROVINCIALISM  55
Definition of Provincialism, 55-61. — In praise
of provincialism, 61-67. — The evils in American
Ufe which provincialism must correct; first, the
evils due to the newness of the country, 67—73. —
The evils due to the levelling tendency of recent
civilization, 79. — The evils due to the mob-spirit,
80—86. — The right type of social group defined,
87-91. — The problem of dealing with the mob-
spirit, 91-96. — The service that provincialism may
accomplish in dealing with the foregoing types of
evils, 96-98. — How to cultivate provincialism with
out merely lapsing into narrowness, 98-108. — The
province as an ideal rather than as a boast, 100—
102. — Provincialism, docility, and individualism:
iUustration in the case of Japan, 102-105. — The
cultivation of the youth of a province, 105. — Pro
vincialism and art, 107.

CONTENTS
PASB
III. ON CERTAIN LIMITATIONS, OF THE
THOUGHTFUL PUBLIC IN AMERICA 109
American idealism, in its popular and practical
aspects, its power and prevalence, 112-125; its
excesses, 119-121; its good aspects seen in the
modern academic movement, 122-125. — Ineilec-
tiveness of too large a portion of our idealisticaUy
disposed public, 125-131; illustration from our
early provincial history in the newer parts of the
country, 131-135; and from older communities,
135, 136. — The cure for this ineffectiveness, 136-
165. — Difficulty and importance of this cure, 136-
139. — The tendency to abstractions, 140—143. —
The Umitations of the effectiveness of the human
thinking-process, 144-148. — Not alone philoso
phers abuse the reasoning powers, 149-152. — In
stinct an"d reason, their respective practical offices,
152-158. — Resulting advice, 158-160. — On the
love of the " new " in thought, 160-164. — Practi
cal conclusions, 165.
IV. THE PACIFIC COAST. A PSYCHOLOGI
CAL STUDY OF THE RELATIONS OF
CLIMATE AND CIVILIZATION . . 167
The journey to CaUfornia, and its goal, as an
introduction to the study, 169-173. — General
review of the physical conditions and climate of
the Pacific coast, 174-187. — The early society of
CaUfornia, 187-190. — The relations of cUmate
and mental life as characterized by the poetical
writers of CaUfornia, 190-199. — General consid
eration of physical, social, and individual condi
tions as determining the CaUfornian mind; result-

CONTENTS
PAGE
ing individuaUsm; accompanjdng loyalty; the
tension between the two tendencies, 199-210. —
Historical illustrations, 210-220. — PecuUar forms
of individuaUsm in CaUfornia, 217-224. — Re
sulting ideaUsm, 224.
V. SOME RELATIONS OF PHYSICAL TRAIN
ING TO THE PRESENT PROBLEMS
OF MORAL EDUCATION IN AMERICA . 227
The general relations of physical and moral
education, 229-232 . — General definition of Loyalty,
232-242. — " Loyalty to Loyalty" defined and
iUustrated, 242-252. — The first way in which
physical training can be of service to loyalty,
namely as a preparation of the organism for devo
tion to causes, 254-259. — The second service of
physical training to the cause of loyalty: team-
loyalty, and similar tendencies, 260-265. The
third service of physical training: fair play and
the spirit of imiversal loyalty, 265-271. — What
kinds of sports and contests best further loyalty,
criterion stated, 271-276. — PhiUp Stanley Abbot's
account of the mountain cUmber's " fulness of
life," 277-280; contrast with certain other types
of athletic experience, 280-284. — Results as to the
values of athletic sports and exercises for moral
training, 285-287.

xm

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
fTHHE numerous questions and prejudices
-¦- which are aroused by the contact of
the various races of men have always been
important factors in human history. They
promise, however, to become, in the near
future, stUl more important than they have
ever been before. Such increased importance
of race questions and prejudices, if it comes
to pass, will be due not to any change in
human nature, and especially not to any
increase in the diversity or in the contrasting
traits of the races of men themselves, but
simply to the greater extent and complexity
of the work of civilization. Physically speak
ing, great masses of men are to-day brought
into more frequent and closer contact than
was formerly possible, because of the ease
with which at present the numerous means
of communication can be used, because of
the increase of peaceful migrations, and
3

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
because of the imperial ambitions of several
of the world's great peoples. Hence what
ever contact, conflict, or mutual influence
the races of men have had in the past, we find
to-day more ways and places in which men
find themselves in the presence of alien races,
with whom they have to learn to live in the
same social order. When we think of East
Indian coolies now present as laborers, side
by side with the native negroes, and with
white men, in the British West Indies ; when
we remember the problem of South Africa,
as it was impressed upon our minds a few
years since, at a moment when Dutchmen
and Englishmen fought for the land, while
Kaffirs and Zulus watched the conflict ; when
we recall what the recent war between Japan
and Russia has already meant for the future
of the races of men in the far East ; and when,
with a few only of such typical instances in
mind, we turn back to our own country, and
think how many diflferent race-problems con
front us, — we then see that the earliest social
problem of humanity is also the most recent

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
problem. This is the problem of dealing
with the men who seem to us somehow very
widely dififerent from ourselves, in physical
constitution, in temperament, in all their
deeper nature, so that we are tempted to think
of them as natural strangers to our souls,
while nevertheless we find that they are
stubbornly there in our world, and that they
are men as much determined to live as we
are, and are men who, in turn, find us as
incomprehensible as we find them. Of these
diverse races, what ones are the superior and
what ones are the inferior races .? What
race or races ought to rule ? What ones ought
to yield to their natural masters ? To which
one of these races has God, or nature, or
destiny, ordained the rightful and final sover
eignty of the earth .P Which of these types
of men is really the human type.? Are they
by their presence and their rivalry essentially
perilous to one another's interests.'' And
if so, what one amongst them is there whose
spread, or whose increase in power or in
number, is most perilous to the true cause
5

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
of civilization .? Is it a "yellow peril," or
a "black peril," or perhaps, after all, is it
not rather some form of "white peril," which
most threatens the future of humanity in
this day of great struggles and of complex
issues ? Are all men equal, as the Eighteenth
Century theorists insisted.? Or if the actual
inequality of men in power, in value, in pro
gressiveness, is an obvious fact, then how is
this fact related to racial distinctions.?
Such are a few of the questions that crowd
upon us when we think about the races of
men, and about their various relations to
civilization. I do not mean, in this brief
discussion, to exhaust any of these questions,
but I want to call attention to a few principles
which seem to me to be serviceable to any
one who wants to look at race questions
fairly and humanely. I
It will be natural for some of my readers
to interpose, at this point, the suggestion that
the principal guidance in any attempt to
answer such questions as the foregoing must
6

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
come from an appeal to the results of the
modern scientific study of the races of men.
Why speculate and moralize, one may say .?
Have not the races of men been studied in
recent times with elaborate care.? What can
tell us how to deal with the race-problems,
in case we neglect the results of anthropology
and of ethnology.? And if we consult those
sciences, do they not already give us a basis
for decision regarding all such matters — a
basis which is far more valuable than any
chance observations of an amateur can be .?
As a fact, if I supposed that, in their pres
ent stage of progress, the sciences which
deal with man had already attained to exact
results regarding the mental and moral dif
ferences, prospects, and destinies, of the differ
ent stocks of the genus homo, nobody would
be humbler than I should be in accepting,
and in trying to use the verdict that would
then have been obtained. But I confess
that, as a student of ethics and of certain other
aspects of our common human nature, I have
been a good deal baffled in trying to discover
7

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
just what the results of science are regarding
the true psychological and moral meaning of
race-dififerences. I shall later speak further
of some of the difficulties of this scientific
aspect of our topic. It is enough to say here
that when I consult any of the known Ras
seniheoretiker for light, I do indeed learn
that the concept of race is the key to the com
prehension of all history, and that, if you only
form a clear idea of the important types of
men (types such, for instance, as the mar
vellous Germanen of Chamberlain's Grund-
ziige des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts), you can
then determine with exactness precisely who
ought to rule and who ought to yield, and
can predict the forms of civilization, the
Weltanschauungen, and the other possessions,
which will be characteristic of each type
of men, so long as that type shall en
dure. When I observe, however, that the
Rasseniheoretiker frequently uses his science
to support most of his personal prejudices,
and is praised by his sympathizers almost
equally for his exact knowledge and for his
8

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
vigorous display of temperament, I begin to
wonder whether a science which mainly de
votes itself to proving that we ourselves are
the salt of the earth, is after all so exact as it
aims to be. It is with some modern race-
theories, as it is with some forms of inter
national yacht racing. I know nothing about
yachting; but whenever any form of the ex
alted sport of international yachting proves to
be definable as a sort of contest in which the
foreigner is invariably beaten, I for my part
take no interest in learning more about the
rules of that particular game. And pre
cisely so, when men marshal all the resources
of their science to prove that their own race-
prejudices are infallible, I can feel no con
fidence in what they imagine to be the result
of science. Much of our modern race-theory
reminds me, in its spirit, altogether too much
of some of the conversations in the "Jungle
Book," — or of the type of international
courtesy expressed in "The Truce of the
Bear," — too much, I say to seem like exact
science. Mowgli's remarks addressed to Red
9

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
Dog may have been good natural history;
but scientific Zoology does not proceed in
that way.
While I deeply respect, then, the actual
work of the sciences which deal with man,
and while I fully recognize their modern
progress, I greatly doubt that these sciences
as yet furnish us with the exact results which
representative race-theorists sometimes insist
upon. Hence I am unable to begin this little
study by a mere report of what science has
established regarding the mental and moral
varieties of men. I must rather make my
beginning with a mention of two instances
which have recently been much in my mind,
and which bear upon the meaning of race
prejudices. One of these instances is to-day
in everybody's mind. n
I refer then, first, to the wonderful lesson
that Japan has been teaching us regarding
what human energy and devotion have done
and can do, and can do also in case of a race
that is indeed remote enough from our own.
10

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
I remember well the Japan of the geography
text-books of my childhood, text-books which
were even then antiquated enough; but I
believed them. Japan was a weird land,
according to the old text-books, — a land
from which foreigners were excluded, a land
where all things were as perverse as possible,
where criminals were boiled in oil, where
Catholic missionaries had long ago been
martyred. Whatever the Japanese were, they
were plainly men of the wrong race. Later,
however, I learned something of the contem
porary history of Japan as it then was. The
scene was now, indeed, vastly changed. The
Japanese had opened their land; and here
upon, lo ! in a magic way, they were imitating,
so we heard, all of our European customs.
So we next had to alter our own opinion as to
their essential nature. They became in our
eyes a plastic race of wonderful little children,
small of stature, quick of wit, light-minded —
a folk who took up any suggestion precisely
as the playful children often do. They, too,
were playing, it seemed, with our whole
11

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
Western civilization. Plainly, then, they were
a race who had no serious life of their own at
all. Those of us who disliked them noted
that they thus showed an ape-like unsteadi
ness of conduct. This, then, was their
racial characteristic. Those who admired
them thought of them as a new sort of pets,
to be humored and instructed with all our
superior condescension. Well, as time went
on, and I grew to manhood, I myself came to
know some of these Japanese as students.
Hereupon, however, I gradually learned to see
such men in a wholly new light. I found
them, with all their steadfast courtesy, pleas
antly, but impenetrably reserved — keepers
of their own counsel, men whose life had, as
I soon foimd, a vast background of opinions
and customs that I could not fathom. When,
I said, shall I ever see what is behind that
Japanese smile.? What is in their hearts.?
With an immovable self-consciousness they
resisted every eflfort to alter, from without, any
of their essential ideals. Politely, whenever
you pressed them, they declmed to admit
12

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
that any of our Western arts or opinions were
equal in value to their own most cherished
national ideal treasures. And this they did
even at the moment when they were present,
most respectfully, as learners. They learned
well ; but plainly they meant to use this learn
ing for their own purposes. An enthusiastic
lady in an American University town was once
seeking to draw from a Japanese visitor some
admission of the importance of Christianity
for the higher civilization of his country.
"Confess," she insisted, "confess what a boon
our missionaries have brought you in intro
ducing Christianity into your land." "You
are right," answered the Japanese, with his
usual courteous smile, "you are right; the
missionaries in introducing Christianity, have
indeed brought us a great good. They have
completed the variety of religions in Japan."
This impenetrable Japanese self-conscious
ness, this unconquerable polite and obstinate
reserve, what did it mean .? Well, Mr. Hearn
and his kin have now let us know in a literary
way something of the true heart of Japan,
13

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
And the recent war has shown us what Japan
meant by imitating our Westem ways, and
also what ancestral ideals have led her sons
to death in battle, and still hold the nation so
closely knit to their Emperor. Already I
have heard some tender souls amongst us
say: "It is they who are racially our supe
riors." Some of us may live to see Japanese
customs pervading our land, and all of our
professional imitators trying to be Japanese.
Well, I myself am no worshipper of any
new fancy or distant civilization, merely
because of its temporary prominence. But
the true lesson which Japan teaches us to
day is, that it is somewhat hard to find out by
looking at the features of a man's face, or at
the color of his skin, or even at the reports of
travellers who visit his land, what it is of
which his race is really capable. Perhaps
the Japanese are not of the right race; but
we now admit that so long as we judged them
merely by their race, and by mere appearances,
we were judging them ignorantly, and falsely.
This, I say, has been to me a most interesting
14

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
lesson in the fallibility of some of our race
judgments. Ill
So much, then, for one lesson of experience.
I have recently been much impressed by an
other lesson, but by one of a very diflferent
character, occurring, so to speak, at the other
extremity of the world of modern race-prob
lems. The negro has so far shown none of
the great powers of the Japanese. Let us,
then, provisionally admit at this stage of our
discussion that the negro is in his present
backward state as a race, for reasons which
are not due merely to circumstances, but
which are quite innate in his mental constitu
tion. I shall indeed return to that topic
later on. But, for the moment, let that view
pass as if it were finally accepted. View the
negro, then, for the instant merely as a back
ward race. But let the race-question here be
our own pressing Southern question : How can
the white man and the negro, once forced,
as they are in our South, to live side by side,
best learn to live with a minimum of friction,
15

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
with a maximum of cooperation ? I have long
learned from my Southern friends that this
end can only be attained by a firm and by a
very constant and explicit insistence upon
keeping the negro in his proper place, as a
social inferior — who, then, as an inferior,
should, of course, be treated humanely, but
who must first be clearly and unmistakably
taught where he belongs. I have observed
that the pedagogical methods which my
Southern friends of late years have found
it their duty to use, to this end, are methods
such as still keep awake a good deal of
very lively and intense irritation in the
minds not only of the pupils but also of
the teachers. Now irritation, viewed merely
in itself, is not an enlightening state of
mind. It is, therefore, according to our
modern views, not a very pedagogical state of
mind. I am myself, for instance, a fairly
irritable person, and I am also a teacher.
But at the moments when I am irritated
I am certainly not just then a good teacher.
Is, however, the irritation which seems to be
16

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
the accompaniment of some of the recent
Southern methods of teaching the negro his
place an inevitable evil, a wholly necessary
accompaniment of the present transition period
in the South .? Must such increase of race
hatred first come, in order that later, when
ever the negro has fully learned his lesson,
and aspires no more beyond his station, peace
may come.? Well, concerning just this mat
ter I lately learned what was to me, in
my inexperience, a new lesson. I have had
occasion three times, in recent summers,
to visit British West Indies, Jamaica, and
Trinidad, at a time when few tourists were
there. Upon visiting Jamaica I first went
round the coast of the island, visiting its
various ports. I then went inland, and walked
for miles over its admirable coimtry roads.
I discussed its condition with men of various
occupations. I read some of its official litera
ture. I then consulted with a new interest its
history. I watched its negroes in various
places, and talked with some of them, too.
I have since collected such further informa-
c 17

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
tion as I had time to collect regarding its life,
as various authorities have discussed the topic,
and this is the result : —
Jamaica has a population of surely not more
than 14,000 or 15,000 whites, mostly English.
Its black population considerably exceeds
600,000. Its mulatto population, of various
shades, numbers, at the very least, some
40,000 or 50,000. Its plantation life, in the
days before emancipation, was much sad
der and severer, by common account, than
ours in the South ever was. Both the period
of emancipation and the immediately fol
lowing period were of a very discouraging
type. In the sixties of the last century there
was one very unfortunate insurrection. The
economic history of the island has also been
in many ways unlucky even to the present day.
Here, then, are certainly conditions which
in some respects are decidedly such as would
seem to tend toward a lasting state of general
irritation, such as you might suppose would
make race-questions acute. Moreover, the
population, being a tropical one, has serious
18

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
moral burdens to contend with of the sort that
result from the known influences of such
climates upon huinan character in the men
of all races.
And yet, despite all these disadvantages,
to-day, whatever the problems of Jamaica,
whatever its defects, our own present Southern
race-problem in the forms which we know best,
simply does not exist. There is no public con
troversy about social race equality or supe
riority. Neither a white man nor a white
woman feels insecure in moving about freely
amongst the black population anywhere on
the island. The colony has a Legislative
Assembly, although one of extremely limited
legislative powers. For the choice to this
assembly a suffrage determined only by a
decidedly low rate-qualification is free to all
who have sufficient property, but is used by
only a very small portion of the negro popula
tion. The negro is, on the whole, neither
painfully obstrusive in his public manners,
nor in need of being sharply kept in his place.
Within the circles of the black population itself
19

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
there is meanwhile a decidedly rich social dif
ferentiation. There are negroes in govemment
service, negroes in the professions, negroes
who are fairly prosperous peasant proprietors,
and there are also the poor peasants ; there are
the thriftless, the poor in the towns, — yes,
as in any tropical country, the beggars. In
Kingston and in some other towns there is a
small class of negroes who are distinctly crim
inal. On the whole, however, the negroes
and colored population, taken in the mass, are
orderly, law-abiding, contented, still back
ward in their education, but apparently
advancing. They are generally loyal to the
government. The best of them are aspir
ing, in their own way, and wholesomely
self-conscious. Yet there is no doubt what
ever that English white men are the essential
controllers of the destiny of the country.
But these English whites, few as they are,
control the country at present, with extraor
dinarily little friction, and wholly without
those painful emotions, those insistent com
plaints and anxieties, which at present are
20-

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
so prominent in the minds of many of our
own Southern brethren. Life in Jamaica is
not ideal. The economical aspect of the
island is in many ways unsatisfactory. But
the negro race-question, in our present Ameri
can sense of that term, seems to be substan
tially solved.
How .? By race-mixture .?
The considerable extent to which race-
mixture went in the earlier history of Jamaica
is generally known. Here, as elsewhere, how
ever, it has been rather the social inequality
of the races, than any approach to equality,
which has been responsible for the mixture, in
so far as such has occurred. It was the social
inequality of the plantation days that began
the process of mixture. If the often-mentioned
desire to raise the "color" of their children,
has later led the colored population to seek
a further amalgamation of the two stocks,
certainly that tendency, so far as it is effective,
has been due to the social advantages of the
lighter color — and not due to any motive
which has decreased the ancient disadvan-
21

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
tages under which the darker race has had to
sufEer. If race-amalgamation is indeed to be
viewed as always an evil, the best way to
counteract the growth of that evil must every
where be the cultivation of racial self-respect
and not of racial degradation. As a fact,
it is not the amalgamation of the stocks,
so far as that has occurred, which has tended
to reduce the friction between the races in
Jamaica. As to the English newcomers to
the island, they probably do not tend to
become amalgamated with the colored stocks
in Jamaica, more than in any other region
where the English live. The English stock
tends, here as elsewhere, to be proud of itself,
and to keep to itself. How then has the
solution of what was once indeed a grave
race-question been brought about in Jamaica .?
I answer, by the simplest means in the world
— the simplest, that is, for Englishmen —
viz. : by English administration, and by
English reticence. When once the sad period
of emancipation and of subsequent occasional
disorder was passed, the Englishman did in
22

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
Jamaica what he has so often and so well
done elsewhere. He organized his colony;
he established good local courts, which gained
by square treatment the confidence of the
blacks. The judges of such courts were
Englishmen. The English ruler also pro
vided a good country constabulary, in which
native blacks also found service, and in which
they could exercise authority over other blacks.
Black men, in other words, were trained, under
English management, of course, to police
black men. A sound civil service was also
organized; and in that educated negroes
found in due time their place, while the chiefs
of each branch of the service were and are,
in the main. Englishmen. The excise and the
health services, both of which are very highly
developed, have brought the law near to the
life of the humblest negro, in ways which
he sometimes finds, of course, restraining,
but which he also frequently finds beneficent.
Hence he is accustomed to the law; he sees
its ministers often, and often, too, as men of
his own race; and in the main, he is fond of
23

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
order, and learns to be respectful toward the
established ways of society. The Jamaica
negro is described by those who know him as
especially fond of bringing his petty quarrels
and personal grievances into court. He is
litigious just as he is vivacious. But this
confidence in the law is just what the courts
have encouraged. That is one way, in fact, to
deal with the too forward and strident negro.
Encourage him to air his grievances in court,
listen to him patiently, and fine him when
he deserves fines. That is a truly English
type of social pedagogy. It works in the
direction of making the negro a conscious
helper toward good social order.
Administration, I say, has done the larger
half of the work of solving Jamaica's race-
problem. Administration has filled the island
with good roads, has reduced to a minimum
the tropical diseases by means of an excellent
health-service, has taught the population
loyalty and order, has led them some steps
already on the long road "up from slavery,"
has given them, in many cases, the true self-
24

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
respect of those who themselves officially co
operate in the work of the law, and it has done
this without any such result as our Southern
friends nowadays conceive when they think
of what is called "negro domination." Ad
ministration has allayed ancient irritations.
It has gone far to oflfset the serious economic
and tropical troubles from which Jamaica
meanwhile suffers.
Yes, the work has been done by administra
tion, — and by reticence. For the English
man, in his official and governmental dealings
with backward peoples, has a great way of
being superior without very often publicly
saying that he is superior. You well know
that in dealing, as an individual, with other
individuals, trouble is seldom made by the
fact that you are actually the superior of
another man in any respect. The trouble
comes when you tell the other man, too
stridently, that you are his superior. Be my
superior, quietly, simply showing your supe
riority in your deeds, and very likely I shall
love you for the very fact of your superiority.
25

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
For we all love our leaders. But tell me that
I am your inferior, and then perhaps I may
grow boyish, and may throw stones. Well,
it is so with races. Grant then that yours is
the superior race. Then you can afford
to say little about that subject in your public
dealings with the backward race. Supe
riority is best shown by good deeds and by
few boasts. IV
So much for the lesson that Jamaica has
suggested to me. The widely dififerent con
ditions of Trinidad suggest, despite the differ
ences, a somewhat similar lesson. Here also
there are great defects in the social order;
but again, our Southern race-problem does
not exist. When, with such lessons in mind,
I recall our problem, as I hear it from my
brethren of certain regions of our Union, I
see how easily we can all mistake for a per
manent race-problem a difficulty that is es
sentially a problem of quite another sort.
Mr. Thomas Nelson Page in his recent
book on the "Southerners' Problem" speaks,
26

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
in one notable passage, of the possibility which
he calls Utopian, that perhaps some day the
negro in the South may be made to cooperate
in the keeping of order by the organization
under State control of a police of his own
race, who shall deal with blacks. He even
mentions that the English in the East Indies
use native constabulary. But this possibility
is not Utopian. When I hear the complaint
of the Southerner, that the race-problem
is such as constantly to endanger the safety
of his home, I now feel disposed to say: "The
problem that endangers the sanctity of your
homes and that is said sometimes to make
lynching a necessity, is not a race-problem.
It is an administrative problem. You have
never organized a country constabulary.
Hence, when various social conditions, amongst
which the habit of irritating public speech
about race-questions is indeed one, though
only one, condition, have tended to the pro
ducing and to the arousing of extremely
dangerous criminals in your communities,
you have no adequate means of guarding
27

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
against the danger. When you complain that
such criminals, when they flee from justice,
get sympathy from some portion of their
ignorant fellows and so are aided to get away,
you forget that you have not first made your
negro countryman familiar with, and fond of,
the law, by means of a vigorous and well-
organized and generally beneficent administra
tion constantly before his eyes, not only in the
pursuit of criminals, but in the whole care of
public order and health. If you insist that
in some districts the white population is too
sparse or too poor, or both, to furnish an
efficient country constabulary constantly on
duty, why, then, have you not long since
trained black men to police black men.?
Sympathy with the law grows with respon
sibility for its administration. If it is re
volting to you to see black men possessed of
the authority of a country constabulary, still,
if you will, you can limit their authority to
a control over their own race. If you say all
this speech of mine is professorial, unpractical,
Utopian, and if you still cry out bitterly for the
28

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
efifective protection of your womankind, I
reply merely, look at Jamaica. Look at other
English colonies.
In any case, the Southern race-problem will
never be relieved by speech or by practices
such as increase irritation. It will be relieved
when administration grows sufficiently effect
ive, and when the negroes themselves get an
increasingly responsible part in this admin
istration in so far as it relates to their own
race. That may seem a wild scheme. But I
insist: It is the English way. Look at
Jamaica, and learn how to protect your own
homes. I have reviewed two very different lessons
which I have recently had brought home to
me regarding race-problems. What is there
which is common to these two lessons.? Is it
not this : In estimating, in dealing with races,
in defining what their supposedly unchange
able characteristics are, in planning what to
do with them, we are all prone to confuse the
accidental with the essential. We are likely
to take for an essential race-characteristic
29

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
what is a transient incident, or a product of
special social conditions. We are disposed to
view as a fatal and overwhelming race-problem
what is a perfectly curable accident of our
present form of administration. If we are
indeed of a superior race ourselves, we shall,
however, best prove the fact by learning to
distinguish the accidental from the essential
in our relations with other races. I speak
with no lack of sympathy for the genuine and
bitter trials of our Southern brethren when I
say that I suppose the mistake which I now
point out, the mistake of confusing the es
sential and the accidental, is the mistake that
they are now making in many of their sincerest
expressions of concern over their race-problem.
So much for the two lessons that have led
me to the present discussion. But now let
me pass to a somewhat wider view of race-
problems. Let me ask a little more generally.
What, if anything, can be known to be es
sential about the characteristics of a race
of men and consequently an essentially im
portant consideration in our dealings with
30

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
alien races? Speaking so far as we can,
apart from prejudice, what can we say about
what it is which distinguishes the various
races of men from one another.?
V
The term "race" is popularly used in a very
vague way. The newspapers not long ago
said, during trouble in Poland, that the Rus
sian soldiers then in Warsaw showed "race-
antipathy" in their conflicts with the people.
We all know, however, that the mutual hatred
of Russians and Poles is due mainly to political
and to religious causes. Frenchmen of the
northern provinces, who are anthropologically
wholly indistinguishable, as Professor Ripley
tells us, from the inhabitants of many western
German districts, still have what they call a
"race-antipathy" for the men across the border.
Thus almost any national or political or
religious barrier, if it is old enough, may lead
to a consciousness of difference of race. On
the other hand, there are, of course, unques
tionable physical varieties of mankind, dis
tinguished by well-known physical contrasts.
31

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
But the anthropologists still almost hope
lessly disagree as to what the accurate classi
fication of these true races may be. Such a
classification, however, does not concern us
here. We are now interested in the minds
of men. We want to know what the races of
men are socially good for. And not in the
study of skulls or of hair, or of skin color,
and not in the survey of all these bewildering
complications with which physical anthro
pology deals, shall we easily find an answer
to our more practical questions, viz., to our
questions regarding the way in which these
various races of men are related to the inter
ests of civilization, and regarding the spirit
in which we ought to estimate and practicaUy
to deal with these racial traits of mankind.
For after all, it is a man's mind, rather
than his skull, or his hair, or his skin, that we
most need to estimate. And if hereupon we
ask ourselves just how these physical varieties
of the human stock, just how these shades of
color, these types of hair, these forms of skuU,
or these contours of body, are related to the
32

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
mental powers and to the moral character
istics of the men in question, then, if only we
set prejudice wholly aside, and appeal to
science to help us, we find ourselves in the
present state of knowledge almost hopelessly
at sea. We know too little as yet about the
natural history of the human mind, our psy
chology is far too infantile a science, to give
us any precise information as to the way in
which the inherited, the native, the constitu
tional aspects of the minds of men really vary
with their complexions or with their hair.
Yet that, of course, is just what we most want
to know. It is easy to show that an Austra
lian is just now far below our mental level.
But how far is his degradation due to the in
herited and unchangeable characters of his
race, and how far to his long struggle with
the dreary desert .? How far is he, as we now
find him, a degenerate, whose ancestors were
on some far higher level.? In other words,
is his type of mind a true variety of the human
mind, inbred and unchangeable? How far
is it, so to speak, a mere incident? Upon
D 33

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
what level were the minds of our own ances
tors in the early stone age of Europe? How
did their minds then compare with the minds
of those ancestors of the Australian who were
then their contemporaries ? Who shall an
swer such questions? Yet just such ques
tions we should have to answer before we could
decide upon the true relations of race and of
mind. To be sure, anthropology has made a
beginning, and a very important beginning,
in the study of the mental types of primitive
man. By various comparative and arch
aeological methods we can already learn a good
deal about the minds of our own ancestors.
We can also study various races as they are
to-day. We know, about the early stages of
human culture, far more than we knew a
little while since. But one result may forth
with be stated regarding what we have so far
learned concerning the early history of the
human mind, whether it is the mind of our
ancestors, or ^of other races. Of course, we
cannot doubt that, just as now we widely
34

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
differ in mental life, so always there must have
been great contrasts between the minds of
the various stocks of men. No doubt, if
the science of man were exact, it would indeed
include a race-psychology. But my present
scepticism concerns the present state of science,
and the result of such study as we have yet
made of the racial psychology of man is dis
tinctly disappointing to those who want to
make their task easy by insisting that the
physical varieties of mankind are in our
present state of knowledge sufficient guides
to an interpretation of the whole inner con
trast of the characters and of the mental
processes of men. For what anthropology
thus far shows us is, that, so soon as you go
back beyond those stages of cultivation where
history is possible, and so soon as you view
men as they are apart from the higher culture
— well, then, all men, so far as we can yet
study them, appear to us not, of course, the
same in mind, but yet surprisingly alike in
their minds, in their morals, and in their arts.
Widely as the primitive men differ, in certain
35

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
broad features they remain, for our present
knowledge, notably similar. And these com
mon features are such as are by no means
altogether flattering to our racial pride, when
we think that our own ancestors, too, were,
not very long since, comparatively, primitive
men like the rest.
All the more primitive men, namely, are
largely alike in the grossness and in the un
promising stupidity of their superstitions,
and in their moral defects and virtues. Very
many of them, belonging to the most various
races, resemble one another in possessing
customs which we now, for the most part,
profoundly abhor, and which we are at pres
ent prone to view as characteristic of es
sentially debased minds. Such customs as
cannibalism, or as human sacrifice, or as the
systematic torturing of prisoners of war, such
horrors as those of the witchcraft from whose
bondage Europeans escaped only since the
seventeenth century — such things, I say,
are characteristic of no one race of men. To
surround one's life with a confused mass of
36

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
spiritual horrors, to believe in ghosts, or in
vampires, in demons, in magic, in witchcraft,
and in hostile gods of all sorts, to tangle up
one's daily activities in a net of superstitious
customs, to waste time in elaborate incanta
tions, to live in fantastic terrors of an unseen
world, to be terrified by tabus of all kinds,
so that numerous sorts of useful deeds are
superstitiously forbidden, to narrate impossible
stories and believe in them, to live in filth, to
persecute, to resist light, to fight against
progress, to be mentally slothful, dull, sen
suous, cruel, to be the prey of endless foolish
ness, to be treacherous, to be destructive —
well, these are the mental traits of no one or
two races of men. These are simply the com
mon evil, traits of primitive humanity, traits to
which our own ancestors were very long ago
a prey, traits against which civilized man has
still constantly to fight. Any frenzied mob of
civilized men may relapse in an hour to the
level of a very base savagery. All the re
ligions of men, without exception, and how
ever lofty the heights that they have since
37

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
climbed, appear to have begun with much the
same chaos of weird customs and of unrea
sonable delusions. Man's mental burdens
have thus been, in all races, of very much the
same sort, except, to be sure, that civilization,
side by side with the good that it has created,
has invented some new mental burdens, such
as our increasing percentage of insanity in
recent times illustrates.
The souls of men, then, if viewed apart
from the influences of culture, if viewed as
they were in primitive times, are by no means
as easy to classify as the woolly-haired and
the straight-haired races at first appear to be.
If you study the thoughts of the various
peoples, as the anthropologist Bastian has
loved to mass them together in his chaotic and
learned monographs, or as Fraser has sur
veyed some of them in his " Golden Bough,"
well, these primitive thoughts appear, in all
their own chaos, and in all their vast varieties
of detail, to be the outcome not of racial
differences so much as of a few essentially
human, although by no means always very
38

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
lofty, motives. These fundamental motives
appear, with almost monotonous regularity,
in the superstitions, the customs, the legends,
of all races. Esquimaux and Australians,
negroes and Scotch Highlanders of former
days, ancient Japanese and Hindoos, Poly
nesians and early Greeks, — all these ap
pear side by side, in such comparative
studies of the primitive mind of man, side
by side as brothers in error and in ignorance,
so soon as you proceed to study by the com
parative method their early magic, their old
beliefs, their early customs. Yet only by
such a study could you hope to distinguish
what really belongs to the mind of a race
of men, as distinct from what belongs to
culture. If, then, it is the mind and the heart of man
that you really want to know, you will find it
hard, so soon as you leave civilization out of
account, to tell what the precise meaning of the
term "race of men" is, when that term is
conceived as characterizing a distinct hered
itary variety of human mental constitution.
39

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
A race-psychology is still a science for the
future to discover.
Perhaps, however, as you may say, I have
not been just, in this very summary statement,
to what, after all, may prove to be the best
test of the true racial differences amongst the
various types of the human mind. Some
races, namely, have proved themselves to
be capable of civilization. Other races have
stubbornly refused civilization, or have re
mained helplessly degraded even when sur
rounded by civilization. Others still have
perished at the first contact with civilization.
The Germanic ancestors of the present west
ern Europeans were barbarians, although of
a high type. But when they met civilization,
they first adopted, and then improved it.
Not so was it with the Indians, with the Poly
nesians. Here, then, is the test of a true
mental difference amongst races. Watch
them when they meet civilization. Do they
show themselves first teachable and then
originative? Then they are mentally higher
races. Do they stagnate or die out in the
40

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
presence of civilization? Then they are of
the lower types. Such differences, you will
say, are deep and ineradicable, like the differ
ences between the higher and the lower sorts
of individual men. And such differences
will enable us to define racial types of mind.
I fully agree that this test is an important
one. Unfortunately, the test has never been
so fairly applied by the civilized nations of
men that it can give us any exact results.
Again, the facts are too complex to be esti
mated with accuracy. Our Germanic ances
tors accepted civilization when they met with it.
Yes, but they met civilization under conditions
peculiarly favorable to their own education.
They had been more or less remotely in
fluenced by its existence, centuries before they
entered the field of history. When they
entered this field, they met civilization first as
formidable foes; they were long in contact
with it without being themselves enslaved;
and then later, in numerous cases, they met
civilization as conquerors, who, in the course
of their very efforts to conquer, found thus the
41

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
opportunity and later something of the leisure
to learn, and who had time to discover by
centuries of hard experience, how great were
the advantages the cultivation of the Roman
empire had to offer them. But suppose that
Csesar in the first century B.C. had already
had the opportunity to undertake the civiliza
tion of Germany by means of our own modern
devices. Suppose that he had then possessed
unlimited supplies of rum, of rifles, and of
machine guns. Suppose in brief that, by the
aid of such gentle arts as we now often use,
he had very greatly abbreviated the period
of probation and of schooling that was open to
the German barbarians to learn the lessons that
the cultivated peoples had to teach. Suppose
that Roman syndicates had been ready to
take possession, at once, of the partly depopu
lated lands of the north, and to keep the few
surviving natives thenceforth in their place, by
showing them how cultivated races can look -
down upon savage folk. Well, in that case,
the further history of civilization might have
gone on without the aid of the Germanic
42

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
peoples. The latter would then have quickly
proved their natural inferiority once for all.
They would have furnished one instance more
for the race-partisans to cite in order to show
how incapable the lower races are of ascending
from barbarism to civilization. Dead men
not only tell no tales; they also, strange to
say, attend no schools, and learn no lessons.
And hereby they prove themselves in the eyes
of certain students of race-questions to have
been always of a much lower mental type than
the cultivated men who killed them. Their
surviving descendants, if sufficiently provided
with the means of corruption, and if suffi
ciently down-trodden, may remain henceforth
models of degradation. ' For man, whatever
his race, is an animal that you unquestionably
can debase to whatever level you please, if
you only have power, and if you then begin
early enough, and devote yourself persistently
enough to the noble and civilized task of prov
ing him to be debased, j
I do not doubt, then, that some races are
more teachable than others. But I do very
43

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
much doubt our power to estimate how
teachable a race is, or what can be made of
them, or what hereditary mental powers they
have until we have given them centuries of
opportunity to be taught. Fortune and the
defects of the Roman Empire gave to the
Germanic peoples an extraordinary opportu
nity to learn. So the world found out how
teachable they were. Let their descendants
not boast unduly until they, too, have given to
other races, not indeed the opportunities of
conquerors, but some equal opportunity to
show of what sort of manhood they are
capable. Yet, you may insist, civilization itself had an
origin. Were not the races that first won
civilized rank superior in mental type to those
that never showed themselves capable of such
originality? WeU, I reply, we do not know
as yet precisely where, and stUl less how,
civilization originated. But this seems clear,
viz. : first, that physical environment and the
forms of social aggregation which this environ
ment determined, had a very great share in
44

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
making the beginnings of civilization pos
sible; whUe, secondly, whatever part race-
qualities played in early civilization, certainly
no one race has the honor of beginning
the process. Neither Chinese nor Egyptian,
neither Caucasian nor Mongol, was the sole
originator of civilization. The African of the
tropical swamps and forests, the Australian
of the desert, the Indian of our prairies, was
sufficiently prevented by his physical en
vironment from being the originator of a
great civUization. What each of these races
would have done in another environment,
we cannot tell. But the Indian of Central
America, of Mexico, and of Peru, shows us
that race alone did not predetermine how
remote from the origination of a higher civili
zation a stock must needs remain. Chinese
civUization, and, in recent times, Japanese
civUization, have shown us that one need not
be a Caucasian in order to originate a higher
type of wisdom.
In brief, then, there is hardly any one thing
that our actual knowledge of the human
45

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
mind enables us to assert, with any scientific
exactness, regarding the permanent, the hered
itary, the unchangeable mental character
istics which distinguish even the most widely
sundered physical varieties of mankind. There
is, to be sure, one exception to this rule, which
is itself instructive. It is the case where we
are dealing with physical and social degen
eracy, the result of circumstances and of en
vironment, and where such degeneracy has
already gone so far that we have before us
highly diseased human types, such as can no
longer be reclaimed. But such types are not
racial types. They are results of alcohol, of
infection, or in some instances, of the long-
continued pressure of physical environment.
In such cases we can sometimes say. Here is
a hopelessly degraded stock of men. But,
then, civilization can create such stocks, out
of any race of men, by means of a sufficient
amount of oppression and of other causes of
degradation, if continued through generations.
No race of men, then, can lay claim to a
fixed and hereditary type of mental life such
46

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
as we can now know with exactness to be
unchangeable. We do not scientifically know
what the true racial varieties of mental type
really are. No doubt there are such varieties.
The judgment day, or the science of the future,
may demonstrate what they are. We are at
present very ignorant regarding the whole
matter. VI
What, then, in the light of these considera
tions, is there which can be called funda
mentally significant about our numerous
modern race-problems? I answer, scientifi
cally viewed, these problems of ours turn out to
be not so much problems caused by anything
which is essential to the existence or to the
nature of the races of men themselves. Our
so-called race-problems are merely the prob
lems caused by our antipathies.
Now, the mental antipathies of men, like
the fears of men, are every elemental, wide
spread, and momentous mental phenomena.
But they are also in their fundamental nature
extremely capricious, and extremely suggest-
47

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
ible mental phenomena. Let an individual
man alone, and he will feel antipathies for
certain other human beings very much as
any young child does — namely, quite capri
ciously — just as he will also feel all sorts
of capricious likings for people. But train
a man first to give names to his antipathies,
and then to regard the antipathies thus named
as sacred merely because they have a name,
and then you get the phenomena of racial
hatred, of religious hatred, of class hatred,
and so on indefinitely. Such trained hatreds
are peculiarly pathetic and peculiarly de
ceitful, because they combine in such a subtle
way the elemental vehemence of the hatred
that a child may feel for a stranger, or a cat
for a dog, with the appearance of dignity and
solemnity and even of duty which a name
gives. Such antipathies will always play their
part in human history. But what we can do
about them is to try not to be fooled by them,
not to take them too seriously because of their
mere name. We can remember that they are
childish phenomena in our lives, phenomena
48

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
on a level with a dread of snakes, or of mice;
phenomena that we share with the cats and
with the dogs, not noble phenomena, but
caprices of our complex nature.
Upon the theoretical aspects of the problem
which such antipathies present, psychology
can already throw some light. Man, as a
social being, needs and possesses a vast range
of simply elemental tendencies to be socially
sensitive when in the presence of other men.
These elemental tendencies appear, more or
less untrained, in the bashfulness of child
hood, in the stage fright of the unskilled, in
the emotional disturbances of young people
who are finding their way in the world, in the
surprises of early love, in the various sorts of
anthropophobia which beset nervous patients,
in the antipathies of country folk toward
strangers, in the excitements of mobs, in count
less other cases of social stress or of social
novelty. Such sensitiveness may arise in
advance of or apart from any individual
experience which gives a conscious reason
why one should feel thus. A common feature

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
of all such experiences is the fact that one
human being finds other human beings to be
portentous, even when the socially sensitive
being does not in the least know why they
should be so. That such reactions have an
instinctive basis is unquestionable. Their
general use is that they prepare one, through
interest in men, to be ready for social training,
and to be submissively plastic. In mUder
forms, or upon the basis of agreeable social
relations, such instinctive emotions easUy come
to be moulded into the most fascinating of
human interests; and the social life is impos
sible without this basis of the elemental
concerns which man feels merely because of
the fact that other men are there in his world.
If decidedly intense, however, such instinc
tively determined experiences are apt, like
other intense disturbances, to be prevailingly
painful. And since novelty, oddity, and lack
of social training on the part of the subject con
cerned are motives which tend to make such
social reflexes intense, a very great number
of the cruder and more childish social re-
50

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
actions involve antipathies ; for a social antip
athy is merely a painful, and so, in general,
an overintense, reflex disturbance in the
presence of another human being. No light
need be thrown, by the mere occurrence of
such an antipathy, upon any permanently
important social character of the hated object.
The chance intensity of the passing experience
may be alone significant. And any chance
association may serve to secure, in a given
case, the intensity of disturbance which makes
the object hated. Oddities of feature or of
complexion, slight physical variations from
the customary, a strange dress, a scar, a too
steady look, a limp, a loud or deep voice, any
of these peculiarities, in a stranger, may be,
to one child, or nervous subject, or other
sensitive observer, an object of fascinated
curiosity; to another, slightly less stable
observer, an intense irritation, an object of
terror, or of violent antipathy. The significant
fact is that we are all instinctively more or
less sensitive to such features, simply because
we are by heredity doomed to be interested
51

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
in all facts which may prove to be socially
important. Whether we are fascinated, or
horror-stricken, or angry, is, apart from
training, largely a matter of the momentary
subjective intensity of the disturbance.
But all such elemental social experiences are
ipso facto, highly suggestible. Our social
training largely consists in the elimination or
in the intensification or in the systematizing
of these original reactions through the influence
of suggestion and of habit. Hence the antip
athy, once by chance aroused, but then named,
imitated, insisted upon, becomes to its victims
a sort of sacred revelation of truth, sacred
merely because it is felt, a revelation merely
because it has won a name and a social stand
ing. What such sacred revelations, however,
really mean, is proved by the fact that the
hungry traveller, if deprived of his breakfast
long enough, by means of an accidental delay
of his train, or the tired camper in the forest,
may readily come to feel whatever racial
antipathy you please toward his own brother,
52

RACE QUESTIONS AND PREJUDICES
if the latter then wounds social susceptibilities
which the abnormal situation has made mo
mentarily hypersesthetic.
I have said little or nothing, in this paper,
of human justice. I have spoken mainly
of human Ulusions. We all have illusions,
and hug them. Let us not sanctify them by
the name of science.
For my part, then, I am a member of the
human race, and this is a race which is, as a
whole, considerably lower than the angels,
so that the whole of it very badly needs race-
elevation. In this need of my race I per
sonally and very deeply share. And it is in
this spirit only that I am able to approach our
problem.

53

II
PROVINCIALISM

II
PROVINCMLISM
T PROPOSE, in this address, to define
-¦- certain issues which, as I think, the
present state of the world's civilization, and
of our own national life, make both promi
nent and critical. I
The word " provincialism," which I have
used as my title, has been chosen because it
is the best single word that I have been able
to find to suggest the group of social tenden
cies to which I want to call your especial
attention. I intend to use this word in a
somewhat elastic sense, which I may at once
indicate. When we employ the word " pro
vincialism " as a concrete term, speaking of
"a provincialism," we mean, I suppose, any
social disposition, or custom, or form of
speech or of civUization, which is especially
characteristic of a province. In this sense
one speaks of the provincialisms of the local
57

PROVINCIALISM
dialect of any English shire, or of any German
country district. This use of the term in
relation to the dialects of any language is
very common. But one may also apply the
term to name, not only the peculiarities of
a local dialect, but the fashions, the manners,
and customs of a given restricted region of
any country. One also often employs the
word " provincialism " as an abstract term, to
name not only the customs or social tenden
cies themselves, but that fondness for them,
that pride in them, which may make the
inhabitants of a province indisposed to con
form to the ways of those who come from with
out, and anxious to follow persistently their
own local traditions. Thus the word " pro
vincialism" applies both to the social habits
of a given region, and to the mental interest
which inspires and maintains these habits.
But both uses of the term imply, of course,
that one first knows what is to be meant by
the word " province." This word, however,
is one of an especially elastic usage. Some
times, by a province, we mean a region as
58

PROVINCIALISM
restricted as a single English county, or as
the smallest of the old German principalities.
Sometimes, however, one speaks of the whole
of New England, or even of the Southern
states of our Union, as constituting one prov
ince; and I know of no easy way of defining
how large a province may be. For the term,
in this looser sense, stands for no deter
minate political or legal division of a country.
Meanwhile we all, in our minds, oppose the
term " province " to the term " nation," as the
part is opposed to the whole. Yet we also often
oppose the terms "provincial" and "metropoli
tan," conceiving that the country districts and
the smaller towns and cities belong even to the
province, while the very great cities belong
rather to the whole country, or even to the
world in general. Yet here the distinction
that we make is not the same as the former
distinction between the part of a country and
the whole country. Nevertheless, the ground
for such an identification of the provincial
with that which pertains to country districts
and to smaller cities can only lie in the sup-
59

PROVINCIALISM
posed tendency of the great city to represent
better the interests of the larger whole than
do the lesser communities. This suppo
sition, however, is certainly not altogether well
founded. In the sense of possessing local
interests and customs, and of being limited
to ideas of their own, many great cities are
almost as distinctly provincial as are certain
less populous regions. The plain people of
London or of Berlin have their local dialect;
and it seems fair to speak of the peculiarities
of such dialects as provincialisms. And
almost the same holds true of the other social
traditions peculiar to individual great cities.
It is possible to find, even amongst the highly
cultivated classes of ancient cities, ideas and
fashions of behavior as characteristically
local, as exclusive in their indifference to the
ways of outsiders, as are the similarly char
acteristic ways and opinions of the country
districts of the same nationality. And so
the opposition of the provincial to the metro
politan, in manners and in beliefs, seems to
me much less important than the other oppo-
60

PROVINCIALISM
sition of the province, as the more or less re
stricted part, to the nation as the whole. It
is this latter opposition that I shall therefore
emphasize in the present discussion. But
I shall not attempt to define how large or
how well organized, politically, a province
must be. For my present purpose a county,
a state, or even a large section of the coun
try, such as New England, might constitute
a province. For me, then, a province shall
mean any one part of a national domain,
which is, geographically and socially, suffi
ciently unified to have a true consciousness
of its own unity, to feel a pride in its own
ideals and customs, and to possess a sense
of its distinction from other parts of the coun
try. And by the term " provincialism" I shall
mean, first, the tendency of such a province
to possess its own customs and ideals; sec
ondly, the totality of these customs and ideals
themselves; and thirdly, the love and pride
which leads the inhabitants of a province to
cherish as their own these traditions, beliefs,
and aspirations. 61

PROVINCIALISM II
I have defined the term used as my title.
But now, in what sense do I propose to make
provincialism our topic? You wUl foresee
that I intend to discuss the worth of provin
cialism, i.e. to consider, to some extent,
whether it constitutes a good or an evU ele
ment in civUization. You will properly ex
pect me, therefore, to- compare provincialism
with other social tendencies; such tendencies
as patriotism, the larger love of humamty,
and the ideals of higher cultivation. Pre
cisely these will constitute, in fact, the special
topics of my address. But all that I have to
say will group itself about a single thesis,
which I shall forthwith announce. My thesis
is that, in the present state of the world's
civilization, and of the life of our own country,
the time has come to emphasize, with a new
meaning and intensity, the positive value,
the absolute necessity for our welfare, of a
wholesome provincialism, as a saving power
to which the world in the near future will
need more and more to appeal. '¦
62

PROVINCIALISM
The time was (and not very long since),
when, in our own country, we had to contend
against very grave evils due to false forms
of provincialism. What has been called sec
tionalism long threatened our national unity.
Our Civil War was fought to overcome the
Uls due to such influences. There was,
therefore, a time when the virtue of true
patriotism had to be founded upon a vigorous
condemnation of certain powerful forms of
provincialism. And our national education
at that time depended both upon our learning
common federal ideals, and upon our look
ing to foreign lands for the spiritual guid
ance of older civilizations. Furthermore, not
only have these things been so in the past,
but similar needs will, . of course, be felt in
the future. We shall always be required to
take counsel of the other nations in company
with whom we are at work upon the tasks
of civilization. Nor have we outgrown our
spiritual dependence upon older forms of
civUization. In fact we shall never outgrow
a certain inevitable degree of such depend-
63

PROVINCIALISM
ence. Our national unity, moreover, will
always require of us a devotion that will tran
scend in some directions the limits of all our
provincial ideas. A common sympathy be
tween the different sections of our country
will, in future, need a constantly fresh cultiva
tion. Against the evil forms of sectionalism
we shall always have to contend. AU this
I well know, and these things I need not in
your presence emphasize. But what I am
to emphasize is this: The present state of
civilization, both in the world at large, and
with us, in America, is such as to define a new
social mission which the province alone, but
not the nation, is able to fulfil. False sec
tionalism, which disunites, will indeed always
remain as great an evil as ever it ' was.
But the modern world has reached a point
where it needs, more than ever before, the
vigorous development of a highly organized
provincial life. Such a life, if wisely guided,
will not mean disloyalty to the nation; and
it need not mean narrowness of spirit, nor
yet the further development of jealousies
64

PROVINCIALISM
between various communities. What it will
mean, or at least may mean, — this, so far as
I have time, I wish to set forth in the follow
ing discussion. My main intention is to de
fine the right form and the true office of
provincialism, — to portray what, if you
please, we may well call the Higher Pro
vincialism, — to portray it, and then to de
fend it, to extol it, and to counsel you to
further just such provincialism.
Since this is my purpose, let me at once say
that I address myself, in the most explicit
terms, to men and women who, as I hope
and presuppose, are and wish to be, in the
wholesome sense, provincial. Every one, as
I maintain, ought, ideally speaking, to be
provincial, — and that no matter how culti
vated, or humanitarian, or universal in pur
pose or in experience he may be or may
become. If in our own country, where often
so many people are still comparative
strangers to the communities in which they
have come to live, there are some of us who,
like myself, have changed our provinces dur-
F 65

PROVINCIALISM
ing our adult years, and who have so been
unable to become and to remain in the sense
of European countries provincial; and if,
moreover, the life of our American provinces
everywhere has stUl too brief a tradition, —
all that is our misfortune, and not our ad
vantage. As our country grows in social
organization, there will be, in absolute meas
ure, more and not less provincialism amongst
our people. To be sure, as I hope, there will
also be, in absolute measure, more and not
less patriotism, closer and not looser national
ties, less and not more mutual sectional mis
understanding. But the two tendencies, the
tendency toward national unity and that
toward local independence of spirit, must
henceforth grow together. They cannot
prosper apart. The national unity must not
kill out, nor yet hinder, the provincial self-
consciousness. The loyalty to the Republic
must not lessen the love and the local pride
of the individual community. The man of
the future must love his province more than
he does to-day. His provincial customs and
66

PROVINCIALISM
ideals must be more and not less highly de
veloped, more and not less self-conscious,
weU-established, and earnest. And therefore,
I say, I appeal to you as to a company of
people who are, and who mean to be, pro
vincial as weU as patriotic, — servants and
lovers of your own community and of its ways,
as weU as citizens of the world. I hope and
believe that you all intend to have your com
munity live its own life, and not the life of
any other community, nor yet the life of a
mere abstraction called humanity in general.
I hope that you are fully aware how pro
vincialism, like monogamy, is an essential
basis of true civilization. And it is with this
presupposition that I undertake to suggest
something toward a definition and defence
of the higher provincialism and of its office
in civilization. Ill
With this programme in mind, let me first
tell you what seem to me to be in our mod
ern world, and, in particular, in our American
world, the principal evils which are to be cor-
67

PROVINCIALISM
rected by a further development of a true
provincial spirit, and which cannot be cor
rected without such a development.
The first of these evils I have already men
tioned. It is a defect incidental, partly to
the newness of our own country, but partly
also to those world-wide conditions of mod
ern life which make travel, and even a change
of home, both attractive and easy to dweUers
in the most various parts of the globe. In
nearly every one of our American communi
ties, at least in the northern and in the western
regions of our country, there is a rather large
proportion of people who either have not
grown up where they were born, or who have
changed their dwelling-place in adult years.
I can speak all the more freely regarding this
class of our communities, because, in my own
community, I myself, as a native of California,
now resident in New England, belong to such
a class. Such classes, even in modern New
England, are too large. The stranger, the
sojourner, the newcomer, is an inevitable
factor in the life of most American communi-
68

PROVINCIALISM
ties. To make him welcome is one of the
most gracious of the tasks in which our people
have become expert. To give him his fair
chance is the rule of our national life. But
it is not on the whole well when the affairs of
a community remain too largely under the
influence of those who mainly feel either the
wanderer's or the new resident's interest in
the region where they are now dwelling. To
offset the social tendencies due to such fre
quent changes of dwelling-place we need the
further development and the intensification
of the community spirit. The sooner the new
resident learns to share this spirit, the better
for him and for his community. A sound
instinct, therefore, guides even our newer
communities, in the more fortunate cases, to
a rapid development of such a local senti
ment as makes the stranger feel that he must
in due measure conform if he would be per
manently welcome, and must accept the local
spirit if he is to enjoy the advantages of his
community. As a Californian I have been
interested to see both the evidences and the
69

PROVINCIALISM
nature of this rapid evolution of the genuine
provincial spirit in my own state. How
swiftly, in that country, the Californians of
the early days seized upon every suggestion
that could give a sense of the unique impor
tance of their new provincial life. The asso
ciations that soon clustered about the tales of
the life of Spanish missionaries and Mexican
colonists in the years before 1846, — these
our American Californians cherished from
the outset. This, to us often half-legendary
past, gave us a history of our own. The
wondrous events of the early mining life, —
how earnestly the pioneers later loved to re
hearse that story ; and how proud every young
Californian soon became of the fact that his
father had had his part therein. Even the
Californian's well-known and largely justified
glorification of his climate was, in his own
mind, part of the same expression of his ten
dency to idealize whatever tended to make
his community, and all its affairs, seem unique,
beloved, and deeply founded upon some sig
nificant natural basis. Such a foundation
70

PROVINCIALISM
was, indeed, actually there; nature had,
indeed, richly blessed his land; but the real
interest that made one emphasize and idealize
aU these things, often so boastfully, was the
interest of the loyal citizen in finding his com
munity an object of pride. Now you, who
know well your own local history, will be able
to observe the growth amongst you of this ten
dency to idealize your past, to glorify the
bounties that nature has showered upon you,
all in such wise as to give the present life of
your community more dignity, more honor,
more value in the eyes of yourselves and of
strangers. In fact, that we all do thus glorify
our various provinces, we well know; and
with what feelings we accompany the process,
we can all observe for ourselves. But it is
well to remember that the special office, the
principal use, the social justification, of such
mental tendencies in ourselves lies in the aid
that they give us in becoming loyal to our
community, and in assimilating to our own
social order the strangers that are within our
gates. It is the especial art of the colonizing
71

PROVINCIALISM
peoples, such as we are, and such as the Eng
lish are, to be able by devices of this sort
rapidly to build up in their own minds a pro
vincial loyalty in a new environment. The
French, who are not a colonizing people,
seem to possess much less of this tendency.
The Chinese seem to lack it almost altogether.
Our own success as possessors of new lands
depends upon this one skill in making the new
lands where we came to dwell soon seem to us
glorious and unique. I was much impressed,
some years ago, during a visit to Australia
and New Zealand, with the parallel devel
opments in the Australasian colonies. They
too have already their glorious past history,
their unique fortunes, their romances of the
heroic days, — and, in consequence, their
provincial loyalty and their power to assimi
late their newcomers. So learn to view your
new community that every stranger who
enters it shall at once feel the dignity of its
past, and the unique privilege that is offered
to him when he is permitted to belong to its
company of citizens, — this is the first rule
72

PROVINCIALISM
of the people of every colonizing nation when
they found a new province.
Thus, then, I have pointed out the first evil
with which our provincialism has to deal —
the evil due to the presence of a considerable
number of not yet assimilated newcomers in
most of our communities. The newcomers
themselves are often a boon and welcome in
deed. But their failure to be assimilated
constitutes, so long as it endures, a source of
social danger, because the community needs
well-knit organization. We meet this danger
by the development of a strong provincial
spirit amongst those who already constitute
the centralized portion of the community.
For thus a dignity is given to the social order
which makes the newcomer long to share in its
honors by deserving its confidence. But this
aspect of provincialism, this usefulness of local
pride, is indeed the best known aspect of my
topic. I pass at once to the less frequently
recognized uses of the provincial spirit, by
mentioning the second of the evils with which
a wise provincialism is destined to contend.
73

PROVINCIALISM

IV

This second modern evil arises from, and
constitutes, one aspect of the levelling ten
dency of recent civUization. That such a
levelling tendency exists, most of us recognize.
That it is the office of the province to contend
against some of the attendant evils of this ten
dency, we less often observe. By the level
ling tendency in question I mean that aspect
of modern civilization which is most obvi
ously suggested by the fact that, because of
the ease of communication amongst distant
places, because of the spread of popular edu
cation, and because of the consolidation and
of the centralization of industries and of
social authorities, we tend all over the nation,
and, in some degree, even throughout the
civilized world, to read the same daily news,
to share the same general ideas, to submit to
the same overmastering social forces, to live
in the same external fashions, to discourage
individuality, and to approach a dead level
of harassed mediocrity. One of the most
74

PROVINCIALISM
marked of all social tendencies is in any age
that toward the mutual assimilation of men
in so far as they are in social relations with one
another. One of the strongest human pre
dispositions is that toward imitation. But
our modern conditions have greatly favored
the increase of the numbers of people who
read the same books and newspapers, who
repeat the same phrases, who follow the same
social fashions, and who thus, in general, imi
tate one another in constantly more and more
ways. The result is a tendency to crush the
individual. Furthermore there are modern
economic and industrial developments, too
well known to all of you to need any detailed
mention here, which lead toward similar
results. The independence of the small
trader or manufacturer becomes lost in the
great commercial or industrial combination.
The vast corporation succeeds and displaces
the individual. Ingenuity and initiative be
come subordinated to the discipline of an
impersonal social order. And each man,
becoming, like his fellow, the servant of mas-
75

PROVINCIALISM
ters too powerful for him to resist, and too
complex in their undertakings for him to
understand, is, in so far, disposed unobtru
sively to conform to the ways of his in
numerable fellow-servants, and to lose all
sense of his unique moral destiny as an in
dividual. I speak here merely of tendencies. As
you know, they are nowhere unopposed ten
dencies. Nor do I for an instant pretend to
call even these levelling tendencies wholly, or
principally, evil. But for the moment I call
attention to what are obviously questionable,
and in some degree are plainly evil, aspects
of these modern tendencies. Imitation is a
good thing. All civilization depends upon
it. But there may be a limit to the number of
people who ought to imitate precisely the same
body of ideas and customs. For imitation is
not man's whole business. There ought to
be some room left for variety. Modern con
ditions have often increased too much what
one might call the purely mechanical carrying-
power of certain ruling social influences.
76

PROVINCIALISM
There are certain metropolitan newspapers,
for instance, which have far too many readers
for the good of the social order in which they
circulate. These newspapers need not al
ways be very mischievous ones. But when
read by too vast multitudes, they tend to pro
duce a certain monotonously uniform trivi
ality of mind in a large proportion of our
city and suburban population. It would be
better if the same readers were divided into
smaller sections, which read different news
papers, even if these papers were of no higher
level. For then there would at least be a
greater variety in the sorts of triviality which
from day to day occupied their minds. And
variety is the beginning of individual inde
pendence of insight and of conviction. As for
the masses of people who are under the domi
nation of the great corporations that employ
them, I am here not in the least dwelling
upon their economic difficulties. I am point
ing out that the lack of initiative in their
lives tends to make their spiritual range
narrower. They are too little disposed to
77

PROVINCIALISM
create their own world. Now every man who
gets into a vital relation to God's truth be
comes, in his own way, a creator. And if
you deprive a man of all incentive to create,
you in so far tend to cut him off from God's
truth. Or, in more common language, in
dependence of spirit flourishes only when a
man at least believes that he has a chance to
change his fortunes if he persistently wUls to
do so. But the servant of some modern
forms of impersonal social organization tends
to lose this belief that he has a chance. Hence
he tends to lose independence of spirit.
Well, this is the second of the evils of the
modern world which, as I have said, pro
vincialism may tend to counteract. Local
spirit, local pride, provincial independence,
influence the individual man precisely because
they appeal to his imitative tendencies. But
thereby they act so as to render him more or
less immune in presence of the more trivial
of the influences that, coming from without
his community, would otherwise be likely to
reduce him to the dead level of the customs
78

PROVINCIALISM
of the whole nation. A country district may
seem to a stranger unduly crude in its ways;
but it does not become wiser in case, under
the influence of city newspapers and of summer
boarders, it begins to follow city fashions
merely for the sake of imitating. Other
things being equal, it is better in proportion
as it remains self-possessed, — proud of its
own traditions, not unwilling indeed to learn,
but also quite ready to teach the stranger its
own wisdom. And in similar fashion provin
cial pride helps the individual man to keep
his self-respect even when the vast forces
that work toward industrial consolidation,
and toward the effacement of individual
initiative, are besetting his life at every turn.
For a man is in large measure what his social
consciousness makes him. Give him the
local community that he loves and cherishes,
that he is proud to honor and to serve, —
make his ideal of that community lofty, — give
him faith in the dignity of his province, — and
you have given him a power to*counteract the
levelling tendencies of modern civUization.
79

PROVINCIALISM V
The third of the evUs with wliich a wise
provincialism must contend is closely con
nected with the second. I have spoken of
the constant tendency of modern life to the
mutual assimilation of various parts of the
social order. Now this assimilation may oc
cur slowly and steadily, as in great measure
it normally does; or, on the other hand, it
may take more sudden and striking forms, at
moments when the popular mind is excited,
when great emotions affect the social order.
At such times of emotional disturbance, so
ciety is subject to tendencies which have
recently received a good deal of psychological
study. They are the tendencies to constitute
what has often been called the spirit of the
crowd or of the mob. Modern readers of
the well-known book of Le Bon's on "The
Crowd" well know what the tendencies to
which I refer may accomplish. It is true that
the results of Le Bon are by no means wholly
acceptable. It is true that the psychology of
80

PROVINCIALISM
large social masses is still insufficiently under
stood, and that a great many hasty statements
have been made about the fatal tendency of
great companies of people to go wrong. Yet
in the complex world of social processes
there can be no doubt that there exist such
processes as the ones which Le Bon charac
terizes. The mob-spirit is a genuine psy
chological fact which occasionally becomes
important in the life of all numerous com
munities. Moreover, the mob-spirit is no new
thing. It has existed in some measure from
the very beginning of social life. But there
are certain modern conditions which tend to
give the mob-spirit new form and power,
and to lead to new social dangers that
are consequent upon the presence of this
spirit. I use the term " mob-spirit " as an abbrevi
ation for a very large range of phenomena,
phenomena which may indeed be classed
with all the rest of the imitative phenomena
as belonging to one genus. But the mob-
phenomena are distinguished from the other
o 81

PROVINCIALISM
imitative phenomena by certain character
istic emotional tendencies which belong to
excited crowds of people, and which do not
belong to the more strictly normal social
activities. Man, as an imitative animal, natu
rally tends, as we have seen, to do what
ever his companions do, so long as he is not
somehow aroused to independence and to
individuality. Accordingly, he easily shares
the beliefs and temperaments of those who are
near enough to him to influence him. But
now suppose a condition of things such as may
readily occur in any large group of people
who have somehow come to feel strong sym
pathy with one another, and who are for any
reason in a relatively passive and impres
sible state of mind. In such a company of
people let any idea which has a strong emo
tional coloring come to be suggested, by the
words of the leader, by the singing of a song,
by the beginning of any social activity that
does not involve clear thinking, that does not
call upon a man to assert his own independence.
Such an idea forthwith tends to take pos-
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PROVINCIALISM
session in an extraordinarily strong degree of
every member of the social group in question.
As a consequence, the individual may come
to be, as it were, hypnotized by his social
group. He may reach a stage where he not
merely lacks a disposition to individual initi
ative, but becomes for the time simply unable
to assert himself, to think his own thoughts,
or even to remember his ordinary habits
and principles of conduct. His judgment
for the time becomes one with that of the
mass. He may not himself observe this fact.
Like the hypnotized subject, the member of
the excited mob may feel as if he were very
independently expressing himself. He may
say: "This idea is my own idea," when as a
fact the ruling idea is suggested by the leaders
of the mob, or even by the accident of the
momentary situation. The individual may
be led to acts of which he says: "These
things are my duty, my sacred privUege, my
right," when as a fact the acts in question
are forced upon him by the suggestions of
the social mass of which at the instant he is
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PROVINCIALISM
merely a helpless member. As the hypno
tized subject, again, thinks his will free when
an observer can see that he is obliged to follow
the suggestions of the hypnotizer, so the mem
ber of the mob may feel all the sense of pure
initiative, although as a fact he is in bondage
to the will of another, to the motives of the
moment. All such phenomena are due to very deep-
seated and common human tendencies. It
is no individual reproach to any one of us
that, under certain conditions, he would lose
his individuality and become the temporary
prey of the mob-spirit. Moreover, by the
word "mob" itself, or by the equivalent word
"crowd," I here mean no term that reflects
upon the personal characters or upon the
private intelligence of the individuals who
chance to compose any given mob. In for
mer ages when the defenders of aristocratic
or of monarchical institutions used to speak
with contempt of the mob, and oppose to the
mob the enlightened portion of the com
munity, the wise who ought to rule, or the
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PROVINCIALISM
people whom birth and social position se
cured against the defects of the mob, the term
was used without a true understanding of the
reason why crowds of people are upon occa
sion disposed to do things that are less in
telligent than the acts of normal and thought
ful people would be. For the modern student
of the pyschology of crowds, a crowd or a mob
means not in any wise a company of wicked,
of debased, or even of ignorant persons.
The term means merely a company of people
who, by reason of their sympathies, have
for the time being resigned their individual
judgment. A mob might be a mob of saints
or of cutthroats, of peasants or of men of
science. If it were a mob it would lack due
social wisdom whatever its membership might
be. For the members of the mob are sympa
thizing rather than criticising. Their ruling
ideas then, therefore, are what Le Bon calls
atavistic ideas; ideas such as belong to earlier
and cruder periods of civilization. Opposed
to the mob in which the good sense of indi
viduals is lost in a blur of emotion, and in
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PROVINCIALISM
a helpless suggestibUity, — opposed to the
mob, I say, is the small company of thought
ful individuals who are taking counsel to
gether. Now our modern life, with its vast
unions of people, with its high development
of popular sentiments, with its passive and
sympathetic love for knowing and feeling
whatever other men know and feel, is sub
ject to the disorders of larger crowds, of more
dangerous mobs, than have ever before been
brought into sympathetic union. One great
problem of our time, then, is how to carry on
popular government without being at the
mercy of the mob-spirit. It is easy to give
this mob-spirit noble names. Often you hear
of it as "grand popular enthusiasm." Often
it is highly praised as a loyal party spirit or
as patriotism. But psychologically it is the
mob-spirit whenever it is the spirit of a large
company of people who are no longer either
taking calm counsel together in small groups,
or obeying an already established law or cus
tom, but who are merely sympathizing with
one another, listening to the words of leaders,
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PROVINCIALISM
and believing the large print headings of their
newspapers. Every such company of people
is, in so far, a mob. Though they spoke with
the tongues of men and of angels, you could
not then trust them. Wisdom is not in them
nor in their mood. However highly trained
they may be as individuals, their mental
processes, as a mob, are degraded. Their
suffrages, as a mob, ought not to count.
Their deeds come of evil. The next mob
may undo their work. Accident may ren
der their enthusiasm relatively harmless.
But, as a mere crowd, they cannot be wise.
They cannot be safe rulers. Who, then,
are the men who wisely think and rightly
guide? They are, I repeat, the men who
take counsel together in small groups, who re
spect one another's individuality, who mean
while criticise one another constantly, and
earnestly, and who suspect whatever the
crowd teaches. In such men there need be
no lack of wise sympathy, but there is much
besides sympathy. There is individuality, and
there is a willingness to doubt both one
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PROVINCIALISM
another and themselves. To such men, and
to such groups, popular government ought
to be intrusted.
Now these principles are responsible for
the explanation of the well-known contrast
between those social phenomena which illus
trate the wisdom of the enlightened social'
order, and the phenomena which, on the con
trary, often seem such as to make us despair
for the moment of the permanent success of
popular government. In the rightly consti
tuted social group where every member feels
his own responsibility for his part of the social
enterprise which is in hand, the result of the
interaction of individuals is that the social
group may show itself wiser than any of its
individuals. In the mere crowd, on the
other hand, the social group may be, and
generally is, more stupid than any of its indi
vidual members. Compare a really success
ful town meeting in a comparatively small
community with the accidental and some
times dangerous social phenomena of a street
mob or of a great political convention. In
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PROVINCIALISM
the one case every individual may gain wis
dom from his contact with the social group.
In the other case every man concerned, if
ever he comes again to himself, may feel
ashamed of the absurdity of which the whole
company was guilty. Social phenomena of
the type that may result from the higher
social group, the group in which individuality
is respected, even while social loyalty is de
manded, — these phenomena may lead to
permanent social results which as tradition
gives them a fixed character may gradually
lead to the formation of permanent institu
tions, in which a wisdom much higher than
that of any individual man may get em
bodied. A classic instance of social phe
nomena of this type, and of the results of
such social activities as constantly make use
of individual skill, we find in language.
However human language originated, it is
certain that it was never the product of
the mob-spirit. Language has been formed
through the efforts of individuals to communi
cate with other individuals. Human speech
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PROVINCIALISM
is, therefore, in its structure, in its devices, in
its thoughtfulness, essentially the product of
the social activities of comparatively small
groups of persons whose ingenuity was con
stantly aroused by the desire of making some
form of social cooperation definite, and some
form of communication amongst individuals
effective. The consequence is that the lan
guage of an uncultivated people, who have
as yet no grammarians to guide them and no
literature to transmit the express wisdom of
individual guides from generation to genera
tion, may, nevertheless, be on the whole much
more intelligent than is any individual that
speaks the language.
Other classic instances of social processes
wherein the group appears wiser than the
individual are furnished to us by the processes
that resulted through centuries of develop
ment in the production of the system of
Roman law or of the British constitution.
Such institutions embody more wisdom than
any individual who has taken part in the
production of these institutions has everpos-
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PROVINCIALISM
sessed. Now the common characteristic of
all such social products seems to me to be due
to the fact that the social groups in which
they originated were always such as encour
aged and as in fact necessitated an emphasis
upon the contrasts between various indi
viduals. In such groups what Tarde has
called "the universal opposition" has always
been an effective motive. The group has
depended upon the variety and not the uni
formity of its members. On the other hand,
the other sort of social group, the mob, has
depended upon the emotional agreement,
the sympathy, of its members. It has been
powerful only in so far as they forgot who
they individually were, and gave themselves
up to the suggestions of the moment.
It follows that if we are to look for the
source of the greatest dangers of popular gov
ernment, we must expect to find them in the
influence of the mob-spirit. Le Bon is right
when he says that the problem of the future
will become more and more the problem
how to escape from the domination of the
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PROVINCIALISM
crowd. Now I do not share Le Bon's pessi
mism when he holds, as he seems to do, that
all populai government necessarily involves
the tendency to the prevalence of the mob-
spirit. So far as I can see Le Bon and most
of the other writers who in recent times have
laid so much stress upon the dangers of the
mob, have ignored, or at least have greatly
neglected, that other social tendency, that
tendency to the formation of smaller social
groups, which makes use of the contrasts of
individuals, and which leads to a collective
wisdom greater than any individual vdsdom.
But why I do insist upon this is that the prob
lem of the future for popular government
must involve the higher development, the
better organization, the more potent influence,
of the social groups of the wiser type, and the
neutralization through their influence of the
power of the mob-spirit. Now the modern
forms of the mob-spirit have become so por
tentous because of a tendency that is in itself
very good, even as may be the results to which
it often leads. This' tendency is that toward
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PROVINCIALISM
a very wide and inclusive human sympathy,
a sympathy which may be as undiscriminat
ing as it often is kindly. Sympathy, how
ever, as one must recollect, is not necessarily
even a kindly tendency. For one may sym
pathize with any emotion, — for instance,
with the emotions of a cruelly ferocious mob.
Sympathy itself is a sort of neutral basis
for more rational mental development. The
noblest structures may be reared upon its
soU. The basest absurdities may, upon occa
sion, seem to be justified, because an undis
criminating sympathy makes them plausible.
Now modern conditions have certainly tended,
as I have said, to the spread of sympathy.
Consider modern literature with its disposi
tion to portray any form of human life, how
ever ignoble or worthless, or on the other
hand, however lofty or inspiring, — to por
tray it not because of its intrinsic worth but
because of the mere fact that it exists. All
sorts and conditions of men, — yes, all sorts
and conditions of emotion, however irrational,
have their hearing in the world of art to-day,
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PROVINCIALISM
win their expression, charm their audience,
get, as we say, their recognition. Never were
men so busy as now with the mere eagerness
to sympathize with, to feel whatever is the Jot
of any portion of humanity. Now, as I have
said, this spread of human sympathy, fur
thered as it is by all the means at the disposal
of modern science, so far as that science deals
with humanity, is a good thing just in so far
as it is ' a basis upon which a rational phi
lanthropy and a more intelligent social or
ganization can be founded. But this habit
of sympathy disposes us more and more to
the influence of the mob. When the time of
popular excitement comes, it finds us expert
in sharing the emotions of the crowd, but
often enervated by too frequent indulgence
in just such emotion. The result is that
modern mobs are much vaster, and in some
respects more excitable than ever they were
before. The psychological conditions of the
mob no longer need include the physical pres
ence of a crowd of people in a given place.
It is enough if the newspapers, if the theatre,
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PROVINCIALISM
if the other means of social communication,
serve to transmit the waves of emotional en
thusiasm. A nation composed of many mill
ions of people may fall rapidly under the
hypnotic influence of a few leaders, of a few
fatal phrases. And thus, as our third evil,
we have not only the general levelling ten
dency of modern social life, but the particular
tendency to emotional excitability which tends
to make the social order, under certain con
ditions, not only monotonous and unideal,
but actively dangerous.
Yet, as we have seen, this evil is not, as Le
Bon and the pessimists would have it, inherent
in the very fact of the existence of a social
order. There are social groups that are not
subject to the mob-spirit. And now if you
ask how such social groups are nowadays to
be fostered, to be trained, to be kept alive for
the service of the nation, I answer that the
place for fostering such groups is the province,
for such groups flourish under conditions that
arouse local pride, the loyalty to one's own
community, the willingness to remember one's
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PROVINCIALISM
own ways and ideals, even at the moment
when the nation is carried away by some
levelling emotion. The lesson would then be :
Keep the province awake, that the nation may
be saved from the disastrous hypnotic slumber
so characteristic of excited masses of mankind.
rv
I have now reviewed three types of evils
against which I think it is the office of pro
vincialism to contend. As I review these
evils, I am reminded somewhat of the famous
words of Schiller in his " Greeting to the New
Century," which he composed at the outset
of the nineteenth century. In his age, which
in some respects was so analogous to our own,
despite certain vast differences, Schiller found
himself overwhelmed as he contemplated the
social problem of the moment by the vast
national conflict, and the overwhelming forces
which seemed to him to be crushing the more
ideal life of his nation, and of humanity.
With a poetic despair that we need indeed no
longer share, Schiller counsels his reader, in
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PROVINCIALISM
certain famous lines, to flee from the stress of
life into the still recesses of the heart, for, as he
says, beauty lives only in song, and freedom
has departed into the realm of dreams. Now
Schiller spoke in the romantic period. We
no longer intend to flee from our social ills
to any realm of dreams. And as to the re
cesses of the heart, we now remember that
out of the heart are the issues of life. But so
much my own thesis and my own counsel
would share in common with Schiller's words.
I should say to-day that our national unities
have grown so vast, our forces of social con
solidation have become so paramount, the re
sulting problems, conflicts, evils, have been so
intensified, that we, too, must flee in the pur
suit of the ideal to a new realm. Only this
realm is, to my mind, so long as we are speak
ing of social problems, a realm of real life. It
is the realm of the province. There must
we flee from the stress of the now too vast and
problematic life of the nation as a whole.
There we must flee, I mean, not in the sense
of a cowardly and permanent retirement, but
H 97

PROVINCIALISM
in the sense of a search for renewed strength,
for a social inspiration, for the salvation of
the individual from the overwhelming forces
of consolidation. Freedom, I should say,
dwells now in the small social group, and has
its securest home in the provincial life. The
nation by itself, apart from the influence of
the province, is in danger of becoming an in
comprehensible monster, in whose presence
the individual loses his right, his self-conscious
ness, and his dignity. The province must
save the individual.
But, you may ask, in what way do I con
ceive that the wise provincialism of which I
speak ought to undertake and carry on its
task? How is it to meet the evils of whichl
have been speaking? In what way is its in
fluence to be exerted against them? And
how can the province cultivate its self-con
sciousness without tending to fall back again
into the ancient narrowness from which small
communities were so long struggling to es
cape ? How can we keep broad humanity
and yet cultivate provincialism ? How can

PROVINCIALISM
we be loyally patriotic, and yet preserve our
consciousness of the peculiar and unique
dignity of our own community ? In what
form are our wholesome provincial activities
to be carried on?
I answer, of course, in general terms, that
the problem of the wholesome provincial
consciousness is closely allied to the problem
of any individual form of activity. An indi
vidual tends to become narrow when he is
what we call self-centred. But, on the other
hand, philanthropy that is not founded upon
a personal loyalty of the individual to his own
family and to his own personal duties is noto
riously a worthless abstraction. We love the
world better when we cherish our own friends
the more faithfully. We do not grow in
grace by forgetting individual duties in be
half of remote social enterprises. Precisely
so, the province will not serve the nation best
by forgetting itself, but by loyally emphasiz
ing its own duty to the nation and therefore
its right to attain and to cultivate its own
unique wisdom. Now all this is indeed ob-
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PROVINCIALISM
vious enough, but this is precisely what in
our days of vast social consolidation we are
some of us tending to forget.
Now as to the more concrete means whereby
the wholesome provincialism is to be culti
vated and encouraged, let me appeal directly
to the loyal member of any provincial com
munity, be it the community of a small town,
or of a great city, or of a country district.
Let me point out what kind of work is needed
in order to cultivate that wise provincialism
which, as you see, I wish to have grow not
in opposition to the interests of the nation,
but for the very sake of saving the nation from
the modern evil tendencies of which I have
spoken. First, then, I should say a wholesome pro
vincialism is founded upon the thought that
while local pride is indeed a praiseworthy
accompaniment of every form of social activity,
our province, like our own individuality,
ought to be to all of us rather an ideal than a
mere boast. And here, as I think, is a matter
which is too often forgotten. Everything
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PROVINCIALISM
valuable is, in our present human life, known
to us as an ideal before it becomes an attain
ment, and in view of our human imperfec
tions, remains to the end of our short lives
much more a hope and an inspiration than it
becomes a present achievement. Just be
cause the true issues of human life are brought
to a finish not in time but in eternity, it is
necessary that in our temporal existence what
is most worthy should appear to us as an
ideal, as an Ought, rather than as something
that is already in our hands. The old saying
about the bird in the hand being worth two
in the bush does not rightly apply to the ideal
goods of a moral agent working under human
limitations. For him the very value of life
includes the fact that its goal as something
infinite can never at any one instant be at
tained. In this fact the moral agent glories,
for it means that he has something to do.
Hence the ideal in the bush, so to speak,
is always worth infinitely more to him than
the food or the plaything of time that hap
pens to be just now in his hands. The differ-
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PROVINCIALISM
ence between vanity and self-respect depends
largely upon this emphasizing of ideals in the
case of the higher forms of self-consciousness,
as opposed to the emphasis upon transient
temporal attainments in the case of the lower
forms. Now what holds true of individual
self-consciousness ought to hold true of the
self-consciousness of the community. Boast
ing is often indeed harmless and may prove a
stimulus to good work. It is therefore to be
indulged as a tribute to our human weakness.
But the better aspect of our provincial con
sciousness is always its longing for the improve
ment of the community.
And now, in the second place, a wise pro
vincialism remembers that it is one thing to
seek to make ideal values in some unique
sense our own, and it is quite another thing
to believe that if they are our own, other
people cannot possess such ideal values in
their own equally unique fashion. A realm
of genuinely spiritual individuality is one
where each individual has his own unique
significance, so that none could take another's
102

PROVINCIALISM
place. But for just that very reason all the
unique individuals of the truly spiritual order
stand in relation to the same universal light,
to the same divine whole in relation to which
they win their individuality. Hence all the
individuals of the true spiritual order have
ideal goods in common, as the very means
whereby they can win each his individual
place with reference to the possession and the
employment of these common goods. Well,
it is with provinces as with individuals. The
way to win independence is by learning
freely from abroad, but by then insisting upon
our own interpretation of the common good.
A generation ago the Japanese seemed to
most European observers to be entering upon
a career of total self-surrender. They seemed
to be adopting without stint European cus
toms and ideals. They seemed to be aban
doning their own national independence of
spirit. They appeared to be purely imitative
in their main purposes. They asked other
nations where the skill of modern sciences
lay, and how the new powers were to be gained
103

PROVINCIALISM
by them. They seemed to accept with the
utmost docility every lesson, and to abandon
with unexampled submissiveness, their pur
pose to remain themselves. Yet those of us
who have watched them since, or who have
become acquainted with representative Jap
anese students, know how utterly super
ficial and illusory that old impression of ours
was regarding the dependence, or the extreme
imitativeness, or the helpless docUity, of the
modern Japanese. He has now taught us
quite another lesson. With a curious and
on the whole not unjust spiritual wUiness, he
has learned indeed our lesson, but he has
given it his own interpretation. You always
feel in intercourse with a Japanese how un
conquerable the spirit of his nation is, how
inaccessible the recesses of his spirit have re
mained after all these years of free intercourse
with Europeans. In your presence the
Japanese always remains the courteous and
respectful learner so long as he has reason to
think that you have anything to teach him.
But he remains as absolutely his own master
104

PROVINCIALISM
with regard to the interpretation, the use,
the possession of all spiritual gifts, as if he
were the master and you the learner. He ac
cepts the gifts, but their place in his national
and individual life is his own. And We now
begin to see that the feature of the Japanese
nationality as a member of the civilized com
pany of nations is to be something quite
unique and independent. Well, let the Jap
anese give us a lesson in the spirit of true pro
vincialism. Provincialism does not mean a
lack of plasticity, an unteachable spirit; it
means a determination to use the spiritual
gifts that come to us from abroad in our own
way and with reference to the ideals of our
own social order.
And therefore, thirdly, I say in developing
your provincial spirit, be quite wUling to en
courage your young men to have relations
with other communities. But on the other
hand, encourage them also to make use of
what they thus acquire for the furtherance
of the life of their own community. Let
them win aid from abroad, but let them also
105

PROVINCIALISM
have, so far as possible, an opportunity to use
this which they acquire in the service of their
home. Of course economic conditions rather
than deliberate choice commonly determine
how far the youth of a province are able to
remain for their lifetime in a place where they
grow up. But so far as a provincial spirit is
concerned, it is well to avoid each of two ex
tremes in the treatment of the young men of
the community, — extremes that I have too
often seen exemplified. The one extreme
consists in maintaining that if young men
mean to be loyal to their own province, to
their own state, to their own home, they ought
to show their loyalty by an unwUlingness to
seek guidance from foreign literature, from
foreign lands, in the patronizing of foreign
or distant institutions, or in the acceptance of
the customs and ideas of other communities
than their own. Against this extreme let the
Japanese be our typical instance. They have
wandered far. They have studied abroad.
They have assimilated the lore of other com
munities. And they have only gained in
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PROVINCIALISM
local consciousness, in independence of spirit,
by the ordeal. The other extreme is the one
expressed in that tendency to wander and to
encourage wandering, which has led so many
of our communities to drive away the best
and most active of their young men. We
want more of the determination to find, if
possible, a place for our youth in their own
communities. Finally, let the province more and more
seek its own adornment. Here I speak of a
matter that in all our American communities
has been until recently far too much neg
lected. Local pride ought above all to cen
tre, so far as its material objects are con
cerned, about the determination to give the sur
roundings of the community nobility, dignity,
beauty. We Americans spend far too much
of our early strength and time in our newer
communities upon injuring our landscapes,
and far too little upon endeavoring to beautify
our towns and cities. We have begun to
change all that, and while I have no right to
speak as an aesthetic judge concerning the
107

PROVINCIALISM
growth of the love of the beautiful in our
country, I can strongly insist that no com
munity can think any creation of genuine
beauty and dignity in its public buildings or
in the surroundings of its towns and cities
too good a thing for its own deserts. For we
deserve what in such realms we can learn
how to create or to enjoy, or to make sacri
fices for. And no provincialism will become
dangerously narrow so long as it is constantly
accompanied by a willingness to sacrifice
much in order to put in the form of great
institutions, of noble architecture, and of beau
tiful surroundings an expression of the worth
that the community attaches to its own ideals.

108

Ill
ON CERTAIN LIMITATIONS OF THE THOUGHT
FUL PUBLIC IN AMERICA

Ill

ON CERTAIN LIMITATIONS OF THE THOUGHT
FUL PUBLIC IN AMERICA 1
IVTO one who is engaged in any part of the
work of the higher education in this coun
try can doubt that, at the present time, our
thoughtful public, —the great company of those
who read, reflect, and aspire, — is a larger factor
in our national life than ever before. When
foreigners accuse us of extraordinary love for
gain, and of practical materialism, they fail
to see how largely we are a nation of idealists.
Yet that we are such a nation is something
constantly brought to the attention of those
whose calling requires them to observe any
of the tendencies prevalent in our recent in
tellectual life in America.

When I speak, in this way, of contemporary
American idealists, I do not now specially refer
' An address first delivered at Vassar College.
Ill

LIMITATIONS OF THE PUBLIC
to the holders of any philosophical opinions, or
even to the representatives of any one type of
religious faith. I here use the term in no techni
cal sense. In this discussion, I mean by the
word " idealist," a man or woman who is
consciously and predominantly guided, in the
purposes and in the great choices of life, by
large ideals, such as admit of no merely mate
rial embodiment, and such as contemplate
no merely private and personal satisfaction
as their goal. In this untechnical sense the
Puritans were idealists. The signers of our
Declaration of Independence were idealists.
Idealism inspired us during our Civil War.
Idealism has expressed itself in the rich
differentiation of our national religious life.
Idealism has founded our colleges and univer
sities. Well, using the term " idealism " in this con
fessedly untechnical sense, I say that many
of our foreign judges have failed to see how
largely we Americans are to-day a nation of
idealists. To be sure, we are by no means
alone amongst modern men in our idealism.
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LIMITATIONS OF THE PUBLIC
But elsewhere sometimes the consequences
of long-continued and oppressive militarism,
sometimes the stress of certain social problems,
and sometimes the burdens of ancient imperial
responsibility, have tended more to discour
age, or even quite to subdue, many forms of that
fidelity to ideals upon which surely all higher
cvilization in any country depends. But,
with us, ever since the close of the Civil War,
numerous forces have been at work to render
us as a nation more thoughtful, more aspiring,
and more in love with the immaterial things
of the spirit, and that too even at the very
moment when our material prosperity, with
all of its well-known corrupting temptations,
has given us much opportunity, had we
chosen to take it, to be what the mistaken
foreign critics often suppose us to be, — a
people really sunk in practical materialism.
Moreover, in saying all this, as to our
general growth in spiritual interests, I am not
at all unmindful of that other side, — that
grosser material side of our national life,
upon which our foreign critics so often insist.
I 113

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The growth of unwise luxury, the brute power
of ill-used wealth, the unideal aspects of our
political life, the evils of our great cities, —
what enlightened American is there who does
not recognize the magnitude of such Uls in
our midst ? But you cannot prove the absence
of light merely by exploring the darker
chasms and caverns of our national existence.
Vast as are those recesses of night, the light
of large and inspiring ideas shines upon stUl
vaster regions of our American life. Side
by side with the excesses of mere luxury
you find, amongst our people, a true and in
creasing, a self-sacrificing and intelligent love
of the beautiful for its own sake. Side by
side with the misuse of money, you observe
the encouraging frequency of the great and
humane deeds that wealth can do. Nor is
this all. An ardent and often successful
struggle for social reform, and a civic pride
that aims, sometimes even from the very depths
of municipal degradation, at the accom
plishment of great and honorable public
services, — these are tendencies that are grow-
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ing amongst us, and that are never wholly or
permanently checked even by the closest
contact with the very worst of our national
defects. Yet, of course, the real proof of the prevalence
of what I have called idealism, in the great
masses of our people, is above all to be sought
not in any particular good deeds of wealthy"
men, nor yet in the public life of the great
cities, but in the intellectual and religious life
of the community at large. And here it is,
as I say, that the college teacher, or any other
worker professionally concerned with the
higher mental interests of our people, has a
chance to estimate the strength and magni
tude of these interests in the unseen.
In our country it is extraordinarily easy,
and as one may at once admit it is too easy,
to get a hearing for any seemingly new and
large-minded doctrine relating either to so
cial reform or to inspiring changes of creed.
Whoever desires the reputation of the founder
of a new sect has merely to insist upon his
plan for reforming society and saving souls, —
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has merely to announce repeatedly to the
public the high valuation that he sets upon his
own ideas concerning nobler topics in order
to win a respectful hearing from many, and,
if his ideas have any measure of coherence and
of humanitarian interest, an often all too
kindly acquiescence from at least a few.
And the faithfulness of these few may soon
assume the pathetic intensity that so often
marks the devotion of the followers of small
sects. Need I mention many instances in
order to remind you of the nature of these
now so familiar processes in our American
life? The late Mr. Henry George was, up
to the time of the appearance of his " Progress
and Poverty," a man quite unknown to the
nation at large, — a California newspaper
man, with no obvious authority to teach con
cerning economic problems. His book re
ceived, at the time of its appearance, little or
no support from the professional economists,
and excited at first, I believe, little very
close attention from their side. George him
self was no party manager. He used hardly
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any showy devices for attracting popular
attention. He was simply in earnest. Yet we
all know how the sect of his followers grew.
And any busy man who has sometimes re
ceived letters from propagandists of that
particular sect will also know, I suppose,
how humane, how faithful, how strenuous,
how unworldly, and one may add, how
unweariedly obstinate they may be in their
efforts to convert the doubter and to lead
people to see, and if possible to love, their new
way of social salvation. A similar, and even
more swiftly contagious kindliness made pos
sible the dramatic, if temporary, success of Mr.
Bellamy's book, " Looking Backward." And
again, a case in point is the movement in con
nection with which Bryan gained his first
national prominence in 1896, a movement
which came near proving successful, and which
was then for a time so dangerous. That
movement had its origin quite as much in
practical idealism as in material distress.
Its fundamental motives were in considerable
measure philanthropic, humane, and, in an
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abstract way, vaguely large-minded. That
was precisely what made this movement most
dangerous. Unwise philanthropy, uninstructed
large-mindedness, can often prove injurious
to the very interests they seek to further.
Our greatest national danger now lies in an
extravagant love of ideally fascinating enter
prises, whose practical results are as hard to
foresee and to estimate as was the end that
lay before the noble-hearted Childe Rolande
of Browning's well-known poem, when he
searched for the goal of his journey in the
midst of the shifting landscapes, and the
treacherous pathways of his romantic wilder
ness. Well, these, I say, are instances of our
American idealism in social matters. In re
ligion, a similar tendency has been strong in
our life from the very first. It has not only
multiplied sects among us, but it has also
wrought great good by giving lasting strength
to their missionary and to their other phil
anthropic enterprises. Moreover it has en
dowed them with an importance for the daily
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life of the people that no established State
church could ever have won by a merely ex
ternal show of authority. The same interest
in ideals has kept the sects themselves from
stagnation, has insisted upon an adjustment of
whatever in their fashions of teaching was
non-essential to the vital needs of each gen
eration of people. On the other hand, this
idealism often shows itself less worthily in the
form of a hasty desire for whatever seems new,
or remote, or fantastic in faith. At the present
day there is hardly a conceivable creed about
ultimate matters, be it never so quaint or so
unreasonable that, if its apparent intents are
only humane, and its catch words impressive,
this creed once earnestly taught cannot very
quickly find a body of adherents, not only in
our country at large, but in some of the most
thoughtful and sophisticated communities
which our country contains. It is not the
ignorant amongst us who are the prey of
strange new doctrines, so much as a portion
of the most considerate classes of our public.
And we are indeed not obliged to be big-
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oted in order to feel that, at present, this
spiritual plasticity of our American public
has gone too far. We ought to be docUe;
but the disposition to prove aU things can
easily outrun the power to hold fast that
which is good.
As a consequence, if new sects thus easily
find followers, and often faithful and per
manent followers, there is also the other side
of the picture. There are those of our people
who waste life in merely floating from doctrine
to doctrine. In such minds the art of holding
fast has wholly been lost, in favor of the easier
art of at least playing with all the things that
belong in the realms of the spirit. For such
souls, new doctrines are like new pictures, or
new plays, or like the passing events of a social
season. The more ardent amongst such
people grow temporarily enthusiastic upon
every new occasion where they listen to what
they cannot comprehend. The more dis
illusioned find the novelties in doctrine more
or less of a bore, just as some folk always
find the plays and the parties tedious. But
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both the ardent and the disillusioned, in such
social groups as I now have in mind, do indeed
treat the new doctrines and the various rival
plans of salvation altogether too much as they
treat the social occasions, the plays, or the
pictures. They expect something new to take
the place of the old at each moment of their
experience. And whether ardent or bored
they continue their life-long quest for spiritual
sensations. Such excesses of the higher life in our
country are only too easy to observe and,
upon occasion, to ridicule. I have not men
tioned them however for the sake of ridicule.
Spinoza said that human affairs are neither
to be wept over nor to be laughed at, but to be
understood; and Spinoza's word, despite its
seeming fatalism, had from any point of view
its large measure of truth. I am speaking
at present of symptoms. These symptoms,
like other incidents of so complex a life as
ours, have both their good and their evil
aspects. Devotion to ideals has its dangers
as it has its glories. I have to point out the
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one as an aid toward a comprehension of the
other. I turn to still other and better aspects of
the tendency here in question. If one asks
what the devotion to ideals has of late accom
plished with purest success in the intellectual
life of our country, I myself should be disposed
to name, as one of the noblest, most positive,
and most unsullied products of American
idealism in recent years, the whole modern
educational movement. The reform of aca
demic methods and interests, both in the
younger and in the older universities and
colleges has been such, within the past twenty-
five years, as to constitute one of the most
substantial and significant events in our
national history. The general public still
understands all too little of the vast work
that has been accomplished. By the fault
of too large a portion of the newspaper press
of the country the more trivial aspects of our
academic life, — the public athletic contests,
and the idle gossip of the hour, — are continually
exaggerated, while the serious and the most
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progressive tendencies of this same life are as
persistently slighted and are often misrepre
sented. Yet despite the false perspective
in which our colleges are thus often made to
appear, the gen,eral public has nevertheless
somehow learned to support nobly the inter
ests of academic reform. The vast sums that
have been dedicated to the cause of learning,
the cordial approval that our more enlightened
people have given to the attempts at bettering
higher education, — these have been most
encouraging features of our educational move
ment. Nor has this movement confined itself
to the Universities and Colleges. In its
connection with the lower schools it is still
in the period of storm and stress and hope.
But it is indeed, in all its forms, a movement
in the interest of ideals. It has needed at
every step great sacrifices, strenuous devotion,
wide sympathies, and far-reaching foresight.
And these have been forthcoming. When
an intelligent American wants to vindicate the
honor of his country to foreigners, I know
in our recent history of no purer instance of
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single-hearted patriotism, devoted to humane
and unsullied ideals, and successful against
all sorts of foes, not only without but within, —
I know, I say, of no purer instance of such
true patriotism than is furnished by just
the great educational reform movement,
and especially the academic movement of
the last quarter of a century. For this has
indeed been no mere effort of dreamers. It
has been a practical movement. It has been
guided by administrators who were often of
the highest executive talent, — men quite
capable, in many instances, of winning worldly
success in wholly different and more showy
regions of public life. It has been supported
by benefactors who were often tempted by all
sorts of more selfish interests to use their
wealth otherwise. It has given to great
numbers of youth a light and guidance that
have meant for them escape from spiritual
bondage, and an opportunity to become in
their turn benefactors. It has furnished to
our country a constantly increasing class of
cultivated workers, ready to enter practical
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life with the ardor of a genuine idealism in
their hearts and minds. And great as this
academic movement has been, its influence is
only beginning. Its real fruits are stUl to be
gathered. So far, then, I have surveyed a number
of forms of recent American idealism. I have
meant to be fair to both sides of the shield.
Not all golden is our devotion to ideals. Yet
this devotion is too marked a feature of our
national spirit to justify the neglect of those
among our foreign critics who regard us as
mainly workers for wealth, or as lovers of
mere material power. It may not be un
fitting, upon this occasion, for us to ask our
selves what can yet be done to make our na
tional idealism more intelligent, better or
ganized, and, above all, more effective.
II
For, after all that we have thus far said,
when we try to sum up the amount of influence
exerted by these various forms of idealism
upon the actual life of our country, we are
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obliged to confess that our thoughtful public
is not yet as efficacious as it ought to be.
Too frequently we find the lovers of the ideal
engaged in unprofitable conflicts with their
spiritual kindred. Plan wars with plan; re
form stands in hostile array over against
reform. Meanwhile the children of this world
are wiser in their generation than the chUdren
of light. The people who dwell in the realms
of thought and of higher faith consequently
find themselves unable to organize effectively
their reforms. They indeed associate, dis
course, and take counsel together. But their
enemies remain too often the better managers.
While, as I just said, the academic movement
is the great instance amongst us, in recent
times, of the possible practical success of
ideal interests, this educational progress
stands too much alone. Our tree of life
flourishes, and puts forth countless leaves;
but it does not yet bear sufficient fruit for the
healing of the nation. Our national idealism
is more characteristic of our inteUectual and
religious life than it is productive of per-
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manent, organized, and substantial results.
Whenever the servants of ill perfect their
devices for corrupting anywhere the state,
and misusing its resources, the lovers of good
things find themselves too frequently helpless
to thwart such mischief. Yet amongst us
the conscious servants of ill are really in a
very decided minority. Our youth are ex
ceptionally high-minded and aspiring. Our
social life is full of admirable purposes. Our
people are very generally interested in the
things of the spirit. Yet the enemy seems
to have possession of far too many of the
effective weapons of social and of political
warfare. When we try to meet him in the
field, we are too scattered, too fantastic, or
too uncertain in mind, to be ready for an
effective fight. Our thoughtfulness involves
too much idle curiosity, too much vaguely
restless ardor, too much unwillingness to
accept the necessary material limitations under
which human work is to be done. And there
fore we are indeed often, in practical under
takings, "beaten down" like Tennyson's
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Lancelot in his quest for the Grail, "beaten
down by little men, mean knights." The
enemy, the power of evil at work, in whatever
form in our land, — the enemy at least always
knows his own purpose. But we, we lovers
of the ideal, spend far too much of our time
vaguely wandering from one club-meeting or
lecture or recent book to another, trying to
discover just what it is that we are thinking
about. While we, with eager minds, in
quire into the shifting thing sometimes called
the New Thought, the enemy is steadUy
engaged in serving the purposes of the Old
Adam. And those purposes need no course
of lectures to define them, no laborious clam
bering toward any "higher plane" to survey
them. The devil within is always ready to
explain them directly and personally to all
comers. The consequence is precisely that
appearance of grosser materialism which our
foreign critics falsely take to be characteris
tic of our country. But much more character
istic of us is the intensity, the manifoldness,
the restlessness, and in all but a few regions,
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the relative ineffectiveness of our national
idealism. Look where you will, even in the regions
where ideas best and most beneficently ex
press themselves in our social life, and you
find the same limitations of our thoughtful
public exemplified, setting bounds to our
spiritual progress even in the best regions of
our activity, and resulting in too many cases,
in a more or less complete inability to do
wholesome reforming work where work is most
needed. In speaking thus, I have in mind no
one section of our country, no one type of activ
ity, no one special class of our thoughtful public.
As myself a Californian, and as one often
called upon to visit, in connection with pro
fessional duties, very various parts of our land,
I have felt the limitations of which I speak
in the West as well as in the East, amongst
good men and women, in the life of the pro
fessional classes as well as in the life of the
people of the world.
Wherever you go, you find the typical
American sensitive to ideas, curious about
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doctrines, concerned for his saul's salvation,
still more concerned for the higher welfare of
his children, willing to hear about great
topics, dissatisfied with merely material ob
jects, seeking even wealth rather with a view
to its more ideal uses than with a mere desire
for its sensuous gratifications, disposed to
plan great things for his country and for his
community, proud of both, jealous of their
honor, and discontented with the life that now
is. His piety has its ideal fervor none the
less when it is the piety of the free thinker
than when it is that of the faithful. He
forms and supports great associations for
public-spirited ends. He encourages science
and learning. He pauses in the midst of the
rush of business to discuss religion, or educa
tion, or psychical research, or mental healing,
or socialism. His well-known and character
istic devotion to his children keeps fresh in his
heart a childlike love of plans and hopes and
beliefs that belong not so much to the market
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Yet this same American is unable to give
his idealism any adequate expression in his
social life. His country towns and his manu
facturing cities are too often full of hideous
ugliness. Even the best of his great cities
are in appearance whatever they happen to
be. In founding new cities and in occupying
new lands he first devotes himself to burning
the forests, to levelling with ruthless eagerness
the hill-slopes, to inflicting upon the land,
whatever its topography, the unvarying plan
of his system of straight streets and of rec
tangular street crossings. In brief, he begins
his new settlements by a feverish endeavor
to ruin the landscape. Now all this he does
not at all because he is a mere materialist
but (as a colleague of mine. Professor George
Palmer, has pointed out), he does this be
cause mere nature is, as such, vaguely unsatis
factory to his soul, because what is merely
found must never content us, and because our
present life itself is felt to be not yet ideal.
Hence, the first desire is to change, to disturb,
to bring the new with us.
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In the regions thus so quickly altered by
man's hand, a community spirit, a strong
local pride, quickly springs up. The church,
the school, the university, appear within a very
few years, and seem at first as if they were
quite at home. One is firmly determined, in
each young community, that they shall aU be
the best of their kind anywhere to be found.
The social order thus established has also its
representative literature, — its poets, its ar
tists, its public heroes, even its swiftly acquired
local traditions, as well as its self-conscious
social independence, somewhat too ardently
and tremulously asserted, of the mere worn-
out ideals and authority of the older regions
of the country.
Nor are the interests in ideal things confined
to such expressions. Confident faith in the
future and in the might of the new life as
serts itself in such newer regions of our land
in the overhasty construction of great rail
ways, that pierce the mountains or invade the
deserts, long before a less restlessly ideal
people would have seen sufficient prospect of
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any adequate return for the material outlay.
Our pioneer makers of railways have often
seemed as if they were themselves amongst
the prophets, the poets, or even the fanatics
of our newer communities. But the result of
this eagerness is too often a swift bankruptcy.
The young community flies too near the sun,
and then lies prostrate and wingless in the
despair of hard times.
Hereupon begins the grosser period. The
community soon really possesses through mere
accumulation more wealth and power; yet
merciless money-getters have profited by
the failures of the first period, and these now
take possession of the creations of the pioneers,
crush out weaker opponents, obtain too much
influence in local politics, and give to the life
of the community just that outward seeming
of mere materialism of which we have spoken.
And now the better men learn more thought
fully to look about them, only to observe, at
this stage, what vast opportunities have been
lost, what noble natural beauties have been
hopelessly defaced, what ideal kingdoms have
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been carelessly created only to be conquered
by the enemy.
The real struggle with evil herewith begins.
The social order, so hastily and easily organized
at the outset, through the finely ideal political
instincts of our people, now becomes infected
by various political diseases. Corruption
grows too prominent in politics. The Philis
tines seem to have captured and blinded the
Sampson whose deeds made the pioneer days
so wonderful. Satan seems to have tri
umphed. Yet this triumph is never so real as it seems.
The good are still in the majority. The heart
of society is still healthy. The church, the
school, the university, the public library, the
literary circles, the intellectual clubs, — these
not only remain, but multiply, and in these one
finds centres for the propagation of ideal
interests. Would-be reformers become numer
ous. But alas, they war among themselves.
They are too often crude, strident, prejudiced.
Greed too often wins possession of the strong
est material forces of the community. The
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reformers lift their too familiar voices in vain.
The prophets true and false speak their
many words. Many listen and applaud. Yet
at the elections the prophets do not win. The
thoughtful public remains the most char
acteristic, but too often the least effective,
portion of the community.
Such is the tale of too many of our newer
communities. Shall I speak still of the older
communities? There indeed the processes
are more complex; but the lesson, like the
outcome, is too often the same. The great
limitation of our thoughtful public in America
remains its inability to take sufficient control
of affairs. And in pointing out this limitation,
I have already indicated, in a measure, both
its causes and the directions in which we ought
to look for a cure, if a cure is possible, for this
ineffectiveness of our American idealism. Let
me pass then to a closer study of this latter
aspect of the case. I have not undertaken
this discussion for the sake of merely criti
cising my brethren ; but for the sake of sug
gesting some few ways of improving our
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state, in so far as any poor suggestions of mine
can hope to possess value. Ill
Yet, as I go on to this side of our topic,
I must indeed admit quite freely that I have
no panacea, no quack remedy to suggest, as
any infallible cure for the ineffectiveness of
our national idealism, or as any one saving
device for overcoming the limitations of
our thoughtful public. Such ills as the one
here in question always lie deep in the very
constitution of our temperaments. We can
not, by merely taking thought, add a cubit
to our stature. One of the very limitations
of our thoughtful public which are here under
discussion lies in the fact that many of us
suppose great reforms to be possible merely
through good resolutions. Yet good resolu
tions have their place in accomplishing re
forms. Our mere human consciousness never
by itself transforms our temperaments; but
it may do something toward lessening their
ill effects, and toward intensifying or en-
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larging the range of their good qualities.
Where limitations have to be overcome, a due
measure of consciousness as to where the
fault lies does not come amiss. Accordingly,
with a full sense of the little that I can do by
such mere practical advice as lies within my
scope, I still wish not merely to point out the
aUment, but to show how it may be attacked.
That it is no hopeless ailment, such successes
of our idealism as the modern educational
movement have already shown us. May we
not hope to escape in time and at last, in a
measure from the ineffectiveness that now
besets the efforts of the thoughtful people of
our country ?
Reform, in such matters, must come, if at
all, from within. The kingdom of heaven is
within you; and that truth is precisely what
all ideally minded people know. It is this
knowledge which makes them lovers of the
unseen. I cannot then offer any pedagogical
device for raising the thoughtful public of our
country to a higher level of effectiveness, unless
my device appeals directly to the individual.
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The public as a whole is whatever the pro
cesses that occur, for good or for evil, in in
dividual minds, may determine. No one of
us is individually called upon for any very
large share in determining other peoples' lives.
The work of any one man, in this life, has a
narrow range. Yet, on the other hand, the
forest is made of the trees ; and great reforms
are due to the combined action of numerous
individuals. I appeal then to the individual lover
of ideals. I say, upon such as you are,
and upon such as you aspire to be, the future
of our country depends. If you fail, in union
with your spiritual kind, to win, and to win
for good, the controlling voice in the nation's
affairs, corruption, grossness, despotism, social
ruin, will sooner or later make naught of our
liberties, of all the dear memory of our country's
fathers, and of the great work that we in
America ought to do for mankind. And if such
as you are find not the way to overcome, in
time, these present limitations of the effective
ness of our thoughtful public, you will faU
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to win and to retain control of the constantly
increasing complications of our national life.
Our ideals will grow vaguer and more rest
less, even while our material activities become
more steadily enchained by the powers of
evU. We shall end where others have ended,
in national disaster, in social dissolution, in
humUiation, in the clutches of some domestic
or foreign conqueror.
But in case you win effective control over
your personal ideals and over your own pro
cesses of giving them expression, you your
self as an individual will indeed accomplish
but an infinitesimal portion of the nation's
vast task. Yet still it will be the nation's
task in which, in your measure, you will be
engaged. For no man liveth unto himself,
and no man dieth unto himself. I appeal
then to you, and to the public, only through
such as you are. If you, together with the
others who love the coming of the kingdom
of heaven, succeed in solving your personal
problems, the good cause will win in public
as in private. And what you need to find is
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some little task that you can effectually do.
That task you need to perform.
To the individual, then, I address myself.
Nor do I forget that I am speaking to students
who already know what one means by high
ideals, and by hearty aspirations, and who
stand at the beginning of life's great tasks.
There comes a sad time in many lives, when
people who have long struggled in vain with
foes without and foes within, grow weary of
the cultivation of ideal interests. Those to
whom I am especially privileged to speak,
upon this occasion, have not reached this stage.
I hope that when any of you reach it, you will
pass it successfully, for nothing better have we
in this life than our ideals and our hopes, and
our power to do a little work. Just now you
are privileged to have a faith, still unsullied,
in such ideals, and a hope to do good work.
I want to indicate some of the ways inwhich
one may wisely nourish this faith, and under
take this work.

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IV
My first word of advice, addressed thus
especially to the thoughtful amongst us,
relates to a certain moderation, to a certain
temperance, that, as I believe, we must all
cultivate in dealing with our own conscious
ness of what our ideals are. Devotion to
what we believe to be a high cause demands
of us, indeed, a certain thoroughness of sur
render, a certain persistence in service, which,
in its own due time and place, ought to know
indeed no bounds. On the other hand, when
thoughtful people cultivate ideals, they do so,
in part, by thinking over these ideals, by
reasoning about them, by becoming conscious
of what they are, by trying to convert others
to these ideals, and, in general, by giving these
ideals articulate expression. The faithfulness
of the unlearned may be dumb, half -conscious,
incapable of giving any reason for itself. The
fidelity of the thoughtful seeks definite formu
lation in a creed, propagates its cause by
spoken and by written words, voices itself in
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a doctrine that can be defended or assailed
by argument, — in brief, seeks to add knowl
edge to faith, insight to service, and teaching
to example. You often hear how important
it is to be not only devoted, but wise, clear of
head as well as persistent in service. Now
such tendencies are an important factor in
the lives of all thoughtful people. Their
highest expression is a reasoned philosophy,
which undertakes to investigate, to compare,
to harmonize, and then, finally, to formulate
and to teach systems of ideals. Now I am
myself by calling a teacher of philosophy.
I believe in persistent thoughtfulness as a
most important factor in the higher life of
humanity. I try to become as conscious as
I properly can become of what my ideals are,
and of why I hold them, and of how they go
together to make one whole, and of why other
lovers of reason ought, if I am right, to accept
my ideals. Over against the inconsiderate
partisans of this or of that form of unreason
ing faith, I often have, as teacher of philosophy,
to maintain the importance, for certain great
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purposes, of giving a reason for the faith that
is in us. And so, as you see, I am in every
way disposed to favor, in its place, not only
the thoughtful spirit of inquiry, but the dis
position to formulate ideals in a definite and
conscious way, to maintain them through
argument, and to propagate them by the
spoken and by the written word. I believe
in the human reason, as a vastly important
factor in the development of all our ideals.
And yet, — I can here speak all the more
frankly just because my profession is that of the
reasoner, — I constantly see mischief done
by an unwise exaggeration of the tendency
to reason, to argue, to trust to mere formulas,
to seek for the all-solving word; in brief, to
bring to consciousness what for a given
individual ought to remain unconscious.
Thoughtfulness is, for us in this life, like any
other human power and privilege. It must
be exercised with a proper moderation.
Thought must indeed be free. But freedom
means responsibUity. Thought, in any in
dividual, must freely set limits to its own
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finite task. And when the thoughtful lovers
of ideals forget this fact, they may become
mere wranglers, or doctrinaires, or pedants,
or, on the other hand, in the end, through
failure in thinking, they may become cynics.
Now some may wonder that, as a teacher
of philosophy, I should at once lay the first
stress upon this defect of the lovers of ideals,
as a defect so often attendant upon the pro
cesses of unhappy thinkers. Some may wonder
that I first confess the errors of my own call
ing. Yet why should I not do so? What
defects has one more occasion to observe
than those which occur in the erring human
effort to pursue his own calling? If one
loves his calling and believes in it, does he
therefore ignore these defects ? Shall one
make a business of the art of seeing clearly,
and yet entirely ignore the imperfections
that may naturally beset his own organ of
vision ?
Very well then, I first observe that many
thoughtful lovers of ideals, many students,
many reformers, many teachers, are too
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much disposed to trust to constant argument,
reasoning, or reflection, to keep them faithful
to their own ideals, and to win others to these
ideals. Or again, some lovers of the ideal,
even when they profess not to argue, but to be
followers of intuition, still in many cases are
too fond of abstract formulas, of catch words
or phrases. Such mistake fads for eternal
truths. Now all such have not observed the
inevitable limitations of the human thinking
process in each individual mind. They do
not observe that any one of us can think
clearly and reflectively and can formulate
exactly and successfully only in case we think
with due moderation, and think during the
time properly set apart for thought, trying to
formulate only what we have more or less
expert right to understand, and then devoting
the rest of life to naivete and to relatively
unreflective action. As a professional rea
soner, I have a profound contempt for de
liberate excesses in the work of reasoning;
I personaUy try to avoid such excesses.
As one busy with formulating theories, I
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have a great hatred for the excessive use of
formulas. I remember well, from my student days,
a pathetic incident that may illustrate the
spirit in which I make this confession. While
I was studying philosophy, one winter at
Leipzig, I enjoyed many happy hours in com
pany with a musical friend of mine, an ad
vanced student at the Conservatory, who had
devoted himself since childhood to the violin,
and who has since won an important place in
his profession. He often took me to attend
the musical evenings at the Conservatory, and
so helped me, as a mere listener, to enter the
wondrous world of tones where he was making
his home. But alas ! for the moment, my
friend, although so faithful and advanced
a student of music, was himself no public
performer at the Conservatory evenings, al
though in previous years he had been a promi
nent and favorite student player. Over
work had given him, for the time, one of those
well-known functional nervous troubles of
coordination, or "occupation disorders";
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namely, in his case, a "violinist's arm." Neu
ralgic pains whenever he played had forced
him to suspend his efforts. Prolonged rest
for his arm was needed. My friend was
perforce spending this year in the study of
musical theory, and in other more general in
tellectual tasks relating to his art., Naturally
this forced restraint was hard, and wounded
ambition would often express itself ; but
still my friend was a man of general mental
skill, who had therefore not a few resources
in his distress. One evening we were to
gether at the Conservatory. Many students
played. Among them my friend's principal
contemporary and rival, a young violinist
of no small skill, won abounding applause
by a very brilliant performance. And my
friend, sitting beside me with wounded wing,
must merely listen ! It would have been more
than human not to rebel a little. But my
friend could at least remember that he himself
had his own variety of mental occupations.
He did remember this fact, yet he grieved
inwardly and deeply. As we were walking
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home he was silent for a time, and then his
wrath at the chains that bound him burst
forth. We spoke of the rival. We could
not avoid the topic. "Confound that fel
low!" said my friend. "Confound that fel
low; he can't do anything but fiddle!"
Well, I speak somewhat in my friend's
general spirit, although I hope without any
bitterness toward any particular rival student
when I now say: "I am indeed not nearly
as much of a reasoner as I desire to be. My
skill in this art is far below my ambition.
But, poor as I am, reasoning is indeed my own
art. I love it. I prize it. I cultivate it.
It is a great part of my life. And yet, — and
yet I still insist, — let that reasoner, that
thoughtful lover of ideals, that philosopher,
if such there be, let him be confounded who
cannot do anything but reason." And in
the same way I say to you of the thoughtful
public : Woe unto the man or woman who can
do nothing but be thoughtful.
Yet why do I thus warn you? Pedantry,
it will be said, is a disease of professors and
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of bookish men. The young, the ardent,
and the general company of the faithful to
ideals in our land, whatever their faults,
are surely not pedants. An overcultivation
of the merely abstract reason is not a be
setting sin of most people. I reply that
there are many forms of pedantry; there are
many grounds for being on one's guard
against it. The misuse of the reasoning
process enters the life of the thoughtful in
more ways than one. The love of abstract
formulas, of mere phrases, or of falsely sim
plified thoughtful processes is not confined to
the professors.
I remember once discussing with a young
lady who was a college student of psychology,
some points in the text-book of my honored
colleague Professor William James. We spoke
in particular of his wonderful chapter on
Habit, so full, as some of you may know,
not only of theoretical wisdom, but of whole
some practical advice about the formation
and control of habits. I asked my young
friend what she thought of this chapter. She
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replied, with adorable naivete, that she had
found this chapter full of advice which must
be very valuable indeed "for the young men
for whom it was intended." Well, my young
friend had certainly observed part of the
significance of Professor James's chapter;
but she did not admit having observed that
his comments upon Habit apply to us all,
whether young men or not. And now, just
so, I should be sorry to have my word about
the misuse of reason and the false love of
abstract formulas supposed to apply only to
those philosophers, if such there be, for whom
it was indeed also intended. The lesson is
general, and human. Especially does it
apply to all the thoughtful public of America.
For this fault of a too abstract thought
fulness is committed, in substance, whenever
people try to reform all the world, or even any
great region of our complex lives, by insisting
upon any one set of phrases, of human con
ceptions and words, which the individual him
self has found somehow dear to his own
consciousness. Not merely the partisans of
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technical reasoning, but the apostles of intui
tion, too, can commit our fault, whenever they
trust in any mere abstraction. The people
of one idea, the people to whom this or that
single device for saving souls is alone important,
the followers of fads, — these fall prey to this
form of error. They mistake the power to
define for the power to accomplish, the ab
straction for the life, the single thought for
all the wealth of truth that our human world
contains, the exercise of an individual reason
for the whole task of reforming our nature.
And does not our modern America, both in the
East and in the West, really suffer too much,
nowadays, from mere fads? What shall
I do to be saved ? says the inquirer, — and
the answer is, — "Practise this or that
system of mind cure, whose teaching can be
made clear in just so many lessons. Follow
Delsarte, study your attitudes, or oratory, or
some other formal accomplishment. Accept
this or that doctrine of the New Thought."
Now the people who cultivate ideals in this
spirit often suppose themselves to be free
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from the philosopher's overwrought love of
the reason. "We follow," they say, "spiritual
intuitions. We thus avoid abstractions and
wrangling." "Yes," one may reply, "but
you none the less are anxious for some all-
embracing formula, some one saving principle
that shall do all manner of work." Now the
human mind, in its present form of conscious
ness, is simply incapable of formulating aU
its practical devices under any one simple
rule. We have to learn both to work and to
wait. We have to learn to obey as weU as to
formulate. What saves the world can never
be any one man's formulated scheme. Rest
less search for the immediate presence of the
ideal is often vain, like the pioneer idealism
that burns the forests merely to see what
they hide. Let the forests grow. They are
better than the empty hillsides. Much of
the best in human nature simply escapes our
present definitions, is known only by its
fruits, and prospers best in the forest shade of
unconsciousness. But a thoughtful lover of
ideals, whether a philosopher or not, is of
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course thinking of something that he can
formulate, — is trying to make his ideas con
scious, explicit, teachable, and so abstract.
Hence so much of his life's business as he best
formulates is likely for that very reason to
be narrow when compared with his whole
human task and with his own best and deepest
aims. We are primarily creatures of instinct;
and instinct is not merely the part of us that
allies us with the lower animals. The highest
in us is also based upon instinct. And only
a portion of your instincts can ever be formu
lated. You will be able in this life to tell
what they mean in only a few instances. But
your life's best work will depend upon all
of your good instincts together. Hence a
great part of your life's work will never become
a matter of your own personal and private
consciousness at all. It is one of the duties
then of the thoughtful lover of ideals to
know that he cannot turn into conscious
thinking processes all of his ideal activities.
Accordingly, he must indeed cultivate a wise
naivete, and that alongside of his reflective
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processes. That is why the companionship of
children becomes the more useful to us the
more thoughtful we are. They show us the
beauty of unconsciousness, and help us to
compensate for our tendency to abstraction by
reminding us of what it is to live straight
forwardly. And now, I say, this rule of mine applies to
the very lover of ideals whom I now chance
to be addressing. We who teach philosophy
are constantly receiving inquiries from people
who seem not to know how little in human
life can as yet be reduced to any abstractly
stateable formulas at all. Teachers inquire
as to the final and correct theory of the develop
ment of the human mind, as to the precise
number of powers that the mind possesses, or
as to the one secret of method in education.
Newspapers or magazines call for popular
discussions of the most serious and complex
issues, as if these could finally be dealt with
in any brief shape. A newspaper once asked
me to contribute to a so-called symposium
whose problem was to be this : What character-
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istics wUl the ideal man of the future possess ?
As I only knew about the ideal future man
this, that when he comes, he will, as in him
lies, adequately attend to his own business,
I felt unable to contribute anything original
to the proposed discussion. The first condi
tion of knowing how to think about ideal
subjects consists in being aware not only what
can be profitably formulated at all, but when
and for what purpose a given formulation
is profitable. When I visit a convalescent
friend who is beginning to feel joyous after a
long illness, I do not in general discuss the
problem of evil. When I too am to enjoy the
company of my friend, I do not first undertake
to inquire into the metaphysical problem as to
whether my friend exists at all. And yet just
such problems have their place in philosophy.
Now just so, when I vote, since, as it chances,
I am no expert in sociology or in economic
problems, I generally have no really very
good reason that I can formulate, in a conscious
and philosophical way, why I vote just as I do.
I vote largely on grounds of sympathy and of
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instinct, I know better than to try to do other
wise. If I tried to formulate a political theory,
it would be a very poor one ; for I have no
scientific comprehension of politics, no philoso
phy adequate to directing my choice of parties.
For my business is largely with other branches
of philosophy. I am a member of one or
two deliberative bodies, where I often hear
lengthy debates upon complex practical ques
tions. The debates for a time instruct me;
but later they often weary me, if they continue,
without instructing me. When people ask
me my reason for my own vote in such com
plex practical cases, or wonder why I am
anxious for a vote to be reached, I often say
that just because my profession is reasoning,
I have learned to know some of the limits
of the art, and to recognize that about some
complex practical issues, after a certain point,
it is vain to reason further, since only personal
reactions, incapable of adequate reflective
formulation, will decide. Hence I grow weary
of the much speaking. I know that at such
times I seem unreasonable; but I merely
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want to vote; and more formulations will in
such cases make me no wiser.
People often say that men act upon con
scious reasoning processes, and women upon
intuitions which they refuse to formulate.
The assertion is, like most proverbial asser
tions, inadequate to the wealth of life's facts.
Certainly women often enough act with a
mysterious swiftness of unconscious wisdom.
But so do many of the most effective men.
I have, however, often observed that some
educated women, some women who enter
public life as reformers, and perhaps too many
college-bred women, are nowadays troubled
with an overfondness both for mere formu
las and for abstract arguments about com
plex practical issues that only a happy in
stinctive choice and wholesome sentiment
can ever successfully decide so long as we
remain what weare; namely, frail and ignorant
human beings, who see through a glass darkly.
The fault of being overfond of abstrac
tions, or of trying to formulate bad reasons
for one's instinctive actions, does not char-
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acterize the man of business or the successful
executive. One does not meet this fault in
the market-place. But just this fault does
characterize some of our most cultivated and
thoughtful people in this country. And
among these people I find a good many
intellectual women.
What then is the happy medium? Shall
I cease to think ? No, not so. Be thoughtful,
reason out some of your ideals for yourself.
Know something, and know that something
well. Have the region where you have a right
to mistrust your instincts, to be keenly and
mercilessly critical, to question, to doubt, and
to formulate, and then devotedly to maintain
and to teach. But let that region be the little
clearing in your life's forest, — the place
where you see, and comprehend, and are at
home. Let there be such a place. You need
it. It may be art, or theology, or Greek, or
administrative work, or politics, or philosophy,
or domestic economy, or general business,
wherein you find this your chosen intellectual
dwelling. In that region be indeed the crea-
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ture of hard-won insight, of clear conscious
ness, of definite thinking about what it is
yours to know. There the formula is in order.
There the ideal is won by your investigations,
and defended by your arguments. I say,
have such a region. We need those who know.
In that region, believe only when you know
why you believe. But remember, life is vast,
and your little clearing is very small. In the
rest of life, cultivate naivete, accept authority,
dread fads, follow as faithfully as your in
stinct permits other lovers of the ideal who are
here wiser than you, and be sure that though
your head splits you will never think out all
your problems, or formulate all your ideals
so long as you are in this life. If this precept
were followed in this country there would be
more experts, and fewer popular crazes,
more effective work done, and less time wasted
in hopeless efforts at general reforms. De
te fabula, I say to every studious soul who is
disposed to be too thoughtful rather than
wisely effective. Be in your devotion to effec
tive leaders relatively uncritical in many things,
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in order to be thoughtfully knowing in some.
Be chUdlike in much of life in order to become
maturely wise in some things.

If you are once aware of the vanity of
trying to formulate everything, and to argue
about all sorts of problems, you will not be
tempted to pursue unwisely mere novelties
of formulation for their own sake. I have
spoken more than once of the feverish desire
for new ideas in which our thoughtful public
wastes much time. An entirely false inter
pretation of the doctrine of evolution has led
some people to imagine that in any department
of our lives, novelty as such must mean true
progress toward the goal. Hence you con
stantly hear of the New Education, the
New Psychology, the New Thought, the
New Humanity, and whatever else can
be adorned by the mere prefixing of this
adjective. And yet people do not speak
adoringly of the New Blizzard, or of the
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New Weather in general. We all of us have
a fondness, not altogether wise, for the
so-called news of the day, quite apart from its
meaning; and the newspapers daUy verify
for us the ancient fact that bad men lie and
steal and murder. Such news, which alas
is no news, but the ancient sorrow of our race,
we do indeed greet with a certain keenness of
interest which is neither altogether rational
nor highly ideal. But still the lovers of the
ideal do not in such cases suppose that some
new form of burglary must, because of the
fatal law of evolution, be higher in nature, or
nobler, or more worthy of study than the older
arts of the thieves. So nobody preaches in
praise of the New Burglary. Nor do we
suppose that evolution implies, as any univer
sal law, that the New Blizzard, when it comes,
is an object worthy of admiration above all
former caprices of our climate. We know
that if news, in this sense, is indeed interesting,
still the weather is the weather, and the thieves
break through and steal, and that no news
makes more ideal these ancient aspects of the
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visible world. Now much that is proposed
as new in thought, or in the less exact sciences,
or in complex arts such as education, has
indeed its importance as embodying real
progress. When we know that to be the case,
we welcome the new, not because it is merely
new, but because it is a substantial addition
to what is already known to be a good. But,
on the other hand, much that is novel in opin
ion is novel only as the latest change of the
weather is new. And I warn you, not indeed
blindly to condemn, but cautiously to suspect
doctrines that are obliged to advertise, very
ostentatiously, the supposed fact that they are
new, in order to get a public hearing. In
really progressive sciences, as for instance in
psychology itself,- the most important advances
need not be thus loudly heralded. They
make their own way, not because they are
merely new, but because they are maturely
conceived and carefully worked out. As for
the world of faith, it is as vain to be a mere
seeker of novelties as it is to be a mere con
servative. In our deeper faiths the newest
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and the oldest of humanity's deeds, interests,
and experiences lie side by side. What is
new for one soul is not new for another.
Love and death and our duty, these are the
oldest and the newest things in human destiny.
The new love is not on that account the true
one. The new coming of death teaches
still the ancient lessons of the burial psalm.
The new duty is no duty unless it is an example
of the most venerable of truths. "These
things" says Antigone, "are not of to-day or
of yesterday, and no man knows whence they
came." As a fact, what you and I really
most need and desire is not the new, nor yet
the old. It is the eternal. The genuine
lover of truth is neither a conservative nor
a radical. He is beyond that essentially
trivial opposition. He cares nothing for the
time in which these things came to pass. For
him their interest lies in their truth. Time
is but an image, an imitation of the eternal.
Evolution itself is only a fashion in which the
everlasting appears. For God there is noth
ing new. Before the mountains were brought
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forth, or ever thou hadst founded the earth,
from everlasting thou art God.
Be docile then; be ready to learn what is
new to you. But avoid this disease of merely
running after every thought that loudly pro
claims, or every plan that stridently asserts,
"Behold, I am new." Say to every such
claimant for your reverence: "Are you such
that you can grow old and still remain as good
as ever? Then indeed I will trust you."
But is there nothing, then, in the idea of
progress ? Are there not certainly progres
sive movements, whose new stages wUl there
fore be good? Yes. The actual discoveries
of empirical science, once submitted to careful
test, do indeed form a progressive series.
Here the new, once assured by critical veri
fication, is good. But the existence in any
particular field of inquiry or of action of a
progress that you and I can regard as certain,
is never something to be merely presumed.
The presumption is valid only after due
examination. Only the expert can decide
then, with clearness, whether the new is good.
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This holds in finance and in business as gen
uinely as in politics or in religion. Therefore
it is only, once more, within the relatively
narrow range of your expertness, that you can
judge whether the new really is, as such, likely
to be the good. Outside of that range,
favor no novelties unless they appeal to your
personal sentiments, to your most humane
sympathies, to your best cultivated, but still
in general partly unconscious, tastes and in
stincts. In brief, then, I say to our thoughtful
public, overcome your limitations, first by
minute and faithful study of a few things and
by clearness of ideas about them; then by child
like simplicity in the rest of life, by faithfulness
to enlightened leaders, by resignation as op
posed to restlessness, and above all by work
rather than by idle curiosity. Organize
through a willingness to recognize that we
must often differ in insight, but that what we
need is to do something together. Avoid this
restless longing for mere novelty. Learn to
wait, to believe in more than you see, and to
love not what is old or new, but what is eternal.
165

IV
THE PACIFIC COAST

A PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE HELATIONS OF
CLIMATE AND CIVILIZATION

IV
THE PACIFIC COAST
A PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE RELATIONS OF
CLIMATE^ AND CIVILIZATION
T" HAVE been asked to describe some of
the principal physical aspects of Cali
fornia, and to indicate the way in which they
have been related to the life and civilization
of the region. The task is at once, in its main
outlines, comparatively simple, and in its
most interesting details hopelessly complex.
The topography of the Pacific slope, now well
known to most travellers, is in certain of its
principal features extremely easy to charac
terize. The broad landscapes, revealing very
frequently at a glance the structure of wide
regions, give one an impression that the mean
ing of the whole can easily be comprehended.
Closer study shows how difficult it is to under
stand the relation of precisely such features
to the life that has grown up in this region.
' An address prepared for the National Geographical
Society, in 1898. 169

THE PACIFIC COAST
The principal interest of the task lies in the
fact that it is our American character and
civilization which have been already moulded
in new ways by these novel aspects of the
far western regions. But we stand at the
beginning of a process which must continue
for long ages. Any one interested in the unity
of our national life, and in the guiding of our
destinies by broad ideals, desires to conceive
in some fashion how the physical features of
the Pacific Coast may be expected to mould
our national type. Yet thus far we have, as
it were, only the most general indications of
what the result must be.
In endeavoring to distinguish between what
has already resulted from physical conditions
and what has been due to personal character,
to deliberate choice, or to the general national
temperament, or to what we may have to call
pure accident, one is dealing with a task for
which the data are not yet sufficient. We
can but make a beginning.

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THE PACIFIC COAST

The journey westward to California is even
now, when one goes by rail, a dramatic series of
incidents. From the wide plains of the states
immediately west of the Mississippi one passes
at first through richly fertile regions to the more
and more arid prairies of the eastern slope
of the Rocky Mountains. Then come either
the steep ranges or the wide passes, and at last
what used to be called the Great American Des
ert itself, that great interior basin of the rugged,
saw-tooth ranges, where the weirdly dreary land
scape at once terrifies the observer by its deso
lation, and inspires him by the grandeur of its
loneliness, and by the mysterious peacefulness
of the desert wherein, as one at first feels,
nothing like the complex and restless life of
our eastern civilization will ever be possible.
As one travels by the familiar central route
still further west, one reaches the valley of
the Humboldt River, that kindly stream
whose general westerly trend made the early
overland migration possible. At the end of
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THE PACIFIC COAST
this portion of the route rises the vast wall of
the Sierra Range, and the traveller's heart
thrills with something of the strange feeling
that the early immigrants described when,
after their long toU, they reached the place
where, just beyond this dark and deathlike
wall, the land of heavenly promise was known
to lie. Abrupt is the ascent of this great
range; slower on the other side, the descent,
amidst the magnificent canons of the western
slope, to the ^ ins of the Sacramento VaUey.
From the foot-hills of the Sierra one used to
the journey could easily get at many points a
wide outlook into the region beyond. The
Coast Range in the far distance bounds with
its blue summits the western view, and seems
to hide the ocean for whose shore one already
looks, as in childhood I, who then lived in the
Sierra foot-hills, and had never seen the sea,
used longingly to look. Through the valley
beneath winds the Sacramento, fed by numer
ous tributaries from the Sierra. At length, as
one continues the railway journey, one reaches
the plains of the Sacramento Valley them-
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THE PACIFIC COAST
selves, and enters that interesting region
where the scattered oaks, separated from
one another by wide distances, used to seem,
I remember in the old days, as if set out by
God's hand at the creation in a sort of natural
park. One crosses the valley, — the shore
of San Francisco Bay is reached. If one is
travelling in summer, the intensely dry heat
of the Sacramento Valley suddenly gives place
to the cold winds of the coast. JMist and the
salt air of the sea greet you d,f you approach
the rugged hills about the Golden Gate, and
find your way by ferry to San Francisco.
The region that to-day is so swiftly and so
easily entered was of old the goal of an over
land tour that might easily last six months
from the Missouri River, and that was attended
with many often-recorded dangers. Yet the
route that in this brief introductory statement
we have followed, is nearly identical with the
one which first guided the immigrants to the
new land. And in part this route was identi
cal, namely, as far as Fort Hall, with the once
familiar Oregon Trail. 173

THE PACIFIC COAST
II
Oregon and California, the Canaan which
long formed the only goal of those who trav
elled over these intermediate regions, are de
termined as to their characters and climate
by the presence beyond them of the great
ocean, and by the trend northward and
southward of the elevated ranges of moun
tains which lie west of the central basin. On
all the continents of the world, in the latitudes
of the temperate zones, the countries that lie
on the lee side of the ocean receive the world's
prevailing winds tempered by a long course
over the water. Accordingly, those coun
tries very generally enjoy a relatively steadier
climate than those which lie in the same lati
tudes but on the lee side of the great conti
nental areas; that is, toward the east. But
other influences join themselves, as secondary
causes, in a number of cases, to this general
consequence of the prevailing west winds of
the temperate zones. The good fortune of
Oregon and California as to their climate
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depends, in fact, as the meteorologists now
recognize, partly upon the steadying influence
of the vast masses of water that there lie to
windward, partly upon the influence of the
mountain masses themselves in affecting pre
cipitation, and finally upon certain great sea
sonal changes in the distribution of the more
permanent areas of high and low pressure, —
changes which have been elaborately studied
in the report of Lieutenant Glassford on the
climate of California and Nevada, published
as a government document in 1891.
During the summer months, the entire
region west of the high Sierra Range and of its
continuation, the Cascade Range, is com
paratively free, and in the southern portion
almost wholly free, from storm disturbances.
The moisture-laden winds of the ocean are
then deflected by areas of high pressure, which
persist off the coast, and the moister winds
are prevented from coming into close relation
to the mountains and discharging their mois
ture. On the other hand, during the months
from November to March, and in Oregon still
175

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later, storm areas are more frequent, and
their behavior along the coast, by reason of
certain areas of high pressure which are then
established in the regions east of the Sierra,
is rendered different from the behavior more
characteristic of the well-known storms of our
eastern coast. The resulting conditions are
sometimes those of long-continued and de
cidedly steady precipitation on the Coast
Range of California, and on the western slope
of the Sierra, as well as throughout the Oregon
region. Thus arise the longer rains of the
California wet season. At other times in the
rainy season the storm areas, moving back
and forth in a more variable way along the
coast, but still unable to pass the area of high
pressure that lies farther inland, produce
conditions of a more gently and variably
showery sort over a wide extent of country;
as the rainy season passes away in March
and April, these showers grow less frequent
in California, though they continue in Ore
gon much later. That portion of Oregon
which lies east of the Cascade Range belongs,
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once more, to the decidedly dry regions of the
western country; on the other hand, western
Oregon has a much moister climate than
California. In consequence, the climate, throughout
this entire far western region, is character-
'ized by a very sharp distinction between the
wet and dry seasons; while otherwise, within
the area of Oregon and California, there exist
very wide differences as to the total amount
of annual precipitation. Wide extents of
country, as, for instance, the San Joaquin Val
ley in California, have needed the develop
ment of elaborate methods of irrigation. The
relative variability of rainfall in the more
northern regions has in some years beset the
Sacramento Valley with severe floods. And
still farther north, at places on the Oregon and
Washington coast, the annual precipitation
reaches very high figures indeed. If one then
returns to the other extreme, in far south
eastern California, one is altogether in a desert
region. Normally the wet season of central
and southern California, even where the rain-
N 177

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fall is considerable, is diversified by extended
intervals of beautifully fair and mild weather.
But nowhere on the Pacific Coast has the
variation of seasons the characters customary
in the eastern country. A true winter exists,
indeed, in the high Sierra, but even here this
season has a character very different from that
of the New England winter. Enormous faUs
of snow on the upper Sierra slopes are, in
deed, frequent. But on the other hand, there
are many places in the Sierra where an early
spring very rapidly melts away these masses
of snow from the upper foot-hills, and leads
by a swift transition to the climate of the Cali
fornia dry season, in a dramatic fashion that
happens to be prominent amongst my own
childhood memories.
In general, then, in California and Oregon,
with the great western ocean so near, the rou
tine of the year's climate is much more definite
and predetermined than in our Atlantic
states. In western Oregon, where, as we have
said, the climate is far more moist, the rains
begin about the end of September and con-
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tinue with more or fewer intermissions until
May or June. The dry season then lasts
steadily for three or four months. In Cali
fornia the dry season grows longer, the rainy
season less persistent and wealthy in watery
gifts, the farther south we go, until in the
far south, except on the coast, there is often
a very short intermission in the year's drought.
So much for the climate of this region as a
whole. Meanwhile, there are numerous local
varieties, and amongst these more distinctly
local influences that modify the climate both
in the wet and in the dry seasons, the Coast
Range of California plays a very important
part. This range, separated, as we have
seen, from the Sierra by the Sacramento and
San Joaquin valleys, joins its masses with
those of the Sierra both at the northern end
of the Sacramento Valley and at the southern
extremity of the San Joaquin Valley. These
two rivers, the Sacramento and the San Joa
quin, flowing the one southward and the
other northward, join their waters and find
an exit to the sea through San Francisco Bay,
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which itself opens into the ocean through the
Golden Gate. The Sacramento Valley is
thus bounded on the east by a range that
varies in height from seven thousand to four
teen thousand feet. The Coast Range on the
west has an elevation varying from two thou
sand to four thousand, and in some cases
rising to five thousand feet. The elevation of
the Coast Range is thus sufficient to affect,
in the rainy season, the precipitation in some
localities, although the greatest rainfaUs of
the rainy season in California are due to the
influence of the Sierra upon the moisture-
laden winds of the sea during the passage of
the areas of low pressure. But decidedly
more marked is the influence of the Coast
Range during the summer months, upon the
determination of local climate along th^
northern Californian coast. Here the sum
mer, from Monterey northward, is along the
coast decidedly cold, — sea-breezes and fre
quent mists marking the days of the entire
dry season, while at night the winds usually
fall, and the cold may not be so severely felt.
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But frequently only a few miles will separate
these cold regions of the coast from the hot
interior of the Sacramento Valley or from the
smaller valleys on the eastern slope of the
Coast Range.
To sum up the total result of all these con
ditions, one may say that the main feature of
the whole climate, apart from its mildness, is
the relatively predictable character of the
year's weather. In the dryer regions of the
south, wherever irrigation is possible and has
been developed, the agriculturist often feels a
superiority to weather conditions which makes
him rejoice in the very drought that might
otherwise be regarded as so formidable. In
central California one is sure, in advance, of
the weather that will steadily prevail during
all the summer months. Agricultural opera
tions are thus rendered definite by the knowl
edge of when the drought is coming, and by
the freedom from all fear of sudden storms
during the harvest season.
That this climate is delightful to those who
are used to its routine will be well known to
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THE PACIFIC COAST
most readers. That it is not without its dis
agreeable features is equally manifest to every
tourist. Nor can one say that this far western
country is free from decided variations in the
fortunes of different years. Where irrigation
is not developed, great anxiety is frequently
felt with regard to the sufficiency of the annual
rain supply of the rainy season. Years of
relative flood and of relative drought are as
well known here as elsewhere. Nor is one
wholly free, within any one season, from un
expected and sometimes disagreeably long-
continued periods of unseasonable tempera
ture. A high barometer over the region north
and east of California occasionally brings to
pass the well-known California "northers."
These have, in the rainy season, a character
that in some respects reminds one of the fa
miliar cold-wave phenomena of the east,
although the effect is very much more moder
ate. Frosts may then extend throughout
northern California, may beset the central
Coast Range, and may on occasion extend
far into the southern part of California itself.
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But when the "northers" come during the
dry season, they are frequently intensely hot
winds, whose drought, associated with hill or
forest fires, may give rise to very memorable
experiences. But these are the inevitable
and minor vicissitudes of a climate which is,
on the whole, remarkably steady, and which
is never as trying as are the well-known varia
tions of our own northeastern climate. The
generally good effect upon the health of such
a climate is modified in certain cases by the
possibly overstimulating character of the
coast summer, which, as for instance at San
Francisco, permits one to work without thought
of holidays all the year round. In my own
boyhood it used often to be said that there
were busy men in San Francisco who had
reached that place in 1849, and who had
become prominent in mercantile or other
city life, and who had never taken vacations,
and never left San Francisco even to cross
the bay, from the hour of their coming until
that moment. Of course, such men can be
found in almost any busy community, but
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these men seemed rather characteristic of the
early California days and suggested the way
in which a favorable climate may on occasion
be misused by an ambitious man to add to the
strains otherwise incident to the life of a new
country. If one now turns from the climate to the
other aspects of our region, the general topog
raphy at once suggests marked features that
must needs be of great importance to the entire
life of any such country. California and Ore
gon are sharply sundered from one another
by the ranges north of the Sacramento Valley.
The Washington region, about Puget Sound,
is destined to still a third and decidedly sepa
rate life, by reason of its relation to those mag
nificent inland waters, and by reason of the
two high ranges which bound the shores of the
American portion of Puget Sound.
And, in fact, the country of the whole Pa
cific Coast may be regarded as geographically
divided into at least four great regions: the
Washington region, in the neighborhood of
Puget Sound; the Oregon region with the
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THE PACIFIC COAST
valley of the Columbia; the northern and
central California region, including the coast
and bay of San Francisco, together with the
great interior valley ; and, finally, the southern
region of California. Both the social devel
opment and the material future of these four
great sections of the Pacific Coast must
always be mutually somewhat distinct and
independent. The northern and central Cali
fornia region, the third of those just enumer
ated, is in possession of the largest harbor
between Puget Sound and the southern boun
dary of the United States. It is, therefore,
here that the civilization of the west was des
tined to find its first centre. Nor can this
province ever have a social destiny indepen
dent of that of San Francisco itself. The
southern California region, while not sepa
rated from central and northern California by
any very high barrier, is still marked off by
certain features due to the amount of precipi
tation, and to the smaller harbors of this part
of the Pacific Coast.
I have already mentioned more than once
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THE PACIFIC COAST
the breadth of landscape characteristic espe
cially of central California, but often visible
elsewhere on the Pacific Coast. Here is a
feature that has to do at once with the mate
rially important and with the topographically
interesting features of this land. When you
stand on Mount Diablo, a mountain about
three thousand eight hundred feet high, and
some fifteen miles east of San Francisco Bay,
you look in one direction down upon the ocean
and upon San Francisco Bay itself, while in
the other direction you have in full sight the
Sierra Range beyond the great valley, and vast
reaches of the interior valley itself. Simi
larly, from the upper foot-hUls of the Sierra,
every chance elevation that overtops its neigh
bors a little gives you far-reaching views of
the interior valley. The normally clear air
of a great part of the year determines the
character and sharp outlines of these broad
views. The young Californian is thus early
used to a country that, as it were, tells its
principal secrets at a glance, and he some
times finds his eye pained and confused either
186

THE PACIFIC COAST
by the monotonous landscapes of the prairies
of our middle west, or by the baffling topog
raphy of many parts of New England or of
our middle states, where one small valley at
a time invites one to guess what may be its
unseen relations to its neighbors. The effect
of all this breadth and clearness of natural
scenery on mental life cannot be doubted.
Ill
Of climate and topography this very sum
mary view must now suffice. We turn from
nature toward life, and ask ourselves what
bearing these geographical features have had
upon the still so incomplete social develop
ment of California.
In 1846, at the outset of our war with
Mexico, the Mexican province of California
extended toward the interior, at least on
paper, so far as to include the present Nevada
and Utah; but only the California coast itself
was really known to its inhabitants. Cali
fornia was seized by the American fleet at
the outset of the war. Its value to our coun-
187

THE PACIFIC COAST
try had been earlier, made known partly
through the New England traders who dealt
on that coast, and partly through the appear
ance in the territory of American settlers.
The famous report of the expedition of 1844
made by Lieutenant Fremont brought to a
focus the popular interest in the importance
of the entire territory, and prepared the way
for the excitement aroused by the discovery
of gold in 1848.
The gold excitement determined the entire
future history of California; and here of
course the immediate influence of the physical
upon the social conditions is the best known
fact about the state. The golden period of
California may be regarded as filling all the
years between 1848 and 1860. Or perhaps
a still better dividing line might be made in
the year 1866, when the government first sur
veyed the mineral lands of California and
parted with its title to these lands, so that
the conditions of mining ownership were
thenceforth no longer primitive. Up to that
time the miners of California had worked by
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THE PACIFIC COAST
government consent upon land to which
they could acquire no title, so that their right
to hold land was entirely due to miner's cus
tom and to occupation, both of which were
recognized by the courts of the state in deal
ing with conflicts amongst miners. With
the close of the distinctively mining period,
begins the agricultural period of California.
Gold mining has of course continued until
the present day, but the development of agri
culture soon surpassed in importance that of
all other industries in the state.
Nevertheless, the civilization of the agri
cultural period has been of course deter
mined in large part, despite the change of
material conditions, by the traditions of the
more romantic golden period. The Cali
fornia pioneers are gradually passing away;
but as the fathers and the early Puritans de
termined in many respects the future of New
England, so the miners, together with their
peers, the merchants of early San Francisco,
lived a life whose traditions, directly due to
the physical conditions under which they
189

THE PACIFIC COAST
worked, are sure to be of long-continued, per
haps of permanently obvious, influence in
the development of the civilization of Cali
fornia. If one attempts to describe in what way
the civilization either of the golden days or
of the later agricultural period has been af
fected by the geographical conditions, a stu
dent of my own habits and prejudices feels
at once disposed to pass directly to the inner
life of the Californian and to ask himself what
influence the nature and climate of such a
region seem to have upon the life of the indi
vidual mind and body, and, indirectly, upon
the social order. Here of course one treads
upon ground at once fascinating and enor
mously difficult. Generalization is limited
by the fact of great varieties of personal char
acter and type with which we are dealing.
But after all, I think that in California litera
ture, in the customary expressions of Cali
fornians in speaking to one another, and, to
a very limited degree, in the inner conscious
ness of any one who has grown up in Cali-
190

THE PACIFIC COAST
fornia, we have evidence of certain ways in
which the conditions of such a region must
influence the life and, I suppose in the end,
the character of the whole community. I
feel disposed, then, to try to suggest very
briefly how it feels to grow up in such a cli
mate, to live in such a region, thus separated
by wide stretches of country from other por
tions of our own land and from the world at
large, thus led by the kindliness of nature
into a somewhat intimate, even if uncompre
hended, relation to the physical conditions,
and thus limited to certain horizons in one's
experience. I speak of course as a native
Californian, but I also do not venture to
limit even for a moment my characterization
by reference to my own private experience.
Californians are rather extraordinarily con
scious of the relation between their home and
their lives. Newcomers who have grown up
elsewhere are constantly comparing their
natural surroundings with those that they
knew before. The natives, for reasons that
I shall suggest in a moment, are put into a
191

THE PACIFIC COAST
relation with nature which, whether they are
students of nature or not, and whether they
are observant or not, is in feeling a peculiarly
intimate relation. The consequence may, as
I have already suggested, be best understood
by a reference to some of the wealthy and
varied literature that California has already
produced. Every one is familiar with that reflection of
the change of seasons in poetical literature
which we find first in the classic English lit
erature, which we find again gradually ap
pearing in new forms in adaptation to the
more special conditions of our American cli
mate. New England nature has now been
perhaps almost too frequently characterized
in literary art. We are here to ask how the
nature of California comes to be character
ized. Let me appeal at once to some of the
poets to tell us.
The most familiar account of the California
climate in literature is Bret Harte's charac
terization of the seasonal changes in his poem,
"Concepcion Argiiello." The scene is here
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THE PACIFIC COAST
at the Presidio at San Francisco, close by the
Golden Gate, where the heroine waited for
her lover during the long years that the poem
describes.
" Day by day on wall and bastion beat the hollow empty
breeze —
Day by day the sunUght glittered on the vacant, smiling seas ;
Week by week the near hills whitened in their dusty leather
cloaks —
Week by week the far hills darkened from the fringing
plain of oaks;
Till the rains came, and far-breaking, on the fierce south-
wester tost.
Dashed the whole long coast with color, and then vanished
and were lost.
So each year the seasons shifted, wet and warm and drear
and dry;
Half a year of clouds and flowers — half a year of dust and
sky."
The nature which is thus depicted has of
course many other aspects besides this its
fundamental rhythm; but prominent in all
the literary descriptions is the stress laid upon
the coming of the rains, — an event which
occupies, very naturally, the same place in
o 193

THE PACIFIC COAST
the California poet's mind that the spring
occupies elsewhere. Only what this spring
time breaks in upon in California is not in
general cold, but drought. It is here not the
bursting away of any iron barrier of frost,
but the clearing of the hazy air, the introduc
tion of a rich and sudden new life, the re
moving of a dull and dry oppression from the
heart, — it is such things that first come to
mind when one views this change. A stu
dent of the University of California in the
year 1878, a lady who has won success in more
than one branch of literature. Miss Millicent
Shinn, published in a college paper of that
time the following sonnet, under the title of
"Rain." The poem deserves to be recalled
here, just as a suggestion of the relation
between nature and the individual mind
under such conditions : —
" It chanced me once that many weary weeks
I walked to daily work across a plain.
Far-stretching, barren since the April rain;
And now, in gravelly beds of vanished creeks,
November walked dry shod. On every side
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Round the horizon hung a murky cloud, —
No hills, no waters; and above that shroud
A wan sky rested shadowless and wide.
Until one night came down the earUest rain;
And in the morning, lo, in fair array.
Blue ranges crowned with snowy summits, lay
All round about the fair transfigured plain.
Oh, would that such a rain might melt away
In tears the cloud that chokes my heart with pain."
The heavy air of the close of the dry season,
the weary waiting for the autumn rains, the
quick change as the new life came, — all
these things bring characteristically before
one the nature life of central California, — a
region of the half-arid type, where the con
ditions are far enough from true desert con
ditions, while at moments they simulate the
latter. Yet not merely this fundamental
rhythm of the climate so easily impressive to
every sojourner, arouses the sensitive atten
tion of the life-long inhabitant. The dwellers
by the shores of San Francisco Bay see these
seasonal changes in the midst of a highly
varied landscape. From the hUl slopes on
the eastern shores of that great harbor one
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THE PACIFIC COAST
looks toward the Golden Gate. North of
the Gate rise the rugged heights of Mount
Tamalpais, to a point about twenty-six hun
dred feet above the sea level. South of the
Gate, San Francisco itself adds its smoke to
the ocean mists, and its hilly summits to the
generally bold landscape. The wide ex
panse of water, stretching north and south
in the bay, changes color under the daylight
in the most varied manner, according as cloud
and sunshine, or as dawn, morning, afternoon,
and sunset pass before you. In the summer
time the afternoon ocean mists enter, along
with the steadily rising daily wind which falls
only with the twilight. One of California's
most successful poets. Miss Coolbrith, de
picts this scene in her poem entitled "Two
Pictures." Morning
"As in a quiet dream,
The mighty waters seem:
Scarcely a ripple shows
Upon their blue repose.
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THE PACIFIC COAST
The sea-gulls smoothly ride
Upon the drowsy tide.
And a white sail doth sleep
Far out upon the deep.
A dreamy purple fills
The hollows of the hiUs;
A single cloud floats through
The sky's serenest blue;
And far beyond the Gate,
The massed vapors wait —
White as the walls that ring
The City of the King.
There is no sound, no word;
Only a happy bird
Trills to her nestUng young,
A Uttle, sleepy song.
This is the holy calm;
The heavens dropping bahn;
The Love made manifest.
And near; the perfect rest.
Evening
The day grows wan and cold:
In through the Gate of Gold
The restless vapors glide.
Like ghosts upon the tide.
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THE PACIFIC COAST
The brown bird folds her wing.
Sad, with no song to sing.
Along the streets the dust
Blows sharp, with sudden gust.
The night comes, chiU and gray;
Over the sullen bay.
What mournful echoes pass
From lonely Alcatraz!
O bell, with solemn toll.
As for a passing sovd !
As for a soul that waits.
In vain, at heaven's gates.
This is the utter blight;
The sorrow infinite
Of earth; the closing wave;
The parting, and the grave."
Such is the daily drama of the dry season
at the bay. On the other hand, the rainy
season itself contains some tragedies that in
no wise belong to the eastern winter. There
are the northers, with their periods of relative
chill and their swift winged sternness; and
these northers have often been celebrated in
California verse. But apart from such colder
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periods, the loud roaring storms and heavy
rains are often likely to stand in a curious
contrast to the abounding life of vegetation
which the rains themselves have aroused. It
is possible to cultivate roses in one's garden
throughout the greater part of the year.
These, the rainy season will generally encour
age in their blooming. On the other hand,
the stormy wind will from time to time de
stroy them with its own fioods of cruelty.
Miss Coolbrith depicts such a scene in the
poem entitled, "My 'Cloth of Gold.'" As
in tropical countries, so here the long storms
seem often much darker and drearier by
reason of their warfare with the rich life
amidst which they rage. IV
Such are a few of the many instances that
might be given of the emotional reactions of
sensitive minds in the presence of California
nature. But now the outer aspect of nature
unquestionably moulds both the emotions
and the customs of mankind, insensibly af-
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fects men's temperaments in ways which, as
we know, somehow or other tend to become
hereditary, however we may view the vexed
question concerning the heredity of acquired
characters. Moreover, the influence of nature
upon custom which every civilization depicts,
is precisely the kind of influence that from
moment to moment expresses itself psycho
logically in the more typical emotions of sensi
tive souls. Thus, one may observe that if
we are considering the relation between civili
zation and climate, and are endeavoring to
speculate in however vague a manner upon
the future of a society in a given environment,
we may well turn to the poets, not for a solu
tion of our problem, but for getting signifi
cant hints. Or, to put the case somewhat
boldly otherwise, I should say that the vast
processes which in the course of centuries
appear in the changes of civUization due to
climate, involve, as it were, tremendously
complex mathematical functions. If it were
possible for us to state these stupendous
functions, we should be possessed of the secret
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THE PACIFIC COAST
of such social changes. Of such a stupendous
function, a group of poems, expressing as
they do momentary human changes, might
be called, if you like, a system of partial, and
I admit very partial, differential equations. I
do not hope to integrate any such system of
equations, or to gain an exact view of the
types of the functions from a consideration
of them, and of course I admit with readiness
that I am using only a very rough mathe
matical metaphor. But to translate the mat
ter once more into literal terms, the tenden
cies of the moment are in their way indications
of what the tendencies of the ages are to be.
Now what all this poetry in general psy
chologically means, quite apart from special
moods, is that the Californian, of necessity,
gains a kind of sensitiveness to nature which
is different in type from the sensitiveness that
a severer climate would inevitably involve,
and different too in type from that belonging
to climates mild but moist and more variable.
In the first place, as you see, such a climate
permits one to be a great deal out of doors in
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the midst of nature. It permits wide views,
where the outlines are vast and in general
clear. As, when you are on a steamer it is
a matter of some skill to understand what are
the actual conditions of wind and sea, while,
when you are on a saUing vessel you con
stantly feel both the wind and the sea with a
close intimacy that needs no technical knowl
edge to make it at least appreciated, so, in
the case of such a climate as the one of Cali
fornia, your relations with nature are essen
tially intimate, whether you are a student of
nature or not. Your dependence upon nature
you feel in one sense more, and in another
sense less, — more, because you are more
constantly in touch with the natural changes
of the moment; less, because you know that
nature is less to be feared than under severer
conditions. And this intimacy with nature
means a certain change in your relations to
your fellow-men. You get a sense of power
from these wide views, a habit of personal
independence from the contemplation of a
world that the eye seems to own. Especially
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in country life the individual Californian
consequently tends toward a certain kind of
independence which I find in a strong and
subtle contrast to the sort of independence
that, for instance, the New England farmer
cultivates. The New England farmer must
fortify himself in his stronghold against the
seasons. He must be ready to adapt himself
to a year that permits him to prosper only
upon decidedly hard terms. But the Cali
fornia country proprietor can have, during
the drought, more leisure, unless, indeed, his
ambition for wealth too much engrosses him.
His horses are plenty and cheap. His fruit
crops thrive easily. He is able to supply his
table with fewer purchases, with less com
mercial dependence. His position is, there
fore, less that of the knight in his castle and
more that of the free dweller in the summer
cottage, who is indeed not at leisure, but can
easily determine how he shall be busy. It is
of little importance to him who his next
neighbor is. At pleasure he can ride or
drive a good way to find his friends; can
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choose, like the southern planter of former
days, his own range of hospitality; can de
vote himself, if a man of cultivation, to read
ing during a good many hours at his own
choice, or, if a man of sport, can find during
a great part of the year easy opportunities
for hunting or for camping both for himself
and for the young people of his family. In
the dry season he knows beforehand what
engagements can be made, without regard
to the state of the weather, since the state of
the weather is predetermined.
The free life and interchange of hospi
tality, so often described in the accounts of
early California, has left its traces in the
country life of California at the present day.
Very readily, if you have moderate means,
you can create your own quiet estate at a
convenient distance from the nearest town.
You may cover your house with a bower of
roses, surround yourself with an orchard,
quickly grow eucalyptus as a shade tree, and
with nearly equal facility multiply other shade
trees. You become, on easy terms, a pro-
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prietor, with estate and home of your own.
Now all this holds, in a sense, of any mild cli
mate. But in California the more regular
routine of wet and dry seasons modifies and
renders more stable the general psychological
consequences. All this is encouraging to a
kind of harmonious individuality that already
tends in the best instances toward a some
what Hellenic type.
A colleague of my own, a New Englander
of the strictest persuasion, who visited Cali
fornia for a short time when he was himself
past middle life, returned enthusiastic with
the report that the California countrymen
seemed to him to resemble the ancient, yes,
even the Homeric, Greeks of the Odyssey.
The Californians had their independence of
judgment; their carelessness of what a bar
barian might think, so long as he came from
beyond the border; their apparent freedom
in choosing what manner of men they should
be; their ready and confident speech. All
these things my friend at once noticed as
characteristic. Thus different in type are
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these country proprietors from the equaUy
individual, the secretively independent, the
silently conscientious New England villagers.
They are also quite different from the typical
southern proprietors. From the latter they
differ in having less tendency to respect tra
ditions, and in laying much less stress upon
formal courtesies. The Californian, like the
westerner in general, is likely to be somewhat
abrupt in speech, and his recent coming to
the land has made him on the whole quite in
different to family tradition. I myself, for
instance, reached twenty years of age without
ever becoming clearly conscious of what was
meant by judging a man by his antecedents,
a judgment that in an older and less isolated
Community is natural and inevitable, and
that, I think, in most of our western com
munities, grows up more rapidly than it has
grown up in California, where the geographi
cal isolation is added to the absence of tra
dition. To my own mind, in childhood,
every human being was, with a few excep
tions, whatever he happened to be. He-
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reditary distinctions I appreciated only in
case of four types of humanity. There were
the Chinamen, there were the Irishmen, there
were the Mexicans, and there were the rest of
us. Within each of these types, every man,
to my youthful mind, was precisely what God
and himself had made him, and it was dis
tinctly a new point of view to attach a man
to the antecedents that either his family or
his other social relationships had determined
for him. Now, I say, this type of individu
ality, known more or less in our western
communities, but developed in peculiarly high
degree in California, seems to me due not
merely to the newness of the community, and
not merely to that other factor of geographi
cal isolation that I just mentioned, but to the
relation with nature of which we have already
spoken. It is a free and on the whole an
emotionally exciting, and also as we have
said, an engrossing and intimate relation.
In New England, if you are moody, you
may wish to take a long walk out-of-doors,
but that is not possible at all or even at most
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seasons. Nature may not be permitted to-
comfort you. In California, unless you are
afraid of the rain, nature welcomes you at
almost any time. The union of the man and
the visible universe is free, is entirely un
checked by any hostility on the part of nature,
and is such as easily fills one's mind with
wealth of warm experience. Our poets just
quoted have laid stress upon the directly or
symbolically painful aspects of the scene.
But these are sorrows of a sort that mean pre
cisely that relation with nature which I am
trying to characterize, not the relation of hos
tility but of closeness. And this is the sort
of closeness determined not merely by mUd
weather, but by long drought and by the rela
tive steadiness of all the climatic conditions.
Now, I must feel that such tendencies are
of vast importance, not merely to-day but
for all time. They are tendencies whose
moral significance in the life of California is
of course both good and evil, since man's rela
tions with nature are, in general, a neutral
material upon which ethical relations may
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be based. If you are industrious, this inti
macy with nature means constant coopera
tion, a cooperation never interrupted by frozen
ground and deep snow. If you tend to idle
ness, nature's kindliness may make you all
the more indolent, and indolence is a possible
enough vice with the dwellers in all mild cli
mates. If you are morally careless, nature
encourages your freedom, and tends in so
far to develop a kind of morale frequently
characteristic of the dwellers in gentle cli
mates. Yet the nature of California is not
enervating. The nights are cool, even in
hot weather; owing to the drought the mild
ness of the air is not necessarily harmful.
Moreover, the nature that is so uniform also
suggests in a very dignified way a regularity
of existence, a definite reward for a definitely
planned deed. Climate and weather are at
their best always capricious, and, as we have
seen, the variations of the California seasons
have involved the farmers in much anxiety,
and in many cases have given the farming
business, as carried on in certain California
p 209

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communities, the same sort of gambling ten
dency that originally vitiated the social value
of the mining industry. But on the other
hand, as the conditions grew more stable, as
agriculture developed, vast irrigation enter
prises introduced once more a conservative
tendency. Here again for the definite deed
nature secures a definite return. In regions
subject to irrigation, man controls the weather
as he cannot eslewhere. He is independent
of the current season. And this tendency to
organization — a tendency similar to the one
that was obviously so potent in the vast
ancient civilization of Egypt, — is present under
Californian conditions, and will make itself
felt. Individuality, then, but of a peculiar type,
and a tendency despite all this individualism
toward agricultural conservatism and a defi
nite social organization — these are already
the results of this climate. V
I have spoken already several times of the
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geographical isolation of this region. This
has been a factor that was felt of course in the
social life from the very outset, and more in
the early days than at present. To be sure,
it was never without its compensating features.
It shows its influences in a way that varies
with pretty definite periods of California his
tory. In the earliest days, before the new
comers in California supposed that agricul
ture was possible on any large scale, nearly
everything was imported. Butter, for in
stance, was sent around the Horn to San
Francisco. And throughout the early years
most of the population felt, so to speak,
morally rooted in the eastern communities
from which they had sprung. This tendency
retarded for a long time the development of
California society, and made the pioneers
careless as to the stability of their social
structure; encouraged corrupt municipal ad
ministration in San Francisco; gave excuse
for the lynching habit in the hastily organized
mining communities. But a reaction quickly
came. After the general good order which
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as a fact characterized the year 1849 had
gradually given place, with the increase of
population, to the disorders of 1851 and to
the municipal errors of the years between
1850 and 1856 in the city of San Francisco,
there came a period of reform and of growing
conservatism which marked all the time of the
later mining period and of the transition to
the agricultural period. During these years
many who had come to California without
any permanent purpose decided to become
members of the community, and decided in
consequence to create a community of which
it was worth while to be a member. The
consequence was the increase of the influence
of the factor of geographical isolation in its
social influence upon the life of California.
The community became self-conscious, inde
pendent, indisposed to take advice from with
out, very confident of the future of the state
and of the boundless prosperity soon to be
expected ; and within the years between 1860
and 1870 a definite local tradition of California
life was developed upon the basis of the memo-
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ries and characters that had been formed in
the early days. The consequence was a pro
vincial California, whose ideals at last assumed
that form of indifference to the barbarians
beyond the border which my friend noticed
as surviving even to the time of the visit of
which I have spoken.
But the completion of the transcontinental
railway in 1869 introduced once more the
factor of physical connection with the East,
and of commercial rivalry with the investors
of the Mississippi Valley who now undertook,
along with the capitalists of California, to
supply the mining population of the still newer
Rocky Mountain regions. On the whole, I
should say that for a good while the provincial
California, in the rather extremer sense of
the tradition of the sixties and early seventies,
held its own against the influence of the rail
way. But the original railway did not re
main alone. Other transcontinental lines
developed. The southern portion of the state,
long neglected during the early days, became,
in the beginning of the eighties, the theatre
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of a new immigration and of a new and on
the whole decidedly more eastern civilization.
There has resulted since that time a third
stage of California life and society, a stage
marked by a union of the provincial in
dependence of the middle period with the
complex social influences derived from the
East and from the world at large. The Cali
fornia of to-day is still the theatre of the
struggle of these opposing forces.
VI
It remains necessary to characterize more
fully the way in which the consequences of
the early days, joined to the geographical
factors upon which we have already laid
stress, have influenced the problems of Cali
fornia life and society. From the very outset,
climate and geographical position, and the
sort of life in which men were engaged, have
encouraged types of individuality whose
subtle distinction from those elsewhere to be
found we have already attempted in a very
inadequate fashion to suggest. Accordingly,
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from the first period down to the present
time, the California community has been a
notable theatre for the display of political
and financial, and, on occasion, of intellectual
individuality of decidedly extraordinary
types. The history of both earlier and later
California politics has been a very distinctly
personal history. The political life of the
years before the war had as their most pic
turesque incident the long struggle for the
United States Senatorship carried on between
David Broderick and William Gwin. This
contest involved personalities far more than
principles. Gwin and Broderick were both
of them extremely picturesque figures, —
the one a typical Irish-American, the other a
Southerner. The story of their bitter warfare
is a familiar California romance. The tragic
death of Broderick, in duel with the once
notorious Terry, is a tale that long had a de
cidedly national prominence. Terry him
self is an example of a type of individuality
not elsewhere unknown in border life, but
developed under peculiarly Californian con-
215

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ditions. Terry was, very frankly, a man of
blood. Regarding him as a man of blood,
one finds him in many ways, and within his
own limits, an interesting, even a conscien
tious and attractive personality. He was at
one time upon the Supreme Bench of the
state of California. He warred with the
Vigilance Committee of 1856 in a manner
that certainly wins one's respect for his skUl
in bringing that organization into a very
difficult position. He carried on this warfare
both as judge of the Supreme Court and as
wielder of a bowie knife. When he slew
Broderick, he did so in a fashion that, so far
as the duelling code permitted, was perfectly
fair. He lived for years with a disposition
to take the unpopular side of every question,
to fight bitterly for causes for which no other
man cared, and it was precisely for such a
cause that he finally died. His attempted
assault upon Judge Field, and the contro
versy that led thereto, and that resulted in
Terry's death, was, a few years since, in every
body's memory. 216

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It would be wholly wrong to conceive Cali
fornia individuality as at all fairly represented
by a border type such as Terry's. Yet when
one looks about in California society and poli
tics, one finds even at the present day pictur
esque personalities preserving their pictur
esqueness amidst various grades of nobility
and baseness, in a fashion more character
istic, I think, than is customary in most of
our newer communities. The nobler sort
of picturesque personality may be the public
benefactor, like Lick or Sutro. He may be
the social reformer of vast ideals, like Henry
George. Or again the baser individual may
be the ignorant demagogue of the grade of
Dennis Kearney. Your California hero may
be the chief of the Vigilance Committee of
1856, or some other typical and admired pioneer,
growing old in the glory of remembered early
deeds. He may be the railway magnate,
building a transcontinental line under all
sorts of discouragements, winning a great
fortune, and dying just as he founds a uni
versity. But in all these phases he remains
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the strong individual type of man that in a
great democracy is always necessary. It is
just this type that, as some of us fear, the con
ditions of our larger democracy in more east
ern regions tend far too much to eliminate.
In California, such individuality is by no
means yet eliminated.
There is a symptom of this fact which I
have frequently noted, both while I was a
continuous resident of California and from
time to time since. Individualistic communi
ties are almost universally, and paradoxicaUy
enough, communities that are extremely cruel
to individuals. It is so in a debating club,
where individuality is encouraged, but where
every speaker is subject to fierce criticism.
Now, this is still so in California to an extent
which surprises even one who is used to the
public controversies of some of our eastern
cities. The individual who, by public action
or utterance, rises above the general level in
California, is subject to a kind of attack
which strong men frequently enjoy, but which
even the stranger finds on occasion peculiarly
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merciless. That absence of concern for a
man's antecedents of which I before spoke,
contributes to this very mercilessness. A
friend once remarked to me that in California,
Phillips Brooks, had he appeared there before
reaching the very height of his reputation,
would have had small chance to win a hearing,
so little reverence would have been felt for
the mere form of the causes that he maintained.
This remark was perhaps unfair, since a
stranger preacher — Thomas Starr King,
— gained in early California days, at about
the beginning of the war, a very great public
reputation in a short time, received great
sympathy, and had a mighty influence. But,
on the other hand, it is perfectly certain that
the public man who intends to maintain his
ideals in California will have to do so under
fire, and wUl have to be strong enough to
bear the fire. His family, or the clubs to
which he belongs, the university that he repre
sents, the church that supports him, — none of
these factors wUl in such a community easily
determine his standing. He works in a commu-
219

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nity where the pioneer tradition still remains,
— the tradition of independence and of dis
trust toward enthusiasm. For one feels in
California, very keenly, that enthusiasm may
after all mean sham, until one is quite sure
that it has been severely tested. And this
same community, so far as its country popu
lation is concerned, is made up of persons
who, whether pioneers or newcomers, live in
the aforesaid agricultural freedom, in easy
touch with nature, not afraid of the senti
ments of the crowd, although of course dis
posed, like other human beings, to be affected
by a popular cry in so far as it attacks men
or declares new ideals insignificant. It is
much more difficult to arouse the enthusiastic
sympathy of such people than it is, in case
one has the advantage of the proper social
backing, to affect the public opinion of a more
highly organized social order in a less isolated
region. And now we have seen the various ways in
which this sort of individuality is a product of
the natural features of the state as well as of
220

THE PACIFIC COAST
those early conditions which themselves were
determined by geographical factors. On the
other hand, in addition to this prevalence of
individuality and this concomitant severity
of the judgment of prominent individuals,
there are social conditions characteristic of
San Francisco which can also be referred to
geographical and climatic factors. Early in
the development of San Francisco a difficulty
in the education of the young appeared
which, as I fancy, has not yet been removed.
This difficulty had to do with the easy de
velopment of vagrancy in city children. Va
grancy is a universal evil of cities, but the
California vagrant can easily pass the night
out-doors during the greater part of the year.
A friend of mine who was connected with
the management of San Francisco public
schools for a number of years, laid stress upon
this climatic factor and its dangers in official
communications published at the time of his
office. The now too well-known name of
"hoodlum" originated in San Francisco, and
is said to have been the name adopted by a
221

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particular group of young men. The social
complications of the time of the sand-lot,
when Dennis Kearney led laborers into a
dangerous pass, were again favored by cli
matic conditions. Public meetings out-of-
doors and in the sand-lot could be held with
a certain freedom and persistency in Cali
fornia that would be impossible without inter
ruption elsewhere. While such factors have
nothing to do with discontent, they greatly
increase the opportunities for agitation. The
new constitution of California, adopted in
1879, was carried at the polls by a combina
tion of the working men of San Francisco
with the dissatisfied farmers of the interior.
This dissatisfaction of the farmers was no
doubt due in the main to the inadequacy of
their comprehension of the material condi
tions under which they were working. The
position of California — its geographical iso
lation again — has been one complicating
factor for the California farmer, since luxuri
ant nature easily furnished him, in case he
should use wise methods, with a rich supply,
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while his geographical isolation made access
to market somewhat difficult. This diffi
culty about the markets long affected Cali
fornia political life in the form of dissatisfac
tion felt against the railway, which was of
course held responsible and which in fact for
years was more or less responsible for an
increase of these difficulties of reaching the
market. Well, this entire series of compli
cations, which in 1879 combined San Fran
cisco working men with the farmers of the
interior, and changed the constitution of the
state, is an example of the complex way in
which the geographical situation and the
factors of climate have acted to affect social
movements. On the other hand, the individuality afore
said, when brought into the presence of such
social agitations, has frequently proved in
California life a conservative factor of great
importance. The mob may be swept away
for a time by an agitating idea. But the indi
vidual Californian himself is suspicious of
mobs. The agitations in question proved
223

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transient. Even the constitution, designed
to give the discontented whatever they most
supposed they wanted, proved to be sus
ceptible of a very conservative construction
by the courts, and public opinion in Cali
fornia has never been very long under the
sway of any one illusion. The individuality
that we have described quickly revolts against
its false prophets. In party politics, Cali
fornia proves to be an extremely doubtful
state. Party ties are not close. The vote
changes from election to election. The inde
pendent voter is well in place. Finally,
through all these tendencies, there runs a
certain idealism, often more or less uncon
scious. This idealism is partly due to the
memory of the romance due to the unique
marvels of the early days. It is also sus
tained by precisely that intimacy with nature
which renders the younger Californians so
sensitive. I think that perhaps Edward
Rowland Sill, whose poems are nowadays so
widely appreciated, has given the most repre
sentative expression to the resulting spirit
224

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of California, to that tension between indi
vidualism and loyalty, between shrewd con
servatism and bold radicalism, which marks
this community.

225

SOME RELATIONS OF PHYSICAL TRAINING
TO THE PRESENT PROBLEMS OF MORAL
EDUCATION IN AMERICA

V

SOME RELATIONS OF PHYSICAL TRAINING
TO THE PRESENT PROBLEMS OF MORAL
EDUCATION IN AMERICA »
TN asking me to address this Society, your
Secretary was well aware that I have no right
and no desire to pass judgment upon any of
the more technical problems which are peculiar
to the profession of physical education. But
there are problems which are common to your
profession and to that region of inquiry to
which I am most devoted. These common
problems, in fact, interest all who are con
cerned in the welfare of humanity, and who in
particular aim to further the welfare of our
country. I refer to those problems of moral
education which, in the present time, assume
new and difficult forms in American life. I
am well aware that those of you, and of your
numerous colleagues, who have been most
' An address before the Boston Physical Education Associa
tion. 229

PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
earnest in furthering the cause of physical
education, not only in our land, but in Europe,
have always laid great stress upon the close
relation of sound physical training to good
moral training. And we all know how, from
primitive times, mankind have used various
forms of physical exercise as a part of the
discipline which tribes or, later, nations or,
in our modern days, civilized men generally,
have regarded as fitted to form whatever
well-rounded types of individual character
the various stages of human culture have
admired. Physical training has repeatedly
had, in the past, a place in the religious life
of various peoples, and systems of secular
training have often so much the more fol
lowed analogous lines. Chivalry in Europe,
Bushido in Japan, were systems of conduct
which were inseparable from various plans
for physical training. To-day most of you lay
constant stress upon your function, not only
as teachers who care for the health, for the
physical growth, and for the accompanying
intellectual development of your pupils, but
230

PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
as instructors who contribute what you all
believe to be a very significant part of the
moral education of the youth of the country.
The social organizations known as Young
Men's Christian Associations are the expres
sion of explicitly religious motives, and are
unquestionably intended for an ethical pur
pose. But they regard their gymnasiums
as an essential part of their work. And this
is but one example of the recognition of a
close linkage between physical and moral
training, — a linkage which you all believe
to be important, and which most of you con
sciously emphasize in your own practice.
The problems of moral education are com
mon, then, to you and to your colleagues in
other branches of education, of inquiry, and
of social work. I myself, as a teacher of
philosophy, have lately been led to consider
some of the problems of ethics with especial
reference to the present state of our American
civilization. I have supposed, therefore, that
you might be interested if I now attempt to
state some of these problems in a way to
231

PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
suggest their possible connections with your
profession. I make these suggestions very ten
tatively. As a student of philosophy, I have,
indeed, my rights as an inquirer into ethical
questions. But, when I try to tell you my
view about how some of these questions relate
to your calling, I at once run the risks which
any man runs who attempts to connect his
own views with those of others, by appealing
to his fellows regarding the matters in which
they are expert while he is not expert. But,
in any case, I shall try to keep to the ground
that is common to your calling and to mine.
You all of you are interested in what some of
you may call the philosophy of physical train
ing. I am professionally concerned with
philosophy. And so I want to meet you
upon this common basis of your interest and
mine in the questions which concern what I
may call the moral philosophy of your calling.
I
I shall begin by asking what we mean by
the moral training of an individual man.
232

PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
This question we can best attempt to an
swer by sketching a moral ideal, — an ideal of
what, as I suppose, we all, more or less con
sciously, desire any moral agent to become.
If we define this ideal, then the moral training
of an individual will be defined as the training
that is best adapted to help that individual
to approach this moral ideal.
The ideal human moral agent, as I assert,
is a man who is whole-heartedly and effect
ively loyal to some fitting object of loyalty.
This first statement of the moral ideal may
seem vague to you. I hasten to explain a
little more precisely what I mean.
I have chosen the good old word " loyal " as
the word best adapted to arouse, with the
fewest misleading associations, that idea of
the moral life which I believe to be rationally
the most defensible. But, of course, my own
usage of the word " loyal " must attempt to
be more exact than the traditional usage is,
because such popular words are always ap
plied somewhat recklessly; and the loyalty
that I have in mind when I employ this term
233

PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
is something that I try to conceive in as exact
a fashion as the subject permits. " Loyalty,"
as popularly understood, has always meant
a certain attitude of mind which faithful
friends, lovers, soldiers, or retainers, or which
martyrs dying for their faith have exemplified.
Plainly, a good many different sorts of people
and of deeds have been called loyal. And,
if you view the matter merely upon the basis
of a comparison of a few widely various
instances of loyalty, you may be disposed to
say that the moral quality in question is too
wavering and confused a feature of character
to be fitly used as a type of all moral exceUence.
Cannot robbers be loyal to their band, slaves
to their master, mischievous boys to the com
rades whose pranks they incite and applaud,
but whose names they refuse to teU to any
teacher? Is loyalty, then, always a trait of
the morally wise or of the good? Is it s
typical virtue? Is it not rather an accidental
accompaniment of goodness or, at best, a
special form which goodness may sometimes
take? 234

PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
I answer that all these just-mentioned
instances of loyalty — even the loyalty of
the robber to his band — involve some morally
good features. My own definition of loyalty
as a fundamental virtue is intended, first to
emphasize these good features, which even the
blindest forms of loyalty exemplify, then to
separate these good features from their acci
dental setting, and then to define the ideal
toward which all the forms of loyalty seem
to me to tend. I will therefore proceed at
once to characterize loyalty as it appears in
its most typical instances and on higher
levels. Loyalty, as I view the essence of this trait,
means, in the first place, a certain attitude
of mind which we can best understand by
considering cases of strong and hearty loyalty
as they occur in the life of a mature and highly
trained man. This loyal attitude makes a
man give himself to the active service of a
cause. This cause is one which the loyal
man regards, at the moment of action, as
something beyond his own private self, and
235

PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
as larger than this private self, as vaster
and worthier than any of his private interests.
And yet, for the loyal man, his whole private
self meanwhile seems inspired by the cause,
so that, while he is engaged in his loyal activity,
his eyes, his ears, his tongue, his hand, his
whole strength, exist, for the time, simply as
the organs of his loyalty. When a man is
loyal and is actively engaged in his loyal un
dertakings, he is keenly and clearly conscious,
therefore, of a strong contrast, and yet of an
equally strong unity, present in his life and
in his deeds. He himself, the natural man,
with his desires and his private interests,
with his muscles and his sense organs, with his
property and his powers, — he is there in
the world, and he knows this natural self
of his, he is definitely aware of it. For loyalty
is never mere self-forgetf ulness ; it is self-
devotion. And you cannot devote yourself
unless you are aware of yourself. The loyal
man lives intensely, vigorously, personally;
and over against this natural self of his is his
cause, — his side in a game, his army in com-
236

PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
bat, his country in danger, or perhaps his
friend, his beloved, his family, humanity,
God. He is conscious of this cause; and so
the cause is, in great part, sharply contrasted
with this private self of his. It is outside of
him, — something vast, dignified, imposing,
compelling, objective. Were he not aware
of this sharp contrast between himself and his
cause, he could not be loyal; for without the
contrast the whole affair would be merely one
of his private interests and passions. The
cause meanwhile is itself no mere thing amongst
things. It has at least the value of a person
or of a system of persons. It is always, in
fact, for any deeply loyal man, something
which is at once personal and superpersonal,
as your family and your country are for you.
One cannot be loyal to merely inanimate
things as such. And yet, on the other hand,
loyalty always views persons in their deeper
relations to something that seems larger than
any one human personality or than any mere
collection of persons can be. Thus your family
is, for your family loyalty, more than the mere
237

PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
collection of its members; and the Joseph
of the story was loyal to his brotherly and to
his filial ties, and not merely to the various
individual brethren.
Well, this contrast of the natural man and
of his imposing and objective cause is a fact
of which the loyal man is keenly conscious.
Yet, despite this fact, he is just as conscious
that by his deeds he is always reducing his
contrast ever afresh to unity. So long as he
is indeed active, wide-awake, effectively loyal,
he exists only as servant of this cause. The
cause, then, is not only another than his
private self; it is in a sense his larger self.
Despite the contrast he becomes one with it
through his every loyal deed. His private
self is its willing instrument. The cause
inspires him, acts through him. Loyalty
is a sort of possession. It has a demonic
force which controls the wayward private
self. The cause takes hold of the man, and
his organism is no longer his own, so long as
the loyal inspiration is upon him.
Such, I say, is, in the briefest language,
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
a general characterization of the character
istic loyal attitude as it exists in its strong
and maturely developed forms, and especially
in the moments of our effectively loyal conduct.
The boys, loyal to their mates, have the be
ginnings of loyalty, often in evanescent forms.
The simple-minded folk who do not reflect
are not always so keenly conscious of their
loyalty as more thoughtful folk may be; but
aU the more are they able to prove their
loyalty by their deeds. The fully mature and
reflectively devoted man knows his loyalty,
and is possessed by it.
For loyalty, as you see, is essentially an
active virtue. It involves manifold senti
ments, — love, good-will, earnestness, de
light in the cause; but it is complete only in
motor terms, never in merely sentimental
terms. It is useless to call my feelings loyal un
less my muscles somehow express this loyalty.
For my objective cause and my inner private
self, in case I am loyal, are sharply contrasted.
I have to think of both of them, if I am to be
loyal; but they must be brought into unity.
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Only my deeds can accomplish this result.
My loyal sentiments, if left to themselves,
would merely emphasize the contrast without
giving life any acceptable unity. Loyal is
that loyally does. Hence the loyal attitude
is one which especially interests any teacher
who is concerned with what his pupU does.
The nature of loyalty, then, in the pupil should
interest any teacher of physical training who is
considerate of the moral aspects of his caUing.
To be sure, on its higher levels, — in its ideal
expressions, — loyalty goes over into regions
where mere physical training seems to be very
remote from the forms of loyalty that are in
question. For loyalty, as I hold, includes in
its spirit whatever has been meant in the past
by the various inner virtues of sentiment, by
charity, by high-mindedness, by spiritual
training. It includes these virtues because
the loyal act needs and expresses the loyal
sentiment. But loyalty combines the senti
ments with all the active virtues, — with
courage, with patience, with moral initiative,
— according as these are needed in one situa-
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
tion or in another. Yet on even its highest
levels loyalty has its physical expression.
For one is loyal through his deed. If I were
here to define the moral ideal in terms of
the Pauline virtue of charity, as described in
the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, we
should have indeed some difficulty in pointing
out within the limits of this paper the various
intermediate steps by which this lofty spiritual
virtue of the apostle is linked, as of course it is
indeed linked, with the motor activities whereby
our organism expresses our will. But, when
I now define the moral ideal directly in terms
of the loyal attitude, you all see at once how
nobody can be effectively loyal unless he is
highly trained on the motor side, and unless
his ideas and his moral sentiments have long
since won their way to an elaborate expression
in the deeds of his organism. And so it is
indeed plain that surely one way, at least, to
prepare a man for a loyal life, is to give him
a careful and extended motor training, such
as organizes his conduct in harmony with his
nobler sentiments. This you all see ; and you
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
know that the Japanese long ago saw it also,
so that an essential part of their training in
Bushido — that is, in their ancient code of
chivalrous loyalty — was a training in the
physical arts of a Samurai. Our very first
view of loyalty suggests then a sense in which
physical and moral training may be closely
related. But before we estimate what this
relation means we must get a fuUer notion of
what loyalty itself means. II
I have so far only characterized the general
attitude of the higher types of loyalty. Loyalty
such as has now been defined may of course
take countless special forms. And these forms
may appear to be in conflict with one another.
In practice the expressions of loyalty do in
fact often conflict with one another. The
loyal are often quarrelsome. Men can be
equally devoted servants of their various
causes and yet pass their lives in trying to kill
one another. But, since I have so far em
phasized the central significance of loyalty
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
as a moral ideal, you may well wonder whether
I am indeed right to make loyalty thus central.
And so you may well ask me what I have to
say, as a moralist, regarding those conflicts
of loyalty of which so large a part of the
history of mankind has consisted. When
equally loyal people are found fighting to
gether, when the heroic devotion of all that a
man has and is to the cause which he has
chosen as his own appears to demand of him
that he should fight and perhaps slay his
fellow-man, — well, as you may next ask, in
such cases. Who is right? And, if loyalty
is indeed any guide to right conduct, why
should loyalty counsel me, as it so often seems
to do, to oppose and to condemn the loyalty
of my fellow? Must there not then be some
higher moral principle than that of loyalty, —
some principle in terms of which we can
find out who is right when two forms of loyalty
contradict each other's claims, while each
pretends to be the only true loyalty? After
all, — as you may insist, — have I shown in
the foregoing why the robber ought not to be
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
loyal to his band ? Have I shown what wise
loyalty is as distinguished from slavish or
base loyalty? Have not countless crimes
been committed in the name of loyalty ?
To such questions I at once answer that, in
making loyalty central as a moral principle,
I mean to define loyalty in a sense which in
the end will make explicit what the true
and implied meaning of all loyalty is, even in
the cases where loyalty, like love in the prov
erb, is blind. I defined the loyal attitude
as something characteristic of a certain type
of personal life. I have said that the genuinely
moral attitude is always one of loyalty. I
have meant, and I shall indeed stoutly insist,
that nobody has reached any morally ideal
position who is not, in his more active life,
loyal to some cause or to some system of causes.
I maintain that without loyalty there is no
thoroughgoing morality; and I also insist
that all special virtues and duties, such as
those which the names benevolence, truth
fulness, justice, spirituality, charity, recall to
our minds, are parts or are special forms of
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
loyalty. My theory is that the whole moral
law is implicitly bound up in the one precept :
Be loyal. But I freely admit that many men
who have been enthusiastically and effectively
loyal to various causes, and who in their per
sonal lives have won as mature a notion of
loyalty as they were capable of getting, have
nevertheless often committed, in the name of
loyalty, great crimes. And you may well
ask how I explain this fact. You may well
wonder how loyalty can be a central moral
principle, when lives that were as loyal as the
men in question knew how to make them have
often been morally mischievous lives.
My answer is that our loyalty leads us into
moral error only in so far as we are indeed
often blind to what the principle of loyalty
actually means and requires. And such blind
ness is, as men go, human enough and com
mon enough. The corrective to such errors,
however, is not the introduction of some
other moral principle than that of loyalty
but is just the discovery of the internal mean
ing, the true sense of the loyal principle itself.
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
Whoever is loyal loves loyalty for its own
sake. Let him merely bethink him of what
this love for loyalty means, and he will be led
to that definition of the precept : Be loyal, —
to that definition, I say, which gives to this
principle its true scope.
Loyalty, namely, is a common good, —
I might say that it is the common good of
morally trained mankind. This, however,
does not mean that all men ought to define
in the same monotonous terms the causes to
which they are to be loyal. There is a diver
sity of causes. There is one spirit of loyalty.
In the spirit of loyalty, viewed just as a per
sonal attitude, lies the only universal solution
of the problem of every private personality.
What am I here for? So a man may ask
himself. And the rational answer is: You
are here to become absorbed in a devotion
to some cause or system of causes. Your
devotion must be as thorough as your effective
power to do work is highly developed. Herein
alone lies the solution of your personal prob
lem. In case you are loyal to nothing, your
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existence as a private individual will remain
to you a mysterious burden, which you may
learn to tolerate, or even, if you are lucky and
thoughtless, to enjoy, but which you can never
discover to be anything of rational meaning
unless you take yourself to be a centre of
activity of which some spiritual power to which
you are loyally devoted makes use. And
this power must be much bigger and worthier
than your private fortunes, taken by them
selves, can ever become. If such a spiritual
power, such a cause, such a god stronger than
you are, enters you, possesses you, uses you,
and finds you its willingly loyal instrument,
then you, just as you, have an office, a function,
a place, a status, a right, in the world. This
your right will become manifest to you only
through your loyal deeds. You will work
in the spirit of your cause. Your powers will
be dedicated to the cause, and the otherwise
miserable natural accident that there you are,
with just your sensations, your ideas, and
your physical organism, will become trans
formed into a notable event in the great world,
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
— the event that precisely your unique ser
vice of your chosen cause has come to pass by
your own will.
Loyalty, then, — the general spirit of loyalty,
I now mean, — is a common good of mankind.
It is the only good the possession of which
makes any man's being thoroughly worth
while from his own more rational point of
view. Now, if this be so, loyalty, taken in
its universal meaning, is just as much a true
good in the world when my neighbor possesses
it as when I possess it. If once I am wide
awake enough to grasp this fact, I shall value
my neighbor's loyalty just as highly as I do
my own. He indeed will be loyal to his cause,
I to mine. Our causes may be very diverse,
but our spirit will be one. And so the very
essence of my spirit of loyalty will demand
that I state my principle thus : Be loyal, and
be in such wise loyal that, whatever your
own cause, you remain loyal to loyalty. That
is, so choose your cause, and so serve it, that,
as a result of your activity, there shall be
more of this common good of loyalty in the
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world than there would have been, had you
not lived and acted. Let your loyalty be such
loyalty as helps your neighbor to be loyal.
Despite the diversity of the individual causes
— the families, countries, professions, friend
ships — to which you and your neighbor are
loyal, so act that the devotion of each shall
respect and aid the other's loyalty.
This simpler statement of the true meaning
of the principle of loyalty enables us at once
to see that, when in the past loyalty has led
men into crimes, — that is, into needless
hostility to other people's loyalty, — it has
done so, not because the men were loyal, but
because they were blind to what their own
loyalty signified. If they loved loyalty for its
own sake (and this they did in case they were
indeed loyal), then they valued loyalty not
as their private possession, but for its own
dear sake, as a type of spiritual activity, as a
sort of human interest, that makes human
Ufe morally worth whUe for any man who
shares this spirit. If they had remembered
this fact, and if they had seen what the fact
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
meant, they would have respected in their
neighbors' lives every form of genuine loyalty,
wherever they met with it. And then they
would have seen that the spirit of our true
loyalty is never opposed to the existence of
our neighbor's loyalty. Charity, benevolence,
and — simplest of all — plain fair play are
tendencies that are thus to be ethically defined
and deduced from our central principle. AU
such virtues are expressions of that loyalty
to loyalty which I have now defined as the
genuine and enlightened incorporation of the
loyal spirit. Wherever a soldier has honored
the heroism and devotion of his enemy, this
honor, if it has taken practical form, has been
an instance of loyalty to loyalty. One soldier
fights for one cause, the other for the other.
But each may, even as warrior, respect his
opponent's loyalty. Let the spirit of this
loyalty to loyalty spread amongst us, and it
will, indeed, in no wise mean that we shall
all individually serve the same causes. We
must have our various causes, just as we have
our various families. And no man's loyalty
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
ought to consist wholly in a devotion to the
same causes that other men serve. Loyalty
is, for each man, something personal, individ
ual. And yet, as I insist, the spirit of loyalty
is a common good for all men. Each man
must solve his own problem of life by means
of his own form of loyalty. But the one cause
that we shall all have in common will be the
cause of loyalty to loyalty; that is, we shall
all be disposed to make all men more loyal.
Every man's individual devotion to his own
cause wUl be just his own, but his example
of loyalty, his eagerness to be the instrument
of his own cause, will be a help and not a hin
drance to his neighbors in the fostering of their
individual form of the loyal spirit. Let this
spirit of loyalty to loyalty grow amongst us,
I say, and then we shall, indeed, rejoice in the
loyalty of foreigners to their own nations in
stead of despising them for having the wrong
country to dwell in. Let this spirit of loyalty
to loyalty become universal, and then wars will
cease; for then the nations, without indeed
lapsing into any merely international mass,
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
will so respect each the loyalty of the others
that aggression will come to seem inhuman.
And instead of war there will then remain
only the sort of cheerful rivalry amongst our
various forms of loyalty which at present
is finely represented by good sport when fair
play prevails. For in true sport one's loyalty
to one's own side exists as immediately ex
pressed in deeds which fully respect the op
ponent's loyalty to his own side, and which
involve that loyalty to the rules of the game,
and so to the common loyalty of both the op
posing sides, which constitutes fair play.
Ill
Thus, if you please, I have sketched for you
the basis of a moral philosophy. The rational
solution of moral problems rests on the prin
ciple : Be loyal. This principle, properly
understood, involves two consequences. The
first is this: Have a cause, choose a cause,
give yourself over to that cause actively,
devotedly, whole-heartedly, practically. Let
this cause be something social, serviceable,
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requiring loyal devotion. Let this cause, or
system of causes, constitute a life work. Let
the cause possess your senses, your attention,
your muscles, — all your powers, so long as
you are indeed active and awake at all. See
that you do not rest in any mere sentiment of
devotion to the cause. Act out your loyalty.
Loyalty exists in the form of deeds done by
the willing and devoted instrument of his
chosen cause. This is the first consequence of
the commandment: Be loyal. The second
consequence is like unto the first. It is this :
Be loyal to loyalty. That is, regard your
neighbor's loyalty as something sacred. Do
nothing to make him less loyal. Never de
spise him for his loyalty, however little you
care for the cause that he chooses. If your
cause and his cause come into some inevitable
conflict, so that you indeed have to contend
with him, fight, if your loyalty requires you to
do so ; but in your bitterest warfare fight only
against what the opponent does. Thwart his
acts where he justly should be thwarted; but
do all this in the very cause of loyalty itself,
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and never do anything to make your neighbor
disloyal. Never do anything to encourage
him in any form of disloyalty; in other words,
never war against his loyalty. From these
consequences of my central principle follow,
as I maintain, all those propositions about
the special duties of life which can be reason
ably defined and defended. Justice, kind
liness, chivalry, charity, — these are aU of
them forms of loyalty to loyalty.
Even while I have set forth this sketch of a
general ethical doctrine, I have intentionally
illustrated my views by some references to
your professional work. But at this point I
next have briefly to emphasize the positive
relations which physical education may have
and should have to the training of the loyal
spirit. Here I shall simply repeat what others,
more expert than I am, have long since, in
various speech, set forth.
The first way in which systematic physical
training of all grades and at all ages may be of
positive service in a moral education is this:
Loyalty, as we have seen, means a willing
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and thoroughgoing devotion of the whole
active self to a chosen cause or to a chosen
system of causes. But such devotion, as we
have also seen, is a motor process. One must
be in control of one's powers, or one has no
self to give to one's cause. One must get a
personality in order to be able to surrender
this personality to anything. And since
physical training actually has that relation
to the culture of the will which your leaders
so generally emphasize, while some physical
expression of one's personality is an essential
accompaniment of the existence of every
human personality, — for both of these rea
sons, I say, the training of physical strength
and skill is one important preparation for a
moral life. There is indeed a great deal else
in moral training besides what physical train
ing supplies ; but the physical training can be
a powerful auxiliary. Here I come upon
ground that is familiar to all of you, and that
I need not attempt to cover anew with sug
gestions of my own. The positive relation
of good physical training to the formation of
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
a sound wUl is known to all of you. The only
relatively new aspect of this famUiar region
that may have been brought to light by the
foregoing considerations is this: Loyalty,
as you see, on its highest levels involves the
same general mental features which are pres
ent whenever a physical activity, at once stren
uous and skilful, is going on. As a skilful
and difficult physical exercise demands that
one should keep his head in the midst of
efforts that, by reason of the strain, or of the
excitement, — by reason of the very magni
tude and fascination of the task, would con
fuse the untrained man, and make him lose
a sense of what he was trying to do, even so
the work of the effectively loyal person is
always one which requires that he should
stand in presence of undertakings large enough
to threaten to cloud his judgment and to crush
his self-control, whUe his loyalty still de
mands that he also should keep his head despite
the strain, and should retain steady control
of his personality, even in order to devote it
to the cause. Loyalty means hard work
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in the presence of serious responsibilities.
The danger of such work is closely similar
to the danger of losing one's head in a difficult
physical activity. One is devoting the self
to the cause. The cause must be vast. For
its very vastness is part of what gives it worth.
I cannot be loyal to what requires of me no
effort. But the consciousness of the vastness
and difficulty of one's cause tends to crush the
self of the person who is trying to be loyal.
And a self crushed into a loss of self-possession,
a self no longer aware of its powers, a self
that has lost sight of its true contrast with
the objects about it, has no longer left the
powers which it can devote to any cause.
Mere good-will is no substitute for trained self-
possession either in physical or in moral
activities. And self-possession is a necessary
condition for self-devotion. When the apostle
compared the moral work of the saints to the
running of a race, his metaphors were there
fore chosen because of this perfectly definite
analogy between the devotion of the trained
organism to its physical task and the devotion
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of the moral self to its cause. In both classes
of cases, in loyal devotion and in skilful
and strenuous physical exercise, similar men
tal problems have to be solved. One has to
keep the self in sight in order to surrender
it anew, through each deed, to the task in
hand. Meanwhile, since the task is centred
upon something outside of the self, and is a
serious and an imposing task, it involves a
tendency to strain, to excitement, to a loss of
a due self-possession, to disturbance of the
equilibrium of consciousness. The result is
likely to be, unless one is in a state of physical
or of moral training, just a primary confusion
of self-consciousness accompanied by fear
or by a sense of helplessness. Against such
a mood the mere sentiment of devotion is no
safeguard. To hold on to one's self at the
moment of the greatest strain, to retain clear
ness, even when confronted by tasks too large
to be carried out as one wishes, to persist
doggedly despite defeats, to give up all mere
self-will and yet to retain full self-control, —
these are requirements which, as I suppose,
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appear to the consciousness of the athlete and
to the consciousness of the moral hero in
decidedly analogous ways. And in both cases
the processes involved are psycho-physical
as well as psychical, and are subject to the
general laws of physiology and of psychology.
Hence, when the teacher of physical training
regards his work as a preparation of his
pupils for the moral life, he can and should
take account and take advantage of these
analogies. His art is indeed one only amongst
the many arts that contribute to moral train
ing. But he may well insist that the organic
virtues that he aims to establish in the bodily
activities of his pupils are not only analogous
to the moral virtues, but, in the loyal, may
form a literal part of those virtues, since vir
tue exists either in action or in those results
of training which prepare us for right action.
To say all this implies no exaggeration of the
importance of such physical education as is
actually given at the present time. The whole
question is one, not of inevitable or of fatal
results, but of the good work that may be done,
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and of an alliance of the motives of physical
and of moral training such as may take place
if the teacher of physical training is alive to
the higher possibilities of his calling.
IV
The second way in which physical training
may serve the purposes of moral training is a
more direct way. It is the one which Dr.
Luther Gulick had in mind when he lately
asserted in a paper in the School Review that
"athletics are primarily social and moral in
their nature." Dr. Gulick is well known to
you as one of the protagonists in the cause of
the moral importance of physical education;
and you know his main argument. Social
training, in boys about twelve years of age,
naturally takes the form of the training which
gangs of boys give to their members. A gang
of boys with nothing significant to do may
become more or less of a menace to the general
social order. A gang of boys duly organized
into athletic teams, in the service of schools,
and of other expressions of wholesome com-
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munity activity, will become centres for train
ing in certain types of loyalty. And this
training may extend its influence to large
bodies of boys who, as spectators of games or
as schoolmates, are more or less influenced
by the athletic spirit. Mutatis mutandis,
the same considerations apply to the socially
organizing forces that belong to college ath
letics. The plans of those who are engaged
in physical education may therefore well be
guided, from the first, by a disposition to pre
pare young people to appreciate and to take
part in such group activities as these. Thus
both the physiological and the intellectual
aspects of physical training would appear to
be subordinate, after all, to the social, and in
this way to the moral, aspects of the profession.
In speaking of these moral aspects, one would
not even emphasize, as much as many do, the
central significance of the self-denial, of the
personal restraints and sacrifices, of the mor
ally advantageous physical habits, which at
tend athletic training. One would rather
more centrally emphasize the view that
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athletic work is not merely a preparation for
loyalty, but that in case of the life of the
organized athletic teams, and in case of any
physical training class of pupils who work
together, the athletic work is loyalty itself, —
loyalty in simple forms, but in forms which
appeal to the natural enthusiasm of youth,
which are adapted to the boyish and later to
the adolescent phases of evolution, and which
are a positive training for the very tasks which
adult loyalty exemplifies; namely, the tasks
that imply the devotion of a man's whole
power to an office that takes him out of his
private self and into the great world of real
social life. The social forms of physical
training in classes or in teams require, and so
tend to train, loyalty.
Physical training may then be so guided as
to be a direct training in social loyalty. Your
secretary has kindly put into my hands, during
my preparation of this paper, two German
monographs * whose authors insist, in some-
' Lorenz, Wehrhrajt und Jugenderziehung, Voigtlander's
Verlag in Leipzig, 1899; Koch, Die Erziehung zum Mute
dutch Turnen, Spiel, und Sport, Berlin, 1900.
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what contrasting ways, upon this directly
important office of the teacher of physical
training as a teacher of loyalty and upon the
value of play, of systematic gymnastics, and of
athletic sports, as a training school for loyal
citizenship. Both of these monographs are
written under the influence of the spirit of
mUitarism, one of them especially so; and
you know now why I should view militarism
as a decidedly blind, although often very
sincere and intense, form of loyalty, — a form
which will vanish from the earth whenever
men come to an enlightened sense of what
loyalty to loyalty implies. But one has to
use, for the best, such types of loyalty as now
prosper amongst men; and the good side of
militarism is indeed the devotion that goes with
it, even as the bad side of militarism is due to
its implied suspicion that the loyalty of the
foreigners to their country's cause is somehow
in essential opposition to our own loyalty.
This suspicion is false. It breeds wars, and
is essentially stupid. But loyalty is loyalty
still, even when blind; and I prefer blind
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loyalty to the sort of thoughtless individualism
which is loyal to nothing. In any case our
two authors are right in insisting that loyalty
and physical training are closely linked by
ties which ought to be recognized by those
who are planning and conducting the general
system of national education. So much, then,
for the second positive relation of physical
education to the cause of general morality.
Here, again, it is true that physical education
can furnish only a portion, and a decidedly
limited portion, of the means and motives
whereby true loyalty is trained in the young,
and whereby it may also be supported in older
minds. But teachers who engage in your
profession have a good right to insist upon
this direct social significance of their work.
They do well to insist also that they can and
do train such direct loyalty, not only in the
work of athletic teams, but in successful
class-work of all kinds, such as the teachers
of physical training can direct.

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The third positive relation of physical
training to moral training is suggested by
what I have said about the need of an enlight
ened form of loyalty. Merely blind loyalty
may do mischief : but it does so, we have said,
not because it is loyalty, but because it is
blind. It turns into enlightened loyalty in
so far as it reaches the stage of loyalty to
loyalty, — the stage where one certainly does
not tend merely to take over into one's own
life and directly to adopt the special cause
that one's neighbor has happened to choose
as his own, but where one regards the spirit
of loyalty, the willingness to devote the self
to some cause, as a precious common moral
good of mankind, — a good that we can indeed
foster in our neighbors even when their in
dividual causes are not our own, or afe even,
by accident, opposed to our own. I can re
spect, can honor, I can help, my neighbor's
family loyalty without in the least wishing to be
come a member of his family. And just so I
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can be loyal to any aspect of my neighbor's
loyalty without accepting his special cause
as my own. He may be devoted to what I
cannot and will not view as my individual
cause; and still, in dealing with him, I can
be loyal to his loyalty.
Now I have already pointed out that the
spirit of loyalty to loyalty is finely exemplified
by the spirit of fair play in games. For true
fair play does not merely mean conformity
to a set of rules which chance this season to
govern a' certain game. Fair play depends
upon essentially respecting one's opponent
just because of his loyalty to his own side.
It means a tendency to enjoy, to admire,
to applaud, to love, to further that loyalty
of his at the very moment when I keenly want
and clearly intend to thwart his individual
deeds, and to win this game, if I can. Now
in the complications of real life it is hard to
keep the spirit of loyalty to loyalty always
alive. If my passions are aroused and if I
hate a man, it is far too easy to think that even
his faithful dog must be a mean cur, in order
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
to be able to be so devoted to his master as he
is. And real life often thus confuses our
judgment through stirring our passions. But
it is a very precious thing when you can keep
your head so clearly as to be able to oppose
even to the very death, if needs must be,
your enemy's cause, even while you are able to
love his loyalty to that cause, and to honor
his followers for their devotion to their leader,
and his friends for their fidelity to him.
Now it is just such loyalty to loyalty that
can be trained in true sport very much more
readily than in real life, because, in sport,
the social situation is simple. And because
the spirit of fair play, in an athletic sport, can
constantly express itself by definite physical
deeds, and because the passions aroused by
wholesome athletic contests ought never to be
as blind, as violent, or as enduring as those
which real life unhappily so often fosters, the
training in fair play ought to be much easier
in the world of athletic sports than the training
of loyalty to loyalty is in our daily life, —
much easier, much simpler, and much more
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
definite. Hence, if games were in all cases
rightly conducted, if confusing passions were
properly kept from unnecessary interference
with the joyous devotion of the players to their
respective sides, if the general physical training
of all those who are to engage in school and in
college sports were conducted from the first
by teachers who had a serious interest in the
moral welfare of their classes, — well, if these
conditions were realized, physical education
ought to contribute its important share to
what we have now seen to be the very crown
of human virtue; namely, to the spirit of
loyalty to loyalty, — to the spirit that honors
and respects one's very enemies for their
devotion to the very causes that one assaUs.
The result should be the spiritual power to
appreciate that common good for which even
those who are mutually most hostUe are con
tending. We human beings cannot agree as
to the choice of our individual causes. We
can learn to honor one another's loyalty.
The spirit of fair play, as trained in such
sports as are founded upon a systematic physi-
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
cal and moral preparation for the strains of
contest, ought then to be made a fine prep
aration for the very highest and hardest
forms of loyalty, as such loyalty is needed for
the great world's social work. The spirit of
fair play, as applied in the larger social life,
has been called of late by a rather poor, if
popularly effective name, — the now famUiar
name "the square deal." The name is poor,
despite the intent of the distinguished moralist
who is responsible for its recent popular usage,
because it is a name derived from games of
chance, and because it suggests that the
true spirit of loyalty to loyalty is sufficiently
shown when you merely avoid any interfer
ence with your opponent's agreed right to his
share of the chances of the game. But true
loyalty to loyalty involves a spirit that goes
much further than this. It involves an active
and effective positive respect, — yes, love,
for loyalty, wherever you meet with it, even if
the loyalty that you honor inspires those very
deeds of the opponent which you most are
required by your own cause to thwart. Now
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
this active and practical honor for the loyalty
of your opponents is no mere external orna
ment of the chivalrous virtues. It is simply
the very essence of all the highest virtues.
Higher civilization depends upon it. True
justice, which certainly involves very much
more than "the square deal," true charity,
truthfulness, humanity, — these are all the
embodiments of loyalty to loyalty. And in
real life this form of virtue is at once the most
valuable and the hardest.
Here, then, is an opportunity for the teacher
engaged in physical training to set before his
pupils the highest of human ideals in an ex
tremely practical way, and in close connection
with definite physical activities. If a man is
loyal to the loyalty that he has seen, — has
seen expressed in the activities of the play
ground, the gymnasium, and the athletic field,
— he ought to be helped toward that loyalty
to unseen loyalty which constitutes the soul
of rectitude in great business enterprises, the
heart of honor in our national and interna
tional enterprises. 270

PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
And yet this great opportunity, which the
teacher of physical training possesses, is, as
I need not say, attended by great and insidious
dangers. Do the modern sports of our inter
collegiate and interscholastic teams uniformly
tend toward the encouragement of loyalty
to loyalty? Is not this great moral oppor
tunity of physical education far too much
wasted, through the accidents and the excesses
of our present educational system ? To ask
this question is to remind you of numerous
recent controversies whose grave significance
you all know. Great opportunities do not
necessarily mean great successes. The cor
ruption of the best may prove to be the worst.
VI
And with these words I am indeed brought
to the central problem amongst all those with
which this discussion is concerned. I have
set forth the three sorts of positively helpful
relations that a sound physical training can
develop in its bearing upon the work of
moral training. First, because skilful and
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
serious physical exercise involves true de
votion, a sound physical training can help to
prepare the organism and the personality
for loyal types of activity. Secondly, physical
training, in so far as it is a part of the life of a
social group, can more directly aid the individ
ual to learn to be loyal to his group. Thirdly,
physical trainingj in so far as it can be used
to give expression to the spirit of fair play,
may be an aid toward the highest types of
morality; namely, to those which embody
that spirit of loyalty to loyalty wliich is des
tined, we hope, some day to bring to pass the
spiritual union of all mankind. I have pointed
out that all these three forms are simply
possible forms in which the moral usefulness
of physical training may appear. There is
nothing that fatally secures the attainment of
any of these three results. All depends upon
the spirit, the skill, and the opportunities of the
teacher, and upon the awakening of the right
spirit in the learners. Instead of these good
results, a failure to reach any of these three
sorts of good results, in any tangible form, is
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
in case of any given pupU or class of pupUs
perfectly possible. And, as we have just seen,
the failure of certain forms of athletic sports
to further, in certain well-known cases, the
high cause of loyalty to loyalty has of late
been far too conspicuous. Can one who
approaches this topic from the ethical side
suggest to you any way in which you may
hope, as a body, to do more than has yet been
done to make physical education morally
serviceable ? To this question I venture, as I
close, to suggest very fragmentary answers.
In judging of the practical ideals that people
cherish regarding their calling and regarding
its results, one may make use of a tentative
method which is likely to be at least partially
enlightening. We all of us have had, in our
lives, what may be called our typical great
experiences, — our moments when life reached
for the time its highest expression, the maxima
of our curve of existence. Poets love to talk
about such moments; romancers dwell upon
them in narrating their stories; our own
memories glow when we recall our own mo-
T 273

PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
ments of this general type. A conversion or a
sudden relief from great sorrow, a home
coming, the reunion of lovers long parted, the
moment of hearing the first cry of some new
born infant, — these are familiar instances
of what may be such maxima in the curve of
experience of this or of that human being, —
glorious discoveries of new success or of great
attainment. Well, our personal and our pro
fessional activities, our avocations and our
vocations, our exercises and our sports, are
characterized each by its own type of maximal
experiences. And you can tell something
about the moral character and the deeper
significance either of a person or of an occupa
tion when you hear some typical report about
what was, from the point of view of this
person or of this occupation, the type of ex
perience which seemed, in its own place and
setting, to have such a maximal character.
It has occurred to me to suggest, as one way
of estimating the moral value of those experi
ences which one person or another may as
sociate with athletic activities, an examination
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
of some of the reports that experts, who also
happen to be authors, have given of what to
their minds seemed to be the truly great mo
ments of athletic activity, — the moments when
one most deeply experiences what, to himself
personally, the whole business in the end
means. Of course our daily life has to be lived,
whatever our profession, upon a somewhat
commonplace level. And it is upon such levels
that, after all, we have to win many of the
best moral results that devotion can bring into
our lives. But just as love is for a lifetime,
but the stories of love's triumphs centre about
the exaltations of the moment when two souls
first find each the other, so it is our general
custom to conceive the moral values of every
day life in terms of our memory or imagination
of the great instants of life,
" Then felt I Uke some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken; "
says Keats; and one knows at once to what
sort of exaltation he refers. This maximum
of experience stands for a type of conscious
ness in terms of which the poet conceives all
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
the long hours and days through which he
devoted himself to Chapman's Homer.
Well, I have asked myself, how do expert
athletes conceive the maximal moments of
their lives as athletes ? With what exultation
are they filled when they contemplate their
greatest attainments? Tell me that, and I
can do something to comprehend their moral
attitude toward their work, and the perils and
the uses of this attitude.
Of course, any one who teUs, in an expert
way, a story of athletic triumphs, wUl depict,
in lively fashion, the moment of victory. And,
of course, the exultation of victory, taken by
itself, has somewhat uniform characters, such
as any boys' story of sports or any lively news
paper picture of a great game will portray.
I need not dwell upon the fact that victory in
any contest is keenly joyous, and constitutes
a maximum point in the curve of experience,
and that whoever writes a lively sporting story
keeps you in suspense for a time, as the specta
tors at the game are kept in suspense, and then
thrUls you with the elemental delight of the
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
victorious solution of the problem of contest,
as the cheerful romancer lets the lovers agonize
awhile, and then indeed somehow startles
you with the perfectly familiar thrill of dis
covering that their hour of joy at length arrives.
Such incidents are sesthetically attractive;
but they are not the sorts of maximal experi
ences that I now have most in mind. For
my present purpose, I want to know whether,
as the expert recalls the moment of his highest
athletic attainment, he thinks of anything
besides victory, and whether this other feature,
besides victory, which at such great instants
he has before him, and which he later recalls,
is of the nature of a morally significant en
largement or fulfilment of any higher self,
so that the memory of this maximum is indeed
any sort of moral inspiration in later life.
Let me quote to you at once the report of
an expert, in which he tells of a great athletic
experience of his own, associated, as it was,
with no little peril. In the year 1896 Philip
Stanley Abbot, a Harvard graduate of the
class of 1890, was killed by an accident during
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
an attempted ascent of Mt. Lefroy, in the
Selkirks. He was a man of great intellectual
promise and power, and an experienced and
devoted mountain climber, whose death left
mourning a very wide circle of friends. In
a memorial of Abbot that was published in
the annual report of the Sierra Club of Cali
fornia, there is printed a passage from a letter
which he once wrote to a friend about his first
Selkirk expedition, — an expedition antedating
by some time the final and fatal attempt to
ascend Mt. Lefroy. The passage has the
interest that Abbot, who was a scholar and a
moralist, as well as a mountain expert, had
long found in his mountain climbing a moral
inspiration, which aided him in the hard
work of his practical life. He was no pleasure-
seeker and no boaster. He had chosen his
Alpine avocation because he found in it a
moral support that, to his mind, justified its
peril. Was his judgment sound in this par
ticular? Well, let him tell his own tale: —
"Palmer's old theory, that the nearest
approach that we can make toward defining
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
the summum bonum is to call it 'fulness of
life,' explains a great many things to me.
Once we came out at seven o'clock upon the
crest of a snow mountain, with two thousand
feet of rather difficult snow work before
us, when I had expected plain sailing, — and
the daylight had already begun to fade. At
the bottom of the two thousand feet we were,
as it proved, still five miles from home ; but we
could have camped there. But where we were
there was nothing more level than the roof of
a house, except the invisible bottom of an
occasional huge crevasse, half masked and
half revealed. I had been feeling lifeless all
that day, and we had already had nine hours
of work. But the memory of that next hour
is one of the keenest and most unmixed
pleasures I have carried away, — letting one's
self go where the way was clear, trusting to
heels alone, but keeping the ice-axe ready for
the least slip, — twisting to and fro to dodge
the crevasses, planning and carrying out at the
same instant, — creeping across the snow-
bridges like snaUs, and going down the plain
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
slopes almost by leaps, — alive to the finger
tips, — is a sensation one can't communicate
by words, but you need not try to convince me
that it isn't primary. However, this by the
way." You will all recognize this, I take it, as a
maximal experience of a type that belongs
to what one might call the lucid athletic
activities, wherein the highest exertion, the
completest devotion of the self to the end in
hand, are accompanied by the clearest sense of
the social relation to one's fellow-workers, and
so by the fullest self-assertion, self-expression,
or, as Abbot calls it, by the fulness of life.
Now are all the great sports equally charac
terized by such lucid self-possession at the
maximal moments, — by such complete union
of the active self and its object that skill,
devotion, and success are all equally clear
facts of consciousness just when the loftiest
height of the experience is reached? That
is a technical question which I have no right
to try to answer upon my own authority.
But, when I turn to the ordinary sporting
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
story, I find that the highest height is said to
be reached, in the mental life of some sports,
just when, amidst the plaudits of vast crowds,
in the intoxication of relief from suspense, in
the exhaustion of the completely worked out
organism, — when, I say, at such an instant, —
the higher centres refuse to function definitely,
and the victorious hero turns into an auto
matic physical mechanism, that somehow,
half consciously or unconsciously, accom
plishes in a blind way the crowning deed of
triumph, while a sort of aurora of glorious
and confusedly blessed sensations flickers
dizzily and massively in the place where the
hero's mind had before seemed to dwell.
In a recent sketch by Mr. Ruhl, "Left Be
hind," the success of the hero in a mile foot
race culminates in a kindly but subconscious
automatism on the hero's part, whereby he
turns at the moment of winning, catches in
his arms his fainting and defeated rival as
the latter crosses the line, and carries him,
then, to the tent near by. What followed,
whUe the hero worked to revive his prostrate
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
fellow-contestant, is thus depicted : " Outside
the crowd cheered and howled, and pushed
up against the canvas walls, and from the
distance came the boom of the band, marching
to them across the field. He [the hero work
ing to revive the defeated rival] swabbed on
witch hazel desperately — panting, dizzy with
excitement and happiness, and a queer happy-
weepy remorse. The Other Man opened his
eyes and blinked.
"'Bill,' he grinned the best he could, and
held out his hand, 'I guess we've been fools
long enough.' Then he got tired again.
'It was a great race,' he said, without opening
his eyes. The hero replies, 'Yes! yes.'
He meant," continues our author, "that he
thought it had been long enough. Somehow
he couldn't remember any words. And then
the crowd came in."
Now contrast these two maximal moments
of athletic experience : in the one, the self
alive to the finger-tips with devotion and
triumph, joyously laboring side by side with
its comrades amidst the beautiful and merci-
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
less fields of snow, and just above the half
visible depths of the crevasses; in the other,
the self with its " queer happy- weepy remorse,"
confused, automatic, kindly, but maudlin.
These are, I say, two maximal experiences,
each to be remembered for a lifetime. Each
has its obvious physical and psychological
conditions. Each is quite in order in its own
context. I have, of course, no objection to
offer to the existence of either of them, when
it comes to the man who has earned it and
who has his right to it. But the contrast
suggests at once a fair question. On the
whole, since we are prone to estimate our lives
and our daily work so much in terms of
such maximal experiences, let us ask then
which forms of sport, other things being
equal, are, on the whole, likely to be best
adapted to the steadiest sort of moral train
ing, — those whose highest heights are
reached in a state of "happy- weepy re
morse," amid howling crowds and dizzy
confusions of consciousness, or those sports
whose loftiest hours or moments of triumph
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
leave the self "alive to the finger-tips," not
with mere muscular sensations, but with the
sense of clearly conscious devotion, of self-
possession, and of exalted, yes, genuinely
spiritual, mastery of something that, however
hard or perilous, seems to be worth mastering.
All kinds of sport have, no doubt, their func
tions. I am, as you see, venturing to answer
here no technical questions; nor do I doubt
that there are maximal moments in the lives
of all of us when we are, in Shelley's phrase,
"dizzy, lost, yet unbe wailing." Yet, on the
whole, I can venture to say that, educationally
considered, and especially from the point of
view of moral education, those forms of sport
must be best whose highest moments leave one
as clearly in possession of himself, and of
his loyal relations to his mates and his rivals,
as the physical exhaustions attending these
highest moments permit.
Now this word about the experiences attend
ing sport is meant here simply to make definite
this closing suggestion regarding the conditions
that must aid in keeping either a set of class
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
exercises in gymnastics or a sport upon a
high level as a means of moral education.
What your athletic exercises need, in order
that they may attain a high grade of moral
efficacy, is a set of social conditions such as
tend to clear-headedness rather than to con
fusion, such as at their highest point shall lead
to Abbot's and Professor Palmer's fulness of
life rather than to the flood of "happy- weepy
remorse" or of other enjoyable destructions
of moral equilibrium. For loyalty means
clear-headedness; and you all regard sound
wits, skilful and definite activities, lucidity,
as mental traits that are to be trained by the
greater part of all those class exercises and all
those sports that you yourselves most admire.
The evils, however, of the recent school and
college sports have resulted, so far as I can
see, almost wholly from the unsound social
conditions which have been allowed to sur
round and to attend both the intercollegiate
and the interscholastic games. For the ethics
of sport have come, through the recent social
conditions, to be influenced, both directly and
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
indirectly, by the confused and unprincipled
sentiments of great crowds of people, and, in
general, by the intrusion of enthusiasms
whose origin is due to the fact that too many
people have been interfering in mass, in
thoughtless ways, through the press, or through
the presence of excited and cheering multitudes,
— have been interfering with the moral educa
tion of our youth. Nobody can learn loyalty
from mobs. The Harvard Stadium is an
admirable place when it is not too full of
people. But when it is full of people it is a
bad place for the moral education of our
athletic youth, just because, by the size of the
crowds that it collects, it encourages, even in
the most highly trained men and even in the
most intelligent and skilful of sports, ideals
that inevitably centre far too much about those
poorer sorts of maximal experiences to which
I have made reference and too little about
that type of fulness of life which Philip
Abbot glorified. Every athletic reform at
Harvard must aim to minimize not so much the
athletic as the social perils of modern sport.
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PHYSICAL TRAINING IN AMERICA
But you, the teachers engaged in physical
education, are fostering the sort of athletic
life that flourishes in small, clearly defined,
well-organized social groups. Whether class
work or games are made prominent in this or
in that part of your teaching, you are all
working to combine in your pupils skill,
devotion, loyalty of the individual to his com
munity, and, whenever you have an opportu
nity to insist upon fair play in difficult situa
tions, you are teaching loyalty to loyalty.
My purpose in this paper has been to sug
gest the correlation of your work with that of
others who are engaged in moral education.
Loyalty to the community and loyalty to
loyalty, — and both of them expressed, not
in confused sentiments, but through clearly
conscious deeds, — these are the traits that
the teacher of morals must inculcate. You
see the task. I have suggested its dangers.
I am sure that you, "alive to the finger
tips," are ready for your share of the perils
of our great modern educational effort to find
our way to the high places of the Spirit.
287

" A POWER IN THE BUSINESS OF LIVING," says the New York Tribune of
The Philosophy of Loyalty
By JOSIAH ROYCE, Ph.D., LL.D.
Professor of the History of Philosophy, Harvard University ; author of
" Outlines of Psychology," " The Conception of God,"
" The World and the Individual," etc.
Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 net; hy mail, $1.60
"The ethical value of loyalty needed discussion, especially as so
much so-called loyalty is mere self-delusion. To be loyal in mere
words, or negatively, to the shell of an outworn convention is not to be
loyal at all, or wise. Moreover, true loyalty must express itself practi
cally, in the way of a man's life, in his deeds. Cherished without rea
soning, and to no really practical purpose, it avails nothing. The drift
of circumstances that may make a man of high and strong personal
qualities a power for lasting good iu a comraunity, or develop him as a
harmful infiuence to society, does not escape Professor Royce's attention.
The present significance of his book, therefore, is evident. . . . The
author disclaims the idea of making a text-book or an elaborately tech
nical work of philosophical research. The appeal of the book is to all
readers." — New York Times.
" A thoroughly sincere attempt to set clearly before the American
people the need for aiming at the highest ethical ideals in their daily
life, in their intercourse with one another, and in their relations with
the outside world. Believing that certain present-day conditions and
tendencies indicate a lowering of individual and national standards.
Professor Royce gives himself resolutely to the task of remedial and
constructive criticism. His programme of reform is summed up in the
single phrase — the cultivation of a spirit of loyalty. . . . His work is
immediately and concretely inspiring to the man not at all concerned
with the subtleties of metaphysical disquisition, but very much concerned
in the affairs of every-day existence. It helps him to appreciate the
poverty of egotistical ideals — such as the ideal of power — and it
plainly propounds means whereby life may be made really worth
living." — The Outlook.
" It gives beautiful and forceful expression to ethical idealism, and
grandly fulfils its purpose ' to simplify men's moral issues, to clear their
vision for the sight of the eternal, to win hearts for loyalty.' . . . There
is raoral enthusiasm in it, there is patriotism in it, there is love of hu
manity in it. It comes from the heart of a man, from the big heart of a
big man, from a fine loyal soul. Fichte never spoke with greater fer
vor and eloquence than does this idealist of Cambridge, and it is to be
hoped that his words will sink deep into the hearts ofthe nation." —
Dr. Frank Thilly in The Philosophical Review.

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"A hook for e'vety pa.rent a.nd thinker"
Outlines of Psychology
AN ELEMENTARY TREATISE WITH
SOME PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
By JOSIAH ROYCE, Ph.D., LL.D.
Professor of the History of Philosophy in
Harvard University
Cloth, i2mo, j^Q pages, $1.25 net
More and more the practice is growing of defining a good many of
the problems of practical life in psychological terms so far as they are
able to do so ; and to those who share this tendency. Dr. Royce's book
will be particularly interesting.
He presupposes a serious reader, one who really " wants to know,"
but not one trained either in experimental methods or in philosophical
inquiries. He tries to tell such a reader a few things that seem to him
important, about the most fundamental and general processes, laws,
and conditions of mental life.
" It is not a ' pedagogical psychology,' but a scientific psychology,
written in such a way as to make readily accessible to teachers a deep
and true knowledge of the natures which they seek to influence." —
Western Journal of Education.
"Obviously a treatise upon psychology that deals with the subject
with this broad, free, strong handling is suggestive and constructive;
helps us to organize our ideas; throws out new light; cannot be dis
regarded by the students of the mind. The treatise, however, has a
special value in practical applications. These are not ' helps to the
teacher,' they are criticisms upon life and society and are helps to the
thinker who is a teacher." — W. E. CHANCELLOR in the Journal of
Pedagogy. "The reader of this book, who, wishing to make an elementary
study of the inner mind of the world, takes Professor Royce for his
guide, will find himself increasingly in serious companionship with a
winsome as well as a knowing leader." — Chicago Tribune.

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Social Psychology

By EDWARD A ROSS
Professor of Sociology in the University of Wisconsin ;
author of " Social Control," " The Foundations
of Sociology," " Sin and Society," etc.

Cloth, i2mo, 372 pages, $1.50 net; by mail, $1.63
A study of the uniformities that come into existence among men
from social causes. Those \yhich are due to a common physical en
vironment, and those which arise from race endowment, or historical
conditions, are no part of the author's subject at present. He seeks to
enlarge and to clear our knowledge of society by explaining how so
many similarities of feeling, belief, or purpose, have established them
selves as a result of mental contacts or mental interactions.
These general levels of uniformity among men supply a basis for
those groupings, cooperations, and conflicts, which are the special
study of sociology proper. As an introduction to that science this book
is, therefore, almost indispensable.
" One must dissent from it occasionally, but it is a wholesome, stimu
lating, and serviceable work." — The Outlook.
" Professor Ross carries his reader through the fascinating problems
of suggestibility, the crowd, the mob, fashion, conventionality, custom,
and social progress. If one-half of his pages are filled with long cita
tions familiar to most readers of sociology, the repetition is always
timely and pointed. No occasion for holding up the mirror to Ameri
cans is lost; anecdotes about our fads, religious and financial manias,
society sillinesses, deep-rooted irrationalities, etc., drive home the
author's contentions most effectively just because everybody has heard
them a hundred times and knows them to be true. . . . He has laid
bare the more vital social traits, good and bad, of the human mind,
and in a manner calculated to awaken thought." — New York Tribune.

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Races and Immigrants in America
By JOHN R. COMMONS

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Books upon the problems of immigration which have recently ap
peared have been of two kinds: one descriptive and narrative, graphic
sketches of travel abroad iu the sources of the flood, or scenic portrai
ture of the types coming to us; the other, books of statistics, data
from the census and discussion of the political phases of the movement.
What characterizes Mr. John R. Commons' Races and Immigrants in
America is that while he keeps certain elements of the other types, he
is chiefly interested in his problem as a student of sociology. He dis
cusses Race philosophically. He analyzes democracy as a force bear
ing upon the social assimilation involved. He is not interested so
much in the mere data of immigration in industry as he is in discover
ing what function industry forms in inducing immigration in the first
place and moulding it later on. The same may be said about his care
ful discussion of the relation of immigration to crime and pauperism
and politics. Just as Professor Steiner depicts the different races to us,
so Professor Commons analyzes their traits and contributions to the
body politic. The book is therefore not so much original in its data,
as in the interpretation of the data. It is valuable largely because it is
the last book, using --, wide range of readings in other drier or more
picturesque literature, and giving us, in addition to facts, his judgment
as to their interpretation. Only a trained and versatile scholar covild
have given us what is, upon the whole, the most valuable and compen
dious book on this subject, up to date. The bibliography furnished is
of especial value to the scholar.

PUBLISHED BY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

YALE UNIVERSITY

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