THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE
To attempt to give references to specific books on so general and inclusive a topic would be an impertinence. But one may legitimately suggest the trends of investigation one would like to see thoroughly explored. In my own case they would be: (1) a study of the pioneer from the point of view of his cultural and religious interests, correlating those interests with his general economic status; (2) a study of the revolutionary feeling of America (not formulas) in psychological terms and of its duration as an emotional driving force; (3) a study of the effects of the post-Civil War period and the industrial expansion upon the position of upper-class women in the United States; (4) a study of sexual maladjustment in American family life, correlated again with the economic status of the successful pioneer; (5) a very careful study of the beginnings, rise, and spread of women’s clubs, and their purposes and accomplishments, correlated chronologically with the development of club life of men and the extent of vice, gambling, and drunkenness; (6) a study of American religions in more or less Freudian terms as compensations for neurotic maladjustment; (7) a study of instrumentalism in philosophy and its implications for reform; (8) a serious attempt to understand and appraise the more or less disorganized jeunes, with some attention to comparing the intensity of their bitterness or optimism with the places of birth and upbringing. No special study of American educational systems or of the school or college life would be necessary, it seems to me, beyond, of course, a general knowledge. The intellectual life of the nation, after all, has little relation to the academic life.
When such special studies had been finished by sympathetic investigators, probably one of several writers could synthesize the results and give us a fairly definitive essay on the intellectual life of America. Such studies, however, have not yet been done, and without them I have had to write this essay to a certain extent en plein air. Thus it has been impossible entirely to avoid giving the impression of stating things dogmatically or intuitively. But as a matter of fact on all the topics I have suggested for study I have already given much thought and time, and consequently, whatever its literary form, the essay is not pure impressionism.
H. E. S.