“Quid quisque vitet,” says Horace, with his canny Roman philosophy,—“What hourly to avoid is known by none.” What hourly to accept is our modern question. Since a man’s foes may be of his own household, what if our own home-grown materialism were after all the worst enemy of our art? It will do little good to fly feverish alien contacts if at the same time things of the spirit are allowed to languish at our own ancestral firesides. Sometimes the firesides themselves seem less frequent, as ancestors diminish in the world’s esteem. True, our tawdry and vehement self-advertising has its magnificent dreams, and our childlike faith in the dollar its occasional glorious hour of justification; we cannot help seeing that some of our transatlantic co-workers in art and letters come among us remembering those things. And it is a healing principle of civilization that we shall borrow our light from one land, and divide our loaf with another; even though loaves are wasted thereby. Every lover of our country will wish its culture to remain at once hospitable and self-respecting; both characteristics may dwell harmoniously together.
In spite of superficial indications such as those offered by the names in a city telephone directory, the core and nucleus of general culture in the United States remains English-speaking; more, it remains true to ideals of human conduct and human responsibility that have been fruitfully developed and cherished by the English-speaking peoples. Whatever lightly-accepted beliefs there may be in regard to this matter, I am persuaded that the broad basis of American culture is and will be our Puritanism. Not the narrow, mote-seeking Puritanism of past story, but an enlightened, liberating Puritanism, with perceptions and pardons for others, and with questionings as to its own supposed superiorities; a Puritanism that has gained in grace and goodness through native development and happy alien contacts. How often we have mumbled an ancient shibboleth to the effect that art and morality have nothing in common! On the contrary, they have the one supreme aspiration of human beings in common; the benefit of the race. It is the little artist who proclaims himself different from other men, and so not subject to their laws; the great artist strives to bring his personality and his work into harmony with the best that he knows of human effort. Magnanimous men and women unconsciously reveal their longing that their work may live after them for the happiness of mankind. Ward on his death-bed, finally assured that all is well with the great equestrian that had engaged his last thoughts, whispers to his wife, “Now I can go in peace.” Saint-Gaudens in the later pages of his Memoirs writes of the knowledge of the beautiful: “I know it is a question whether such a knowledge increases the general happiness and morality of a community. I firmly believe it does, as I believe that any effort to do a thing as well as it can be done, regardless of mercenary motives, tends to the elevation of the human mind.”
VICTORY
BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS
THE GILLISS PRESS
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.