But the difference is disappearing. Not that America is becoming like Europe, but Europe is becoming like America. This is not a case of the imitation that is a form of flattery; it is a case of similar causes producing similar results. The disease—or shall we say, to use a neutral term—the diathesis of commercialism found in America an open field and swept through it like a fire. In Europe, its course was hampered by the structures of an earlier civilisation. But it is spreading none the less surely. And the question arises—In the future, when the European environment is as unfavourable to Art as the American, will there be, in the West, any Art at all? I do not know; no one knows; but there is this to remark. What I am calling commercialism is the infancy, not the maturity of a civilisation. The revolution in morals, in manners, and in political and social institutions which must accompany the revolution in industry, has hardly yet begun its course. It has gone further in Europe than in America; so that, oddly enough, Europe is at once behind and in front of this continent, overlaps it, so to speak, at both ends. But it has not gone very far even in Europe; and for generations, I conceive, political and social issues will draw away much of the creative talent that might have been available for Art. In the end, one may suppose, something like a stable order will arise; an order, that is, in which people will feel that their institutions correspond sufficiently with their inner life, and will be able to devote themselves with a free mind to reflecting their civilisation in Art.
But will their civilisation be of a kind to invite such reflection? It will be, if the present movement is not altogether abortive, a civilisation of security, equity, and peace; where there is no indigence, no war, and comparatively little disease. Such society, certainly, will not offer a field for much of the kind of Art that has been or is now being produced. The primitive folk-song, the epic of war, the novel or play inspired by social strife, will have passed irrecoverably away. And more than that, it is sometimes urged, there will be such a dearth of those tense moments which alone engender the artistic mood, that Art of any kind will have become impossible. If that were true, it would not, in my opinion, condemn the society. Art is important, but there are things more important; and among those things are justice and peace. I do not, however, accept the view that a peaceable and just society would necessarily also be one that is uninspired. That view seems to me to proceed from our incurable materialism. We think there is no conflict except with arms; no rivalry except for bread; no aspiration except for money and rank. It is my own belief that the removal of the causes of the material strife in which most men are now plunged would liberate the energies for spiritual conflict; that the passion to know, the passion to feel, the passion to love, would begin at last to take their proper place in human life; and would engender the forms of Art appropriate to their expression.
To return to America, what I am driving at is this. America may have an Art, and a great Art. But it will be after she has had her social revolution. Her Art has first to touch ground; and before it can do that, the ground must be fit for it to touch. It was not till the tenth century that the seed of Mediæval Art could be sown; it was not till the thirteenth that the flower bloomed. So now, our civilisation is not ripe for its own Art. What America imports from Europe is useless to her. It is torn from its roots; and it is idle to replant it; it will not grow. There must be a native growth, not so much of America, as of the modern era. That growth America, like Europe, must will. She has her prophet of it, Walt Whitman. In the coming centuries it is her work to make his vision real.
CONCLUDING ESSAY
The preceding pages were written in the course of travel and convey the impressions and reflections of the moment. Whatever interest they may have depends upon this immediacy, and for that reason I have reprinted them substantially as they first appeared. Perhaps, however, some concluding reflections of a more considered nature may be of some interest to my readers. I do not advance them in a dogmatic spirit nor as final judgments, but as the first tentative results of my gropings into a large and complicated subject. I will ask the reader, therefore, be he Western or Oriental, to follow me in a spirit at once critical and sympathetic, challenging my suggestions as much as he will, but rather as a fellow-seeker than as an opponent bent upon refutation. For I am trying to comprehend rather than to judge, and to comprehend as impartially as is compatible with having an attitude of one's own at all.
Ever since Mr. Rudyard Kipling wrote a famous line it has become a commonplace of popular thought in England and America that there is an East and a West, and an impassable gulf between them. But Mr. Kipling was thinking of India, and India is not all the East: he was thinking of England, and England is not all the West. As soon as one approaches the question more particularly it becomes a complicated matter to decide whether there is really an East and a West, and what either stands for. That there is a West, in a real sense, with a unity of its own, is, I think, true. But it must be limited in time to the last two centuries, and in space to the countries of Western Europe and the continent of America. So understood, the West forms, in all the most important respects, a homogeneous system. True, it is divided into different nations, speaking different languages, and pursuing different, and often conflicting, policies; and these distinctions are still so important, that they colour our fears and hopes and sympathies, and take form in the burden of armaments and the menace of war. Nevertheless, seen in the perspective of history, they are survivals, atrophying and disappearing. Behind and despite of them there is a common Western mind and a common Western organisation. Finance is cosmopolitan; industry is cosmopolitan; trade is cosmopolitan. There is one scientific method, and the results achieved by it are common. There is one system of industry, that known as Capitalism; and the problems arising from it and the solutions propounded appear alike in every nation. There is one political tendency, or fact, that of popular government. There are cognate aims and similar achievements in literature and art. There is, in brief, a Western movement, a Western problem, a Western mentality; and the particular happenings of particular nations are all parts of this one happening. Nor is this all. There is in the West a common religion. I do not refer to Christianity, for the religion I mean is held by hundreds and thousands who are not Christians, and indeed does not very readily find in Christianity an expression at once coherent and pure. It has not been formulated in a creed; but it is to be felt and heard in all the serious work and all the serious thought of the West. It is the religion of Good and Evil, of Time and the process in Time. If it tried to draw up a confession of faith perhaps it would produce, as its first attempt, something of this kind:—
"I believe in the ultimate distinction between Good and Evil, and in a real process in a real Time. I believe it to be my duty to increase Good and diminish Evil; I believe that in doing this I am serving the purpose of the world. I know this; I do not know anything else; and I am reluctant to put questions to which I have no answer, and to which I do not believe that anyone has an answer. Action, as defined above, is my creed. Speculation weakens action. I do not wish to speculate, I wish to live. And I believe the true life to be the life I have described."
In saying that this is the real creed of the modern Western man I do not pretend that he always knows or would admit it to be so. But if his actions, his words, and his thoughts be sympathetically interpreted, where all are at their best, I think they will be found to imply something of this kind. And this attitude I call religious, not merely ethical, because of its conviction that the impulse towards Good is of the essence of the World, not only of men, or of Man. To believe this is an act of faith, not of reason; though it is not contrary to reason, as no faith should be or long can be. Many men do not believe it, for many are not religious; others, while believing it, may believe also many other things. But it is the irreducible minimum of religion in the modern West, the justification of our life, the faith of our works. I call it the Religion of Time, and distinguish it thus from the Religion of Eternity.