Ancient Rome and Modern America; A Comparative Study of Morals and Manners

by Guglielmo Ferrero

But every medal has its reverse side; and we have had to pay, and to pay dearly, for this fabulous abundance which man had vainly visioned for centuries.

The modern world [says another of my characters] has crowned quantity at the expense of quality—which is, after all, an eternal law. For I can make in a certain time things of a certain quality, that is to say, resembling a certain model of perfection which I have before my eyes or in my mind. But in that case, I cannot make any quantity of it which I may require. I must rest content with that quantity which I can manage, working with all my zeal. I can say, on the other hand: I want so many things of a certain quality. But in that case, I can no longer prescribe the time necessary to finish them as my fancy bids me. Or again: I wish in so much time to make such a quantity. Very well; but in that case, I must put up with the best quality I can get. So that whoever wants to increase the quantity, and to curtail the time must abate his demand for quality. And that is just what we are doing to-day in this civilisation of ours, in which quantity reigns supreme.

In the light of this idea that decadence in art, and in so many other refinements of life, which many Europeans impute to America, seemed to me no longer the effect of an aberration on the part of the masses, but a sort of compensation. We pay, and we ought to pay, for the rapid fortunes so commonly made nowadays. We pay, we ought to pay, for the speed of the trains, the motor-cars, the aeroplane, the telegraph; and the price is the mediocrity which pervades everything. We cannot have, we must not want, everything in this world,—railways as well as beautiful pictures, aeroplanes as well as the marvellous furniture which the great French artists used to make in the eighteenth century, speed as well as good manners. For among the reproaches hurled at America by Europe is that of having banished from Europe by the example of her democracy the good manners of our ancient ceremonial, and substituted for it a rather over-simple and over-casual cordiality. But can we expect the polished form, for which the eighteenth century was famous, to survive in the social relations of a civilisation which, like ours, is always in a hurry? Among men, who live between the train, the motor-car, and the telephone?

Every epoch directs all its efforts towards a supreme goal, which for it is the all-important one. There have been epochs ablaze with religious fervour, whose chief aspiration it was to diffuse and to defend the faith. There have been epochs with a profound sense of the ambition for glory, which fought great wars. Others again have turned their attention to the fostering of the arts and sciences. Our civilisation aims, in the first place, at the mastery over nature, and the intensive exploitation of all the riches of the earth. We enjoy the advantages of it. We are not inclined to abjure railways and telegraphs. We have no wish again to run the risk of famine, which was such an ever-present one to the civilisations of the past. We enjoy the incredible abundance and liberty of the day and are by no means eager to return to the pristine régime of discipline and parsimony. We Europeans also, then, must resign ourselves to paying the price which all these advantages cost, and to living in an epoch in which art cannot flourish in any high degree, in which religion will no longer have the strength to emanate waves of mystical ardour, and even science will be cultivated only so far as it can be of immediate service to practical ends, by intensifying and making more prolific the exploitation of natural riches. For this, too, is a phenomenon noticeable to-day in every part of Europe: disinterested studies are falling into disfavour. Rich as it is, the world of to-day is less capable of searching after the true for the sole pleasure of expanding the field of knowledge, than it was two centuries ago, when it was so much poorer. Even scientists nowadays want to see their discoveries turned into money.

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The Americanisation of Europe, then, is a fatal phenomenon. Europe, from the moment when she aspired to great wealth and to the dominion of nature, was called upon to renounce her claim to many of the treasures of her ancient and refined culture. This was the conclusion at which I rested for a moment. And yet at this point, I, as a European, felt a misgiving. If matters stood thus, was not Europe fatally doomed to become even more thoroughly Americanised in the future? At the present time, the appetites and ambitions of all classes in Europe, even the most numerous, have been given free rein. Everybody, from the aristocrat of ancient lineage to the most obscure peasant, wishes to earn, spend, and accumulate as much as he can. There is no power, human or divine, which can pretend to drive back towards its historical fountainhead this immense torrent of greed and ambition. Europe, thus, is fated to become increasingly oblivious of the traditions of its ancient and disinterested culture; to struggle to imitate and compete with America in the production of great riches at greater speed. And, as America with her immense territories and smaller store of traditions is better equipped for the competition, so Europe must necessarily become ever more and more decadent in the future. The continent destined to dominate the civilisation of the future, as Europe dominated it up to the middle of the nineteenth century, will be America.

There are not wanting persons in Europe who take a delight in repeating from time to time this prophecy, which to the ears of a European sounds somewhat lugubrious. For a moment, when in America, I, too, somewhat discouraged by the vitality of which the American spirit of progress gives proof, felt myself inclined to give ear to these prophets, whom hitherto in Europe I had always contradicted. Yes, culture in Europe was destined to become ever more decadent before the invasion of progress interpreted in the American sense; quantity, that is to say, the nations with vast territories at their disposal and capable of rapidly producing vast wealth, would rule supreme in the future, while the forces of idealism would lose a great part of their ancient empire over the world.

America, however, actually America, proved to me that the ancient culture represented by Europe is not destined to die out, and that, if Europe is being Americanised, America in compensation is being induced by an eternal impulse to Europeanise herself! I, like so many other Europeans, had gone to America, persuaded that the American’s only thought is to make money. But in America, I, too, ended with the conviction that no country in Europe expends so much money, labour, and zeal on founding museums, schools, universities, and new religions; on fostering, in the midst of the mechanical civilisation and the realm of quantity, the arts, the religious spirit, and the disinterested sciences; on preventing the loss of that intellectual legacy of the past, in which Europe takes an ever-decreasing interest, occupied as she is in developing her industries and her trade. If, out of deference to history, rather than to the present day, we may grant that Europe represents in the world’s history the effort directed to the perfecting of a lofty culture, artistic, scientific, religious, or philosophic,—there is no doubt but that America is to-day becoming Europeanised; is seeking, that is to say, to employ the vast riches which she has accumulated by the intensive exploitation of her territory in the promotion of the progress of art, knowledge, and the religious spirit. Doubtless, not all the efforts she makes are successful; but they are numerous, intense, and obstinate. Indeed, if America is open to any reproach in this relation, it is, in my opinion, to that of feeling too ardent an admiration for lofty culture—art and science in particular—an admiration which sometimes blunts the critical sense, and does not permit her to distinguish what in the world of the ideal is authentic from what is counterfeit, the real gold from pinchbeck. In fact, one can find in no European country so lively and profound a trust in science as in America. Europe knows that science can do a great deal and has done a great deal, but that it often promises, or raises hopes of, more than it can do. Not so in America. Among the cultured, as among the lower classes, faith in the power of science is practically unlimited. There is no marvel which the American does not expect to see issuing from the scientist’s closet. Even the mystical movements in America, whose trend is anti-scientific, like to trick themselves out with the name of “Science,” which has a kind of magic sound and glamour for the men of the New World.

There is the same universal enthusiasm for art in America. It might be said that America is determined to admire everything which might possibly be beautiful, of every country, every epoch, and every school. It is true that the most engrossing preoccupation of the Americans is not that of fostering the arts; they must still keep their minds fixed on the conquest of their great continent. But it is also true that, in the moments of leisure, when they can think of something other than business, they fling open, so to speak, their arms to the arts of the whole world. Just as all the styles of architecture can be found in the great buildings of New York, so all the arts which have flourished in the course of centuries in Asia and Europe have been transplanted into the New World. America, I might almost say, wishes to taste and understand all the beauties which the past has created; classical literature as well as contemporary European literature, Italian as well as German music, Greek sculpture as well as the French sculpture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Italian as well as Dutch painting, Japanese decorative art as well as the styles of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth Louis. New York, from this point of view, is a real artistic cosmopolis.

If, then, Europe is gradually destroying her ancient culture, and her great traditions, in order to construct railways and factories, to found banks and to initiate commercial enterprises, America, on the other hand, wishes to employ the wealth gained by the intensive exploitation of her vast continent in creating an art and a science. How can we explain this contrast? “The snobbery of a parvenue nation,” it pleases the European, with a shrug of the shoulders, to label it. But anyone with any knowledge of America and much knowledge of human nature will not rest content with so glib an explanation. It is true that, thanks to machinery, to America, and to the idea of liberty and progress, quantity is to-day triumphant in the world. Men wish to enjoy abundance. Can they, however, confine their wish to abundance, to the increase, that is to say, of the quantity of things they possess? Observe a peasant who comes to town, turns artisan, and earns a higher wage. What does he do? Does he buy with his higher wage a second pair of boots, or a second suit in addition to and like the one he wore when he was poor? No. He adopts the town fashions and buys more elegant shoes and clothes, in appearance at least, that is to say, like those worn by the upper classes. In every country of America and Europe, the differences in dress between the upper and lower classes, once so great, are disappearing. And why? Because the people want to dress like the “Swells”; and modern industry spares no trouble to give them at little cost the means of satisfying their ambition. In other words, the workman wants to invest his higher wage in the purchase of finer, or what he thinks are finer, clothes, than those he wore before, because to possess a suit of superior clothes is to him a greater joy than to have two suits of the same workmanship as those he wore when he was poorer. In other words, quantity soon satiates, and at a certain stage man needs to translate it into quality, and to employ his wealth to procure for himself, not a greater number of things, but more beautiful and better things, otherwise wealth is useless.