Another proof of this same characteristic is furnished by American universities. Europeans have all heard descriptions of these great American universities, Harvard and Columbia, for example. They are true cities of learning with vast and splendid buildings, gardens, pavilions, laboratories, museums, libraries, athletic fields for physical exercises, pools where students can go to swim. They are enormously rich and, at the same time, always in dire straits. How can that be? Because no speciality or item of perfection is allowed to be lacking. All the languages and the literatures of the world which have reached any degree of importance, all the histories, all the sciences,—judicial, social, moral, physical, natural,—all the divisions of mathematics, and all the philosophies, are taught there by hundreds of professors. Private citizens of the rich classes, bankers, manufacturers, merchants, have in a great degree met from their private purses the steadily growing needs of the universities.
There is the same tendency in art. That American cities are ugly, I willingly admit. It would need much courage, no doubt, to brand this affirmation as false, but it would also be unjust to deny that America is making mighty efforts to beautify her cities. All the schools of architecture in Europe, especially that of Paris, are full of Americans hard at work. The sums which cities, states, banks, insurance companies, universities, and railroads, have spent in beautifying their magnificent edifices is fabulous. Not all these buildings, by any means, are masterpieces, but there are many which are very beautiful. America has architects of indisputable worth. In Europe, men like to repeat that Americans buy at extravagant prices objects of ancient art, or things that pass for such, not distinguishing those which are beautiful and ancient from those which are inferior and counterfeit. But those who have seen something of the houses of rich Americans know that, although there are snobs and dupes in America, as everywhere else, there are also people who know the meaning of art, who know how to buy beautiful things, and who search the world over for them. You will find in the streets of New York every variety of architecture, just as you find in its libraries all the literatures of the world, and in its theatres all the music, and in its houses all the decorative arts.
“The barbarian laden with gold” is, then, a legendary personage, but it is not at all surprising that such a conception should exist. Modern society is organised in such fashion that it is impossible even to conceive of a people at once rich and ignorant. Industry, business, agriculture, demand nowadays very special technical knowledge, and a very complete social organisation; that is to say, they imply a scientific, political, and judicial civilisation of a reasonably high order. Thus America is not at all uninterested in the higher activities of the mind. It would be more just to say that as a nation, and without regard to individual instances, she interests herself in such activities less than in industry, in business, and in agriculture. But is not this also the case with Europe? Who would dare affirm that the progress of the arts and sciences and letters is at this moment the principal concern of the governments and of the influential classes of the Old World? We Europeans have only to listen to what people round about us are saying. Their talk is all of bringing the cultivation of the land to economic perfection, of opening coal and iron mines, of harnessing waterfalls, of developing industries, of increasing exports. Kings who rule “by the grace of God” publicly declare that nothing interests them so much as the business of their countries!
If all this were characteristic only of American barbarism, we should be obliged to admit that Europe is Americanising herself with disconcerting rapidity. But this economic effort of Europe in turn presents nothing that need surprise us; like the American development, it is only the dizzy acceleration of a vast historic movement whose beginnings go back to the far distant day when an obscure and obstinate Genoese set sail, and in the midst of the waters of the Atlantic crossed the impassable boundary of the Old World. Yes, before that day, Europe had created admirable arts and literatures, profound philosophies, consoling religions, lofty morals, wise systems of justice, but—she was poor. She produced little, and produced it slowly; she had defied tradition and authority; she had fettered human energy by a multitude of laws, precepts, and prejudices. To humble men’s pride, she kept repeating to them that they were feeble and corrupt creatures. She taught them to use Virgil’s beautiful figure that they were like “a rower who painfully forces his boat against the current of the stream. Evil be on his head if for one instant he forgets, and ceases to struggle against the current’s force; in that moment, he is lost; the flood sweeps away his fragile boat.”
One fine day, however, Europe discovered a vast continent in the midst of the ocean. Then it dawned upon her that Prometheus had been but a clumsy thief, for he had stolen only a tiny spark of fire; she discovered mines, coal, and electricity. She created the steam-engine and all the other machines which have been derived from it. She succeeded in multiplying riches with a rapidity unimagined by remoter ancestors. From that moment, man no longer contented himself with dreaming of the Promised Land. He wished to go there. He destroyed all the traditions, the laws, and institutions which place limitations upon the store of human energy. He learned to work swiftly. At a single stroke, he conquered liberty and riches, and he conceived the idea of progress. If America seems to-day to symbolise this movement, which has turned the world topsy-turvy, the movement was derived from Europe. After having conceived the idea of such a revolution, could Europe remain untouched by it?
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It would appear then that the riddle of America is very simple. The answer contains nothing to make us uneasy. The riches of the New World threaten no catastrophe to the noblest traditions of our civilisation. For New York’s wealth is only a part of the riches produced in the same economic development in the two worlds. The ultimate development of these mighty riches might be merely a general advance, both material and ideal, of Europe and America. Rich and prosperous Americans might try to assimilate the culture of Europe, and on her part Europe, in her effort to increase her own riches, might seek to equal America. But a historian of antiquity who returns from America cannot share this optimism. In the lap of modern civilisation, there are twin worlds struggling with each other for leadership. But these two worlds are not, as people are apt to think, Europe and America. Their names are Quality and Quantity.
The civilisations from which our own is sprung were poor indeed. They set limits to their desires, their ambitions, their spirit of initiative, their audacity, their originality. They brought forth slowly and a little at a time, and suffered continuously from the insufficiency of their material resources. They looked upon the amassing of wealth merely as a painful necessity; but, in all things, they sought to attain the difficult model of perfection, whether in art, or in literature, or in the realms of morality and religion. The aristocratic character of almost all the industries of the past, the importance which was formerly bestowed on the decorative arts and on all questions of personal morality, ceremonial, and form—these are all proofs of it. It was Quality, not Quantity, which carried our forefathers forward. All the limitations to which these civilisations were subject, so astonishing to us to-day, were only the necessary cost of these perfections which men once so ardently desired. We have turned upside down the world our ancestors lived in. We have made our goal the multiplication of riches. We have won liberty, but we have been obliged to abandon almost all the ancient ideals of perfection, sacrificing Quality in everything.
How many of the difficulties which torture this brilliant period of ours so cruelly are the result of this duel between Quality and Quantity! Look, for example, at the present crisis in the study of the classics. Why did men formerly study Homer and Cicero with passionate zeal? Because, in those days, the great Greek and Latin writers were the models of that literary perfection, so greatly admired by the influential classes, which was not merely an ornament of the mind. The attainment of perfection often carried with it the admiration of the public, fame, sometimes even glory and high rank. In this last century, however, these models have lost much of their prestige, either on account of the multitude of literatures which have come to be known and liked, or because they have proved troublesome to a period compelled to write too much and too quickly. Just imagine a candidate for the presidency of the United States who should pronounce ten or fifteen long orations daily and who should in each discourse show himself the perfect orator according to the rules of Cicero or Quintilian! The day when classical culture ceased to be an official school of literary taste, on that day it was condemned to die; and scientific philology, which we have sought to set up in its place, can only serve to bury its corpse. No longer models for posterity, the books of the ancient authors have become like any others, and are less interesting for the majority of readers than the works of modern literatures.
It is the fashion nowadays to discuss the crisis which threatens all the arts. We must, however, remember to preserve a distinction. We must divide the arts into two categories: those which serve to amuse men by helping them to pass the time agreeably, like music, the theatre, and, to a certain degree, literature; and those which serve to beautify the world, like architecture, sculpture, painting, and all the decorative arts. It is patent that the crisis which we are considering is much more serious among the arts embraced by the second category. No epoch has spent so much money in beautifying the world as has our own; no age has supported so formidable an army of architects, sculptors, decorators, and cabinet-makers; no age has built so many cities, palaces, monuments, bridges, plazas, and gardens. In the midst of lavish plenty, why are we so discontented with the results obtained; why have not Americans, in view of the enormous sums which they have spent to beautify their cities, succeeded in building a St. Mark’s or a Notre Dame? They have all the materials,—money, artists, the desire to create beautiful things. What then do they lack? They lack one single thing—time.