The Spirit of America

by Henry Van Dyke

La vie intense—which is the polite French translation of “the strenuous life”—is regarded as the unanimous choice of the Americans, who are never happy unless they are doing something, and never satisfied until they have made a great deal of money. The current view in Europe considers them as a well-meaning people enslaved by their own restless activity, bound to the service of gigantic industries, and captive to the adoration of a golden idol. But curiously enough they are often supposed to be unconscious both of the slavery and of the idolatry; in weaving the shackles of industrious materialism they imagine themselves to be free and strong; in bowing down to the Almighty Dollar they ignorantly worship an unknown god.

This European view of American energy, and its inexplicable nature, and its terrible results, seems to have something of the fairy tale about it. It is like the story of a giant, dreadful, but not altogether convincing. It lacks discrimination. In one point, at least, it is palpably incorrect. And with that point I propose to begin a more careful, and perhaps a more sane, consideration of the whole subject.

It is evidently not true that America is ignorant of the dangers that accompany her immense development of energy and its application in such large measure to material ends. Only the other day I was reading a book by an American about his country, which paints the picture in colours as fierce and forms as flat as the most modern of French decadent painters would use.

The author says: “There stands America, engaged in this superb struggle to dominate Nature and put the elements into bondage to man. Involuntarily all talents apply themselves to material production. No wonder that men of science no longer study Nature for Nature’s sake; they must perforce put her powers into harness; no wonder that professors no longer teach knowledge for the sake of knowledge; they must make their students efficient factors in the industrial world; no wonder that clergymen no longer preach repentance for the sake of the kingdom of heaven; they must turn churches into prosperous corporations, multiplying communicants and distributing Christmas presents by the gross. Industrial civilization has decreed that statesmanship shall consist of schemes to make the nation richer, that presidents shall be elected with a view to the stock-market, that literature shall keep close to the life of the average man, and that art shall become national by means of a protective tariff....

“The process of this civilization is simple: the industrial habit of thought moulds the opinion of the majority, which rolls along, abstract and impersonal, gathering bulk till its giant figure is selected as the national conscience. As in an ecclesiastical state of society decrees of a council become articles of private faith, and men die for homoöusion or election, so in America the opinions of the majority, once pronounced, become primary rules of conduct.... The central ethical doctrine of industrial thought is that material production is the chief duty of man.”

The author goes on to show that the acceptance of this doctrine has produced in America “conventional sentimentality” in the emotional life, “spiritual feebleness” in the religious life, “formlessness” in the social life, “self-deception” in the political life, and a “slovenly” intelligence in all matters outside of business. “We accept sentimentality,” he says, “because we do not stop to consider whether our emotional life is worth an infusion of blood and vigour, rather than because we have deliberately decided that it is not. We neglect religion, because we cannot spare time to think what religion means, rather than because we judge it only worth a conventional lip service. We think poetry effeminate, because we do not read it, rather than because we believe its effect injurious. We have been swept off our feet by the brilliant success of our industrial civilization; and, blinded by vanity, we enumerate the list of our exports, we measure the swelling tide of our national prosperity; but we do not stop even to repeat to ourselves the names of other things.”

This rather sweeping indictment against a whole civilization reminds me of the way in which one of my students once defined rhetoric. “Rhetoric,” said this candid youth, “is the art of using words so as to make statements which are not entirely correct look like truths which nobody can deny.”

The description of America given by her sad and angry friend resembles one of those relentless portraits which are made by rustic photographers. The unmitigated sunlight does its worst through an unadjusted lens; and the result is a picture which is fearfully and wonderfully made. “It looks like her,” you say, “it looks horribly like her. But thank God I never saw her look just like that.”

No one can deny that the life of America has developed more rapidly and more fully on the industrial side than on any other. No one can deny that the larger part, if not the better part, of her energy and effort has gone into the physical conquest of nature and the transformation of natural resources into material wealth. No one can deny that this undue absorption in one side of life has resulted in a certain meagreness and thinness on other sides. No one can deny that the immense prosperity of America, and her extraordinary success in agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and finance have produced a swollen sense of importance, which makes the country peddler feel as if he deserved some credit for the $450,000,000 balance of foreign trade in favour of the United States in 1907, and the barber’s apprentice congratulate himself that American wealth is reckoned at $116,000,000,000, nearly twice that of the next richest country in the world. This feeling is one that has its roots in human nature. The very cabin-boy on a monstrous ocean steamship is proud of its tonnage and speed.

But that this spirit is not universal nor exclusive, that there are some Americans who are not satisfied—who are even rather bitterly dissatisfied—with $116,000,000,000 as a statement of national achievement, the book from which I have quoted may be taken as a proof. There are still better proofs to be found, I think, in the earnestly warning voices which come from press and pulpit against the dangers of commercialism, and in the hundreds of thousands of noble lives which are freely consecrated to ideals in religion, in philanthropy, in the service of man’s intellectual and moral needs. These services are ill-paid in America, as indeed they are everywhere, but there is no lack of men and women who are ready and glad to undertake them.