The Spirit of America

by Henry Van Dyke

But then I began to remember that those farms of New England and New York and New Jersey were won only a few generations ago from a trackless and savage wilderness; that the breadth of their acres had naturally tempted the farmer to neglect the less fruitful for the more productive; that Nature herself had put a larger premium upon energy than upon parsimony in these first efforts to utilize her resources; and that, after all, what I wished to describe and prove was not an outward triumph of universal orderliness in material things, but an inward desire of order, the wish to have a common life well arranged and regulated, tranquil and steady.

Here I began to see my way more clear. Those farms of eastern America, which would look to a foreigner so rude and ill-kept, have nourished a race of men and women in whom regularity and moral steadiness and consideration of the common welfare have been characteristic traits. Their villages and towns, with few exceptions, are well cared for physically; and socially, to use a phrase which I heard from one of my guides in Maine, they are “as calm as a clock.” They have their Village Improvement Societies, their Lyceum Lecture Courses, their Public Libraries, their churches (often more than they need), and their schoolhouses, usually the finest of all their buildings. They have poured into the great cities, year after year, an infusion of strong and pure American blood which has been of the highest value, not only in filling the arteries of industry and trade and the professions with a fresh current of vigorous life, but also in promoting the rapid assimilation of the mass of foreign immigrants. They have sent out a steady flood of westward-moving population which has carried with it the ideals and institutions, the customs and the habits, of common order and social coöperation.

On the crest of the advancing wave, to be sure, there is a picturesque touch of foam and fury. The first comers, the prospectors, miners, ranchers, land-grabbers, lumbermen, adventurers, are often rough and turbulent, careless of the amenities, and much given to the profanities. But they are the men who break the way and open the path. Behind them come the settlers bringing the steady life.

I could wish the intelligent foreigner to see the immense corn-fields of Indiana, Illinois, and Kansas, the vast wheat-fields of the Northwest, miles and miles of green and golden harvest, cultivated, reaped, and garnered with a skill and accuracy which resembles the movements of a mighty army. I could wish him to see the gardens and orchards of the Pacific slope, miles and miles of opulent bloom and fruitage, watered by a million streams, more fertile than the paradise of Damascus. I could wish him to see the towns and little cities which have grown up as if by magic everywhere, each one developing an industry, a social life, a civic consciousness of its own, in forms which, though often bare and simple, are almost always regular and respectable even to the point of monotony. Then perhaps he would believe that the race which has done these things in a hundred years has a real and deep instinct of common order.

But the peculiarly American quality in this instinct is its individualism. It does not wish to be organized. It wishes to organize itself. It craves form, but it dislikes formality. It prizes and cherishes the sense of voluntary effort more than the sense of obedience. It has its eye fixed on the end which it desires, a peaceable and steady life, a tranquil and prosperous community. It sometimes overlooks the means which are indirectly and obscurely serviceable to that end. It is inclined to be suspicious of any routine or convention whose direct practical benefit is not self-evident. It has a slight contempt for etiquette and manners as superficial things. Its ideal is not elegance, but utility; not a dress-parade, but a march in comradeship toward a common goal. It is reluctant to admit the value of the parade even as a discipline and preparation for the march. Often it demands so much liberty for the individual that the smooth interaction of the different parts of the community is disturbed or broken.

The fabric of common order in America is sound and strong at the centre. The pattern is well-marked, and the threads are firmly woven. But the edges are ragged and unfinished. Many of our best cities have a fringe of ugliness and filth around them which is like a torn and bedraggled petticoat on a woman otherwise well dressed.

Approaching New York, or Cincinnati, or Pittsburg, or Chicago, you pass first through a delightful region, where the homes of the prosperous are spread upon the hills, reminding you of a circle of Paradise; and then through a region of hideous disorder and new ruins, which has the aspect of a circle of Purgatory, and makes you doubt whether it is safe to go any farther for fear you may come to a worse place. This neglected belt of hideous suburbs around some of the richest cities in the world is typical and symbolical. It speaks of the haste with which things have been done; of the tendency to overlook detail, provided the main purpose is accomplished; of the lack of thoroughness, and the indifference to appearance, which are common American faults. It suggests, also, the resistance which a strong spirit of individualism offers to civic supervision and control; the tenacity with which men cling to their supposed right to keep their houses in dirt and disorder; the difficulty of making them comply with general laws of sanitation and public improvement; and the selfishness with which land-owners will leave their neglected property to disfigure the city from whose growth they expect in ten or twenty years to reap a large profit.

Yet, as a matter of fact, this very typical mark of an imperfect sense of the value of physical neatness and orderliness in American life is not growing, but diminishing. The fringes of the cities are not nearly as bad as they were thirty or forty years ago. In many of them,—notably in Philadelphia and Boston and some of the western cities,—beauty has taken the place of ugliness. Parks and playgrounds have been created where formerly there were only waste places filled with rubbish. Tumble-down shanties give way to long rows of trim little houses. Even the factories cease to look like dingy prisons and put on an air of self-respect. Nuisances are abolished. The country can draw near to the city without holding its nose.

This gradual improvement, also, is symbolical. It speaks of individualism becoming conscious of its own defects and dangers. It speaks of an effort on the part of the more intelligent and public-spirited citizens to better the conditions of life for all. It speaks of a deep instinct in the people which responds to these efforts and supports them with the necessary laws and enactments. It speaks most of all, I hope, of that underlying sense of common order which is one of the qualities of the Spirit of America.

Let me illustrate this, first, by some observations on the average American crowd.