Thus, and thus only, the real man, the entire man, would become more clear to me. He might appear more or less admirable. I might like him more, or less. That would make no difference. The one thing that is sure is that I should know him better. I should know the soul of the man.
If this is true, then, of the individual, how much more is it true of a nation, a people? The inward life, the real life, the animating and formative life of a people is infinitely difficult to discern and understand.
There are a hundred concourses of travel in modern Europe where you may watch “the passing show” of all nations with vast amusement,—on the Champs-Elysées in May or June, in the park of Aix-les-Bains in midsummer, at the Italian Lakes in autumn, in the colonnade of Shepherd’s Hotel at Cairo in January or February, on the Pincian Hill at Rome in March or April. Take your seats, ladies and gentlemen, at this continuous performance, this international vaudeville, and observe British habits, French manners, German customs, American eccentricities, whatever interests you in the varied entertainment. But do not imagine that in this way you will learn to know the national personality of England, or France, or Germany, or America. That is something which is never exported.
Some drop of tincture or extract of it, indeed, may pass from one land to another in a distinct and concentrated individuality, as when a Lafayette comes to America, or a Franklin to France. Some partial portrait and imperfect image of it, indeed, may be produced in literature. And there the reader who is wise enough to separate the head-dress from the head, and to discern the figure beneath the costume, may trace at least some features of the real life represented and expressed in poem or romance, in essay or discourse. But even this literature, in order to be vitally understood, must be interpreted in relation to the life of the men who have produced it and the men for whom it was produced.
Authors are not algebraic quantities,—X, Y, Z, &c. They express spiritual actions and reactions in the midst of a given environment. What they write is in one sense a work of art, and therefore to be judged accurately by the laws of that art. But when this judgment is made, when the book has been assigned its rank according to its substance, its structure, its style, there still remains another point of view from which it is to be considered. The book is a document of life. It is the embodiment of a spiritual protest, perhaps; or it is the unconscious confession of an intellectual ambition; or it is an appeal to some popular sentiment; or it is the expression of the craving for some particular form of beauty or joy; or it is a tribute to some personal or social excellence; or it is the record of some vision of perfection seen in
“The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the poet’s dream.”
In every case, it is something that comes out of a heritage of ideals and adds to them.
The possessor of this heritage is the soul of a people. This soul of a people lives at home.
It is for this reason that America has been imperfectly understood, and in some respects positively misunderstood in Europe. The American tourists, who have been numerous (and noticeable) on all the European highways of pleasure and byways of curiosity during the last forty years, have made a vivid impression on the people of the countries which they have visited. They are recognized. They are remembered. It is not necessary to inquire whether this recognition contains more of admiration or of astonishment, whether the forms which it often takes are flattering or the reverse. On this point I am sufficiently American myself to be largely indifferent. But the point on which I feel strongly is that the popular impression of America which is derived only or chiefly from the observation of American travellers is, and must be, deficient, superficial, and in many ways misleading.
If this crowd of American travellers were a hundred times as numerous, it would still fail to be representative, it would still be unable to reveal the Spirit of America, just because it is composed of travellers.