The Spirit of America

by Henry Van Dyke

It is evident that such a list of names as I have been trying to give must necessarily be very imperfect. Many names of substantial value are omitted. The field is not completely covered. But at least it may serve to indicate some of the different schools and sources, and to give some idea of the large literary activity in which various elements and aspects of the Spirit of America have found and are finding expression.

III. The real value of literature is to be sought in its power to express and to impress. What relation does it bear to the interpretation of nature and life in a certain country at a certain time? That is the question in its historical form. How clearly, how beautifully, how perfectly, does it give that interpretation in concrete works of art? That is the question in its purely æsthetic form. What personal qualities, what traits of human temperament and disposition does it reveal most characteristically in the spirit of the land? That is the question in the form which belongs to the study of human nature.

It is in this last form that I wish to put the question, just now, in order to follow logically the line marked by the general title of these lectures. The Spirit of America is to be understood not only by the five elements of character which I have tried to sketch in outline,—the instinct of self-reliance, the love of fair-play, the energetic will, the desire of order, the ambition of self-development. It has also certain temperamental traits; less easy to define, perhaps; certainly less clearly shown in national and social institutions, but not less important to an intimate acquaintance with the people.

These temperamental traits are the very things which are most distinctive in literature. They give it colour and flavour. They are the things which touch it with personality. In American literature, if you look at it broadly, I think you will find four of these traits most clearly revealed,—a strong religious feeling, a sincere love of nature, a vivid sense of humour, and a deep sentiment of humanity.

(1) It may seem strange to say that a country which does not even name the Supreme Being in its national constitution, which has no established form of worship or belief, and whose public schools and universities are expressly disconnected from any kind of church control, is at the same time strongly religious, in its temperament. Yet strange as this seems, it is true of America.

The entire independence of Church and State was the result of a deliberate conviction, in which the interest of religion was probably the chief consideration. In the life of the people the Church has been not less, but more, potent than in most other countries. Professor Wendell was perfectly right in the lectures which he delivered in Paris four years ago, when he laid so much emphasis upon the influence of religion in determining the course of thought and the character of literature in America. Professor Münsterberg is thoroughly correct when he says in his excellent book The Americans, “The entire American people are in fact profoundly religious, and have been, from the day when the Pilgrim Fathers landed, down to the present moment.”

The proof of this is not to be seen merely in outward observance, though I suppose there is hardly any other country, except Scotland, in which there is so much church-going, Sabbath-keeping, and Bible-reading. It is estimated that less than fifteen of the eighty millions of total population are entirely out of touch with any church. But all this might be rather superficial, formal, conventional. It might be only a hypocritical cover for practical infidelity. And sometimes when one reads the “yellow journals” with their flaming exposures of social immorality, industrial dishonesty, and political corruption, one is tempted to think that it may be so.

Yet a broader, deeper, saner view,—a steady look into the real life of the typical American home, the normal American community,—reveals the fact that the black spots are on the surface and not in the heart of the country.

The heart of the people at large is still old-fashioned in its adherence to the idea that every man is responsible to a higher moral and spiritual power,—that duty is more than pleasure,—that life cannot be translated in terms of the five senses, and that the attempt to do so lowers and degrades the man who makes it,—that religion alone can give an adequate interpretation of life, and that morality alone can make it worthy of respect and admiration. This is the characteristic American way of looking at the complicated and interesting business of living which we men and women have upon our hands.

It is rather a sober and intense view. It is not always free from prejudice, from bigotry, from fanaticism, from superstition. It is open to invasion by strange and uncouth forms of religiosity. America has offered a fertile soil for the culture of new and queer religions. But on the whole,—yes, in immensely the larger proportion,—the old religion prevails, and a rather simple and primitive type of Christianity keeps its hold upon the hearts and minds of the majority. The consequence of this is (to quote again from Professor Münsterberg, lest you should think me a prejudiced reporter), that “however many sins there are, the life of the people is intrinsically pure, moral, and devout.” “The number of those who live above the general level of moral requirement is astonishingly large.”