The Americans

by Hugo Münsterberg

The real man, it is felt, is not affected by this differentiation, and it would not be worth while either to command or to obey if all men did not tacitly understand that each esteems the other as an equal. A division of labour is necessary, but as long as any one does the work apportioned to him he belongs of course to the fraternal circle, quite as well as the one who by reason of industrial conditions or natural talents comes to take a more distinguished or agreeable position. Whoever makes this claim honestly for himself assumes that every one else does likewise. On the other hand, whosoever thinks himself equal to those above him, but superior to those beneath him, conceives external differences to be intrinsic, and makes thus a presumptuous demand for himself. The man who truly sees social equality as a real part of the social contract, will feel toward those above as toward those below him. He will make his own claims good by the very act of recognizing the claims of others. The spirit of social self-assertion requires the intrinsic equality of all one’s neighbours who belong to the social community in question.

So long as one seeks equality by trying to imitate one’s more wealthy, more educated, or more powerful neighbours and trying to gloze over the differences, or by consciously lowering one’s self to the level of the poor, the uninfluential, and the uneducated, and either by spiritual or by material aid obliterating the distinction, one is not really believing in equality, but is considering the outer distinctions as something actual. Indeed, the zeal to wipe out distinctions is the most obvious admission that one feels actual differences to exist in the social fabric. Where the spirit of self-assertion, with the recognition of one’s neighbour as an equal social being, prevails, there will be no lack of striving for outward similarity, of trying to help one’s self along, and of helping others up to one’s own position; but this is looked on as a technical matter and not as referring intrinsically to the participants in the social game.

It is doubtful whether a European can fully appreciate this social point of view, because he is too apt to distort the idea into an ethical one. He is ready to abstract artificially from all social differences, and to put the ethical idea of moral equality in the stead of social differentiation. The social system is secondary then to the moral system, as in fact religion actually teaches. The American, however, goes in just the opposite direction. He presupposes, as a matter of course, that the citizens of the United States are socially equal, whether they live in the White House or work in the coal mine; and this point of view is not dependent on any ethical theory, but is itself the basis of such a theory. When we were speaking of the influence of religion on morality, we especially emphasized the fact that religious ethics are everywhere complemented by a purely social ethic, and now we meet this new form of ethics. Religion requires a morality of which the principle is clearly, though somewhat derogatorily, designated in philosophical discussions as the morality of submission, and which finds its counterpart in the ethical theories of moral lordship—the forcible and conscious suppression of the weak. Now the American constructs a morality of comradeship which is as far from the morality of submission as from that of lordship; which is unlike either the morality of the pietist based on the religious idea of immortality, or the morality of Nietzsche, based on biological exigencies. This morality of comradeship is based entirely on the idea of society.

This does not mean that it is a question of fulfilling moral requirements in order to escape social difficulties, or to gain social advantages, but of recognizing this morality simply as a social requirement. Such actions may be called moral because they are unselfish and arise from no other motive than that of the inner desire; and still they are not, in the ordinary sense, moral because they are not universally valid, and refer no further than the circle of the special social community. They may be compared to the requirements which arise in some communities out of a peculiar conception of honour; but the society here is a whole nation, without caste and without distinction. And, moreover, an idea of honour gets its force from the self-assertion of a personality, while the social morality of the American arises in a demand for the recognition of another. The fundamental feeling is that the whole social interplay would have no meaning, and social ambition and success would yield no pleasure, if it were not clearly understood that every other member of the social community is equal to one’s self, and that he has the absolute right to make such a claim.

The criminal and the man without honour have forfeited that right; they are excluded from the community and cut off from the social game. But distinctions of position, of education, of heredity, and of property, have nothing to do with this right. If we are to strive for social success, we must be perfectly sure at the outset that we are all comrades, participating in the various labours of the great gay world with mutual approval and mutual esteem; and we must show that we believe this, by our actions. And because here it is not a question of rigorous morality, but rather of the moral consequences of social ideals, the ethical goes by inappreciable steps into the ethically indifferent, into purely social customs and habits; and in many cases into evils and abuses that follow from the same social ideals. We may picture to ourselves the salient traits which are essential to this spirit of social self-assertion.

A stranger first notices, perhaps, the perfect confidence with which everybody goes about his business, without feeling oppressed by those above nor exalted by those beneath him. He feels himself an equal among equals. There is no condescension to those beneath nor servility to those above. The typical American feels himself in every social situation self-assured and equal; he is simply master of himself, polite but frank, reserved but always kind. He detests patronage and condescension as much as servility and obsequiousness. For condescension emphasizes the difference in the rank, and presumes to challenge a possible forgetting of this difference by suggesting that both the persons do recognize the distinction as intrinsic. A man who asserts his true equality and expects in every other honourable man the same self-assertion, scarcely understands how purely technical differences of social position can affect the inner relations of man to man.

One who grows up in such a social atmosphere does not lose his feeling of assurance on coming into quite a different society. Archibald Forbes, the Englishman, describes somewhere the American war correspondent, MacGahan, who was the son of an Ohio farmer, as he appeared in a Russian camp. “Never before,” writes Forbes, “have I seen a young man appear so confident among high officers and officials. There was no trace in his manner of impudence or presumption. It was as if he had conceived the matter on a single principle: I am a man—a man who, in an honourable way and for a specific purpose, which you know or which I will gladly tell you, needs something which you are best able to give me—information, a pass, or something of the sort; therefore I ask it of you. It is indifferent to the logic of the situation whether you are a small lieutenant or a general in command, a messenger boy, or an imperial chancellor.” And some one else has added, “MacGahan could do anything with Ignatieff; he calmly paid court to Mme. Ignatieff, patronized Prince Gortschakoff, and gave a friendly nod to the Grand Duke Nicholas.”

It is not surprising that Englishmen are the ones who feel this trait of the Americans most markedly. England, which is most similar to America politically, is, in this respect of real belief in social equality, most dissimilar; and in curious contrast to Russia, which is politically the very furthest removed from America, but which in its common life has developed most of all a feeling of social equality. And still the American feeling is very different from the Russian. In the Russian man, all the deeper sensibilities are coloured by a religious conception; he accounts himself at bottom, neither better nor worse than the most miserable: whereas the American feels, on the contrary, that he is at bottom not inferior to the very best. The Russian sense of equality pulls down and the American exalts.

As for the Englishman, Muirhead relates as follows in his book, “The Land of Contrasts”: “There is something wonderfully rare and delicate in the finest blossoms of American civilization—something that can hardly be paralleled in Europe. The mind that has been brought up in an atmosphere theoretically free from all false standards and conventional distinctions acquires a singularly unbiased, detached, absolute, purely human way of viewing life. In Matthew Arnold’s phrase, ‘it sees life steadily and sees it whole’; just this attitude seems unattainable in England; neither in my reading nor my personal experience have I encountered what I mean elsewhere than in America.... The true-born American is absolutely incapable of comprehending the sense of difference between a lord and a plebeian that is forced on the most philosophical among ourselves by the mere pressure of the social atmosphere. It is for him a fourth dimension of space; it may be talked about, but practically it has no existence.... The British radical philosopher may attain the height of saying, ‘With a great sum obtained I this freedom’; the American may honestly reply, ‘But I was free-born.’”

But what Muirhead thus says of the colour of the finest flowers is true, if we look more closely, of the entire flora; it may not be so delicate and exquisite as in these flowers; it is often mixed with cruder colours, but every plant on American soil, if it is not just an ordinary weed, has a little of that dye.