The Americans

by Hugo Münsterberg

Differentiation, once more, works not merely upward, but also downward; the public leader pushes himself ahead, and at the same time the great masses are looking for some one whom they may follow. It is not a matter of subjection, but of confidence—confidence in men who are recognizedly better than many others. There can be no doubt that a reaction is going on throughout America to-day, not against democracy, but against those opinions which have prevailed in the democracy ever since the days of the pioneers. A great many people feel instinctively that the time is ripe to oppose the one-sidedness of domination by the masses; people are forcibly impressed by the fact that in politics, government, literature and art, the great achievements are thwarted by vulgar influences, that the original individual is impressed into the ordinary mould, and that dilettanteism and mediocrity rule triumphant and keep out the best talents from public life. People see the tyranny of greed, the reproach of municipal corruption, the unwholesome influence of a sensational press and of unscrupulous capital. They see how public life becomes blatant, irresponsible, and vulgar; how all authority and respect must disappear if democracy is not to be curbed at any point.

The time has come, a great many feel, in which the moral influence of authority is needed, and the educational influence of those more cultivated persons who will not yield to the æsthetic tastes of the vulgar must be infused into the democracy. The trained man must speak where the masses would otherwise act from mere caprice; the disciplined mind must lead where incompetence is heading for blind alleys; the best minds must have some say and people must be forced to listen, so that other voices and opinions shall have weight than those that make the babel of the streets. The eclectic must prevail over the vulgar taste, and the profound over the superficial, since it is clear that only in that way will America advance beyond her present stage of development. America has created a new political world, and must now turn to æsthetics and culture. Such a reaction has not happened to-day or yesterday, but has been going on steadily in the last few decades, and to-day it is so strong as to overcome all resistance. The desire for the beauty and dignity of culture, for authority and thoroughness, is creeping into every corner of American life.

The time is already passing which would do away with all discipline and submission in school and family life; public life brings the trained expert everywhere into prominence. The disgust at the vulgarity of daily life, as in the visible appearance of city streets, increases rapidly. The sense of beauty is everywhere at work; and men of taste, education, and traditions, rather than the city fathers who are elected by the rabble, are finally being called to positions of leadership. The democratic spirit is not crumbling, and certainly the rights of the masses are not to be displaced by the rights of the better educated and more æsthetic; but democracy is in a way to be perfected, to be brought as high as it can be brought by giving a representation to really all the forces that are in the social organism, and by not permitting the more refined ones to be suppressed by the weight of the masses. The nation has come to that maturity where the public is ready to let itself be led by the best men.

It is true that the public taste still prevails too widely in many branches of social life; there is too much triviality; too many institutions are built on the false principles that everybody knows best what is good for him, and too many undertakings flatter the taste which they should educate. But opposite tendencies are present everywhere. The more the economic development of the country is rounded off, the greater is its demand for social differentiation, for the recognition of certain influences as superior, for subordination, and for finer organization. Just as economic life has long since given up free competition, and the great corporations show admirably that subordination is necessary to great purposes, and the world of labour has become an army with strictest discipline and blind allegiance, so in the non-economic world a tendency toward subordination, individuation, and aristocracy becomes every moment more evident.

To this tendency there is added the new conception of the state. Democracy is, from the outset, individualistic. We have seen everywhere that the fundamental force in this community is the belief of every man in his own personality and that of others. The state has been the sum total of individuals, and the state as something more than the individual has appeared as a bare abstraction. The individual alone has asserted itself, perfected and guided itself, and taken all the initiative. And this belief in the person is no less firm to-day; but another belief has come up. This is a belief in the ethical reality of the state. Public opinion is still afraid that if this belief increases, the old confidence in the value of the individual, and therewith of all the fundamental virtues of American democracy, may be shaken. But the belief spreads from day to day, and produces its change in public opinion. Politics are trending as are so many other branches of life; the emphasis is passing from the individual to the totality. As we have seen that the Americans adorned their houses before their public buildings, quite the opposite of what Europeans have done, so they have given political value to the millions of individuals long before they laid weight on the one collective will of the state. The men who would have sacrificed everything rather than cheat their neighbours have had no conscientious scruples in plundering the state.

It is different to-day. The feeling grows that honour toward the state, sacrifice for it, and confidence in it are even more important than the respect for the totality of individuals. These opinions cannot be spread abroad without having their far-reaching consequences; the state is visible only in symbols, and its representatives get their significance by symbolizing not the population, but the abstract state. The individual representative of government is thus exalted personally above the democratic level. To fill an office means not merely to do work, but to experience a broadening of personality, much as that which the priest feels in his office; it is an enlargement which demands on the other side respect and subordination. This tendency is still in its beginnings, and will never be so strong as in Europe, because the self-assertion of the individual is too lively. Nevertheless, these new notes in the harmony are much louder and more persistent than they were ten years ago.

Thus there are many forces which work to check the spirit of self-assertion; in spite of the liveliest feeling of equality, a social differentiation is practically working itself out in all American life. Differences of occupation are, perhaps, the least significant; a profession which has such a great claim to superiority as, for instance, that of the army officer in Germany, does not exist in the United States. Perhaps the legal profession would be looked on as the most important, and certainly it absorbs a very large proportion of the best strength of the nation. The high position given the jurist is probably in good part because, unlike his Continental colleague, as we have explained at length, he actually takes part in shaping the law. In a different way the preacher is very greatly respected, but his profession decreases slowly in attractiveness for the best talents of the country. The academic professions, on the other hand, have drawn such talent more and more, and will continue to do so as the distinction grows sharper between the college teacher and the real university professor. The pre-eminently reproductive activities are naturally less enticing than those which are creative, and wherever talent is attracted it quickly accomplishes great things, and these work to improve the social status of the profession. The political profession, as such, is far down in the scale; only governors, senators, and the highest ministerial officials play an important social part. Of course, one cannot speak of the especial recognition of mercantile or industrial professions, because these offer too great a variety of attainment; but certainly their most influential representatives are socially inferior to none in the community.

Social differentiation does not rest on a sharp discrimination of profession, and yet it is realized from the highest to the lowest circles of society, and to a degree which fifty years ago would have greatly antagonized at least the entire northern part of the country. In Washington, the exclusive hostess invites only the wives of senators, but not those of representatives, to her table; and in the Bowery, according to the accounts, the children of the peanut vendor do not deign to play with the children of the hurdy-gurdy man, who are vastly more humble. The Four Hundred in the large city quietly but resolutely decline to invite newly made millionaires to dinner; and the seamstress, who comes to the house to sew or mend, refuses to sit down at table with the servants. Already, in the large cities, the children of better families are not sent to public, but to private schools. The railroads have only one class of passenger coach; but the best society declines that, and rides in the Pullman cars. The same distinctions hold everywhere, and not merely as a matter of greater luxury for the rich, but as a real social distinction. At the theatre, the person who socially belongs in the parquet prefers to sit in one of the worst seats there to going into the balcony, where he does not belong, even though he might hear and see better.

The increasing sympathy with badges, costumes, and uniforms—in short, with the symbols of differentiation—is very typical. There was a time in which a free American would have refused to wear a special livery; but to-day nobody objects, from the elevator boy to the judge, to wear the marks of office. The holiday processions of working-men and veterans become gayer and gayer. Those who have seen the recent inaugurations of the presidents of Yale and Columbia have witnessed parades of hundreds of gay and, it seemed, partly fantastic costumes, such as are now worn at every university celebration in America—symbolic emblems which would have seemed impossible in this monotonous democracy twenty years ago.

The inner life of universities gives also lively indication of social cleavage. In Harvard and Yale, there are exclusive clubs of the social leaders among the students. It is true that hundreds of students go through the university without paying any attention to such things; but there are almost as many more whose chief ambition is to be elected into an exclusive circle, and who would feel compensated by no sort of scientific success if they were disappointed in their aspirations for club life. In the same way many families which have become wealthy in the West move to New York or Boston, in the vain hope of breaking into society. The social difference between near-lying residential sections is, indeed, much greater than in Europe; and real estate on a street which comes to be occupied by socially inferior elements rapidly depreciates, because the inhabitants of any residential section must stand on the same plane.