The Americans

by Hugo Münsterberg

As to the estimation of money and its acquirement, France and the United States are indeed as far apart as possible, while Germany stands in between. The Frenchman prizes money as such; if he can get it without labour, by inheritance or dowry, or by gambling, so much the better. If he loses it he loses a part of himself, and when he has earned enough to be sure of a livelihood, he retires from money-making pursuits as soon as possible. It is well known that the ambition of the average Frenchman is to be a rentier. The American has exactly the opposite idea. Not only does he endure loss with indifference and despise gain which is not earned, but he would not for any price give up the occupation of making money. Whether he has much or little, he keeps patiently at work; and, as no scholar or artist would ever think of saying that he had done enough work, and would from now on become a scientific or literary rentier and live on his reputation, so no American, as long as he keeps his health, thinks of giving up his regular business.

The profession of living from the income of investments is virtually unknown among men, and the young men who take up no money-making profession because they “don’t need to,” are able to retain the social respect of their fellows only by undertaking some sort of work for the commonwealth. A man who does not work at anything, no matter how rich he is, can neither get nor keep a social status.

This also indicates, then, that the American does not want his money merely as a means for material comfort. Of course, wealthy Americans are becoming more and more accustomed to provide every thinkable luxury for their wives and daughters. Nowhere is so much expended for dresses, jewelry, equipages and service, for country houses and yachts, works of art and private libraries; and many men have to keep pretty steadily at work year in and year out in order to meet their heavy expenditures. And the same thing is repeated all down the social scale. According to European standards, even the working-man lives luxuriously. But, in spite of this, no person who has really come into the country will deny that material pleasures are less sought after for themselves in the New World than in the Old. It always strikes the European as remarkable how very industrious American society is, and how relatively little bent on pleasure. It has often been said that the American has not yet learned how to enjoy life; that he knows very well how to make money, but not how to enjoy it. And that is quite true; except that it leaves out of account the main point—which is, that the American takes the keenest delight in the employment of all his faculties in his work, and in the exercise of his own initiative. This gives him more pleasure than the spending of money could bring him.

It is, therefore, fundamentally false to stigmatize the American as a materialist, and to deny his idealism. A people is supposed to be thoroughly materialistic when its sphere of interests comprises problems relating only to the world of matter, and fancies itself to be highly idealistic when it is mainly concerned with intangible objects. But this is a pure confusion of ideas. In philosophy, indeed, the distinction between materialistic and idealistic systems of thought is to be referred to the importance ascribed to material and to immaterial objects. Materialism is, then, that pseudo-philosophical theory which supposes that all reality derives from the existence of material objects; and it is an idealistic system which regards the existence of matter as dependent on the reality of thought. But it is mere play on words to call nations realistic or idealistic on the strength of these metaphysical conceptions, instead of using the words in their social and ethical significations. For in the ethical world a materialistic position would be one in which the aim of life was enjoyment, while that point of view would be idealistic which found its motive not in the pleasant consequences of the deed, but in the value of the deed itself.

If we hold fast to the meaning of materialism and idealism in this ethical sense, we shall see clearly that it is entirely indifferent whether the people who have these diametrically opposed views of life are themselves busy with tangible or with intangible things. The man who looks at life materialistically acts, not for the act itself, but for the comfortable consequences which that act may have; and these consequences may satisfy the selfish pleasure as well if they are immaterial as if they are material objects. It is indifferent whether he works for the satisfaction of the appetites, for the hoarding up of treasures, or for the gratification to be found in politics, science, and art. He is still a materialist so long as he has not devotion, so long as he uses art only as a means to pleasure, science only as a source of fame, politics as a source of power; and, in general, so long as the labour that he does is only the means to an end. But the man who is an idealist in life acts because he believes in the value of the deed. It makes no difference to him whether he is working on material or intellectual concerns; whether he speaks or rhymes, paints, governs, or judges; or whether he builds bridges and railroad tracks, drains swamps and irrigates deserts, delves into the earth, or harnesses the forces of nature. In this sense the culture of the Old World threatens at a thousand points to become crassly materialistic, and not least of all just where it most loudly boasts of intellectual wealth and looks down with contempt on everything which is material. And in this sense the culture of the New World is growing to the very purest idealism, and by no means least where it is busy with problems of the natural world of matter, and where it is heaping up economic wealth.

This is the main point: The economic life means to the American a realizing of efforts which are in themselves precious. It is not the means to an end, but is its own end. If two blades of grass grow where one grew before, or two railroad tracks where there was but one; if production, exchange, and commerce increase and undertaking thrives, then life is created, and this is, in itself, a precious thing. The European of the Continent esteems the industrial life as honest, but not as noble; economic activities seem to him good for supporting himself and his family, but his duty is merely to supply economic needs which are now existing.

The merchant in Europe does not feel himself to be a free creator like the artist or scholar: he is no discoverer, no maker; and the mental energy which he expends he feels to be spent in serving an inferior purpose, which he serves only because he has to live. That creating economic values can itself be the very highest sort of accomplishment, and in itself alone desirable, whether or not it is useful for the person who creates, and that it is great in itself to spread and increase the life of the national economic organization, has been, indeed, felt by many great merchants in the history of Europe, and many a Hanseatic leader realizes it to-day. But the whole body of people in Europe does not know this, while America is thoroughly filled with the idea. Just as Hutten once cried: “Jahrhundert, es ist eine Lust, in dir zu leben: die Wissenschaften und die Künste blühen,” so the American might exclaim: It is a pleasure to live in our day and generation; industry and commerce now do thrive. Every individual feels himself exalted by being a part of such a mighty whole, and the general intellectual effects of this temper show themselves in the entire national life.

A nation can never do its best in any direction unless it believes thoroughly in the intrinsic value of its work; whatever is done merely through necessity is never of great national significance, and second-rate men never achieve the highest things. If the first minds of a nation look down with contempt on economic life, if there is no real belief in the ideal value of industry, and if creative minds hold aloof from it, that nation will necessarily be outdone by others in the economic field. But where the ablest strength engages with idealistic enthusiasm in the service of the national economic problems, the nation rewards what the people do as done in the name of civilization, and the love of fame and work together spur them on more than the material gain which they will get. Indeed, this gain is itself only their measure of success in the service of civilization.

The American merchant works for money in exactly the sense that a great painter works for money; the high price which is paid for his picture is a very welcome indication of the general appreciation of his art: but he would never get this appreciation if he were working for the money instead of his artistic ideals. Economically to open up this gigantic country, to bring the fields and forests, rivers and mountains into the service of economic progress, to incite the millions of inhabitants to have new needs and to satisfy these by their own resourcefulness, to increase the wealth of the nation, and finally economically to rule the world and within the nation itself to raise the economic power of the individual to undreamt-of importance, has been the work which has fascinated the American. And every individual has felt his co-operation to be ennobled by his firm belief in the value of such an aim for the culture of the world.

To find one’s self in the service of this work of progress attracts even the small boy. As a German boy commences early to write verses or draw little sketches, in America the young farmer lad or city urchin tries to come somehow into this national, industrial activity; and whether he sells newspapers on the street or milks the cow on a neighbour’s farm, he is proud of the few cents which he brings home—not because it is money, but because he has earned it, and the coins are the only possible proof that his activities have contributed to the economic life of his country. It is this alone which spurs him on and fills him with ambition; and if the young newspaper boy becomes a great railroad president, or the farmer’s lad a wealthy factory owner, and both, although worth their millions, still work on from morning till night consumed by the thought of adding to the economic life of their nation, and to this end undertake all sorts of new enterprises, the labour itself has been, from beginning to end, its own reward. The content of such a man’s life is the work of economic progress.