It would take a lively partisan to assert, as one sometimes does, that this Constitution is the greatest achievement of human intellect, and yet the severest critics have acknowledged that a genius for statesmanship is displayed in its text. Penned in an age which was given over to bombastic declamation, this document lays down the fundamental lines of the new government with great clearness and simplicity. “We, the people of the United States,” it begins, “in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” This is the entire introduction. The contents come under seven articles. The first article provides for the making of laws, this power to be vested in a Congress consisting of a Senate and House of Representatives; for the business and daily routine of this Congress, as well as its powers and obligations. The second article provides for the executive power, to be vested in the person of the President, who is elected every fourth year; the third article provides for a judiciary; the fourth defines the mutual relations of separate states; and the last three articles concern the adoption of the Constitution and the conditions under which it may be amended.
The need of amendments and extensions to this Constitution was foreseen and provided for. How profoundly the original document comprehended and expressed the genius of the American people may be seen from the fact that during a century which saw an unexampled growth of the country and an undreamed-of transformation of its foreign policy, not a single great principle of the Constitution was modified. After seventy-seven years one important paragraph was added, prohibiting slavery; and this change was made at a tremendous cost of blood. Otherwise the few amendments have been insignificant and concerned matters of expediency or else, and more specially, further formulations of what, according to American conceptions, are the rights of the individual. Although the original Constitution did not contain a formal proclamation of religious freedom, freedom of speech, of the press, and of public assemblage, this was not because those who signed the document did not believe in these things, but because they had not aimed to make of the Constitution of the Union either a treatise on ethics or yet a book of law. But as early as 1789 the states insisted that all the rights of the individual, as endorsed by the national ideals, should be incorporated in the articles of this document. In the year 1870 one more tardy straggler was added to the list of human rights, the last amendment; the right of the citizens to vote was not to be abridged on account of race, colour, or previous condition of servitude.
Of the other amendments, the tenth had been tacitly assumed from the first year of the Republic; this was that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This principle also was surely in no way at variance with the spirit of the original document. It was, indeed, the lever that ensured the great efficacy of the Constitution, so that by its provisions the centrifugal forces were never disturbed by centripetal ones; an equilibrium was effected between the tendencies that made for unity and those that made against it, in such a way that the highest efficiency was ensured to the whole while the fullest encouragement was given to the enterprise and initiative of the parts. In no direction, probably, would an improvement have been possible. More authority concentrated at the head would have impeded general activity, and less would have lost the advantages of concerted action; in neither case would material growth or the reconciliation of conflicting opinions have been possible. Constant compensation of old forces and the quickening of new ones were the secret of this documented power, and yet it was only the complete expression of the spirit of self-direction, which demands unremittingly that the nation as a whole shall conduct itself without encroaching on the freedom of the individual, and that the individual shall be free to go his own ways without interfering with the unfettered policy of the nation.
Under the auspices of this Constitution the country waxed and throve. As early as 1803 its land area was doubled by the accession of Louisiana, which had been ceded by Spain to France, and was now purchased from Napoleon for fifteen million dollars—an event of such far-reaching importance that the people of St. Louis have not inappropriately invited the nations of the earth to participate in a Louisiana Purchase Exposition. In 1845 Texas was taken into the Union, it having broken away from Mexico just previously and constituted itself an independent state. The large region on the Pacific slope known as Oregon came in 1846 to the United States by treaty with England, and when finally, in 1847, after the war with Mexico, New Mexico and California became the spoils of the victor and in 1867 Russia relinquished Alaska, the domain of the country was found to have grown from its original size of 324,000 square miles to one of 3,600,000. The thirteen states had become forty-five, since the newly acquired lands had to be divided. But all this growth brought no alteration in the Constitution, whose spirit of self-direction, rather, had led to this magnificent development, had fortified and secured the country, and inspired it with energy and contentment. The population also has grown under this benevolent Constitution. Millions have flocked hither to seek and to find prosperity on this new and inexhaustible soil. The area has increased tenfold, but the population twenty-fold; and the newcomers have been disciplined in the school of self-direction and educated to the spirit of American citizenship.
There is a certain kind of character which must be developed in this school. It is true, of course, that there is no one model which just fits every one, the native-born Yankee as well as the European immigrant, the farmer as well as the resident in cities. The Irish-American is not the German-American, nor is the New Englander like the Virginian, nor the son of the East like his brother in the West. The infinite shadings of personal character, temperament, and capacity which nature has produced, have, of course, not been lost. And, nevertheless, just as the human race in America has begun to differentiate into a species which is anthropologically distinct, and this partly under the influence of the climate since the species has several characters in common with the aboriginal Indian, so also in the moral atmosphere of this body-politic a distinct type of human character is undoubtedly being evolved; and one may note with perpetual surprise how little the other great divisions of social life, as of rich and poor, cultivated and ignorant, native-born and immigrant, manual labourer and brain-worker—how little these differentiate the American citizen in his political capacity. Of course only the political life is in question here; that new groupings and divisions are being continually formed in the economic, intellectual, and social life need not concern us for the present. In the individual it may not be easy to follow the threads through the tissue of his psychic motions, but in the abstract and schematic picture of the type it is by no means impossible to trace them out.
What is it, then, which the American has gotten from his training? Many and apparently unrelated lessons are taught in the school of self-direction, and perhaps none of them are without their dangers. For it is here not a matter of theoretical knowledge, which may be remembered or forgotten and may be well or ill selected, but which in itself involves no scale of excellence and, therefore, has no need to be tempered or restrained. Theoretical knowledge cannot be overdone or exaggerated into untruth. But the practical conduct which is here in question is different; it involves an ideal, and in such a way that a man may not only misapprehend or forget what is the best course of action, but also he may err in following it, he may give it undue place and so neglect opposing motives which in their place are no less requisite. In short, conduct, unlike knowledge, demands a fine tact and unflagging discernment for the fitness of things. In this sense it cannot be denied that the teaching of American democracy is itself the source of serious errors, and that the typical American citizen is by no means free from the failings of his virtues. His fundamental traits may be briefly sketched, and from the excellencies which he strives for many of his defects can be understood.
There is, firstly, a group of closely related impulses, which springs from the American’s unbounded belief in his own strength, a trait which in the last analysis must be, of course, the foundation-stone of any doctrine of self-direction. He will not wait for others to look out for him, counsel him, or take cognizance of his interests, but relies wholly on his own judgment and his own strength, and believes no goal too high for his exertions to attain. Every true American will have found in himself some trace of this spirit. Each day of his life has suggested it to him, and all the institutions of his country have reinforced the teaching. Its most immediate result is such a strength of initiative as no other people on earth possesses, an optimism, a self-reliance and feeling of security which contribute more than half to his success. Faint heart is not in the American’s dictionary. Individual, corporation, or country may be undecided, and dispute whether a certain end is desirable or whether a certain means is best to a given end, but no one ever doubts or goes into his work with misgivings lest his strength be not enough to traverse the road and reach the goal. And such an attitude encourages every man to exert himself to the utmost. The spirit of self-direction is here closely allied with that self-initiative which is the mainspring of the economic life of America. But the initiative and optimistic resolution shown in the political arena astonish the stranger more than the same traits displayed in the economic field. It is shown in the readiness for argument, in which every one can express himself accurately and effectively; in the indefatigable demand that every public office shall be open to the humblest incumbent, and in the cool assurance with which thousands and thousands of persons, without any technical knowledge or professional training, assume the most exacting political offices, and become postmasters, mayors, ministers and ambassadors, without even pausing before their grave responsibilities. But most of all, American initiative is shown in the structure of all her institutions, great or small, which minimizes transitions and degrees between higher and lower, and so facilitates the steady advance of the individual. Each and all must have the chance to unfold and there must be no obstacles to hinder the right ambition from its utmost realization. Every impulse must be utilized; and however far toward the periphery a man may be born he must have the right of pressing forward to the centre. The strength of this nation lies at the periphery, and the American government would never have advanced so unerringly from success to success if every village stable-lad and city messenger-boy had not known with pride that it depends only on himself if he is not to become President of the United States.
But the transition is easy and not well marked from such strength to a deplorable weakness. The spirit of initiative and optimism is in danger of becoming inexcusable arrogance as to one’s abilities and sad underestimation of the value of professional training. Dilettanteism is generally well-meaning, often successful, and sometimes wholly admirable; but it is always dangerous. When brawny young factory-hands sit on a school committee, sturdy tradesmen assume direction of a municipal postal service, bankers become speakers in legislature, and journalists shift over to be cabinet ministers, the general citizen may sometimes find cold comfort in knowing that the public service is not roped off from private life, nor like to become effete through stale traditions. It is very evident that America is to-day making a great effort to ward off the evils of amateurish incompetence and give more prominence to the man of special training. And yet it cannot be denied that very noticeably in the intellectual make-up of the American his free initiative and easy optimism are combined with a readiness to overestimate his own powers and with a bias for dilettanteism.
Another psychological outcome of this individualism seems inevitable. When every member of a nation feels called on to pass judgment on all subjects for himself, it will come about that public opinion reaches an uncommonly high mean level, but it will also happen that the greatest intellects are not recognized as being above this mean. The genius, who in his day is always incomprehensible to the masses, goes to waste; and the man who sees beyond the vulgar horizon fights an uphill battle. The glittering successes are for the man whose doings impress the multitude, and this fact is necessarily reflected in the mind of the aspirant, who unconsciously shapes his ambitions to the taste of the many rather than of the best. Wherever the spirit of initiative possesses all alike, a truly great individual is of course insufferable; any great advance must be a collective movement, and the best energies of the country must be futilely expended in budging the masses. It is no accident that America has still produced no great world genius. And this is the other side of the vaunted and truthful assertion, that whenever in a New England town a question is brought to an open debate, the number of those who will take a lively, earnest, orderly, and intelligent part in the discussion is perhaps greater in proportion to the total number of inhabitants than in any place in Europe.