Yet while Hovey was uplifted by the fine fervor of such a faith, he experienced a reaction with the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. In the sudden self-righteousness of an inflamed patriotism he nationalized God and deified war. Excited beyond measure by the immediate issue, he not only justified America against Spain but, forgetting all the lessons of evolution, he declared that the race could develop only through the repetition of old experiences.
By strife as well as loving—strife,
The Law of Life,—
In brute and man the climbing has been done
And shall be done hereafter. Since man was
No upward-climbing cause
Without the sword has ever yet been won.
His mistake lay in justifying all wars in order to justify the national altruism of the war with Spain, and his fallacy came in his assumption that biological and physical life were governed by the same laws. For the moment Hovey turned “jingo,” as most of his countrymen did, yet even then he invoked the sword for the suppression of tyranny and not in the name of nationalistic ambition.
The home of Hovey’s imagination was where the true poet’s always is—“far in the vast of sky, ... too high for sound of strife, or any violation of the town.” From this high vantage point he sang the glories of the things he loved the best, but with maturity he moved from the world of material pleasure to the realms of spiritual adventure. In 1893 he wrote
Down the world with Marna!