Meanwhile, the science of Social Adjustment has occupied the most prominent place in American thought. If the American people have under-emphasized Eugenics they have over-emphasized Social Adjustment. From ocean to ocean, the country has been swept, during the past three decades, by a whirlwind of legislation directed toward the adjustment of social institutions to human needs. Trusts, factories, food, railroads, liquor selling and a hundred other subjects have been kept in the foreground of public attention. The American people might almost plead guilty to adjustment madness.
From the foundation of the earliest colonies, the basis, in theory at least, was laid for the development of the individual. The colonists believed in the worth-whileness of men, they lived in an age of natural philosophy; they were the products of an effort to secure religious and political freedom; they therefore emphasized the individual conscience, and the right of the individual to think and act for himself. Each individual was a man, to be so regarded, and so honored. Their new life was a hard one. Nature presented an aspect on the rocky, untilled New England coast different from that in the civilized countries of the old world. There was but one way to meet these new conditions—the individual must carve out his own future.
Throughout the United States, the watchword of the people has been opportunity. Without opportunity, the people perish—hence opportunity must stand waiting for each succeeding generation. In the turmoil of commercial life, in the ebb and flow of the immigrant tide, the reality has been frequently lost; yet the ideal of opportunity remains as firmly rooted as ever.
The worth-whileness of men, the social control of the environment, and a free opportunity for the development of the individual constitute the basis for social advance in the United States. The ideal is firmly rooted; the possibility of its realization is an everpresent reality.
With a boundless wealth of natural resources; bulwarked by the stock of the dominant races; with abundant leisure; granting freedom and individuality to women; foregoing war; cognizant of the principles of race making; Social Adjustment and of Education, the American nation is thrown into the foreground, as the land for the development of the Super Race. The American people have within their grasp the torch of social progress. Can they carry it in the van, lighting the dark caverns of the future? Can they develop a race of men who shall set a standard for the world—men of physical and mental power, efficient, broadly sympathetic, actuated by the highest ideals, striving toward a vision of human nobleness?
The answer rests with this and the succeeding generations. Given ten talents of opportunity, are we as a nation worthy to be made the rulers over ten cities? Provided with the raw stuff of a Super Race, can we mold it into “A mightier race than any that has been?” The past worked with things: the present works with men. “We stand at the verge of a state of culture, which will be that of the depths, not, as heretofore, of the surface alone; a stage which will not be merely a culture through mankind, but a culture of mankind. For the first time the great fashioners of culture will be able to work in marble instead of, as heretofore, being forced to work in snow.”[23] Bulwarked by this pregnant thought, and assured by Ruskin that, “There is as yet no ascertained limit to the noblesse of person and mind which the human creature may attain,” we press forward confidently, advocating and practicing those measures which will create the energy, mental grasp, efficiency, sympathy and vision of the Super Man and the Super Race.
Footnotes:
[1] John Ruskin, Unto this Last—Essay II.
[2] William B. Yeats, Poetic Works, Vol. II, p. 407. Macmillan Co., N. Y.