In Mr. Pearson’s fourth chapter he deals, from a very noble standpoint, with some advantages of national feeling. With this chapter and with his praise of patriotism, and particularly of that patriotism which attaches itself to the whole country, and not to any section of it, we can only express our hearty agreement.
In his fifth chapter, on “The Decline of the Family” he sets forth, or seems to set forth, certain propositions with which I must as heartily disagree. He seems to lament the change which is making the irresponsible despot as much of an anomaly in the family as in the State. He seems to think that this will weaken the family. It may do so, in some instances, exactly as the abolition of a despotism may produce anarchy; but the movement is essentially as good in one case as in the other. To all who have known really happy family lives, that is to all who have known or have witnessed the greatest happiness which there can be on this earth, it is hardly necessary to say that the highest ideal of the family is attainable only where the father and mother stand to each other as lovers and friends, with equal rights. In these homes the children are bound to father and mother by ties of love, respect, and obedience, which are simply strengthened by the fact that they are treated as reasonable beings with rights of their own, and that the rule of the household is changed to suit the changing years, as childhood passes into manhood and womanhood. In such a home the family is not weakened; it is strengthened. This is no unattainable ideal. Every one knows hundreds of homes where it is more or less perfectly realized, and it is an ideal incomparably higher than the ideal of the beneficent autocrat which it has so largely supplanted.
The final chapter of Mr. Pearson’s book is entitled “The Decay of Character.” He believes that our world is becoming a world with less adventure and energy, less brightness and hope. He believes that all the great books have been written, all the great discoveries made, all the great deeds done. He thinks that the adoption of State socialism in some form will crush out individual merit and the higher kinds of individual happiness. Of course, as to this, all that can be said is that men differ as to what will be the effect of the forces whose working he portrays, and that most of us who live in the American democracy do not agree with him. It is to the last degree improbable that State socialism will ever be adopted in its extreme form, save in a few places. It exists, of course, to a certain extent wherever a police force and a fire department exist; and the sphere of the State’s action may be vastly increased without in any way diminishing the happiness of either the many or the few. It is even conceivable that a combination of legislative enactments and natural forces may greatly reduce the inequalities of wealth without in any way diminishing the real power of enjoyment or power for good work of what are now the favored classes. In our own country the best work has always been produced by men who lived in castes or social circles where the standard of essential comfort was high; that is, where men were well clothed, well fed, well housed, and had plenty of books and the opportunity of using them; but where there was small room for extravagant luxury. We think that Mr. Pearson’s fundamental error here is his belief that the raising of the mass necessarily means the lowering of the standard of life for the fortunate few. Those of us who now live in communities where the native American element is largest and where there is least inequality of conditions, know well that there is no reason whatever in the nature of things why, in the future, communities should not spring up where there shall be no great extremes of poverty and wealth, and where, nevertheless, the power of civilization and the chances for happiness and for doing good work shall be greater than ever before.
As to what Mr. Pearson says about the work of the world which is best worth doing being now done, the facts do not bear him out. He thinks that the great poems have all been written, that the days of the drama and the epic are past. Yet one of the greatest plays that has ever been produced, always excepting the plays of Shakespeare, was produced in this century; and if the world had to wait nearly two thousand years after the vanishing of the Athenian dramatists before Shakespeare appeared, and two hundred years more before Goethe wrote his one great play, we can well afford to suspend judgment for a few hundred years at least, before asserting that no country and no language will again produce another great drama. So it is with the epic. We are too near Milton, who came three thousand years after Homer, to assert that the centuries to come will never more see an epic. One race may grow feeble and decrepit and be unable to do any more work; but another may take its place. After a time the Greek and Latin writers found that they had no more to say; and a critic belonging to either nationality might have shaken his head and said that all the great themes had been used up and all the great ideas expressed; nevertheless, Dante, Cervantes, Molière, Schiller, Chaucer, and Scott, then all lay in the future.
Again, Mr. Pearson speaks of statecraft at the present day as offering fewer prizes, and prizes of less worth than formerly, and as giving no chance for the development of men like Augustus Cæsar, Richelieu, or Chatham. It is difficult to perceive how these men can be considered to belong to a different class from Bismarck, who is yet alive; nor do we see why any English-speaking people should regard a statesman like Chatham, or far greater that Chatham, as an impossibility nowadays or in the future. We Americans at least will with difficulty be persuaded that there has ever been a time when a nobler prize of achievement, suffering, and success was offered to any statesman than was offered both to Washington and to Lincoln. So, when Mr. Pearson speaks of the warfare of civilized countries offering less chance to the individual than the warfare of savage and barbarous times, and of its being far less possible now than in old days for a man to make his personal influence felt in warfare, we can only express our disagreement. No world-conqueror can arise save in or next to highly civilized States. There never has been a barbarian Alexander or Cæsar, Hannibal or Napoleon. Sitting Bull and Rain-in-the-Face compare but ill with Von Moltke; and no Norse king of all the heroic viking age even so much as began to exercise the influence upon the warfare of his generation that Frederick the Great exercised on his.
It is not true that character of necessity decays with the growth of civilization. It may, of course, be true in some cases. Civilization may tend to develop upon the lines of Byzantine, Hindoo, and Inca; and there are sections of Europe and sections of the United States where we now tend to pay heed exclusively to the peaceful virtues and to develop only a race of merchants, lawyers, and professors, who will lack the virile qualities that have made our race great and splendid. This development may come, but it need not come necessarily, and, on the whole, the probabilities are against its coming at all.
Mr. Pearson is essentially a man of strength and courage. Looking into the future, the future seems to him gray and unattractive; but he does not preach any unmanly gospel of despair. He thinks that in time to come, though life will be freer than in the past from dangers and vicissitudes, yet it will contain fewer of the strong pleasures and of the opportunities for doing great deeds that are so dear to mighty souls. Nevertheless, he advises us all to front it bravely whether our hope be great or little; and he ends his book with these fine sentences: “Even so, there will still remain to us ourselves. Simply to do our work in life, and to abide the issue, if we stand erect before the eternal calm as cheerfully as our fathers faced the eternal unrest, may be nobler training for our souls than the faith in progress.”
We do not agree with him that there will be only this eternal calm to face; we do not agree with him that the future holds for us a time when we shall ask nothing from the day but to live, nor from the future but that we may not deteriorate. We do not agree with him that there is a day approaching when the lower races will predominate in the world and the higher races will have lost their noblest elements. But after all, it matters little what view we take of the future if, in our practice, we but do as he preaches, and face resolutely whatever fate may have in store. We, ourselves, are not certain that progress is assured; we only assert that it may be assured if we but live wise, brave, and upright lives. We do not know whether the future has in store for us calm or unrest. We cannot know beyond peradventure whether we can prevent the higher races from losing their nobler traits and from being overwhelmed by the lower races. On the whole, we think that the greatest victories are yet to be won, the greatest deeds yet to be done, and that there are yet in store for our peoples and for the causes that we uphold grander triumphs than have ever yet been scored. But be this as it may, we gladly agree that the one plain duty of every man is to face the future as he faces the present, regardless of what it may have in store for him, and, turning toward the light as he sees the light, to play his part manfully, as a man among men.
FOOTNOTES:
[21] The Sewanee Review, August, 1894.