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Page 20
This is the kind of experience which comes to those who are habitually
dealing with crude materials rather than with finished products. They
cannot afford to be fastidious; they learn to take things as they come
and make the best of them. The doctrine that things are not as they seem
is a cheerful one, to a person who is accustomed to dealing with things
which turn out to be better than at first they seemed. The unknown takes
on a friendly guise and awakens a pleasant curiosity. That is the
experience of generations of pioneers and prospectors. They have found
a continent full of resources awaking men of courage and industry. The
opportunities were there; all that was needed was the ability to
recognize them when they appeared in disguise.
III
And the human problem has been the same as the material one. Europe has
sent to America not the finished products of her schools and her courts,
but millions of people for whom she had no room. They were in the rough;
they had to be made over into a new kind of citizen. This material has
often been of the most unpromising appearance. It has often seemed to
superficial observers that little could be made of it. But the attempt
has been made. And those who have worked with it, putting skill and
patience into their work, have been agreeably surprised. They have come
to see the highest possibilities in the commonest lumps of clay.
The satisfaction that is taken in the common man is not in what he
is at the present moment, but in what he has shown himself capable of
becoming. Give him a chance and all the graces may be his. The American
idealist admits that many of his fellow citizens may be rather dreary
brethren, but so were many of the kings of whom nothing is remembered
but their names and dates. Only now and then is one seen who is every
inch a king. But such a person is a proof of what may be accomplished.
It may take a long time for the rank and file to catch up with their
leaders. But where the few are to-day the many will be to-morrow; for
they are all travelling the same road.
The visitor in the United States, especially if he has spent his time in
the great cities of the East, may go away with the idea that democracy
is a spent force. He will see great inequalities in wealth and position.
He will be struck by the fact that autocratic powers are wielded which
would not be tolerated in many countries of Europe. He will notice that
it is very difficult to give direct expression to the will of the
people.
But he will make a mistake if he attributes these things to the growth
of an aristocratic sentiment. They are a part of an evolution that is
thoroughly democratic. The distinctive thing in an aristocracy is not
the fact that certain people enjoy privileges. It lies in the fact that
these privileged people form a class that is looked upon as superior. An
aristocratic class must not only take itself seriously; it must be taken
seriously by others.
In America there are groups of persons more successful than the average.
They are objects of curiosity, and, if they are well-behaved, of
respect. Their comings and goings are chronicled in the newspapers, and
their names are familiar. But it does not occur to the average man that
they are anything more than fortunate persons who emerged from the
crowd, and who by and by may be lost in the crowd again. What they have
done, others may do when their time comes. The inequalities are
inequalities of circumstance and not of nature.
The commonplace American follows unworthy leaders and has admiration for
cheap success. But he cherishes no illusions in regard to the objects of
his admiration. They have done what he would like to do, and what he
hopes to be able to do sometime. He thinks of the successful men as
being of the same kind with himself. They are more fortunate, that is
all.
IV
The same temperamental quality is seen in the American idealist.
His attitude toward his spiritual leaders is seldom that of meek
discipleship. It is rather that of frank, outspoken comradeship. No
mysterious barrier separates the great man from the common man. One has
more, the other has less, that is all.
The men who have cherished the finest ideals have insisted that these
should be shared by the multitude. In a newspaper of sixty years ago
there is this contemporary character sketch: "Ralph Waldo Emerson is
the most erratic and capricious man in America. He is emphatically a
democrat of the world, and believes that what Plato thought, another man
may think. What Shakespeare sang, another man may know as well. As for
emperors, kings, queens, princes, or presidents, he looks upon them as
children in masquerade. He has no patience with the chicken-hearted who
refer to mouldy records or old almanacs to ascertain if they may say
that their souls are their own. Mr. Emerson is a strange compound of
contradictions. Always right in practice, and sometimes in theory. He is
a sociable, accessible, republican sort of man, and a great admirer of
nature."
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