MASTER NEGA TIVE NO. 93-81401-21 MICROFILMED 1993 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK as part of the . ^ "Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission from Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The copyright law of the United States - Title 17, United States Code - concerns the malting of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or other reproduction is not to be "used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research." If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of "fair use," that user may be liable for copyright infringement. This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. AUTHOR: SANTAYANA, GEORGE TITLE: THE GENTEEL TRADITION IN. PLACE: [BERKELEY] DA TE : 1911 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARGET Master Negative # Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record Santayana, George, 1863- 1952 ! }^^^ . . .The genteel tradition in American philospjj^ ihyi George Santayana. i Berkeley, University 'of^ California press j 1911. p. (367, -380. 22^^. _ ^ From University of California chronicle, 1911, V. 13, no. 4. D191Sa5 Copy in Butler. 1911. R2 1 o ^■ l I I Restrictions on Use: FILM SIZE: .^^ r IMAGE PLACEMENT: lA DATE FILMED: ^/] TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA REDUCTION RATIO: a^. INITIALS HLMEDBY: RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS. INC WOODBRIPT^. CT >% c Association for information and Imago Management 1100 Wayne Avenue. Suite 1100. Silver Spring. 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CXiJFPRiSrV CTAr^i/icle is the official record of the University. • tn'ifare* p^ese^ved the chief addresses of general interest delivered at the University from time to time by distinguished visitors, and also as many as possible of the public addresses delivered at home or abroad by members of the faculty. Papers upon all subjects are admitted to its pages, provided the manner of their presentation is such as arouses general rather than technical interest. Each number contains also the University Record, which presents in brief the annals of the University for the quarter-year preceding each issue of the magazine. Issued quarterlyy in January ^ Aprils July, and October SUBSCRIPTION PRICE, ONE DOLLAR A YEAR SINGLE COPIES, TWENTY-FIVE CENTS Foreign postage, twenty cents a year additional Subscriptions should be addressed to The University Press, Berkeley BERKELEY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1911 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA CHRONICLE Vol. XIII OCTOBER, 1911 No. 4 t • • * « t * < * • • • • • ♦ * » • • • • • « * ■ . . » I . • » I : ♦ ( # ♦ • t * *5 all. \ l:^ r-F \ I y THE GENTEEL TRADITION IN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY* George Santayana Ladies and Gentlemen: The privilege of addressing you to-day is very welcome to me, not merely for the honor of it, which is great, nor for the pleasures of travel, which are many, when it is California that one is visiting for the first time, but also because there is something I have long wanted to say which this occasion seems particularly favorable for saying. America is still a young country, and this part of it is especially so ; and it would have been nothing extraordinary if, in this young country, material preoccupations had altogether absorbed people 's mindsQnd they had been too much engrossed in living to reflect upon lifejor to have any philosophy. The opposite, however, is the case. Not only have you already found time to phil- osophize in California, as your society proves, but the eastern colonists from the very beginning were a sophisti- cated race. As much as in clearing the land and fighting the Indians they were occupied, as they expressed it, in wrestling with the Lord. The country was new, but the race was tried, chastened, and full of solemn memories. It was an old wine in new bottles ; and America did not have to wait for its present universities, with their depart- ments of academic philosophy, in order to possess a living philosophy,— to have a distinct vision of the universe and definite convictions about human destiny. * Address deUvered before the Philosophical Union, Aug. 25, 1911. /• 3 isis^iS 358 UNIVEB8ITY CHBONICLE. ^ .-t«.jd>*\ ^'- \\ Now this situation is a singular and remarkable one, and has many consequences, not all of which are equally fortunate. America is a young country with an old men- tality: it has enjoyed the advantages of a child carefully brought up, and thoroughly indoctrinated; it has been a wise child. \But a wise child, a njold head on young shoul- ders, always has a comk andL ^ unpromising side. The H wisdo m is a Titt k .thin".and verbal, not aware of its full - U meaning an d grounds; and physical and emotional growth may be "stunted by it, or even deranged. (Or when the child is too vigorous for that, he wi ll develop a fresh men- l. tality of ^:"f ^"^"i ^"^ ftt W nhsprvfttinns and actual in- stincts ;"^and this fresh men tality will interfere with the ♦ traditional meat dit^^j_fljad-i.end to reduce it to something perfunctory, conventional, and .perhaps secretly despised. r A philosophy is not genuine unless it inspires and expresses \thejife of those who cherish it^ I do not think the hered- itary philosophy of America has done much to atrophy the natural activities of the inhabitants; the wise child has not missed the joys of youth or of manhood ; but what has happened is that the hereditary philosophy has grown stale, and that the academic philosophy afterwards devel- oped has caught the stale odor from it. Am§.dca-is not simply, as I said a moment ago, a young country with an old mentality : it is^a^ jountry wit h two ^mentalities^ one a surxiiaLeLtlifi,J?^ta-aiid-Standards of the fathers,, the nfW^^n^yprPssinn nf the instinctSj^ practice, and discov- eries ot the .^UJlgfij:«g£rLfirations. In all the higher things of the^juiad — in religion, in literature, in the moral emo- tions— it is the hereditary spirit that still prevails, so much so that Mr. Bernard Shaw finds that America is a hundred years behind the times. \ 'jThe truth is that that one-half of the American mind, that not occupied intensely in prac- Itical affairs, has remained, I will not say high-and-dry, but slightly becalmed; it has floated gently in the back- water, while, alongside, in invention and industry and social organization the other half of the mind was leap- i > OENTEEL TBADITION IN AUEBICAN PHILOSOPET. 359 ing down a sort of Niagara Rapids.J ^i8,.(iiyision_jna2L be found symbolized in American architecture: a neat \ reproduction of the colonial mansion-with some modem comforts introduced surregtitifusly— stands beside the sky- scraper. Th^jiwei-ican RilUnhabits the sky-scraper; the American intellect inhabits the colonial mansion. The one is the sphere of the American man; the other, at least predominanlly, of^the American, woman. The one is all ' aggressive'enterprise ; the otheti* all genteel iraditoon. . Now, with your permission, I should like to analyze more fully how this interesting situation has arisen, how it is qualified, and whither it tends. And in the first place we should remember what, precisely, that philosophy, was which the first settlers broughtjvithjlwmjnto^^ In'rtriJtaSrthere w^iffiSfeTESninaautwe may confine our attention to what Ij£m.jeall\Calvinismj since it is on this that the current academie_EhilosoEh;LhSsieen jrafted. I do not mean exaltb^TET^ahiiisia^LCaMn^ otj^^ of /y Jonathan Edwards ;'• for in their systems there was, much ^. thaT was not pure-philosophy, but rather faith in the ex- ternals and_iistory of revelation. \Jewishand Christian r^feliiti^ was inter preted by J ^^em^JUXMiBM^^m the spiritbf a-^articular philogQphi::.-Wliich might have,.arisen under any sV^SO^,a5S2SWted with any-otLer.pllgion (a^ell as^with Protestant Christianity. In fact, the phil- oso^cal principle of Calvinism appears also in the Koran in Spinoza, and in Cardinal Newman; and persons with no very distinctive Christian belief, like Carlyle or like Professor Royce, may be nevertheless, philosophically, per- fect CalvinistB. tealvinism^teken in this^sense, jsjn ex- pression of the j^^nSecTcSSiSMTt is aje^tt^L-the ?fOTlT^E2Eu^ar3gow2^t2SBSia£S.J£^i^ embraces^ if it'takes itself seriously, as, being agonized, -oi._caurs& it must Calvinism, essentially, asserts three things : .thatsm exists, itEt sin is punished,\«Jid that it is *eaut,ful.4hat sinVhould exist to be punished. The heart of the Calvinist is thefefofedividia between tragic.concern at_bis own mis- O'OtJ'^-****^ /■ frM^ ■w y^'^ yi^f !^i rT- - -5 360 UNIVEBSITY CHRONICLE, erable condition, and tragic exultation about the universe at large. He oscillates between a profound abasement and a paradoxical elation of the spirit. ^ be a Calvinist phil- Eiophically is to feel a fierce pleasur?ln tHe^xistence of isery, ^specially of one*s own^ in that this^ mjfiftry .seems I TYinnifotat th ^ fapf t , l ]ftt the Absolutc js irresponsible or nfin ite or holy . J Human nature, it teels, is totally de- pravedTtb have the instincts and motives that we neces- sarily have is a great scandal, and we must suffer for it; > Vmt f,|igf fiPflTi^fl)^i«-rpqnigitA, siucc ot herwisc the serious jimprirtan ce of bein^^ we oyght to^elvQu^( j | not have been jvindicaifiiJ. To those of us who have not an agonized conscience this system may seem fantastic and even unintelligible; yet it is logically and intently thought out from its emo- tional premises. It can take permanent possession of a deep mind here and there, and under certain conditions it can become epidemic. Imagine, for instance, a small nation with an intense vitality, but on the verge of ruin, ecstatic and distressful, having a strict and minute code of laws, that paint life in sharp and violent chiaroscuro, all pure righteousness and black abominations, and exaggerating the consequences of both perhaps to infinity. Such a people; were the Jews after the exile, and again the early Pro- testants. If such a people is philosophical at all, it will not improbably be Calvinistic. Even in the early Amer- ican communities many of these conditions were fulfilled. The nation was small and isolated; it lived under pressure and constant trial; it was acquainted with but a small range of goods and evils. Vigilance over conduct and an absolute demand for personal integrity were not merely traditional things, but things that practical sages, like Franklin and Washington, recommended to their country- men, because they were virtues that justified themselves visibly by their fruits. (But soon these happy results them- selves helped to relax the pressure of external circum- stances, and indirectly the pressure of the agonized con- GENTEEL TRADITION IN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 361 science within. J The nation became numerous ; it ceased to be either et^tktia or distressful ; the high social morality which on the whole it preserved took another color ;^ people remained honest and helpful out of good sense anS good will rather than out of scrupulous adherence to any fixed principlesTJ They retained their instinct for order, and often created order with surprising quickness; but the sanctity of law, to be obeyed for its own sake, began to escape them; it seemed too unpractical a notion, and not quite serious. In fact, the second and native-born Amer- icgjianentality be5a£5a Iftk6^ a | T c. Tfe s e mirufroitu fe alty evaporated. Nature, in the wo rds of^merson, w as all beauty and commodity; and wHUe operating on IFTabor- iously, and drawing quick returns, the American began to drink in inspiration from it aesthetically. At the same time, in so broad a continent, he had elbow-room. His neighbors helped more than they hindered him; he wished their number to increase. Good-will became the great American virtue; and a passion arose for counting heads, and square miles, and cubic feet, and minutes saved — as if there had been anything to save them for. How strange to the American now that saying of Jonathan Edwards, that men are naturally God's enemies! Yet that is an axiom to any intelligent Calvinist, though the words he uses may be different. If you told the modern American that he is totally depraved, he would think you were joking, as he himself usually is. He is convinced that he always has been, and always will be, victoric^ and blameless. Calvinism thus lost its basis in .S^rican life. Some emotional natures, indeed, reverted in their religious re- vivals or private searchings of heart to the sources of the tradition; for any of the radical po ints of view in phil- osophy may cease to be prevalent, buTf none can cease to be possible. Other natures, more sensitive to the moral and liferary influences of the world, preferred to abandon parts of their philosophy, hoping thus to reduce the distance which should separate the remainder from real life. ^:y V' 362 UNIVEBSITT CHBONICLE, GENTEEL TBADITION IN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 363 \ / Meantime, if anybody arose with a special sensibility or a technical genius, he was in great straits; not being fed sufficiently by the world, he was driven in upon his o^Ti resources. The three American writers whose per- sonal endowment was perhaps the finest— Poe, Hawthorne, and Emerson— had all a certain starved and abstract qual- ity. They could not retail the genteel tradition; they were too keen, too perceptive, and too independent for that. But life offered them little digestible material, nor were they naturally voracious. They were fastidious, and under the circumstances they were starved. Emerson, to be sure,^ fed on books. There was a great catholicity in his read- ing ; and he showed a fine tact in his comments, and in his way of appropriating what he read. But he read trans- cendentally, not historically, to learn what he himself felt, not what others might have felt before him. fAnd to feed on books, fpr^a philosopher or a poet, is stm to starve. Books can help him tcTacquire form, or to avoid pitfalls; they cannot supply hun witTi' substance, if lie is to have any. Therefore the genius of Poe and Hawthorne, and even of Emerson, was employed on a sort of inner play, or digestion of vacancy. It was a refined labor, but it was in danger of being morbid, or tinkling, or self-indulgent. | It was a play of intra-mental rhymes. Their mind wasj like an old music-box, full of tender echoes and quaint i fancies. These fancies expressed their personal genius sin- \ cerely, as dreams may; but they were arbitrary fancies^ / in comparison with what a real observer would have said in the premises. Their manner, in a word, was subjec-, tive. In their own persons they escaped the mediocrity of the genteel tradition, but they supplied nothing to sup- plant it in other minds. The churches, likewise, although they modified their spirit, had no philosophy to offer save a selection or a new emphasis on parts of what Calvinism contained. The the- ology of Calvin, we must remember, had much in it be- sides philosophical Calvinism. A Christian tenderness, and I''- a hope of grace for the individual, came to mitigate its sardonic optimism; and it was these evangelical elements that the Calvinistic churches now emphasized, seldom and with blushes referring to hell-fire or infant damnation. Yet/philosophTd^Cal^ms^ with a theory of life that would A perfectly j us tiT/ hell-fire and infant damnation if they happened to /exist, still dominates the traditional meta- physics. It'^s a n ingredient, and the decisiv e ingredient, in what calk itseli^ idealismj \But in order^to^e just what par t Calvinism p lays in current idealism , it will be neces- sary to distinguish ^the other chief element in that comp lex system, namely^JL raSc en3gntalism . "ranscena entaiism^ the philosophy which the romantic era produced in Germany, and independently, I believe, in America also. Transcendentalism proper, like romanticism, is not any particular set of dogmas about what things exist ; it is not a system of the universe regarded as a fact, or as a collection of facts. It is^ a method, a poi nt of view^ f rom which anjT wor l d, no niatt er what it might contain^ co uld be approached b y a self-conscious observerj \!Eransc^jien- talis m IS systematic subjectivism.} Itstudi^ the perspec- tives of knowledge-,. .aa. they radiate from the self; it is a plan of those avenues of inference by which our ideas of things must be reached, if they are to afford any system- atic or distant vistas. In other words, transcendentalism is the critical logic of science. Knowledge, it says, has a station, as in a watch-tower; it is always seated here and now, in the self of the moment. The past and the future, things inferred and things conceived, lie around it, painted as upon a panorama. They cannot be lighted up save by some centrifugal ray of attention and present interest, by some active operation of the mind. This is hardly the occasion for developing or explaining this delicate insight ; suffice it to say, lest you should think later that I disparage transcendentalism, that as a method I regard it as correct and, when once suggested, unforget- able. I regard it as the chief contribution made in modern /'.A. ♦ * ^YW*^"- 364 UNIVEBSITT CHEONICLE. GENTEEL TBADI TION IN AMEBIC AN PHILOSOPHY. 365 'f I ' ••'•• times to speculation. T^nt it is a method-pnly^ an attitude we mav always assume if we like and that will always be legitimate. It is no an swer, and involves no particular answgj^^OoJthequesd What exists; in what order is what existsprodnced; what is to exist in the future ? This question must be answered by observing the object, and tracing humbly the movement of the object. It cannot be answered at njj^hy hnrpinpf ^-rt-^^^'^"^^ that 4his job ject, if di^tJSvereSTmjjst .h&-d4«oov^ed by som^bodyi and by some- body wThoTias an interest in discovering it. Yet the Ger- mans who first gained the full transcendental insight were iFomantic people; they were more or less frankly poets; they were colossal egotists, and wis hed to m^e n ot only their own know le^lge but tke whole universe center about. iems( "And full as they were of their romantic iso lation^andromiiticliberty, it occurred to them to imagine that all j paHtyL-inight be.4u triftnacendenta ^^ a ro- [ream er like themse l ves; naTT tyt. it might l)e just their own '^arig^^ndf^^^^ «^^f nnd. thpULJlWii . jomantic t\r\ i\\\\\ ^^Xt rrr^£^ij ^\i\\ ' \\ I TranscgjqdenTAl Jftgic, the method of dig(? overy f ^r the ^^^^ , w«« ^ hppome al so the iy.ofVin^nf <>vnln^j()n jp r.afnrf^ and hlstory. \\Tran scendental met Eodj^so abuse d, produced t ranscendental m yt'hj 'A^^CQn- «^ipnijmTgj>^^jti^^ T^TiT^lt^dge was turned " into a sham system of natii re^ We must therefor^j istinguisli sharply (if tihP iTif^lX^t.^ whifih is sig- nfffcant and potentially correct, from the various trans-j cendental systems of the universe, whishuaie chimeras.. In both its parts, however, transcendentalism had much to recommend it to American philosophers, for the trans- cendental method appealed to the individualistic and revo- lutionary temper of their youth, while transcendental myths enabled them to find a new status for their inherited the- ology, and to give what parts of it they cared to preserve some semblance of philosophical backing. This last was the use to which the transcendental method was put by Kant himself, who first brought it into vogue, before the / / terrible weapon had got out of hand, and become the instru- ment of pure romanticism. IFa^ tcame, he himself sa id, to remove knowledge i n order to make room for fai th, whici mn his case meant faith i^i^alvinism . ^En other word s, he applied the transcendental method to matt ers o f fact, reducing them thereby to human ideas, in o rder to give to the Calvinisti c postu lates of conscience a meta- p hysicai validity. For Kant had a genteel tradition of his own, which he wished to remove to a place of safety, feeling that the empirical world had become too hot for it; and this place of safetjfjvas^the regi on of tran scendental mythj I need hardly say how perfectly^ this expedient suited the needs of philosophers in America, and it is no accident if the influence of Kant soon became dominant here. To embrace this philosophy was regarded as a sign of pro- found metaphysical insight, although the most mediocre minds found no difficulty in embracing it. , In truth it was a sign of having been brought up in the genteel tradi- tion, of feeling it weak, and of wishing to save it^^ — ^ But the transcendental method, in its way, was also / sympathetic to the American mind. It embodied, in a/ \\\ radical form, the spirit of Protestantism as distinguished - \ \ from its inherited doctrines ; it was autonomous, undis- J '^| mayed, calmly revolutionary; it f elt^ihat^Wiil, w as. d e^ er than Intellect ;i it f ocused everyth in g here and now, and -^^\ asked all things to show their credentials at the bar of the young self, and to prove their value for this latest born . ' moment. These things are truly American; they would ~^^ be characteristic of any young society with a keen and '' discursive intelligence, and they are strikingly exemplified in the thought and in the person of Emerson. They con- stitute what he called self-trust. Self-trust, like other frajg^PTirloTitnl iittitndp^ mnv bo expressed in metanhvsical fable s. TViP rnmi^Trt ic Spirit ma^ Djaginf^ \U^\t tft hfi an absolute. JopecrcvoktBg and moldijQ^4he- plasti«-j£orid_to ^}^ [pressitsuscaEjdngJDOi^ds. But for a pioneer who is actu- irld-builder this metaphysical illusion has a partial *"".*- --.^■*^-» "** *■" * 'J tJ ^vw*^' 366 UNIVEBSITY CHRONICLE. GENTEEL TFADITION IN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 367 warrant in historical fact ; far more warrant than it could boast of in the fixed and articulated society of Europe, among the moonstruck rebels and sulking poets of the romantic era. Emerson was a shrewd Yankee, by instinct on the winning side ; he ^as a cheery, child-like soul, im- pervious to the evidence of evil, as of everything that it did not suit his transcendental individuality to appreciate or to notice. More, perhaps, than anybody that has ever lived, he practiced the transcendental method in all its purity. He had no system. He opened his eyes on the world every morning with a fresh sincerity, marking how things seemed to him then, or what they suggested to his spontaneous fancy. This fancy, for being spontaneous, was not always novel ; it was guided by the habits and training of his mind, which were those of a preacher. tYethe never insisted oii,lxia_notions so as_to^^ inta settled dogmas ; he felt in his b ongj hat they were myth sj Some- times, indeed, the bad example of other transcendentalists, less true than he to their method, or the pressing questions of unintelligent people, or the instinct we all have to think our ideas final, led him to the very verge of system-making ; but he stopped short. Had he made a system out of his notion of compensation, or the over-soul, or spiritual laws, the result would have been as thin and forced as it is in other transcendental systems. But he coveted truth; and he returned to experience, to history, to poetry, to the nat- ural science of his day, for new starting-points and hints toward fresh transcendental musings. To covet truth is a very distinguished passion. Every philosopher says he is pursuing the truth, but this is seldom the case. As Mr. Bertrand Russell has observed, one reason why philosophers often fail to reach the truth is that often they do not desire to reach it. Those who are genuinely concerned in discovering what happens to be true are rather the men of science, the naturalists, the historians ; and ordi- narily they discover it, according to their lights. The truths they find are never complete, and are not always \ important; but they are integral parts of the truth, facts and circumstances that help to fill in the picture, and that no later interpretation can invalidate or afford to contra- dict. But professional philosop hers ar e usually only schol- astics: that is, Ithe^ are*'absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained, to see how much evidence or semblance of evidence they can gather for the defense, and how much prejudice they can raise against the witnesses for the prosecution; for they know they are defending prisoners suspected by the world, and perhaps by their own good sense, of falsification. They do not covet truth, but victory and the dispelling of their own dou^taJ What they defend is some system, that is, some view about the totality of things, of which men are actually ignorant. No system would ever have been framed if people had been simply interested in knowing what is true, whatever it may be. What produces systems is the interest in maintaining flfygingf all f>(||nPT^at}iflt Romp favor- i te_0r inherited Id^U nf nnrs is sii%jpnt f^i^H r\ffht. A system may contain an account of many things which, in detail, are true enough; but as a system, covering infinite possibilities that neither our experience nor our logic can prejudge, it must^be a work of imagin a tion ^an d a pie ce of human soliloguy. It may be expressive of human ex- perience, it may be poetical; but how should any one who really coveted truth suppose that it was true? Emerson had no system; and his coveting truth had another exceptional consequence: he was detached, un- worldly, contemplative. When he came out of the con- venticle or the reform meeting, or out of the rapturous close atmosphere of the lecture-room, he heard nature whis- pering to him : * ' Why so hot, little sir ? ' ' No doubt the spirit or energy of the world is what is acting in us, as the sea is what rises in every little wave ; but it passes through us, and cry out as we may, it will move on. Our^priyilege is to have perceived it as it moves. v Qur dignity is not in "1 h « 368 UNIVEB8ITY CEEONICLE, \ •^" y-" w^*'v^ »4 1^ f • what we^do, but.in wjist.we underetandj The whole world ITdoing things. We are turning in that vortex ; yet within us is silent observation, the speculative eye before which all passes, which bridges the distances and compares the combatants. On this side of his genius Emerson broke away from all conditions of age or country and represented nothing except intelligence itself. There was another element in Emerson, curiously com- bined with transcendentalism, namely, his love and respect for Nature. Nature, for the transcendentalist, is precious because it is his own work, a mirror in which he looks at himself and says (like a poet relishing his own verses), * * What a genius I am ! Who would have thought there was such stuff in me r ' And the philosophical egotist finds in his doctrine a ready explanation of whatever beauty and commodity nature actually has. No wonder, he says to himself, that nature is sympathetic, since I made it. And such a view, one-sided and even fatuous as it may be, un- doubtedly sharpens the vision of a poet and a moralist to all that is inspiriting and symbolic in the natural world. Emerson was particularly ingenious and clear-sighted in feeling the spiritual uses of fellowship with the elements. This is something in which all Teutonic poetry is rich and which forms, I think, the most genuine and spontaneous part of modern taste, and especially of American taste. Just as some people are naturally enthralled and refreshed by music, so others are by landscape. Music and landscape make u p the spiritual resou rfi*^« ^f tbftfP w^" cannot or dare not express th eir un fu lfilled ideals in w ords. \ Serious po- ^t lYi profound religron_LCalvinism, for instance) are'the f joys of an mahappiupss that Jl^nfgssesjtself ; but when a \ genteel tradition forbids people to confess that they are J unhappy, serious poetry and profound religion are closed j to them by that ; and since human life, in its depths, can- ^ ' not then_expre^ itself openly, imagination is driven for( comfort into abstract arts, where human circumstances are lost sighT'of , and hum an problems dissolve in a purer V. GENTEEL T \l ABIT ION IN AMEBIC AN PHILOSOPHY. 369 medium. The pressure of care is thus relieved, without its quietus being found in intelligence. To understand one - s elf JS thg ^ r^^ftSin ^^r^ of f*nn<;r^]^|inn : \t o eludc QfiCSelf is tfie romantic. In the presence of mnsifi or landsfia pf h^ pian e xperienc e p,l^|^^^*Tra ^fj •SndlEus^rom jm^ ifii thfi bo^^ between tra^.^^^T^^Ti^f^l and naturalistic sentiment. Have there been, we may ask, any successful efforts to escape from the genteel tradition, and to express some- thing worth expressing behind its back? This might well not have occurred as yet; but America is so precocious, it has been trained by the genteel tradition to be so wise for its years, that some indications of a truly native philosophy and poetry are already to be found. I might mention the humorists, of whom you here in California have had your share. The humorists, however, only half escape the genteel, tradition; their humor would lose its savor if thev had wholly escaped it. They point to what contradicts it in the facts; but not in order to abandon the genteel tradi- tion, for they have nothing solid to put in its place. When they point out how ill many facts fit into it, they do not clearly conceive that this militates against the standard, but think it a funny perversity in the facts. Of course, did they earnestly respect the genteel tradition, such an incongruity would seem to them sad, rather than ludicrous. Perhaps the prevalence of humor in America, in and out of season, may be taken as one more evidence that the genteel tradition is present pervasively, but everywhere weak. Similarly in Italy, during the Renaissance, the Catholic tradition could not be banished from the intellect, since there was nothing articulate to take its place; yet its hold on the heart was singularly relaxed. The conse- quence was that humorists could regale themselves with the foibles of monks and of cardinals, with the credulity of fools, and the bogus miracles of the saints; not intending to deny the theory of the church, but caring for it so little at heart, that they could find it infinitely amusing that it t 370 UNIVEBSITY CHBONICLE. should be contradicted in men's lives, and ihat no harm should come of it. So when Mark Twain says, **I was born of poor but dishonest parents,*' the humor depends on the parody of the genteel Anglo-Saxon convention that it is disreputable to be poor; but to hint at the hoUowness of it would not be amusing if it did not remain at bottom one's habitual conviction. The one American writer who has left the genteel tra- dition entirely behind is perhaps Walt Whitman. For this reason educated Americans find him rather an unpal- atable person, who they sincerely protest ought not to be taken for a representative of their culture; and he cer- tainly should not, because their culture is so genteel and traditional. But the foreigner may sometimes think other- wise, since he is looking for what may have arisen in America to express, not the polite and conventional Amer- ican mind, but the spirit and the inarticulate principles that animate the community, on which its own genteel mentality seems to sit rather lightly. When the foreigner opens the pages of Walt Whitman, he thinks that he has come at last upon something representative and original. In Walt Whitman democracy is carried into psychology and morals. The various sights, moods, and emotions are given each one vote; they are declared to be all free and equal, and the innumerable common-place moments of life are suffered to speak like the others. Those moments for- merly reputed great are not excluded, but they are made to march in the ranks with their companions,— plain foot- soldiers and servants of the hour. Nor does the refusal to discriminate stop there; we must carry our principle further down, to the animals, to inanimate nature, to the cosmos as a whole. Whitman became a pantheist; but his pantheism, unlike that of the Stoics and of Spinoza, was unintellectual, lazy, and self-indulgent; for he simply felt jovially that everything real was good enough, and that he was good enough himself. In him Bohemia rebelled against the genteel tradition; but the reconstruction that \\\ I i: .1 GENTEEL TRADITION IN AMEBIC AN PHILOSOPHY. 371 alone can justify revolution did not ensue. His attitude, in principle, was utterly disintegrating; his poetic genius fell back to the lowest level, perhaps, to which it is possible for poetic genius to fall. He reduced his imagination to a passive sensorium for the registering of impressions. No element of construction remained in it, and therefore no element of penetration. But his scope was wide; and his lazy, desultory apprehension was poetical. His work, for the very reason that it is so rudimentary, contains a beginning, or rather many beginnings, that might possibly grow into a noble moral imagination, a worthy filling for the human mind. An American in the nineteenth century who completely disregarded the genteel tradition could hardly have done more. But there is another distinguished man, lately lost to this country, who has given some rude shocks to this tra- dition and who, as much as Whitman, may be regarded as representing the genuine, the long silent American mind — I mean William James. He and his brother Henry were as tightly swaddled in the genteel tradition as any infant geniuses could be, for they were born in Cambridge, and in a Swedenborgian household. Yet they burst those bands almost entirely. The ways in which the two brothers freed themselves, however, are interestingly different. Mr. Henry James has done it by adopting the point of view of the outer world, and by turning the genteel American tradition, as he turns everything else, into a subject-matter for analysis. For him it is a curious habit of mind, intimately comprehended, to be compared with other habits of mind, also well known to him. Thus he has overcome the genteel tradition in the classic way, by understanding it. With William James too this infusion of worldly insight and European sympathies was a potent influence, especially in his earlier days; but the chief source of his liberty was another. It was his personal spontaneity, similar to that of Emerson, and his personal vitality, similar to that of nobody else. Convictions and ideas came to him, so to 372 UNITEBSirr CHBONICLE. speak from the subsoil. He had a prophetic sympathy ^th 'the da.-ning sentiments of the age, w>th the moods of the dumb majority. His scattered words caught fire in many parts of the Wd. His way of thmkmg and feeling 'represented the true America, «!^ ^^^7 Thu" a measure the whole ultra-modern, radical world. Thus •he eluded the genteel tradition in the romantic way by continuing it into its opposite. The romantic n»nd glori- fied in Hegel's dialectic (which is not dialectic at all, but a sort of tragi-comic history of experience), is always ren- dering its thoughts unrecognizable through the infusion of new insights, and through the insensible trans "rmat'on of the moral feeling that accompanies them, till at last it has completely reversed its old J«dgni«nte under cover of expanding them. Thus the genteel tradition was M a merry dance when it fell again into the hands of a gen- uine and vigorous romanticist, like William James^ He Stored thefr revolutionary force to its neutrahzed de- ments, bv picking them out afresh, and emphasizing them separately, according to his personal predilections. . %or or.; thing, William James kept his mind and heart ^ide open to all that might ^e^"^' *« P»"° J' ^^^ personal, or visionary in religion and philosophy He gave a sincerely respectful hearing to ^^'^^'f^''^^^^ for spiritualists, wizards, cranks, quacks, and ^^^^^^^J''' it is hard to draw the line, and James was not wiUing to draw it prematurely. He thought, with his -f -«r*:hiiimain:ii'ai5oiiV*or ti/e / ' :' • » .• • • • « • * • • • :■ -• • *• ••• •■•••• «••••»( « • «•«••• •» •**•• • «, • ••••• •• •• »,• ••^t » >• •do*** •• « ••«*• • » • • • « • • •• • • • •• o * t • • • • * • f « • • > * z Akk 380 UNIVEBSITY CHBONICLE. \\ human distinction between good and evil, is the center and pivot of the universe. That is what the mountains and the woods should make you at last ashamed to assert. From what, indeed, does the society of nature liberate you, that you find it so sweet? It is hardly (is it?) that you wish to forget your past, or your friends, or that you have any secret contempt for your present ambitions. You respect these, you respect them perhaps too much; you are not suffered by the genteel tradition to criticize or to reform them at all radically. No; it is the yoke of this genteel tradition itself, your tyrant from the cradle to the grave, that these primeval solitudes lift from your shoulders. They suspend your forced sense of your own importance not merely as individuals, but even as men. They allow you, in one happy moment, at once to play and to worship, to take yourselves simply, humbly, for what you are, and to salute the wild, indifferent, non-censorious infinity of nature. You are admonished that what you can do avails little materially, and in the end nothing. At the same time, through wonder and pleasure, you are taught specu- lation. You learn what you are really fitted to do, and where lie your natural dignity and joy, namely, in repre- senting many things, without being them, and in letting your imagination, through sympathy, celebrate and echo their life. Because the peculiarity of man is that his ma- chinery for reaction on external things has involved an imaginative transcript of these things, which is preserved and suspended in his fancy; and the interest and beauty of this inward landscape, rather than any fortunes that may await his body in the outer world, constitute his proper happiness. By their mind, its scope, quality, and temper, , we estimate men, for by the mind only do we exist as men, ■ and are more than so many storage-batteries for material ; energy. Let us therefore be frankly human. Let us be content to live in the mind. • • * • • • • • • • • • • .1 • It • • > « • i • I * • • • t • « • • • •, .11 » •» ••»..• • • •*•< n't* « •* .*• I I • • { ( I t I t « •• llMllllAl TT?(