perception of proportion or perspective, and without that a fine discernment of the absurd is impossible; it is their extravagance of emotion that makes them so prone to the use of the superlative. At one time I believed that this national weakness for the superlative was simply blague, but I now know that it is constitutional. As deficient in the power to estimate true values as certain persons are wanting in the ability to differentiate colors or recognize harmony, their reflection of life is one of those convex mirrors so mirth-provoking to the yokel, who sees his features enormously distorted and grins back in delight at the exaggerated likeness. It is this constitutional tendency for exaggeration and the inability to measure men and things for what they really are that is responsible for the American belief, which is the cardinal doctrine of their faith, in the swanlike attribute of American geese, in the "bigness" of their country and the extraordinary ability of their men; in this respect similar to little children who, having mastered the elementary multiplication table, talk of millions and think, to their limited capacity, in billions. There is seldom a man elected to an office (immediately after his election), whether it be constable or President, who is not either in intellect or virtue without a peer, whose genius is not the admiration of all the world; without discriminating whether his place was the gift of a boss or the recognition of real merit. If the Americans had a keener appre

ciation of the ridiculous, their newspapers would be less amusing, but they would also be more informing. No newspaper, for instance, with a sense of proportion would attempt seriously to defend its cartoonist by bracketing in the same sentence the name of a quite unknown and crude amateur and Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Phidias!1 Yet the incongruity and absurdity of the juxtaposition does not make the paper the laughingstock of the country. But it is a dangerous pastime for the inmates of glass houses to throw stones, and as hardly any newspaper excludes the superlative from its vocabulary there is reason why criticism is hushed.

In a democracy man is much given to the contemplation of himself, and there is tendency to exalt the individual and minimize the force of organized society. Where classes exist the person is of less consequence than the class he represents, the order whose champion he is, the traditions he defends. What gives weight to the utterance of the possessor of a historical name in a monarchy is not alone his talents or his virtues, but the feeling that through him speaks the historic past, that he voices not merely his own opinion but that of his class. Democracy undoubtedly is a spur to individual initiative, but man becomes so proud of what he has accomplished that he is apt to forget the obligation he owes the state.

1 San Francisco Examiner, July, 1908.

It was an acute English observer who was overimpressed by the seeming gravity and melancholy of the Americans. He observed them at work, on the streets, in traveling, at play, and it was his conclusion that they were a sombre race. Compared with the volatile Latin untempered by the restraining influence of the Saxon strain, or the mercurial Celt, or even the phlegmatic Teuton, whose phlegm is partly the conventional habit of controlling emotions, the American appears markedly more quiet and as if weighed down by the burden of life, and yet distinguished by alertness that sets him apart. Had the original English stock spread across the continent undiluted by the blood of Europe, we should to-day have in the United States not a new race but simply a variation of the parent stem. It is this foreign element absorbed into the native stock (meaning by this not the indigenous race, the Indians, but the English, who in the second generation became native to the soil) that has been one of the causes to produce the new race, and that, in addition to the influence of environment and a political code that is not less a moral and social law, explains the many contradictions in the American character. The gravity, the melancholy, that feeling of national despair that finds its expression in the savage attacks of the press on the motives and integrity of public men, which is almost the agonized cry whether anything is worth while, is the spirit of the Puritan, which for three centuries has

quickened the conscience of America and still lives. And the cynical indifference so often displayed, the levity with which things spiritual are treated, the sudden flaming emotion frequently akin to hysteria, the balance and sound judgment after the first gust of passion has spent itself, the feverish haste and the dogged persistence, the selfishness and the altruism, the suspicion and the almost childlike confidence, the self-consciousness and the poise, these are the product of environment, of blood, and political and social institutions.

It is only the superficial observer who can dogmatically assert what the American temperament is. It is as true to say that the American is grave as it is to say that he is volatile; as true as it would be to say that America has mountains and plains; as misleading as it would be to say that its striking physical characteristics are mountains and to ignore the fact of its plains or rivers; as to say that the soil is influenced by the heat and to disregard the fructifying effect of cold. The American volubly strikes up a chance acquaintance with a man he may happen to meet in a railway carriage, while the Englishman retains his reserve and is oblivious of his fellow passengers, and the Englishman insists that the American is obtrusive and has no conception of dignity or reticence, forgetting that a social and political system that recognizes caste has a manner of expression entirely different from that in which labor may occupy the throne; that, as was

said of the Florentines, the consciousness of having not simply the right to vote but the chance of being voted for must make every man feel within himself the power of sovereignty. A people cannot be deliberately guilty of national hypocrisy and not degenerate. The American must either believe in his articles of faith the universal equality of man or else go to destruction; for faith, a profound conviction, a belief in something, whether in the divine right of kings or the majesty of the will of the people, is necessary to hold society together. "Hypatia had taken away the living God and given him instead the four elements." It does not compensate, for the elements are unstable and society must anchor itself to a rock. The American no more than the Englishman is a conscious national hypocrite. Each recites his creed and believes it, but in this as in other things a definition of terms is necessary.

The struggle in which the founders of a new race engaged developed them physically and materially, but it dwarfed them spiritually. I do not use this word in the sense it is commonly employed. It connotes neither religion nor the spirit of religion, although the deep-seated devotion to religion, which was the essence of the Puritan character, was later bruised by the struggle. By spiritual I mean what Carlyle terms "our thinking." "In our inward, as in our outward world, what is mechanical lies open to us; not what is dynamical and has vitality. Of