merely by removing to America. American life, indeed, at once reacted upon their minds, and began to give its tone and hue to their words."1 The preRevolutionary period is an era of heroic literature, not heroic or mythical in the sense that we apply the term to the Norse Sagas or the Arthurian legends; there is here no search for the Holy Grail or vows of pious knights; there are no beauteous maidens to be rescued or symbolical tales of temptation of the flesh to be overcome; but there are tracts and sermons and volumes to inspire men with courage and to make them cling to an ideal; to implant in them the sense of tradition and ever to foster the spirit of liberty.

It has been pointed out in the previous volume that the Indian exercised a certain influence upon the civilization of the white man in the colonial period and taught the Englishman some of his cunning and love of cruelty; that the Englishman profited by the Indian's knowledge of nature, and that these were influences that survived long after Englishmen had become Americans. But the Indian was never able to impose his civilization upon the Englishman or American, nor did he in any lasting way modify or temper the civilization of the white man. The language of the Indian did not color that of his conqueror; aboriginal customs were not permanently adopted by a race more highly developed; the slight admixture of Indian blood in certain por

1 Tyler: A History of American Literature, vol. 1, p. 7.

tions of the United States has not influenced the people as a whole or affected their thought or institutions, as in some other countries, in Latin America, for instance, where the Indian strain is noticeable. A power at once absorptive and repellent, antithetical forces simultaneously at work, have enabled the Americans from the first to incorporate into themselves physical and mental elements that were desirable and reject those that were destructive. It is this force that transforms the alien into an American in the course of a generation, but makes it impossible for him to graft upon the American his language or his customs; it was the same force that in early days enabled the settler to draw from the Indian all that was useful to him and yet to keep his blood unvitiated. "It is a fact worth noting by those who study questions of race," Murray observes, "that among both the Greeks and the Hebrews the most prominent and characteristic part of the nation was also the part most largely mixed with the race of the despised aborigines. The tribe of Judah had the largest Canaanite element. As for the Athenians, they always claim to be children of the soil, and Herodotus actually goes so far as to describe them as 'not Greek but Pelasgian.'"1

And lastly, we find, as one of the elements without which there can be no sense of nationality, that in a country so vast in area as the United States, some of whose people dwell on the seaboard and

1 Murray: The Rise of the Greek Epic, p. 50.

others far inland, where there is great diversity of soil, climate, and occupation, where there is great poverty and great wealth, whose people are both urban and agricultural, there is only one moral code and the ethical concept of conduct is the same whether in the metropolis or the hamlet. This broad general statement is not to be accepted as meaning that the conventions of the city are those of the village, for the refinement of wealth and intelligence, the stress of competition, and the tension of life in the city, as opposed to a more placid and reposeful existence in the village, enforce broader views of conduct and sanction customs that the village, unable to comprehend, frowns upon; nor is it to be accepted as meaning that the arbitrary code of the long-established city, where there is great wealth and much luxury and the latest expression of modern civilization, is that of the newer city of the plains or the half-neglected town that progress has left in a backwater to drone out an existence. Nor again must it be accepted as meaning that the summary social methods of a younger community not yet disciplined into respect for the law are those of an older, more stable, and better organized society, or that where society delegates to the state the function of vengeance and makes it the executioner, the law of private retaliation meets with no condemnation. Yet, accepting the statement broadly, its truth remains unchallenged. Principles of morality, of right and wrong, of probity, integrity, and honest dealing

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between man and man and the relations between man and woman, and of both man and woman to society at large, are the same, whether East or West, North or South, in the city or the village; in the cities with a historical past and those whose history dates from yesterday. We hear much of the frivolities of the "Four Hundred," of the immoralities of "society," of the extravagance of the idle rich, of divorce, of a corrupt and arrogant plutocracy; but admitting all that is said to be true, -and it is not all true by a great deal,

we see

that a few idle or dissolute or foolish men and women are not typical of a people; we see, moreover, that the vices of society are not condoned or secretly admired by the people, who have a rugged idea of virtue and are not ashamed to confess it. And we shall further see that the moral backbone of America is not to be found among the rich in the large cities, but it is among the "common people,"

- using that expression precisely in the same spirit that made the words linger so lovingly on the lips of Lincoln that is to be found the moral stamina and the strength of purpose that make a people great. Let it be understood, however, that I disclaim the popular hypocrisy of attributing all the virtue to the poor and lowly and all the vices to the rich and exalted. Neither rich nor poor possess a monopoly of vice or virtue, and in this respect America is no different from any other country, even although the attempt has been repeatedly made to

prove that its people claim the prerogative of a special law. Here, as everywhere else, there are more people of small means than of great wealth, more men who work with their hands than idle with their bodies, more inducements to "straight" living than an aimless existence.

1

When does the animal, human or otherwise, cease to be foreign to the soil and become native to it? The time required to domesticate an animal no scientist has yet been able to determine with authority, any more than he has been able to determine its origin. This much, however, science has established for us: after a certain length of time, varying according to circumstances, the animal, influenced by climate, food, and other conditions, ceases to be wild or alien to his new environment and becomes autochthonous. "How many generations are necessary for one species or race to absorb another by repeated crosses has often been discussed; and the requisite number has probably been much exaggerated. Some writers have maintained that a dozen or score, or even more generations, are necessary; but this in itself is improbable, for in the tenth generation there would only be 1-1024th part of foreign blood in the offspring."2 In the time required to transform men from aliens to "natives" science is even more vague, but argu1 Darwin: The Origin of Species, passim; Spencer: Principles of Biology, passim.

2 Darwin: The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. II, p. 65.

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