THE "DIVINE AVERAGE"1

G. LOWES DICKINSON

THE great countries of the East have each a civilization that is original, if not independent. India, China, Japan, each has a peculiar outlook on the world. Not so America, at any rate in the north. America, we might say, does not exist; there exists instead an offshoot of Europe. Nor does an "American spirit" exist; there exists instead the spirit of the average Western man. Americans are immigrants and descendants of immigrants. Putting aside the negroes and a handful of Orientals, there is nothing to be found here that is not to be found in Western Europe; only here what thrives is not what is distinctive of the different European countries, but what is common to them all. What America does, not, of course, in a moment, but with incredible rapidity, is to obliterate distinctions. The Scotchman, the Irishman, the German, the Scandinavian, the Italian, even, I suppose, the Czech, drops his costume, his manner, his language, his traditions, his beliefs, and retains only his common Western humanity. Transported to this continent all the varieties developed in Europe revert to the original type, and flourish in unexampled vigor and force. It is not a new type that is evolved; it is the fundamental type, growing in a new soil, in luxuriant profusion. Describe the average Western man and you describe the American; from east to west, from north to south, everywhere and always the same masterful, aggressive, unscrupulous, egotistic, at once good-natured and brutal, kind if you do not cross him,

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1 Appearances, part IV, chapter 1. Reprinted through the generous permission of the author and of Doubleday, Page & Co.

ruthless if you do, greedy, ambitious, self-reliant, active for the sake of activity, intelligent and unintellectual, quickwitted and crass, contemptuous of ideas but amorous of devices, valuing nothing but success, recognizing nothing but the actual, Man in the concrete, undisturbed by spiritual life, the master of methods and slave of things, and therefore the conqueror of the world, the unquestioning, the undoubting, the child with the muscles of a man, the European stripped bare, and shown for what he is, a predatory, unreflecting, naïf, precociously accomplished brute.

One does not then find in America anything one does not find in Europe; but one finds in Europe what one does not find in America. One finds, as well as the average, what is below and what is above it. America has, broadly speaking, no waste products. The wreckage, everywhere evident in Europe, is not evident there. Men do not lose their self-respect, they win it; they do not drop out, they work in. This is the great result not of American institutions or ideas, but of American opportunities. It is the poor immigrant who ought to sing the praises of this continent. He alone has the proper point of view; and he, unfortunately, is dumb. But often, when I have contemplated with dreary disgust, in the outskirts of New York, the hideous, wooden shanties planted askew in wastes of garbage, and remembered Naples or Genoa or Venice, suddenly it has been borne in upon me that the Italians living there feel that they have their feet on the ladder leading to paradise; that for the first time they have before them a prospect and a hope; and that while they have lost, or are losing, their manners, their beauty, and their charm, they have gained something which, in their eyes, and perhaps in reality, more than compensates for losses they do not seem to feel, they have gained self-respect, independence, and the allure of the open horizon. “The vision of America," a friend writes, "is the vision of the lifting

up of the millions." This, I believe, is true, and it is America's great contribution to civilization. I do not forget it; but neither shall I dwell upon it; for though it is, I suppose, the most important thing about America, it is not what I come across in my own experience. What strikes more often and more directly home to me is the other fact that America, if she is not burdened by masses lying below the average, is also not inspired by an élite rising above it. Her distinction is the absence of distinction. No wonder Walt Whitman sang the "Divine Average." There was nothing else in America for him to sing. But he should not have called it divine; he should have called it “human, all too human."

Or is it divine? Divine somehow in its potentialities? Divine to a deeper vision than mine? I was writing this at Brooklyn, in a room that looks across the East River to New York. And after putting down those words, "human, all too human," I stepped out on to the terrace. Across the gulf before me went shooting forward and back interminable rows of fiery shuttles; and on its surface seemed to float blazing basilicas. Beyond rose into the darkness a dazzling tower of light, dusking and shimmering, primrose and green, up to a diadem of gold. About it hung galaxies and constellations, outshining the firmament of stars; and all the air was full of strange voices, more than human, ingeminating Babylonian oracles out of the bosom of night. This is New York. This it is that the average man has done, he knows not why; this is the symbol of his work, so much more than himself, so much more than what seems to be itself in the common light of day. America does not know what she is doing, neither do I know, nor any man. But the impulse that drives her, so mean and poor to the critic's eye, has perhaps more significance in the eye of God; and the optimism of this continent, so seeming-frivolous, is justified, may be, by reason lying beyond its ken.

THE FRAME OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT 1

JAMES BRYCE

THE account which has been so far given of the working of the American Government has been necessarily an account rather of its mechanism than of its spirit. Its practical character, its temper and color, so to speak, largely depend on the party system by which it is worked, and on what may be called the political habits of the people. These will be described in later chapters. Here, however, before quitting the study of the constitutional organs of government, it is well to sum up the criticisms we have been led to make, and to add a few remarks, for which no fitting place could be found in preceding chapters, on the general features of the National Government.

I. No part of the Constitution cost its framers so much time and trouble as the method of choosing the President. They saw the evils of a popular vote. They saw also the objections to placing in the hands of Congress the election of a person whose chief duty it was to hold Congress in check. The plan of having him selected by judicious persons, specially chosen by the people for that purpose, seemed to meet both difficulties, and was therefore recommended with confidence. The Presidential electors have, however, turned out mere ciphers, and the President is practically chosen by the people at large. The only importance which the elaborate machinery provided in the Constitution retains, is that it prevents a simple popular vote in which the majority of the Nation should prevail, and makes the

1 The American Commonwealth (Revised Edition), part 1, chapter XXVI Reprinted through the generous permission of The Macmillan Company.

issue of the election turn on the voting in certain "pivotal" States.

II. The choice of the President, by what is now practically a simultaneous popular vote, not only involves once in every four years a tremendous expenditure of energy, time, and money, but induces of necessity a crisis which, if it happens to coincide with any passion powerfully agitating the people, may be dangerous to the Commonwealth.

III. There is always a risk that the result of a Presidential election may be doubtful or disputed on the ground of error, fraud, or violence. When such a case arises, the difficulty of finding an authority competent to deal with it, and likely to be trusted, is extreme. Moreover, the question may not be settled until the preëxisting Executive has, by effluxion of time, ceased to have a right to the obedience of the citizens. The experience of the election of 1876 illustrates these dangers. Such a risk of interregna is incidental to all systems, monarchic or republican, which make the executive head elective, as witnesses the Romano-Germanic Empire of the Middle Ages, and the Papacy. But it is more serious where he is elected by the people than where, as in France and Switzerland, he is chosen by the Chambers.

IV. The change of the higher executive officers, and of many of the lower executive officers also, which usually takes place once in four years, gives a jerk to the machinery, and causes a discontinuity of policy, unless, of course, the President has served only one term, and is reëlected. Moreover, there is generally a loss either of responsibility or of efficiency in the executive chief magistrate during the last part of his term. An outgoing President may possibly be a reckless President, because he has little to lose by misconduct, little to hope from good conduct. He may therefore abuse his patronage, or gratify his whims with impunity. But more often he is a weak President. He has little influence with