centuries this longing for the infinite has been the source of much of the best and much of the poorest in German intellectual achievements. From this longing for the infinite sprang the deep inwardness and spiritual fervor which impart such a unique charm to the contemplative thought of the German Mystics of the fourteenth century. In this longing for the infinite lay Luther's greatest inspiration and strength. It was the longing for the infinite which Goethe felt when he made his Faust say, "The thrill of awe is man's best quality.” This longing for the infinite was the very soul of German Romanticism; and all its finest conceptions, the Blue Flower of Novalis, Fichte's Salvation by the Will, Hegel's Self-revelation of the Idea, Schopenhauer's Redemption from the Will, Nietzsche's Revaluation of all Values, are nothing but ever new attempts to find a body for this soul. But while there has thus come a great wealth of inspiration and moral idealism from this German bent for reveling in the infinite, there has also come from it one of the greatest National defects: German vagueness, German lack of form, the lack of sense for the shape and proportion of finite things. Here, then, we meet with another discrepancy between the American and the German character. For nothing is more foreign to the American than the mystic and the vague, nothing appeals more to him than what is clear-cut, easy to grasp, and well proportioned; he cultivates "good form" for its own sake, not only in his social conduct, but also in his literary and artistic pursuits, and he usually attains it easily and instinctively, often at the expense of the deeper substance. To the German, on the contrary, form is a problem. He is principally absorbed in the subject-matter, the idea, the inner meaning; he struggles to give this subjectmatter, this inner meaning, an adequate outer form; and he often fails. To comfort himself, he has invented a technical term designed to cover up his failure: he falls back on the "inner form" of his productions.. I have reserved for the last place in this review of differences of German and American temper another trait intimately connected with the German craving for the infinite; I give the last place to the consideration of this trait, because it seems to me the most un-American of all. I mean the passion for self-surrender. I think I need not fear any serious opposition if I designate self-possession as the cardinal American virtue, and consequently as the cardinal American defect also. It is impossible to imagine that so unmanly a proverb as the German "Wer niemals einen Rausch gehabt should have originated in New England or Ohio. But it is impossible also to conceive that the author of Werthers Leiden should have obtained his youthful impressions and inspirations in New York City. "Conatus sese conservandi unicum virtutis fundamentum"- this Spinozean motto may be said to contain the essence of the American decalogue of conduct. Always be master of yourself; never betray any irritation, or disappointment, or any other weakness; never slop over; never give yourself away; never make yourself ridiculous what American would not admit that these are foremost among the rules by which he would like to regulate his conduct? It can hardly be denied that this habitual self-mastery, this habitual control over one's emotions, is one of the chief reasons why so much of American life is so uninteresting and so monotonous. It reduces the number of opportunities for intellectual friction, it suppresses the manifestation of strong individuality, often it impoverishes the inner life itself. But, on the other hand, it has given the American that sureness of motive, that healthiness of appetite, that boyish frolicsomeness, that purity of sex-instincts, that quickness and litheness of manners, which distinguish him from most Europeans; it has given to him all those qualities which insure success and make their possessor a welcome member of any kind of society. If, in contradistinction to this fundamental American trait of self-possession, I designate the passion for self-surrender as perhaps the most significant expression of National German character, I am well aware that here again, I have touched upon the gravest defects as well as the highest virtues of German National life. The deepest seriousness and the noblest loyalty of German character is rooted in this passion. “Sich hinzugeben ganz und eine Wonne Zu fühlen die ewig sein muss, that is German sentiment of the most unquestionable sort. Not only do the great names in German history—as Luther, Lessing, Schiller, Bismarck, and so many others — stand in a conspicuous manner for this thoroughly German devotion, this absorption of the individual in some great cause or principle, but countless unnamed men and women are equally typical representatives of this German virtue of self-surrender: the housewife whose only thought is for her family; the craftsman who devotes a lifetime of contented obscurity to his daily work; the scholar who foregoes official and social distinction in unremitting pursuit of his chosen inquiry; the official and the soldier, who sink their personality in unquestioning service to the State. But a German loves not only to surrender himself to a great cause or a sacred task, he equally loves to surrender himself to whims. He loves to surrender to feelings, to hys terias of all sorts; he loves to merge himself in vague and formless imaginings, in extravagant and reckless experience, in what he likes to call "living himself out." And thus this same passion for self-surrender which has produced the greatest and noblest types of German earnestness and devotion, has also led to a number of paradoxical excrescences and grotesque distortions of German character. Nobody is more prone to forget his better self in this so-called “living himself out" than the German. Nobody can be a cruder materialist than the German who has persuaded himself that it is his duty to unmask the "lie of idealism." Nobody can be a more relentless destroyer of all that makes life beautiful and lovely, nobody can be a more savage hater of religious beliefs, of popular tradition, of patriotic instincts, than the German who has convinced himself that by the uprooting of all these things he performs the sacred task of saving society. 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, 1 Appearances, part IV, chapter 1. Reprinted through the generous permission of the author and of Doubleday, Page & Co. |