[43: 3–13] The theory (I oppose) is that the advance of men in European civilization is dependent on the class organization & special priveleges of certain classes in England.

America was planted with the more barbarous people of England. It has had no such class organization or privileges, but has nevertheless advanced—man for man of its population, more rapidly than England.

If we can imagine a number of men and women of that condition in life in their own society, which English travellers most refer to, in comparing American with English customs, habits and manners, to have met with great disasters, suddenly causing them to be completely seperated from all friends and associates of similar condition, and that they have been driven to maintain life by such means as are used by the majority of the lower and larger class of the English people; to have become parents while in that lower condition and then follow in imagination their descendents for several generations, and finally suppose that all their descendents to the number of several thousand, having had in the meantime only the average fortune of the English laboring classes, are collected in one community, we shall unavoidably presume that great differences would be found between the character of such a community and another community composed entirely of such descendents of the cousins of their progenitors as may have remained in the more fortunate condition. I say differences of character because without the admission of any blood of families previously of low condition there would have been developed differences more important than could be seen in habits in regard to food and stimulants, fashions of clothing, use of language and modes of address; the obligations of self respect and personal honor and sensitive regard for honesty and truthfulness would have become less important elements in the life of the poorer branches. Not that many individuals of them would fail to be honest and truthful in a high degree, but that a man who habitually gave eye service to his employer, or who customarily misrepresented the quality of small wares which he had to dispose of or who gave short weight or measure, might retain the sincere respect and cordial good will of those generally among his associates who were acquainted with his habits in these respects, as would not be the case with a man known to be equally dishonorable in his habits in the [758]more fortunate rank of society even though manifestations of contempt or aversion might in the latter case be less frequently or less distinctly indulged in.

On the other hand, the poorer body would be found very much more sympathetic, charitable, forbearing to wrong-doers, encouraging and helpful to those struggling to do well. They would be more frank, more careless and wasteful; they would be less enterprising, energetic, elastic and refined in their mental movements; they would, for illustration, find more congenial entertainment in that kind of literature which is prepared by writers of very moderate talents than in that which is most highly refined and elaborated, because the latter to be appreciated would demand of them a more delicate and finely extended application of their imaginations than they would find it easy to make. Such a difference would have been established even though no one of those concerned had ever gone out of England. When a traveller dwells upon the evidences, he finds that Americans possess qualities such as the poorer cousins would have acquired in the case supposed; it does not follow that his observations have the remotest value with reference to the question of the effect upon the English race either of the American climate, the American laws, or the American fertility and cheapness of land. Just such differences he would find at home between the classes with which he prefers to be associated and certain other Englishmen on the far side of a Social Atlantic with whom he has little more personal intercourse of a kind to make him acquainted with their character than he has with those who have gone out from them to America.

If again we imagine the community which in the first place we have supposed to be composed of a number of universally poor families to grow rapidly richer, we can see that changes perceptible to an occasional visitor would very soon occur. Distinctions between it and the more fortunate community of its cousins in respect to dress and manners and modes of business would soon be less obvious and to the superficial observer would perhaps disappear altogether long before any essential change had occurred in regard to the more important distinctions of character.

This also would be the case whether the trial occurred in England or America, and when the English traveller becomes acquainted with people who dress well, have plenty of commonplace small talk at command and are generally free from coarseness or rudeness of manners, but who yet evidently lack something of the quality of gentlemen, he makes a mistake which a better knowledge of his own country would have enabled him to avoid if he refers their shortcomings either to the laws, the climate or the soil of the United States.

[The same dullness, shortness and backwardness would be found in [759] some degree-we say not yet whether greater or less-in most average Englishmen who from a condition of prolonged poverty have come to be prosperous and socially ambitious. All the English novelists assure us of this although most English travellers in America seem to be forgetful of it.]

The question remains, however, whether such a body of people as we have supposed would be found to be advancing in all essential particulars more rapidly toward the highest standard of civilization under the American or the English conditions?

Adopting the improbable supposition that its progress in wealth and means of knowledge would be equal and looking at the question from a purely theoretic point of view, we shall find that we have to weigh the advantage of examples and standards of tastes, habits, and behavior constantly held before the English community by its neighbors of the higher class, with the disadvantage which arises from a conscious inferiority and sense of being barred out from association with that which is superior, against the absence of both the advantage and disadvantage in question, in America.

There is hardly a question that for a time the gain is much more rapid in America, but the best observers seem to think that beyond a certain point the reverse is the case. (Look at book announcements.) We are doing little to advance the scholarship of the world, little to advance science, though we have a much larger proportion of scholars and of students of science of a low grade. If we had had classes; if the lower advanced more slowly, would the higher advance more rapidly? Should we have a larger number of advanced scholars, more real culture? (Arnold, Hammond, S.C.)

Slavery was sustained by many upon the presumption that we should. Mr Carlyle and Mr Ruskin evidently believe that we should. So have most English travellers believed who have given the world their observations of America. But not one of them has shown a particle of evidence that the lack of permanent class distinctions, the lack of priveledges, the lack of whatever tends to prevent men of the lower ranks from rising or wishing or striving to rise, has had anything to do with our shortcomings, with our lack of really eminent men and our profusion of men who are simply not altogether low. On the contrary their record of facts observed indicates that where there has been the nearest approach to English conditions, where classes have been most distinctly formed and grades most exactly defined and seperated, there they have found the most of superficial and the least of essential attainment; where the bars to the advance of the lowest have been least obvious, least formal, least recognized in law and government, where distinctions of class have been most lightly considered, where intimacy between the lowest and highest has been easiest and commonest, there have lived & grown the [760]greater number of those whom they recognized to be the peers of the men who lead the advance of European learning, refinement, culture and civilization.

If we see that the whole number of such persons in America is mournfully small and if we have reason to fear that the capacity of our scholars is much less on an average in the present than in past generations, there unquestionably are other influences than those of our democratic levelling conditions to which the misfortune may in some degree if not altogether be traced.

What in England & the world over is the eminent demand of newly rich men who have been very poor? Certainly not the first of all fruits of high culture. Who in England listen with most interest to Mr Arnold, Mr Ruskin or Mr Carlyle? Certainly not men for the most part whose fathers and mothers were working people.

Not only is the number of men who have inherited means which relieved them of the necessity of working for their living at any early age very small in America, but the demand upon the time and the mind of those who possess capital, either in the form of money or of discipline and learning to do something else with it than use it as a base on which to strive for higher attainments, is so strong that few can resist it. The average rate of interest for money loaned is more than twice as great in America as it is in England. The average rate of interest for money used with a moderate degree of the advantages which are possessed by minds refined by a course of contemplative reflection, is much more than twice as great, and this is simply an expression of the greater degree in which temptation to desert the upward path of learning, science, refinement is presented to every man who enters upon it. This greater temptation comes not from the laws but from the open wilderness of resources which America possesses and the want of the world that men should bestir themselves to draw out & scatter the bread, cotton, wool and oil for which the people of England are more clamorous than any other.

[42: 285–90] It is a general experience that the results of study of American society which have been published by travellers are of much less interest and value than the works of the same authors in other fields. In old countries men and things are interesting in themselves. In whatever degree they are so in America, it is of no consequence compared with the interest which attaches to them from the significance with which they bear upon the progress of the race. But not in a few months or even a few twelvemonths can a stranger become so accustomed to the difference of the conditions in which men live here and in the old world, as to be able to study with advantage the multitudinous counter-currents of moral force between which we are all drifting with more or less of unsteady gyration. We can judge of the direction of a broad current only by watching what it carries for a period of time. That at a certain moment a bubble is swinging around or a chip advancing one way or another indicates nothing, we wish to know where the bubble was formed, where did the chip fall into the stream, and it is only so far as travellers are able to compare the present of individuals with the past of the same individuals, [762]or in some more general way to place the phenomena which they find on the surface today in their true sequence with a series reaching to a point higher up-stream that their observations can be of importance, and it is only as we see that they have tried to do this and acquire confidence that they have been in some degree successful, that we can patiently read their reflections.

Men and women of a certain degree of penetration come here from Europe and find certain things on the surface resembling things to which they are accustomed and which are associated in Europe with certain attainments of civilization. Presently discovering that there is no such association here they naturally and reasonably become cautious in regard to accepting the genuineness of any of the apparent evidences of civilized progress which they encounter. They see that there is much life, much stir, much turbulence, much glitter, much bubbling, much rising to the surface, foam, froth and drifting rubbish and according to their temperament or their self interest, or the fashion of their class or party for the moment, they express hope or fear of what it all amounts to, but they help us to really understand it very little.

And among ourselves there is much of the same perplexity. Our interest in what other men think is partly due to the confused result of our own observation and to our real anxiety as to whither we are drifting. We live not for ourselves in America, we live to work for those who are to follow us. We care not for the present except as it is the opportunity to be used for the future. Therefore, this question of the drift of things is vital to us. And who feels altogether sure? Who has not wholly changed his mind as to the value & significance of this or that, in which a few years ago he took great interest? Who does not know that this hope of good and great men was a false hope, and that the labors in which it led them to engage were wasted; that this fear which possessed himself & thousands of others a few years ago was grounded on a fallacy and the struggle which it induced was a vain one? Who has not misinterpreted the most obvious phenomena? Who has not miscalculated the drift of things? Who feels entire confidence that he now sees aright and is working in such a way as shall serve to advance the right?

We have no sooner passed the point of emancipation and gained the appearance of new national unity than we [are] suddenly appalled by hundreds of vortices of official meanness and corruption which betray a fearful weakness in our political system and which could not possibly have come about except through a condition of general folly and demoralization that we are appalled to realize. There is nothing more disgraceful, nothing more frightful, nothing more uncivilized in the worst government of Europe than we have seen in our legislation, our courts of law and our civil service generally since we returned from the war. And the very men who led us in that war have part in and consent to this damnation [763]of the republic. Who does not know this, and who knowing it can help feeling that the most searching study is necessary before a true discrimination can be made between the true and false acquisitions for which we are all working so hard?

Rich men and poor men, Rich communities and poor communities. Penetrate the lacquer and which is which? Where is there trustworthy evidence of true prosperity? Who is it that is successful? What is healthy growth & what is diseased monstrosity?

[I have given some attention to a line of study which appears to me [[to]] have been too much overlooked and it has led me to conclusions in which I feel a satisfactory degree of hopeful assurance and I would therefore commend it to be more thoroughly and generally followed.]