we think of a man who should complain that he had no friends, when his
house was thronged daily with guests, simply because he had seen and
talked with them all once before? Such a man has either chosen badly, or
he is himself at fault. "Hold fast that which is good" says the Scripture.
Do not taste it once and throw it away. To get at the root of this matter
we must go farther back than literature and inquire what it has in common
with all other forms of art to compel our love and admiration. Now, a work
of art differs from any other result of human endeavor in this--that its
effect depends chiefly on the way in which it is made and only secondarily
upon what it is or what it represents. Were this not true, all statues of
Apollo or Venus would have the same art-value; and you or I, if we could
find a tree and a hill that Corot had painted, would be able to produce a
picture as charming to the beholder as his.

The way in which a thing is done is, of course, always important, but its
importance outside of the sphere of art differs from that within. The way
in which a machine is constructed makes it good or bad, but the thing that
is aimed at here is the useful working of the machine, toward which all
the skill of the maker is directed. What the artist aims at is not so much
to produce a likeness of a god or a picture of a tree, as to produce
certain effects in the person who looks at his complete work; and this he
does by the way in which he performs it. The fact that a painting
represents certain trees and hills is here only secondary; the primary
fact is what the artist has succeeded in making the on-looker feel.

While Sorolla is painting a group of children on the beach, I may take a
kodak picture of the same group. My photograph may be a better likeness
than Sorolla's picture, but it has no art-value. Why? Because it was made
mechanically, whereas Sorolla put into his picture something of himself,
making it a unique thing, incapable of imitation or of reproduction.

The man who has a message, one of those pervasive, compelling messages
that are worth while, naturally turns to art. He chooses his subject not
as an end, but as a vehicle, and he makes it speak his message by his
method of treatment, conveying it to his public more or less successfully
in the measure of his skill.

We have been speaking of the representative arts of painting and
sculpture, but the same is true of art in any form. In music, not a
representative art, in spite of the somewhat grotesque claims of so-called
program music, the method of the composer is everything, or at least his
subject is so vague and immaterial that no one would think of exalting it
as an end in itself. There is, however, an art in which the subject stands
forth so prominently that even those who love the art itself are
continually in danger of forgetting the subject's secondary character. I
mean the art of literature. Among the works of written speech the
boundaries of art are much more ill-defined than they are elsewhere. There
is, to be sure, as much difference between Shelley's "Ode to a Skylark"
and Todhunter's "Trigonometry" as there is between the Venus de Milo and a
battleship; and I conceive that the difference is also of precisely the
same kind, being that by which, as we have seen above, we may always
discriminate between a work of art and one of utility. But where art-value
and utility are closely combined, as they are most frequently in
literature, it is, I believe, more difficult to divide them mentally and
to dwell on their separate characteristics, than where the work is a
concrete object. This is why we hear so many disputes about whether a
given work does or does not belong to the realm of "pure literature," and
it is also the reason why, as I have said, some, even among those who love
literature, are not always ready to recognize its nature as an art, or
mistakenly believe that in so far as its art-value is concerned, the
subject portrayed is of primary importance--is an aim in itself instead of
being a mere vehicle for the conveyance of an impression.

Take, if you please, works which were intended by their authors as works
of utility, but have survived as works of art in spite of themselves, such
as Walton's "Compleat Angler" and White's "Natural History of Selborne."
Will anyone maintain that the subject-matter of those books has much to do
with their preservation, or with the estimation in which they are now
held? Nay; we may even be so bold as to enter the field of fiction and to
assert that those fictional works that have purely literary value are
loved not for the story they tell, but for the way in which the author
tells it and for the effect that he thereby produces on the reader.

I conceive that pure literature is an art, subject to the rules that
govern all art, and that its value depends primarily on the effect
produced on the reader--the message conveyed--by the way in which the
writer has done his work, the subject chosen being only his vehicle. Where
a man who has something to say looks about for means to say it worthily,
he may select a tale, a philosophical disquisition, a familiar essay, a
drama or a lyric poem. He may choose badly or well, but in any case it is
his message that matters.

My excuse for dwelling on this matter must be that unless I have carried
you with me thus far what I am about to say will have no meaning, and I
had best fold my papers, make my bow, and conclude an unprofitable
business. For my subject is re-reading, the repetition of a message; and
the message that we would willingly hear repeated is not that of utility
but of emotion. It is the word that thrills the heart, nerves the arm, and
puts new life into the veins, not that which simply conveys information.
The former will produce its effect again and again, custom can not stale
it. The latter, once delivered, has done its work. I see two messengers
approaching; one, whom I have sent to a library to ascertain the
birth-date of Oliver Cromwell, tells me what it is and receives my thanks.
The other tells me that one dear to my heart, long lying at death's door,
is recovering. My blood courses through my veins; my nerves tingle; joy
suffuses me where gloom reigned before. I cry out; I beg the bearer of
good tidings to tell them again and again; I keep him by me, so that I may
ask him a thousand questions, bringing out his message in a thousand
variant forms. But do I turn to the other and say, "O, that blessed date!
was Cromwell truly born thereon? Let me, I pray, hear you recite it again
and again!" I trow, not.

The message that we desire to hear again is the one that produces its
effect again and again; and that is the message of feeling, the message of
art--not that of mere utility. This is so true that I conceive we may use
it as a test of art-value. The great works of literature do not lose their
effect on a single reading. One makes response to them the hundredth time
as he did the first. Their appeal is so compelling that there is no
denying it--no resisting it. There are snatches of poetry--and of prose,
too--that we have by heart; that we murmur to ourselves again and again,
sure that the response which never failed will come again, thrilling the
whole organism with its pathos, uplifting us with the nobility of its
appeal, warming us with its humor. There is a little sequence of homely
verse that never fails to bring the tears to my eyes. I have tested myself
with it under the most unfavorable circumstances. In the midst of
business, amid social jollity, in the mental dullness of fatigue, I have
stopped and repeated to myself those three verses. So quickly acts the
magic of the author's skill that the earlier verses grip the fibers of my
mind and twist them in such fashion that I feel the pathos of the last
lines just as I felt them for the first time, years ago. You might all
tell similar stories. I believe that this is a characteristic of good
literature, and that all of it will bear reading, and re-reading, and
reading again.

But I hear someone say, "Do you mean to tell me that those three little
verses that bring the tears to your eyes, will bring them also to mine and
my neighbor's? I might listen to them appreciatively but dry-eyed; my
neighbor might not care for them enough to re-read them once. All about us
we see this personal equation in the appreciation of literature. Unless
you are prepared, then, to maintain that literature may be good for one
and bad for another, your contention will scarcely hold water."

Even so, brother. The messenger who told me of the safety of my dear one
did not thrill your heart as he did mine. She was dear to me, not to you,
and the infinitely delicate yet powerful chain of conditions and relations
that operated between the messenger's voice and my emotional nature did
not connect him with yours. Assuredly, the message that reaches one man
may not reach another. It may even reach a man in his youth and fall short
in manhood, or vice versa. It may be good for him and inoperative on all
the rest of the world. We estimate literature, it is true, by the
universality of its appeal or by the character of the persons whom alone
that appeal reaches. The message of literature as art may thus be to the
crowd or to a select few. I could even imagine intellect and feeling of
such exquisite fineness, such acknowledged superiority, that appeal to it
alone might be enough to fix the status of a work of art, though it might
leave all others cold. Still, in general I believe, that the greatest
literature appeals to the greatest number and to the largest number of
types. I believe that there are very few persons to whom Shakespeare,
properly presented, will not appeal. In him, nevertheless, the learned and
those of taste also delight. There are authors like Walter Pater who are a
joy to the few but do not please the many. There are others galore, whom
perhaps it would be invidious to name, who inspire joy in the multitude
but only distaste in the more discriminating. We place Pater above these,
just as we should always put quality above quantity; but I place
Shakespeare vastly higher, because his appeal is to the few and the many
at once.

But we must, I think, acknowledge that an author whose value may not
appeal to others may be great to one reader; that his influence on that
reader may be as strong for good as if it were universal instead of
unique. We may not place such a writer in the Walhalla, but I beseech you,
do not let us tear him rudely from the one or two to whom he is good and
great. Do not lop off the clinging arms at the elbow, but rather skilfully
present some other object of adoration to the intent that they may
voluntarily untwine and enfold this new object more worthily.

The man who desires to own books but who can afford only a small and
select library can not do better than to make his selection on this
basis--to get together a collection of well-loved books any one of which
would give him pleasure in re-reading. Why should a man harbor in his
house a book that he has read once and never cares to read again? Why
should he own one that he will never care to read at all? We are not
considering the books of the great collectors, coveted for their rarity or
their early dates, for their previous ownership or the beauty of their
binding--for any reason except the one that makes them books rather than
curiosities. These collections are not libraries in the intellectual or
the literary sense. Three well thumbed volumes in the attic of one who
loves them are a better library for him than those on which Pierpont
Morgan spent his millions.

This advice, it will be noted, implies that the man has an opportunity to
read the book before he decides whether to buy it or not. Here is where
the Public Library comes in. Some regard the Public Library as an
institution to obviate all necessity of owning books. It should rather be
regarded from our present standpoint as an institution to enable readers
to own the books that they need--to survey the field and make therefrom a
proper and well-considered selection. That it has acted so in the past,
none may doubt; it is the business of librarians to see that this function
is emphasized in the future. The bookseller and the librarian are not
rivals, but co-workers. Librarians complain of the point of view of those
publishers and dealers who regard every library user as a lost customer.
He is rather, they say, in many cases a customer won--a non-reader added
to the reading class--a possible purchaser of books. But have not
librarians shared somewhat this mistaken and intolerant attitude? How
often do we urge our readers to become book-owners? How often do we give
them information and aid directed toward this end? The success of the
Christmas book exhibitions held in many libraries should be a lesson to
us. The lists issued in connection with these almost always include
prices, publishers' names, and other information intended especially for
the would-be purchaser. But why should we limit our efforts to the holiday
season? True, every librarian does occasionally respond to requests for
advice in book-selection and book-purchase, but the library is not yet
recognized as the great testing field of the would-be book owner; the
librarian is not yet hailed as the community's expert adviser in the
selection and purchase of books, as well as its book guardian and book
distributor. That this may be and should be, I believe. It will be if the
librarian wills it.

Are we straying from our subject? No; for from our present standpoint a
book bought is a book reread. My ideal private library is a room, be it
large or small, lined with books, every one of which is the owner's
familiar friend, some almost known by heart, others re-read many times,
others still waiting to be re-read.

But how about the man whose first selection for this intimate personal
group would be a complete set of the works of George Ade? Well, if that is
his taste, let his library reflect it. Let a man be himself. That there is
virtue in merely surrounding oneself with the great masters of literature
all unread and unloved, I can not see. Better acknowledge your poor taste
than be a hypocrite.

The librarian can not force the classics down the unwilling throats of
those who do not care for them and are perhaps unfitted to appreciate
them. There has been entirely too much of this already and it has resulted
disastrously. Surely, a sane via media is possible, and we may agree that
a man will never like Eschylus, without assuring him that Eschylus is an
out-of-date old fogy, while on the other hand we may acknowledge the
greatness of Homer and Milton without trying to force them upon unwilling
and incompetent readers. After all it is not so much a question of Milton
versus George Ade, as it is of sanity and wholesomeness against vulgarity
and morbidity. And if I were to walk through one city and behold
collections of this latter sort predominating and then through another,
where my eyes were gladdened with evidences of good taste, of love for
humor that is wholesome, sentiment that is sane, verse that is tuneful and
noble, I should at once call on the public librarian and I should say to
him, "Thou art the man!" The literary taste of your community is a
reflection of your own as shown forth in your own institution--its
collection of books, the assistants with which you have surrounded
yourself, your attitude and theirs through you toward literature and
toward the public.

But, someone asks, suppose that I am so fortunate and so happy as to sit
in the midst of such a group of friendly authors; how and how often shall
I re-read? Shall I traverse the group every year? He who speaks thus is
playing a part; he is not the real thing. Does the young lover ask how and
how often he shall go to see his sweetheart? Try to see whether you can
keep him away! The book-lover reopens his favorite volume whenever he
feels like it. Among the works on his shelves are books for every mood,
every shade of varying temper and humor. He chooses for the moment the
friend that best corresponds to it, or it may be, the one that may best
woo him away from it. It may be that he will select none of them, but
occupy himself with a pile of newcomers, some of whom may be candidates
for admission to the inner group. The whole thing--the composition of his
library, his attitude toward it, the books that he re-reads oftenest, the
favorite passages that he loves, that he scans fondly with his eye while
yet he can repeat them by heart, his standards of admission to his inner
circle--all is peculiarly and personally his own. There is no other
precisely like it, just as there is no other human being precisely like
its owner. There is as much difference between this kind of a library and
some that we have seen as there is between a live, breathing creature with
a mind and emotions and aspirations, and a wax figure in the Eden Musee.

Thus every book lover re-reads his favorites in a way of his own, just as
every individual human being loves or hates or mourns or rejoices in a way
of his own.

One can no more describe these idiosyncrasies than he can write a history
of all the individuals in the world, but perhaps, in the manner of the
ethnological or zoological classifier, it may interest us to glance at the
types of a few genera or species.

And first, please note that re-reading is the exact repetition of a dual
mental experience, so far at least as one of the minds is concerned. It is
a replica of mind-contact, under conditions obtainable nowhere else in
this world and of such nature that some of them seem almost to partake of
other-worldliness. My yesterday's interview with Smith or Jones, trivial
as it is, I can not repeat. Smith can not remember what he said, and even
if he could, he could not say it to me in the same way and to the same
purpose. But my interview with Plato--with Shakespeare, with Emerson; my
talk with Julius Caesar, with Goethe, with Lincoln! I can duplicate it
once, twice, a hundred times. My own mind--one party to the contact--may
change, but Plato's or Lincoln's is ever the same; they speak no "various
language" like Byrant's nature, but are like that great Author of Nature
who has taken them to Himself, in that in them "is no variableness,
neither shadow of turning." To realize that these men may speak to me
today, across the abyss of time, and that I can count on the same message
tomorrow, next year and on my death bed, in the same authentic words,
producing the same effect, assures me that somewhere, somehow, a miracle
has been wrought.

I have said that one of the minds that come thus into contact changes not,
while the other, the reader's, is alterable. This gives him a sort of
standard by which he can measure or at least estimate, the changes that go
on within him, the temporary ones due to fluctuations in health, strength
or temper, the progressive ones due to natural growth or to outside
influences.

In his "Introduction to Don Quixote," Heine tells us how that book, the
first that he ever read, was his mental companion through life. In that
first perusal knowing not "how much irony God had interwoven into the
world," he looked upon the luckless knight as a real hero of romance and
wept bitterly when his chivalry and generosity met with ingratitude and
violence. A little later, when the satire dawned upon his comprehension,
he could not bear the book. Still later he read it with contemptuous
laughter at the poor knight. But when in later life, he lay racked on a
bed of pain his attitude of sympathy returned. "Dulcinea del Toboso," he
says "is still the most beautiful woman in the world; although I lie
stretched upon the earth, helpless and miserable, I will never take back
that assertion. I can not do otherwise. On with your lances, ye Knights of
the Silver Moon; ye disguised barbers!"

So every reader's viewpoint shifts with the years.

Our friend who welcomes George Ade to his inner sanctuary may find as the
years go on that his reaction to that contact has altered. I should not
recommend that the author be then be cast into outer darkness. Once a
favorite, always a favorite, for old sake's sake even if not for present
power and influence. Our private libraries will hold shelf after shelf of
these old-time favorites--milestones on the intellectual track over which
we have wearily or joyously traveled.

There will always be a warm spot in my heart and a nook on my private
shelf for Oliver Optic and Horatio Alger. Though I bar them from my
library (I mean my Library with a big L) I have no right to exclude them
from my private collection of favorites, for once I loved them. I scarcely
know why or how. If there had been in those far-off days of my boyhood,
children's libraries and children's librarians, I might not have known
them; as it is, they are incidents in my literary past that can not be
blinked, shameful though they may be. The re-reading of such books as
these is interesting because it shows us how far we have traveled since we
counted them among our favorites.

Then there is the book that, despite its acknowledged excellence, the
reader would not perhaps admit to his inner circle if he read it now for
the first time. It holds its place largely on account of the glamour with
which his youth invested it. It thrills him now as it thrilled him then,
but he half suspects that the thrill is largely reminiscent. I sometimes
fancy that as I re-read Ivanhoe and my heart leaps to my mouth when the
knights clash at Ashby, the propulsive power of that leap had its origin
in the emotions of 1870 rather than those of 1914. And when some of
Dickens' pathos--that death-bed of Paul Dombey for instance--brings the
tears again unbidden to my eyes, I suspect, though I scarcely dare to put
my suspicion into words, that the salt in those tears is of the vintage of
1875. I am reading Arnold Bennett now and loving him very dearly when he
is at his best; but how I shall feel about him in 1930 or how I might feel
if I could live until 2014, is another question.

Then there is the book that, scarce comprehended or appreciated when it
was first read, but loved for some magic of expression or turn of thought,
shows new beauties at each re-reading, unfolding like an opening rose and
bringing to view petals of beauty, wit, wisdom and power that were before
unsuspected. This is the kind of book that one loves most to re-read, for
the growth that one sees in it is after all in oneself--not in the book.
The gems that you did not see when you read it first were there then as
they are now. You saw them not then and you see them now, for your mental
sight is stronger--you are more of a man now than you were then.

Not that all the changes of the years are necessarily for the better. They
may be neither for better nor for worse. As the moving train hurries us
onward we may enjoy successively the beauties of canyon, prairie and lake,
admiring each as we come to it without prejudice to what has gone before.
In youth we love only bright colors and their contrasts--brilliant sunsets
and autumn foliage; in later life we come to appreciate also the more
delicate tints and their gradations--a prospect of swamp-land and distant
lake or sea on a gray day; a smoky town in the fog; the tender dove colors
of early dawns. So in youth we eagerly read of blood and glory and wild
adventure; Trollope is insufferably dull. Jane Austen is for old maids;
even such a gem as Cranford we do not rate at its true value. But in after
life how their quiet shades and tints come out! There is no glory in them,
no carnage, no combat; but there is charm and fascination in the very
slowness of their movement, the shortness of their range, their lack of
intensity, the absence of the shrill, high notes and the tremendous bases.

Then there is the re-reading that accuses the reader of another kind of
change--a twist to the right or the left, a cast in the mental eye, or
perhaps the correction of such a cast. The doctrines in some book seemed
strange to you once--almost abhorrent; you are ready to accept them now.
Is it because you then saw through a glass darkly and now more clearly? Or
is your vision darker now than it was? Your rereading apprizes you that
there has been a change of some sort. Perhaps you must await corroborative
testimony before you decide what its nature has been. Possibly you read
today without a blush what your mind of twenty years ago would have been
shocked to meet. Are you broader-minded or just hardened? These questions
are disquieting, but the disturbance that they cause is wholesome, and I
know of no way in which they can be raised in more uncompromising form
than by re-reading an old favorite, by bringing the alterable fabric of
your living, growing and changing mind into contact with the stiff,
unyielding yardstick of an unchangeable mental record--the cast of one
phase of a master mind that once was but has passed on.

Here I can not help saying a word of a kind of re-reading that is not the
perusal of literature at all with most of us--the re-reading of our own
words, written down in previous years--old letters, old lectures,
articles--books, perhaps, if we chance to be authors. Of little value,
perhaps, to others, these are of the greatest interest to ourselves
because instead of measuring our minds by an outside standard they enable
us to set side by side two phases of our own life--the ego of 1892,
perhaps, and that of 1914. How boyish that other ego was; how it jumped to
conclusions; how ignorant it was and how self-confident! And yet, how
fresh it was; how quickly responsive to new impressions; how unspoiled;
how aspiring! If you want to know the changes that have transformed the
mind that was into the very different one that now is, read your own old
letters.

I have tried to show you that pure literature is an art and like other
arts depends primarily upon manner and only secondarily upon matter. That
the artist, who in this case is the author, uses his power to influence
the reader usually through his emotions or feelings and that its effects
to a notable extent, are not marred by repetition. That on this account
all good literature may be re-read over and over, and that the pleasure
derived from such re-reading is a sign that a book is peculiarly adapted
in some way to the reader. Finally, that one's private library, especially
if its size be limited, may well consist of personal favorites, often
re-read.

When the astronomer Kepler had reduced to simple laws the complicated
motions of the planets he cried out in ecstacy: "O God! now think I Thy
thoughts after Thee!" Thus when a great writer of old time has been
vouchsafed a spark of the divine fire we may think his divine thoughts
after him by re-reading. And Shakespeare tells us in that deathless speech
of Portia's, that since mercy is God's attribute we may by exercising it
become like God. Thus, by the mere act of tuning our brains to think the
thoughts that the Almighty has put into the minds of the good and the
great, may it not be that our own thoughts may at the last come to be
shaped in the same mould?

"Old wine, old friends, old books," says the old adage; and of the three
the last are surely the most satisfying. The old wine may turn to vinegar;
old friends may forget or forsake us; but the old book is ever the same.
What would the old man do without it? And to you who are young I would
say--you may re-read, you first must read. Choose worthy books to love. As
for those who know no book long enough either to love or despise it--who
skim through good and bad alike and forget page ninety-nine while reading
page 100, we may simply say to them, in the words of the witty Frenchman,
"What a sad old age you are preparing for yourself!"




HISTORY AND HEREDITY[8]

[8] Read before the New England Society of St. Louis.


In one of his earlier books, Prof. Hugo Munsterberg cites the growing love
for tracing pedigrees as evidence of a dangerous American tendency toward
aristocracy. There are only two little things the matter with this--the
fact and the inference from it. In the first place, we Americans have
always been proud of our ancestry and fond of tracing it; and in the
second place, this fondness is akin, not to aristocracy but to democracy.
It is not the purpose of this paper to prove this thesis in detail, so I
will merely bid you note that aristocratic pedigree-tracers confine
themselves to one line, or to a few lines. Burke will tell you that one of
the great-great-grandfathers of the present Lord Foozlem was the First
Baron; he is silent about his great-grandfather, the tinker, and his
great-grandfather, the pettifogging country lawyer. Americans are far more
apt to push their genealogical investigations in all directions, because
they are prompted by a legitimate curiosity rather than by desire to prove
a point, American genealogical research is biological, while that of
Europe is commercial.

An obvious advantage of interest in our ancestors is that it ought to make
history a more vital thing to us; for to them, history was merely current
events in which they took part, or which, at least, they watched. This
linking up of our personal ancestral lines with past events is done too
seldom. Societies like the New England Society are doing it, and it is for
this reason that I have chosen to bring the subject briefly before you.

It has been noted that our historical notions of the Civil War are now,
and are going to be in the future, more just and less partisan than those
of the Revolution. This is not because we are nearer the Civil War; for
nearness often tends to confuse historical ideas rather than to clear them
up. It is because the descendants of those who fought on both sides are
here with us, citizens of our common country, intermarrying and coming
into contact in a thousand ways. We are not likely to ignore the Southern
standpoint regarding the rights of secession and the events of the
struggle so long as the sons and daughters of Confederate soldiers live
among us. Nor shall we ever forget the Northern point of view while the
descendants of those who fought with Grant and Sherman are our friends and
neighbors.

It is otherwise with the Revolution. We are the descendants only of those
who fought on one side. Of the others, part went back to their homes in
England, the rest, our old neighbors and friends, we despoiled of their
lands and drove across our northern border with execrations, to make new
homes in a new land and view us with a hatred that has not yet passed
away. If you doubt it, discuss the American Revolution for fifteen minutes
with one of the United Empire Loyalists of Toronto. It will surprise you
to know that your patriot ancestors were thieves, blacklegs and
scoundrels. I do not believe that they were; but possibly they were not
the impossible archangels of the school histories.

Of one thing I am sure; that if the descendants of those who fought
against us in '76 had been left to mingle with our own people, the
historical recollections of the struggle would have been surer and truer
on both sides than they are today. Here is a case where ancestry has
perverted history, but simply because there has been an unnatural
segregation of descendants. Let me note another where we have absolutely
forgotten our ancestral predilections and have gone over to the other
side, simply because the other side made the records. When we read a Roman
account of encounters between the legions and the northern tribes, where
do we place ourselves in imagination, as readers? Always with the Roman
legions. But our place is not there; it is with our hardy and brave
forefathers, fighting to defend their country and their firesides against
the southern intruders. How many teachers of history try to utilize
race-consciousness in their pupils to make them attain a clearer knowledge
of what it all meant? Should we not be proud that we are of the blood of
men who withstood the self-styled rulers of the world and won their
freedom and their right to shape their own personal and civic development?

I should like to see a book tracing the history and development of an
imaginary Anglo-Saxon American line of ancestry, taking it from the
forests of Northern Germany across to Britain, through the Norman conquest
and down the stream of subsequent English history across seas to
America--through savage wars and Revolution, perhaps across the
Alleghenies, to settle finally in the great West. I would try to make the
reader realize that here was no fairy tale--no tale of countries and races
with which we have naught to do, but the story of our own fathers, whose
features and whose characteristics, physical and mental, have been
transmitted by heredity to us, their sons and daughters of the year 1913.

It is unfortunate perhaps, for our perceptions of racial continuity, that
we are rovers by disposition. Who runs across the sea, says the Latin
poet, changes his sky but not his mind. True enough, but it is difficult
for some of us to realize it. It is hard for some of us to realize that
our emigrant ancestors were the same men and women when they set foot on
these shores as when they left the other side some weeks before. Our
trans-Atlantic cousins labor under the same difficulties, for they assure
us continually that we are a "new" country. We have, they say, the faults
and the advantages of "youth." It would be interesting to know at just
what point in the passage the education and the habits and the prejudices
of the incoming Englishman dropped off. Change of environment works
wonders with habits and even with character; we must of course recognize
that; but it certainly does not make of the mind a _tabula rasa_, on which
the fresh surroundings may absolutely work their will.

I must say that our migrations within the limits of our own continent have
not been productive of so much forgetfulness. I have been struck, for
instance, since I came to St. Louis, with what I may call the
source-consciousness of our western population. Everyone, whether he is
particularly interested in genealogy or not, knows that his people came
from Vermont or Virginia or Pennsylvania. He may not be able to trace his
ancestry, or even to name his great-grandfather; but with the source of
that ancestry he is always acquainted. I believe this to be the case
throughout the Middle West. From this point of view the population is not
so well mixed as it is in the East. No one in Massachusetts or Connecticut
can point out to you, offhand, the families that came from particular
counties in England. And yet in England, a migration from one county to
another is always recognized and remembered. A cousin of mine, visiting on
an English estate, was casually informed by his host, "Our family are
newcomers in this county. We moved in only about 300 years ago." From this
point of view we are all newcomers in America. It is to be hoped that as
the years go on, the elements of our western population will not so
thoroughly lose sight of their sources as have the Easterners. It is not
likely that they will, for those sources are more accessible. We have
Virginia families who still keep up friendly intercourse with the old
stock; Vermont families who spend each summer on the old homestead; and so
on. The New Englander did not and could not keep up similar relations with
Old England. Even the Southerner, who did it for a time, had to drop it.
Our inter-communication with Europe has grown enormously in volume, but
little of it, if any, is due to continuous ancestral interest, although a
revived general interest has sprung up and is to be commended.

I fear, however, that the greater part of this interest in sources, where
it exists, is very far from an intelligent connection with the body of
historical fact. When a man is proud of the fact that an ancestor took
part in the famous Boston Tea Party, has he taken any pains to ascertain
what actually took place on that occasion? If he claims descent from
Pocahontas, can he tell us just how much of what we currently believe of
her is fact and how much is myth? If he knows that his family came from
Cheshire, England, and was established and well-known there for centuries,
what does he know of the history of Cheshire and of the connection of his
ancestors with it? Our interest, when it exists, is concentrated too much
on trivial happenings. We know and boast that an ancestor came over in the
Mayflower without knowing of the family doings before and after that
event. Of course, connection with some one picturesque event serves to
stimulate the imagination and focus the interest, but these events should
serve as starting points for investigation rather than resting points
where interest begins and ends. Historical students are beginning to
realize that it is not enough to know about the battle of Hastings without
understanding the causes and forces that led to it and proceeded from it,
and the daily lives and thoughts of those who took part in it, from
captain to spearman.

This failure to link up family history with general history is responsible
for many sad losses of historical material. Many persons do not understand
the value of old letters and diaries; many who do, keep them closely in
the family archives where they are unknown and unappreciated. Old letters
containing material that bears in any way on the events, customs or life
of the time, should be turned over to the local historical society. If
they contain private matter, seal up the packet and require that it shall
remain sealed for a century, if you wish; but do not burn it. The feeling
that destroys such documents is simply evidence that we are historically
valuing the individual and the family above the community, just as we
still are in so many other fields of thought. I cannot tolerate the idea
that we shall ultimately think only in terms of the common good; the
smaller units, the man, the family must not lose their influence, but the
connection between them and the general welfare must be better understood
and more generally recognized; and this must be done, in the first place,
in all that relates to their historical records and to our historical
consciousness.

Ancestral feeling should, in this way, always be historical, not
individual. A man is right to be personally proud of his own achievements,
but it is difficult to see how he can properly take the same kind of pride
in that of others, whether related to him by blood or not. But there are
other kinds of legitimate pride--family pride, racial pride, group pride
of all sorts, where the feeling is not personal. If any member of a
family, a profession or any association, has so conducted himself that
credit is gained for the whole body, it is proper that this kind of group
pride should be felt by each member of the body, and in the case of a
family, where the bond is one of blood, the group feeling should be
stronger and the group pride, if it is proper to feel it at all, may be of
peculiar strength, provided it be carefully distinguished from the pride
due to personal achievement. And when the member of the family in whom one
takes pride is an ancestor, this means, as I have said, that feeling
should be historical, not individual. And anything that tends to lift our
interest from the individual to the historical plane--to make us cease
from congratulating ourselves personally on some connection with the good
and great and substitute a feeling of group pride shared in common by some
body to which we all belong, is acting toward this desirable end. The body
may be a family; it may be the community or the state; it may be as broad
as humanity itself, for we may all be proud of the world's greatest. Or it
may be a body like our own, formed to cherish the memories of forebears in
some particular line of endeavor, in some particular place or at some
particular era. Our ancestry is part of our history; so long as our regard
for it is properly interwoven with our historical sense, no one can
properly charge us with laving the foundation for aristocracy. We are
rather making true democracy possible, for such is the case only when the
elements of a community are closely united by ties of blood, interest and
knowledge--by pride in those who have gone before and by determination
that the standard set by these men and women of old shall be worthily
upheld.




WHAT THE FLAG STANDS FOR[9]

[9] An address on Flag Day made in St. Peter's Church, St. Louis.


The most important things in the world are ideas. We are so familiar with
the things that are the material embodiment of ideas--buildings, roads,
vehicles and machines--that we are prone to forget that without the ideas
that gave them birth all these would be impossible. A house is a mass of
wood, stone and metal, but all these substances, collected in a pile, do
not suffice to make a house.

A locomotive is made of steel and brass, but although the ancient Romans
had both the metal and the alloy, they had no locomotives.

The vital thing about the house--the thing that differentiates it from
other masses of the same materials--is the idea--the plan--that was in the
architect's mind while wood and stone and iron were still in forest,
quarry and mine. The vital thing about the locomotive is the builder's
idea or plan, which he derived, in turn, from the inventor.

The reason why there were no locomotives in ancient Rome is that in those
days the locomotive had not yet been invented, and when we say this we
refer not to the materials, which the Romans had in abundance, but to the
idea or plan of the locomotive. So it is with the whole material world
about us. The things that result, not from man's activities, but from the
operations of nature, are no exceptions; for, if we are Christians, we
believe that the idea or plan of a man, or a horse, or a tree, was in the
mind of the great architect, the great machinist, before the world began,
and that this idea is the important thing about each.

A man, a house, an engine--these are ideas that lead to things that we can
feel, and see and hear. But there are other ideas that have nothing of the
kind to correspond to them--I mean such ideas as charity, manliness,
religion and patriotism--what sometimes are called abstract qualities.
These are real things and their ideas are even more important than the
others, but we cannot see nor feel them.

Now, man likes to use his senses, and it is for this reason that he is
fond of using for these abstract ideas, symbols that he can see and feel.
We of St. Louis should appreciate this to the full just now, for we have
just set before the world the greatest assemblage of symbolic images and
acts, portraying our pride in the past and our hope and confidence for the
future, that any city on this earth ever has been privileged to present or
to witness.[10] Whether we were actors or spectators; whether we camped
with the Indians, marched with De Soto or La Salle and felled the forests
of early St. Louis with Laclede and Chouteau, or whether we were part of
that great host on the hillside, we can say no longer that we do not
understand the importance of the idea, or the value and cogency of the
visible symbols that fix it in the memory and grip it to the heart.

[10] The Pageant and Masque of St. Louis, 1915.

The Church of Christ always has understood and used this property of the
visible and tangible symbol to enforce the claims of the abstract idea.

We revere the cross, not because there is anything in its shape or
substance to make us venerate it, but because it is the symbol of the
Christian religion--of all that it has done for the world in the past and
all that it may do in the future. That is why we love and honor the
flag--not because it is a piece of cloth bearing certain figures and
colors, but because it is to us the symbol of all that our country has
meant to our fathers; all it means to us and all that it may mean to our
children, generation after generation.

A nation's flag did not always mean all this to those who gazed upon it.
In very old times the flag was for the soldier alone and had no more
meaning for the ordinary citizen than a helmet or a spear. When the
soldier saw it uplifted in the thick of the battle he rallied to it. Then
the flag became the personal emblem of a king or a prince, whether in
battle or not; then it was used to mark what belonged to the government of
a country. It is still so used in many parts of Europe, where the display
of a flag on a building marks it as government property, as our flag does
when it is used on a post office or a custom-house. Nowhere but in our own
country is the flag used as the general symbol of patriotic feeling and
displayed alike by soldier and citizen, by Government office and private
dwelling. So it comes about that the stars and stripes means to us all
that his eagles did to the Roman soldier; all that the great Oriflamme did
to the medieval Frenchman; all that the Union Jack now means to the Briton
or the tri-color to the Frenchman--and more, very much more, beside.

What ideas, then, does the flag stand for? First, it stands for union. It
was conceived in union, it was dipped in blood to preserve union, and for
union it still stands. Its thirteen stripes remind us of that gallant
little strip of united colonies along the Atlantic shore that threw down
the gage of battle to Britain a century and a half ago. Its stars are
symbols of the wider union that now is. Both may be held to signify the
great truth that in singleness of purpose among many there is effective
strength that no one by himself can hope to achieve. Our union of States
was formed in fear of foreign aggression; we have need of it still though
our foes be of our own household. If we are ever to govern our cities
properly, hold the balance evenly betwixt capital and labor, develop our
great natural resources without undue generosity on the one hand or
parsimony on the other--solve the thousand and one problems that rise to
confront us on every hand--we shall never accomplish these things by
struggling singly--one man at a time or even one State at a time, but by