Hugo Münsterberg

“ With the expansion of the country has grown the individual’s love of expansion, his delight in undertaking new enterprises, not merely to hold his own, but to go on and to stake his honour and fortune and entire personality in the hope of realizing something as yet hardly dreamed of. Any Yankee is intoxicated with the idea of succeeding in a new enterprise; he plans such things at his desk in school, and the more venturesome they are the more he is fascinated.
Nothing is more characteristic of this adventurous spirit than the way in which American railroads have been projected. ”

“ But from the book-shelves of the millionaire to the carefully selected little shelf of the poor school-ma’am, from the monumental home of the national library to the modest little library building of every small village, from the nervous and rapid perusal of the scholar to the slow making-out of the working-man who pores over his newspaper on the street corner, or of the shop-girl with the latest novel in the elevated train, there is everywhere life and activity centring around the world of print, and this popularity of books is growing day by day. ”

“ If one does not purposely close one’s eyes, one cannot doubt that the public life of America holds certain abuses, which are against the spirit of the Constitution and which too often come near to being criminal. One can ask, to be sure, if that lack of conscience does not have place in every form of state in one way or another, and if the necessity of developing a sound public spirit to fight against abuse may itself not be an important factor in helping on the spirit of self-determination to victory. ”

“ None of the traditions are dead; and any one who is not deceived by superficial impressions knows that the most essential traits of Boston and New England are the ones which, in respect to intellectual life, lead the nation. Quite as the marble Capitol at Washington is the symbol of the political power of America, and the sky-scrapers of lower Broadway are the symbol of America’s economic life, so we may say the elm-shaded college yard of Harvard is the symbol of American intellectual capacity and accomplishment. ”

“ Thousands of most diverse personalities work out their life problems in this little city of lecture halls, laboratories, museums, libraries, banquet halls, and club buildings, which are scattered about the ancient elm-shaded yard. Each student has come, in the ardour and ambition of youth, to these halls where so many intellectual leaders have taught and so many great men of the outside world have spent their student years; and each one goes away once more into the world a better and stronger man. ”

“ Economically to open up this gigantic country, to bring the fields and forests, rivers and mountains into the service of economic progress, to incite the millions of inhabitants to have new needs and to satisfy these by their own resourcefulness, to increase the wealth of the nation, and finally economically to rule the world and within the nation itself to raise the economic power of the individual to undreamt-of importance, has been the work which has fascinated the American. ”

“ Just as Lincoln said that the American government is a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” so certainly American society is a government of the women, by the women, and for the women. The part which the wife plays determines so unconditionally the social status of every home, that even a man who has his own social ambitions can accomplish his end in no better way than by doing everything to further the plans and even the whims of his wife. ”

“ The incitements toward acquisition and the spirit of war, on the other hand, destroy the spirit of our democracy, and breed un-American, autocratic ambitions. War strengthens the blind faith of the leaders in their own dictatorial superiority, and so annihilates the feeling of independence and responsibility in the individual; and this is just the way for the nation to lose its moral and political integrity. The true patriotism which our youth ought to learn is not found in noisy jingoism, but in the silent fidelity to the Declaration of Independence of our fathers. ”

“ A magnificent economic life such as that of America can never spring from impure ethical motives, and the person is very naïve who supposes that a great business was ever built up by mere impudence, deception, and advertising. Every merchant knows that even advertisements benefit only a solid business, and that they run a bad one into the ground. And it is still more naïve to suppose that the economic strength of America has been built up through underhanded competition without respect to law or justice, and impelled by nothing but a barbarous and purely material ambition. ”

“ This must seem very contemptible to all who look on from a distance, for everything which the papers tell to the four winds of heaven about these people is an insult to real and sound American feeling. The fountains of perfumery, the dinners on horseback, the cotillons where the favours are sun-bursts of real gems—in short, the senseless throwing away of wealth in the mere interests of rivalry and without even any æsthetic compensations, cannot profoundly impress a nation of pioneers. ”

“ There is no such background in America; there is a desire to protect American marriage, but it is not presupposed that marriage is, in and of itself, the highest good for woman. The completion of woman’s destiny lies rather in giving to her as to the man an intrinsically high life content whether she is married or not married; it is a question of her individual existence, as of his. Marriage is thus not the centre, and an independent career is in no sense a compensation or a makeshift; even the betterment of marriage is only intended as a means of bettering the individual. ”

“ The nine judges of the federal court, the Supreme Court of the United States, are sitting there in their black gowns, between Greek columns. The President and his Cabinet, the Senate, and the House of Representatives fill the American with a pride which is tempered by some critical judgment on this or that feature, or perhaps by a lively party dissatisfaction. But every American who is competent to judge looks on the Supreme Court with unqualified admiration. He knows very well that no force in the country has done more for the peace, prosperity, and dignity of the United States. ”

“ In Russia, as a well-known American once said, serfdom could be wiped out by a stroke of the Czar’s pen, and millions of Russians would be freed from slavery with no loss of life or property. “We Americans had to offer up a half-million lives and many millions’ worth of property in order to free our slaves. And yet nothing else was to be thought of. We had to overcome that evil by our own initiative, and by our own exertions reach our goal. And just because we are Americans and not Russians no power on earth could have relieved us of our responsibility.” ”

“ With an infallible scent, a pack of reporters follows in the trail of the least event which may have significance for the general public. A good deal of gossip and scandal is intermingled, to be sure, and much that is trivial served up to the readers; but granted for once, that millions in the lower classes, as members of the American democracy, wish, and ought to wish, to carry home every night a newspaper as big as a book, then, of course, such a hunger for fresh printed matter can be satisfied only by mental pabulum adapted to the vulgar mind. ”

“ The economic life means to the American a realizing of efforts which are in themselves precious. It is not the means to an end, but is its own end. If two blades of grass grow where one grew before, or two railroad tracks where there was but one; if production, exchange, and commerce increase and undertaking thrives, then life is created, and this is, in itself, a precious thing. The European of the Continent esteems the industrial life as honest, but not as noble ”

“ The American distrusts such extreme concentration of power and capital; it looks toward aristocracy, oligarchy, and tyranny. At the same time the masses are demoralized, and in very many cases individual initiative is strangled. There are, as it were, nothing but officials obeying orders; no men acting wholly on their own responsibility. Work ceases to be a pleasure, because everything goes by clock-work; the trust supersedes the independent merchant and manufacturer just as the machine has superseded the independent artisan. ”

“ Only such men as desire to take part in the economic era of creation, to meet their neighbours openly and trustingly and to rely on their spoken word, in short, to believe in the intrinsic worth of industry—only such men can weave the wonderful fabric of New World industry. A race of men carrying on commerce merely in order to live, feeling no idealism impelling them to industry, would never, even in this richly-endowed America, have produced such tangible results or gained such power. ”

“ The problem has been admirably solved. The absolute adaptation of the building to its requirements, and its execution in the most appropriate material—namely, steel and marble—the shaping of the rooms to the required ends, and the carrying out of every detail in a thoroughly artistic spirit make a visit to the best office buildings of New York an æsthetic delight. And since very many of these are now built side of one another, they give the sky-line of the city a strength and significance which strike every one who is mature enough to find beauty in that to which he is not accustomed. ”

“ No end of progress remains to be made, but everything works together under the protection of the American Constitution to produce a splendid home in the New World for peace. America is the one world power which makes for peace; and it will only depend on the future growth of this nation, which has been ordained to become such an example, whether the idea of peace will finally prevail throughout the world over the immoral settlement of disputes by mere force of arms. ”

“ The genius, who in his day is always incomprehensible to the masses, goes to waste; and the man who sees beyond the vulgar horizon fights an uphill battle. The glittering successes are for the man whose doings impress the multitude, and this fact is necessarily reflected in the mind of the aspirant, who unconsciously shapes his ambitions to the taste of the many rather than of the best. Wherever the spirit of initiative possesses all alike, a truly great individual is of course insufferable ”

“ They would insist that the American system needs great parties, and that parties cannot be practically effective if there is no discipline in their organization—that is, if the minority of their membership is not ready to submit cheerfully to the will of the majority. If any man wishes to make reforms, he should first set about to reform his party. Whereas, if on every difference of opinion he goes over to the enemy’s camp, he simply destroys all respect for the weight of a majority, and therewith undermines all democracy. ”

“ If the incomplete past no longer met the American’s eye in all its poverty and ugliness and smallness, he would have lost the mainspring of his life. That which is complete does not interest him, while that which he can still work on wholly fascinates and absorbs him. It is true here, as in every department of American life, that superficial polish would be only an imitation of success; friction and that which is æsthetically disorganized, but for this very reason ethically valuable, give to his life its significance and to his industry its incomparable progress. ”

“ It is not here, in this world of intellectual labour, as in the economic world; there is no question of threatening rivalry, there is no scientific competition; there is nothing but co-operation. And yet even here no people can, without danger to its own achievements, afford to ignore what another nation has done. The sooner that Europe, and in particular Germany, acquaints itself with the intellectual life of America, so much more organically and profitably the future labour in common will develop. ”

“ The topics of school and university would not make up one-half of the history of American popular education. In no other country of the world is the nation so much and so systematically instructed outside of the school as in America, and the thousand forms in which popular education is provided for those who have grown beyond the schools, are once more a lively testimony to the tireless instinct for personal perfection. ”

“ Bureaucracy is to his mind the worst enemy of industrial life, because it everywhere provides the most trivial obstacles to that spirit of adventure and daring which seeks to press on into the future; and in the end it is sure to bring all enterprise to a standstill. It is important for this freedom that the whole economic legislation is regulated, first of all, not by the Union, but by the several states, and that thus every variety of industrial life going on in any state shall be so well represented that every attempt to bring up artificial restraints shall be nipped in the bud. ”

“ All this is not merely the programme of a party or of a group of people, but the confession of faith of every American. The American finds no problem here, since none would dispute the contention. It has all impressed itself so fully on the consciousness of the American people that it gives to the whole nation a feeling of moral superiority. Nor is this merely the pathos uttered in moral orations; it is the conviction with which every child grows up and with which every farmer goes to his plough, every artisan and merchant to his machine and desk, and the President to his executive chamber. ”

“ One who seeks the profoundest reality that history has to offer, not in the temporal unfolding of events, but in the interplay of human wills, will agree with the American’s judgment of himself. Looking at the people of the New World even from afar, one will find the fascination, novelty, and greatness of the American world mission, not in what the American has accomplished, but in what he desires and will desire. ”

“ The American himself is inclined to believe that severe crises are not to be feared any more; but however that may be, the long-predicted downfall has not come to-day, and is not even in sight. The general progress persists, and the decline in stock-market securities, which has been here and there abroad the signal for alarm, is itself a part of the sound development. When one looks at the whole rise one realizes that the young nation’s development has been great and powerful, and such as was never before known in the history of civilization. ”

“ It is as if a party, which found itself defeated at the polls, should start a revolution; whereas it is the pride of the American people to accept without protest the government which the majority has chosen. And so party allegiance is taken as the mark of political maturity, and the men who hold themselves superior to their parties are influential at the polls, but in the party camps they see their arguments held in light esteem. ”