Samuel McChord Crothers

“ Formal philosophy seemed to him to be "too buttoned-up and white-chokered and clean-shaven a thing to speak for the vast, slow-breathing, unconscious Kosmos with its dread abysses and its unknown tides. The freedom we want is not the freedom, with a string tied to its leg and warranted not to fly away, of that philosophy. Let it fly away, we say, from us. What then?"
To this American there must be a true democracy among the faculties of the mind. The logical understanding must not be allowed to put on priggish airs. The feelings have their rights also. ”

“ Those who belong to the cult of John Bull take him as the symbol of that which has been most vital and successful in the island story. England has had more than its share of men of genius. It has had its artists, its wits, its men of quick imagination. But these have not been the builders of the Empire, or those who have sustained it in the hours of greatest need. Men of a slower temper, more solid than brilliant, have been the nation's main dependence. "It's dogged as does it." On many a hard-fought field men of the bull-dog breed have with unflinching tenacity held their own. ”

“ Emerson is pleased with the world, not because he thinks its present condition is very good, but because he sees so much room for it to become better. It is a most promising experiment. It furnishes an abundance of the raw materials of righteousness.
Nor does he flatter himself that the task of betterment is an easy one, or that the end is in sight. It is not a world where wishes, even good wishes, are fulfilled without effort. There are inexorable laws not of our making. The whims of good people are not respected. ”

“ They are not able, therefore, to pay cheerfully for any future good. If it is not given to them at once they feel that they have a grievance. For friendly coöperation they are not prepared. They must have their own way or they will not play the game. Their fretful complaints are like those of the children in the old-time market-places: "We have piped unto you and you have not danced, we have mourned unto you and you have not lamented."
There is a fashionable attitude of mind among many who pride themselves on their acute intellectualism. ”

“ Civilization has failed to produce contentment. It has failed to secure perfect justice between man and man, or to satisfy the hungry with bread. Christianity after all these centuries of preaching leaves mankind as we see it to-day—an armed camp, nation fighting nation, class warring against class. The democratic movement about which we hear so much is equally unsuccessful. After its brilliant promises it leaves us helpless against the passion and stupidity of the mob. Popular education adds to the tribulations of society. ”

“ It may be said in extenuation of Dickens that the blemish of obviousness is one which he shared with the world he lived in. It would be too much to say that all realities are obvious. There is a great deal that we do not see at the first glance; but there is a great deal that we do see. To reproduce the freshness and wonder of the first view of the obvious world is one of the greatest achievements of the imagination. ”

“ Silently and steadily Cavour worked toward the same end. And at last Rome gathered to herself the glory of the heroes who were not her own children,
If we recognize the symbolic and representative character of Roman history, we can begin to understand the reason for the bewilderment which comes to the traveler who attempts to realize it in imagination. Roman history is not, like the tariff, a local issue. The most important events in that history did not occur here at all, though they were here commemorated. So it happens that every nation finds here its own, and reinforces its traditions. ”

“ Will the Labor party be a little less noisy and insistent in its demands? All will come in time, but one Reform must say to another, "After you." Hoarse voices cry, "We care nothing for etiquette, we must have what we demand, and have it at once. We cannot stand still. If we are pushing, we are also pushed from behind. If you do not give us what we ask for, the Socialists and the Syndicalists will be upon you." There is always the threat of a General Strike. Laborers have hitherto been starved into submission. ”

“ Do not those words give us a glimpse of the American mind in its natural working. Its genius is anticipatory. It is searching for a common ground on which all may meet. It puts its trust not in the thinker who can put his thoughts in the most neat form, but the man whose faculties have on the whole the best divining power.
To listen to William James was to experience an illogical elation—and to feel justified in it. He was an unsparing critic of things as they are, but his criticism left us in no mood of depression. Our interest is with things as they are going to be. ”

“ The reason why the literary artist shuns the obvious is that there is too much of it. It is too big for the limited resources of his art. In the actual world, realities come in big chunks. Nature continually repeats herself. She hammers her facts into our heads with a persistency which is often more than a match for our stupidity. If we do not recognize a fact to-day, it will hit us in the same place to-morrow.
We are so used to this educational method of reiteration that we make it a test of reality. An impression made upon us must be repeated before it has validity to our reason. ”

“ It is the unrest of the strong and ambitious. You cannot still it by talking about prosperity: of course we are prosperous, after a fashion, but it is a fashion that no longer pleases us. We want something better and we propose to get it. What disturbs you is the appearance in force of a generation that has turned its attention to a new set of problems, and is attempting to solve them by scientific methods. It is believed that there is a Science of Government as well as an Art of Politics. The new generation has a respect, born of experience, for the expert. ”

“ The saving clause is a great help to those idealists who are inclined to look unwelcome facts in the face. It enables them to retain faith in their ideals, and at the same time to hold on to their intellectual self-respect.
There are idealists of another sort who know nothing of their struggles and self-contradictions. Having formed their ideal of what ought to be, they identify it with what is. For them belief in the existence of good is equivalent to the obliteration of evil. Their world is equally good in all its parts, and is to be viewed in all its aspects with serene complacency. ”

“ The consciousness of the magnitude of the change has come to us rather suddenly. One big job which has absorbed the energies and stimulated the ambition of Americans for three hundred years is practically finished. Some work still remains to be done on it, but it no longer demands the highest ability. The end is in sight.
This work has been the settlement of a vast territory, lying between the Atlantic and Pacific, with a population of white men. It was a task so big in itself that it fired the imagination and developed that peculiar type of character which we call American. ”

“ Just at this time things are moving almost as rapidly as they did in the seventeenth century. There is the same clash of opinion and violence of party spirit. All sorts of non-conformities struggle for a hearing. One is reminded of that most stirring period, which is so delightful to read about, and which must have been so trying for quiet people to live through.
A host of earnest and wide-awake persons are engaged in the task of doing what they are told not to do. Their enthusiasm takes the form of resistance to some statute made or proposed. ”

“ But it must have occurred to some one to ask, "What will happen when the Oregons and Californias are filled up?" Well, the answer is, "See what is happening now." Instead of settling down to herb-tea and elegies, Young America, having finished one big job, is looking for another. The noises which disturb you are not the cries of an angry proletariat, but are the shouts of eager young fellows who are finding new opportunities. They have the same desire to do big things, the same joy in eventful living, that you had thirty years ago. ”

“ As we are not nearly so clever, we are left with a chastened sense of our inferiority, which is doubtless good for us. And all this groping for the un-obvious is connected with an equally insistent demand for realism. The novel must not only be as real as life, but it must be more so. For life, as it appears in our ordinary consciousness, is full of illusions. ”

“ Hodge and Sir Lionel meet in the garden which one owns, and in which the other digs with the sweat of his brow. There is kindly interest on the one hand, and decent respect on the other. But all this sense of ordered righteousness is dependent on one condition. Neither must eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge that grows in the midst of the garden. A little knowledge is dangerous, a good deal of knowledge may be even more dangerous, to the relations which custom has established. ”

“ They know their countrymen, and that they have the good sense to avoid most of the collisions that they declare to be inevitable.
I take comfort in the philosophy which I glean from the top of a London motor-bus. From my point of vantage I look down upon pedestrian humanity as a Superman might look down upon it. It seems to consist of a vast multitude of ignorant folk who are predestined to immediate annihilation. As the ungainly machine on which I am seated rushes down the street, it seems admirably adapted for its mission of destruction. ”

“ What can a mere Act of Parliament do when confronted by such a combination as that? Passive resistance takes on heroic proportions when a duchess and a man-servant confront the Law with haughty immobility.
In the mean time, Mr. Tom Mann goes to jail, amid the applause of organized labor, for advising the British soldier not to obey orders when he is commanded to fire on British working-men.
Mr. Tom Mann is a labor agitator, while Mr. Bonar Law is the leader of the Conservative party; but when it comes to legislation which he does not like, Mr. Bonar Law's language is fully as incendiary. ”

“ The struggle is stem and unrelenting. It taxes all our energies. And yet it is exhilarating. There is a moral quick-wittedness which sees the smile behind the threatening mask of Fate. Destiny is after all a good comrade for the brave and the self-reliant. ”

“ When the pilgrim from Kansas arrives at an ancient English inn he feels that he must be on his good behavior. Boots in his green apron is a lesson to him. He is not like a Western hotel bell-boy on the way to becoming something else. He knows his place. Everybody, he imagines, in this country knows his place, and there is no unseemly crowding and pushing. ”

“ When thus we return to Dickens, we are compelled to confess the justice of the latter-day criticism. In all his writings he deals with characters and situations which are wholly obvious; at least they are obvious after he deals with them. Not only is he without the art which conceals art, but, unlike some novelists of more recent fame, he is without the art that conceals the lack of art He produces an impression by the crude method of "rubbing it in." There are no subtleties to pique our curiosity, no problems left us for discussion, no room for difference of opinion. ”

“ To understand Lowell's exhilaration one must enter into the spirit of American history. It has been the history of what has been done by strong men who owed nothing to the refinements of civilization. The interesting events have taken place not at the centre, but on the circumference of the country. The centrifugal force has always been the strongest. There has been no capital to which ambitious youths went up to seek their fortune. In each generation they have gone to the frontier where opportunities awaited them. ”

“ It is the moralists and the reformers who have after all the most cheerful message for us. They are all the time threatening us, yet for our own good. They see us plunging heedlessly to destruction. They cry, "Look out!" They often do not themselves see the way out, but they have a well-founded hope that we will discover a way when our attention is called to an imminent danger. The fact that the race has survived thus far is an evidence that its instinct for self-preservation is a strong one. ”

“ When we take such typical characters as John Bull and Brother Jonathan as representing actual Englishmen or Americans, we put ourselves in the way of contradiction. They are not good likenesses. An English writer says: "As the English, a particularly quick-witted race, tinged with the colors of romance, have long cherished a false pride in their reputed stolidity, and have accepted with pleasant equanimity the figure of John Bull as their national signboard, though he does not resemble them, so Americans plume themselves on the thought that they are dying of nervous energy." ”

“ This impression of a mingling of optimism, cynicism, and hurry is one which is often made upon those who are suddenly plunged into American society. In any company of Americans who are discussing public affairs the stranger is struck by what seems the lack of logical connection between the statements of facts and the judgments passed upon them. The facts may be most distressing and yet nobody seems much distressed, still less is any one depressed. ”

“ That which received the Roman stamp passed current throughout the world.
In the political struggle for the New Italy, Rome had the same symbolic character. Mazzini was never so eloquent as when portraying the glories of the free Rome that was to be recognized, indeed, as the mother of us all. The Eternal City, he believed, was to be the regenerating influence, not only for Europe but for all the world. All the romantic enthusiasm of Garibaldi flamed forth at the sight of Rome. All other triumphs signified nothing till Rome was the acknowledged capital of Italy. ”