Western man

“ It constitutes the key-conception of historical progress, and is the very life of that highest stage of this which we designate and praise by the name of Western Civilisation. It is at the mental summons of this ideal, that the West as a stadium in historic progress emerges from the hoary and impassive East; and the entire history of the West as divergent from the oriental spirit, as the scene of energetic human improvement, the scene of the victory of man over Nature and over his merely natural self, has its controlling and explanatory motive in this ideal alone. ”

“ But whatever the sources and phases of its growth, the existence and strength of this faith in humanity are undeniable. It is this faith which compels us to refuse to think of Western civilization as merely Western. For we believe that the West holds in trust for mankind, not only a right knowledge of nature, not only a correct scientific method, but also an essential conception of the worth and unity of human life. Whatever we are to gain from the East, this is one of the gifts we bring to the other half of the world. ”

“ If therefore we are to discover in what form the destiny of the Western Culture will be accomplished, we must first be clear as to what culture is, what its relations are to visible history, to life, to soul, to nature, to intellect, what the forms of its manifestation are and how far these forms — peoples, tongues and epochs, battles and ideas, states and gods, arts and craft-works, sciences, laws, economic types and world-ideas, great men and great events — may be accepted and pointed to as symbols. ”

“ The simplification of life, the decrease of "vital" demands, strips the arts and culture of the West of all efficacy and worth. To these men, whose longing was for the inner, spiritual freedom of man, Western progress, with all it connoted, was an abomination. We are not surprised, therefore, to find the Westernizers, the rationalists, strongly arrayed against them. ”

“ Just as sure as history records the existence of an early West—a West where the gun and knife settled men’s heated controversies, a West where, for many years, there was a dearth of woman’s soft voice and tender smile—just so sure are the writings of the Western poets, philosophers and storytellers of this period a vital part of our early American literature. The literature of the West, as with the literature of any country, needs only be a true, sincere, worthy expression of the life it professes to portray. ”

“ In temperament, in feeling, in mind, and even in unreason, they are Western, with an absolute comprehension of all Western modes of thought, even of those which are remote from their historical experience. ”

“ The Western States are the pioneers of civilization, and have a dauntless, less educated, and more turbulent character, approaching, as you draw towards the setting sun, very much to the half-horse, half-alligator, and paving the way for the arts and sciences of Europe with the rifle and the axe. ”

“ However they may be settled, the great fact will remain essentially the same, that the two continents of this Western Hemisphere shall yet bear up a stupendous social, political, and religious structure, wrought by the American mind, moulded and coloured by the hues of American thought, and animated and united by an American soul. ”

“ The people out there were so alive, so go-ahead; and they took such an interest in all forms of culture too, in literature, music, painting, the drama. “Why, look at the big magazines,—they depend for their circulation on the West.” And then, the homes of the West! “Oh, if I lived in Europe, I should lose my faith in human nature. Western people are so warmhearted. ”

“ The West has witnessed more changes than has the East. The common impression, and one to which all Americans are bred, leaves paleface Western occupation to a modern day. Whenever one’s thought wanders to what is old in this country one inevitably sets his face towards the East. ”

“ The farther we went into the real West, the West of the movies and the early days pictured by Bret Harte, we realized what part these Western women had played, and were still playing, in their unselfish, brave, industrious, vital lives, in the opening and developing of that vast territory, and in making such a trip as ours comfortable, safe, and even possible. ”

“ And how does the honorable gentleman mean to maintain, that language like this is applicable to the conduct of the government of the United States towards the Western emigrants, or to any representation given by me of that conduct? Were the settlers in the West driven thither by our oppression? Have they flourished only by our neglect of them? Has the government done nothing but prey upon them, and eat out their substance? ”

“ Such is American character, in the manifestations which have most affected the settlement and development of the West; a compound of many noble qualities, with a few—and no nation is without such—that are not quite so respectable. All these, both good and bad, were possessed by the early pioneer in an eminent, sometimes in an extravagant degree; and the circumstances, by which he found himself surrounded after his emigration to the West, tended forcibly to their exaggeration. ”

“ I hope to hear that they are always going along the straight line, that in having before them the virtues—and I am sorry to say the vices—of two civilisations. Western and Eastern, they reject the vices of both and blend the virtues of both. Then and then alone can they lead happy and pure lives. ”

“ In every one of these three great lines of activity we may still note what we may call the curiously individual quality of the West. The conditions of life, of trade, of any endurance upon the soil, made heavy demands upon the physical man. ”

“ Western civilisation, or rather Western ideas, and education had brought the natives of the Eastern Empire to such a degree of culture and enlightenment that the subjugated ones realised that they had become the equal of their masters long before the dawn of the twenty-first century. ”

“ Historian, artist, novelist, poet, must all in some measure fail to answer this demand, for each 35 generation buries its own dead, and each epoch, to be understood, must be seen in connection with its own living causes and effects and interwoven surroundings. Yet it is pleasant sometimes to seek among causes, and I conceive that a certain interest may attach to a quest that goes farther than a mere summons for the spurred and booted Western dead to rise. Let us ask, What was the West? ”

“ The fitting of Western thought to an Oriental race, while it must be chiefly left to the race itself, needs clearly the help of those who are conversant with the best aspects {327} of that Western thought and of its history. ”

“ To-day the historical societies of many Western States issue each year a volume filled with material of great interest—matter that will be of enormous value to the historian who shall set down the story of the development of the West. ”

“ The West had turned back towards the East, and, although the intent was hostile, the minds of the western men had been fecundated, their imagination fired by contact with the mother of all religions and all cultures. ”

“ Let us picture for ourselves this first restless American, this West-bound man. We must remember that there had been two or three full American generations to produce him, this man who first dared turn away from the seaboard and set his face toward the sinking of the sun, toward the dark and mysterious mountains and forests which then encompassed the least remote land fairly to be called the West. Two generations had produced a man different from the Old-World type. ”

“ This western boy, born to a feeble republic-mother, with exceeding suffering in those days which “tried men’s souls,” grew up as all boys grow up. For a long and doubtful period the young West grew slowly and changed appearance gradually. ”

“ Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down. He appears to migrate westward daily, and tempt us to follow him. He is the Great Western Pioneer whom the nations follow. We dream all night of those mountain ridges in the horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which were last gilded by his rays. ”

“ Here, again, his life will be very different from that life which has characterized, thus far, the Western Christian. The masculine virtues of assertion, boldness, aggressiveness have characterized the West. We have been strong and continue strong in that aspect of our faith which we associate with the words assertion and attack. ”

“ While engaged in these scholarly pursuits, our variant of the pattern--western civilization--has been passing through the customary life cycle. If we read the signs correctly, western civilization reached the high point in its cycle toward the end of the last century. ”

“ Here, then, is the problem of the West, as it looked to New England leaders of thought in the beginning and at the end of this century. From the first, it was recognized that a new type was growing up beyond the seaboard, and that the time would come when the destiny of the nation would be in Western hands. ”

“ Why, I always want more of them than I can find. A young man like you, with your advantages, your education—there are all kinds of opportunities. Yes, right with me. The West is the place for young men—provided simply that they are men! ”

“ This westward movement is a vivid rehearsal of a belated migration that tells the tale of man's first yielding to the mobile impulse in his nature, an impulse that has made of him the conqueror of the globe. ”

“ Then, because of the lusty strength incidental to the vigorous youth of the junior members of our commonwealth, Western ideas and influences began to be felt in the East and to modify the conditions that existed in Eastern society. ”

“ Indeed, we find it difficult to study even our grim 426 columns of figures, our unimaginative records of events, without still retaining the curious and awesome feeling that heretofore the settlement of the American West, the birth and growth of the American man, has been a matter of fate, of destiny. ”

“ The central coordinating theme for Liberal Studies courses up to this point has been the deliberately ambiguous phrase Issues in Western Culture, and while this has never meant or led to the exclusion of anything from elsewhere, it has meant that, for the most part, our attention is focused on works obviously relevant to the history and development of what we call Western Culture, loosely defied. ”

“ The fortunes of the West are guided by emigrants and the descendants of emigrants from New England, the Middle and the border States, and while adopted citizens, nearly all of a desirable class, are in a majority in many parts of the West, most of the western men and women also, of national fame, can trace an American pedigree for several generations. ”

“ For everything that our present-day psychologist has to tell us—and here we refer not only to the systematic science but also in the wider sense to the physiognomic knowledge of men—relates to the present condition of the Western soul, and not, as hitherto gratuitously assumed, to “the human soul” at large. ”

“ Mr Western having finished his holla, and taken a little breath, began to lament, in very pathetic terms, the unfortunate condition of men, who are, says he, "always whipt in by the humours of some d—n'd b— or other. ”

“ Social and economic life receives unusual attention throughout the book, and wherever possible is shown in its relation to physical conditions and environment. The West receives the best treatment we have noted in any text-book. Excellent accounts of why the settlers went to the West, how they travelled, how they obtained their land, and of how Western democracy arose and reacted on the East, are here given. ”

“ The West has taken strength, thought, training, selected aptitudes out of the old treasures of the East,—as if out of a new Orient; while the East has itself been kept fresh, vital, alert, originative by the West, her blood quickened all the while, her youth through every age renewed. Who can say in a word, in a sentence, in a volume, what destinies have been variously wrought, with what new examples of growth and energy, while, upon this unexampled scale, community has passed beyond community across the vast reaches of this great continent! ”

“ To the philanthropist and christian, the character and manners,—the institutions, literature and religion of so wide a portion of our country, whose mighty energies are soon to exert a controlling influence over the character of the whole nation, and in some measure, of the world, are not less matters of momentous concern.
"The West is a young empire of mind, and power, and wealth, and free institutions, rushing up to a giant manhood, with a rapidity and power never before witnessed below the sun. ”

“ It is a pity that it is not more often so, but the zeal of the West mars as well as mends, and in imparting Western beliefs and Western learning carelessly and needlessly destroys Eastern ideals of conduct and manner, often more reasonable and more attractive than our own. ”

“ A spirit of tolerance was awakened such as had never been known in the Western country before, and as the West became populous and prosperous, it became also more broadly and generously American, more truly national in character, and more accurately representative of all that is best in American thought and life than any part of the country had ever been. ”

“ The independent energy of the Americans of fifty years ago, whether in the East or among the pioneers of the Western frontier, was not, however crude its manifestations, mere bombastic assertiveness, but the expression of a faith and the expression of strong character. ”

“ Europe was best described, to his mind, as an elaborate engine for dissociating the confined American from that indispensable knowledge, and was accordingly only rendered bearable by these occasional stations of relief, traps for the arrest of wandering western airs. ”