Western men

“ 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. ”

“ The West was another name for opportunity. Here were mines to be seized, fertile valleys to be preëmpted, all the natural resources open to the shrewdest and the boldest. The United States is unique in the [213] extent to which the individual has been given an open field, unchecked by restraints of an old social order, or of scientific administration of government. The self-made man was the Western man's ideal, was the kind of man that all men might become. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. Americans are the western pilgrims, who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigour, and industry which began long since in the East. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Still there are lots of colored men who would be out west building an empire, and plenty of nice colored girls who would journey thither and wed, if they really understood the opportunities offered; but very few understand the situation or realize the opportunities open to them in this western country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the news has reached me even here that in the West you seek a moral standard, and this quest always fills me with wonder. There are priests among you, I can see that, and soldiers, and fishermen, and artists and princes and folk who labor in the fields--now do you expect all these men, living in different conditions of life, to live under the same rule? I am afraid that the East and the West will never understand each other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ In the West no man has a past, unless that past is personified and carries a rebuking six-shooter. He had wealth, popularity, an acquaintance as wide as the Hills themselves. All that meant power, especially when combined with a shrewd ability to read men's characters. ”

“ These facts have been given to show the natures of these men who made the West; who carved, unasked, an empire for the profit of us who live now, and who, in a space of less than forty years, practically passed from the face of the earth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ The West, save where special interests centre (as in those pockets of silver where men’s eyes catch as it were an eager gleam from the very ore itself) : the West is in less danger of sectionalization. Who shall say in that wide country where one region ends and another begins, or, in that free and changing society, where one class ends and another begins? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Life in the West, especially away from the larger towns, lacked, indeed, the finer enjoyments of civilization to a degree hard to bear to those who had been accustomed to them and who did not find a compensation in that which gave to Western life—and American life generally—its peculiar charm: a warm, living interest in the progressive evolution, constantly and rapidly going on, the joy of growth—that which I have attempted to call in German “die Werdelust.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the Western man goes East he carries the consciousness of playing a great part in the making of an empire; his horizon is large; but he finds himself surrounded by an atmosphere of indifference or non-comprehension of the prodigiousness of his country, of incredulity as to the refinement and luxury of his civilization ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the East has qualities and virtues that make for great strength, it is no less clearly lacking in other qualities and virtues that still find a home in the West. The Yellow446 Peril, so far from driving us to a cowardly despair, may and should have the effect of raising our courage, ennobling our ideals, up rooting our selfishness and purifying Western society. It may enable us to see that in some respects our aims have been false ones, and that our views of the essentials of progress and of civilisation must be partially modified. ”

“ On the whole, the things that I saw and heard made the West exceedingly attractive to me. This was something of the America that I had seen in my dreams; a new country, a new society almost entirely unhampered by any traditions of the past; a new people produced by the free intermingling of the vigorous elements of all nations, with not old England alone, but the world for its motherland; with almost limitless opportunities open to all, and with equal rights secured by free institutions of government. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I do not desire to see my own people a Western people, such as the Americans are, but rather a nation seated between the East and the West. Some of us fondly think ourselves Western in our ideals, but the fact is the Americans have left us far behind, and we can never catch up because we do not really believe in these ideals. But we can gain immensely by seeing America go ahead. Let us shake hands with America; she is splendid. God speed! Go on, work out your ideals, [266] let us see you as you wish to be. Meanwhile we will go on with our own problems and the realisation of our own ideals. ”

“ Such conclusions, based on history, are underlined by current experience with the over-ballyhooed, over-priced variant of the life pattern which signs itself western civilization. Dating from the Crusades a thousand years ago, western civilization has been promoted, built up and carried forward by the blood, sweat and tears of credulous, hopeful, eager human beings. ”

“ Culture, the outgrowth of population, was first planted in the East; there it rooted and there it blossomed, and there humanity gathered its first fruits, but its ripened products have fructified upon its Western grafts. Westward indeed the star of Empire has made its way, and here on our Western Continent, under the ægis of our great Republic, under the influence of American liberty and freedom, it seems destined to reach its ascendant. ”

“ I ask, with all the intensity that I am capable, that the men of the West will remember the sharp distinction I have just drawn between the man who skins the land and the man who develops the country. ”

“ Meanwhile, I see all around me valiant Americans, Southern European by birth and tradition, Americans now in spirit and loyalty and tendency. These men and women have mastered the opportunity—for they had to seek and improve it themselves—to become assimilated. ”

“ The sterling simplicity that makes Westerners great is easily frittered away in the East. Men go in for display. They keep what they call “establishments.” They are much given to drink. Too often they debauch. ”

“ They have their place in the drama of our national life, for better or for worse, and their pursuits and character must be recognized and studied by any one who would comprehend our great Western country. ”

“ The history of the occupation of the West is the story of a great pilgrimage. It is the record of a people always outstripping its leaders in wisdom, in energy and in foresight. A slave of politics, the American citizen has none the less always proved himself greater than politics or politicians. The American, the Westerner, if you please, has been a splendid individual. We shall have no hope as a nation when the day of the individual shall be no more. ”