The American Temper : Patterns of Our Intellectual Heritage

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THE AMERICAN

TEMPER

Met THE AMERICAN TEMPER « # PATTERNS OF OUR SINTELLEGTUAL Pen

lOCHARD

mNIVERSILY BeRwELEY

OF AND

HERITAGE D. MOSIER

CALIFORNIA. LOS

ANGELES

PRESS |}1952

45707

UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

PRESS

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

CAMBRIDGE

UNIVERSITY

PRESS

London, England

Copyright 1952 by

THE REGENTS

OF THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

Printed in the United States of America Designed by John B. Goetz

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Dear e MwOSITER

WITHDRAWN

PREFACE

The Making of the American Mind To the Puritans belongs a primitive synthesis of the American mind, in which sixteenth-century Calvinism was gradually transformed in the light of social-contract theory into a religion of reason. To the young republicans of the revolutionary age belongs the pleasure of an early enlightenment, made fresh in the mind by so many recent departures from it. To the transcendentalists belongs a transformation of romantic philosophy into terms suitable to the current American dream. To the pragmatists belongs the creation of a philosophy of technology, with its experimental temper and its instrumentalist purpose. These four have been the main creative moments in the making of the American mind; but none of them, taken by itself, is quite complete, and each can be

read in terms of the others. The whole sum of American wisdom may be expressed in a maxim of Bacon, that knowledge is power, if it is accompanied by a question of Whitman, What is the fusing explanation and tie—what the relation between the (radical, democratic) Me, the human identity of understanding, emotions, spirit, on the one side, of and with the (conservative) Not Me, the whole material objective universe and laws, and what is behind them in time and space, on the other side? The maxim and the question sum up the whole creative contribution of the American mind, and catch in their active union all that America

can presently teach. The maxim of Bacon expresses in a phrase a conception of knowledge as technique, and recalls to the mind the current deification of American know-how. The question of Whitman raises an old doubt, now presently forming again in the American mind, whether the conception of the world as machine, generated inevitably by the Baconian conception of knowledge, is adequate to the demands of the spirit and not in the long run hostile to the development of the

individual. The history of American ideas is the history of this antithesis between the maxim of Bacon and the question of Whitman. It is the history of their conflict and occasional reconciliation, and it gives rise in each of the major epochs of the American mind to a new synthesis. In Puritanism only God possesses the knowledge that is power, and man is cut off from it by virtue of a primitive apostasy of Adam. In republicanism man recovers his virtue and hence his power of self-government, but must stand as a passive spectator to the world machine. In transcendentalism a new method is discovered for gaining insight into nature’s development, and the divinity comes to dwell in individual man. In experimentalism man possesses the power to interfere actively in the development of nature, and by the mastery of its technique gains the ability to control it in the light of human destiny. But the creative womb of time will one day bear her fruit, and bring to its birth another creative moment in the making of the American mind. Such a moment will reconcile again the antithesis of the maxim of Bacon and the question of Whitman, while summing up the creative

contribution of the preceding moments of thought. It will be a moment when the American spirit will once more regain its balance in the flux, discovering in the contradictions of its thought the breeding ground of new and more sprightly children of the American mind. It will be a moment when ideas are on the wing, and the flood of a transition will sweep away the moorings of the mind which previous generations have so laboriously built. The future of the American mind is great because the categories of its thought have not yet been frozen by history into the inviolable, nor by partisan interest into the untouchable. I want to communicate to America this sense of its creativity in the realm of the mind, so that a subsequent generation will not be impervious to the pleasures of the understanding. To catch then the intellectual temper of each of the transition epochs of the American mind is the purpose of my endeavors. The work of the mind, which is a fruit of long maturing, cannot be easily capsuled in a phrase, or paragraphed by a single vial of thought. But the fundamental ideas which have entered into the making of the American mind have had a singular capacity to enter into wont and use, while awakening the mind from its lethargy and old encrusted superstitions. From Puritanism to pragmatism, from experimental religion to experimental science, the line of thought both embodies and betrays the ideals of former epochs, while breaking through to some new principle of continuity which later ages might build upon. Unless then the continuity of the old and the new, the linkage of past and future, is brought into the focus of current opinion, it will betray itself into action without the

protection of contemplation, and into thought without an active outlet for its ideals. The history of American ideas might serve to explain that neither the Puritans nor the Pragmatists could survive the shock of a history that had moved beyond them, because they no longer expressed the ideals to which the American spirit, in its easy hours of self-adulation, had given its sympathies and its undying love.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the many scholars whose specialized work has made this present survey possible. Though the original version of my manuscript contained extensive documentation and numerous quotations from the original sources to bolster up my interpretation of our intellectual history, these have been sacrificed in the successive cuttings and revisions through which the manuscript has passed to meet the requirements of publication. Hence, my indebtedness to the original source materials on which, for the most part, this survey was built, has not got adequately expressed in the few quotations which remain. Nevertheless, should any scholar wish to dispute over the grounds of my own bias and judgment, I shall be happy to supply a complete file of references and quotations to bolster up my opinions. On the other hand, it is gladly admitted that what set out to be a scholarly undertaking has now become little more than a series of interpretative essays on the intellectual history of the United States; and it would not be an unusual thing to have some critic point out that other positions, judgments, and evaluations of our intellectual history are not only possible but respectable. I make no claim to having delivered the absolute truth, and only hope that the shortcomings of the present undertaking will stimulate others to a like endeavor but with a more probable success. My indebtedness to particular authors is threefold. To Professor Perry Miller, upon whom I drew heavily for interpretations of the Puritan mind, and whose unraveling of the complexities of the Federal Theology no doubt found an echo in my work, I am particularly indebted. Professor Miller’s New England Mind is the pioneering and definitive study of the seventeenth-century Puritan intellectual heritage, beside which my own interpretations of the Puritan mind seem only a faint and faroff echo. To the late F. O. Matthiessen, who provided insights into the

character of our native transcendental literature, I likewise owe a great

debt. Professor Matthiessen’s American Renaissance is the most reliable study of the romantic mind, beside which my own pedestrian investigation of our transcendental literature must seem like child’s play. To John Dewey, particularly in The Quest for Certainty, I am indebted for interpretations of the philosophic significance of the transition from Newtonian to Einsteinian physics and the contradictions which attended it. No doubt the judgments of these three authors have found an echo in my works; but beyond these specific acknowledgements of indebtedness I cannot go, for the present volume was built mainly on my own interpretation of source materials, and hence the three authors to whom Iam particularly indebted should not be held responsible for my errors. For permission to quote copyrighted materials I am indebted to the following publishers: To the Citadel Press, for permission to quote from Thomas Paine, The Complete Writings, ed. by Foner; to G. P. Putnam’s Sons for permission to quote from Thomas Jefferson, Writings, ed. by Ford, James Madison, Writings, ed. by Hunt, and John Dewey, The

Ouest for Certainty; to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, for permission to quote from Thomas Jefferson, Writings, ed. by Bergh; to Charles Scribner’s Sons for permission to quote from Thorstein Veblen, Science in Modern Civilization and The Theory of Business Enterprise; to Henry Adams, for permission to quote from Brooks Adams, The Theory of Social Revolutions; to the Macmillan Co., for

permission to quote from John Dewey, Experience and Education, and Democracy and Education; to Ginn and Co., for permission to quote from Lester Ward, Psychic Factors in Civilization; to W. W. Norton

and Co., for permission to quote from John Dewey, Experience and Nature; to Henry Holt and Co., for permission to quote from William

Tames, Talks to Teachers on Psychology; to Appleton-Century-Crofts, for permission to quote from William T. Harris, Psychological Foundations of Education; to Longmans, Green and Co., for permission to quote

from William James, Pragmatism, and The Meaning of Truth; to G. P.

Putnam’s Sons, for permission to quote from Walt Whitman, The Complete Writings; to the American Unitarian Association, for permission to quote from Theodore Parker, Works, Centenary Edition; toHoughton Mifflin Co., for permission to quote R. W. Emerson, Works, Centenary Edition, and John Fiske, Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy; to Henry Holt and Co., for permission to quote from John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems; to Yale University Press, for permission to quote from W. G.

Sumner, Earth Hunger and Essays, and John Dewey, A Common Faith; to the American Book Co., for permission to quote from Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson, The Puritans; to Harvard University Press, for permission to quote from S. E. Morison, The Founding of Harvard Col-

lege, and C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers, ed. by Hartshorne and Weiss; to the Philosophical Library, for permission to quote from Benjamin Rush, Selected Writings, ed. by Runes; to Oxford University Press, for permission to quote from Walt Whitman, Specimen Days in America.

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