Modern American Prose Selections | Page 8

of
Socrates. The foundation of government is man--changing, inert,
impulsive, limited, sympathetic, selfish man. His institutions, whether
social or political, must come out of his wants and out of his capacities.
The problem of government, therefore, is not always what should be
done but what can be done. We may not follow the supreme tradition of
the race to create a newer, sweeter world unless we give heed to its
complementary tradition that man's experience cautions him to make a
new trail with care. He must curb courage with common-sense. He may
lay his first bricks upon the twentieth story, but not until he has made
sure of the solidity of the frame below. The real tradition of our people
permits the mason to place brick upon brick wherever he finds it most
convenient, safest and most economical; but he must not mistake thin
air for structural steel.
Let me illustrate the thought that I would leave with you by the
description of one of our western railroads. Your train sweeps across
the desert like some bold knight in a joust, and when about to drive
recklessly into a sheer cliff it turns a graceful curve and follows up the
wild meanderings of a stream until it reaches a ridge along which it
finds its flinty way for many miles. At length you come face to face
with a great gulf, a canyon--yawning, resounding and purple in its
depths. Before you lies a path, zigzagging down the canyon's side to the
very bottom, and away beyond another slighter trail climbs up upon the
opposite side. Which is our way? Shall we follow the old trail? The
answer comes as the train shoots out across a bridge and into a tunnel

on the opposite side, coming out again upon the highlands and looking
into the Valley of Heart's Desire where the wistful Rasselas might have
lived.
When you or I look upon that stretch of steel we wonder at the daring
of its builders. Great men they were who boldly built that road--great in
imagination, greater in their deeds--for they were men so great that they
did not build upon a line that was without tradition. The route they
followed was made by the buffalo and the elk ten thousand years ago.
The bear and the deer followed it generation after generation, and after
them came the trapper, and then the pioneer. It was already a trail when
the railroad engineer came with transit and chain seeking a path for the
great black stallion of steel.
Up beside the stream and along the ridge the track was laid. But there
was no thought of following the old trail downward into the canyon.
Then the spirit of the new age broke through tradition, the canyon was
leaped and the mountain's heart pierced, that man might have a swifter
and safer way to the Valley of Heart's Desire.

AMERICA'S HERITAGE[3]
FRANKLIN K. LANE
[Footnote 3: Address at the Americanization Banquet, Washington, D.
C., May 14, 1919. Reprinted by permission from Proceedings of the
Americanization Conference, Government Printing Office, 1919.]
You have been in conference for the past three days, and I have greatly
regretted that I could not be with you. You have been gathered together
as crusaders in a great cause. You are the missionaries in a new
movement. You represent millions of people in the United States who
to-night believe that there is no other question of such importance
before the American people as the solidifying and strengthening of true
American sentiment.
I understand that your conference has been a success; and it has been a

success because, unlike some other conferences, it was made up of
experts who knew what they were talking about. But you know no one
can give the final answer upon the question of Americanization. You
may study methods, but you find yourselves foiled because there is no
one method--no standardized method that can always be used to deal
correctly and truly with any human problem. Bergson, the French
philosopher, was here a year or two ago, and he made a suggestion to
me that seemed very profound when he said that the theory of evolution
could carry on as to species until it came to deal with man, and then
you had to deal with each individual man upon the theory that he was a
species by himself. And I think there is more than superficial
significance to that. It may go to the very heart and center of what we
call spirituality. It may be because of that very fact the individual is a
soul by himself; and it is for that reason that there must be avenues
opened into men's hearts that can not be standardized.
Man is a great moated, walled castle, with