The Promise of American Life | Page 2

to his own national history and cannot honestly escape the
debt. The good patriot is obliged to offer faithful allegiance to a
network of somewhat arbitrary institutions, social forms, and
intellectual habits--on the ground that his country is exposed to more
serious dangers from premature emancipation than it is from stubborn
conservatism. France is the only European country which has sought to
make headway towards a better future by means of a revolutionary
break with its past; and the results of the French experiment have
served for other European countries more as a warning than as an
example.
The higher American patriotism, on the other hand, combines loyalty to
historical tradition and precedent with the imaginative projection of an
ideal national Promise. The Land of Democracy has always appealed to
its more enthusiastic children chiefly as a land of wonderful and more
than national possibilities. "Neither race nor tradition," says Professor
Hugo Münsterberg in his volume on "The Americans," "nor the actual
past, binds the American to his countrymen, but rather the future which
together they are building." This vision of a better future is not, perhaps,

as unclouded for the present generation of Americans as it was for
certain former generations; but in spite of a more friendly acquaintance
with all sorts of obstacles and pitfalls, our country is still figured in the
imagination of its citizens as the Land of Promise. They still believe
that somehow and sometime something better will happen to good
Americans than has happened to men in any other country; and this
belief, vague, innocent, and uninformed though it be, is the expression
of an essential constituent in our national ideal. The past should mean
less to a European than it does to an American, and the future should
mean more. To be sure, American life cannot with impunity be
wrenched violently from its moorings any more than the life of a
European country can; but our American past, compared to that of any
European country, has a character all its own. Its peculiarity consists,
not merely in its brevity, but in the fact that from the beginning it has
been informed by an idea. From the beginning Americans have been
anticipating and projecting a better future. From the beginning the Land
of Democracy has been figured as the Land of Promise. Thus the
American's loyalty to the national tradition rather affirms than denies
the imaginative projection of a better future. An America which was
not the Land of Promise, which was not informed by a prophetic
outlook and a more or less constructive ideal, would not be the
America bequeathed to us by our forefathers. In cherishing the Promise
of a better national future the American is fulfilling rather than
imperiling the substance of the national tradition.
When, however, Americans talk of their country as the Land of
Promise, a question may well be raised as to precisely what they mean.
They mean, of course, in general, that the future will have something
better in store for them individually and collectively than has the past
or the present; but a very superficial analysis of this meaning discloses
certain ambiguities. What are the particular benefits which this better
future will give to Americans either individually or as a nation? And
how is this Promise to be fulfilled? Will it fulfill itself, or does it imply
certain responsibilities? If so, what responsibilities? When we speak of
a young man's career as promising, we mean that his abilities and
opportunities are such that he is likely to become rich or famous or
powerful; and this judgment does not of course imply, so far as we are

concerned, any responsibility. It is merely a prophecy based upon past
performances and proved qualities. But the career, which from the
standpoint of an outsider is merely an anticipation, becomes for the
young man himself a serious task. For him, at all events, the better
future will not merely happen. He will have to do something to deserve
it. It may be wrecked by unforeseen obstacles, by unsuspected
infirmities, or by some critical error of judgment. So it is with the
Promise of American life. From the point of view of an immigrant this
Promise may consist of the anticipation of a better future, which he can
share merely by taking up his residence on American soil; but once he
has become an American, the Promise can no longer remain merely an
anticipation. It becomes in that case a responsibility, which requires for
its fulfillment a certain kind of behavior on the part of himself and his
fellow-Americans. And when we attempt to define the Promise of
American life, we are obliged, also, to describe the kind of behavior
which the fulfillment of the Promise demands.
The distinction between the two aspects