The Promise of American Life | Page 4

realized that this better future, just in
so far as it is better, will have to be planned and constructed rather than
fulfilled of its own momentum; but at any rate, in seeking to
disentangle and emphasize the ideal implications of the American
national Promise, I am not wholly false to the accepted American
tradition. Even if Americans have neglected these ideal implications,
even if they have conceived the better future as containing chiefly a
larger portion of familiar benefits, the ideal demand, nevertheless, has
always been palpably present; and if it can be established as the
dominant aspect of the American tradition, that tradition may be
transformed, but it will not be violated.
Furthermore, much as we may dislike the American disposition to take
the fulfillment of our national Promise for granted, the fact that such a
disposition exists in its present volume and vigor demands respectful
consideration. It has its roots in the salient conditions of American life,
and in the actual experience of the American people. The national
Promise, as it is popularly understood, has in a way been fulfilling itself.
If the underlying conditions were to remain much as they have been,
the prevalent mixture of optimism, fatalism, and conservatism might
retain a formidable measure of justification; and the changes which are

taking place in the underlying conditions and in the scope of American
national experience afford the most reasonable expectation that this
state of mind will undergo a radical alteration. It is new conditions
which are forcing Americans to choose between the conception of their
national Promise as a process and an ideal. Before, however, the nature
of these novel conditions and their significance can be considered, we
must examine with more care the relation between the earlier American
economic and social conditions and the ideas and institutions
associated with them. Only by a better understanding of the popular
tradition, only by an analysis of its merits and its difficulties, can we
reach a more consistent and edifying conception of the Promise of
American life.
II
HOW THE PROMISE HAS BEEN REALIZED
All the conditions of American life have tended to encourage an easy,
generous, and irresponsible optimism. As compared to Europeans,
Americans have been very much favored by circumstances. Had it not
been for the Atlantic Ocean and the virgin wilderness, the United States
would never have been the Land of Promise. The European Powers
have been obliged from the very conditions of their existence to be
more circumspect and less confident of the future. They are always by
way of fighting for their national security and integrity. With possible
or actual enemies on their several frontiers, and with their land fully
occupied by their own population, they need above all to be strong, to
be cautious, to be united, and to be opportune in their policy and
behavior. The case of France shows the danger of neglecting the
sources of internal strength, while at the same time philandering with
ideas and projects of human amelioration. Bismarck and Cavour seized
the opportunity of making extremely useful for Germany and Italy the
irrelevant and vacillating idealism and the timid absolutism of the third
Napoleon. Great Britain has occupied in this respect a better situation
than has the Continental Powers. Her insular security made her more
independent of the menaces and complications of foreign politics, and
left her free to be measurably liberal at home and immeasurably

imperial abroad. Yet she has made only a circumspect use of her
freedom. British liberalism was forged almost exclusively for the
British people, and the British peace for colonial subjects. Great Britain
could have afforded better than France to tie its national life to an
over-national idea, but the only idea in which Britons have really
believed was that of British security, prosperity, and power. In the case
of our own country the advantages possessed by England have been
amplified and extended. The United States was divided from the
mainland of Europe not by a channel but by an ocean. Its dimensions
were continental rather than insular. We were for the most part freed
from alien interference, and could, so far as we dared, experiment with
political and social ideals. The land was unoccupied, and its settlement
offered an unprecedented area and abundance of economic opportunity.
After the Revolution the whole political and social organization was
renewed, and made both more serviceable and more flexible. Under
such happy circumstances the New World was assuredly destined to
become to its inhabitants a Land of Promise,--a land in which men
were offered a fairer chance and a better future than the best which the
Old World could afford.
No more explicit expression has ever been given to the way in which
the Land of Promise was first conceived by its children than in