We have no standards in this country. The individual is free to express himself here within the law in any way he sees fit, and the conduct of life comes always at last to an equation of the individual. Each one of us when we awake in the morning finds the problem of existence staring him anew in the face, and cannot always spare the time to remember that he is an American. And yet Americanism is the sum total of what all of us are. It will be very easy for us simply to imitate the civilizations of the past, but if our civilization is to stand for anything vital, and to be a step forward in the progress of humanity, we must do more than use the old combinations and devices of society in a new kaleidoscopic form. Our heritage as Americans is independence, originality, self-reliance, and sympathetic energy animated by a strong ethical instinct, and these are forces which can produce a higher and a broader civilization than the world has yet seen if we choose to have it so. But it is no longer a matter of cutting down forests and opening mines, of boasting beside the plough and building cities in a single year, of fabulous fortunes won in a trice, and of favorite sons in black broadcloth all the year round. It is a matter of a vast, populous country and a powerful, seething civilization where the same problems confront us which have taxed the minds and souls of the Old World for generations of men. It is for our originality to throw new light upon them, and it is for our independence to face them in the spirit of a deeper sympathy with humanity, and free from the canker of that utter selfishness which has made the prosperity and glory of other great nations culminate so often in a decadence of degrading luxury and fruitless culture.
No civilization which regards the blessings and comforts of refined living as unworthy to be striven for and appropriated can hope to promote the cause of humanity. On the other hand, we Americans must remember that purely selfish appropriation and appreciation of these blessings and comforts has worked the ruin of the most famous civilizations of the past. Marie Antoinette was more elegant than the most fashionable woman in New York, and yet that did not save her from the tumbrel and the axe. The best Americanism of to-day and for the future is that which shall seek to use the fruits of the earth and the fulness thereof, and to develop all the manifestations of art and gentle living in the interest of humanity as a whole. But even heartless elegance is preferable to that self-righteous commonness of spirit which sits at home in its shirt-sleeves and is graceless, ascetic, and unimaginative in the name of God.