THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO Professor of English at Princeton University Hyde Lecturer, University of Paris, 1908-9 Hon. LL.D., University of Geneva Hon. F.R.S.L., London New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1912 All rights reserved Copyright, 1910, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1910. Reprinted March, Octob

To inscribe your name upon this volume, dear Madame, is to recall delightful memories of my year in France. Your sympathy encouraged me in the adventurous choice of a subject so large and simple for a course of lectures at the Sorbonne. While they were in the making, you acted as an audience of one, in the long music-room at Hostel and in the forest of St. Gervais, and gave gentle counsels of wisdom in regard to the points likely to interest and retain a larger audience of Parisians in the Amphi

This book contains the first seven of a series of twenty-six conférences , given in the winter of 1908-1909, on the Hyde Foundation, at the University of Paris, and repeated in part at other universities of France. They were delivered in English, and afterward translated into French and published under the title of Le Génie de l’Amérique . In making this American edition it has not seemed worth while to attempt to disguise the fact that these chapters were prepared as lectures to be given to a F

There is an ancient amity between France and America, which is recorded in golden letters in the chronicles of human liberty. In one of the crowded squares of New York there stands a statue of a young nobleman, slender, elegant, and brave, springing forward to offer his sword to the cause of freedom. The name under that figure is La Fayette. In one of the broad avenues of Paris there stands a statue of a plain gentleman, grave, powerful, earnest, sitting his horse like a victor and lifting high

There is a proverb which affirms that in order to know a man you have only to travel with him for a week. Almost all of us have had experiences, sometimes happy and sometimes the reverse, which seem to confirm this saying. A journey in common is a sort of involuntary confessional. There is a certain excitement, a confusion and quickening of perceptions and sensations, in the adventures, the sudden changes, the new and striking scenes of travel. The bonds of habit are loosened. Impulses of pleasu

The other day I came upon a new book with a title which seemed to take a good ideal for granted: The New American Type . The author began with a description of a recent exhibition of portraits in New York, including pictures of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. He was impressed with the idea that “an astonishing change had taken place in men and women between the time of President Washington and President McKinley; bodies, faces, thoughts, had all been transformed. One short s

It is no mistake to think of America as a democratic country. But if you wish to understand the nature and quality of the democracy which prevails there,—its specific marks, its peculiarities, and perhaps its inconsistencies,—you must trace it to its source in the spirit of fair play . Therefore it will be profitable to study this spirit a little more carefully, to define it a little more clearly, and to consider some illustrations of its working in American institutions, society, and character.

The Spirit of America is best known in Europe by one of its qualities,— energy . This is supposed to be so vast, so abnormal, that it overwhelms and obliterates all other qualities, and acts almost as a blind force, driving the whole nation along the highroad of unremitting toil for the development of physical power and the accumulation of material wealth. La vie intense —which is the polite French translation of “the strenuous life”—is regarded as the unanimous choice of the Americans, who are

It is a little strange, and yet it seems to be true, that for a long time America was better understood by the French than by the English. This may be partly due to the fact that the French are more idealistic and more excitable than the English; in both of which qualities the Americans resemble them. It may also be due in part to the fact that the American Revolution was in a certain sense a family quarrel. A prolonged conflict of wills between the older and the younger members of the same hous

The Spirit of America shows its ingrained individualism nowhere more clearly than in education. First, by the breadth of the provision which it makes, up to a certain point, for everybody who wishes to be educated. Second, by the entire absence of anything like a centralized control of education. Third, by the remarkable evolution of different types of educational institutions and the liberty of choice which they offer to each student. All this is in the nature of evidence to the existence of a

All human activity is, in a certain sense, a mode of self-expression. The works of man in the organization of the State, in the development of industry, in voluntary effort for the improvement of the common order, are an utterance of his inner life. But it is natural for him to seek a fuller, clearer, more conscious mode of self-expression, to speak more directly of his ideals, thoughts, and feelings. It is this direct utterance of the Spirit of America, as it is found in literature, which I pro