Do not those words give us a glimpse of the American mind in its natural working. Its genius is anticipatory. It is searching for a common ground on which all may meet. It puts its trust not in the thinker who can put his thoughts in the most neat form, but the man whose faculties have _on the whole the best divining power_.
To listen to William James was to experience an illogical elation--and to feel justified in it. He was an unsparing critic of things as they are, but his criticism left us in no mood of depression. Our interest is with things as they are going to be. The universe is growing. Let us grow with it.
When, as a child, I learned the Westminster Catechism by heart I found the Ten Commandments easy to remember. There was something straightforward in these prohibitions. Once started in the right direction one could hardly stray from the path. But I stumbled over the question, in regard to certain Commandments, "What are the reasons annexed?"
That a commandment should be committed to memory seemed just. I was prepared to submit to the severest tests of verbal accuracy. But that there should be "reasons annexed," and that these also should be remembered, seemed to my youthful understanding a grievance. It made the path of the obedient hard. To this day there is a haziness about the "reasons" that contrasts with the sharp outlines of the commandments.
I fancy that news-gatherers have the same experience. They are diligent in collecting items of news and reporting them to the world, but it is a real hardship to them to have to give any rational account of these bits of fact. They tell what is done in different parts of the world, but they forget to mention "the moving why they did it." The consequence is that, in this age of instantaneous communication, we know what is going on in other countries, but it seems very irrational. The rational elements have been lost in the process of transmission.
There has, for example, been no lack of news cabled across the Atlantic in regard to the nominations for President of the United States. The European reader is made aware that a great deal of strong feeling has been evoked, and strong language used. When a picturesque term of reproach has been hurled by one candidate at another it is promptly reported to a waiting world. But the "reasons annexed" are calmly ignored. The consequence is that the reader is confirmed in his exaggerated idea of the nervous irritability of the American people. There seems to be a periodicity in their seizures. At intervals of four years they indulge in an orgy of mutual recrimination, and then suddenly return to their normal state of money-getting. It is all very unaccountable. Doubtless the most charitable explanation is the climate.