XLTRADITIONS
Whether we like it or not, we are governed by the past. The books written by men long dead have the largest influence in shaping our minds and ruling our conduct; the laws that control our duties and our privileges as citizens were made by men whose names we cannot remember; spirit hands guide our footsteps; we think the thoughts of our ancestors and carry into execution conceptions formed by them. The muscles of our bodies and the swifter impulses of our minds are set in motion by thousands of men and women. We have been shaped by our traditions. We can ourselves add something to these traditions, but even if we would, we cannot annihilate them. They are as real as we are.
Many Americans have such a militant consciousness of independence that they cannot endure the thought of having America’s destiny in any way influenced by hands across the sea. “What! do you mean to say that foreigners shall tell us what we may and may not do?” Now thetruth is, that not only men in foreign nations have a vital influence on our present conduct and future acts, but that this is especially true of those foreigners who have been dead for centuries. The situation is humiliating. Bad enough to have an absentee ruler alive—how much more insupportable when he has ceased to exist!
Nothing is more foolish than to despise the past or to attempt to arrange the future without a sound knowledge of history. The difficulty with some radical reformers is that they are deficient in historical knowledge. They do not know that the experiment they have in mind has been tried so many times without success that some lesson might possibly be gained by observation of previous results. “Histories make men wise,” said Bacon; they make us wise, not merely because history books were written by wise men, but because history itself is the accumulation of human wisdom gleaned from human folly. To sneer at the past is to sneer at wisdom. For despite the glib way in which the word evolution is used, despite the advances made in personal luxuries, housing and locomotion, despite the broad (rather than deep) diffusion of culture by which reading and writing have become no more conspicuous than breathing—thereis not one scintilla of evidence to prove that the individual mind has advanced a single step in the power of thought, or in the ability to reason, or in the possession of wisdom. The men of ancient times—as represented by their leaders—were in every respect as able-minded as the best products of the twentieth century.
Reflexion makes us realise the imponderable worth of traditions; we know they come only from years. Even if every man had his price, which is not true, there are things beyond all price. A boy who goes to Cambridge or Oxford has something in his education beyond the price he pays for his tuition, or the instruction he receives in lectures, or the advantages of modern laboratories. The grey walls of the cloisters, the noble old towers, the enchanting beauty of the quadrangle, represent not only the best in architecture, but they are hallowed by thousands of ghosts. Lowell coined the phrase, “God’s passionless reformers, influences.” These influences, silently but chronically active, like a deep-flowing river, give something that no recently founded institution can bring; something that makes the so-called almighty dollar look impotent. Any well-disposed multi-millionaire can start a well-equipped university; in time it, too,will have its traditions; but many centuries give a tone and a stamp that cannot be bought or sold.
A certain independent humour accompanies those who live in ancient surroundings—and this humour is frequently the Anglo-Saxon way of expressing pride. After dining in hall with the dons one evening in a college at Oxford, we adjourned successively to three rooms. I asked one of my hosts if that had always been the custom. “No, indeed,” said he, with a smile; “in fact, it is comparatively recent. We have been doing this only since the seventeenth century.” He spoke as though it were a rather startling innovation. A wealthy American was so pleased with the velvet turf of the Oxford quadrangles that he asked a janitor how such turf was produced; it appeared that he wished his front lawn at home to wear a similar aspect. The janitor replied that the matter was simple; all that was necessary was to wait a thousand years. Age sometimes really comes before beauty.
When the Englishman Thomas Hardy sat down in his house at Dorchester to write a poem, he knew that the ground in his garden was filled with the relics of Roman occupation—pottery, utensils and human bones. Twenty centuries were in his dooryard. No wonderthere is dignity in his compositions when their roots go so deep.
Tennyson said:
That man’s the best cosmopoliteWho loves his native country best.
That man’s the best cosmopoliteWho loves his native country best.
That man’s the best cosmopoliteWho loves his native country best.
That man’s the best cosmopolite
Who loves his native country best.
I suppose he meant that the man who loved his own country was better fitted to love all countries and thus become a citizen of the world than one who, while professing to be swayed only by international sentiment, should have little affection for any country in particular. We are familiar with the type of man who is filled with enthusiasm for humanity, but who never helps an individual; love, like charity, should begin at home. It is a singular but happy human characteristic that we love so ardently the scenes of our childhood; even those brought up in a detestable climate will, when far away in golden sunlight, become homesick for the fog, the mist, and the rain. Many who have left home in early manhood will return thither in old age, as though drawn by invisible but irresistible bonds.
American traditions go back to Colonial days; and those days went back to the English country and English speech. We ought not to forget these traditions or be untrue to the best that is in Anglo-Saxon civilisation. Perhaps no onething is more necessary to the welfare and peace of the world today than frank, hearty, sincere friendship and good will between Great Britain and the United States.