If it
was not the desire for religious freedom that urged them, it was
the desire for personal freedom; if not political liberty, why
then economic liberty (for this too is idealism), and the
opportunity to raise the standard of life. And of course all these
motives were strongest in that earlier immigration which has done
most to fix the state of mind and body which we call being
American. I need not labor the argument. Our political and social
history support it; our best literature demonstrates it, for no
men have been more idealistic than the American writers whom we
have consented to call great. Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne,
Whitman--was idealism ever more thoroughly incarnate than in them?
And this idealism--to risk again a platitude--has been in the air of
America. It has permeated our religious sects, and created
several of them. It has given tone to our thinking, and even more
to our feeling. I do not say that it has always, or even usually,
determined our actions, although the Civil War is proof of its
power. Again and again it has gone aground roughly when the ideal
met a condition of living--a fact that will provide the
explanation for which I seek.
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