So long as we are
blindly and ignorantly rolled about by the forces of our nature,
their contradiction baffles us and lames us; so soon as we have
clearly discerned what they are, and begun to apply to them a law of
measure, control, and guidance, they may be made to work for our good
and to carry us forward. Then we may have the good of our German
part, the good of our Latin part, the good of our Celtic part; and
instead of one part clashing with the other, we may bring it in to
continue and perfect the other, when the other has given us all the
good it can yield, and by being pressed further, could only give us
its faulty excess. Then we may use the German faithfulness to Nature
to give us science, and to free us from insolence and self-will; we
may use the Celtic quickness of perception to give us delicacy, and
to free us from hardness and Philistinism; we may use the Latin
decisiveness to give us strenuous clear method, and to free us from
fumbling and idling. Already, in their untrained state, these
elements give signs, in our life and literature, of their being
present in us, and a kind of prophecy of what they could do for us if
they were properly observed, trained, and applied. But this they
have not yet been; we ride one force of our nature to death; we will
be nothing but Anglo-Saxons in the Old World or in the New; and when
our race has built Bold Street, Liverpool, and pronounced it very
good, it hurries across the Atlantic, and builds Nashville, and
Jacksonville, and Milledgeville, and thinks it is fulfilling the
designs of Providence in an incomparable manner.
Pages:
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163