eign lands or are adaptations after German or Scottish models. This poet, too, with all his delicacy, good taste, noble language, idealism in the best sense, is wanting in elemental creative power, and that regardlessness so necessary to the genuine poet. In Whitman, the really modern American poet, the personification of America's strength and weakness in all places, the typical poet of the new world, one misses just what one admires in Longfellow. Could one poet have been made of the two, the land would perhaps have had its great poet, for which it still waits in vain.

For Emerson, the literary man of whom the country professedly is proudest, penetrated with a deep sense of the mystery of nature, great as philosopher, prophet, essayist, who gave American literature what it before him lacked, perspective of the everlasting, though undoubtedly a rich soul, was not a rich poet, and does not represent an unbroken original artist individuality. In this gentle spirit we miss the Shakesperian sense of the tragedy of existence and the elemental passion of a Bonaparte.

The nation has produced an unusually large number of witty and humorous writers. But American wit and humor are far less fine than that of England and Germany, they are rather boisterous and boastful, often coarse. For the tear that the German humorist secretly hides in his own eye as he makes his thrust at the follies of man, one seeks in vain in his American cousin. Only Holmes and Irving are exceptions.

So-called American fiction of the present is conventional and suffers from being written too rapidly. The best of it is only average stuff. What pass for nature books cannot be called works of art. They are, so to speak, only filmy, boneless protoplasms having neither beginning nor end and absolutely without point.

The educational systems of Germany and America are not to be compared, since the goals striven for are so entirely different. The American nation, here as elsewhere, realizing that it could not create ideal conditions, has satisfied itself with the best possible under the circumstances. The schools found the task to educate men for this land, these

circumstances, this constitution, to train citizens of a democracy, who later in life were to rule themselves; and to give to all individuals regardless of class, color or sex the most similar education possible and make of each a practical human being. This task they have performed fairly well. The German ideal, seldom enough reached, is surely higher and purer-development to personality through harmonious education.

Harmonious education is impossible in the American system; here is its great weakness. From kindergarten to graduate university work, in spite of many individual excellences, there is a fatal lack of unity: there are gaps which really amount to contradictions. Such a gap undoubtedly exists, for example, between grammar school and high school, the aims of the one are absolutely different from those of the other. This high school, moreover, is responsible for the greatest defect in all American education: it produces dilettantism. Professedly the aim of the school is to give the pupil an education with the help of which he can later make his way in every special branch. But this purpose is thwarted by the teaching too early of all sorts of matter, which belongs only in some special department. The amount of work attempted is simply beyond attainment. At best, then, it is only a nibbling at all sorts of learning, and produces that superficial vanity which so readily comes of a smattering knowledge of many things. And the teaching here, too, is poorly done, and the method false. To substitute recitations learned by heart from a text book for the lecture by the teacher must be due to a failure to recognize the fact that nothing more stimulates and excites personal judg ment in the pupil than the model of a living personality in the teacher.

American universities have no great names to show. Their scholars, in spite of intense striving and industry, have done nothing independently great in pure philosophy and metaphysics, theological exegesis and criticism of sources, in ancient or comparative philology. The explanation is to be found in the character of the race. The strength of the German has always been to develop his inner nature and put

it in harmony with that which is above the world of appearance the transcendental. The American, on the other hand, is wonderfully endowed for dealing with the external world, but for the creation of great thoughts that move mankind he lacks two qualities: the intuition of the poet and the organic thinking of the philosopher. And so American scholars and searchers for truth have not yet proved that with all their keen sense and imagination they possess an insight into the deepest connection of things.

And religion in the New World? Von Polenz finds the wisdom of the founders of the American government in keeping Church and State distinct splendidly verified. Many blessings have resulted from it, one of the greatest being that in America there is not that deep-seated deplorable hostility to the church among the masses, who, in their grievances against government do not differentiate between Church and State, where they are combined.

As a nation the Americans are religiously endowed. Here, too, they are practical and active rather than brooding and hypercritical. One misses that deep humble piety often to be found among the religious of Germany. In the church services there seems, too, to be a lack of appeal to the spirit of the congregation. The American congregations seem to be concerned too much about comfortable and fine surroundings and appear to need appeal from without by a fine oration and by beautiful singing. What the German above all else seeks in the worship, the American seems to overlookedifying of the spirit.

Among the masses there is seldom, as in Germany, outspoken disbelief, rather religious indifference. Moreover, since the government is hands off in all religious matters, the public schools give no instruction in the Bible, and since, especially in the larger cities, the poorer classes do not send their children to Sunday school, there is growing up in the heart of the country a modern heathendom. The free church fights valiantly to overcome this and does a great work. Yet against the ruling denominations, which with accumulated wealth and with prestige have grown aristocratic and exclusive, the poor man entertains feelings of

distrust. Even the Methodist church, which earlier, especially in the South, had become the church of the people, is no longer the simple pious denomination it once was. Hence the great place in America that such an organization as the Salvation Army has won. These people reach the masses, and by their very presence protest against the tendency of the old churches.

A most admirable feature in American religious work is the great part the young take in it. The work, for example, of the Y. M. C. A. is magnificent.

And our future? In spite of some real dangers, chief of which are the negro question; the immigration from inferior peoples of thousands of their outcasts; the small birth-rate in those classes that are to furnish the leaven of the nation; the lack of a healthy prosperous middle class as in Germany, made impossible in America by the control of business by a few; and false capitalization of the great business organizations and consequent distrust in them-in spite of all these and the evils and weaknesses spoken of above, von Polenz believes America has the greatest future of any country in the world, for the nation is too sound not to overcome these defects and dangers. And Goldberger finds that in this land of unlimited possibilities, where golden gifts and iron-like industry, good fortune and deserts are united, there is room for Sparta and Athens, Rome and Jerusalem-only not for Capua and Byzantium.

Political Philosophy*

BY W. W. WILLOUGHBY, PH. D.,

Professor in Political Science at Johns Hopkins University

The term "Political Philosophy" is not so self-explicative as to render unnecessary an inquiry into the character and value of the speculations with which it has to deal. The adjective "political" is easily reduced to its proper meaning. Correctly used, it has reference to those matters that directly pertain to the organization of men in corporate communities over which some paramount ruling authority is generally recognized as the legitimate source of all legally binding commands. We thus term political all matters that concern the state, its origin, history, right to be, organization, activities, administration and aims. When, however, we turn to the meaning of the substantive "philosophy," when used in connection with the qualifying adjective "political," the matter is not quite so simple. It is clear that we cannot speak of a philosophy of politics in the metaphysical or epistemological senses of the word, nor can we employ the term in its cosmic application as a synthesis of the doctrines of all the sciences. The only meaning, then, which we may properly attach to the word, when used in the phrase political philosophy, is that which it has when we speak of the philosophy of any science as being that portion of it which is concerned with the theoretical discussion of the essential characteristics of the material and phenomena with which such science has to deal. When we thus speak of a philosophy of a science as dealing with its theoretical principles, it is not to be understood, however, that it is therefore concerned with its hypothetical or undetermined part. A philosopy in this sense is theoretical only in the sense of being abstract, that is, as dealing with generalizations rather than with particulars, and as predicating essential and fundamental qualities rather than accidental

*A paper read at the International Congress of Arts and Sciences, at St. Louis, September, 1904.