of minds much more enlightened than his own. He is canvassed by a multitude of applicants, who seek to deceive him in a thousand different ways, but who instruct him by their deceit. He takes a part in political undertakings which did not originate in his own conception, but which give him a taste for undertakings of the kind. New meliorations are daily pointed out in the property which he holds in common with others, and this gives him the desire of improving that property which is more peculiarly his own. He is perhaps neither happier nor better than those who came before him, but he is better informed and more active. I have no doubt that the democratic institutions of the United States, joined to the physical constitution of the country, are the cause (not the direct, as is so often asserted, but the indirect cause) of the prodigious commercial activity of the inhabitants. It is not engendered by the laws, but the people learns how to promote it by the experience derived from legislation.

When the opponents of democracy assert that a single individual performs the duties which he undertakes much better than the government of the community, it appears to me that they are perfectly right. The government of an individual, supposing an equality of instruction on either side, is more consistent, more persevering, and more accurate than that of a multitude, and it is much better qualified judiciously to discriminate the characters of the men it employs. If any deny what I advance, they have certainly never seen a democratic government, or have formed their opinion upon very partial evidence. It is true that even when local circumstances and the disposition of the people allow democratic institutions to subsist, they never display a regular and methodical system of government. Democratic liberty is far from accomplishing all the projects it undertakes, with the skill of an adroit despotism. It frequently abandons them before they have borne their fruits, or risks them

when the consequences may prove dangerous; but in the end it produces more than any absolute government, and if it do fewer things well, it does a great number of things. Under its sway, the transactions of the public administration are not nearly so important as what is done by private exertion. Democracy does not confer the most skillful kind of government upon the people, but it produces that which the most skillful governments are frequently unable to awaken, namely, an all-pervading and restless activity, a superabundant force, and an energy which is inseparable from it, and which may, under favorable circumstances, beget the most amazing benefits. These are the true advantages of democracy.

In the present age, when the destinies of Christendom seem to be in suspense, some hasten to assail democracy as its foe while it is yet in its early growth; and others are ready with their vows of adoration for this new duty which is springing forth from chaos; but both parties are very imperfectly acquainted with the object of their hatred or of their desires; they strike in the dark, and distribute their blows by mere chance.

We must first understand what the purport of society and the aim of government are held to be. If it be your intention to confer a certain elevation upon the human mind, and to teach it to regard the things of this world with generous feelings; to inspire men with a scorn of mere temporal advantage; to give birth to living convictions, and to keep alive the spirit of honorable devotedness; if you hold it to be a good thing to refine the habits, to embellish the manners, to cultivate the arts of a nation, and to promote the love of poetry, of beauty, and of renown; if you would constitute a people not unfitted to act with power upon all other nations; nor unprepared for those high enterprises, which, whatever be the result of its efforts, will leave a name forever famous

in time if you believe such to be the principal object of society, you must avoid the government of democracy, which would be a very uncertain guide to the end you have in view.

But if you hold it to be expedient to divert the moral and intellectual activity of man to the production of comfort, and to the acquirement of the necessaries of life; if a clear understanding be more profitable to men than genius; if your object be not to stimulate the virtues of heroism, but to create habits of peace; if you had rather behold vices than crimes, and are content to meet with fewer noble deeds, provided offenses be diminished in the same proportion; if, instead of living in the midst of a brilliant state of society, you are contented to have prosperity around you; if, in short, you are of opinion that the principal object of a government is not to confer the greatest possible share of power and of glory upon the body of the nation, but to insure the greatest degree of enjoyment, and the least degree of misery, to each of the individuals who compose it if such be your desires, you can have no surer means of satisfying them than by equalizing the condition of men, and establishing democratic institutions.

But if the time be past at which such a choice was possible, and if some superhuman power impel us toward one or the other of these two governments without consulting our wishes, let us at least endeavor to make the best of that which is allotted to us; and let us so inquire into its good and its evil propensities as to be able to foster the former, and repress the latter to the utmost.

THE GERMAN AND THE AMERICAN

TEMPER1

KUNO FRANCKE

PERHAPS the most fundamental, or shall I say elementary, difference between the German temper and the American may be expressed by the word "slowness." Is there any possible point of view from which slowness might appear to an American as something desirable? I think not. Indeed, to call a thing or a person slow seems to spread about them an atmosphere of complete and irredeemable hopelessness. Compare with this the reverently sturdy feelings likely to be aroused in a German breast by the words langsam und feierlich inscribed over a religious or patriotic hymn, and imagine a German Männerchor singing such a hymn, with all the facial and tonal symptoms of joyful and devout slowness of cerebral activity and you have in brief compass a specimen-demonstration of the difference in tempo in which the two national minds habitually move.

It has been said that the langsamer Schritt of the German military drill was in the last resort responsible for the astounding victories which in 1870 shook the foundations of Imperial France. Similarly, it might be said that slowness of movement and careful deliberateness are at the bottom of

1 As a native German and an American citizen and patriot, Professor Francke is peculiarly fitted to recognize the merits and defects of both the German and the American temper. The article from which these extracts are derived "German Literature and the American Temper," printed in the Atlantic Monthly, November, 1914, and again in The German Spirit, 1916 was written in the spring preceding the outbreak of war. It is here reprinted through the generous permission of Henry Holt & Co.

most things in which Germans have excelled. To be sure, the most recent development of Germany, particularly in trade and industry, has been most rapid, and the whole of German life of to-day is thoroughly American in its desire for getting ahead and for working under high pressure. But this is a condition forced upon Germany from without through international competition and the exigencies of the worldmarket rather than springing from the inner tendency of German character itself. And it should not be forgotten that it was the greatest German of modern times, Goethe, who, anticipating the present era of speed, uttered this warning: “Railways, express posts, steamships, and all possible facilities for swift communication, these are the things in which the civilized world is now chiefly concerned, and by which it will over-civilize itself and arrive at mediocrity."

A striking consequence of this difference of tempo in which the American mind and the German naturally move, and perhaps the most conspicuous example of the practical effect of this difference upon National habits, is the German regard for authority and the American dislike of it. For the slower circulation in the brain of the German makes him more passive and more easily inclined to accept the decisions of others for him, while the self-reliant and agile American is instinctively distrustful of any decision which he has not made himself.

Here, then, is another sharp distinction between the two National tempers, another serious obstacle to the just appreciation of the German spirit by the American.

I verily believe that it is impossible for an American to understand the feelings which a loyal German subject, particularly of the conservative sort, entertains toward the State and its authority. That the State should be anything more than an institution for the protection and safeguarding of the happiness of individuals; that it might be considered