The Promise of American Life | Page 3

of America as a Land of
Promise made in the preceding paragraph is sufficiently obvious, but it
is usually slurred by the average good American patriot. The better
future, which is promised for himself, his children, and for other
Americans, is chiefly a matter of confident anticipation. He looks upon
it very much as a friendly outsider might look on some promising
individual career. The better future is understood by him as something
which fulfills itself. He calls his country, not only the Land of Promise,
but the Land of Destiny. It is fairly launched on a brilliant and
successful career, the continued prosperity of which is prophesied by
the very momentum of its advance. As Mr. H.G. Wells says in "The
Future in America," "When one talks to an American of his national
purpose, he seems a little at a loss; if one speaks of his national destiny,
he responds with alacrity." The great majority of Americans would
expect a book written about "The Promise of American Life" to contain
chiefly a fanciful description of the glorious American future--a sort of
Utopia up-to-date, situated in the land of Good-Enough, and flying the
Stars and Stripes. They might admit in words that the achievement of
this glorious future implied certain responsibilities, but they would not
regard the admission either as startling or novel. Such responsibilities

were met by our predecessors; they will be met by our followers.
Inasmuch as it is the honorable American past which prophesies on
behalf of the better American future, our national responsibility
consists fundamentally in remaining true to traditional ways of
behavior, standards, and ideals. What we Americans have to do in order
to fulfill our national Promise is to keep up the good work--to continue
resolutely and cheerfully along the appointed path.
The reader who expects this book to contain a collection of patriotic
prophecies will be disappointed. I am not a prophet in any sense of the
word, and I entertain an active and intense dislike of the foregoing
mixture of optimism, fatalism, and conservatism. To conceive the
better American future as a consummation which will take care of
itself,--as the necessary result of our customary conditions, institutions,
and ideas,--persistence in such a conception is admirably designed to
deprive American life of any promise at all. The better future which
Americans propose to build is nothing if not an idea which must in
certain essential respects emancipate them from their past. American
history contains much matter for pride and congratulation, and much
matter for regret and humiliation. On the whole, it is a past of which the
loyal American has no reason to feel ashamed, chiefly because it has
throughout been made better than it was by the vision of a better future;
and the American of to-day and to-morrow must remain true to that
traditional vision. He must be prepared to sacrifice to that traditional
vision even the traditional American ways of realizing it. Such a
sacrifice is, I believe, coming to be demanded; and unless it is made,
American life will gradually cease to have any specific Promise.
The only fruitful promise of which the life of any individual or any
nation can be possessed, is a promise determined by an ideal. Such a
promise is to be fulfilled, not by sanguine anticipations, not by a
conservative imitation of past achievements, but by laborious,
single-minded, clear-sighted, and fearless work. If the promising career
of any individual is not determined by a specific and worthy purpose, it
rapidly drifts into a mere pursuit of success; and even if such a pursuit
is successful, whatever promise it may have had, is buried in the grave
of its triumph. So it is with a nation. If its promise is anything more

than a vision of power and success, that addition must derive its value
from a purpose; because in the moral world the future exists only as a
workshop in which a purpose is to be realized. Each of the several
leading European nations is possessed of a specific purpose determined
for the most part by the pressure of historical circumstances; but the
American nation is committed to a purpose which is not merely of
historical manufacture. It is committed to the realization of the
democratic ideal; and if its Promise is to be fulfilled, it must be
prepared to follow whithersoever that ideal may lead.
No doubt Americans have in some measure always conceived their
national future as an ideal to be fulfilled. Their anticipations have been
uplifting as well as confident and vainglorious. They have been
prophesying not merely a safe and triumphant, but also a better, future.
The ideal demand for some sort of individual and social amelioration
has always accompanied even their vainest flights of patriotic prophecy.
They may never have sufficiently