the state police. The community looks on in pathetic moral impotence while property is destroyed, community welfare sacrificed, and often lives lost. There is lacking any higher ethical tribunal, the mandates of which can be made binding upon both groups. The prevailing traditional individualistic ethic finds itself utterly incompetent to deal with the situation. A collectivistic régime demands a complete reorganization of the social conscience.

$3. THE DUALISM IN AMERICAN LIFE

In reality, however, the causes of our uncertain morality are deeper than the confusion due to the conflict between individualism and collectivism. They can be traced back to a dualism that has existed in American life from the very beginning. "In the higher things of the mind," writes Santayana, "in religion, in literature, in the moral emotions, it is the hereditary spirit that still prevails, so much so that Mr. Bernard Shaw finds that America is one hundred years behind the times. The truth is that one-half of the American mind, that not occupied intensely in practical affairs, has remained, I will not say high and dry, but slightly becalmed; it has floated gently in the back-water, while, alongside, in invention and industry, and social organization, the other half of the mind has leaped down a sort of Niagara Rapids ". Here, ultimately, in this gap between the genteel tradition that has prevailed in politics, religion, art, and philosophy and the pragmatic and utilitarian ideals of actual life, we must find the explanation of the singular impotence at the higher levels of the intellectual life of America.

Primary among the factors that have produced this dualism in American life were the actual conditions faced by the founders of the nation. The early fathers were pioneers. They undertook the herculean task of creating a civilization in the wilderness. They did not possess nor did they have time to create their own political or social institutions. They had no indigenous social heritage of religion, literature and customs necessary to the establishment and maintenance

of a civilization. It was inevitable that they should appropriate these for the most part ready-made from the mother country. But the bills of rights, the Declaration and the Federal Constitution which were thought to embody the last word of political wisdom, were in reality the outgrowth of the advanced political experience of the England of the eighteenth century. By making these documents final the American people gave hostages to fortune so far as the development of a political conscience, intimately related with the expanding life of the nation, was concerned.

Thus was laid the basis for an unfortunate dualism in the political loyalties of the American people. It was the dualism that was destined to arise in time between the fixed, law-made democracy of the Constitution and the practical democratic ideals that were developed in immediate contact with the problems of the national life. The lofty ideals of the Constitution have remained fixed while the industrial, political, and social factors entering into our civilization were constantly changing. The result is that theoretically we are idealists while in practice we are pragmatists or even materialists. By tradition and training we place in the foreground certain ultimate conceptions as to the meaning and values of life, such as equality, freedom, peace, and universal brotherhood. It is only when forced to make supreme moral decision, however, as in the case of the recent war, that these lofty principles actually merge and play a part in our thought and life. The principles that actually shape business and politics and even social relations have been anything but idealistic. Two souls, it would seem, dwell in the breast of the average American, that of the idealist and that of the materialist. When the tide of life runs smoothly and the stern necessity for criticism and analysis does not press upon us, the average American is apt to be thoughtless and adventurous, a materialist in business, a Philistine in culture and a prig in religion and morals. It is only at great critical moments when he is forced to pass through some national Gethsemane, as in the battle against slavery or in the recent struggle against

the gospel of force and frightfulness, that he seriously bethinks himself of his spiritual birthright.

As the gap widened between this fixed world of religiopolitical values and the actual social situation it was inevitable that there should arise a feeling of unreality, even of insincerity, in the conscience of the nation. This has been accentuated of recent years through the tremendous expansion of the industrial order and the rise of a social and economic structure never dreamed of by the men who formulated the political philosophy of the nation. Even before the outbreak of the war President Wilson was able to say, "This is nothing short of a new social age, a new era of human relationships, a new stage setting for the drama of life ". But even in the utterances of this clear-sighted and forward-looking leader we seem to have indications that he had not completely emancipated his thought from the inherent dualism of the American mind. We still seem to catch an echo of the old simple individualistic life of the small farmer, or the small shopkeeper, of unrestricted competition with its transcendental background of unalterable and inalienable rights. It has been remarked of the Mr. Wilson of 1913 that his ideal "is the old ideal, the ideal of Bryan, the method is the new one of government interference ". The problem of introducing homogeneity into our scale of values, made urgent through the rise of a new industrial order, has been accentuated of course a thousandfold through the great international catastrophe. Had the American people been schooled from the beginning to formulate their political ideals in close and vital contact with developing political experience, as is true of the English, had they been taught to give rational interpretation to the constantly accumulating mass of national experience instead of relying confidently upon the political faith "which was once for all delivered unto the saints", we should not now be so helpless when faced with new and untried issues.

Disrespect for law is a much more serious consequence of this dualism. The average American has been schooled to believe in the majesty, the authority and the indefecti

ble character of the principles of right embodied in his political symbols. He is, therefore, at once freed from any pressing sense of responsibility for their preservation. He holds them in the highest esteem and admiration, listens with all possible respect to the judicial interpretation of their subtle and hidden meanings. In actual life, in business or politics, however, he does not hesitate to take a "moral holiday", like a boy out of school, under the firm conviction that the eternal principles of the Constitution will keep watch and ward over the destiny of the republic.

The average American has thus come to view the law in two senses. On the one hand, we have the indefectible principles of righteousness and justice embalmed in the highest law of the land and expounded with august dignity and learning by the Supreme Court. On the other, we have the ordinary laws of the city and community in which one lives. The average American is intensely loyal to the lofty legal abstractions of the Constitution but too often the laws that hedge him about in actual life are viewed with distrust and even hostility. It is part of the game to circumvent them if possible. He does not associate with them much of his sense of loyalty to the beautiful abstractions of natural rights, freedom and equality.

Unfortunately, however, this immediate world of work and play, where rules exist but to be evaded, inevitably wins out in any prolonged contest with a world of eternal laws whether political or religious. For the world of fact is with us early and late. The constant impact of its petty details, its habits of action, is ever being recorded in human character and shapes the social conscience. The result is that a moral sense oriented in terms of ideals "too pure and good for human nature's daily food" soon loses its virility. We have thus a curious parallel between the decay of Calvinistic theology and the gradual discrediting of the doctrine of natural rights underlying the highest law of the land.

The unfortunate thing about this national double-mindedness is the disciplinary effect of the long years when the

masses of Americans, particularly in business, have devoted all their energies to the lower and materialistic things of life. The leaders of industry cannot live as though profitism were the supreme measure of values without in time building up habits of thought in themselves and in the community that are materialistic. Our present moral uncertainty is largely the result of our failure to make real in actual life the noble spiritual traditions we have inherited from our fathers. It is always increasingly difficult as the social process becomes more complex to keep clearly in mind our ultimate loyalties. The immediate problem of mastering the means, of perfecting the instruments for the attainment of the distant goal tends to monopolize our thought and effort. We become so enamored of the excitement and the exhiliration of the chase that we forget to ask whether the quarry is worth our pains. The business of merely living becomes more important than the ultimate end of life itself. We become so fascinated with the din and clatter of the machinery that we adopt its fiendish energy and mechanical determinateness as our measures of value. Gross output becomes more important in our eyes than richness and sweetness of human life. We forget, what the war has taught us with terrible emphasis, that the machine can do the bidding of the devil just as effectively and as impartially as it works the righteousness of God.

Most insidious and dangerous is the effect of this prevailing impotence of higher moral sanctions in its educative effects upon the community. The frequent failure of the reformer or of the instruments of law and order to cope effectively with social evils inevitably leads the average unreflective individual to look upon acts of violence, corruption, maladministration or what not as part of the tare and tret of the social process. The conscience of the average man is shaped by social experience until he becomes, though all unwittingly, an advocatus diaboli. It is a very easy transition from the habit of mind, for example, which is schooled to associate forms of vice with the massing of men in great cities to the attitude of mind which finds a necessary causal relation be