anslated into terms of
individual intellectual and moral discipline. In truth, it was, of
course, a great mistake to conceive Americanism as intellectually and
morally a species of Newer-Worldliness. A national intellectual ideal
did not divide us from Europe any more than did a national political
ideal. In both cases national independence had no meaning except in a
system of international, intellectual, moral, and political relations.
American national independence was to be won, not by means of a perverse
opposition to European intellectual and moral influence, but by a
positive and a thorough-going devotion to our own national democratic
ideal.

The national intellectual ideal could afford to be as indifferent to the
sources of American intellectual life as the American political ideal
was to the sources of American citizenship. The important thing was and
is, not where our citizens or our special disciplinary ideals come from,
but what use we make of them. Just as economic and political Americanism
has been broad enough and vital enough to make a place in the American
social economy for the hordes of European immigrants with their many
diverse national characteristics, so the intellectual basis of
Americanism must be broad enough to include and vigorous enough to
assimilate the special ideals and means of discipline necessary to every
kind of intellectual or moral excellence. The technical ideals and
standards which the typical American of the Middle Period instinctively
under-valued are neither American nor European. They are merely the
special forms whereby the several kinds of intellectual eminence are to
be obtained. They belong to the nature of the craft. Those forms and
standards were never sufficiently naturalized in America during the
Colonial Period, because the economic and social conditions of the time
did not justify such naturalization. The appropriate occasion for the
transfer was postponed until after American political independence had
been secured; and when occasion did not arise, the naturalness of the
transfer was perverted and obscured by political preconceptions.

The foregoing considerations throw a new light upon the mistake made by
the American heretics of the Middle Period. In so far as their assertion
of American intellectual independence was negative, it should not have
been a protest against "feudalism," social classification, social and
individual discipline, approved technical methods,