s own adequacy, and its
success will constitute an enormous stride towards human amelioration.
Just because our system is at bottom a thorough test of the ability of
human nature to respond admirably to a fair chance, the issue of the
experiment is bound to be of more than national importance. The American
system stands for the highest hope of an excellent worldly life that
mankind has yet ventured,--the hope that men can be improved without
being fettered, that they can be saved without even vicariously being
nailed to the cross.

Such are the claims advanced on behalf of the American system; and
within certain limits this system has made good. Americans have been
more than usually prosperous. They have been more than usually free.
They have, on the whole, made their freedom and prosperity contribute to
a higher level of individual and social excellence. Most assuredly the
average Americanized American is neither a more intelligent, a wiser,
nor a better man than the average European; but he is likely to be a
more energetic and hopeful one. Out of a million well-established
Americans, taken indiscriminately from all occupations and conditions,
compared to a corresponding assortment of Europeans, a larger proportion
of the former will be leading alert, active, and useful lives. Within a
given social area there will be a smaller amount of social wreckage and
a larger amount of wholesome and profitable achievement. The mass of the
American people is, on the whole, more deeply stirred, more thoroughly
awake, more assertive in their personal demands, and more confident of
satisfying them. In a word, they are more alive, and they must be
credited with the moral and social benefit attaching to a larger amount
of vitality.

Furthermore, this greater individual vitality, although intimately
connected with the superior agricultural and industrial opportunities of
a new country, has not been due exclusively to such advantages.
Undoubtedly the vast areas of cheap and fertile land which have been
continuously available for settlement have contributed, not only to the
abundance of American prosperity, but also to the formation of American
character and institutions; and undoubtedly many of the economic and
political evils which are now becoming offensively obtrusive are
directly or indirectly derived from the gradual monopolization of
certain important economic opportunities. Nevertheless, these
opportunities could never have been