horne, but practically every American writer and artist from the
beginning has been forced to do his work without the sustaining and
heartening touch of national fellowship and pride. Emerson himself felt
the chilling poverty in the intellectual and emotional life of the
country. He betrays it in this striking passage from his _Journal_,
about the sculptor Greenough:--

"What interest has Greenough to make a good statue? Who cares
whether it is good? A few prosperous gentlemen and ladies;
but the Universal Yankee Nation roaring in the capitol to
approve or condemn would make his eye and hand and heart go
to a new tune."

Those words were written in 1836, but we are still waiting for that new
national anthem, sustaining the heart and the voice of the individual
artist. Yet there are signs that it is coming.

It is obvious that the day for the old individualism has passed.
Whether one looks at art and literature or at the general activities of
American society, it is clear that the isolated individual is
incompetent to carry on his necessary tasks. This is not saying that we
have outgrown the individual. We shall never outgrow the individual. We
need for every page of literature and for every adequate performance of
society more highly perfected individuals. Some one said of Edgar Allan
Poe that he did not know enough to be a great poet. All around us and
every day we find individuals who do not know enough for their specific
job; men who do not love enough, men in whom the power of will is too
feeble. Such men, as individuals, must know and love and will more
adequately; and this not merely to perfect their functioning as
individuals, but to fulfill their obligations to contemporary society.
A true spiritual democracy will never be reached until highly trained
individuals are united in the bonds of fraternal feeling. Every
individual defect in training, defect in aspiration, defect in passion,
becomes ultimately a defect in society.

Let us turn, then, to those conditions of American society which have
prepared the way for, and foreshadowed, a more perfect fellowship. We
shall instantly perceive the relation of these general social
conditions to the specific performances of our men of letters. We have
repeatedly noted that our most characteristic literature is what has
been called a citizen literature. It is the sort of writing which
springs from a sense of the general needs of the community and w