d
with the concrete performance of such social workers as these, the
gospel according to Whitman and Tolstoi is bound to seem vague in its
outlines, and ineffective in its concrete results. That such a gospel
attracts cranks and eccentrics of all sorts is not to be wondered at.
They come and go, but the deeper conceptions of fraternalism remain.

A further obstacle to the progress of fellowship lies in selfishness.
But let us see how even the coarser and rawer and cruder traits of the
American character may be related to the spirit of common endeavor
which is slowly transforming our society, and modifying, before our
eyes, our contemporary art and literature.

"The West," says James Bryce, "is the most American part of America,
that is to say the part where those features which distinguish America
from Europe come out in the strongest relief." We have already noted in
our study of American romance how the call of the West represented for
a while the escape from reality. The individual, following that
retreating horizon which we name the West, found an escape from
convention and from social law. Beyond the Mississippi or beyond the
Rockies meant to him that "somewheres east of Suez" where the Ten
Commandments are no longer to be found, where the individual has free
rein. But by and by comes the inevitable reaction, the return to
reality. The pioneer sobers down; he finds that "the Ten Commandments
will not budge"; he sees the need of law and order; he organizes a
vigilance committee; he impanels a jury, even though the old Spanish
law does not recognize a jury. The new land settles to its rest. The
output of the gold mines shrinks into insignificance when compared with
the cash value of crops of hay and potatoes. The old picturesque
individualism yields to a new social order, to the conception of the
rights of the state. The story of the West is thus an epitome of the
individual human life as well as the history of the United States.

We have been living through a period where the mind of the West has
seemed to be the typical national mind. We have been indifferent to
traditions. We have overlooked the defective training of the
individual, provided he "made good." We have often, as in the free
silver craze, turned our back upon universal experience. We have been
recklessly deaf to the teachings of history; we have spoken of the laws
of literature and art as if they were mere conventions designed to
oppress the free ac