lism,
which are indubitably and fundamentally American.

There are certain sentiments of which we ourselves are conscious,
though we can scarcely translate them into words, and these vaguely
felt emotions of admiration, of effort, of fellowship and social faith
are the invisible America. Take, for a single example, the national
admiration for what we call a "self-made" man: here is a boy selling
candy and newspapers on a Michigan Central train; he makes up his mind
to be a lawyer; in twelve years from that day he is general counsel for
the Michigan Central road; he enters the Senate of the United States
and becomes one of its leading figures. The instinctive flush of
sympathy and pride with which Americans listen to such a story is far
more deeply based than any vulgar admiration for money-making
abilities. No one cares whether such a man is rich or poor. He has
vindicated anew the possibilities of manhood under American conditions
of opportunity; the miracle of our faith has in him come true once
more.

No one can understand America with his brains. It is too big, too
puzzling. It tempts, and it deceives. But many an illiterate immigrant
has felt the true America in his pulses before he ever crossed the
Atlantic. The descendant of the Pilgrims still remains ignorant of our
national life if he does not respond to its glorious zest, its
throbbing energy, its forward urge, its uncomprehending belief in the
future, its sense of the fresh and mighty world just beyond to-day's
horizon. Whitman's "Pioneers, O Pioneers" is one of the truest of
American poems because it beats with the pulse of this onward movement,
because it is full of this laughing and conquering fellowship and of
undefeated faith.

III

American Idealism

Our endeavor to state the general characteristics of the American mind
has already given us some indication of what Americans really care for.
The things or the qualities which they like, the objects of their
conscious or unconscious striving, are their ideals. "There is what I
call the American idea," said Theodore Parker in the Anti-Slavery
Convention of 1850. "This idea demands, as the proximate organization
thereof, a democracy--that is, a government of all the people, by all
the people, for all the people; of course, a government on the
principle of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness'
sake, I will call it the idea of Freedom." That is one of a thousand
definitions