of all, comes mostly from what we call the
National Tradition. Some people call it Public Opinion. They think they
can even make it. They suppose it belongs to the present. In fact, they
cannot make it to any extent at all. It belongs to the past. It is a
thing inherited. It is best to call it National Tradition.

For the nation, being an organism, and living, its life does not end
with one generation. The river flows to-day, and is the same river it
was a thousand years ago, though every wave and every drop has changed a
million times. So the generations heave on into the great sea and are
forgotten, but the Nation abides the same. So all the thought, and
feeling, and conviction of the Nation to-day, on questions of human life
and duty, it brings from the far-away past, from the gray mists of the
distant hills where it took its rise.

Just think! The life of every great, strong man and woman, who has
lived, thought, worked in the Nation, has it not entered into the
Nation's life? Is not here yet, a part of the Nation's influence? Every
great, distinct type of human nature grown in the Nation becomes forever
a mould in which to cast men. Every great deed done, every strong
thought uttered, every noble life lived, is committed to the stream of
this national tradition. Every great victory won, every terrible defeat
suffered, every grand word spoken, every noble song sung, is alive to
the last. The living Nation drops nothing, loses nothing out of its
life. The Saxon Alfred, the Norman William, Scandinavian viking, moss
trooper of the border, they have all gone into our circulation, they all
help to shape Americans. And we have added Washington, the stainless
gentleman, and Jefferson, the unselfish statesman, and Franklin, the
patient conqueror of circumstance, and a thousand others, as types by
which to form the children of this people for a thousand years.

Think, too, how the national tradition rejects all bad models, all mean
types, how it refuses to touch them at any price, how it will only carry
down the grand models, the noble types. Arnold never enters as an
influence into national training. The Arnolds and their treason are
whelmed and sunk, as the Davises and their treason will be. The
Washingtons do live as types. Their deeds sweep on, like stately barks,
borne proudly on the rolling waves of the Nation's life, with triumphal
music on their snowy decks, the land's glory for evermore! Only the
noble, only the