Page:Men of Mark in America vol 2.djvu/19

 IDEALS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE Xlll and that other conviction of the dignity and authority of man as man, without regard to station or possessions or opportunity, which lies at the foundation of our political system. For many generations this belief has been the first article in the creed of Americans. Like all other creedal statements it has been often "more honored in the breach than in the observance;' ' it is, nevertheless, wrought not only into the structure of our government but into the fiber of our thought. That a man is to be honored for what he is rather than for what he possesses; that in the open field of American society a man goes where he belongs and gets what is his own; that he succeeds because he has force, industry and skill, and fails because he lacks these qualities, are beliefs which are very closely related to the conviction that what a man sows he reaps, and that what a man does is determined, shaped and limited by what a man is. Respect for men as men, and provision for their rights and duties on a basis of common humanity, inevitably tends to intensify the sense of moral obligation and to give life in any field, ethical definiteness and authority. We take it for granted that there is something divine in men or we should not trust them as we do. This is the substance of Emer- son 's teaching, and it is implicit in the work of every American writer. The form in which the faith is held varies from the spiritual idealism of Emerson to the broad, human idealism of Whitman; from Hawthorne's subtle conception of the return of every man's deed upon his character to the passionate reproach and warning of the nation by Mr. Moody for what he regards as unfaithfulness to the moral ideals of the Republic. Under many forms the faith is uni- versal. Reverence for man as man and a deep sense of the moral respon- sibility rooted in his freedom and a certain exaltation of spirit in de- fining his possible development reveal themselves in the tender and beautiful reverence for the sanctity of the home which is shared and expressed by American poets with winning simplicity and sweetness. If the individual man is to be held to such rigid accounting there