AMERICAN IDEALS* 



IN his noteworthy book on "National Life and 

 Character," Mr. Pearson says : "The country- 

 men of Chatham and Wellington, of Washington 

 and Lincoln, in short the citizens of every historic 

 state, are richer by great deeds that have formed 

 the national character, by winged words that have 

 passed into current speech, by the examples of lives 

 and labors consecrated to the service of the com- 

 monwealth."' In other words, every great nation 

 owes to the men whose lives have formed part of its 

 greatness not merely the material effect of what they 

 did, not merely the laws they placed upon the statute 

 books or the victories they won over armed foes, but 

 also the immense but indefinable moral influence 

 produced by their deeds and words themselves upon 

 the national character. It would be difficult to ex- 

 aggerate the material effects of the careers of Wash- 

 ington and of Lincoln upon the United States. 

 Without Washington we should probably never have 

 won our independence of the British crown, and we 

 should almost certainly have failed to become a great 

 nation, remaining instead a cluster of jangling lit- 



* The Forum, February, 1895. 



