NATIONAL GROWTH AND NATIONAL CHARACTER 189 



them, like the early Puritans, served an apprenticeship in set- 

 tlement in other lands — and all were strengthened by the earlier 

 experience to cope with the difficulties surrounding the land of 

 their ultimate hopes. The migratory bird gains strength of wing 

 by exercise, and acuteness of instinct by varied experiences ; so 

 the migrant people gain strength of limbs and lungs by the exer- 

 cise of journeying, acquire culture through contact, and achieve 

 strength of mind by exercise of faculty; and thus the average 

 comers to American shores were not merely the select of their 

 stock, but workers specially trained and developed during their 

 earlier life. Then came the hard task of pioneering, under which 

 the weakest fall out of the race while all others are strength- 

 ened ; and in this way the stock still further improved with the 

 generations grown up on America's soil. Meantime the same 

 blending of blood and commingling of culture which gave pre- 

 potency to the parent stock went forward more rapidly than 

 ever before : The British colonists were from different shires and 

 provinces; they associated and finally consorted with one an- 

 other, with representatives of the Low Country and other lands 

 of northern Europe, and to some extent with the sons of France 

 and the scions of Spain, while a trace of the strong blood of the 

 aborigines was absorbed. Thus by the middle of the eighteenth 

 century at latest, the American branch had outpassed the parent 

 stock in its complexity of both blood and culture. 



So it came about that all the factors of the fatherland were in- 

 tensified in the character of the American colonists. Sorted out 

 by the sieve of adventurous pioneering, invigorated by earlier 

 experience, strengthened by contact with a rigorous environ- 

 ment, and revivified by admixture of blood and culture, the 

 American pioneers were, even before the Revolution, the strong- 

 est people of the world in bod}' and brain. This great fact, often 

 ignored because so commonplace, cannot be too strongly empha- 

 sized ; for the wonderful birth and marvelous growth of the Amer- 

 ican nation were nothing less than a miracle unless illumined by 

 this fundamental fact. 



A special factor contributed materially to that strengthening 

 of the American colonies which matured in independence: A 

 considerable part of the pioneers came for conscience's sake, in 

 full confidence that, in this new land, they might think as they 

 would and believe according to their bent, without bar of church 

 or state ; many others came because of instinctive desire for re- 

 lief from irksome laws and customs — indeed not a few came in 



