But it was based upon the illusion
that the economic and social conditions of the Middle Period, which
favored temporarily a mixture of faith and irresponsibility, freedom and
formlessness, would persist and could be translated into terms of
individual intellectual and moral discipline. In truth, it was, of
course, a great mistake to conceive Americanism as intellectually and
morally a species of Newer-Worldliness. A national intellectual ideal
did not divide us from Europe any more than did a national political
ideal. In both cases national independence had no meaning except in a
system of international, intellectual, moral, and political relations.
American national independence was to be won, not by means of a perverse
opposition to European intellectual and moral influence, but by a
positive and a thorough-going devotion to our own national democratic
ideal.
The national intellectual ideal could afford to be as indifferent to the
sources of American intellectual life as the American political ideal
was to the sources of American citizenship.
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