The important thing was and
is, not where our citizens or our special disciplinary ideals come from,
but what use we make of them. Just as economic and political Americanism
has been broad enough and vital enough to make a place in the American
social economy for the hordes of European immigrants with their many
diverse national characteristics, so the intellectual basis of
Americanism must be broad enough to include and vigorous enough to
assimilate the special ideals and means of discipline necessary to every
kind of intellectual or moral excellence. The technical ideals and
standards which the typical American of the Middle Period instinctively
under-valued are neither American nor European. They are merely the
special forms whereby the several kinds of intellectual eminence are to
be obtained. They belong to the nature of the craft. Those forms and
standards were never sufficiently naturalized in America during the
Colonial Period, because the economic and social conditions of the time
did not justify such naturalization.
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