The Study of American Civilization: Jingoism or Scholarship?

Author(s): Arthur E. Bestor, Jr.

Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Jan., 1952), pp. 3-9
Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
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 The Study of AmericanCivilization:
Jingoism or Scholarship?
Arthur E. Bestor, Jr.*

JN one of his boldestand mostmagnificentfiguresof speech,JohnMil-

ton likened Truth to the good Osiris, whose body, hewn into a
thousand pieces, was scatteredto the four winds. "From that time ever
since," wrote Milton, "the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear,
imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris,
went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they could find
them."
This well describesthe task to which many thoughtful men and women
have dedicated themselves in twentieth-centuryAmerican colleges and uni-
versities. Though we may not speak so confidently of Truth as Milton did,
we are painfully aware of the difference, for intellectual life, between an
animated body and a heap of dissevered limbs. We know that life will not
be restored to liberal education until some power "shall bring together
every joint and member, and shall mould them into an immortal feature
of loveliness and perfection."
To restore some unity to a college curriculum that had been mangled,
dismembered, and rent apart by the free-elective system has been the most
significant task in higher education for half a century. Some palliatives
have won general acceptance. All colleges now require a student to elect
a major field in which his studies shall be concentrated,and to cultivate at
least a bowing acquaintance with certain major areas of human thought
besides. We have a long way still to go, however, before the ideal of liberal
education is realized as fully in our diversified society as in the simpler
days of our grandfathers. The ideal itself remains the same-to graduate
a body of men and women who understand in common the fundamentals
of intellectual life in its varied branches, and who can apply to their prob-
lems not a single specialized technique but a choice of powerful intellectual
tools over which they have achieved some measure of disciplined control.
*Mr. Bestor is in the Department of History at the University of Illinois. This
paper was read to a joint session of the American Historical Association and the
American Civilization Conference,Chicago,December 28, I95o. A limited number of
reprintsof the article are availableupon request at the Quarterlyoffice.

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4 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

Programs for the unified study of American civilization in its various

aspects-historical, literary, artistic, economic, political, sociological-have
been developed on many campuses to advance these great purposes of
liberal education. The disciplined and enlightened scholarshipof the men
who have created these programs is the guarantee of their integrity. So
long as such scholarship presides over these curricula, their spread will be
a beneficent thing.
Now that American programs have won recognition, however, can we
be sure that their further spread will be for the right reasons? In this mid-
dle year of the twentieth century, I for one cannot reply with a confident
yes. The narrow and vicious nationalism that stalks the country today
threatens liberal education in part by suppression, in part by infiltration
and subversion. Against this latter danger, curricula in American civiliza-
tion are ill-protected. To the jingoist how inviting such programs are!
How apt for his purposes! In what other field of science or scholarship
can the enemy of critical thinking bring greater pressure to bear? To a
bigoted nationalist, afraid of the free and wide-ranging mind that com-
pares and contrasts and judges for itself, how conveniently narrow an
American studies program must appear! How little policing it should
require to keep it safely within the bounds of our national frontiers and
our national prejudices! If programs of American studies are to retain
their good repute, their sponsors must be on guard against jingoistic allies
who offer support in return for a betrayalof liberal education itself.
But narrow nationalism is only one species of narrowness. Men of
fantastically limited minds have gained control over wide areas of modern
education. And programs of American studies, unfortunately, are likely
to receive their sinister blessing. First of all there are the vocationalists.Like
the fur-traderwho believes that a geyser exists only to poach his morning
eggs, these men think of education only as preparation for employment.
To them American studies are the best adjunct to job-training, for they
orient a student quickly to the society in which he will work, without
wasting his time on the larger contexts of human life. Then there are the
educators who deliberatelynarrow their vision to the trivia of daily living,
the toothbrush and the trafficlight. The study of American civilization is
less important in their scheme of things than learning how to act on one's
first date, but at least it is not so remote and hence so insignificant as
philosophy or literatureor mathematics.
Next there are the educational theorists who attack all disciplined,

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 THE STUDY OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 5
cumulativetraining in such basic tools as languagesand mathematics.
Even without intellectualequipment,their studentsmay be said to have
a grasp of the essentialfields of knowledge,if only the essentialfields of
knowledge are redefinedas the things their studentscan grasp.And an
Americanprogram,one must confess,can be madeto appearthe firststep
towardsucha convenientredefinition.Finallytherearethe educatorswho
would submergethe schoolsin the discussionof contemporary problems.
Shall we have socializedmedicine?What can we do aboutRussia?These
are the breath-takingquestionsthey expectadolescentsto answerwithout
backgroundor exact knowledge.To these educatorsAmericanprograms
are appealingbecausetherebyso many long perspectivesand so much
humanexperiencecanbe excludedand disregarded.
If we value the scholarlystudyof Americancivilization,let us beware
of fair-seemingsupporters,who, whetherthey realizeit or not, areenemies
of the out-reachingyet disciplinedmind which it is the true objectof
liberaleducationto produce!
I do not, of course,imply that a liberaleducationcannotbeginwith an
examinationof familiarthings. In point of fact, it is desirablethat it
should.Perhapsin an ultimatepsychologicalsenseit cannotbegin other-
wise. The distinctionbetweenliberaleducationandits oppositeis the spirit
in which that examinationis conducted.Is it directedtowardincreasingly
higher generalization,does it seek throughrigorouscomparisonto gain
perspective,is it constantlyconcernedwith developingthose powers of
mind whose potencylies in their very abstractness? If so, it is liberating
and liberal.If not, not. A hundredand thirteenyearsago Ralph Waldo
Emerson stated the matter in his Harvardaddresson "The American
Scholar":
Whatwouldwe reallyknowthe meaningof? The mealin thefirkin;themilk
in the pan;the balladin the street;the newsof the boat;the glanceof the eye;
theformandgaitof thebody;. . .
So much of the quotationis familiar.So much of it would seem to argue
for that attentionto the immediateand the petty which I have just con-
demned.But Emersondid not stop here.The passagecontinued,without
breakin the sentence:
. . . showme the ultimatereasonof thesematters,showme the sublimepres-
ence of the highestspiritualcauselurking,as it alwaysdoes lurk, in these

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6 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

suburbs and extremitiesof nature; let me see every trifle bristling with the
polaritythat rangesit instantly on an eternallaw; and the shop, the plough,
and the ledger referredto the like cause by which light undulatesand poets
sing;-and the world lies no longer a dull miscellanyand lumber-room,but has
form and order;there is no trifle,there is no puzzle, but one design unites and
animatesthe farthestpinnacleand the lowest,trench.
Here is our clue. The study of what is near at hand and familiar-the
study of American civilization, for example,-is an easy door. But it must
be, not a door into a dull miscellany and lumber-room,but a door opening
outward upon the universe of human endeavor and natural process.
Such a door opening outward upon freedom is what I conceive a liberal
education to be. This is true to the etymology of the phrase: liberal educa-
tion is the education worthy of a free man. More than that, it is the educa-
tion by which a man achieves freedom. But what can achieving freedom
possibly mean except liberation from some form or other of slavery? To
make himself truly free, a man must break the intellectual chains that
keep him a serf by binding him to his parish,by binding him to his narrow
workaday tasks, by binding him to accept the authority of those placed
over him in matters temporal and spiritual. A liberal education frees a man
by enlarging and disciplining his powers. 'He is no longer bound to his
parish, because education makes him spiritually a citizen of all places and
all times. His workaday tasks no longer subdue his mind to their narrow
demands, for he is large enough to cope with them and with the great
intellectual tasks of a free man as well. He is no longer obliged to accept
blindly the authority of those above him, for they are above him no longer.
In the things of the mind he is their peer, and he can decide for himself,
on as good grounds as they, the great human issues that confront him.
Thereby he is entitled to be the citizen of a free state, participating in its
highest decisions, and obeying no political mandates save those that derive
their ultimate sanction from his own consent.
Can the study of American civilization constitute such a liberating and
liberal education? I believe that it can. But I do not believe that it will do
so unless it deliberately makes the attempt. To defend American studies
indiscriminately is to betray them. What we must do, in these days of
danger, is to define the characteristicsthat alone can render such programs
defensible.
The scholarly study of American civilization can be the foundation of

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 THE STUDY OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 7

a genuinely liberaleducation,I believe,preciselybecauseany seriousat-

tempt to understandour nationallife must inevitablycarrythe student
into investigationsof things happening far outside our geographical
boundariesand long beforethe beginningof our separatechronology.And
it demandsof him the intelligentuse of scholarlytechniquesof investiga-
tion belongingto disciplinesin additionto the one with which he begins
his work.
To a thoughtfulstudent,Americancivilizationis less self-contained
than almostany otherculturewith which he might concernhimself.Our
firstsettlerswere not wanderingbarbarianswho painfullydevelopedtheir
cultureout of nothing in the spot at which their migrationsended.They
wereinheritorsof a culturewhich they set aboutreproducing,as faithfully
as conditionswould permit,in the new homes they had chosen.It was
not recentideas but ancienttraditionswhich moved them most deeply-
the Bible,whose earliestpassageswere at least twenty-fivehundredyears
old, and the intellectualtraditionsof Greeceand Rome,whosecivilization
as a livingthinghad endeda thousandyearsbefore.
In its later development,as in its origins,Americancivilizationwas
part of a largerwhole that knew no nationalboundaries.Even when the
United States set itself up as a separatenation, its Declarationof Inde-
pendencewas deliberatelyphrasedin terms of ideas and argumentsthat
were the common currencyof eighteenth-century cosmopolitanthought,
and its fundamentalConstitutionembodied,and justifieditself in terms
of, politicalideas whose historystretchedback at least to Aristotle.In its
materialdevelopmentalso, especiallyduring the last hundredyears,the
United States lived no life apart,but was caught up in an industrial
revolutionworld-wide in its sweep. Finally, in our own lifetime, the
Americanpeople have been forced to fight for their lives and liberties
against vast conspiratorialdespotismsrooted in continentsfar-but not
far enough-from ourown.
A studyof Americancivilizationthatfollowsout thesetrailsinto other
civilizationsand other ways of looking at things cannotfail to be a lib-
eratingstudy.I am not talking,of course,about"background knowledge"
-that vague and delusiveterm which genteellyimplies a smatteringof
ill-understoodinformation.I am talking about serious and disciplined
study of those other historiesand literatures,in their own terms and
preferablyin theirown languages,studythatwill enablea studentto make
informedcomparisons,to trace movementsas they migrateacrossarbi-

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8 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

trary frontiers, to know what is common to many before venturing to

decide what is unique with one.
It hardly seems possible that a student should not for himself see the
opportunity, indeed the necessity, for seeking origins, for making compari-
sons, for putting American civilization in the perspective of ever wider
knowledge. But we must not take for granted that this will be the case.
Too many students are likely to be attracted to programs of American
studies because they want to escape the tough problems that foreign lan-
guages and foreign ideas present, or because they fear to see challenged
the comfortable doctrines they already believe. No education can be liberal
that permits them to avoid these tasks and these challenges.
Nor may we overlook the parochialism that is latent in all of us. Vigi-
lance against this is one of our major responsibilities.Too many students
take local and state history as a starting point only to reach, not the farthest
boundaries of place and time, but the opposite, the stuffy closets of anti-
quarianism and genealogy. Too many students who delve into obscure
frontier writers or folklore or hill-billy music lose, rather than gain, per-
ception of what constitutes great writing and great art and what maturity
means in the realm of ideas. No program of American studies, in other
words, can be expected to become automatically a program of liberal edu-
cation. Through formal requirements, or through conscientious advice,
every student must be required-explicitly, rigorously, undeviatingly-to
follow the trails that lead outward, into the study of other histories and
cultures, and especially into the study of those enduring monuments of
human wisdom and artistic achievement that provide the only worldwide
standardsof judgment.
In a program of American studies guided by principles like these I see
the possibility of a new flowering of humanistic studies, equal in grasp and
profundity with the great work of the past, and more alive, perhaps,to the
men of this present age. The stern challenges which American civilization
is now being called upon to face from without are akin to the challenges
which many times in the past have awakened peoples from provincial
slumber and opened to them the spacious vistas of the mind that I have
made synonymous with liberal education. After the Spanish Armada came
Shakespeare and Bacon's Advancement of Learning. After the Crusades,
Dante, Giotto, and the university foundations of western Europe.
Most telling example of all, after the Persian Wars came the flowering
of Athens. The father of history, Herodotus, wrote of that great conflict

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 THE STUDY OF AMERICAN CIVILIZATION 9

between East and West, so near to him in time and place. But he saw
that to understandit, he must carry his researchesoutward in geographical
space and backward in time to the very limits of what could be known.
History had still much to learn by way of critical discipline from the later
work of Thucydides, but Herodotus endowed history at its birth with that
sense of broad perspectives, that ideal of seeing in recent events the play
of forces deeply rooted in the past, which are the historian's peculiar in-
spiration. What Herodotus gave to history, moreover, was essentially
what the other thinkers of classical Greece contributed to their respective
disciplines-the sense that present phenomena have implications which
must be pursued by the mind as far as they will lead. The steadfast ad-
herence to this principle was what made the Greek mind for so many later
ages the model of the disciplined mind which liberal education should aim
to produce.
The events of Greek history were human events, no more and no less
human than the events of other histories. Yet consider how many others,
as rich in drama and the revelation of human character,have been told in
such a way that they seem but parish chronicles! That which has given
Greek history its hold upon the imaginations of men has been the insight
and perspective that the human mind has brought to the study of it. To
the study of American civilization we can bring the minds of antiquarians
and annalists, or we can bring the disciplined imagination of men who
can see in a blade of grass chemistry and biology and poetry, and in the
smallest human event sociology and ethics and history. If we do the latter,
no one will think to ask whether the study of American civilization can
constitute a liberal education. The question rather will be, what the
Renaissance humanist would have asked concerning the classics, can any
other study be so liberating as this?

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