Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

There’s the crux: no respect.An American is insubmissive, lonely, self-educating, and polite. His politenessconceals his slowness to adopt any ideas which he does not feel that he hasproduced himself. It all goes back to the fundamental problem of an American’srelation to authority, and related to it is the American’s reluctance to concede thatthere is an essential truth, or a thing true in essence.For centuries—over there—kings were held to be invested with an essentialauthority. The child born into a royal cradle, be it the nonentity or genius, was heldto be, for mysterious and unsearchable reasons, the ruler of his people (May he liveforever! May God take particular pains to save him, rather than you and me!) andheld the royal authority.Tradition commanded us to revere our fathers, not because they took thetrouble to beget us and to pay our board in our earlier years, but because they wieldeda paternal authority. America is now rapidly becoming a matriarchy, and fathersare bewildered to discover that they are no longer accorded any such magical sway.For Americans there is no inherent and essential authority accruing to theelderly either. Thoreau said:Practically, the old have no very important advice to give to theyoung. Their own experience has been so partial, and their liveshave been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they mustbelieve. … I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I haveyet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice frommy seniors.The same indocility holds in the intellectual life. In Europe the Herr Professorand Cher Maitre and the knighted scholar and the member of the Royal Academy of… have enjoyed a distinction above and beyond their learning and wisdom. Whatbetter illustration of it than the fact that in Germany—in the good old days—noone less than a full professor could be invited to a dinner in society at which a fullprofessor was present? To be sure, a mere professor extraordinarius might becomea full professor next Tuesday, but on Monday he was still lacking the mysticalqualification, the Mana. He was not salonfahig; like a dog, he was not hausrein.American universities are still filled with vestigial Old-World elements.Our academic world is in labor trying to bring forth its first American university.There is still present among us many a tacit allusion to a state of grace enjoyed byauthorities. From time to time we professors become aware that twentieth-centurystudents are not completely sensible of this grace. The situation is far more serious:a student’s mind goes blank when authority and tradition are invoked, so seldom184