Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

wonder that the English developed the stratification of the social classes,of the greatest precision and of the greatest sensitivity to encroachment;overcrowding, centuries long, has resulted in a condition where Englishmencan hear one another think. The barriers were rendered necessary to protectthem from this steamy intimacy. Modern English plays and novels show usthat the English live in anguish because of the indelicacy of their exposureto one another. In France life and conversation and love itself seem to us tobe overruled by a network of conventions as intricate as a ballet or a game;just so the Chinese built walls of ceremony behind which they could hidefrom the piercing intelligence of their neighbors.Yet such density is also warming and reassuring: “I am I because myfellow citizens know me.”Americans can find in environment no confirmation of their identity,try as they may. The American gregariousness strikes every European visitoras hollow and strained—the college fraternity (“Brothers till death”),the businessmen’s clubs (“One for all and all for one”), the febrile cocktailparty (“Darling, do call me up; you’re my favorite person in the world andI never see you”).There is only one way in which an American can feel himself to bein relation to other Americans—when he is united with them in a project,caught up in an idea, and propelled with them toward the future. There isno limit to the degree with which an American is imbued with the doctrineof progress. Place and environment are but décor to his journey. He lives noton the treasure that lies about him but on the promises of the imagination.“I am I,” he says, “because my plans characterize me.” Abstract!Abstract!Another element entered the American experience, which has renderedstill more difficult any hope of an American’s deriving comfort fromenvironment: he learned to count. He can count to higher numbers—andrealize the multiplicity indicated by the numbers—than any European. Itbegan with his thinking in distances; it was increased by his reception intothis country of the representatives of many nations.How wide and high was the America to which he came? How manythousands of miles wide and high is a country whose boundaries have not yetbeen reached? The peoples of Europe knew well the dimensions of their ownlands; one’s own land is one’s norm and scale. Several of these peoples werevoyagers and colonizers; their travelers had experience of great distancesand vast populations; but concepts of magnitude are not communicable byhearsay. It is amazing the extent to which European literatures are without193