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gone by," Whitman wrote in 1888, "the true use for the imagina·
tive faculty of modern times is to give ultimate vivification to facts,
to science, and to common lives, endowing them with glows and
glories and final illustriousness which belong to every real thing,
and to real things only." As this statement was intended as a
prophecy, it is worth noting that while the radiant endowments that
Whitman speaks of-the "glows and glories and final illustrious·
ness"-have not been granted, the desired and predicted vivifica·
tion of facts, science, and common lives has in a measure been
realized, though in the process Whitman's democratic faith has as
often been belied as confirmed.
4.
It is not the mere recoil from the inhibitions of puritan and
neo-puritan times that instigated the American search of experi·
ence. Behind it is the extreme individualism of a country without
a long past to brood on, whose bourgeois spirit had not worn itself
out and been debased in a severe struggle against an old culture so
tenacious as to retain the power on occasion to fascinate and render
impotent even its predestined enemies. Moreover, in contrast to the
derangements that have continually shaken Europe, life in the
United States has been relatively fortunate and prosperous. It is
possible to speak of American history as a "successful" history.
Within the limits of the capitalist order-and until the present
period the objective basis for a different social order simply did
not exist here--the American people have been able to find defini.
tive solutions for the great historical problems that faced them.
Thus both the Revolutionary and Civil War were complete actions
that once and for all abolished the antagonisms which had initially
caused the breakdowns of national equilibrium. In Europe similar
actions have usually led to festering compromises that in the end
reproduced the same conflicts in other forms.
It is plain that in America there has really been no urgent
need for high intellectual productivity. Indeed, the American
in·
telligentsia developed very slowly as a semi-independent group·
ing; and what is equally important, for more than a century now
and especially since 1865, it has been kept at a distance from the
