F. G. Friedmann
AMERICA: ACOUNTRY WITHOUT PRE-HISTORY
Civilizations may be studied in either of two fundamental
ways. The first way is immediate and intuitive, and requires the
ability to identify oneself with the presuppositions of a civiliza–
tion.
If,
for one reason or another, we are incapable of that direct
identification, we must have recourse to another more indirect
method, which seeks, not intuition, but a systematic description of
the elements that form the civilization.
1
Following this latter method, we may easily proceed to an
enumeration of some of the most salient ingredients that have gone
into forming American culture: such as, the influence of Puritanism,
of English common law, in forging the customs of the new country;
of romanticism and idealistic philosophy upon American poets and
thinkers; or of the great German universities upon the organization
of some of the best universities in the United States. The list of
such separate items could be continued almost indefinitely, but,
taking precedence over them all, is the one fact that seems to me
to lie at the heart of the matter, so far as the formation of American
civilization is concerned: the fact, namely, that the American com–
munity had a beginning at a particular moment of history in contrast
with the traditional communities that, far from having a precise
historical origin, rOSe out of the bottomless darkness of time in that
long period of pre-history which is history, if at all, only in its latent
and undeveloped stage.
This fact has been decisive in the formation of the American
character. It makes clear, among other things, that the absence
of certain traditions in America is not due so much to the lack of
historical experience as to a fundamental and peculiar attitude toward
history itself. Not only does history originate in pre-history, but it
