A COUNTRY WITHOUT PRE-HISTORY
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of the participants. Life, in fine, is too pulsating to permit a man
to stop in the midst of his activities to contemplate socially such
unprofitable phenomena as death or sickness.
The different attitude toward the various limits or limitations
of man finds a particularly interesting expression in the various con–
ceptions of God. In many of the traditional civilizations God is re–
garded as the supreme limit, the absolutely given, the object of our
contemplation as well as the primary cause of the specific limits of
our existence. For the great majority of Americans God is instead the
supreme help in the affairs of our life, in other words, instead of
being limit or cause of limits He
is
the driving force in our attempts
to overcome limits. From the Puritan conception to the instrumental–
ism of Dewey, from the biblical faith in God to the interpretation of
God as a construction of the human mind, we find an emphasis,
though expressed in different ways and in different degrees, on a
functional view of God. In place of a transcendent God Who is
First Cause and Supreme End we find a God whose basic function,
as far as man is concerned, is to be a helper in the practical and
progressive pursuits of man. It would be wrong to conclude that
such a conception reduces the Godhead to a servant of human
whims. In a society which is as active and social-minded as the
American, such a view tends to give a religious significance to the
meanest tasks of the day. In other words, we find the curious situa–
tion that the primitive positivism which we saw to be due to the
transcendent character of the myths is accompanied by a religious
fervor which is not easily found anywhere else in the world.
This American way of interpreting God is closer to the Old than
to the New Testament: we are successful because we are rightoous;
God
cannot but help those who help themselves. In the Bible success
refers usually to actions of war while the emphasis here is usually on
economic activities. Being righteous, in the Old Testament con–
ception, means obeying the laws of God; in the American society
being righteous is practically reduced to the command to work. This
may explain why Americans work rather willingly and often with
what to European observers may look like a lack of sufficient reason.
It also explains the religious zeal of many businessmen and a certain
aggressiveness, born of self-righteousness, which seems to be in con–
flict with some of the precepts of the more traditional religions.
