Page:Columbia University Lectures on Literature (1911).djvu/349

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THE COSMOPOLITAN OUTLOOK
335

but they are not signs of real Cosmopolitanism as I under- stand the term. 1 will go farther and say that our Literature and our thought, while on the whole sound and adapted to our special needs, strike me as tending to become more national rather than more cosmopolitan. I sometimes even wonder whether we are not in a fair way of becoming one of the most parochical of peoples. Not long since, for example, one of our leading newspapers published among its obituaries those of a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, a dock engineer, a provision outfitter, and a great historian. The shortest notice, as might have been expected, was that of the scholar, the only one of the four men who had an inter- national reputation. The newspaper knew its business, and presumably it knew that its readers would not even care to be given the name of a single one of the historian's books. Perhaps this is entirely as it should be, and certainly I am expressing only the opinion of one moderately well-informed individual. But, as these must be my generalizations and no one else's, I may as well give them honestly and fearlessly. We Americans as a people have in ourselves the elements that go to make a true Cosmopolitanism, and we have them perhaps to a greater extent than any other people. We have in our broad system of public instruction, in our peace societies, our scientific associations, our philanthropical and other federated bodies, instrumentalities admirably fitted for fusing these elements and increasing their working power; but in some respects we seem to be less truly cosmopolitan than we were half a century ago. A profound belief in the rights of man as man, is, I think, an essential element of true Cosmopolitanism. Did not that belief help to keep alive the courage of Abraham Lincoln, and of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and of millions of men, women, and children at home, during the dark days of the Civil War? Where is that profound belief now? Look into your hearts and answer, and remember that this question is put to a Northern