aristocratic valuation of all things; and after the Revolution" the most prodigious and unexpected event came to pass, the antique ideal stood in person with unwonted splendour before the eyes and consciousness of humanity. … (Then) appeared Napoleon, isolated and belated example though he was."[1]
I believe that if the professor of philology had not been continually cropping up in Nietzsche he would have perceived that the master type still exists under our own eyes, and that it is this type which, at the present time, has created the extraordinary greatness of the United States. He would have been struck by the singular analogies which exist between the Yankee, ready for any kind of enterprise, and the ancient Greek sailor, sometimes a pirate, sometimes a colonist or merchant; above all, he would have established a parallel between the ancient heroes and the man who sets out on the conquest of the Far West.[2] P. de Rousiers has described the master type admirably. "To become and to remain an American, one must look upon life as a struggle and not as a pleasure, and seek in it, victorious effort, energetic and efficacious action, rather than pleasure, leisure embellished by the cultivation of the arts, the refinements proper to other societies. Everywhere—we have seen that what makes the American succeed, what constitutes his type—is character, personal energy, energy in action, creative energy."[3] The profound contempt which the Greek had for the Barbarian is matched by that of the Yankee for the foreign worker who makes no effort to become truly American. "Many of these people would be better if we took them in hand,"
- ↑ Nietzsche, op. cit. pp. 78–80.
- ↑ P. de Rousiers observes that everywhere in America approximately the same social environment is found, and the same type of men at the head of big businesses; but "it is in the West that the qualities and defects of this extraordinary people manifest themselves with the greatest energy; … it is there that the key to the whole social system is to be found" (La Vie américaine: ranches, fermes, et usines, pp. 8–9; cf. p. 261).
- ↑ De Rousiers, La Vie américaine: l'éducation et la société, p. 325.
