As a matter of fact, Americans have always had the liveliest and completest faith in the process of individual and social improvement and in accepting the assumption, I am merely adhering to the deepest and most influential of American traditions.  The better American has continually been seeking to “uplift” himself, his neighbors, and his compatriots.  But he has usually favored means of improvement very different from those suggested hereinbefore.  The real vehicle of improvement is education.  It is by education that the American is trained for such democracy as he possesses; and it is by better education that he proposes to better his democracy.  Men are uplifted by education much more surely than they are by any tinkering with laws and institutions, because the work of education leavens the actual social substance.  It helps to give the individual himself those qualities without which no institutions, however excellent, are of any use, and with which even bad institutions and laws can be made vehicles of grace.

The American faith in education has been characterized as a superstition; and superstitious in some respects it unquestionably is.  But its superstitious tendency is not exhibited so much in respect to the ordinary process of primary, secondary, and higher education.  Not even an American can over-emphasize the importance of proper teaching during youth; and the only wonder is that the money so freely lavished on it does not produce better results.  Americans are superstitious in respect to education, rather because of the social “uplift” which they expect to achieve by so-called educational means.  The credulity of the socialist in expecting to alter human nature by merely institutional and legal changes is at least equaled by the credulity of the good American in proposing to evangelize the individual by the reading of books and by the expenditure of money and words.  Back of it all is the underlying assumption that the American nation by taking thought can add a cubit to its stature,—­an absolute confidence in the power of the idea to create its own object and in the efficacy of good intentions.

Do we lack culture?  We will “make it hum” by founding a new university in Chicago.  Is American art neglected and impoverished?  We will enrich it by organizing art departments in our colleges, and popularize it by lectures with lantern slides and associations for the study of its history.  Is New York City ugly?  Perhaps, but if we could only get the authorities to appropriate a few hundred millions for its beautification, we could make it look like a combination of Athens, Florence, and Paris.  Is it desirable for the American citizen to be something of a hero?  I will encourage heroes by establishing a fund whereby they shall be rewarded in cash.  War is hell, is it?  I will work for the abolition of hell by calling a convention and passing a resolution denouncing its iniquities.  I will build at the Hague a Palace of Peace which shall be a standing rebuke to the War Lords of Europe.  Here, in America, some of us have more money than we need and more good will.  We will spend the money in order to establish the reign of the good, the beautiful, and the true.