The distinction between the two aspects of America as a Land of Promise made in the preceding paragraph is sufficiently obvious, but it is usually slurred by the average good American patriot.  The better future, which is promised for himself, his children, and for other Americans, is chiefly a matter of confident anticipation.  He looks upon it very much as a friendly outsider might look on some promising individual career.  The better future is understood by him as something which fulfills itself.  He calls his country, not only the Land of Promise, but the Land of Destiny.  It is fairly launched on a brilliant and successful career, the continued prosperity of which is prophesied by the very momentum of its advance.  As Mr. H.G.  Wells says in “The Future in America,” “When one talks to an American of his national purpose, he seems a little at a loss; if one speaks of his national destiny, he responds with alacrity.”  The great majority of Americans would expect a book written about “The Promise of American Life” to contain chiefly a fanciful description of the glorious American future—­a sort of Utopia up-to-date, situated in the land of Good-Enough, and flying the Stars and Stripes.  They might admit in words that the achievement of this glorious future implied certain responsibilities, but they would not regard the admission either as startling or novel.  Such responsibilities were met by our predecessors; they will be met by our followers.  Inasmuch as it is the honorable American past which prophesies on behalf of the better American future, our national responsibility consists fundamentally in remaining true to traditional ways of behavior, standards, and ideals.  What we Americans have to do in order to fulfill our national Promise is to keep up the good work—­to continue resolutely and cheerfully along the appointed path.

The reader who expects this book to contain a collection of patriotic prophecies will be disappointed.  I am not a prophet in any sense of the word, and I entertain an active and intense dislike of the foregoing mixture of optimism, fatalism, and conservatism.  To conceive the better American future as a consummation which will take care of itself,—­as the necessary result of our customary conditions, institutions, and ideas,—­persistence in such a conception is admirably designed to deprive American life of any promise at all.  The better future which Americans propose to build is nothing if not an idea which must in certain essential respects emancipate them from their past.  American history contains much matter for pride and congratulation, and much matter for regret and humiliation.  On the whole, it is a past of which the loyal American has no reason to feel ashamed, chiefly because it has throughout been made better than it was by the vision of a better future; and the American of to-day and to-morrow must remain true to that traditional vision.  He must be prepared to sacrifice to that traditional vision even the traditional American ways of realizing it.  Such a sacrifice is, I believe, coming to be demanded; and unless it is made, American life will gradually cease to have any specific Promise.