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 Contents

To the Student xiii Changing the Constitution Through Formal

To the Instructor xv Amendment 39
Changing the Constitution Through Judicial
Review 39
Part I Introduction: Main Themes
Changing the Constitution Through Political
1 Democracy and American Politics 1 Practices 40
Using the Democracy Standard: the Constitution:
the Struggle for Democracy: robert Moses and the
How Democratic? 41
Struggle of african americans for Voting rights 2
What Is Democracy? 2 3 Federalism: States and Nation 44
The Origins of Democracy 3
Direct Versus Representative Democracy 5 the Struggle for Democracy: Health Care For all?
The Benchmarks of Representative Democracy 5 What role Should Federalism Play? 45
Objections to Representative Democracy 10 Federalism as a System of Government 46
How Do Government and Politics Work? 12 Federalism Defined 47
Identifying the Factors That Influence Government Comparing American Federalism 48
and Politics 12 Federalism in the Constitution 48
Connecting the Factors That Influence Government Federal, State, and Concurrent Powers 48
and Politics: An Application 14 The Roles of States in the National Government 50
Understanding Government and Politics Holistically 15 Relations Among the States 51
The Evolution of American Federalism 52
Part II Structure The Ascendant Power of the National Government 53
Federalism Before the Civil War 54
2 The Constitution 17 Expansion of National Power Following the Civil War 57
Expansion of National Power in the
the Struggle for Democracy: Does the “advice
Twentieth Century 57
and Consent” of the Senate Matter? 18
The Devolution and the Rethinking of Federal
The American Revolution and the Declaration of
Power 59
Independence 19
The Reassertion of Federal Power After 2000 61
Key Ideas in the Declaration of Independence 20
Recent Pushback Against National Power 62
Key Omissions in the Declaration of Independence 22
Fiscal Federalism 63
The Articles of Confederation: Our First Constitution 22
Origin and Growth of Federal Grants 63
Provisions of the Articles 23
Types of Federal Grants 64
Shortcomings of the Articles 23
Federal Grants: Money and Control 65
Factors Leading to the Constitutional Convention 24
Strong States Versus A Strong National Government 67
What Worried American Notables and Why 24
Strong States: Diversity of Needs 68
The Constitutional Convention and
Strong National Government: The Importance
a New Framework for Government 28 of National Standards 68
Who Were the Framers? 28 Strong States: Closeness to the People 68
Consensus and Conflict at the Constitutional Strong National Government: Low Visibility of State
Convention 29 Officials 68
What the Framers Created at the Constitutional Strong States: Innovation and Experimentation 68
Convention 32
Strong National Government: Spillover Effects and
The Struggle to Ratify the Constitution 37 Competition 69
The Changing Constitution, Democracy, and Using the Democracy Standard: american Federalism:
American Politics 38 How Democratic? 70

vii
viii Contents

4 The Structural Foundations of Using the Democracy Standard: Public Opinion:

Does It Determine What Government Does? 131
American Government and Politics 73
the Struggle for Democracy: the Walmartization 6 The News Media 135
of american Manufacturing: Where Will all the
Good Jobs Go? 74 the Struggle for Democracy: Big Stories
America’s Population 76 Without Legs 136
America’s Population Is Growing 76 How News Organizations Operate 137
America’s Population Is Becoming More Diverse 76 The Functions of the News Media in a Democracy 137
America’s Population Is Moving West and South 80 News Media Organizations 138
America’s Population Is Growing Older 81 Profit Motives of the News Media 140
America’s Population Is Becoming Economically News-Gathering and Production Operations 142
More Unequal 82 Online News Media 148
America’s Economy 87 Bias in the News 152
Main Tendencies of Capitalism 87 Ideological Bias 152
Globalization, Technological Change, and Nonideological Bias 154
Hypercompetition 88 Effects of the News Media on Politics 155
America’s Political Culture 93 Agenda Setting 155
Individualistic 93 Priming 156
Distrustful of Government 94 Framing 156
Believers in Democracy and Freedom 96 Fueling Cynicism 156
Populist 96 Fragmenting Comprehension 157
Religious 97 Using the Democracy Standard: the News Media:
Using the Democracy Standard: american Do they Help or Hinder Democracy 158
Society, Economy, and Political Culture: How
Democratic? 99 7 Interest Groups and Business
Power 161
Part III Political Linkage the Struggle for Democracy:

5 Public Opinion 101

Disaster in the Gulf
Interest Groups in a Democratic Society: Contrasting
162

the Struggle for Democracy: Vietnam: a Matter Viewpoints 164

of Opinion? 102 The Evils-of-Faction Argument 164
Measuring Public Opinion 103 The Pluralist Argument 164
Public Opinion Polls 104 The Universe of Interest Groups 166
Challenges of Political Polling 104 Private Interest Groups 166
Political Socialization: Learning Political Beliefs Public Interest Groups 169
and Attitudes 107 Interest Group Formation and Proliferation 170
How and Why People’s Political Attitudes Differ 109 The Constitution 170
Party Identification 109 Diverse Interests 171
Race and Ethnicity 110 A More Active Government 171
Social Class 114 Disturbances 172
Geography 115 What Interest Groups Do 173
Education 115 The Inside Game 173
Gender 116 The Outside Game 177
Age 117 Interest Groups, Corporate Power, and Inequality
Religion 119 in American Politics 179
The Contours of American Public Opinion: Are the Representational Inequality 181
People Fit to Rule? 120 Resource Inequality 181
The People’s Knowledge About Politics 121 Access Inequality 183
The People’s Attitudes About the Political The Privileged Position of Corporations 184
System 123 Curing the Mischief of Factions 188
The People’s Liberalism and Conservatism 126 Using the Democracy Standard: Interest
The People’s Policy Preferences 126 Groups: Do they Help or Hinder american
The People’s “Fitness to Rule” Revisited 130 Democracy? 190
 Contents ix

8 Social Movements 193 The American Two-Party System Since the

Great Depression 227
the Struggle for Democracy: Women Win the right The New Deal Party Era 228
to Vote: Why Did It take So Long 194 The Dealignment Era 229
What Are Social Movements? 195 The Polarization Era 231
Major Social Movements in the United States 197 The Three Functions of Today’s Political Parties 232
The Abolitionist Movement 197 Parties as Ideological Organizations 233
The Populist Movement 198 Parties as Electoral Organizations 237
The Women’s Suffrage Movement 198 Parties as Governing Organizations 241
The Labor Movement 198 Using the Democracy Standard: Political Parties:
The Civil Rights Movement 198 How Do Our two Major Political Parties affect
Democracy? 247
Contemporary Antiwar Movements 198
The Women’s Movement 201
10 Voting, Campaigns, and Elections 250
The Environmental Movement 201
The Gay and Lesbian Movements 201 the Struggle for Democracy: an Historic End
The Religious Conservative Movement 201 to a Contentious Campaign 251
The Anti-Globalization Movement 202 Elections and Democracy 253
The Tea Party Movement 202 The Prospective (or Responsible Party)
The Occupy Wall Street Movement 203 Voting Model 253
The “Black Lives Matter” Movement 204 The Electoral Competition Voting Model 253
The Retrospective (or Reward and Punishment)
The Role of Social Movements in a Democracy 205
Voting Model 255
Encouraging Participation 205
Imperfect Electoral Democracy 255
Overcoming Political Inequality 206
Which Party Model Works Best? 256
Creating New Majorities 206
The Unique Nature of American Elections 257
Overcoming Constitutional Inertia 206
Elections Are Numerous and Frequent 257
Factors That Encourage the Formation of Social
Election Procedure and Vote-Counting
Movements 207 Inconsistencies 257
Real or Perceived Distress 207 “First-Past-the-Post” Wins 258
Availability of Resources for Mobilization 208
Voting in the United States 258
A Supportive Environment 208
Expansion of the Franchise 258
A Sense of Efficacy Among Participants 209
Direct Partisan Elections 259
A Spark to Set Off the Flames 210 Barriers to Voting and Low Voter Turnout 260
Tactics of Social Movements 210 Reform Proposals and New Struggles over
Why Do Some Social Movements Succeed Voting 262
and Others Fail? 211 Who Votes? 263
Low-Impact Social Movements 212 Income and Education 263
Repressed Social Movements 212 Race and Ethnicity 264
Partially Successful Social Movements 213 Age 265
Successful Social Movements 214 Gender 266
Using the Democracy Standard: Social Movements: Does It Matter Who Votes? 266
Do Social Movements Make america More or Less The Presidential Campaign 266
Democratic? 216
Preparing to Run 267
The Presidential Primary System 269
9 Political Parties 219 The General Election Campaign 271
Money in General Elections 273
the Struggle for Democracy: the 2016 Election Election Outcomes 279
and the Fracturing of the republican Party 220 How Voters Decide 279
Political Parties in Democratic Systems 222 The Electoral College 280
The American Two-Party System 223 Using the Democracy Standard: Voting,
The Rules of the Game 223 Campaigns, and Elections: Do Voting, Campaigns,
Minor Parties in American Politics 225 and Elections Make Government Leaders Listen
to the People? 283
x Contents

Part IV Government and Governing The Powers and Roles of the President 331
Chief of State 332
11 Congress 286 Domestic Policy Leader 332
Chief Executive 333
the Struggle for Democracy: a Dysfunctional
Foreign Policy and Military Leader 335
Congress? 287
Party Leader 339
Constitutional Foundations of Congress 288
The President’s Support System 339
Enumerated and Implied Powers of Congress 288
The White House Staff 339
Constraints on Congress 288
The Executive Office of the President 340
Basis for Representation in Congress 289
The Vice Presidency 341
Is Congress Capable of Solving Big Problems? 290
The Cabinet 342
Representation and Democracy in Congress 291
The President and Congress: Perpetual
Two Styles of Representation 291
Tug-of-War 342
Member Demographics 292
Conflict by Constitutional Design 343
Representation in the House: Reapportionment and
What Makes a President Successful with
Redistricting 294
Congress? 344
Representation in the Senate 298
The President and the People: An Evolving
How Representative Is Congress? A Look Back
Relationship 346
at the Arguments 299
Getting Closer to the People 346
Congressional Elections 299
Leading Public Opinion 347
The Congressional Election Process 300
Responding to the Public 347
Who Runs for Congress? 300
Presidential Popularity 348
Money and Congressional Elections 300
Using the Democracy Standard: the Presidency:
The Incumbency Factor 302
Presidents and the american People 350
Do Congressional Elections Ensure Representation? 303
The Congressional Legislative Process 304 13 The Executive Branch 353
Introducing a Bill 306
Referral to Committee 306 the Struggle for Democracy: Is the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau an Effective regulatory
The Rules Committee 307
agency or More Bureaucratic red tape? 354
Floor Action on a Bill 307
How the Executive Branch Is Organized 355
Resolving Bicameral Differences 310
Cabinet-Level Departments 356
Presidential Action on a Bill 311
Independent Regulatory Commissions 358
Party and Leader Influences on the Passage Process 311
Independent Executive Agencies 358
Voting in Congress 313
Other Federal Bureaucracies 360
Procedural and Substantive Votes 314
What Do Bureaucracies and Bureaucrats Do? 360
Parties and Party-Line Voting in Congress 314
Executing Programs and Policies 360
Congressional Oversight of the Executive Branch 316
Exercising Discretion 361
Nominee Confirmations 316
Regulating 361
Hearings and Investigations 316
Adjudicating 362
Impeachment 318
Discretion and Democracy 363
Using the Democracy Standard: Congress:
Is Congress Out of touch with the american Who Are the Bureaucrats? 363
People? 319 The Merit System 364
Political Appointees 365
12 The Presidency 323 How Different Are Civil Servants from
Other Americans? 366
the Struggle For Democracy: President Obama Political and Governmental Influences on
Uses His Unitary Powers 324
Bureaucratic Behavior 366
The Expanding Presidency 325 The President and the Bureaucracy 367
The Framers’ Conception of the Presidency 326 Congress and the Bureaucracy 369
The Dormant Presidency 327 The Courts and the Bureaucracy 370
The Twentieth Century Transformation 328 The Public and the Press 371
How Important Are Individual Presidents? 330 Interest Groups 371
 Contents xi

The American Bureaucracy: Controversies Religious Freedom 428

and Challenges 372 Rights of the Accused 432
Hostile Political Culture 373 Unreasonable Searches and Seizures 433
Incoherent Organization 374 Right to Counsel and Protections Against
Divided Control 374 Self-Incrimination 434
Reforming the Federal Bureaucracy 374 Capital Punishment 436
Scaling Back Its Size 375 Terrorism and the Rights of the Accused 439
Becoming More Businesslike 377 Right to Privacy 441
Protecting Against Bureaucratic Abuses of Power 378 Private Decisions 442
Increasing Presidential Control 378 Private Communications 443
Using the Democracy Standard: the Executive Using the Democracy Standard: Civil Liberties:
Branch: Does the Bureaucracy advance So, Has the State of american Freedom
or Hinder Democracy? 379 Improved? 444

14 The Courts 382 16 Civil Rights: The Struggle

for Political Equality 447
the Struggle for Democracy: the Battle
for the Courts 383 the Struggle for Democracy: Civil rights,
The Foundations of Judicial Power 385 african americans, and the Police 448
Constitutional Design 385 The Status of Civil Rights Before 1900 449
Judicial Review 385 An Initial Absence of Civil Rights in the
The Federal Court System: Jurisdiction and Constitution 449
Organization 388 Civil Rights After Ratification of the Civil
The Jurisdiction of the Federal Court 389 War Amendments 450
The Organization of the Federal Court System 389 The Contemporary Status of Civil Rights for Racial
Appointment to the Federal Bench 393 and Ethnic Minorities 453
Who Are the Appointees? 393 The End of Government-Sponsored Segregation
and Discrimination 453
The Appointment Process 395
The Beginning of Government-Sponsored
The Supreme Court in Action 398 Remedies to Right Past Wrongs 455
The Norms of Operation 398
The Contemporary Status of Civil Rights for Women 462
Control of the Agenda 398
Intermediate Scrutiny 463
Deciding Cases 399
Abortion Rights 464
Outside Influences on Supreme Court Decisions 402
Sexual Harassment and Hostile Environments 465
The Supreme Court as a National Policy Maker 405 American Women by Comparison 466
Structural Change and Constitutional
Broadening the Civil Rights Umbrella 467
Interpretation 405
The Elderly and People with Disabilities 467
The Debate over Judicial Activism 409
Gays and Lesbians 468
Using the Democracy Standard: the Courts:
Does the Supreme Court Enhance american Using the Democracy Standard: Civil rights:
Democracy? 413 Is Equal Citizenship a reality in the
United States? 472

Part V What Government Does 17 Domestic Policies 475

15 Civil Liberties: The Struggle the Struggle for Democracy: the 2008 Economic
Crisis and the Federal Government’s response 476
for Freedom 416
Why Does the Federal Government Do So Much? 478
the Struggle for Democracy: Digital Surveillance Managing the Economy 478
and the War on terror 417 Providing a Safety Net 478
Civil Liberties in the Constitution 418 Economic Policy 479
Explicit Protections in the Constitution 418 The Goals of Economic Policy 479
Incorporation of the Bill of Rights 420 The Tools of Economic Policy 482
First Amendment Freedoms 421 The Federal Budget 485
Freedom of Speech 423 The Budgeting Process 485
Freedom of the Press 426 Federal Spending 486
xii Contents

Federal Revenues 488 Dimensions of America’s Superpower Status 516

Budget Deficits and the National Debt 489 American Superpower: Structural Foundations 516
Regulation 492 American Superpower: Strategic Alternatives 524
The Role of Regulation 492 What Goals for American Power? 524
The Recent History of Regulation 492 How to Use American Power? Competing
Federal Safety Net Programs 494 Viewpoints 525
Types of Federal Safety Net Programs 494 Problems of the Post–Cold War World 526
Social Insurance Programs 495 Security Issues 526
Means-Tested Anti-Poverty Programs 498 Economic and Social Issues 534
Poverty in the United States 501 Who Makes Foreign and National Defense Policies? 536
Health Care Policy 503 The President and the Executive Branch 537
Key Components of the ACA 503 Congress 540
Challenges to the ACA 504 Using the Democracy Standard: Foreign and
National Defense Policies: What role Do the People
The American Safety Net in Context 505
Play in Foreign and Defense Policy Making? 542
Factors That Have Shaped the American
Safety Net 506
Using the Democracy Standard: Domestic Policies: Appendix 545
Do americans Get the Economic Policies and Safety
Net Programs they Want from Government? 508
Glossary 574
Endnotes 585
18 Foreign and National Defense
Photo Credits 619
Policies 512
Index 621
the Struggle for Democracy: the Syrian Nightmare 513
Foreign and National Security Policies and Democracy 514
 To the Student

W
hy study american government and politics, and why read this textbook
to do it? Here’s why: Only by understanding how our complex political
system operates and how government works can you play a role in de-
ciding what government does. Only by understanding the obstacles that stand in your
way as you enter the political fray, as well as the abundant opportunities you have to
advance your ideas and values in the political process, can you play an effective role.
You can learn this best, we believe, by studying what political scientists have dis-
covered about American politics and government. Political science is the systematic
study of the role that people and groups play in determining what government does;
how government goes about implementing its policy decisions; and what social, eco-
nomic, and political consequences flow from government actions. The best political
science research is testable, evidence-based, and peer-reviewed—as free as possible
from ideological and partisan bias as it can be.
The Struggle for Democracy not only introduces you to that research but also gives
you tools to decode the American political system, analyze its pieces, consider its link-
ages, and identify opportunities to make a difference. A simple but powerful frame-
work will guide you in discovering how government, politics, and the larger society
are intertwined and how government policies are a product of the interactions of
actors and institutions across these domains.
Our hope and expectation is that The Struggle for Democracy will enable your suc-
cess in your introduction to American government and politics course. But we are
interested in more than your classroom experiences. We believe that knowing how
politics and government work and how closely they conform to our democratic val-
ues will also enable a lifetime of productive choices. Put all naïveté aside, however.
Making a mark on public policies is never easy. Like-minded individuals need to do
more than vote. Those who gain the most from government policies have, after all,
substantial resources to make certain that government treats them well.
But you have resources to make changes, too. Beyond voting, opportunities for
affecting change may come from your involvement in political campaigns, from using
social media to persuade others of your views or to organize meetings and demon-
strations, from participating in social movements, from contributing to groups and
politicians who share your views, and from many more such avenues. So, much like
waging war, making your voice heard requires that you know the “lay of the land,”
including the weapons you have at your disposal (we would call them political tools)
and the weapons of those arrayed against you. But, much like peacemaking, you need
to know how and when compromises can be reached that serve the interests of all
parties.
Lest all of the above seems too daunting, we also have tried to make this book
enjoyable, accessible, and fun. If your experience in reading The Struggle for Democracy
comes close to the pleasure we had in writing it, we have come as near as possible to
achieving our goal.

xiii
xiv To the Student

Meet Your Author

EDWarD S. GrEEnbErG is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and a Research
Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Ed’s research
and teaching interests include American government and politics, domestic and
global political economy, and democratic theory and practice, with a special emphasis
on workplace issues. His multi-year longitudinal panel study, funded by the NIH,
examining the impact of technological change and the globalization of production
on Boeing managers and employees, is reported in his book Turbulence: Boeing and the
State of American Workers and Managers (Yale University Press, 2010, co-authored with
Leon Grunberg, Sarah Moore, and Pat Sikora). He is currently doing research on the
global competition between Boeing and Airbus and its impact on people who work in
these firms.
 To the Instructor

B
en Page and I decided to write this book because, as instructors in introduc-
tory American government courses, we could not find a book that provided
students with usable tools for critically analyzing our political system and
making judgments about how well our government works. The Struggle for Democracy
does not simply present facts about government and politics—it also provides several
analytical and normative frameworks for putting the flood of facts we ask our students
to absorb into a more comprehensible form. By doing so, I believe we have made it
easier and more satisfying for instructors to teach the introductory course.
Our goal all along was to create a textbook that treats students as adults, engages
their intellectual and emotional attention, and encourages them to be active learners.
Every element in this text is designed to promote the kind of critical thinking skills
scholars and instructors believe students need to become the engaged, active, and
informed citizens that are so vital to any democracy. Over the next several sections, I
show the elements we created to meet these objectives.

Features
aPProaCh The Struggle for Democracy provides several analytical and normative
frameworks for putting the flood of facts teachers ask their students to absorb into a
more comprehensible form. Although all topics that are common and expected in the
introductory American government and politics course are covered in this textbook,
the two main focal points—an analytical framework for understanding how politics
and government work and the normative question “How democratic are we?” (ad-
dressed in concluding remarks at the end of each chapter under the “Using the Democ-
racy Standard” headline)—allow for a fresh look at traditional topics.
This book pays great attention to structural factors—which include the American
economy, social and demographic change in the United States, technological innova-
tions and change, the American political culture, and changes in the global system—
and examines how they affect politics, government, and public policy. These factors
are introduced in Chapter 4—a chapter unique among introductory texts—and they
are brought to bear on a wide range of issues in subsequent chapters.
The Struggle for Democracy attends very carefully to issues of democratic political
theory. This follows from a critical thinking objective, which asks students to assess
the progress of, and prospects for, democracy in the United States and from a desire
to present American history as the history of the struggle for democracy. For instance,
Struggle examines how the evolution of the party system has improved democracy in
some respects in the United States, but hurt it in others.
Struggle also includes more historical perspective because it provides the necessary
context for thinking comprehensively and critically about contemporary political
debates. It shows, for example, how the expansion of civil rights in the United States is
tied to important historical events and trends.
Comparisons of developments, practices, and institutions in the United States
with those in other nations add another dimension to our understanding. We can bet-
ter comprehend how our system of social welfare works, for example, when we see

xv
xvi To the Instructor

how other rich democratic countries deal with the problems of poverty, unemploy-
ment, and old age.

CovEraGE In an effort to build a ground-up understanding of American politics

and the policy outcomes it does (and does not) produce, the chapters in Struggle mir-
ror the structure of our analytical pyramid framework. Part 1 includes an introduc-
tion to the textbook, its themes, and the critical thinking tools used throughout the
book. Part 2 covers the structural foundations of American government and politics,
addressing subjects such as the U.S. economy and political culture and its place in
the international system; the constitutional framework of the American political sys-
tem; and the development of federalism. Part 3 focuses on political linkage institutions
such as parties, elections, public opinion, social movements, and interest groups that
convey the wants, needs, and demands of individuals and groups to public officials.
Part 4 concentrates on the central institutions of the national government, including
the presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court. Part 5 describes the kinds of poli-
cies the national government produces and analyzes how effective government is at
solving pressing social and economic problems. The analytical framework used in
this book also means that the subjects of civil liberties and civil rights are not treated in
conjunction with the Constitution in Part 2, which is the case with many introductory
texts, but in Part 5, on public policy. This is because we believe that the real-world sta-
tus of civil liberties and civil rights, while partly determined by specific provisions of
the Constitution, is better understood as the outcome of the interaction of structural,
political, and governmental factors. For example, the status of civil rights for gays,
lesbians, and transgendered people depends not only on constitutional provisions but
also on the state of public opinion, degrees of support from elected political leaders,
and the decisions of the Supreme Court.

PEDaGoGy The Struggle for Democracy offers unique features that help students bet-
ter understand, interpret, and critically evaluate American politics and government.

• Chapter-opening stories provide useful frames of reference for defining why

the principal topic of each chapter matters to the citizens of our American
democracy.
• A unique visual tool that maps out the many influences in the American politi-
cal process and how they shape political decisions and policies, the applying
the Framework model makes clear that government, politics, and society are
deeply intertwined in recognizable patterns. The framework simplifies complex
associations, builds on the “deep structures” that underlay American politics
and government—the economy, society, political culture, and the constitutional
rules—and encourages holistic comprehension of American politics.
• More than one hundred figures and tables strengthen the narrative and help stu-
dents extract meaning and insights from data that drive political decision making
and government action.
• Timelines appear throughout this book to help students develop a sense of his-
torical context and to clarify the chronology of a particular period. Timeline topics
include federalism milestones and a history of the civil rights movement.
• Every chapter includes a marginal glossary of key terms to support students’
understanding of new and important concepts at first encounter. For easy refer-
ence, key terms from the marginal glossary are repeated at the end of each chapter
and in the end-of-book glossary.
• Every chapter includes a Using the Democracy Standard section to help students
consolidate their thinking about the American political system as a whole by
 To the Instructor xvii

using a normative democracy “yardstick” that asks students to assess the degree
to which the United States has become more or less democratic.
• review the Chapter sections organized around chapter learning objectives is
included at the end of each chapter to help students better understand and retain
information and to think critically about the material.

New to This Edition

Key updates to The Struggle for Democracy include:

• Substantial coverage of the contentious 2016 presidential nomination contests in

both parties and the consequential 2016 national elections, with special attention
to the partisan aspects of the election in Chapter 9, the voting and campaign as-
pects in Chapter 10, the consequences for Congress in Chapter 11, and the impact
on the presidency in Chapter 12.
• Coverage throughout, but especially in Chapters 3, 10, 14, 15, 16, and 17, on
important rulings by the Supreme Court on same-sex marriage, voting rights,
immigration, affirmative action, election financing, the scope of the commerce
clause, and the Affordable Care Act.
• Consideration, especially in Chapter 12, “The Presidency,” and Chapter 18,
“Foreign Policy and National Defense,” on the new challenges posed by the rise
of ISIS in Syria and Iraq; nuclear weapons programs in North Korea, Pakistan,
and especially Iran; China’s emergence as a competing world power; and Russia’s
attempt to reassert its power in Ukraine, in other countries formerly a part of the
Soviet Union, and in Syria and the greater Middle East.
• Increased attention to the growing partisan bitterness in Washington and across
much of the nation that affects how government addresses or fails to address
virtually every major problem facing the nation whether it be energy, illegal
immigration, climate change, or the shrinking middle class (Chapters 5, 9, 10, 11,
and 17).
• Questions of whether and to what degree income and wealth inequality has
increased, and if it has, with what political and public policy consequences were
thoroughly considered during this revision. We also look closely at globaliza-
tion and technological change and their impact on americans, with extensive
research and analysis of particular note evident in Chapters 4 and 18.
• The ways in which social, economic and technological trends shape government
action are also considered, including legislation to regulate the financial indus-
try, executive orders that increase the number of Americans who are eligible to
be paid time-and-a-half for overtime work and increasing gas mileage require-
ments for cars and trucks, and prosecution of government employees who leak
confidential government information to social media sites (Chapters 4, 6, 15, 17,
and 18).
• Photos in this edition were selected not only to capture major events from the
last few years but to illustrate the relevancy of politics in our daily lives. They
show political actors and processes as well as people affected by politics, creat-
ing a visual narrative that enhances rather than repeats the text. Each includes
critical thinking questions that allow readers to engage with the material more
intensely.
• The data in all of the figures and tables have been updated throughout with
the intention of helping users think critically not only about political decisions
in retrospect but also about pending government action.
xviii To the Instructor

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Revel enlivens course content with media interactives and assessments—
integrated directly within the authors’ narrative—that provide opportunities for
students to read about and practice course material in tandem. This immersive educa-
tional technology boosts student engagement, which leads to better understanding of
concepts and improved performance throughout the course.
Some of the particularly exciting highlights of this Revel edition include the following:

• Chapter-opening Current Events bulletins feature author-written articles that

put breaking news and current events into the context of American govern-
ment. Examples include the 2016 elections in context, the strained relationship
between the U.S. and Russia, and how Democratic turnout in the 2016 election
helps to explain Trump’s victory.

• Captivating videos bring to life chapter content and key moments in American
government. ABC news footage provides examples from both current and his-
torical events. Examples of footage include FDR visiting the newly completed
Boulder Dam (Hoover Dam), an NRA lobbyist’s proposition to put guns in
schools one week after the Sandy Hook tragedy, and President Obama’s struggle
to make a case for air strikes in Syria. In addition, each chapter concludes with
an author-narrated video subtitled “Why It Matters,” helping students to put
chapter content in a real-world context. For example, Chapter 16, “Civil Rights:
The Struggle for Political Equality,” concludes with a discussion of the real-life
implications of affirmative action in college admission and on campus—a topic
immediately relevant to today’s undergraduate students.
 To the Instructor xix

• Interactive maps, figures, and tables featuring innovative Social Explorer tech-
nology allow for inputting the latest data, toggling to illustrate movement over
time, and clicking on hot spots with pop-ups of images and captions. Examples
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Figure 9.2: Presidential Elections, 1960 and 2012 (map); and Figure 11.2: Women
and Minorities in the U.S. Congress (bar chart).

• Interactive simulations in every chapter (beginning with Chapter 2) allow

students to explore critical issues and challenges that the country’s Founders
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day. Students apply key chapter concepts in realistic situations. For example,
in Chapter 3, students have the opportunity to imagine themselves as federal
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police officers.
xx To the Instructor

• Interactive Conclusion and review summaries using video, learning objectives,

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• assessments tied to primary chapter sections, as well as full chapter exams, allow
instructors and students to track progress and get immediate feedback.

• Integrated Writing opportunities To help students reason and write more

clearly, each chapter offers two varieties of writing prompts:
• Journal prompts in nearly every section across the narrative ask students to
consider critical issues that are first presented in a relevant photograph and
associated photo caption. These questions are designed to reinforce one of the
material’s primary goals: to equip students to engage critically with American
government and thereby ensure a healthy, thriving democracy.
 To the Instructor xxi

• Shared writing prompts, following each chapter’s Conclusion and Review

section, encourage students to consider how to address the challenges de-
scribed in the chapter in an essay format. For example, in Chapter 3, students
must argue for or against the proposition that the federal government should
not provide funds to support large infrastructure projects, such as the con-
struction and expansion of interstate highways. Through these shared writing
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Learn more about Revel

Visit at http://www.pearsonhighered.com/revel/.
xxii To the Instructor

Supplements
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with each semester.
Pearson is pleased to offer the following resources to qualified adopters of The
Struggle for Democracy. Several of these supplements are available to instantly down-
load on the Instructor Resource Center (IRC); please visit the IRC www.pearsonhigh-
ered.com/irc to register for access.

TEST bank Evaluate learning at every level. Reviewed for clarity and accuracy, the
Test Bank measures this book’s learning objectives with multiple choice, true/false,
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covered in your course. Word, BlackBoard, and WebCT versions available on the IRC
and Respondus versions available upon request from www.respondus.com.

PEarSon MyTEST This powerful assessment generation program includes all of

the questions in the Test Bank. Quizzes and exams can be easily authored and saved
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mytest.

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room, online, or hybrid courses. Designed for new and experienced instructors, the
Instructor’s Manual includes a sample syllabus, lecture and discussion suggestions,
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able on the IRC.

PoWErPoInT PrESEnTaTIon WITh CLaSSrooM rESPonSE SySTEM (CrS)

Make lectures more enriching for students. The PowerPoint Presentation includes a
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Acknowledgments
Heartfelt thanks and gratitude go to Ben Page, friend and long-time collaborator, who
co-authored many editions of this book, though not this one. For over a year after I
first broached the idea about our doing a textbook together, we hashed out whether
it was possible to write a textbook that would be consistent with our standards as
teachers and scholars, offer a perspective on American government and politics that
was unique in the discipline, and do well in the marketplace. Once we concluded that
it was possible to produce a textbook that hit these benchmarks and that we passion-
ately wanted to make happen, we spent more than two years writing what became
the First Edition of The Struggle for Democracy. When Ben and I started this process, we
were only acquaintances. Over the years, in the process of collaborating on the publi-
cation of several editions of this textbook, we became and remain very good friends.
Though Ben has not been an active co-author on this edition of Struggle, his brilliant
insights, analytical approach, and elegant writing are visible on virtually every page,
and it is why his name sits next to mine on the cover and the title page. Ben Page, of
course, is one of the most brilliant, cited, visible, and admired political scientists in the
 To the Instructor xxiii

world, and hardly needs additional praise from me. But, I will say that I feel extraordi-
narily lucky to have worked with him for a good part of my academic career.
This edition of Struggle has been refreshed by and has benefited from the work of
three extremely talented and energetic young political scientists, all former teaching
assistants of mine in the large introductory course on American government and poli-
tics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and all now launched on their own aca-
demic careers as teachers and scholars. David Doherty of Loyola University Chicago,
Josh Ryan of Utah State University, and Scott Minkoff of SUNY New Paltz, took on
a substantial portion of the burden of producing this new edition of Struggle, each
taking responsibility for updating three chapters and each responsible for creating or
modernizing chapter features that make this book such an exciting tool for student
learning. I am grateful to each of them and hope and trust we will work together on
future editions.
I also want to thank the many students, teaching assistants, and faculty at the
University of Colorado and other universities, colleges, and two-year institutions who
have used this book over the years as a learning and teaching tool and who have let
me know what worked and what didn’t work in previous editions. I appreciate their
insight and candor.
My thanks also go to my editor at Pearson Higher Education, Jeff Marshall, who
has been a champion of this book and my principal guide into the brave new world
of textbooks in the digital age. To Jeff and to all of his very smart and very capable
colleagues at Pearson, I express my very special appreciation. Judy O’Neill, our devel-
opmental editor on the previous edition of this book and for part of the time on this
edition, heroically kept David, Josh, Scott, and me on track, offered compelling sugges-
tions for content updates, helped with everything from photo selection to the design of
line art, and acted as liaison with the many people involved in the complex process of
getting this book out the door and into the hands of teachers and students. I also want
to thank Karen Moore who took over as development editor part way through the
project and performed magnificently. My thanks also go to Kristin Jobe and her team
at Integra; Debbie Coniglio, Allison Collins, Jennifer Jacobson, and Beth Jacobson at
Ohlinger Publishing Services; the magnificent team at Social Explorer; and Tara Cook
at Metrodigi. The shrewd and judicious contributions of these individuals to the pro-
duction of Struggle are apparent on every printed page and on every digital screen.
We also wish to thank the many professors who gave their time to provide invalu-
able input during the following conferences and Pearson events:

aPSa 2015: Brian Califano, Missouri State University; David A. Caputo,

Pace University; Lori Cox Han, Chapman University; Joshua Dyck, University
of Massachusetts, Lowell; Maurice Eisenstein, Purdue University Calumet; Bryan
Gervais, UTSA; Ben Gonzalez, Highline College; Mel Hailey, Abilene Christian
University; Kerstin Hamann, University of Central Florida; Meredith Heiser, Foothill
College; Erika Herrera, Lone Star College; Judith Hurtado-Ortiz, Peralta; Gabe Jolivet,
Ashford University; Ryan Krog, George Washington University; Jessica Lavariega
Monforti, Pace University; Liz Lebron, LSU; Andrew Levin, Harper College; Stephen
Meinhold, UNC-W; Keesha Middlemass, Trinity University; Samantha Mosier,
Missouri State University; Jason Myers, CSU Stanislaus; Todd Myers, Grossmont
Community College; Sharon Navarro, Univeristy of Texas at San Antonio; John
Payne, Ivy Tech Community College; Anne C. Pluta, Rowan; Dan Ponder, Drury
University; David Ramsey, UWF; Jason Robles, Colorado State University; John David
Rausch, Jr., West Texas A&M University; Jon Ross, Aurora College; Erich Saphir, Pima
College; Justin Vaughn, Boise State University; Peter Wielhouwer, Western Michigan
University; Patrick Wohlfarth, University of Maryland, College Park; Chris Wolfe,
Dallas County Community College; Youngtae Shin, University of Central Oklahoma
xxiv To the Instructor

aPSa 2016: Cathy Andrews, Austin Community College; Sara Angevine, Whittier
College; Benjamin Arah, Bowie State University; Yan Bai, Grand Rapids Community
College; Michael Bailey, Georgetown University; Karen L. Baird, Purchase College,
SUNY; Richard Bilsker, College of Southern Maryland; Russell Brooker, Alverno
College; Christopher M. Brown, Georgia Southern University; Jonathan Buckstead,
Austin Community College; Camille Burge, Villanova University; Isaac M. Castellano,
Boise State University; Stefanie Chambers, Trinity College; Anne Marie Choup,
University of Alabama, Huntsville; Nick Clark, Susquehanna University; Mary Anne
Clarke, RI College; Carlos Cunha, Dowling College; John Diehl, Bucks County
Community College; Joseph DiSarro, Washington and Jefferson University; Margaret
Dwyer, Milwaukee School of Engineering; Laurel Elder, Hardwick College; Melinda
Frederick, Prince George’s Community College; Amanda Friesen, IUPUI; Jason
Giersch, UNC, Charlotte; Mauro Gilli, ETH; Margaret Gray, Adelphi University;
Mark Grzegorzewski, Joint Special Operations University; John Hanley, Duquesne
University; Jacqueline Holland, Lorain County Community College; Jack Hunt,
University of Southern Maine; Clinton Jenkins, George Washington University;
Nadia Jilani-Hyler, Augusta University; Christopher N. Lawrence, Middle Georgia
State University; Daniel Lewis, Siena College; Joel Lieske, Cleveland State; Nancy
Lind, Illinois State University; Matt Lindstrom, College of St. Benedict / St. John’s
University; Eric D. Loepp, UW-Whitewater; Kevin Lorentz, Wayne State University;
Gregory Love, University of Mississippi; Abbie Luoma, Saint Leo University; Linda
K. Mancillas, Georgia Gwinnett College; Buba Misawa, Washington and Jefferson
College; Martha Musgrove, Tarrant County College – South Campus; Steven Nawara,
Lewis University; Tatishe Nteta, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Dr. Mjahid
Nyahuma, Community College of Philadelphia; Matthew Platt, Morehouse College;
Marcus Pohlmann, Rhodes College; Adriane M. Raff Corwin, Bergen & Brookdale
Community Colleges; Lauren Ratliff, The Ohio State University; Dr. Keith Reeves,
Swarthmore College; Ted Ritter, Virginia Union University; Joseph W. Roberts, Roger
Williams University; Amanda Rosen, Webster University; Scot Schraufnagel, Northern
Illinois University; John Seymour, El Paso Community College; Ginger Silvera, Cal
State, Dominguez Hills; Kyla Stepp, Central Michigan University; Ryane Straus,
College of Saint Rose; Maryam Stevenson, Troy University; Tressa Tabares, American
River College; Bernard Tamas, Valdosta State University; Lee Trepanier, Saginaw
Valley State University; Kevin Wallsten, California State University, Long Beach;
Richard Waterman, University of Kentucky; Joe Weinberg, University of Southern
Mississippi; Jonathan Whatron, Southern Connecticut State University; Elizabeth G.
Williams, PhD, Santa Fe College

2016 WebEx meetings for revel: Maria Albo, University of North Georgia; Hendel
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Another random document with
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imagination. Of these the most universal and the most significant are
customs connected with the burial of the dead. To the habit of
interring with the dead man the implements he most valued in life—
his tools or weapons—we owe the little knowledge we possess of our
very primitive ancestors. It is generally said that these articles were
buried with the man, that he might have them ready for use in
another world; and, no doubt, some vague idea of this kind has
extensively prevailed: but if we may speculate on a subject so obscure
as the imaginations of the savage, we should say that this idea grew
out of the custom of burying with the dead man his own previous
possessions, and that the custom itself at first originated in simple
regret and respect for the dead. We cannot have any strong
sentiment without feeling the desire in some way to manifest it. The
dead man was loudly lamented—wept and wailed over—and the
mourners often cut and wounded themselves as an exhibition of their
grief. Well, at such a moment, instead of appropriating to themselves
the possessions of the deceased, the survivors threw them into the
grave with him. They were still in a manner his property. It would
manifest a disrespect to the dead if at once, as soon as the hand of his
chief was cold, another man had seized upon his spear and carried it
to his own hut. Thus this one passionate desire to manifest grief and
respect to a late friend or chief would sufficiently account for the act
of interring with the body the instruments or weapons he had been
in the habit of using. The custom once adopted, superstition would
step in and enforce it, and the imagination would invest it with a new
significance. Some poet of the land would first suggest that, if the
dead man rose from his tomb, he would find himself equipped for
the chase or for war. Sometimes the buried arms, vessels, or other
implements, were broken before they were deposited in the grave,
which does not seem to accord with the idea that they were laid there
for any future use. It looks like the interpretation of a subsequent
generation when it is said that the savage expected the broken tool or
perforated vessel, like the decayed human body, to be restored again
and made fit for his use. Here is an Indian, a Chinook, buried in his
canoe. Within the canoe a broken sword is deposited. Am I to gather
that the Chinook expected a maritime life hereafter, and even to
revive floating upon the waters? Does not the whole act seem, at least
in its initiation, to be symbolical? All was at an end. The man would
float no more—would fight no more. The canoe was buried, the
sword was broken.
But whether we are right or not in our supposition as to the origin
of this idea—namely, that the articles buried in the tomb with the
deceased would be useful to him in an after life—it is plain that such
an idea has been entertained, and certainly all our learned writers
upon these ancient customs of burial attribute this motive to our
imaginative forefathers. When, in the old pagan burrows of the wold
of Yorkshire or elsewhere, some British or Saxon charioteer has been
exhumed, with the iron wheel-tires and bronzed horse-furniture (the
wreck of the decayed war-chariot), and the skeletons of the horses,
eloquent antiquarians have not failed to say (as Mr Wilson does) that
the dead chief was buried thus “that he might enter the Valhalla of
his gods, proudly borne in the chariot in which he had been wont to
charge amid the ranks of his foes.” We presume they find themselves
justified in this interpretation.
Here, again, we find that the new continent sets almost before the
eyes of our traveller scenes similar to those which, as a European
archæologist, he had been laboriously endeavouring to reconstruct in
some remote antiquity.

“Upwards of forty years since, Black Bird, a famous chief of the Omahaws,
visited the city of Washington, and on his return was seized with smallpox, of
which he died on the way. When the chief found himself dying, he called his
warriors around him, and, like Jacob of old, gave commands concerning his burial,
which were as literally fulfilled. The dead warrior was dressed in his most
sumptuous robes, fully equipped with his scalps and war-eagle’s plumes, and
borne about sixty miles below the Omahaw village to a lofty bluff on the Missouri,
which towers far above all the neighbouring heights, and commands a magnificent
extent of landscape. To the summit of this bluff a beautiful white steed, the
favourite war-horse of Black Bird, was led; and there, in presence of the whole
nation, the dead chief was placed with great ceremony on its back, looking towards
the river, where, as he had said, he could see the canoes of the white men as they
traversed the broad waters of the Missouri. His bow was placed in his hand, his
shield and quiver, with his pipe and medicine-bag, hung by his side. His store of
pemmican and his well-filled tobacco-pouch were supplied, to sustain him on the
long journey to the hunting-grounds of the great Manitou, where the spirits of his
fathers awaited his coming. The medicine-men of the tribe performed their most
mystic charms to secure a happy passage to the land of the great departed; and all
else being completed, each warrior of the chiefs own band covered the palm of his
right hand with vermilion, and stamped its impress on the white sides of the
devoted war-steed. This done, the Indians gathered turfs and soil, and placed them
around the feet and the legs of the horse. Gradually the pile arose under the
combined labour of many willing hands, until the living steed and its dead rider
were buried together under the memorial mound; and high over the crest of the
lofty tumulus which covered the warrior’s eagle plumes a cedar post was reared, to
mark more clearly to the voyagers on the Missouri the last resting-place of Black
Bird, the great chief of the Omahaws.”

But there is one passage in Mr Wilson’s book which, we think, to

the student of the ancient myth or religious legend must be replete
with interest. It occurs in the chapter which treats on the use of
tobacco and that custom of smoking which we have imported from
the savage, much to the delectation, no doubt, of those who inhale
the fumes of what they are pleased to call the fragrant weed, and
much, assuredly, to the disgust and suffering of those who are
involved, most unwillingly, in the smoke which others are exhaling
around them. Never were two parties more sharply divided than the
smokers and the non-smokers. The first will doubtless agree with the
Indian in the belief that tobacco was of divine origin. Did not two
hunters of the Susquehannas share their venison with a lovely squaw
who mysteriously appeared before them in the forest? and did they
not, “on returning to the scene of their feast thirteen moons after,
find the tobacco-plant growing where she had sat?” and do not
Indians tell us that the Great Spirit freely indulges in the intoxicating
fumes which they themselves love so well? The non-smokers hold a
different faith. They see no celestial gift in this black, fuliginous
amusement; and if they do not ascribe to it a devilish origin, they
assert that it is enjoyed with a devilish indifference to those to whom
their beloved smoke is but stench and sickness. Into this custom of
tobacco-smoking Mr Wilson enters at large, and bestows much
learning on the inquiry; but it is especially to the institution of the
pipe of peace amongst the Indians that we would now direct the
attention of the reader.
We have, as Mr Wilson tells the story, the complete dissection of a
myth; we see how a legend arises, or may arise, partly from the most
trivial causes, and partly from generous impulses and high
imaginations. Between the Minnesota and the Missouri rivers there
stands a bold perpendicular cliff, “beautifully marked with distinct
horizontal layers of light grey and rose or flesh-coloured quartz.”
Near this a famous red pipe-stone is procured; a material, we
presume, better fitted than any other for making pipes. Traces of
both ancient and modern excavation prove that it has been the
resort, during many generations, of Indian tribes, seeking this
famous red pipe-stone. A spot to which independent tribes came for
this purpose, and for this only, became neutral ground; became a
spot on which they might meet in peace—perhaps to discuss their
points of difference. But in process of time it became a sacred spot,
and the peace between hostile tribes was preserved by a religious
sanction. There are marks on the rock resembling the track of a large
bird. These were converted into the footsteps of the Great Spirit. The
Great Spirit, therefore, at one time descended upon the rock and
taught—what else could he be supposed to teach?—the sacred
neutrality of the spot, and the privilege and duty of all tribes to renew
their pipes there, and especially the calumet, or pipe of peace. The
last version of the tradition runs thus:—

“Many ages,” say the Sioux, “after the red men were made, when all the different
tribes were at war, the Great Spirit called them all together at the Red Rocks. He
stood on the top of the rocks, and the red nations were assembled in infinite
numbers in the plain below. He took out of the rock a piece of the red stone, and
made a large pipe. He smoked it over them all; told them that it was part of their
flesh; that though they were at war they must meet at this place as friends; that it
belonged to them all; that they must make their calumets from it, and smoke them
to him whenever they wished to appease him or get his goodwill. The smoke from
his big pipe rolled over them all, and he disappeared in the cloud.”

The Sioux, notwithstanding this good teaching of the very tradition

which they still repeat to the stranger, have, by the right of the
strongest, taken possession of the sacred neutral ground; and they,
and all other tribes of the red race, are either being absorbed into the
white population or exterminated by it. The development of the myth
and the people of the myth has been therefrom alike arrested. But
how clearly we see its growth and formation! To what a mystical faith
that flesh-coloured quartz was conducting! And what mingling of the
divine and human would have been suggested by the act recorded of
the Great Spirit! If these Indian tribes had finally coalesced in one
nation, the myth would have been exalted, and the Great Spirit
would have taught them an eternal bond of peace and brotherhood.
If civilisation and culture had still further advanced, this peace and
brotherhood would have embraced all mankind, and assumed the
form of the highest moral teaching.
A considerable portion of Mr Wilson’s book is occupied with those
ancient remains, whether in the valley of the Mississippi or in the
forests of Central America, which speak of a civilisation, or at least of
nations and of cities that had existed and left their ruins behind
them, anterior to what we call the discovery of the New World. The
subject is highly interesting, and it loses none of its interest in the
hands of our author. He speaks very decidedly on the great antiquity
of the mounds and the earthworks of the valley of the Mississippi;
less decidedly on the antiquity of the monumental pillars and other
architectural remains which were first brought to the knowledge of
the English public through the travels of Mr Stephens in Central
America. The work of Mr Squiers still contains, we believe, the fullest
account we possess of those vast circular mounds, and other
extraordinary earthworks, discovered within the territory of the
United States. Both these writers, Mr Stephens and Mr Squiers,
produced at the time of the publication of their several works a very
vivid impression on the reading public of England. Both of them
broke ground into quite new fields of inquiry, but both of them left
the mind rather excited than informed. This was to be expected when
the subject was of so novel and surprising a character. Mr Squiers
saw evidences of serpent-worship and of other religious rites which
his study of the antiquities of the Old World had made familiar to his
imagination, in the circular mounds which he traced in the open
field: and Mr Stephens, as he broke his way through the forests, saw
the ruins of another Egypt stand before him.
That no tradition should exist amongst the present race of Indians
with respect to these primitive “mound-builders,” is not surprising;
nor would this alone indicate any very great antiquity. Mr Wilson
thinks the state in which the skeletons were found within the tumuli
—crumbling to dust on being touched—is sufficient proof of their
great age. One must know all the circumstances of the burial, all the
influences to which the skeleton has been exposed, before any safe
conclusion can be drawn from this fact. But, leaving undetermined
the antiquity of these remains, we think it plain that the first
discoverers of them, whether of the mounds or of the ruined cities,
have, with the natural enthusiasm pertaining to all discoverers,
exaggerated the evidence they display of civilisation, or progress in
the arts. After all, the soundest opinion seems to be that the “mound-
builders” and the builders of the deserted cities were but the
intellectual progenitors of those half-civilised Mexicans and
Peruvians whom the Spaniards encountered and destroyed. It is not
likely that any higher or equal state of civilisation had been attained
and lost before the arrival of the Spaniards.
The quite circular form of an extensive mound or earthwork is
thought to imply a knowledge of geometry or trigonometry, because
a modern surveyor would proceed in a certain scientific manner to
lay out such a circle. But the slow process of measuring a number of
radii from a given centre, and connecting their terminal points,
would probably have sufficed for all that these early geometers
executed. Or they might have drawn a smaller circle, in the first
instance, by a movable radius, and then traced a larger and a larger
one outside of this, till they had obtained one of the requisite
magnitude. Time and labour will accomplish much, and with very
little help from art or science. But where imagination seems to play
the subtlest tricks with our antiquarians is in their appreciation of
the beautiful in such relics of the fine arts as are discovered in these
mounds and cities. We have prints given us here of carved pipes
found in the tombs, which we are told are very beautiful. To our eye
they do not look beautiful at all, and very little in advance of other
prints which represent pipes carved by the present race of Red
Indians. But it is when the antiquarian critic finds himself amongst
the remains of the rude sculptures of Central America that he shows
himself most under the influence of this glamour. If we had not the
pictures or engravings by which to check the text, we should think
that Thebes and Memphis had been long ago outrivalled on the other
side of the Atlantic.
Our readers, we are sure, have not forgotten Mr Stephens’s book of
travels; they will remember how he entered with his guide into what
seemed an untrodden forest at Copan, apparently undisturbed from
its very creation; and how, as he made his way with his axe through
the brushwood, he found himself face to face with an upright column
of stone elaborately carved. In the centre of this a human face of
gigantic proportions stared out upon him. Some of these monuments
had been overpowered by the vigorous growth of the surrounding
trees, and displaced from their upright position by huge branches
that half encircled them; others lay upon the ground, as if bound
down by the vines and other great creepers of the American forest.
Nothing disturbed the solitude of the scene except a grimacing
procession of monkeys, who from the branches of the trees were
looking alternately at the traveller, and at the mysterious objects
which had attracted the traveller’s attention. As he proceeded he
came upon a truncated pyramid, with a flight of steps leading to a
broad surface, on which evidently some other structure had been
raised; and then again he entered a square enclosure with steps,
which might have been intended for seats, running up on all sides,
reminding him of a Roman amphitheatre. No books had told him of
the existence even of this ruined city. Who had built it, who had lived
in it, no one could say. The people of the country could only answer
him with their “Quien sabe?” who knows?—an answer always
sufficient for themselves. There was not even a tradition, not even a
palpable lie, to be heard. Men were as silent about these cities as the
forest itself.
What wonder that the enthusiasm of the traveller should be
excited, and that he should see more than the eye—as a simple
optical instrument—disclosed to him? Assuredly his enthusiasm as to
the beauty of the sculpture is not supported by the drawings he has
given us. He commends to us these drawings of the artist as being,
“next to the stones themselves,” the most perfect materials on which
to form our judgment. And of one thing we may be certain, that a
modern artist, trained to the correct representation of the human
figure, would err, if he erred at all, by improving the drawing in
these grotesque sculptures. It would require a distinct effort in the
modern artist to depart from the true outline and proportions of the
human form; and whenever his attention relaxed, he would infallibly
become more correct than his original. Well, we see in the
delineation here given us a mere pillar, in the centre of which is
carved a human face, and lower down two fat arms, which the
imagination is to connect with the unmeaning face above them; and
we are told in the text “that the character of this image is grand, and
it would be difficult to exceed the richness of the ornament.” We turn
the page and see another gigantic head, with huge saucer eyes, such
as a child would draw, and we are told that “the style is good,” and
that “the great expansion of the eyes seems intended to inspire awe.”
So are the masks sold in our toy-shops to mischief-loving boys. But
very silly savages must those have been in whom such absurd figures
could have inspired awe. Mr Stephens is constantly being “arrested
by the beauty of the sculpture.” The bas-reliefs at Palenque are
indeed superior to anything he met with at Copan, and some
drawings from these exhibit an unexpected grace, and an outline
perhaps unconsciously improved by the hand of the artist. But here
also we are startled at the discrepancy between the description of the
enraptured traveller and the representation in the engravings. We
have, in one of them, a figure sitting cross-legged upon a narrow
bench; his legs are tucked up under him painfully tight, and his
balance must be preserved with great difficulty; his large nose is in
manifest danger of breaking itself upon the floor. We are told that
this figure sits “on a couch, ornamented with two leopards’ heads,”
and that “the attitude is easy, and the expression calm and
benevolent.” The first discoverer must evidently have looked with
something of a lover’s eye.
The learned antiquarian has been nowhere more exposed to
delusion than in this New World. Mr Wilson gives us an amusing
account of the inscription on the Dighton Rock, which has received
so many various interpretations. It stands in New England; and at a
time when it was a favourite speculation of its theologians, that the
Phœnicians had been the earliest colonists of America, and that the
accursed race of Canaan had been banished there, this inscription
was decided to be Punic. Dr Stiles, President of Yale College, when
preaching in 1783 before the Governor and State of Connecticut,
appealed to the Dighton Rock, graven, as he believed, in the old
Punic or Phœnician character and language, in proof that the Indians
were of the cursed seed of Canaan, and were to be displaced and
rooted out by the European descendants of Japhet! “The
Phœnicians,” says Dr Stiles, “charged the Dighton and other rocks in
Narraganset Bay with Punic inscriptions remaining to this day,
which last I myself have repeatedly seen and taken off at large, as did
Professor Sewell. He has lately transmitted a copy of this inscription
to M. Gebelin of the Parisian Academy of Sciences, who, comparing
them with the Punic palæography, judges them to be Punic, and has
interpreted them as denoting that the ancient Carthaginians once
visited these distant regions.”
 Various copies, all professing to be most carefully executed, of this
inscription, were sent to antiquarian societies, to museums, to
colleges, as well in Europe as in America. A learned Colonel Vallency,
of the London Antiquarian Society, undertook to prove that the
inscription was neither Phœnician nor Punic, but Siberian. Then it
became the fashion to look upon the Danes and the Northmen as the
first discoverers of America, or its first colonists, and the Punic was
changed into a Runic inscription. The names of Thorfinn and other
Norse heroes were plainly read in this wild scrawl upon the Dighton
Rock. Learned Danes themselves found no difficulty in deciphering
the name at least of the chief hero who conducted the expedition of
which this is a memorial, though they confess that the names of his
associates are not quite so legible.

“Surely no inscription,” continues Mr Wilson, “ancient or modern, not even the

Behistun cuneatics or the trilingual Rosetta Stone, ever received more faithful
study. But the most curious matter relating to this written rock is, that after being
thus put to the question by learned inquisitors for a hundred and fifty years, it did
at length yield a most surprising response. Mr Schoolcraft tested the origin and
significance of the Dighton Rock inscription, by submitting a copy of it to
Chingwauk, an intelligent Indian chief, familiar with the native system of picture-
writing. The result was an interpretation of the whole as the record of an Indian
triumph over some rival native tribe, and the conviction on Mr Schoolcraft’s part
that the graven rock is simply an example of Indian rock-writing, attributable to
the Wabenakies of New England.... And such is the conviction reluctantly formed
in the mind of the most enthusiastic believer in the discovery and colonisation of
New England by the Northmen.”

We are in danger of losing our way entirely amongst the multitude

of interesting subjects which Mr Wilson’s two thick volumes present
to us—and present, it must be confessed, in a somewhat confused
array. A rather pleasant effect is produced by the bringing together
the knowledge of the European archæologist with the observations of
the modern traveller; but this leads to a discursive style. In spite of
the distinct titles of the several chapters, we never know precisely
what we are discussing, and where to look for anything a second time
which we may remember to have read. We are now engaged with the
wild Indians, and are reminded of such human curiosities as the
“Flatheads,” who glory in producing a deformed skull by a
distressing pressure on the infant’s head, of which process we have a
gilded picture strangely ornamenting our learned volumes. These
Flatheads are plainly uninjured in their intellects by this distortion of
the skull; so as there is room left for the development of the
cerebrum, all seems right; and even when nature keeps the
formation of the skull in her own hands, we apprehend this is all that
is wanted. These Flatheads contrive to make slaves of the
neighbouring round-headed Indians,—who, by the way, are not
permitted to flatten the heads of their children, this being jealously
guarded as a sign of freedom and aristocratic privileges. They are
said to look with contempt on the whites, as bearing in the shape of
their heads the hereditary mark of slaves. After contemplating for a
time these unprogressive natives, some railroad car comes whizzing
past, or the posts of the electric telegraph remind the author of the
go-ahead American who is gradually appropriating all the soil to
himself. We have a highly characteristic trait mentioned of the new
race. Not only does he cut down forests and break up the prairie, but
he trades in water-lots—in land still covered with water;
appropriates and sells half the soil of a lake which has yet to be
reduced to the economical proportion he intends to allow it.
The two races cannot plainly long reside on the same continent;
but Mr Wilson brings before us a fact which will probably be new to
most English readers. It is almost as much an absorption into the
white race as a process of extinction that is now going on amongst
the Red Indians. Wherever the whites, whether they are French, or
English, or Scotch, have been long settled in the neighbourhood of
Indian tribes, there has grown up a mixed race or half-breed. This
half-breed, in some instances, remains in the settlement of the
whites, but in others it still follows the mode of life of its Indian
parent, and a race grows up that is neither European nor Indian.
Whole tribes seem now to be constituted of this half-breed, and they
are distinguished for their power of endurance and their greater
faculty for social organisation. But in proportion as they approximate
to the European, the less likelihood is there that they will long
remain distinct and separated from the European by their mode of
life.
 “The idea,” says Mr Wilson, “of the absorption of the Indian into the Anglo-
American race will not, I am aware, meet with a ready acceptance, even from those
who dwell where its traces are most perceptible; but fully to appreciate its extent,
we must endeavour to follow down the course of events by which the continent has
been transferred to the descendants of its European colonists. At every fresh stage
of colonisation or pioneering into the wild west, the work has necessarily been
accomplished by the hardy youths, or the hunters and trappers of the clearing.
Rarely indeed did they carry with them their wives or daughters; but where they
found a home amongst savage-haunted wilds, they took to themselves wives of the
daughters of the soil. To this mingling of blood, even in its least favourable aspects,
the prejudices of the Indian presented little obstacle. Henry, in his narrative of
travel among the Cristineaux, says, ‘One of the chiefs assured me that the children
borne by their women to Europeans were bolder warriors and better hunters than
themselves.’ The fact is unquestionable that all along the widening outskirts of the
newer clearings, and wherever an outlying trading or hunting post is established,
we find a fringe of half-breed population, marking the transitional border-land
which is passing away from its aboriginal claimants.... At all the white settlements
near those of the Indians the evidence of admixture is abundant, from the pure
half-breed to the slightly-marked remoter descendant of Indian maternity,
discoverable only by the straight black hair, and a singular watery glaze in the eye,
not unlike that of the English gypsy. There they are to be seen, not only as fishers,
trappers, and lumberers, but engaged on equal terms with the whites in the trade
and business of the place. In this condition the population of all the frontier
settlements exists; if, as new settlers come in, the mixed element disappears, it
does so purely by absorption.
“Nor are such traces confined to the frontier settlements. I have recognised the
semi-Indian features in the gay assemblies at a Canadian Governor-General’s
receptions, in the halls of the Legislature, among the undergraduates of Canadian
universities, and mingling in the selectest social circles. And this is what has been
going on in every new American settlement for upwards of three centuries, under
every diversity of circumstance.”

This is a far more agreeable idea than that the Indians are being
everywhere starved out of existence by the encroachments of the
European. But that portion of the mixed offspring which adhered to
the Indian tribe, and became Indian in its habits, affords a still more
interesting subject of speculation. On the Red River there is a
settlement of half-breeds, numbering about six thousand. A marked
difference, we are told, “is observable, according to their white
paternity. The French half-breeds are more lively and frank in their
bearing, but also less prone to settle down to drudgery of farming, or
other routine duties of civilised life, than those chiefly of Scottish
descent.” If in both cases the half-breed has been entirely educated
by its Indian parent, this would be a good instance of the influence of
race as separable from the influence of education. These half-breeds
are generally superior in physical as well as mental qualities, and
have greater powers of endurance than any of the native tribes
exhibit. Mr Wilson assures us “that the last traces of the Red blood
will disappear, not by the extinction of the Indian tribes, but by the
absorption of the half-breed minority into the new generations of the
predominant race.”
Of the warlike tribes of native Indians some have been induced to
settle down as agriculturists. Some are Roman Catholics, some
Protestants. But we believe it may be stated that all signal
amendments or progressive changes have been accompanied by a
mixture of European blood. To this very day the full-blooded Indian
despises the civilisation of the white man, or at least thinks it
something that may be good for the white man, but by no means
good for him. The fierce tribes that constituted the famous
confederacy of the Iroquois, and who have settled in Canada, have
been all more or less tamed, but they have all lost the purity of their
race; and when we hear of the hunter of the prairies taking upon
himself the mode of life of European colonists, we may be sure that
this change has been facilitated by an intermixture of the two races.
Some of these tribes have forgotten their own language, and speak
only a French patois.
We do not imply by this observation that the native Indian would
have been incapable of advancing by a slow and natural progression
of their own on the road of civilisation: on the contrary, we believe
that the civilisation of the Aztecs and the Peruvians may be seen in
its earliest stage amongst the Iroquois. But when the European
encounters the savage, there is a gap between them which the latter
cannot suddenly traverse. The intermediate steps are not presented
to him. The time is not given him by which slow-changing habits can
be formed and transmitted. He is required to proceed at a faster pace
than his savage nature can accomplish. Now, as every generation that
has advanced upon its predecessors, transmits, together with its
knowledge, some increasing aptitude for the acquisition of such
knowledge, there is no difficulty in believing that the savage would be
expedited in his career of civilisation as well by an intermixture of
race as by a participation of knowledge.
The whole chapter of Mr Wilson on the Red Race is well worthy of
perusal. The reader will find in it many interesting details, which, of
course, our space will not permit us to allude to. We shall conclude
our notice by some reference to a topic especially interesting when
we speak of the progress of civilisation—namely, the mode of
transmitting ideas, the art of writing, or letters. Our author,
according to his favourite phraseology, entitles his chapter on this
subject ‘The Intellectual Instinct: Letters.’
The origin of language may be open to discussion. Its gradual
growth from the wants, the social passions, the organisation, the
mimetic and reasoning powers of man, may to many persons seem
an unsatisfactory account. But no one disputes that writing is an
invention of man. Even if the steps of this invention had not been
traced, we should have been unable to frame any other hypothesis
with regard to an art possessed by one people and not possessed by
another. We may define writing to be the transmission of ideas by
visible and permanent signs, instead of by momentary sounds and
gestures. The art of writing, it must be remembered, is not complete
till the characters upon the paper, or the parchment, or the plaster of
the wall, or the graven rock, interpret themselves to one who knows
the conventional value of the several signs. So long as any picture-
writing or symbolic figures act merely as aids to the memory, in
retaining a history of events which is, in fact, transmitted by oral
tradition, writing is not yet invented. The picture, however faithful,
gives its meaning only to those who know many other facts which are
not in the picture itself. When a system of signs has been invented,
by which alone the ideas of one person, or one generation, can be
communicated to another person or another generation, then the art
has been attained, whether those signs are hieroglyphics or
alphabetical, whether they are signs of things or signs of words.
This is necessary to be borne in mind, because there is a certain
use of pictorial and symbolic signs which is in danger of being
confounded with the perfect hieroglyph; and we are inclined to think
this confusion has been made with regard to some of the sculptured
remains discovered in Central America. We doubt if these
“hieroglyphics,” which scholars are invited to study and to interpret,
are hieroglyphics as the word is understood by the Egyptologist.
Granting that they always have a meaning, and are not introduced, in
some cases, as mere ornaments (just as we introduce the heads of
stags or the figures of little children on any vase we desire to
ornament), still it may be a meaning of that kind which could be only
intelligible to one who from other sources knew the history or the
fable it was intended to bring to remembrance. A representation of
this kind, half pictorial and half symbolic, would help to keep alive
the memory of an event; but, the memory of it once extinct, it could
not revive the knowledge of the event to us. We should waste our
ingenuity in vain attempts to read what was not, in fact, any kind of
writing.
The Peruvians had manifestly not advanced beyond a system of
mnemonics, a kind of memoria technica. With certain knots in
strings of different colours they had associated certain ideas. A
Peruvian woman could show you a bundle of knotted strings and tell
you her whole life “was there.” To her it was, but to no one else. If all
the Peruvians agreed to associate the history of Peru with other
bundles of knotted cords, their quipus would still be only an aid to
memory; the history itself must be conveyed from one mind to
another by oral communication. Some of the North American
Indians had their wampum, their many-coloured belt, into which
they talked their treaty, or any other matter it was desirable to
remember. The Mexicans had mingled symbols with their picture-
writing, but they had not wrought the hieroglyphic into a system, by
means of which alone ideas could be conveyed from one generation
to another. With them it could not be said that the art of writing was
known. But antiquarians have formed, it seems, a different opinion
of the mixture of symbol and picture discovered in the ruins of
Copan and Palenque; and, partly on this ground, they arrived at the
conclusion that these cities were built and inhabited by a people in
advance of the Mexicans or Aztecs discovered by the Spaniards. Mr
Wilson says very distinctly of those mysterious sculptures: “They are
no rude abbreviations, like the symbols either of Indian or Aztec
picture-writing; but rather suggest the idea of a matured system of
ideography in its last transitional stage, before becoming a word-
alphabet like that of the Chinese at the present day.”
 We should be open to the charge of great presumption, if, with
nothing before us but a few engravings by which to guide our
judgment, we ventured to offer an opinion opposed to that of Mr
Wilson, or of others who have made the subject one of especial study.
But opposite to the very page (p. 140, vol. ii.) from which we take this
last sentence we have quoted, Mr Wilson gives us an engraving of
what are denominated “hieroglyphics.” It appears to us as if the pillar
here represented had been divided into compartments, and each
compartment had been filled by the artist with some appropriate
subject, generally some human figure whose action and attitude are
unintelligible to us; but the whole conveys the idea, not of a series of
hieroglyphics, but of individual representations, each of which has its
own independent meaning. Other engravings, indeed, approximate
more nearly to the hieroglyphic; the arbitrary sign is more
conspicuous, and there is a more frequent repetition of the same
subject; but when we consider the poverty of invention that even in
later times afflicts the arts, and the tendency to repeat and to copy
which is very noticeable in rude times, we are not surprised that the
same subject is often found on the same monument, or that it has
spread from Copan to Palenque. There is nothing in the engravings
before us, or in the account given of them, which proves that a really
hieroglyphic system had been invented; and we cannot but suspect
that those who undertake the task of deciphering them will inevitably
fail, not because the key cannot be found, but because no key ever
existed.
Suppose a monument erected or a medal struck in honour of one
of our own excellent missionaries; suppose it represented the
missionary-standing with one foot on a broken image, or idol, and
that by his side knelt some half-naked savage with a cross in his
hands—this mixture of picture and of symbol would tell its tale very
intelligibly to us, for we have heard before of the labours of the
missionary. But suppose this and other pictures of the same kind
were handed down to a remote posterity, who had no information
except what the pictures themselves conveyed by which to
understand them, what hopeless perplexities would they for ever
remain! And the use of the repeated symbol might lead to the
persuasion that they were composed on some hieroglyphic system.
We might imagine learned men toiling for ever over such
representation, and never coming to any satisfactory result.
 What different impressions the same pictorial representation may
convey to two different persons, we have many an amusing instance
of in the history of our Egyptian discoveries, or efforts at discovery.
We borrow an example from the pages before us. On the wall of the
temple at Philæ, at the first cataract of the Nile, a figure is seen
seated at work on what seems a potter’s wheel, and there is a group
of hieroglyphics over its head. One learned translator reads and
explains thus:—“Kaum the Creator, on his wheel, moulds the divine
members of Osiris (the type of man) in the shining house of life, or
the solar disk.” Another learned man, Mr Birch of the British
Museum, soars, if possible, still higher for a meaning:—“Phtah
Totonem, the father of beginnings, is setting in motion the egg of the
sun and moon, director of the gods of the upper world.” Mr Wilson,
we presume, in accordance with a still later interpretation, calls this
figure simply the “ram-headed god Kneph,” without explaining what
he is doing with his wheel. If the picture and the hieroglyphic
together lead to such various results, we may easily conceive what
wild work would be made by an attempt to interpret a pictorial
representation alone.
We hesitate to assign to the inscriptions discovered in these ruined
cities the true character of hieroglyphics; that is, of a system of
symbols by means of which, independently of oral tradition, the
ideas of one generation could be conveyed to another. But our
readers would probably prefer to have Mr Wilson’s matured
judgment to our own conjectures. He says:—

“On the sculptured tablets of Copan, Quirigua, and Palenque, as well as on the
colossal statues at Copan and other ancient sites in Central America, groups of
hieroglyphic devices occur arranged in perpendicular or horizontal rows, as
regularly as the letters of any ancient or modern inscription. The analogies to
Egyptian hieroglyphics are great, for all the figures embody, more or less clearly
defined, representations of objects in nature or art. But the differences are no less
essential, and leave no room to doubt that in these columns of sculptured symbols
we witness the highest development to which picture-writing attained, in the
progress of that indigenous American civilisation so singularly illustrative of the
intellectual unity which binds together the divers races of man. A portion of the
hieroglyphic inscription which accompanies the remarkable Palenque sculpture of
a figure offering what has been assumed to represent an infant before a cross, will
best suffice to illustrate the characteristics of this form of writing.”
 What is the antiquity of these ruined cities? The first tendency was
to carry them back into some very remote period, far beyond the
memory or knowledge of the Mexicans and Peruvians. This was the
first impression of Mr Stephens; afterwards he was disposed to bring
them nearer the epoch of the Spanish conquest. He had lent a
credulous ear to the story of some good padre, who had assured him
that a native Indian city, greater than Copan could have ever been,
still existed in a flourishing and populous condition, in some district
untrodden by the European traveller. And this faith, that a Copan
still existed, naturally induced him to believe that the ruined Copan,
not belonging to an extinct civilisation, might not be so old as he first
presumed it to be. He seems to have thought it possible that some of
these cities might have been inhabited at the time of the Spanish
conquest, and that others at that period were already a heap of ruins.
War appears to have been incessant amongst almost all the tribes of
the native Americans. On this account it appears to us very probable
that many cities may have been built and destroyed, and a partial
civilisation won and lost in them, prior to the epoch of the Spanish
conquest. Such oscillations, very likely, occurred in the progress of
American civilisation. And in some of these oscillatory movements a
nearer approach might have been made to the art of writing than in
that one phase of this civilisation in which the European discovered
and destroyed it for ever. But our impression is, that, viewing the
history of this continent as a whole, there has been a slow irregular
progress, which had reached its highest point in the epoch of
Montezuma and the Incas of Peru.
The earliest stages of human progress are very slow, and much
interrupted by wars of conquest and extermination. We find no
difficulty, therefore, in assigning a great antiquity to some of these
ruined cities, and a still greater antiquity to the curious mounds and
earthworks in the valley of the Mississippi, without necessarily
inferring that these are the remains of any civilisation superior to
what history has made known to us. And before these mounds were
constructed, there might have passed a long epoch in which man
wandered wild by the rivers and in the forests of this continent. This
last-mentioned epoch of mere savage existence, some of our
speculative philosophers would extend to an enormous duration. We
are not disposed, by any evidence yet submitted to us, to expand this
period to what we must not call a disproportionate length, because
we have not the whole life of the human race before us; but which,
arguing on those progressive tendencies which, notwithstanding the
impediments and checks they receive, constitute the main
characteristic of the species, seems an improbable length. Let the
geologist, however, to whom this part of the problem must be
handed over, pursue his researches, and we need not say we shall be
happy to receive whatever knowledge of the now forgotten past he
can bring to light.
 CAXTONIANA:
A SERIES OF ESSAYS ON LIFE,
LITERATURE, AND MANNERS.

By the Author of ‘The Caxton Family.’

PART XVI.

NO. XXII.—ON CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF ART IN WORKS

OF IMAGINATION.

Every description of literature has its appropriate art. This truth is

immediately acknowledged in works of imagination. We speak, in
familiar phrase, of the Dramatic Art, or the Art of Poetry. But the
presence of art is less generally recognised in works addressed to the
reason. Nevertheless, art has its place in a treatise on political
economy, or in a table of statistics. For in all subjects, however
rigidly confined to abstract principles or positive facts, the principles
and facts cannot be thrown together pell-mell; they require an
artistic arrangement. Expression itself is an art. So that even works
of pure science cannot dispense with art, because they cannot
dispense with expression. What is called method in Science is the art
by which Science makes itself intelligible. There is exquisite art in the
arrangement of a problem in Euclid. If a man have a general
knowledge of the fact that all lines drawn from the centre of a circle
to the circumference are equal, but has never seen that fact proved
by Euclid, let him attempt to prove it in his own way, and then
compare his attempt with the problem in Euclid which demonstrates
the fact, and he will at once acknowledge the master’s art of
demonstration. Pascal is said to have divined, by the force of his own
genius, so large a number of Euclid’s propositions, as to appear
almost miraculous to his admirers, and wholly incredible to his
aspersers. Yet that number did not exceed eighteen. In fact, art and
science have their meeting-point in method.
And though Kant applies the word genius (ingenium) strictly to
the cultivators of Art, refusing to extend it to the cultivators of
Science, yet the more we examine the highest orders of intellect,
whether devoted to science, to art, or even to action, the more clearly
we shall observe the presence of a faculty common to all such orders
of intellect, because essential to completion in each—a faculty which
seems so far intuitive or innate (ingenium) that, though study and
practice perfect it, they do not suffice to bestow—viz., the faculty of
grouping into order and symmetrical form, ideas in themselves
scattered and dissimilar. This is the faculty of Method; and though
every one who possesses it is not necessarily a great man, yet every
great man must possess it in a very superior degree, whether he be a
poet, a philosopher, a statesman, a general; for every great man
exhibits the talent of organisation or construction, whether it be in a
poem, a philosophical system, a policy, or a strategy. And without
method there is no organisation nor construction. But in art, method
is less perceptible than in science, and in familiar language usually
receives some other name. Nevertheless, we include the meaning
when we speak of the composition of a picture, the arrangement of
an oration, the plan of a poem. Art employing method for the
symmetrical formation of beauty, as science employs it for the logical
exposition of truth: but the mechanical process is, in the last, ever
kept visibly distinct; while, in the first, it escapes from sight amid the
shows of colour and the curves of grace.
And though, as I have said, Art enters into all works, whether
addressed to the reason or to the imagination, those addressed to the
imagination are works of Art par emphasis, for they require much
more than the elementary principles which Art has in common with
Science. The two part company with each other almost as soon as
they meet on that ground of Method which is common to both,—
Science ever seeking, through all forms of the ideal, to realise the
Positive—Art, from all forms of the Positive, ever seeking to extract