Publisher's Synopsis
Nicholas Murray Butler has given us another significant little volume which is most valuable as a study of American life and progress. It is entitled "The American as He Is," and is divided into three chapters: The American as a Political Type; The American Apart from His Government; and The American and the Intellectual Life.
The first deals with the American type as a unit, giving full weight to the persistence of the Anglo-Saxon impulse and its extraordinary effect in developing what promises to be a homogeneous national character from the chaotic elements which go to making up the American people. Dr. Butler attributes the development of this unit largely to the broadening effect of interstate migration and to the influence of voluntary organizations that are national in their scope and that serve to draw together what otherwise might be provincial and mutually hostile elements. Our Federal Government, especially within the last few years, has also served as a strong force for the bringing about of national and political unity.
Dr. Butler takes up the question of American politics and treats it succinctly, with due recognition of the innate conservatism of the American people and of their reverence for the rule of the Constitution and for the Judiciary as an organ of government. He asserts that the Courts represent the settled habits of thinking of the American people, as either President or Congress may be influenced by the passions and clamor of the moment, but the Federal Courts are there to decide rationally as to the exact merits of the case and to uphold the principles laid down in the Constitution. This conservatism Dr. Butler dwells upon with a special emphasis as being the distinguishing characteristic of the American form of government. By its action every immediate demand for political action is tested as to its validity through the standard of the fundamental principles of organized government embodied in the Constitution. And when it comes to the final decision, it is this rule of principles, not of man, which dominates all American political action.
The remainder of the book is devoted to a keen study of the American as the individual, showing his most salient characteristics and the spirit of American life as a whole. This naturally includes a study of American business methods, the large corporations and the growth of the new and vigorous intellectual movement which even now is shaping itself as a natural expression of the national life, which is becoming more definitely coordinated with every decade that passes.
-The Craftsman, Volume 16 [1909]
