Touching these English colonies, I do not wish to be misunderstood.
I do not say of them or of America that they have not a future,
or that they will not be great nations. I merely deny the whole
established modern expression about them. I deny that they are "destined"
to a future. I deny that they are "destined" to be great nations.
I deny (of course) that any human thing is destined to be anything.
All the absurd physical metaphors, such as youth and age,
living and dying, are, when applied to nations, but pseudo-scientific
attempts to conceal from men the awful liberty of their lonely souls.
In the case of America, indeed, a warning to this effect is instant
and essential. America, of course, like every other human thing,
can in spiritual sense live or die as much as it chooses.
But at the present moment the matter which America has very seriously
to consider is not how near it is to its birth and beginning,
but how near it may be to its end. It is only a verbal question
whether the American civilization is young; it may become
a very practical and urgent question whether it is dying.
When once we have cast aside, as we inevitably have after a
moment's thought, the fanciful physical metaphor involved in the word
"youth," what serious evidence have we that America is a fresh
force and not a stale one? It has a great many people, like China;
it has a great deal of money, like defeated Carthage or dying Venice.
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