Race Questions, Provincialism, and Other American Problems: Expanded Edition

Preface

Preface  The five essays which make up the present volume were all, at some time, read, before various audiences, as addresses. Each one contains indications of the special occasion for the sake of which it was first prepared. Yet each one of them also states opinions which, from my own point of view, make it a part of an effort to apply, to some of our American problems, that general doctrine about life which I have recently summed up in my book entitled ‘‘The Philosophy of Loyalty.’’ In the light of that philosophy I therefore hope that the various special opinions here expressed may be judged. This book I regard as an auxiliary to its more systematic predecessor. The closing essay of the present volume contains, in fact, a summary of the theses upon which my ‘‘Philosophy of Loyalty’’ is based, as well as a direct application of these theses to a special practical problem of our recent education. The first essay here printed—that on ‘‘Race Questions’’—was read before the Chicago Ethical Society, in 1905. It was later published in the ‘‘International Journal of Ethics.’’ It is an effort to express and to justify, in the special case of the race-problems, the spirit which I have elsewhere defined as that of ‘‘Loyalty to Loyalty.’’ The second and fourth essays of this book both relate to ‘‘Provincialism ,’’—the one discussing, in general terms, the need and uses of that spirit in our American life; the other sketching, as well as I am able, the bases upon which rests that particular form of provincialism to which I, as a native Californian, personally owe most. The paper on ‘‘The Pacific Coast’’ was prepared as early as 1898. The general {  }  preface essay on ‘‘Provincialism’’ was read as a Phi Beta Kappa Address, at the Iowa State University, in 1902. In the ‘‘Philosophy of Loyalty’’ the importance of an enlightened provincialism is discussed in the course of the fifth lecture of that volume,—a lecture whose general topic is: ‘‘Certain American Problems in their Relation to Loyalty.’’ What I there merely sketched regarding provincialism is here more fully set forth. In my own mind, meanwhile, the essay on the ‘‘Pacific Coast’’ is a continuation of the study which first took form in my volume on the history of California, published, in the Commonwealth Series, in 1886. In that work I stated, in various passages, views about the provincial aspects of loyalty,—views which have later come to form part of the more general ethical doctrine to which I am now committed. Loyalty is the practical aspect and expression of an idealistic philosophy . Such a philosophy, in relation to theoretical as well as to practical problems, I have long tried to maintain and to teach. A familiar charge against idealism, however, is, that it is an essentially unpractical doctrine. Such a charge can be fairly answered only in case an idealist is quite willing, not only to listen with good humor to his common-sense critics, but also to criticise himself and to observe the defects of his tendencies. In such a spirit I have tried to write the third of the essays here printed. I should be glad to have this paper read in the light of the lecture on ‘‘Conscience,’’ in the ‘‘Philosophy of Loyalty.’’ Some passages in these papers show special signs of the dates when they were written; and therefore the reader may notice a few allusions and illustrations—due to passing events—which would be otherwise chosen or stated were the papers composed to-day. Thus, my sketch of conditions in Jamaica, in the essay on ‘‘Race Questions,’’ contains a few statistical and other data that were publicly reported in 1904, and that would need some modification to adapt them to the present moment. But I believe that none of these matters interfere with what my volume attempts to be,—a series of illustrations, prepared in the course of a number of years, but all bearing upon the application of a certain philosophical doctrine and spirit to some problems of American life. preface  I have mentioned the Japanese, more than once, in these pages. It is fair to say that the characterization of their national spirit which occurs in the essay on ‘‘Provincialism’’ was written in 1902, and here appears substantially unchanged. Mrs. Royce has constantly aided me in preparing these essays...